No likes for Facebook fiascos

John Crudele

DEAR JOHN...THE ANSWER MAN

Dear John: I am writing to you because I need help exposing a chat room called openchat on Facebook.

This app allows access to all ages 13 and up. There is hate chat, racism, bullying, sexually explicit [content], nudity, pornography and also perverts and pedophiles.

There is a webcam room too, which is disgusting. Men go on and masturbate in front of whomever, even kids. I witnessed a 7-year-old girl on there with no shirt on.

These perverts do not respect females and do not obey the law, either.

Some of these kids are unaware of the intentions of these pedophile/pervs and have their Facebook accounts wide open for anyone to go in.

I have contacted my police department and half a dozen others, but I need more agencies on this. Please help me to help the kids! These kids are accessing openchat via Facebook and YouTube. I am on a mission to close this app. Thank you! P.C.

Dear P.C.: Mission accomplished.

I contacted Facebook on your behalf and forwarded your e-mail. And the site was taken down quickly by Facebook.

Sadly, Facebook said this was a popular site, with 20,000 “likes.”

Incidentally, a Facebook spokesman told me, “We have absolutely no tolerance for apps that would violate our terms and permit the sharing of sexually explicit content with minors. We react quickly to remove all reported apps that violate our terms, and we encourage people to report questionable content using links located throughout the site.”

Dear John: My son has a Facebook page in conjunction with his small business, Make It Legal.

It is a site advocating the legalization of medical marijuana.

Douglas, my son, told me that the page was deleted because someone complained about a copyright infringement.

Now Douglas cannot get in touch with anyone at Facebook.

Facebook gave him the e-mail [address] of the person complaining, but [he] will not get back to Douglas. And Facebook will not answer Douglas’s e-mails.

How did you get in contact with someone “live” when you were fighting Facebook over a pedophile page in your columns?

Any light that you can shine on what I or my son can do would be hugely appreciated. M.K.

Dear M.K. I sent your e-mail to my contact at Facebook, and he immediately got in touch with you and your son. And as your son was originally told, someone else claims the copyright to “Make It Legal.”

Your son provided what he says is documentation that he copyrighted the name first. Facebook says it doesn’t deal with issues like this.

“Thank you so much for reaching out,” said Facebook. “Unfortunately, we are not able to adjudicate third-party trademark disputes and abide by the records kept by the US Patent and Trademark Office.

“We encourage you to reach out to the USPTO or others to reach proper resolution, as we won’t be able to assist you without a valid USPTO record,” Facebook told you.

You should contact the USPTO in Washington to see what your options are. If your page is profitable enough, you might want to hire a lawyer to handle this. And if you win, and the other guy’s page is making him a ton of money, he might have an incentive to buy you out.

At the very least, I would insist that Facebook pull the other guy’s page as well as Douglas’s, so that your opponent won’t be able to say that you abandoned the copyright.

But I’m just saying that as a guy who covers all options; I’m not a lawyer.

Good luck.

Send your questions to Dear John, The NY Post, 1211 Ave. of the Americas, NY, NY 10036, or john.crudele@nypost.com.

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The ex-Pope

‘You are confusing a modern man with an American liberal.”

These words were spoken years ago by a French cardinal responding to a question about modernity and Christianity. They come back to us now as we watch a pope who has just left the chair of St. Peter — where the eyes of the world were upon him — for a life of prayer and obscurity.

Since he announced his decision to resign, the media have obsessed over who the next pope will be and especially what he might change within Catholicism. Will he be open to gay marriage? Women priests? Married priests? Birth control? And so on.

AP

Pope Benedict XVI

We don’t pretend to have answers. But as we watch the extraordinary outpouring of love, affection and tears for this humble, 85-year-old priest from Bavaria, we are left wondering whether the American media have the best take on Pope Benedict’s impact on either the world or his flock.

Maybe, as that French cardinal suggested, people are not looking for a pope whose idea of modernity conforms to the world’s latest fashion. Just maybe their idea of a leader for the modern age is someone willing on occasion to stand up to it.

Have an opinion on this Post editorial? Send it in to LETTERS@NYPOST.COM!

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Read the heartbreaking impact statement read by the Figoski girls

Pool Photo

Below is the impact statement read in Brooklyn Supreme Court today by the four daughters of NYPD Det. Peter Figoski at the sentencing of his killer, Lamont Pride. The one joint statement was read in court, with each daughter taking a portion.

CHRISTINE FIGOSKI, 21:

On the evening of Sunday, December 11, my sisters and I went to bed with the worries of your average teenage girl. We were worried about studying for upcoming college final exams, and high school tests, and looking forward to going home for the Christmas holiday and having the family together.

We all got our normal “Night, I love you” text from Daddy, and only a few hours after, my sisters and I were faced with the tragedy that would impact the rest of our lives. The next events that happened that morning are events that will haunt us for the rest of our lives.

We were awoken by my Mom in a panic after hearing that Daddy had been in an accident. We were startled and from that moment on everything seemed to get worse.

We all came to the hospital to “Hope” and “Pray” that our Dad would pull through. Our Father was shot in the face, and still breathing at that moment, and even though as bad as his condition was, we still thought just somehow he would survive. Nothing at that moment felt real and till this day, it still doesn’t.

Two of us arrived at the hospital to see the grim faces of family members and the sad faces of hundreds of police officers that were lined up throughout the hospital.

The next several hours were some of the hardest of our lives as we were told that our Father died as a result of a gunshot to the face. We spiraled into the confusion of having to deal with the hard reality of having to prepare with life without our Dad.

CORINNE FIGOSKI, 15:

Our dad was our world, our everything. He was our hero, protector, role model and our best friend. He always made everything better. And not at one moment would any of us realize what it would be like without a father, it’s more than anyone could ever imagine. Everything our Dad did was for us. He was always trying his hardest to make us the best people we could be.

Now a day's “Promise” is just a word. When people say, “I promise everything will get better, and it’s going to be OK,” it’s just a lie to us.Nothing will ever be the same again and we will never feel the way we used to.

We lay in bed for hours in the dark at night, thinking about every possible thing that has changed in our lives since December 12, 2011. Sometimes we want to believe that this world is hell and there is another peaceful world where our dad is now. I’m not sure if we are depressed, but we are constantly angry and sad, but we continue to put smiles on our faces and laugh and joke with one another like our Father would want. But inside we are numb, and broken. We find it so hard to be happy, sometimes we forget how to feel. The past is better than it is now, and the future is less resolved. When our father died, a part of us died inside. We realize that once you’re broken in certain ways, they couldn’t ever be fixed now, no matter how hard you try.

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Hospitals’ handicaps

Comments in the editorial “A Surgical Strike” (Feb. 27) are a gross oversimplification and show a remarkable lack of insight.

Surgical centers provide little or no charity care. They are not required to take care of everyone that comes to their door regardless of ability to pay. In fact, no one arrives at their door uninvited.

They do not provide emergency services. They do not have to stay open nights and weekends. They are subjected to a fraction of the regulatory burden imposed on hospitals.

Patients do not go to these centers because they are better, but because they are directed to them by physicians who also happen to own them. These same physicians direct the uninsured and under-insured to a hospital.

So the surgical center profits enough to run a fancy, clean facility with no bums or drunks in the waiting room. If they have a complication at the center, they transfer the patient to a hospital and go home for the night.

If they don’t make money, they can close without the approval of the state, city, courts, community activists and unions. And you call that competition?

William J. McHugh

Medical Director and

Chief Medical Officer

Trinitas Regional

Medical Center

Elizabeth, NJ

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Bloomberg’s thirst

Confronted with revelations that his ban on jumbo-size soda is far more extensive than New Yorkers have realized, Mayor Bloomberg showed that his thirst for control remains unquenched: If he can’t impose his preferences on everyone, then the state should do it for him.

His remarks come as restaurants and other food establishments prepare for the day, less than two weeks hence, when they’re banned from serving sugary drinks larger than 16 ounces. But as The Post’s Brad Hamilton and Susan Edelman report this week, Bloomberg’s ban extends to more than just individual drinks.

Reuters

Michael Bloomberg

Take the two-liter soda bottles people often have delivered with their pizzas. Or the large pitchers of soda served at bowling alleys. Or the carafes of mixers served in city bars and nightclubs.

If you buy any of these, Bloomberg’s ban will affect more than your sweet tooth. That two-liter bottle of Coke for your daughter’s birthday you used to pay $3 for? An equal amount of soda will now set you back $7.50.

So what was Mayor Mike’s reaction when The Post asked him about all this? Any objections, he said, are “just made up because somebody on Sunday wants to write a column and they can’t find any news that day.”

And the gaping hole in his plan — the fact that grocery stores and supermarkets will be unaffected by his ban because they’re regulated by the state and not the city? “The state should do exactly the same thing in stores,” said Bloomberg.

In other words, the answer to problems caused by big government is even bigger government.

Have an opinion on this Post editorial? Send it in to LETTERS@NYPOST.COM!

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Old McDonald had a donor

Mayoral candidate George McDonald scored a small win in court yesterday: For the time being, he can collect campaign donations that are legal under state law but exceed the $4,950-per-donor limit imposed by the city.

That’s great news for New Yorkers who are fed up with the city’s current class of politicians. For this case is about more than money in politics: It’s about laws that favor the established political class at the expense of credible challengers.

Because McDonald has opted out of the city’s matching-funds program, he argues he should be governed by the state’s finance laws. These laws allow campaign donations of up to $19,700 in the primaries and $41,100 in general elections.

George McDonald

Without access to these donations, McDonald simply can’t compete. An advocate for the homeless, he doesn’t have the money to self-finance. He isn’t bankrolled by a union, and, unlike lifelong politicians, he has no donor base built up by years of dishing out political favors.

It’s telling that a brief filed in court against McDonald came from state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who obviously has no personal objection to big donations. In his most recent six-month filing, we found more than 60 contributions that would exceed the city limits.

Indeed, Schneiderman has amassed a $2.8 million war chest, which suggests that his agenda here has little to do with keeping money out of New York elections.

Like so many others who want to extend the city’s narrower campaign-donation limits to the state, Schneiderman knows that it’s a good way of keeping first-time candidates like McDonald out of the running — and keeping entrenched pols in power.

As McDonald told The Post: “I’m planning on financing my campaign exactly as the attorney general does now. It hasn’t seemed to invite corruption as far as he’s concerned. It certainly won’t for me.”

We agree. Shouldn’t McDonald be allowed to run his campaign under the same rules as Schneiderman?

Have an opinion on this Post editorial? Send it in to LETTERS@NYPOST.COM!

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Chill factor

Most popular songs

1. Thrift Shop, Macklemore, Ryan Lewis

2. Stay, Rihanna

3. Ho Hey, The Lumineers

4. Harlem Shake, Baauer

5. Suit & Tie, Justin Timberlake

6. Gangnam Style, PSY

7. When I Was Your Man, Bruno Mars

8. Scream And Shout, Will.i.am

9. I Will Wait, Mumford & Sons

10. Started from the Bottom, Drake

Tivo favorites

1. The Big Bang Theory

2. Modern Family

3. NCIS

4. The Amazing Race

5. Two and a Half Men

Top video downloads

1. Terrible Valentine’s

2. Day gift

3. Obama sends Kid President a message

4. Cheerleader half-court trick shot

5. How it feels through glass

Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP

Rihanna

Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP

Jennifer Lawrence

6. Burning my hair off

Google trends

1. NASCAR

2. Ronda Rousey

3. Argo

4. National Margarita Day

5. Kenny Clutch

NY Post hot topics

1. Mayor’s soda ban

2.Oscar romance goes ‘Dark’

3. Lumenick’s Oscar picks

4. CBS anchor cheated

6. I Dream of Jenny

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Creep teach keeps his job

A lovesick Brooklyn teacher who stalked, assaulted and threatened another teacher for refusing to date him can keep his city job, The Post has learned.

Salvatore Sparacino, 46, a gym teacher at It Takes a Village Academy HS in East Flatbush, vented his fury at a colleague when she spurned his romantic advances, according to testimony.

“I’ll show you, you f--king bitch. You’ll pay for this,” he yelled.

Despite finding that Sparacino had terrorized the woman both in and out of school, Joshua Javits, a hearing officer who decides cases against tenured teachers, barred the city Department of Education from firing him.

J.C. Rice

Salvatore Sparacino

Instead, Javits slapped the crazed coach with a transfer and a $20,000 fine.

The trouble started when Sparacino and the colleague “became friends” in the 2010-11 school year. They went out to lunch and dinner, but the woman told him she wasn’t interested in a physical relationship, she said.

Undeterred, Sparacino showered her with favors and gifts. He gave Regents study aids and tennis lessons to her teenage daughter. While helping the woman move books in her classroom, he tried to touch her hand, she said. She told him not to.

After Sparacino paid $800 for tickets to Cirque du Soleil, the woman refused to go. He then bombarded her with angry phone and text messages, one day calling 18 times, she testified.

“I was crazy for you,” one said. “I was the jackpot because I would have done anything for you.”

The colleague tossed his letters without opening them, including one containing the circus tickets. Sparacino barged into her classroom, screaming. “It’s the end. You think you can throw me away,” she testified.

Sparacino then chased her around the desks. When she tried to get him to leave, he shoved a door that struck and bruised her forehead. Shouting “F--k you” and waving his fists, he followed her outside, slammed his body against her car and blocked her from leaving.

He then tailed the woman home and parked next to her car, so she could not leave with her daughter, according to testimony.

“I will kill you, bitch. I’ll sue you,” she quoted him as saying.

She called 911. Sparacino was arrested for second-degree harassment but pleaded guilty to a non-criminal violation. Under the deal, he had to do three days of community service, take an anger-management class and obey an order of protection to stay away from the woman.

He denied ever harassing or hitting the colleague, claiming he only wanted his money back for the circus tickets.

Hearing officer Javits called that excuse “absurd,” citing Sparacino’s “romantic desires.”

But Javits took pity on Sparacino, refusing to allow his firing after 15 years on the job.

“His stalking conduct and harassing behavior, while completely unacceptable, do not automatically render him completely unfit to return to his teaching career,” Javits wrote.

Sparacino, who makes $82,100 a year, is now assigned to a pool of substitutes who go to different schools each week, the DOE said.

susan.edelman@nypost.com

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Pickup truck horror in Brooklyn: pedestrian crushed on cookie run

 

William C Lopez/New York Post

Scene of the deadly accident in Brooklyn tonight.

A Brooklyn woman was crushed to death by an out-of-control pickup tonight just seconds after she left a Brooklyn Heights cafe with a bag of cookies, cops and witnesses said.

Martha Atwater, 48, had just paid for five horseshoe-shaped cookies and exited Bagel Cafe when the driver of a black Honda Ridgeline jumped the curb and pinned her against the Clinton Street building at about 5:40 p.m., cops said.

“She just came in to buy cookies. She looked happy, she was smiling,” said cafe manager Alauddin Shipun.

“She walked out. I heard a big bang and she was gone. Someone was trying to lift her head up and asking her, ‘Are you okay? Are you okay?”

The 53-year-old driver may have lost consciousness because of his diabetes, a police source said.

He remained at the scene and has not been charged.

Atwater was pronounced dead at Long Island College Hospital.Her husband identified her there, a police source said.

Atwater graduated from Princeton University, had been an executive at education company Scholastic, and was on the board of the Brooklyn Heights Association.

“She was very active in the community,” said a neighbor near Atwater’s Remsen Street home.

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Schools Fix Is In

Bob McManus

So now it’s up to state Education Commissioner John King and his band of Albany bureaucrats to chum up an effective New York City teacher-evaluation system?

With all due respect to the commissioner: Not bloody likely.

And Gov. Cuomo, the architect of this latest scheme to coerce the United Federation of Teachers into doing something fundamentally contrary to its best interests, certainly knows it.

Sure, he says his plan will guarantee meaningful evaluations into “perpetuity.”

He says he means for King to develop and impose an evaluation regimen on the city and the UFT if no agreement is reached by June 1.

AP

Surprise: The real power in state education is Speaker Sheldon Silver, not Gov. Cuomo.

Mind you, the need for meaningful evaluations is obvious.

Mayor Bloomberg’s Department of Education has been hamstrung by its inability to fire incompetent, lazy or otherwise unfit teachers ever since he took control of the schools a decade ago.

And the governor himself has been promising a system for eliminating bad teachers since he declared himself to be a “lobbyist” for public-school pupils more than a year ago.

So, taken at face value, the governor has handed King a real challenge. Which is interesting, because he lacks the authority — constitutional or otherwise — to tell King what time to come to work in the morning.

Thus two questions:

* Is Cuomo sincerely attempting to redeem his pledge to look out for the kids?

* Or is this latest initiative just a thinly disguised surrender to the UFT?

It certainly takes a massive leap of faith to assume that anything meaningful will emerge from the legislation Cuomo has proposed.

This, again, is because Commissioner King doesn’t work for Cuomo. He works for the state Board of Regents and, specifically, for Regents Chancellor Merryl H. Tisch.

And Tisch owes her position solely to Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver — plus to the state Constitution, which severely restricts the direct control governors have over education policy.

The Constitution requires that regents, and the chancellor, be elected by the entire Legislature — sitting as a single body. And since Silver’s Democratic conference outnumbers all other lawmakers combined, he has the whip hand.

Which he exercised with his elevation of Tisch to what is nominally one of the most powerful public-education jobs in America. But while puppet may be too strong a word to describe Tisch’s actual role, she’s not remotely likely to buck him on matters of this magnitude.

So what is Silver’s interest?

Well, let’s just say that the influence the public employee unions enjoy over the speaker and his Assembly Democrats is profound. And that none of those unions are more influential than the UFT and its parent organization, New York State United Teachers.

So it’s not hard to see where all this is heading.

Without reference to King’s good faith, Tisch’s independence or Cuomo’s sincerity, it remains that that the state Education Department itself has been in near-total thrall to Silver and the teachers for years — indeed, decades.

Thus it’s simply not reasonable to expect that the three could force the department to exercise real independence on teacher evaluations, even if they wanted to.

Not in the immediate case, and certainly not over time.

So much for Cuomo’s “perpetuity.”

So much, in fact, for the notion that there is anything fundamentally different in this approach than from what has come before.

The UFT has had an effective veto over meaningful evaluations all along. While it may allow Silver to engineer a fig-leaf accommodation this time around — the union, after all, stands to regain effective control of city schools once Bloomberg leaves office — there’s no reason to believe that significant numbers of bad teachers will wind up losing their jobs.

Ever.

rmcmanus8@gmail.com

Have a comment on this PostOpinion column? Send it in to LETTERS@NYPOST.COM!

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Doling out dollars for downton

The Issue: The success of “Downton Abbey,” and whether it’s cause to end public funding of PBS.

***

The editorial “Downton Abbey’s Welfare” (Feb. 16) is rather misleading.

The American taxpayer in no way resembles Cora’s family, bailing out the Granthams and Downton Abbey.

On the contrary, taxpayer dollars to public television amount to $1.35 per American, per year — less than a cup of coffee. And to imply that if PBS aired more successful programs like “Downton Abbey” we would not need federal funds misses the mark.

No one could have predicted the runaway success of “Downton Abbey,” but these successes are rare in public and commercial television. The difference is that commercial television has so much more money that it can create miss after miss until it finds a “hit.”

If Matthew Crawley were to take stock of public television today, I think he’d say it’s a great value and an even greater example of public-private partnerships, leveraging $6 for every federal dollar received.

One of our most esteemed former presidents, Ronald Reagan, thought so, too.

Neal Shapiro

President and CEO

WNET

Manhattan

The residents of Downton Abbey need not be concerned. Lord Obama is always ready to rush to their rescue with taxpayers’ bucks.

Jerome Levenberg

Cedarhurst

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Empire State of decline

Bob McManus

Did Gov. Cuomo’s $2 billion millionaires’ tax hike of 15 months ago pinch off the public purse as a cash source for election-year spending sprees?

So it would seem. Certainly nobody’s talking direct tax increases as New York’s two-year municipal/state election cycle proceeds.

But that leaves the indirect route, a well-traveled path in a state with an insatiable appetite for free stuff — and a political class dedicated body and soul to supplying it.

And all the better when the tab can be handed to the private sector, which has scant say in the process and no option when it’s over but to pay up or move on.

Gabriella Bass

Fighting — but not for you: Mayoral wannabe Bill de Blasio joining striking bus drivers to demand the city preserve their expensive privileges.

Think plucked duck, neck in a knot and hanging from a hook in a Chinatown window.

Two major de facto tax hikes are moving through the pipeline right now: A mandatory paid sick-leave bill in New York City and an inflation-indexed minimum-wage statute in Albany.

And a variation on the theme can be found in the promise by Democratic mayoral candidates to revive an effort to transform some 8,000 private-sector school-bus drivers into all-but-in-name-only municipal employees.

First, the bus drivers, who are expected to end a five-week strike today — unqualified good news for 152,000 kids affected by the shutdown, and their parents.

But it’s not so good for the drivers, who were holding out for city job-security and wage guarantees that would’ve effectively made them municipal employees.

They lost. But all the Democrats mounting credible campaigns to succeed Bloomberg have vowed to revisit that outcome as soon as possible.

It’s a stunningly irresponsible promise: The city lays out some $1.1 billion a year for bus services — or about $7,000 per child served. In contrast, Los Angeles — the next most expensive city — spends about $3,100 per child.

Thus New York pays a 125-percent premium for school busing, even though the cost of living in New York is just 20 percent higher than in LA.

The difference is more than an extravagance: It’s a wholly unnecessary, recurring tax hit totaling hundreds of millions of dollars for the benefit of just 8,000 individuals — and their union bosses, of course.

No, the arrangement isn’t identical to the mechanism driving the sick-leave and minimum-wage bills — but the distinctions are minimal.

All three deploy the power of government on behalf of special-interests: In this case, labor.

In fact, the union cat’s-paw Working Families Party is the prime mover of both mandatory sick-pay and the minimum-wage hike.

Kid-glove press coverage — or, more to the point, scant coverage at all — has produced a predictable result: Both measures enjoy considerable public support.

But both also represent lousy public policy.

Each squarely targets employers — that is, job creators. Each promises to impose hefty new costs on small businesses. And each would extract from the economy hundreds of millions that might otherwise go for expansion, growth and future high-wage jobs.

The sick-leave bill — now bottled up (to her credit) by Council Speaker Christine Quinn, but ready to go at a moment’s notice — would cost employers an estimated $800 million a year. And it would require the creation of a stultifying, expensive regulatory system sure to delight City Hall paper-pushers, but also guaranteed to depress the job market.

The minimum-wage hike, now all but certain to become law this year unless Congress passes its own hike first, stands to cost employers at least $1.2 billion in its first year, according to the left-leaning Fiscal Policy Institute. More to the point, a study prepared for the New York Partnership says it will erase 22,000 marginal jobs (mostly from small business) and reduce New York’s gross product by some $2.5 billion over the next decade.

Now whether either bill — or municipalizing private-sector bus drivers — represents sound social policy is something else entirely; certainly that bears discussing.

But if the answer is yes, then simple equity dictates that funding come from general revenues — from an honest tax increase, if that’s what is required.

Discriminatory, special-interest-driven levies have been a way of life in New York for decades — and that’s a prime reason why the state is so lopsided economically.

Big-bucks businesses thrive in Manhattan, but small business struggles everywhere; the middle-class has long since abandoned an economically hollowed-out Upstate — even as unions and other special interests grow fat across the board.

Meanwhile, the leading Democratic mayoral candidates promise more of the same for the city — and various Albany factions compete to make matters worse statewide.

Think of it as an Empire State of mind — economically corrosive and morally bankrupt, but business as usual nonetheless.

rmcmanus8@gmail.com

Have a comment on this PostOpinion column? Send it in to LETTERS@NYPOST.COM!

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Newtown massacre gunman wanted to exceed Norway shooter's death toll

The gunman who carried out the Newtown school massacre was inspired by violent video games — and was trying to outdo a Norwegian mass murderer who killed 77 people, it was reported today.

Adam Lanza believed he was in ghoulish competition with Anders Breivik, who carried out a bloodbath at two locations in July 2011, law enforcement sources told CBS News.

Breivik, a paranoid ultra nationalist, fatally shot 69 people at a summer camp after murdering eight others in downtown Oslo.

Lanza wanted to exceed Breivik’s death toll, according to investigators.

He chose the Sandy Hook (Conn.) Elementary School because it was the “easiest target” with the “largest cluster of people,” two officials who have been briefed about the investigation said.

Lanza saw his victims as characters in a shooting video game and the higher the death toll, the better his “score.”

Investigators said they had found evidence that Lanza was obsessed with Breivik, who posted a bizarre extremists manifesto the day of his attacks.

Sources told CBS that investigators have also uncovered a “trove” of video games from Lanza’s basement.

He is believed to have spent much of his free time in a basement play room, with the windows blacked out, engaged in a kind of target practice on video games.

It was not disclosed which games he played. But Breivik boasted that he trained for his rampage by playing a war-simulation game named “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.”

He said he developed “target acquisition” by practised his aim using a “holographic aiming device” on the game, which he believed was being used to train combat soldiers.

Norwegian prosecutors also said Breivik played “World of Warcraft” an astounding average of six hours and 50 minutes a day for four months while he was preparing his attacks.

The fate of the two mass murderers turned out differently.

Lanza, 20, killed himself after slaying 20 children and six adults before police closed in.

But Breivik surrendered to police and is being held in a Norwegian jail on a 21-year sentence, the longest allowed in his country.

In his manifesto and afterward Breivik said he was inspired by Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, the Knights Templar of the Middle Ages, al Qaeda, “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski, and Japanese “banzai” warriors.

He said he was motivated by fear of an Islamic takeover of Europe, a decline in Western values and the growth of Europe’s left-leaning political parties.

No manifesto or written explanation from Lanza of his rampage has been found.

Before his fatal spree he destroyed the hard drive on his computer, which may have kept some of the records of the games he played and who he played with.

But investigators are believed to be making progress in tracing Lanza’s on-line life.

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A Mayor unplugged from reality

Mayor Bloomberg wants to double down on electric vehicles, but it’s a bad bet for New York.

In his State of the City speech last week, Bloomberg said he wants to add 10,000 new electric-vehicle charging stations over the next seven years. To that end, he wants the City Council to amend building codes so that 20 percent of all new parking spaces must be “wired and ready for electric vehicles.”

The city can be as “wired and ready” as Bloomberg likes, but he can’t make consumers buy electric cars. More important, he can’t overcome the basic physics that have prevented battery-powered cars from being anything more than a tiny niche player in the global auto industry.

Getty Images

Still pushing dubious ideas: Mayor Bloomberg last Thursday.

The history of the electric car is a century of failure tailgating failure. The problems haven’t changed in 100 years: All-electric vehicles, or EVs, have little range, take too long to refuel and cost way too much.

Takeshi Uchiyamada, the vice chairman of Toyota Motor Co. — the world’s biggest producer of hybrid cars — underscored these points this month, saying that due to “its shortcomings — driving range, cost and recharging time — the electric vehicle is not a viable replacement for most conventional cars.”

Nissan had high hopes for the electric car. Last year, the automaker — which got a $1.4 billion line of credit from the US Energy Department to help it produce EVs — expected to sell 20,000 copies of its all-electric Leaf. Actual sales totaled just 9,800.

Let’s put those numbers in perspective. Last year, Ford sold 645,316 pickups in the United States. So Ford is selling more pickups in six days than Nissan is selling Leafs in an entire year.

Last year, electric vehicles accounted for just 0.1 percent of total US car sales of 14.5 million. And hybrid sales were roughly 3.3 percent of the market.

Consumers are buying about 31 hybrids for every 1 electric vehicles for a simple reason: value.

Check out Cars.com. You can buy a brand new 2013 Prius for about $22,000; the cheapest Leaf available is $35,000.

The cheapest Chevy Volt — the much ballyhooed plug-in hybrid electric — was also about $35,000, twice the price of the Chevy Cruze, which uses a conventional gasoline engine but is built on the same chassis. And while the Volt has a bit of “gee-whiz” cool, the Cruze still gets about 42 miles per gallon.

In short, EVs aren’t a regular consumer good; they’re a toy for the wealthy. Indeed, a 2010 Deloitte Consulting report found that the most likely buyers of electric cars are people with household incomes “in excess of $200,000.”

By pushing for more electric cars, Mayor Bloomberg is following the same failed strategies of the Obama administration, which has handed out $2.4 billion in grants to the EV sector, as well as nearly $2.6 billion in loans. Despite all that money, the sector has seen nothing but carnage.

Last year, Obama-subsidized EV-battery makers Ener1 and A123 Systems both went bankrupt. Fisker Automotive, the troubled maker of upscale hybrid-electric cars (costing $50,000 to $100,000) is hoping to be bought out by another automaker.

And Tesla Motors, a publicly traded company that makes all-electric vehicles, has lost about $450 million over the past five quarters alone. It’s pinning its future on the Model S, a vehicle with a starting price of $52,400. Want the “performance” version? That’ll cost you $87,400 — nearly as much as a new Mercedes S550 ($95,000).

Those cost figures help explain what a recent Reuters article called the public’s “yawning indifference to green vehicles.”

Bottom line: Bloomberg wants to force the private sector to build charging stations for a fleet of cars that don’t exist and probably won’t exist for years to come, if ever.

New York City has plenty of infrastructure needs. More charging stations for electric cars isn’t one of them.

Robert Bryce, a Manhattan Institute senior fellow, is the author, most recently, of “Power Hungry: The Myths of ‘Green’ Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future.”

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Required Reading

Middle Men

by Jim Gavin (Simon & Schuster)

The guys (mostly Southern Californians) in Gavin’s first story collection are not at the top of the heap. They are trying to at least achieve fine middle-class lives. With a sharp, witty eye, Gavin gives us a game-show assistant whose high-powered host sends him to steal his dog back from an ex-wife (“Elephant Doors”). There’s a one-hit-wonder screenwriter, who’s success was ethnic cop-buddy flick “Hyde & Sikh” (“Illuminati”). And in “Costello,” a father-and-son toilet-salesmen team.

Where the Cherry Tree Grew

The Story of Ferry Farm, George Washington’s Boyhood Home

by Philip Levy (St. Martin’s)

Levy asserts that a young George Washington never really chopped down a cherry tree, much less refused to lie about it. But the author did spend a decade researching and excavating the property, near Fredericksburg, Va., where Washington lived from age 6 to about 15. He recounts how the cherry-tree myth began; the sordid tale of how real-estate speculators tried to sell the grave of Washington’s mother; bloody Civil War battles on the property; and more recently, how Walmart tried to turn the farm into a mall.

The Soundtrack of My Life

by Clive Davis (Simon & Schuster)

Clive Davis has come pretty far for a kid from Crown Heights who lost both parents as a teen. As a top record exec, he found, signed, worked with and mentored the likes of Whitney Houston, Janis Joplin, Aretha Franklin, Barry Manilow, Simon and Garfunkel, Aerosmith, Alicia Keys, Jennifer Hudson and many more. He recalls the first time he heard Houston sing, at Sweetwater’s in 1983 (he immediately offered her a contract); how he found out Simon and Garfunkel were breaking up; and a chance meeting with John Lennon at a coffee shop, where the ex-Beatle told him he was moving to the Dakota.

Washed Away

How the Great Flood of 1913, America’s Most Widespread Natural Disaster, Terrorized a Nation and Changed it Forever

by Geoff Williams (Pegasus)

One hundred years ago, there was no AccuWeather forecast or Doppler Radar or Weather Channel, so the people of Ohio, Indiana, their neighboring states — and even as far away as New Jersey, New York and Vermont — hardly knew what hit them. Tornadoes and a days-long deluge wreaked havoc. As many as 1,000 people died. In Omaha, Neb., alone, a March 23 twister killed 140. Williams brings the disaster back to life with tales of desperation and heroism that sadly sound so familiar today.

Doug Unplugged

by Dan Yaccarino (Knopf)

Take a break from your electronic and digital devices for this delightful picture book about a robot boy, Doug, whose robot parents plug him in every morning for his information download. Until one day, Doug — drawn a bit like Elroy Jetson — figures he can learn even more by unplugging and exploring the city. He takes the subway, sees pigeons, makes a friend and plays in the park and ends up sharing what he learned with his parents.

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Pull the Plug On Chuck Hagel

Linda Chavez

Chuck Hagel’s nomination to be secretary of defense is in trouble — as it should be. The former Republican senator has so much baggage, it is amazing that the administration hasn’t dumped him, as they did Susan Rice when her proposed nomination ran into trouble. Unfortunately, having won that battle, the GOP may be in weaker position to defeat another Obama nominee. And Rice, her misstatements about the attack on Benghazi notwithstanding, would have been a less dangerous cabinet member than Hagel.

Hagel has made clearly anti-Semitic statements before public forums time and again. If his target had been, say, blacks or Hispanics, he’d have been forced to withdraw. Just try that on for size.

Hagel: Nominee unable to answer even basic questions competently.

What if Hagel had been on record as declaring, “The black [or Latino] lobby intimidates a lot of people”? And then had publicly declared the Ku Klux Klan “legitimate”? What if the nominee had also been the one U.S. senator who refused to sign a letter criticizing the former apartheid government of South Africa for its racist treatment of blacks?

In fact, Hagel’s actions with respect to Jews have followed exactly this course. In 2006, Hagel said, “The Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people,” an accusation for which he could not produce a single example during his confirmation hearings. He has defended the murderous Iranian regime as “legitimate” — a regime whose leaders are committed to annihilating Israel and who deny the Holocaust.

And he’s opposed sanctions against Iran, even though the regime is a state sponsor of terrorism against the United States. Apparently he thinks Israel is a greater threat to the United States than Iran. In a speech at Rutgers University, Hagel accused the State Department of taking its orders from the Israeli Foreign Ministry.

Lest anyone think his animus is toward Israel — not Jews — consider that he is the only US senator to have refused to sign a letter to former Russian President Boris Yeltsin asking him to take action against rising anti-Semitism in Russia.

Hagel’s office issue the lame excuse that the then senator had a “policy not to send letters to foreign heads of state regarding their domestic policy.” Really? Well then I guess we can expect President Obama’s nominee to remain silent on Syrian and North Korean “domestic policy” as these nations slaughter their citizens by gunning the down in the streets of Homs or Aleppo or killing them slowly in the gulags of Hoeryong?

Hagel would do himself and the president a big favor by stepping aside. His performance during his confirmation hearings was embarrassing. He seemed woefully ignorant of the president’s own policies toward a nuclear Iran.

At one point, he said, “I support the president’s strong position on containment,” suggesting the president believes a nuclear-armed Iran can be “contained” much as the Soviet Union was during the Cold War. But President Obama has not suggested he favors containment, which would be a green light to the Iranians to move ahead with their plans to develop nuclear weapons.

So Hagel later tried to correct the record, but in doing so, he made himself look like a fool. In fact, his inability to answer questions before the Senate committee alone should be enough to derail his nomination.

The president has a right to nominate his cabinet — but the Constitution doesn’t give him a blank check. The Senate also plays an important role in advising and consenting on presidential appointments.

President Obama may have thought he was extending an olive branch to Republicans by picking a former GOP-elected official for his defense secretary. But Hagel is a caricature of the Republican Party — a man whose personal prejudices (his anti-gay comments about a Clinton nominee seem to have been largely forgotten by his liberal backers) are cringe-inducing and who is as ill-informed as he is inarticulate.

The Senate will take up Hagel’s nomination later this month after Thursday’s threatened filibuster delayed the vote. That is, unless the president admits his mistake and pulls the nomination. The country would be better served if he did.

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Slain SI mom remembered

Steven Sierra spoke about his “roller coaster” marriage with his wife Sarai as hundreds payed their last respects tonight to the Staten Island mom who was mysteriously slain on a solo trip to Europe.

“We were looking to grow old together,” the jilted husband said during the Valentine’s Day wake, choking up at times.

Sarai went missing on Feb 3 and it was later reported that she had been seeing a man identified as Tarkan K. Turkish newspapers said the man had sex with Sarai in a bar restroom before she disappeared.

“Despite the roller coaster that we'd been through in our marriage ... The love was truly so deep, so rooted, that we always made it through,” Steven said.

James Messerschmidt

Sarai Sierra's husband Steven at the wake.

Her two young sons, Sion and Silas, sat quietly on relatives’ laps at Christian Pentecostal Church while dad Steven — who proposed to his wife on Valentine’s Day fifteen years ago — met mourners near the closed white coffin bearing the 33-year-old Silver Lake mom’s remains.

Sierra’s friends and family smiled through tears as videos of Sarai — as a child with her dad, Dennis Jimenez, on the beach with Steven, and pregnant with her kids — played on large screens set up on either side of the church altar.

Before his wife was slain, Sierra poured his heart out on social media, indicating their marital strife.

“Don’t cheat in relationship [sic],” reads Steven Sierra’s Instagram posting dated Dec. 28.

FBI sources said Sierra had been seen with a “criminal element” before she disappeared. Investigators have questioned several people in her death and are reportedly looking for a homeless man in connection with the murder.

“It doesn’t sound like they’re describing the girl I know,” Carlo said.

“There’s been so many things said, and so many things untrue. If we would just stick to what actually happened, I think it would help, but unfortunately (there’s) a lot of innuendos and things.

Longtime family friend Danny Gonzalez said the community has rallied around the Sierra boys.

“They want to understand that out of sad stories, you have to find something positive in it,” Gonzalez said.

“The [boys] understand what happened, they’re receiving a lot of love from their family and friends.

Sierra will be buried Friday morning.

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Share and share alike

Several friends and I are renting a ski house this winter. Although most have been good about keeping things tidy, two of my girlfriends are absolute slobs. How do I get them to clean up their act? —Lorna B., Long Island City, Queens

Isn’t it amazing what you can learn about people you think you know simply by spending some time together under the same roof? I’ll bet while you’re grumbling about these messy Bessies, they’re complaining to anyone who will listen that you’re uptight.

You could probably ease up on these two if the areas in question are their own rooms — as long as the messes don’t creep into the space of others (or attract critters). The same cannot be said for common areas like the kitchen, bathroom and living room, where everyone shares responsibility for keeping things pristine.

In private, have a gentle-but-firm conversation with the offenders. Your goal should not be to embarrass, but to convey the importance of maintaining a tidy quality in shared living spaces. They might not become “cleanliness is next to godliness” converts, but even their grudging cooperation will mean a more enjoyable environment for everyone else.

I’ve put together a great ski house in Vermont for Presidents Day weekend, but one member of the group pulled out at the last minute due to a work emergency. He’s now asked me to find someone to take his place. Shouldn’t he be the one to find a substitute? — Arthur D., Englewood, NJ

Ah, the joys of organizing a group getaway. You find the house, negotiate a rate, find the right mix of people, sign a lease, send a deposit and then, just when you think your work is done, someone drops out and dumps the responsibility of finding a replacement on you.

Work emergencies happen, of course, and his coming to you first was the right course of action. For all he knew, you had a waiting list of friends eager to join. However, at this stage, I’m guessing you have neither the time nor the desire, and you’re fully within your rights to expect the canceler to find his own understudy.

If he’s unable to come up with another person at this late date, he must be prepared to pay the full share amount. Under no circumstances should his work crisis become your monetary one.

We’re invited annually to spend a weekend in the Catskills with friends who own a ski house. They’re always so generous, but refuse our offers to take them out to dinner during our stay. Any thoughts on how we can repay them for their hospitality? — Trina K., Sunset Park, Brooklyn

Start with a great hostess gift . . . ideally something for the house. (After many shared weekends together, you should know their taste by now.) Bring food and spirits, too — some to be consumed during your visit, some to be left for their enjoyment at a later date. When you get back home, send them an invite for a home-cooked meal at your place. And last but not least, don’t forget the thank-you note.

Next column: Newspaper nabbers and other neighbor nuisances. Got a question? E-mail me at
t
estingthemarketnyc@gmail.com or Tweet me @MisterManners.

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Who failed Chicago?

Michelle Malkin

As her husband delivered his annual State of the Union Address last night, First Lady Michelle Obama hosted the parents of an innocent teenage girl shot and killed by Chicago gang thug. On Friday, President Obama will travel to the Windy City to decry violence and crusade for more gun laws in the town with the strictest gun laws and bloodiest gun-related death tolls in America.

Does the White House really want to open up a national conversation about the state of Chicago? OK, let’s talk.

Obama, his wife, his campaign strategists, his closest cronies, and his biggest bundlers all hail from Chicago. Senior adviser and former Chicago real estate mogul/city planning commissioner Valerie Jarrett and her old boss, Richard Daley, presided over a massive “Plan for Transformation” in the mid-1990s to rescue taxpayer-subsidized public housing from its bloody hellhole. How’d that work out for you, Chicago?

Answer: This social-justice experiment failed miserably. A Chicago Tribune investigation found that after Daley/Jarrett dumped nearly $500 million of federal funding into crime-ridden housing projects, the housing complexes (including the infamous Altgeld-Murray homes) remained dangerous, drug-infested, racially segregated ghettos.

Altgeld is a long-troubled public housing complex on Chicago’s South Side where youth violence has proven immune to “community organizing” solutions and the grand redevelopment schemes championed by Obama and company.

In fact, as I’ve reported previously, it’s the same nightmarish ’hood where Obama cut his teeth as a community activist — and exaggerated his role in cleaning up asbestos in the neighborhood, according to fellow progressive foot soldiers. As always, Obama’s claims to success there were far more aspirational than concrete.

In the meantime, lucrative contracts went to politically-connected Daley pals in the developer world to “save” Chicago youth and families. Another ghetto housing project, the Grove Parc slum, was managed by Jarrett’s former real-estate empire, Habitat, Inc. Jarrett refused to answer questions about the dilapidated housing development after becoming the top consigliere in the Obama administration.

But as the Boston Globe’s Binyamin Appelbaum, who visited the slums several years ago, reported: “Federal inspectors graded the condition of the complex an 11 on a 100-point scale — a score so bad the buildings now face demolition. . . . [Jarrett] co-managed an even larger subsidized complex in Chicago that was seized by the federal government in 2006, after city inspectors found widespread problems.”

Grove Parc and several other monumental housing flops “were developed and managed by Obama’s close friends and political supporters. Those people profited from the [federal] subsidies even as many of Obama’s constituents suffered.”

Democrats poured another $30 million in public money into the city’s public schools to curb youth violence over the last three years. The New York Times hailed the big-government plan to fund more social workers, community organizers and mentors and create jobs for at-risk youth.

But watchdogs on the ground exposed it as a wasteful “makework scheme.” One local activist nicknamed it “Jobs for Jerks” because “it rewards some of the worst students in the school system with incredibly rare employment opportunities while leaving good students to fend for themselves.”

Obama and his ineffectual champions of Chicago’s youth will demand more taxpayer “investments” to throw at the problem. But money is no cure for the soaring fatherlessness, illegitimacy and family disintegration that have characterized Chicago inner-city life since Obama’s hero Saul Alinsky pounded the pavement.

As City Journal’s Heather MacDonald noted in a damning indictment of the do-gooders’ failures, “official silence about illegitimacy and its relation to youth violence remains as carefully preserved in today’s Chicago as it was during Obama’s organizing time there.”

Team Obama will find perverted ways to lay blame for Chicago’s youth violence crisis on the NRA, Fox News, George Bush and the Tea Party. But as the community organizer-in-chief prepares to evade responsibility again, he should remember: When you point one finger at everyone else, four other fingers point right back at you-know-who.

malkinblog@gmail.com

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Bus strike: ayor Mike wins

Michael Benjamin

This afternoon, it will be checkmate for the school-bus strikers. The strike essentially ends — thanks to the Bloomberg gambit.

The mayor played it perfectly, and willingly sacrificed pieces to achieve his endgame.

At midday today, the Office of Pupil Transportation will open the bid packages for the K-12 school-bus routes. It can start service under the new contracts before September — though not as soon as parents hope, since the contracts must go through the city’s lengthy review process. Still, those bids are what the strike was supposed to stop.

AP

Losers: Local 1181 boss Michael Cordiello (r.) with International ATU chief Larry Hanley.

But yesterday, in a bid to be competitive, several bus companies went to court to void the employee protections in current contracts and to halt the new bids.

If that suit fails, a mix of new and currently-contracted bus companies will likely win contracts. Meanwhile, a number of bus companies with current contracts will probably decline to submit bids, because their union contracts would leave them uncompetitive. Their unionized employees, now on strike, would be out of jobs as of June 30.

For these workers, the only rational decision will be to return to work. Already in the last few days, workers have crossed union picket lines to return to their jobs.

After today (assuming the bus companies’ suit fails), it will make sense for more striking drivers and attendants to return for their last few months of pay and benefits, especially their health-care coverage. And it makes even more sense for these workers to seek work with the new companies.

In a sense, the worker-protection bubble finally burst. Small bus companies and their workers are collateral victims; the worker protections put those companies, already operating on a slim margin, at a competitive disadvantage.

When the city, citing court rulings, put out for bid new bus contracts that didn’t require the employee protections (as these contracts had for 35 years), that didn’t mean the bus companies could break their contracts with the unions to provide those priveleges. That left them handicapped in bidding, since they’d have higher labor costs than firms without the generous protections.

To stay competitive, the companies needed the union to work with them to lower costs. But the union instead went on strike — trying to force Bloomberg to retain the protections, and even to get the state to pass a new law to undo the court ruling.

When the National Labor Relations Board this month failed to force even a temporary resolution favorable to the union, the end was in sight.

Mind you, Mayor Bloomberg sacrificed a number of chess pieces to achieve his endgame.

Parents, especially of special-needs children, are angry at him for four weeks of educational disruption. The stress on special-needs kids is incalculable. The city schools lose federal funding for students who couldn’t attend during the strike.

Bloomberg alienated the bus company operators — who feel caught in the middle of the dispute — by not paying them for service they didn’t (couldn’t) deliver during the strike.

Finally, after more than a decade of fairly good labor relations, he will be remembered for breaking one union’s hold on an industry.

Bloomberg’s bold gambit will benefit his successors, who won’t be saddled with needlessly high school-busing costs.

If the city’s lucky, the mayor in his final months in office will use similar gambits to tackle some of the much larger union-benefit issues that are consuming ever-larger chunks of the municipal budget.

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