The true subway peril

Nicole Gelinas

The Transport Workers Union won a round last Thursday in its war with the MTA, when the TWU’s month-long campaign against subway-track deaths scored it a packed City Council hearing.

Lost in the drama was the fact that riding on the subways is one of the safest things you can do — and what little danger there is comes from the MTA’s crushing fiscal burden, an area where the TWU is far from innocent.

Frustrated after a year without a contract, the union has taken a novel approach to labor relations: telling customers that the MTA doesn’t care if you die.

Stefan Jeremiah

Slower trains would be longer waits: The backup at the Marcy Avenue stop in Williamsburg, after partial J and M service was restored after Sandy.

At the City Hall subway station, union members handed out “MetroCards” with a message: the “blood”-spattered cards warned “use at your risk” and featured a skeletal MTA exec dressed as the Grim Reaper.

The council ate it up. Transportation Committee Chairman James Vacca intoned, “The cost of doing business is $2.25, not your life. One death on our city’s subway tracks is one death too many.”

Councilfolk spent two hours grilling MTA brass on why they’re so heartless that they don’t take basic steps to save lives, ranging from slowing down trains to putting “life preserver” rope kits on platforms to spending billions to install barriers with sliding doors.

Councilwoman Liz Crowley of Queens left her understanding of physics at home, noting that slower passenger-car speed limits save lives. “These are rail cars,” one MTA official explained. That is, they’re heavy enough to kill even at lower speeds.

No one brought up the obvious: Riding the subway (or waiting for one) is pretty safe.

At first glance, it’s shocking to see that 55 people died last year in some kind of collision with a subway train.

But 291 people died in above-ground car and truck crashes crashes in the city, including 176 walkers and bikers. Nationwide, you’re about 71 times more likely (per mile traveled) to die in a car crash than a rail crash.

And the subway’s not getting more dangerous. While the death total has been as low as 34 in recent years, it was 55 in 2007, just like last year. Plus, it’s not clear that extraordinary measures would save many of these lives.

People may think that most subway deaths are “pushing” murders — but December’s two such crimes were the only two that year. In a 2009 academic article studying more than four years’ worth of New York subway deaths (211 total) two doctors found that 52 percent were suicides.

Sadly, the MTA could spend billions protecting these folk from themselves only to see them jump off the George Washington Bridge instead, as one woman did last week.

And of the victims who didn’t kill themselves, nearly half had an average of twice the legal driving limit of alcohol in their blood. Altogether, nearly two-thirds of the accident victims were on alcohol or mind-altering drugs.

To that end, the MTA noted last week that a disproportionate number of deaths occur between 9 p.m. and midnight, not at crowded rush hours.

This is common sense: Drunks do dumb things — fall, fight (which resulted in three falls last year, not including the two pushings) or think it’s wise to climb down to get a dropped iPhone.

Most telling: Of the 211 deaths the doctors studied, 83 percent were men, reflecting men’s greater risk-taking behavior.

Since these deaths are already largely avoidable, it’s hard to see what we gain by spending billions trying to avoid them — or by slowing down trains, adding to long commutes and creating more crowding on busy platforms.

Speaking of crowding: The biggest risk is that the MTA won’t have enough money to grow its transit system as ridership grows — cramming more people onto crowded lines like the Lex, or forcing frustrated riders into cars, where they face more danger.

And the MTA’s biggest money drain is its rising pension and health costs for its workers. Such costs will grow by 6.2 percent and 8.2 percent respectively at the subway and bus unit each year, reaching nearly $2.5 billion by 2016.

Too bad no city councilman mentioned that.

Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal.

Twitter: @nicolegelinas

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Left’s misfire

The left’s incessant blaming of weapons and those who manufacture them for gun violence absolves those who pull the triggers and actually commit the crimes (“Moral Grandstanding,” George Will, PostOpinion, Feb. 4).

Because a large amount of gun violence is traced to gangs, that would seem a good place to start solving the problem.

President Obama’s executive orders did not address this issue. Rahm Emanuel as mayor of Chicago has also done nothing in this regard, and the murders there, especially among young minorities, continue like clockwork.

Yet liberal politicians continue to foment fear about legally licensed gun owners who live outside of urban areas.

Herb Eichen, Bayside

UMEZ’s mission

The Post’s editorial represents a new and reckless low in its campaign to discredit UMEZ (“NY’s Profitable ‘Nonprofits,’” Feb. 3).

It contains numerous inaccuracies and falsehoods, and most outrageously, hurls the baseless accusation of “graft” at an effective local-development corporation.

UMEZ has prudently invested over $230 million of public funds into the upper Manhattan economy, leveraged over $1 billion of private investment and created more than 8,000 jobs and one of the most successful urban revitalization initiatives.

Vital investments in Harlem USA, East River Plaza, Gotham Plaza, Best Yet Market, The Apollo, Studio Museum of Harlem, El Museo del Barrio, Museum of the City of New York and numerous small businesses, have helped transform Upper Manhattan.

Gov. Cuomo has modeled his regional approach to economic development based upon UMEZ’s success.

Sadly, The Post ignored these facts, and attempted to make a ridiculous categorical link between UMEZ and two former politicians outside of Manhattan.

Kenneth Knuckles, President and CEO, Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone, Manhattan

Upstate waits...

Bob McManus scores a solid point about Gov. Cuomo’s poll-driven policies (“Cuomo’s Nixon Game,” PostOpinion, Feb. 8).

Cuomo does, in fact, have an upstate economic-development policy. So what if the policy is to bless the totally wretched and very sad-in-human-terms casino industry?

The governor has an environmental policy. So what if the “policy” is to study to death a job- and wealth-producing industry — natural-gas fracking — for our upstate economy?

I am convinced we can develop sound policies for leveraging our natural resources without wreaking environmental havoc and do so faster than the Egyptians built the pyramids.

John McMahon, Manhattan

Hungry for jobs

What’s so disgusting about this show is how it uses people to create entertainment, showcasing just how desperate they are to find work (“America’s Hunger Games,” Maureen Callahan, PostScript, Feb. 3).

The sadder reality is that the unemployment situation is very fixable.

Obama and most who have studied economics know this.

Our free-market economy is nothing more than people and companies making and selling products, and buyers purchasing what they want.

It’s only when government gets in the way that things go bad and the economy slows down.

D. Richardson, Bridgeport, Conn.

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The Dow at 14,000: not as good as gold

What an illuminating week for Wall Street — the Dow Jones Industrial Average has been bobbling just above and below the record high 14,000 mark, even as the country comes to grip with the reports that its economy has actually been slumping, with GDP shrinking 0.1 percent in the last quarter of 2012.

The Obama administration is trying to put a bright face on things — but the rest of us feel like we’re smoking more now and enjoying it less.

Well, guess what: While the Dow Jones Industrials have been edging past 14,000, the actual value of those stocks has been going down.

Bernanke: Has kept the Dow floating high by sinking the dollar’s value.

By this, I mean that if you take one share of each of the stocks in the Dow index, their combined value as measured in gold is lower than it used to be. The price in paper money may be going up, but the real value is slumping.

At about 14,000, the Dow Jones Industrial Average stands at nearly twice the 7,949 at which it stood on the day in January 2009 when President Obama first took the oath of office. But value of the stocks in the index has drifted downward; a portfolio of one share of each stock is worth only 8.3 ounces of gold, down from 9.3 ounces on Jan. 20, 2009.

There are those who will say that this is a trick, that no one measures things in ounces of gold anymore. Not since 1971, when President Richard Nixon finished taking America off the gold standard — which then still defined the dollar by law as a 35th of an ounce of gold.

Nixon’s move put us on a system of fiat money, in which the dollar isn’t backed by specie but nonetheless must be accepted in payment of debts.

Throughout history, though, people all over the world thought of gold and silver as the real money — and thinking of it that way can still be illuminating.

In his weekly radio address two years ago, the president spoke on soaring gasoline prices, saying there is “no silver bullet” to solve the problem.

It was a funny choice of words. It turns out that the value of gasoline — measured in ounces of silver (or gold) — hadn’t been going up at all. It had been going down.

In other words, it wasn’t the price of gasoline that was going up. It was the value of the United States dollar that was going down.

This is the part of the policy partnership of Barack Obama and Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernankethat no one likes to talk about. What it means is that there’s little joy on the street — Wall Street or (especially) Main Street — even in a week when the Dow Jones Industrial Average touches a historic high of 14,000.

Track the Dow in terms of gold, and you see what a collapse it’s been: The index was valued at 41.3 ounces of gold as recently as 2000.

Rep. Ron Paul is practically alone in Congress in paying attention to this warning. He confronted Bernanke with the question at a congressional hearing two years ago. The Fed chairman dodged by suggesting that consumers didn’t want to buy gold.

That was a funny argument to make at a time of soaring gold prices. And it’s a hard sell at a time when the Dow Jones average is at a historical high, yet the value of the stocks in it is slumping in terms of gold. Call it “the fiat Dow.”

It’s not just gadflies who are sounding these warnings. John Taylor, one of America’s savviest economists, argued in The Wall Street Journal this week that the Federal Reserve’s “quantitative easing” policy has not only failed to solve the economic problems in the country but has actually made things worse.

If you want to draw your own conclusions as to whether he’s right, track the value of your IRA or pension fund in terms of ounces of gold.

Lipsky@nysun.com

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Accused witch burned alive in Papua New Guinea

PORT MORESBY, Papua New Guinea -- Assailants stripped, tortured and bound a woman accused of witchcraft, then burned her alive in front of hundreds of witnesses in a Papua New Guinea town, police said Friday after one of the highest profile sorcery-related murders in this South Pacific island nation.

Some of the hundreds of bystanders took photographs of Wednesday's brutal slaying. Grisly pictures were published on the front pages of the country's biggest circulating newspapers, The National and Post-Courier. The prime minister, police and diplomats condemned the killing

Kepari Leniata, a 20-year-old who had a child, had been accused of sorcery by relatives of a 6-year-old boy who died in the hospital the day before, police spokesman Dominic Kakas said.

She was tortured with a hot iron rod, bound, doused in gasoline, then set alight on a pile of car tires and trash in the Western Highlands provincial capital of Mount Hagen, Kakas said.

"Investigations are continuing. We've got good leads. The husband is the prime suspect," Kakas said.

Sorcery has traditionally been countered by sorcery in Papuan New Guinean culture. But responses to sorcery allegations have become increasingly violent in recent years.

Kakas said the death was the first the sorcery-related murder in Papua New Guinea in a year.

Police Commissioner Tom Kulunga described the murder as "shocking and devilish."

"We are in the 21st century and this is totally unacceptable," Commissioner Kulunga said in a statement.

He suggested courts be established to deal with sorcery allegations, as an alternative to villagers dispensing justice.

Prime Minister Pete O'Neill said he had instructed police to use all available manpower to bring the killers to justice.

"It is reprehensible that women, the old and the weak in our society should be targeted for alleged sorcery or wrongs that they actually have nothing to do with," O'Neill said.

The U.S. Embassy in the national capital Port Moresby issued a statement calling for a sustained international partnership to enhance anti-gender-based violence laws throughout the Pacific.

The embassy of Australia, Papua New Guinea's colonial ruler until independence in 1975 and now its biggest foreign aid donor, said "We join ... all reasonable Papua New Guineans in looking forward to the perpetrators being brought to justice."

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Mayor Mike’s morning after

Mayor Bloomberg doesn’t seem to realize it, but he’s handing his opponents a weapon to undermine his biggest policy triumph — mayoral control of the public schools.

In an exclusive last Sunday, The Post reported that the mayor’s Health Department is running wild, distributing the controversial “Plan B” morning-after pill to city schoolchildren without many parents even knowing it.

“I’m in shock,” Mona Davids of the NYC Parents Union told The Post. “What gives the mayor the right to decide, without adequate notice, to give our children drugs that will impact their bodies and their psyches? He has purposely kept the public and parents in the dark with his agenda.”

REUTERS

Michael Bloomberg

The evidence supports her charges. In September, the city suggested this was a relatively small program limited to 13 high schools and 567 girls who were receiving Plan B. Yet as The Post’s Susan Edelman found, that barely scratches the surface.

Far from being limited to 13 schools, the program involves 40 separate “school-based health centers.” Last year, these centers handed out 12,721 doses of Plan B — up from 10,720 in 2010-11 and more than double the 5,039 doses given out in 2009-10.

That the city is concerned about teen pregnancy is fine. And state law allows minors to get contraceptives without parental consent. But that doesn’t absolve the city of its obligation to be forthcoming to moms and dads about the medications its “health centers” are offering their daughters.

Plan B is the kind of issue that raises passions on all sides. For that reason alone, the city never should have allowed this program to be imposed by fiat by one of the least accountable of the many un-elected bureaucracies: the Department of Health.

This is an issue that cries out for the people’s elected legislators to decide, acting in the open, after all sides have had a chance to make their concerns heard.

Instead, the city took the imperial approach: Officials refused even to talk to The Post about the program.

If that’s the city’s position, the mayor shouldn’t be surprised if, the morning after he’s gone, his hard-fought win on mayoral control is reversed on the grounds that it shuts parents out of key decisions involving their children.

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Sad Muslim summit

Amir Taheri

Cairo - ‘May Allah protect believers against fear!” This is one of the slogans that greet visitors arriving at Cairo Airport for the Islamic summit set to open here today.

Yet, in a sign that Allah’s protection may not be quite enough, the Egyptian hosts have moved the summit’s venue from the old Palace of Conferences to a new luxury hotel near the airport.

Heads of state from 26 countries are expected to attend the summit of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, along with senior officials from 50 other Muslim-majority nations across the globe.

The venue change came after police said they might be unable to prevent anti-government demonstrators from laying siege to the “palace.”

For weeks, the government of Egyptian President Mohammad Morsi has been shaken by mass protests in Cairo and half a dozen other cities, with army chief Gen. Abdul-Fattah al-Sissi warning that the Egyptian state may face “total collapse.”

Al-Sissi’s melodramatic statement, posted on his Facebook page, may well be exaggerated, yet it’s clear that Morsi has lost a good part of the goodwill he had earned on his election last year.

The summit was supposed to come to Cairo back in 2011, while President Hosni Mubarak was still in charge. It was scrapped when the Arab Spring swept Mubarak away, paving the way for Islamist takeover under the Muslim Brotherhood with Morsi as president.

Morsi had hoped to use the summit to launch Egypt’s bid for the leadership of the Muslim world. But the demonstrations will make it hard to market his “Egyptian way,” which is supposedly midway between Turkey’s secular system and Iran’s theocratic setup.

Traditionally, Iran, Turkey and Egypt have been the main contenders for leadership in the so-called Muslim world. That rivalry was in abeyance for much of the 20th century, under secular regimes in all three countries.

Now, however, all three nations are back in the Islamic fold. Turkey is governed by a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Iran is run by mullahs, while Egypt has fallen under Brotherhood rule for the first time.

Yet all three countries are experiencing rough patches. On top of Egypt’s turmoil, Turkey’s “economic miracle” is fizzling out, while Iran is heading for a deep political crisis ahead of its presidential elections in June.

So some look to Saudi Arabia, the traditional dark horse in the race for Islamic leadership. But the Saudis, under aging leadership, may lack the political energy needed to promote a leadership claim.

Still, checkbook diplomacy has secured Saudi Arabia numerous allies in the Muslim world, notably Pakistan and several nations in sub-Saharan Africa. And the kingdom also hosts and finances the OIC’s headquarters in Jeddah.

Iran will be represented by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in his last major diplomatic appearance before his term ends in June. He has vowed to force the summit to “focus on the Palestinian issue” and relieve pressure on President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, where the bloody civil war continues.

But Egyptian sources tell me Ahmadinejad is likely to fail on both scores. Assad has been excluded from the summit, and Morsi has insisted that there should be no attempt at fomenting trouble between Egypt and Israel.

Plus, Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyib Erdogan is slated to promote a new initiative on Syria that could include the use of force to protect a number of safe havens for victims of Assad’s campaign of repression.

With the leading powers all distracted and at odds, the summit may seek some “safe” issue to offer a veneer of unity. The group’s retiring secretary-general, Turkish diplomat Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, offers “the threat of disintegration” of a number of Muslim-majority countries in Africa, where non-Muslim communities feel threatened by the rise of ideological Islam. The secession of South Sudan from Muslim-dominated Sudan, he says, sets “a dangerous example” that others in Africa may follow.

Condemning the shrinkage of the Muslim world may well be all that the leaders of the Muslim world can agree upon.

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The dirt on ‘Government motors’

Charles Gasparino

Maybe the most disturbing news in “American Turnaround,” Ed Whitacre’s new book that describes his stint as head of General Motors, is how naïve he was about what it means to run a company that’s been bailed out by the federal government, and is now regulated by the anti-business types who populate the Obama administration.

As Whitacre takes the job back in 2009, he thinks that the automaker’s government masters are rational people looking to help the company survive and thrive. Along the way, he finds out that they’re not.

In fact, their true goal wasn’t to maximize profits to ensure GM survives for the long term, but to keep control of the company as long as possible (the feds still hold a 26 percent stake today) to both keep its union allies fat and happy and to please its green buddies by forcing GM to produce hybrid vehicles that the vast majority of Americans can’t afford now, and never will.

You have to read between the lines to learn this, but it’s pretty clear to anyone who knows what was going on.

What Whitacre does explain is how his advice to the administration that it should accept a deal in which GM would get the government completely out of its hair by repaying all the bailout money was shot down — with little rational explanation.

In the book, he blames GM’s investment bankers, who said they were skittish because of market conditions at the time — afraid that an IPO might not raise enough to repay the government’s entire $43 billion investment.

But those bankers weren’t picked by the company, but in large part by the Obama Treasury Department. And it’s clear they didn’t view Whitacre as their client — these were some of the same fat-cat bankers who themselves got a federal bailout during the 2008 financial crisis, who’d say anything to appease their ultimate bosses in Washington.

And, as Whitacre notes, the partial IPO that the bankers allowed went well. On that day, GM didn’t just get a few additional orders for its $20.1 billion offering (then the largest IPO ever) but orders worth $86 billion — enough, he notes, that GM “could have easily repaid the government the entire $43 billion it owed, and given taxpayers a nice profit for their time and trouble on top of that.”

A longtime former telecom executive, including a stint as CEO of AT&T, Whitacre knows something about Wall Street deal-making — so it’s no surprise he was right.

Again, he doesn’t cast aspersions on the administration. He writes of meeting President Obama, who urged him to stay on as CEO (he retired at the end of 2010), saying the president had “no airs at all. I liked him right way.”

But he obviously didn’t like working for him. While he never complains outright about the money-losing hybrids, Whitacre says, “Government was getting a little too comfortable with having a grip on GM.” Answering to the feds made it hard to pay and attract talented managers, which had “negative impact on our people, and a negative impact on our psyche as a company,” now known derisively as “Government Motors.”

Whitacre says he supported the controversial bailout of GM, which is odd from a guy who spent his life in the free marketplace.

Yes, the alternative would’ve been bankruptcy and an uncertain future — but plenty of companies survive such reorganization in better shape. After all, bankruptcy lets you deal more effectively with issues like overly generous union pensions, which was at the heart of GM’s financial woes. And it would’ve avoided interference from political types who couldn’t care less about how many real (money-making) cars as opposed to (money-losing) hybrids are being sold.

In the end, the lesson to take from Whitacre’s muddled message about GM and its partnership with government (particularly for US corporate leaders operating in the new world of bailouts and an administration eager to control their activities for political purposes): Be wary of handouts.

The label “Government Motors” might come with free money to avoid natural market forces, but it also means you’re never really going to be independent, and that might be a fate worse than bankruptcy court.

Charles Gasparino is a Fox Business Network senior correspondent.

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Talking Turkey

In a terrible symmetry, a suicide bomber attacked the American embassy in Ankara on the same day that John Kerry was sworn in as secretary of state.

Kerry moves to State at a tough time. So we wonder if he has reconsidered any of his earlier characterizations of how America should address terrorism. In 2004, for example, Kerry famously stated that “we have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they’re a nuisance.”

That strikes us as fully in line with President Obama’s approach of the past four years. The problem is, while Americans may no longer make terrorists “the focus of our lives,” they make attacking the US the focus of theirs.

AP

John Kerry

In the last five months alone, the al Qaeda flag was raised over the besieged US embassy in Cairo, the US ambassador in Benghazi and three other Americans were murdered and the Yemen branch of al Qaeda put a bounty of three kilos of gold on the head of the US ambassador in Sana’a.

In Hillary Clinton’s final, combative appearance before the Senate, she rightly observed that a secretary of state has “no greater responsibility” than protecting our diplomats abroad. She also noted that “they cannot work in bunkers and do their jobs.”

She was right. Keeping American diplomats safe cannot be done simply by adding more Marines or turning buildings into fortresses. The way to do it is for the world to see that the United States exacts a swift and unforgiving price for an attack on its embassies or personnel.

US diplomats and their families deserve to know that Kerry regards their would-be killers as more than just a “nuisance.”

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America's hunger games

For all the talk about our slow climb out of the worst recession since the Great Depression, this past week brought some alarming news: The unemployment rate climbed to 7.9 percent, and in the fourth quarter of 2012 the US economy shrunk again.

Most distressing is the years-long trend that shows no sign of reversing: The middle class is disappearing. A 2012 study by economists at Duke University and the University of British Columbia found that nine out of every 10 jobs lost during the recession were mid-level and mid-paying — positions often eliminated due to technology.

Contestants on “The Job” beg for work at The Palm. Ryan is in the middle, Jann second from right.

Of the 3.5 million jobs that have been added since June 2009 — the official end of the Great Recession — only 2% were middle-class positions. By contrast, 70% of jobs added were in low-paying sectors and 28% were in high-level ones.

“The jobs that are going away,” MIT’s Andrew McAfee has said, “aren’t coming back.”

Into this tragic, intractable economy comes a new CBS reality show called “The Job.” Premiering Friday, it’s billed as a feel-good program, a show that seeks to match middle-class job seekers of varying desperation with some of America’s most prestigious corporations.

But for all of the exploitations reality TV has to offer — from on-camera sex to drunken hillbillies — “The Job” may be the most offensive in television history.

We live in a time when a having a middle-class job has mutated from the American Dream to a luxury, when even those lucky enough to still have one live in perpetual fear that they’ll be fired next.

“The Job” turns this massive human toll into spectacle, dangling the prospect of an unspecified mid-level position in front of desperate contestants, who degrade themselves by telling their most pathetic personal histories in the paradoxical quest to regain some dignity.

Yet its creators believe they are doing middle-class America a great service.

“I’ve grown very tired of reality TV that is exploitative,” says Michael Davies, co-producer of “The Job.” “Yes, I’ve got to deliver an hour of entertainment, no doubt. But I don’t think this is gladiatorial.”

As much as the reality TV genre reflects — and contributes to — an intractable chipping-away of our national character, it’s usually easy to consign most shows to the bin of frivolity: sozzled, emotionally stunted housewives with status anxiety; proudly uneducated young adults aggressively making poor life decisions; weekend warriors willing to ingest bugs and risk tropical diseases in pursuit of money and fame; the aspirant looking to become America’s next top pop singer, designer, model, chef, comic, etc.

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9-year-old falls three stories in Bronx

A nine year-old child fell three stories from an apartment window on Featherbed Lane and Nelson Avenue at 6:30 p.m., cops said.

"He was laying on the floor without a t-shirt on. He wasn't moving but he was crying for his mommy. He was crying 'mommy! mommy!' He was bleeding from the chest and he was almost naked,” Wanda Simonetti,59, a neighbor on the second floor said.

The boy who lives with his mom, grandparents and two year-old sister, is known to run rampant around the building, a neighbor said.

"Sometimes they see him on the roof. He has no supervision. The mom was at work and nobody watches the kid. His grandparents are too old. He's always running around,” a concerned second floor resident, Gina Ortiz said.

The young boy suffered an arm injury and other possible trauma but is expected to survive, EMS officials said.

It wasn’t immediately clear if the child was pushed, fell or jumped out the window, cops said.

The investigation is ongoing, cops said.

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Hagel was so bad ...

John Podhoretz

‘I’ve said many, many things over many, many years,” said Chuck Hagel, the president’s nominee for secretary of defense, in a Senate hearing yesterday. He was trying, for the umpteenth time during his testimony, to explain away another of the many, many impolitic statements that have come to light over the past couple of months.

Well, as a result of this confirmation hearing — the most disastrous of its kind since another veteran senator, John Tower, blew himself up in his pursuit of the same post back in 1989 — Hagel has probably lost many, many votes to confirm him as secretary of defense.

ZUMAPRESS.com

Embarassing: Defense Secretary-designate Chuck Hagel yesterday actually claimed it’s not a policy-making job, among endless other boners.

Though he was being asked about things he had said over the course of the past 15 years, it was what Hagel said yesterday — and how he said what he said — that had his defenders reeling in shock and even his critics aghast at how poorly he handled himself.

Hagel said many, many things yesterday — incoherent things, confused things, wrong things, untrue things, and things that seemed to contradict other things he had said previously. Some were about Israel, some about Iran, some about American policy.

First he said it was the policy of the Obama administration to “contain” Iran — meaning it will allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon and then try to box it in.

Now, that is exactly what many of us fear is the true policy of the Obama administration, especially in light of Hagel’s appointment.

For not only has Hagel spoken approvingly of engaging with the Iranians, he has his own checkered history when it comes to holding Iran to account. It includes voting against a 2007 resolution that declared the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps — perhaps the world’s foremost trainer and funder of state-sponsored terrorism — a terrorist organization.

In trying to defend that vote yesterday, he said he had done so (along with newly minted Secretary of State John Kerry) because it was an assault on an “elected, legitimate” government — by which he meant Iran’s theocracy. And because, he said, voting for the resolution would have given the Bush administration a green light to go to war with Iran.

Well, that ludicrous notion is in the past. What’s in the present is that the stated policy of the Obama administration toward the Iranian nuke is “prevention” — that it will not allow Iran to get the bomb, period, and will do what is necessary to ensure it doesn’t happen.

So Hagel corrected himself, kind of: “I was just handed a note that I misspoke — that I said I supported the president’s position on containment. If I said that, I meant to say that we don’t have a position on containment.” Whatever that means.

Later he said he was sorry he’d called the Iranian government elected and legitimate; rather, he should have said it was recognized.

“I don’t understand Iranian politics,” Hagel said — which would be understandable if, say, Khloe Kardashian were testifying. But Hagel is going to be a key official determining US policy toward Iran, and one would hope he’d bring a bit of pre-existing knowledge to the table.

He was also sorry to have said Israel keeps the Palestinians “caged in like wild animals.” Oh, and he didn’t mean to have drawn a moral equivalence between Israel and Hezbollah by referring to “the sickening slaughter on both sides” during a war inaugurated entirely by Hezbollah’s rockets.

As for American policy, he and his ex-friend Sen. John McCain got into quite a tussle over the surge in Iraq, which Hagel described before it began as “the worst foreign-policy disaster since Vietnam.”

This is something about which he was obviously mistaken — even if you think the war itself was a foreign-policy disaster, the surge certainly made it far less of one — and yet he could neither find the words to defend his 2007 view nor the words to say things had worked out differently from how he had expected them to go.

“There are a lot of things I don’t know about,” Hagel said, when it came to America’s defenses. “If confirmed, I intend to know a lot more than I do.”

But why should he bother? After all, he said in perhaps the most head-shaking comment of the day, “It doesn’t matter what I think.”

Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) begged to differ: “It matters what you think,” she found herself saying in response.

Or maybe this was the most head-shaking comment: Defense secretary is “not a policymaking position,” and because he has to work in consultation with others and in service to the president, he won’t be “running anything.”

After yesterday, maybe he won’t. Because maybe, after this horror show, the Senate will decide it just can’t countenance confirming Chuck Hagel. That would be a shocker, but no less shocking than his performance.

jpodhoretz@gmail.com

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Just sold!

Manhattan

HARLEM $1,995,000

111 Central Park North

Three-bedroom, three-bath condo, 1,914 square feet, with glass balcony, floor-to-ceiling windows, walk-in closet, washer/dryer and Central Park views; building features doorman, parking, roof deck, gym and party room. Common charges $2,170, taxes $467. Asking price $1,995,000, on market 34 weeks. Brokers: Michael Rosenblum, Douglas Elliman and Kristina Ojdanic, The Corcoran Group

UPPER EAST SIDE $1,400,000

300 E. 74th St.

Two-bedroom, two-bath co-op, 1,450 square feet, with windowed kitchen, dining room and balcony; building features doorman, gym, laundry and storage. Maintenance $2,042, 45 percent tax-deductible. Asking price $1,425,000, on market 21 weeks. Brokers: David Wolfenson, Maxwell Jacobs and Linda Chen, The Corcoran Group

Westchester

BEDFORD HILLS $2,385,000

33 Bedford Center Road

Five-bedroom, five-bath stone house, 6,731 square feet, with two-story conservatory, formal living and dining rooms, family room, guest wing and four antique fireplaces; landscaped property features fenced yard, pool and tennis court. Taxes $45,923. Asking price $2,750,000, on market 50 weeks. Broker: Angela Kessel, Houlihan Lawrence

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Ground Zero’s new face: No substitute for the twins

The Issue: The almost complete 1 World Trade Center at Ground Zero and its affect on the skyline.

***

If Steve Cuozzo thinks that freedom is singing at Ground Zero, he is seriously tone-deaf (“Freedom Sings,” PostScript, Jan. 27).

If Cuozzo were really a part of the common rabble, he would never have written a column that tried to build the Freedom Tower up by tearing the Twin Towers down.

Doesn’t he understand that when he attacks the Twin Towers, he is attacking the millions who thought they were marvelous?

Doesn’t he know that his propaganda gives aid and comfort to those who feel free to blow the public’s money?

J.C. Rice

View of 1 World Trade Center from Jersey City.

For years he has been cheerleading for a building that almost no one wanted and that is sucking commuters dry at Port Authority crossings.

It’s bad enough that the public is heavily subsidizing the rebuilding of Ground Zero, while Larry Silverstein gets a free ride.

Cuozzo’s effort to demolish the Twin Towers’ reputation was way over the top. M. L. Donovan

Manhattan

In regard to the newly built One World Trade Center, as beautiful as it looks, we need to have a second tower built.

Our hearts and the New York City skyline cry out for its twin.

James Lautier

Windsor, Conn.

Neither I nor anyone I know has anything but contempt for that travesty of a building.

It belongs in Cincinnati or Singapore, but not where the Twin Towers once stood.

Cuozzo didn’t like the Twin Towers, and he’s welcome to his opinion, but many of us did.

Furthermore, unlike 1 WTC, the Twin Towers were memorable, inspiring and the recognized signature of the Big Apple.

They were used as the establishing shot for almost every movie filmed in New York City from the time they were finished to the time they came down.

They were us. The Freedom Tower will never represent New York to the world.

It’s just another mediocre building in the skyline.

Now the Port Authority, meaning the toll-paying public, is on the hook for at least $7.5 billion for a project we don’t want and shouldn’t have had to pay for.

We’ve been played for suckers by Silverstein and his shills in the press. Only in New York.Richard Hughes

Manhattan

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NYC’s murder freeze

Murder took a break last week — New York enjoyed a 10-day stretch without a single homicide, a span that ended Saturday with a shooting in Queens at 6:03 p.m.

Many chalked it up to the frigid temperatures that descended on the city. But it was even icier in the Midwest. And yet that didn’t stop Chicago from seeing 12 people murdered with guns over the same 10-day stretch, including six men on Saturday night alone.

So far this January, Chicago has suffered 41 murders to New York’s 21, even though the Second City has less than a third of New York’s population.

AP

Raymond Kelly

Clearly, it’s not Old Man Winter who’s deterring killings in New York. It’s Ray Kelly and the policies he has pursued as police commissioner.

Fact is, 10 murder-free days on Kelly’s watch is stunning but not a total aberration: Homicides dropped to a record low in New York last year — 418, the fewest since the city began recording the data in 1963.

That good news comes thanks to great work by the nation’s finest police force, but again, this success is not just a matter of more feet on the ground. Chicago has just about as many cops per resident as New York, yet that hasn’t done anything to reduce that city’s alarming murder rate.

Which suggests that the NYPD’s style of policing has something to teach other cities about fighting crime. It begins with political will. From the start, Mayor Bloomberg has given Kelly the backing he needs for his aggressive program of clearing guns from New York’s streets.

In Chicago, by contrast, Mayor Rahm Emanuel has focused his fire on gunmakers instead of criminals. Last Friday he wrote to two major banks urging them to stop lending money to firearms manufacturers.

The grandstanding didn’t do anything, of course, to stop crime. The same day, a man was shot to death in Chicago. The day after, six more.

The point is that the best police cannot function without strong political backing for the often unpopular policies that save lives — including the much-criticized practice of stop-question-frisk used to great effect by the NYPD. For effective policing is always under assault: Just look at what federal Judge Shira Scheindlin is doing to render stop-and-frisk illegal.

That is pure folly. New Yorkers should celebrate the fruits of Kelly’s labors: not just 10 days of relative peace in a bustling city, but untold lives saved all year round.

And pity poor Chicago, which cannot.

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Singer sewing change

Paul Singer appears to have changed his tune on Argentina.

After a decade of aggressively pursuing $1.44 billion he claims the country owes him and a group of bondholders, including successfully pressing Ghana to seize a locally docked Argentine naval vessel to help pay down the debt, the billionaire New York hedge fund mogul is sounding like Bobby McFerrin in “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.”

Singer’s Elliott Management now feels Argentina will do the right thing, according to recent court filings.

It’s quite a change from last fall’s legal arguments, in which Singer urged a federal judge to hurry up and force Buenos Aires to put some of the monies owed into escrow, citing the country’s president’s plot to avoid the debt payment.

Such a move would have put Argentina into default.

Now there’s nothing but love and trust. Well, at least trust.

“It is hard to believe that Argentina will needlessly trigger yet another default and cause the acceleration of tens of billions of dollars in principal repayment obligations” to a second, rival group of bondholders, Elliott’s lawyer, Ted Olson, told a federal appeals court, according to a filing late Friday.

Elliott and Argentina have been sparring in court for almost a decade over defaulted debt Elliott purchased at a steep discount. The $21 billion hedge fund demands to be paid in full, with interest. About 92 percent of the bondholders entered an exchange offer and accepted a 70 percent haircut.

A dozen of these rival, so-called exchange bondholders, including such names as BlackRock, Alliance Bernstein, Gramercy and Perry Capital, have asked the appeals court to throw out a lower court ruling that would force Argentina to pay the Elliott group each time it makes a payment to them.

The rivals have argued they won’t get their money if that happens because Argentina President Cristina Kirchner has vowed the country will never pay so-called “holdout creditors” who refused to go along with two separate debt restructurings in recent years.

Kirchner’s comments led to speculation the country was devising a way to pay the other bondholders outside of the US, which would create a technical default. Elliott repeated those speculations in several briefs recently.

Singer’s change of tune comes after an appeals court temporarily overturned part of the lower court ruling ordering the escrow payment.

An appeals court hearing is scheduled for Feb. 27.

mcelarier@nypost.com

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Dress up, dudes

Young men starting their first jobs and veterans who’ve recently been promoted or switched to working in an office with a different dress code could all use some style guidance, particularly if their attire is supposed to fall under the nebulous “business-casual” category.

Trunk Club will help sartorially challenged guys get the high-end clothes they need without having to go shopping.

After you sign up online, a stylist will contact you to provide a consultation. In addition to basic information about your body type and hair and eye color, you can tell your stylist what situations you need clothes for (e.g., a new job, important meetings with clients) and what types of clothes you want.

You can also negotiate a budget for the clothes that will be shipped to you.

A trunk of roughly 10 items, along with a hand-written note about why the enclosed clothes were chosen, will be sent to you for free.

You have 10 days to try on your prospective duds, and you can return any items that you don’t want, also for free, courtesy of a prepaid FedEx return label. You only have to pay for the clothes you keep, and the price tags are on all of the items.

You can then talk to your stylist about subsequent trunks whenever you need some new gear.

Although Trunk Club focuses on business-casual attire, if you need some suits, they can provide those, too.

A typical trunk will have roughly $1,500 worth of merchandise, and customers usually keep about a third of that, so your first shipment of clothes will likely end up costing you $500. The pricing for individual items is similar to that of upscale department stores.

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Caught: Suspect who escaped during bathroom break nabbed in Bronx

They finally flushed out this fugitive!

A murder suspect who escaped from a Brooklyn police precinct yesterday by asking a cop for a bathroom break was captured today by cops hiding out in a friend’s Bronx apartment, the NYPD said.

Brandon Santana, 24, was apprehended at 3:15 p.m. at 3930 Third Avenue by NYPD officers and the Regional Fugitive Task Force, about 37 hours after he ran, un-handcuffed, from the 78th Precinct in Park Slope after knocking down a cop escorting him to the toilet.

Police said that the girlfriend of Santana’s friend opened the door when they arrived, and she told them that a pal of her boyfriend was staying there.

NYPD

Brandon Santana, escaped during bathroom break.

Cops found Santana standing in the bedroom, and took him into custody without incident, according to the NYPD.

Santana is suspected of repeatedly bashing 22-year-old dad-to-be Alexander Santiago with a lead pipe during a gang assault on the man and three of his friends at 12th Street and Fifth Avenue in Park Slope on Aug. 1, 2010.

After Santana’s latest arrest today, Santiago’s girlfriend Stephanie Mercado, told The Post, “'I hope the cops keep him tight, and don't let him get away.”

“No bathroom breaks this time,” Mercado said. “And now that they have him we want them to get the rest of the cowards. I want justice."

Santana’s apprehension was the second time in the past week he was caught by cops.

He had been hiding out with a relative in Iowa, but returned to the city this week – and was promptly caught by cops who wanted to arrest him for Santiago’s murder.

Detectives questioned Santana at the station house Wednesday night, and then left at the end of their shift at 1 a.m. yesterday, expecting to put him in a witness lineup later.

An hour later, after he had been placed in a first-floor holding cell, Santana asked the officer minding him if he could use the bathroom.

When the cop opened the cell door, Santana — who was not handcuffed — shoved the officer, knocking him to the ground, and ran straight out of the station house, law-enforcement sources said.

One cop behind the front desk jumped over it to chase him, but hurt himself in the process, sources said.

A lieutenant also went after Santana but couldn’t catch up, sources said.

“It’s like they gave us justice, then took it away,” said Anaisa Santiago, Alexander’s 15-year-old sister yesterday.

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Fly in the ointment

President Obama is riding high in the afterglow of his second Inauguration — but the signs of trouble ahead are already becoming clear.

First off, it now looks like the US economy peaked in the third quarter last year — growing at 3.1 percent, a huge leap from 1.3 percent in the second quarter and 2 percent in the first.

That was perfect timing for his re-election, bringing unemployment below 8 percent for the first time since Obama took office and robbing Mitt Romney of one of his top talking points.

But top economists believe things slowed in the fourth quarter and again this year. Many are openly predicting that fourth-quarter growth will come in at between 1 and 1.5 percent, and growth is unlikely to top that rate in the near future.

Reuters

Not as planned: Obama, yesterday, dealing with a fly as he speaks in the White House State Dining Room.

We’re already seeing the signs of an economy far from recovery. Retail sales in December, the most important shopping month of the year, were a flop. Holiday-related sales rose just 0.7 percent from Oct. 28 to Dec. 24, compared with a 2 percent rise the year before.

And according to a Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan report, consumer confidence is at its lowest point since December 2011.

The president may continue to claim that the economy’s woes just aren’t his fault, but in his fifth year in office, those excuses are wearing exceedingly thin. It won’t help that his Inaugural Address included barely a mention of jobs or economic growth: He’s made his real priorities clear.

Meanwhile, he’s dealt himself another problem that will frustrate all his efforts to deal with the economy.

A year ago, Democratic pollsters Doug Schoen and Pat Caddell warned in an oped column that Obama could only win re-election by running “the most negative campaign in history,” and that the political damage from such a campaign would leave him unable to govern in a second term.

It was one of the boldest predictions of the election season — and it was right.

No sooner had Romney secured the GOP nomination than Team Obama hit him with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of negative ads, casting him as, in Haley Barbour’s words, a “wealthy plutocrat married to a known equestrian.”

The Obama blitzkrieg defined Mitt Romney before he could define himself. And despite an inspired first debate performance, he never recovered.

Nor did the president let up after Election Day. In his inaugural address, his usual lofty rhetoric thinly veiled the same partisan attack lines he used in his campaign, complete with references to “the shrinking few who do very well” and those who believe in “happiness for the few.”

Even after the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln was willing and able to strike a conciliatory tone with his political opposition. Not Obama.

The start of Obama’s second term looks a lot more like the beginning of FDR’s second term in 1937, when he launched his Supreme Court-packing plan — and wound up losing 81 seats to the Republicans in the 1938 midterms.

Like Roosevelt, Obama is overplaying his hand. His favorability rating has dropped sharply, from 55 percent immediately after his re-election to 48 percent today. He is now the only president in history to be elected to a second term with fewer popular votes than he won for his first term.

But none of this is good for the country.

After all, he won re-election despite a vastly unpopular domestic-policy record, with no plan for a second term and an electorate that believes the country is on the wrong track.

If the president continues to treat Republicans — who control the House and a strong minority in the Senate — with such contempt, it will be almost impossible to legislate much of anything.

Yet the country needs Washington to actually resolve at least a few issues — to find some grounds for principled compromise. The current standoff produces massive uncertainty. What will future tax rates be? Which government programs will be cut or expanded? What parts of the government might wind up shut down for extended periods while the two sides fight?

And uncertainty leaves businesses and others afraid to invest — afraid to take risks when the rules are too likely to change, and maybe change again within the year. Not enough people will risk putting money into long-term ventures when the future is so cloudy.

All of which will make it nearly impossible to get the economy truly moving again, creating massive numbers of jobs to bring unemployment down below 5 percent, where it should be.

As Americans, we are dismayed at the pain the president is imposing on the country, but as Republicans with solutions, our future as a party is bright.

Ed Cox is the chairman and David Laska the communications director of the New York State Republican Party.

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Exit another fighting gen.

Michael A. Walsh

Lost in the inaugural hullabaloo was Tuesday’s news that President Obama has relieved Gen. James “Mad Dog” Mattis, the colorful and highly decorated Marine who’s been in charge of the crucial US Central Command, which oversees the various wars in the Middle East, since 2010.

Mattis is famous for his blunt style and blistering aphorisms — “be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet” was his clear-headed advice to the Marines he led during the treacherous Iraq War. He’ll retire from both CentCom and the Corps in March, several months short of his expected tour of duty.

ZUMA Press

A rising star — until now: Gen. Mattis greeting a friend while assuming a new command in 2006.

But why? Could it be that, as Obama prepares to cede Afghanistan back to the Taliban, the last thing he needs is an obstreperous general gumming up the surrender?

For an administration whose relationship with the military is, to put it mildly, fraught with tension, Mattis is yet another wall trophy, to go alongside the heads of Gen. Stanley McChrystal (fired in 2010 as the commander of the US forces in Afghanistan) and David Petraeus, who left CentCom to be buried alive at the CIA (and later resigned over the Paula Broadwell sex scandal).

Officially, the administration offers a nothing-to-see-here explanation for Mattis’ departure, noting that his tenure in the crucial job was about average for the post.

Maybe. But politics is at play here as well. The brusque Mattis apparently fell afoul of National Security Adviser Tom Donilon, an Obama apparatchik. Why? Because Mattis says things the Obama team doesn’t want to hear, especially about what might well become the next theater of operations — Iran.

Thinking two or three moves down the line, the hard-line Mattis was known for peppering his civilian superiors with uncomfortable questions: What happens in Iran when and if the nuclear threat is neutralized? What if we have to fight a conventional war with the mullahs? Then what?

The line between frank outspokenness and open insubordination is a narrow one, and under our system, even top-level officers must cede to civilian authority. President Harry Truman famously fired the Army’s top general, Douglas MacArthur, during the Korean War for trying to go over his head to Congress in his quest for total victory on the Korean peninsula.

But officers must be prepared to tell the politicians what they need to hear, not what they want to hear. Choking off discussion to satisfy policy preferences — as the Bush administration arguably did in the runup to the Iraq War — can only lead to disaster.

Similarly, generals should not be politicians. Even after winning World War II, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower agonized about going into politics (for a long time, no one even knew which party he supported), and it’s long been a tradition in certain branches of the armed forces for officers to refrain from voting, lest they become politically invested.

But since the Clinton administration, there’s been a political tug-of-war between the generals and the politicians (think of the fight over gays in the military), which only got worse in the Bush years, when Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld openly bullied his commanders in the field, and Gen. Colin Powell traded in his uniform for a politician’s suit.

Things have only gotten worse under Obama. We’ve had a dispiriting merry-go-round when it comes to command in the Afghanistan-Pakistan theater; such instability at the top threatens the hard-won gains of our fighting forces.

And with at least three of our most effective fighting generals now cashiered or forced into retirement, the president is sending a clear message to the rest of the world.

That message is: Sound the retreat.

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An absentee mayor

Bob McManus

Remember the time Mike Bloomberg jetted off to sunny Bermuda as a monster snowstorm bore down on the five boroughs? Never again, he said afterward, woefully, while the city ever-so-slowly dug itself out of the drifts.

Well, some tigers just can’t change their stripes.

For there he was last week, down in Maryland giving America a firearms intervention while the United Federation of Teachers and his own crack Department of Education negotiators pulled his pants down on teacher-quality reform.

Transforming the city’s public-school system into a national model for quality and effectiveness was once right at the top of Mayor Mike’s personal legacy list.

AP

Busy in Baltimore: Mayor Bloomberg waiting to speak at a gun-violence summit while aides his were bungling teacher-evaluation talks back home.

But then came the third-term blahs, the departure of Joel Klein as schools chancellor, the ensuing Cathy Black debacle, the ascendancy of the thuggish United Federation of Teachers boss Mike Mulgrew — and the now-pervasive sense that Bloomberg no longer much gives a damn about the city’s 1,400 schools.

Fact is, he’s always been long on big ideas and short on follow-through (congestion pricing, anyone?). The schools seem to be no different.

Bloomberg won mayoral control of the Board of Education early on — a signal victory, though one built on the largely unappreciated efforts of his predecessor, Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Then came a lot of churning, but not much change.

Certainly not when it came to dealing with Albany.

He dispatched naïve deputies to the capital city to negotiate charter-school and school-closure reform with Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver — and wound up with laws studded with subsections designed to weaken, not strengthen, mayoral control.

And that’s how it worked out.

Fast forward to last week’s teacher-evaluation horror show, a repeat of what had come before: Mike delegated, his deputies dithered and the UFT carried the day

More, the union can now credibly — if dishonestly — argue that the potential loss of hundreds of millions in state and federal school aid is all Mike’s fault.

The money is the carrot in a state law requiring that the city and its unions negotiate objective evaluation standards for teachers and supervisors.

This always was going to be a tough fight. Mulgrew would sooner jam hot needles in his eyes than allow even the most egregiously incompetent teachers to be dismissed.

But as negotiations closed in on last Thursday’s deadline, the union had an unexpected ally at the table: Shael Polakow-Suransky, the policy factotum forced on Bloomberg by Albany as its price for allowing Cathy Black to become chancellor.

Black imploded after just weeks on the job, but Polakow-Suransky remained.

And Polakow-Suransky, it seems, is no fan of standardized testing, a key tool — if not the key tool — in any credible teacher-evaluation regimen.

“He doesn’t believe in testing,” says one high-ranking participant in the talks. “He negotiated it away — and when Mike [came back and] found out, he exploded.”

This brought negotiations to an end in a spray of invective, with state Education Commissioner John King essentially (and not unreasonably) blaming the breakdown on Bloomberg while threatening to withhold perhaps $1 billion in education aid from the city.

But, correcting for the bad hand the mayor had dealt himself, Bloomberg is spot on: One can’t objectively evaluate teachers without, well, objective evaluation metrics.

That is, without standardized tests.

Many pupils, if not most, will do fine without much testing.

Still, you can’t perform an education on a child, like an appendectomy. It’s a process, and many children — for reasons of class, culture, economic circumstance or personal disinclination to participate — resist it more than others.

These are the children who desperately need the readin’, ’ritin’ and ’rithmatic rubric that comprises the core of most test prep.

And in that sense, test performance is an entirely valid — indeed, critical — standard against which to judge teachers.

So if Polakow-Suransky doesn’t like standardized testing — well, too bad about Polakow-Suransky. And no matter that such views enjoy considerable currency among the Columbia Teachers College crew that drives policy at the Department of Education; they have no legitimate presence in Bloomberg administration negotiating positions.

And they certainly shouldn’t have come as such a surprise to the mayor himself.

That is, Mike should have been paying much closer attention to what was being proposed in his name.

For while education isn’t as sexy as assault rifles, he started the reform fight. He really should devote what time he has remaining in City Hall to working for its successful conclusion.

rmcmanus8@gmail.com

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