NIMBY, The ADA, and the MTA

The New York City MTA has frequently failed to adhere to its obligations under the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA). Many of its subway stations are not in compliance, and part of the agency's long term capital construction costs are related to bringing stations it renovates up to standards.

So, what happens when the MTA plans on renovating a station on the Upper East Side? Local residents complain that the station's ADA compliance portion would destroy the fabric of the historic neighborhood.

The MTA is planning to renovate the station at 68th Street/Hunter College as part of a federal requirement to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, according to a presentation made at a Community Board 8 transportation committee meeting on Wednesday night.

An elevator would be added to the northeast corner of 68th Street and Lexington Avenue, and new entrances (just with stairs) would be built on the southwest and southeast corners of East 69th Street and Lexington Avenue.

“It would ruin the fabric of the neighborhood,” East 69th Street resident Nancy Friedman told DNAinfo. “It’s the most beautiful block in the city,” she claimed, describing her street’s carriage houses and townhouses.

Changes to historic districts were usually heavily scrutinized, Friedman added. “We’re not even allowed to change the windows — even on the back of our buildings, and they’re just going to slap this on the block?”

Particularly on the west side of the street, the entrance wasn't needed, she said, because "people to the west don't take the subway. Not to be elitist, but they don't."

The MTA’s plans spurred one man from the ritzy block to accuse the transit agency of using the ADA requirements as a “charade.”

Board members bristled at the accusation, with the committee’s co-chair calling the comment “offensive to disabled people.”

Community Board 8 will put the MTA’s presentation online and solicit responses to provide the MTA. The transportation authority is expected to come back in December with an updated plan.

In support of the MTA’s plans, CB 8 member A. Scott Falk — who said it has taken him up to five minutes to exit that subway when it’s crowded — told the residents at the meeting, “New York City is not a gated community. The whole idea of putting an entrance on 69th Street is going to open you up to marauding down the street seems a bit reactionary.”

This is insanity encapsulated.

The MTA needs to bring its station access up to ADA standards, and that's a costly proposition. When you've got local communities blocking such improvements because they think it's going to increase crime (for a station that already exists mind you), that amounts to nothing more than NIMBY and it also shows that the local community has no regard for the disabled or families that need to rely on the subways for transit.

Subway access for the disabled is far from where it should be, and the agency has been slowly working towards improving the situation. New stations such as at Fulton Street incorporate ADA requirements, and older stations are retrofitted with ramps, elevators, and wider access points but less than half the stations in the system are ADA compliant.

Accounting Tricks Play Into Postal Service Mess

The US Postal Service is in trouble, but it's not all the result of declining use of first class postage services and increased use of the Internet.

A good portion is the result of Congress playing its usual accounting tricks to hide and shift money on the deficit.

First, it's important to note that the USPS is financially self-sufficient. Since the 1970s, it has been mandated by Congress to operate entirely on its own revenue, with no taxpayer money. It's an enormous agency — with $65 billion in annual revenue, it would be a Fortune 50 company if it were a private entity. As a quasi-government agency, it enjoys privileged fiscal status — its revenue and expenses are "off budget," meaning Congress isn't supposed to be able to toy with them. It shares this privileged state with only one other government entity: the Social Security Trust Fund. But as you know, Congress finds a way to toy with everything.

In 2006, Congress passed the "Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act" to modernize the agency's stamp-price-setting tools and a host of other elements of mail delivery. That law set up this seemingly crazy health care prepayment fund.

To bean counters at the U.S. Treasury Department, however, the fund made perfect sense. It was a crazy arrangement to cover for another crazy arrangement the Postal Service escaped in 2006.

When former members of the U.S. military take a government job, their military service counts as annual credits toward pension eligibility. This holds true when service members take postal jobs — but who pays for the value of those credits? In 2006, the Postal Service was shouldering that cost on its balance sheet, even though there was general agreement that the Treasury Department should be responsible for pension credit earned prior to employment with the Postal Service. The 2006 law shifted the burden from the USPS, but that meant an addition burden on the Treasury — that is, it would have added to the federal deficit. So to balance out that negative on Treasury's balance sheet, the Postal Service was ordered to make health care pre-payments equivalent to the cost of the pension cost shift.

The problem of military pension credits itself was a creation of just such a deficit-hiding accounting trick. In 2002, an audit of the USPS budget found it had overpaid into the federal government's pension plan by roughly $80 billion. Postal Service officials lobbied hard have its pension payments readjusted. They were, in 2003, but in order to make the shift revenue neutral, military pension credit costs were shifted from Treasury to the USPS.

The 2006 law passed by Congress was designed to put an end to this fiscal football.

In the middle part of the last decade, the Postal Service was so awash in operating cash that the 10-year tithe to the federal government seemed a small price to pay for a promise that the crazy cost shifting would be over in a decade. In the meantime, the cash played a small but measurable part in reducing the federal deficit.

"But it became very clear that these payments were unaffordable once the economy tanked," Fauber said. In short order, the health care prepayments became “a million-pound weight” on the Postal Service budget.

Fauber and other Postal Service advocates say the Postal Service would have no trouble balancing its own budget if Congress and the Treasury Department stopped adding billions to its annual expenses through fiscal maneuvering.

The Postal Service is prepaying pensions for people it is expected to hire in 2050 and 2060 and beyond - all because Congress needs to keep adjusting its house of cards and shift deficits off-budget.

As with many of the other issues facing the nation, it comes down to Congress failing to do its job of managing the nation's budget in a responsible manner. It sees the Postal Service as a piggy bank it can simultaneously raid, castigate, and blame for its financial mess.

That isn't to say that the Postal Service doesn't have to adjust service to reflect reduced usage for mail. It does need to reduce the number of outlets and improve efficiencies all while improving customer service.

But first and foremost - Congress has to remedy the situation.

Massive Iranian Bank Scandal Threatens To Take Down Ahmadinejad?

Karma's a bitch. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the President of Iran, is threatened by a huge banking scandal in Iran where he's alleged to have been in on a $2.5 billion dollar bank scam.

The largest case of bank fraud in Iranian history is threatening to engulf President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad after a parliamentary commission decided to investigate his office for possible connections to the crime, Iranian state media has reported.

To add insult to injury, Islamist hard-line legislators loyal to Iran's Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Khamenei, subsequently sent the commission a letter requesting specifically that Ahmadinejad be included in the investigation. They have since said they would not follow up on the letter out of respect for Khamenei.

It is one move of many by Islamists to link the president to the alleged embezzlement of 30 trillion Iranian rials -- more than $2.5 billion.

To frame the extent of allegations in U.S. terms: It would be akin to religious conservative legislators attempting to implicate a sitting American president in the infamous Madoff Ponzi scheme, in which disgraced financier Bernie Madoff cheated investors out of $50 billion.

Ahmadinejad has vehemently rejected accusations that anyone in his government is linked to what is currently the highest-profile crime in the country, according to the semi-official Mehr News Agency.

Ahmadinejad and the Islamist hardliners within the mullahs have been at each other since before the disputed elections resulted in massive protests and a violent crackdown against the opposition led by Mirhussin Mousavi. Candidates in Iranian elections are vetted and approved by the religious council - the mullahs - so the crackdown was seen as a schism among the mullahs or a potential power grab by Ahmadinejad. That political and religious tension continues and this latest scandal is an outgrowth of that earlier mess.

Does this have legs? Well, a $2.5 billion bank scandal is nothing to be trifled with - not when most Iranians live in deplorable living conditions and wonder where all the oil wealth has gone.

Ahmadinejad's close economic advisers are tied to the case:

The main suspect in the case has ties to the Iranian president's chief adviser, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, who used his influence in a bank business deal for the accused man, Amir Mansoor Khosravi.

Khosravi had opened a private bank known as the Bank Arya. Getting a license is usually difficult, but Mashaei used his political pull to help pave the way, said economist Dr. Behrooz Hady Zonooz from Tehran.

Add close family ties, and tribal-style alliances, and you've got grounds for collusion, back-room deals, and opportunities for fraud on a massive scale.

The scams involve a greater percentage of Iranian GDP than even the Madoff Ponzi scheme ($50 billion) - and has the potential to take down some of Iran's largest and most prestigious banks.

Zuccotti Park Protests Continue After Major March Energizes Movement

Yesterday, I saw that the Occupy Wall Street Protesters were far more energized than they had been in preceeding days and weeks, particularly because of the infusion of union workers into the protest/marches planned for yesterday.

For the most part, the 10-20,000 people who showed up for the march did so peacefully, but things got out of hand after dark when a group decided to attempt a sit-in at Wall Street itself. Some in the group apparently pushed forward, and senior NYPD officers then pushed back, including one who came out swinging with his baton. There were more arrests in that portion of the protest, but who exactly is protesting?

The NY Observer has a cross section of those protesting (and those covering the protests). I recall at least crossing paths with some of the protesters profiled - particularly this gentleman, who I recall because of the signs he was carrying.

The unions brought numbers, but the protesters who have been at Zuccotti Park since day 1 haven't ceded ground or control to the unions. They welcome the union participation but aren't going to let the unions take over the message.

I think that's the right move. Not only have the unions been late to this particular message, but many Americans consider the unions to be part of the problem.

Some unions are wary of joining in with the protesters, in part because some of the groups harbor anti-Semitic views (but have largely avoided such displays down at Zuccotti Park). Included in the mix of protesters are enough people who not only blame the bankers, but throw in Israel and the Jews into the mix, it's a fallback to a longstanding anti-Semitic smear.

For all the anger at Wall Street, there should be even more ire against Congress and government in general, which has been far too cozy with Wall Street and looked the other way when it should have been regulating and monitoring the industry far more closely than it has done. It means enforcing the rules already on the books. It means prosecuting those who have engaged in criminal acts; it means businesses that engaged in wrongful practices should be hammered hard - and not cut cozy deals that a homeowner in pending foreclosure hell could only dream of.

Government, business, and citizens of the country have a compact with each other - and far too many think that the government and businesses' compact with the people has broken down. Government and business is seen as far too cozy with each other to the detriment of people. Watching governments issue multibillion dollar bailouts for banks that precipitated the credit crisis and imploded in the real estate collapse because they didn't do their jobs to manage risk but do little to help homeowners who played by all the rules is frustrating and only adds to the anger and pain.

Watching companies fatten their bottom line by cutting jobs even as they give bonuses to top executives adds to the anger and pain. Rather than seeing organic growth, businesses are attempting to do more with less, and the end result is an economic situation that borders on a persistent recession.

Some companies are trying to forge new links with unions and improve not only their bottom line, but those of its workers. Ford is one such company. It just cut a deal with the UAW to not only raise salaries, but to bring more jobs back into the US, expand production and improve other benefits. That deal is also likely to result in an upgrade in Ford's credit rating, which will reduce its debt load as the company can refinance its debt obligations and improve its bottom line.

Other companies need to take a similar tact. Hiring people shouldn't be an anathema to businesses. Raises shouldn't be either, and yet that's exactly the kind of situation seen at major companies all across the country. Wages have stagnated, even as executives get promoted and given raises for keeping the bottom line lean.

The Next Generation of Metallica Fanatics Has Arrived

Kids Playing Metallica Are Awesome - Watch MoreFunny Videos

HT: Mrs. Lawhawk

IRS Ruling May Deal Crushing Blow To Medical Marijuana Industry

An IRS ruling today may have dealt a crushing blow to nonprofit providers that issue medical marijuana as allowed under state law. The key provision is IRC Sec. 280E, which disallows deductions for the following:

...deductions incurred in the trade or business of trafficking in controlled substances that federal law or the law of any state in which the taxpayer conducts the business prohibits. For this purpose, the term “controlled substances” has the meaning provided in the Controlled Substances Act. Marijuana falls within the Controlled Substances Act.

Since federal law hasn't been amended to exclude medical marijuana from the Controlled Substance Act, the IRS has to disallow any deductions that the providers have taken. These are deductions that any business would take as a matter of course - business expenses for example.

That is a huge tax burden and one that makes little sense. Moreover, the legal provision of medical marijuana at Harborside in Oakland has resulted in quite a tidy sum of tax revenues: $1.1 million in taxes to the city of Oakland, $2 million to the state of California and $500,000 to the federal government. The IRS ruling would increase the federal government tab to $2.5 million, but would end up killing the business. Other providers in a similar position would see a similar hit.

I don't fault the IRS for pursuing this particular case, as they are required to follow the law as in effect. It's up to Congress to fix this.

The Latest From Zuccotti Park Occupy Wall Street Protests

Today's protests seem a whole lot more energized than they were last week, and it's not just because the weather is vastly improved. I think the various unions coming out in support of the protests has galvanized the protesters. There will be more protests and marches later today, and the NYPD continues monitoring the situation (they have a significant police presence, but the rank and file officers seem as laid back as ever). They've also arranged more security barriers on adjoining streets in the expectation of further marches today or down the road.

The messages also seem to be a bit more coherent than they were last week. Part of it is because the protesters themselves are a whole lot more organized and focused than before.

Still a crowd pleaser - protesters with percussion instruments to garner attention along Church Street. There are protests along both Church and Broadway, but Broadway still should be the focus for protesters to gain attention from passersby. 

Just a few of the media trucks that have come to view the proceedings. Several others, including Channel 4 (NBC) and Channel 7 (ABC) were circling the block looking for a spot to set up. CNN had a crew there and several foreign media outlets were also mingling with the crowds.

Speaking of being better organized, the protesters have put together a list of needs, and how people can volunteer their time and skills to keep the protests going. 

Just a few of the many handwritten signs that are displayed along the edge of the park.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.7.4

The crowds thicken along the spine of Zuccotti Park, and it's a beehive of activity. 

A library has been set up for those who are protesting. 

Sorry about the poor contrast on this photo, but it does show protesters along Church Street complaining about Wall Street buying stocks, not politicians. Those signs are printed and being distributed by a group calling itself Rootstrikers.

There was no sign of any anti-Semitic or racist dribble that others have indicated.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.7.4

Christmas Day Underwear Bomber Trial Gets Underway With Defiant Defendant

The trial of Abdul Farouk Abdul Mutallab is getting underway today, and the suspected terrorist is defiant in his hatred and views of the United States.

A Nigerian man accused of trying to bring down an international jetliner with a bomb in his underwear walked into the start of his federal trial Tuesday and declared that a radical Islamic cleric killed by the U.S. military is alive.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's outburst came as jury selection got under way for his federal terror trial in Detroit, where the 24-year-old is acting as his own attorney and has previously told reporters they should stop reporting that Osama bin Laden was dead.

"Anwar is alive," Abdulmutallab said Tuesday, referring to American-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed last week by a joint CIA-U.S. military air strike in Yemen.

"The mujahadeen will wipe out the U.S. — the cancer U.S.," he added.

Abdulmutallab, a well-educated Nigerian from an upper-class family, was directed by al-Awlaki and wanted to become a martyr when he boarded Northwest Airlines Flight 253 in Amsterdam on Christmas 2009, according to the government.

Awlaki was killed in airstrikes a couple of days ago, but Awlaki was successful in recruiting numerous terrorists to join or act as lone wolf affiliates of al Qaeda. Mutallab is one such thug who attempted to blow up an airplane using a bomb sewn into his underwear just minutes before the plane was to land at Detroit Metropolitan Airport. The bomb failed, but passengers and crew pounced on Mutallab to prevent further attempts and to foil the plot.

Mutallab entered not guilty pleas to multiple terrorism-related charges, including including conspiracy to commit terrorism and attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction. The government says he wanted to blow up the plane by detonating chemicals in his underwear, just seven minutes before the jet carrying 279 passengers and a crew of 11 was to land at Detroit Metropolitan Airport.

Chris Christie Wont Be Saving the GOP At This Time

For all the talk about how New Jersey Governor Chris Christie might be persuaded to enter the 2012 race for President, Christie kept saying no. Well, yet another nail in that particular coffin has been put in place. More sources have come forward saying that Christie will not be running.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie will not run for president, according to a source with direct knowledge of the governor’s thinking.

Christie has long said he’s not ready to run , but had reconsidered in recent weeks and there was speculation he could make a late entrance into the race. Christie thrilled conservatives with a speech last week to Republicans at the Reagan Library in California. And his status as a governor in the blue state of New Jersey made him seem electable in a general election against President Obama.

That sigh of relief you heard was from Rick Perry and Mitt Romney, who have been trading leads in the majority of polls. While neither has lit up the voters with enthusiasm, they're the ones that the GOP are stuck with.

Of course, with a lackluster showing, GOP bigwigs might attempt to draft Christie to run, or to make a show of it at the GOP convention, but I think that Christie really has no intention of running. He's repeatedly stated as much, and while it's flattering to be called upon to enter the race by many folks, he just doesn't have the fire to run at this time - and he also has calculated that he might have a better chance after completing his first term as New Jersey governor when there may be an open field in 2016.

Those few moderate Republicans had hoped Christie would change his mind because the Tea Party and social conservatives have radicalized the party and pushed it far to the right and don't appear to be electable in general elections. That's why Christie was so intriguing; he was elected in a Democrat-leaning state and has shown himself capable of leading and learning from mistakes (such as disaster response following the blizzard and then the improved response from Hurricane Irene and Lee).

Port Authority Screws Bus Commuters Again

Even after imposing massive fare and toll hikes that hit commuters from New Jersey hard, the Port Authority is rubbing it in the faces of bus commuters.

There will be no relief for the nearly 225,000 people who ride NJ Transit buses into the Port Authority bus terminal. More than half are from Bergen or Passaic counties and ride NJ Transit. A promised $800 million expansion of the terminal will not happen, and the Port Authority cites the lower fare and toll hikes.

What the Port Authority isn't saying is that it has failed to get the proposed skyscraper over the bus terminal off the drawing board. The air rights are an invaluable resource that the Port Authority has squandered and would help with the expansion and renovation of the bus terminal that has seen little in the way of upgrades over the years.

The bus terminal is a depressing and squalid place, and yet commuters have been able to get around because buses are more reliable than trying to drive in and fight the traffic. Yet, buses have no place to go once they're in Manhattan and are forced to make return trips into New Jersey to be stored for the rush hour. In the evening, this means that buses clog up the inbound approach and the slightest delays can multiply into massive problems for bus-bound commuters. What should be a 45 minute commute can easily become twice that. There was no reliability on commutes, which is why Mrs. Lawhawk opted to pay more to take the trains rather than deal with the crummy bus service, even though the buses have more frequent operating times.

There is inadequate parking for buses near the terminal, and the Port Authority is again failing on a key part of its obligation to maintain transit systems in the New York City metro region.

It needs to get a deal done to build the skyscraper over the bus terminal so that it can fund the critical expansion project. Moreover, it needs to reduce its costs at the WTC PATH hub, which is where the bulk of the cost overruns have been. The Port Authority claimed that it needed the toll and fare hikes to cover higher costs at Ground Zero, but when you break down the costs for individual components, one sees that the overwhelming majority of overruns have been for the Santiago Calatrava-designed PATH hub. Instead of $2.2 billion, the project is now expected to run $3.44 billion. That's $1.24 billion more than originally expected, and by itself can explain the need for fare and toll hikes. That amount keeps rising, despite any claims for cost containment from the agency.

Had the Port Authority been able to contain costs on the PATH hub, it would have been able to build out the expanded bus terminal. Instead, we get fare hikes, and no bus terminal expansion for the foreseeable future.

Excellent work there by the Port Authority. [sarcasm]

Syrian Opposition Groups Formally Unite

One of the longstanding problems with the opposition groups in Syria is that Bashar al Assad's regime has been able to continue suppressing the opposition and world leaders have been unable to find someone within the opposition to back.

That's changed as the Syrian opposition has formed a national council along the lines of what Libyan rebels have done with their transitional council.

The unification of Syria's largely leaderless opposition movement is almost certain to improve coordination with the international community, whose backing could add crucial momentum to the seven-month uprising. Until now, Western leaders have been unable or unwilling to provide the kind of support that could help the opposition overthrow Mr. Assad, the Washington Post reports.

Western diplomats have frequently identified the lack of a unified opposition movement as one of the Syrian uprising’s biggest obstacles. Without a coherent opposition or any clear sense of who or what would replace Assad, world powers and many ordinary Syrians have been reluctant to throw their weight behind efforts to unseat him, fearful of a power vacuum in the strategically located nation.

The council includes the Local Coordination Committees, which has organized most of the protests across the country; the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood; and Kurdish groups; among others, the Associated Press reports. Almost half the members are from inside the country, according to the Washington Post, overcoming a key concern that the council would rely to heavily on exiles.

This means that the Syrian opposition will be able to demonstrate to world leaders that they are a viable alternative to Assad and his despotic regime.

Assad's regime continues its brutal crackdown against the opposition and a recent spate of assassinations has raised the spectre of civil war and one has to consider Assad's willingness to use assassination as a tool of foreign policy. I wouldn't put it past his regime to murder individuals, even those loyal to his regime, in order for him to remain in power by dividing and conquering opposition groups and relying on sectarian divisions to maintain his hold on power:

The latest series of assassinations in Syria, including the recent murder of the son of the grand mufti, reveals a muddled and complex picture of the state of the uprising in the country. The killings could lead Syria spiraling down the path of a bloody civil war, with sectarian vendettas likely to characterize the next chapter of the revolution. If, however, it turns out that President Bashar al-Assad’s regime is behind the targeted murders, these acts will likely backfire and unite religious sects against the regime. The flashpoint city of Homs was last week the scene of several targeted assassinations.

On Sept. 25, a surgeon at Homs’ general hospital, Hassan Eid, was shot dead as he got into his car. Aws Abdel Karim Khalil, a nuclear engineering specialist and charge d’affaires at al-Baath University, was gunned down as his wife drove him to work. Mohammad Ali Aqil, deputy dean of the architecture faculty, and Nael Dakhil, director of the military petrochemical school, were also killed last week, both the Syrian official news agency and activists reported. Khalil and Eid are said to belong to the Alawite sect of Islam, to which Assad is also affiliated, while Aqil was a Shiite Muslim and Dakhil a Christian.

It is possible that armed dissidents were targeting suspected regime informants and collaborators. But it is equally possible that the regime was carrying out targeted killings against leading members of minority Shiite, Alawite and Christian sects to create tensions between them and the majority Sunni Muslims. If the revolution develops into a sectarian war, the regime will likely present itself as an independent party seeking to unite a divided nation and thus emerge as victorious in the mayhem.

Assad already relies heavily on the Alawite minority to remain in power, but he needs others to be cowed into backing him to maintain his grip on power. Fueling fears by Christians of a Sunni Islamist takeover would play into Assad's hands.

The fact is that Assad will use all means of violence at his disposal to remain in power. He will cynically murder those loyal to his regime to stoke those fears of sectarian warfare, even though all but a few loyalists have suffered for decades under his brutal regime.

Gov. Christie Gets His Way On Ending Sad ARC Chapter

When Governor Chris Christie killed the woeful ARC tunnel project that even boosters of mass transit said was a misbegotten plan that wouldn't relieve congestion and would saddle New Jersey taxpayers with anywhere from $1 to $5 billion in cost overruns, backers of the project slammed Christie for killing a project that was in the works for years and that would supposedly cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars in repayments for federal funds already expended.

Well, Gov. Christie won that fight too. Instead of repaying $271 million, New Jersey will be on the hook for $95 million over five years, and the $1 million spent on legal fees to fight the repayment looks like money well spent.

The fact is that the ARC tunnel was a boondoggle that would have made the Secaucus Junction project look like child's play. NJ Transit has repeatedly shown itself incapable of bringing in projects on time and on schedule - especially larger projects like what was being contemplated.

Moreover, there were huge problems with the design. It wasn't that this was a tunnel to Macy's/Herald Square. It was that the tunnel would not relieve congestion like NJ Transit claimed it would; it would not have access to store trains in Sunnyside Yards, meaning that trains coming into the new terminal access would have to be sent back to New Jersey for storage between rush hours. It was a pitiful design considering all the money spent and it wasn't even the best of the alternatives considered.

Proponents of ARC came back and proposed another alternative, Gateway, which would be built under Amtrak auspices, and that proposal has a whole lot more going for it. For starters, it would bring truly high speed rail access to Manhattan, and increase the amount of NJ Transit trains into Manhattan. It just wouldn't bring as many trains as NJ Transit wished for (but which NJ Transit can't afford to run because the agency simply keeps cutting service because it lacks the capacity and operating budget to do so unless it raises fares). In fact, NJ Transit raised fares and cut service in the last round, and all the talk about a one-seat ride into Manhattan from Northern NJ is just that - talk. It wouldn't happen, and if it did, it would eliminate the need for having built Secaucus Transfer the way they did - for an obscene cost and which draws a fraction of the riders that it was originally intended to do. A one-seat ride would eliminate the reason for most of those using the station at all - to transfer between the Northern New Jersey train lines into NY Penn Station.