The outgoing CEO of the Bear Stearns investment firm, which was just bailed out of near bankruptcy with a $30 billion guarantee from the Federal Reserve to enable JP Morgan Chase to purchase the firm at a huge discount, announced today that the firm had performed so poorly that it was returning all government subsidies that it had received, including $37 million in tax breaks and other incentives given by the City in 1991 and the $75 million benefits package also given to them by the City in 1997. ...read more

Despite skyrocketing demand and dire food shortages at the state’s more than 2,000 emergency feeding programs, the new State budget – just agreed upon by the New York State Legislature and Governor David Patterson – cuts the main source of State funding for such programs by 16%.

Advocates indicated that the State could have avoided such cuts if it had enacted the Assembly plan to restore more equitable taxation to state residents earning more than one million dollars a year or if the State had reduced funding for numerous types of corporate welfare still supported by State dollars. ...read more