The government branches and services affected by the shutdown. Slideshow New York City Democratic mayoral nominee Bill de Blasio speaks after receiving the endorsement of former mayoral candidate and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn during a press conference at City Hall in New York September 17, 2013. Credit: Reuters/Shannon Stapleton NEW YORK | Mon Sep 30, 2013 7:38pm EDT NEW YORK (Reuters) – New York City Democratic mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio revealed on Monday that his father took his own life in 1979 after a long struggle with alcoholism and late-stage cancer. Speaking about a difficult personal situation weeks before the November 5 general election, de Blasio, who has a wide lead in the race to follow Mayor Michael Bloomberg in City Hall, said he had learned “very powerful personal lessons” from his father’s demise but that it was “tough stuff to make sense of to this day.” De Blasio, the city’s public advocate, issued a statement about his father’s death to pre-empt a New York Post article about the suicide, which was published soon after. He gave a long interview to New York’s public radio station afterwards. “We knew his life was going to come to an end. We didn’t expect it to be this way,” he said. “And there had been such sorrow around it.” De Blasio said he did not intend to discuss it further. “I think some things still need to be respected about families and I think it’s fair that I that I would answer these questions for one person and explain the situation for one person,” he said. “But after that I don’t have any intention to talk about it any more.” “This particular piece is just particularly painful and difficult and wasn’t something I felt real comfortable talking about,” he said. De Blasio is due to face Republican Joe Lhota, a former deputy under Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. Recent polls show that de Blasio is favored by about two-thirds of city voters. De Blasio’s father, Warren Wilhelm, volunteered to fight in World War Two and was at Okinawa, one of the war’s bloodiest episodes. De Blasio said he saw little of his father after his parents separated and described his father’s drunkenness as a “consistent reality.” Wilhelm, 61 and sick with late-stage cancer, shot himself in a Connecticut hotel in 1979. De Blasio was 18 and had just finished high school. (Reporting by Edith Honan; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
Antrel Rolle and New York Giants Continue to Open Mouths
“Other cities don’t have Rikers Island,” said Martin F. Horn, who in 2009 resigned as the city’s correction commissioner, noting that hundreds of millions of dollars are spent a year to run the 400-acre island in the East River next to the runways of LaGuardia Airport that has 10 jail facilities, thousands of staff and its own power plant and bakery. The city’s Independent Budget Office annual figure of $167,731 – which equates to about $460 per day for the 12,287 average daily New York City inmates last year – was based on about $2 billion in total operating expenses for the Department of Correction, which included salaries and benefits for staff, judgments and claims as well as debt service for jail construction and repairs. But there are particularly expensive costs associated with Rikers. The department says it spends $30.3 million annually alone on transportation costs, running three bus services that usher inmates to and from court throughout the five boroughs, staff from a central parking lot to Rikers jails and visitors to and around the island. There were 261,158 inmates delivered to court last year. A way to bring down the costs, Horn has long said, would be to replace Rikers Island with more robust jails next door to courthouses. But his attempts to do that failed in part because of political opposition from residential areas near courthouses in Brooklyn, Manhattan and elsewhere. “My point is: Have you seen a whole lot of outcry on this? Why doesn’t anything happen?” Horn said of the $167,731 annual figure. “Because nobody cares.” “That’s the reason we have Rikers Island,” he said. “We want these guys put away out of public view.” New York’s annual costs dwarf the annual per-inmate costs in other big cities. Los Angeles spent $128.94 a day, or $47,063 a year, for 17,400 inmates in fiscal year 2011-12, its sheriff’s office said. Chicago spent $145 a day, or $52,925 a year, for 13,200 inmates in 2010, the most recent figures available from that county’s sheriff’s office.
New York Jets: What You Need to Know Heading into Week 5
But Antrel Rolle and other New York Giants are opening their mouths after their paltry 0-4 start has left nothing else to say. Rolle, a Giants safety and captain, likes to share his “beliefs,” needless to say. He is the team’s fifth tackler ( 21 total ) but is running away with the lead in hyperbolic comments for the New York media to scoop up. His latest installment came on Tuesday on WFAN radio (h/t ESPN) when he expressed his “belief” that Big Blue’s locker room is lacking “belief” in itself: Honestly speaking, I really don’t believe that everyone believes that we can win within our locker room…And it’s hard. There’s guys that haven’t been there before, there’s guys that haven’t been affiliated with how the Giants make comebacks and how we can come back in the games, or how we can overcome adversity. So I really don’t expect every guy to believe, to have the same belief that I have, or maybe the other people that have been around the organization have. A captain’s words often inspire teammates to believe or offer a rallying cry, calling for players to get on board. This statement was a bit out of the ordinary. Rolle, in his fourth season for New York, has a point about the Giants’ youth, new faces and backup players. But his comments the day prior , about his own “belief” (seriously, his words) that the Giants would finish the season 12-0, are suspect if he doesn’t trust his locker room. Christian Petersen/Getty Images “I believe we can go 12-0 from this point on,” Rolle stated on Monday ( per ESPN ). “People can look at me like I’m crazy, but you know, I could really give a damn at this point.” He continued, “This is what I truly believe. I know the talent of this team, I know the mindset of this team, we just have to go out there and put it all together.” The Giants have a lot to put together should they get back on track in 2013. They are 30th in the NFL in points per game (15.2), 23rd in yards per game (325.5) and 21st in yards allowed per game (384.3). They are dead last in third-down conversion percentage (22.5), turnover differential (-9) and points allowed per game (36.5), via NFL.com .
New York mayoral hopeful discusses father’s suicide
Dale Zanine-USA TODAY Sports The Jets must travel to the Georgia Dome this week; a place where Matt Ryan is 34-6 in his career. Unfortunately, New York has little to no chance of making the postseason for the first time in three seasons this year. The Jets may be off to a respectable 2-2 start, but the team’s schedule over the next two months is brutal. New York must visit Atlanta, Cincinnati and Baltimore , and it has home games against the Patriots, New Orleans Saints and Miami Dolphins all before Week 14. The combined records of New York’s remaining opponents is 25-22. In fact, if you take away the team’s next two games against the 1-3 Atlanta Falcons and the winless Pittsburgh Steelers , the remaining record of New York’s opponents is a ridiculous 24-15. With a solid defense, the Jets should manage to stay competitive against even the toughest of competition, but it’s difficult to see them winning more than six or seven games. The 2013 Jets may be a team that is better than its final record suggests. 2. The Jets turnover differential could be the worst in the league. Gang Green could easily be 4-0 if it wasn’t for one thingturnovers. With at least a pair of turnovers in every game, rookie Geno Smith has given the ball away an unfathomable 11 times a quarter way through the season. That translates to a record-breaking 44 turnovers over a 16-game season. Smith’s decision-making is subpar, to say the least, and he consistently underthrows his receivers deep. He may be a rookie, but he needs to take care of the ball if he is to maintain his starting job over the duration of the season. Additionally, New York’s defense may be a solid unit, but it fails to pressure the opposing team into turning the ball over. The Jets have managed just two takeaways through the first four games, despite facing rookie EJ Manuel and turnover-prone Josh Freeman in two of those contests. The Jets turnover differential currently sits at negative-nine, just one ahead of the Steelers for last in the league.