Will Mike strike out?

Nicole Gelinas

How long should New Yorkers put up with the school-bus strike? Last week, the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1181 was in charge of the schedule. Mayor Bloomberg should make clear that the city will get kids to school on time and safely — by making it clear that striking workers are risking their jobs.

As temperatures fell below freezing late last week, barely a third of the private yellow school buses that take 152,000 New York kids to school were on duty. That was a drop from Wednesday, the first strike day. Picketers intimidated replacement drivers and blocked buses.

Tomas E. Gaston

Bloomberg can get tougher: NYPD officers keep protesters away as a bus crosses a picket line in The Bronx last week. The mayor should hire new bus companies now.

The last time the union went out on strike, in 1979, it stayed out 13 weeks.

And the city caved in, giving the workers the civil-servant-style job protections that they want to keep now, no matter which private company employs them. (The city’s drive to do away with those protections after 34 years has pushed the union out this time.)

So without decisive action from Bloomberg, New York parents could be looking at chaos till summer — or longer. Your kid may not get to school until the bus drivers run out of money.

But the mayor can take action — by moving to terminate the bus companies’ contracts for nonperformance.

Whatever the city does, it’ll end up in court. Its contracts with bus companies are not well written. Unlike solid contracts that outline who does what in the event of everything from war to earthquakes, the contracts are vague on who — the company or the city — is responsible in a strike. The contracts require that bus companies make “good faith” efforts — and the mayor hasn’t said what he thinks that means.

But the contracts do define what is a violation of the contract. “Failure to conform to and maintain the route,” “exclusion of any rider from a run,” “failure to provide service to a school,” “failure to dispatch the kind of bus specified” and “failure to have the minimum number of spare vehicles” are among violations, with no excuses.

The city can issue fines of $2,800 a day, in some cases per bus route or per child, which could add up to tens of thousands of dollars (or more) a day.

Since contractors aren’t getting paid by the city while their buses are idle, such fines could put them out of business.

In the meanwhile, the city could move up its call for bids for new contractors to now, instead of next fall, signing emergency short-term deals with new bus fleets.

New drivers and matrons, like the old, would have to meet safety qualifications and criminal-background checks, just as the city plans for next year’s contracts.

Killing existing contracts means killing the drivers’ jobs — a threat Bloomberg hasn’t wielded yet.

It works. In 1994, Legal Aid lawyers who worked for a private firm under a city contract, similar to the bus drivers today, went out on strike for a raise. Then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani immediately moved to terminate the contract. Just as immediately, the lawyers went back to work — on the city’s terms.

The mayor should be clear that striking workers are risking their jobs. Union leaders don’t necessarily have workers’ interests at heart — just as they didn’t in the recent past. When bus companies must make extortion payoffs to the union’s leader, as they did under former chief Sal “Hotdogs” Battaglia, now a felon, that means less money for drivers.

And new bidders are not going to hire minimum-wage workers. All companies need experienced drivers and matrons who won’t walk off the job in a few months’ time for a better opportunity.

Commercial drivers’ licenses and clean records are worth something. If that weren’t true, the bus companies would’ve ditched the union years ago.

The mayor’s duty is to taxpayers, parents and kids. There’s a lot at stake.

The members of a different union, the Transport Workers Union, who staff the subway and bus system, struck in 2005 (illegally, because they, unlike the school-bus workers, are public workers).

The TWU has been without a contract for a year now — and it’s been gingerly testing its power again in recent weeks.

Union members have given out fliers to riders suggesting that the MTA makes subway motormen enter stations too fast for safety — and is reminding the drivers and conductors to “use caution.”

Since work slowdowns are illegal, the TWU has been careful to not tell drivers to slow down.

But TWU leaders not only support the striking school-bus drivers; they’re watching closely.

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

Twitter: @nicolegelinas

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Three generations — and counting

In 2009, when Larry Zinn took over as sales manager for the Infiniti dealership that his father owned, he had a great idea: retrain the sales staff in a team approach and offer customers complimentary add-on services for the first year.

Some salesmen who were used to selling the same way for decades up and quit. But that didn’t deter Larry from insisting a new sales culture and value proposition for new car buyers was necessary. “I was persistent with everything I’ve believed we needed to do going forward. People were going to embrace change or move on,” says Larry, 28.

The resistance quieted, however, after Larry recruited young salespeople and had them trained in the new advantage program. The new approach helped push sales volume up 72 percent. "We had a lot of success with it,” he says.

Larry Zinn’s experience is not unusual for family-owned businesses that survive into a third generation and employ new tactics to keep from becoming obsolete.

Nationally, family-run businesses account for nearly 35 percent of the largest companies including Ford, Koch Industries, Hilton, Wal-Mart, Loews and Ikea. In South Florida, family-run businesses are particularly prevalent and account for a majority of the largest Hispanic companies, including Goya, Bacardi, El Dorado and Sedano’s Supermarkets.

But while more than 30 percent of all U.S. family-owned businesses survive into the second generation, only about 12 percent are passed onto the third generation, according to Family Firm Institute, a Boston-based association for family enterprise professionals. Those that do survive have a few intriguing commonalities: an ability to stay relevant, think bigger and take a long term view.

“They try to figure out where they want to be in 10 years and take steps to make that target,” says Wayne Rivers, president of The Family Business Institute in Raleigh, N.C.

Most third-generation family businesses, particularly those in South Florida, were started by a scrappy entrepreneur who saw business ownership as a way to provide for the family. Those businesses include grocery chains such as Sedano’s, restaurant operators such as Las Vegas Cuban Cuisine and airport concessionaires such as NewsLink.

Typically, in those businesses, the founder brought his kids with him to work, put them in the kitchen, the stock room, the sales floor, and taught them on-the-spot business lessons. Those kids eventually came to work full time and helped the company evolve beyond a seat-of-the-pants start-up into a more sophisticated business with processes and systems.

Now comes the third generation, who are more likely to have received formal business education before they return to the company. Often, they are able to leverage that training and move the company forward dramatically. But the succession also comes with challenges. They must keep the respect of longtime employees and show the same dogged commitment to seeing their company succeed, even after having already grown up enjoying the fruits of its success.

In successful third-generation businesses, the senior generation often stays on to ensure that commitment, adopting a role as mentor or advisor while creating an environment where younger family members can take on real responsibility, says Rivers, who consults for family businesses. “They get out of the way, let the next generation make their own mistakes, and gracefully exit when it’s appropriate.”

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Miami’s own Vanilla Ice: a one-hit wonder’s remarkable second act

He still remembers that moment, even as the chaos of his life swirled about him two decades ago. On the upside of his epic hit, Ice Ice Baby, Robert Van Winkle surveyed what his soaring career had afforded — the cars, the parties, the good times and this modern pad on Star Island. It was a professionally designed showcase of flash, but deeply bereft of soul.

“I felt like I was living in a nightclub,” said Van Winkle, the rapper who commanded the stage as Vanilla Ice. “It never felt like home.’’

Van Winkle, 45, who has spent more than half of his life in South Florida, re-imagined his space in warm earth tones. For Van Winkle, it was about so much more than decorating, but rather the beginning of the next chapter after a rap career that had been so promising, then careened into pop culture obscurity.

Many turns later, Van Winkle emerged from the wreckage as a successful, self-taught real estate investor, renovation whiz and a popular reality television home star, the seeds first planted that moment on Star Island when his house wasn’t a home.

Van Winkle’s third season of the DIY Network’s Vanilla Ice Project premiers next Sunday in which the rapper — who still tours performs concerts — buys, guts and makes pretty upscale homes. With his easy personality and hearty laugh still intact, plus a newfound Zen after a troubled past, Van Winkle mines South Florida’s rich housing landscapes for homes that can be grabbed, renovated and returned to the market for a profit. He is also the star of a DIY special called Ice My House, airing this Sunday at 11 p.m., and has a new lighting collection called, you guessed it: Vanilla Ice Lighting.

“With the recession, people have been feeling so miserable for so long. People don’t want to put money in an upside-down house,’’ said Van Winkle who lives with his wife and two daughters in a Wellington community. “I wanted a show that motivated people to want to invest in their homes, to get that kitchen they always wanted. I want people to enjoy their homes.’’

The show is just the latest stop in Van Winkle’s transformation, and his leveraging of his monster single.

“Vanilla Ice is one of those figures in pop music who was able to successfully reinvent himself,’’ said Matt Donahue, of Bowling Green State University’s Department of Popular Culture. “ Ice Ice Baby is his signature phrase and he has been able to take it all the way to the bank.’’

The Vanilla Ice Project’s 13-episode season follows Van Winkle and a crew of contractors as they transform a 6,000-square-foot house in a Lake Worth subdivision. “This place was rotten, we had to take down every piece of drywall, gut it down to the cinderblocks,’’ he said. “Everything in here now is custom, with state-of-art in-home technology and made with a whole lot less carbon.’’

On an especially muggy weekday, Van Winkle is taking a break from filming. Tattooed arms outstretched, he is animated as he talks about the plans to make this home a showpiece, a lifetime away from his early days as a rising rapper.

Van Winkle, who grew up in Dallas, exploded on the music scene in the early 1990s — just as rap was settling into its second decade — and sold 15 million To the Extreme albums worldwide on the popularity of Ice Ice Baby, the smash that started as a B-side song. The catchy song — along with Vanilla Ice’s high-stepping in parachute pants — became the first rap single in history to top the Billboard charts.

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Michelle Obama on Inauguration President Barack Obama

ET's Rocsi Diaz sat down first with First Lady Michelle Obama at the Kids' Inaugural Concert to discuss a variety of topics from her new hairstyle and birthday celebration to Lance Armstrong.

RELATED: Actors Who've Played Presidents

Mrs. Obama debuted her shoulder-length bob with eye-level bangs via Twitter on her birthday, Thursday, January 17, and she told Rocsi that Dr. Jill Biden may have had an influence on her.

"I've been coveting [Dr. Biden's] bangs for four years," joked Mrs. Obama, quipping that they're "the bang sisters." She also revealed that husband President Barack Obama gave her a "beautiful necklace" as a recent birthday gift.

On the topic of Lance Armstrong's interview with Oprah in which he admits to doping, Mrs. Obama said, "I didn't even get a chance to see it. It's a sad situation for everyone who's watching ... I think we have to remember all the people that have been helped and who will continue to need the help of [The Livestrong Foundation]. We should focus on making sure that cancer survivors and people dealing with the disease have the kind of support, medical and research, that they need to deal with the situation. We can't lose sight of that accomplishment."

Rocsi will present at tonight's Kids' Inaugural, which marks the latest efforts by the First Lady and Dr. Jill Biden's Joining Forces initiative to urge Americans to support our troops, and our Gold Star and Blue Star families.

The First Lady described the event in a video message, explaining that it's about "celebrating who we are as Americans and the people who make our country great -- our men and women in uniform, our military spouses, and our amazing military kids. So it's no surprise that when Jill and I decided to host this event, everyone wanted to join us -- from Katy Perry to Glee, from Nick Cannon to Usher. They know that military kids serve this country right alongside their moms and dads, and we’re really looking forward to celebrating our military families this weekend."

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O and Israel, apart

Shortly after the United Nations General Assembly voted in late November to upgrade the status of the Palestinians, the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that it would advance plans to establish a settlement in an area of the West Bank known as E-1, and that it would build 3,000 additional housing units in east Jerusalem and the West Bank.

The world reacted to the E-1 announcement in the usual manner: It condemned the plans as a provocation and an injustice. In the weeks after the UN vote, Obama said privately and repeatedly, “Israel doesn’t know what its own best interests are.” With each new settlement announcement, in Obama’s view, Netanyahu is moving his country down a path toward near-total isolation.

The dysfunctional relationship between Netanyahu and Obama is poised to enter a new phase. Next week, Israeli voters will probably return Netanyahu to power, this time at the head of a coalition even more intractably right-wing than the one he currently leads.

Obama, since his time in the Senate, has been consistent in his analysis of Israel’s underlying challenge: If it doesn’t disentangle itself from the lives of West Bank Palestinians, the world will one day decide it is behaving as an apartheid state.

During November’s vote on Palestine’s status, the US supported Israel and asked its allies to do the same. In the end, they were joined by a total of seven other countries.

When such an issue arises again, Israel may find itself even lonelier. It wouldn’t surprise me if the US failed to whip votes the next time, or if the US actually abstained. I wouldn’t be particularly surprised, either, if Obama eventually offered a public vision of what a state of Palestine should look like, and affirmed that it should have its capital in East Jerusalem.

Bloomberg View

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Investors await word from Apple

No company today elicits such devotion and dedication among its customers and shareholders like Apple. The fervor felt by Apple fans for its products, its leaders and its business underscore the company’s technological eco-centric strategy. While that loyalty has made for rich rewards over the long term, it will mean very little to a myopic stock market when Apple reports its latest financial results Wednesday.

When a company so dominates a business like Apple does, it is subject to plenty of rumors, especially when that company, like Apple, is disciplined to not respond to speculation. There have been a series of anonymous and Wall Street analyst worries floated in the past quarter centered on the iPhone 5. First were concerns Apple couldn’t get enough supplies to build the phones fast enough. Then there were hints Apple cut its supply orders, suggesting slower sales.

Apple optimists have been quick to defend the company even as its stock has fallen from $700 to around $500 per share since September. The stock drop has come even as Apple probably sold a record number of iPhones and iPads during the holiday quarter.

No doubt Apple will trumpet its financial prowess on Wednesday. And it should. After all it generates more than $500 million dollars a day. But the short-sighted stock market has been conditioned to expect big numbers. Therein is the challenge for Apple: incubating such devotion without inflating expectations.

Tom Hudson is anchor and managing editor of Nightly Business Report, produced by NBR Worldwide and distributed nationally by American Public Television. In South Florida, the show is broadcast at 7 p.m. weekdays on Channel 2. Follow him on Twitter, @HudsonNBR.

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King’s son brings message to South Florida

The past few days have kept the eldest son of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. busy. He’s been to at least three states to carry on his father’s message: ending violence and learning from historical wrongs.

In a Fort Lauderdale Baptist church early Friday, he delivered another directive:

“A nation is judged on how we treat our most prized possession,” Martin Luther King III said. “And our most precious resource, I think, is our children.”

King served as the keynote speaker at the ninth annual Martin Luther King Jr. inspirational breakfast hosted by the YMCA of Broward County.

More than 500 gathered inside the First Baptist Church on Broward Boulevard, selling out the $2,500 per table event, to honor King’s legacy.

“My concern was that it would not be reduced to a day of relaxation,” said King III. “We have to look at this as a day on — not a day off.”

The Rev. King, a prominent civil rights leader, was born this week 84 years ago. He lead peaceful protests and bus strikes working for racial equality until his 1968 assassination.

The younger King told the South Florida audience about spending his youth at the local YMCA in Birmingham, learning to swim and working out with his dad.

“Those were wonderful experiences, experiences that I will never forget,” he said.

Like his father, King III has been a fighter for human rights, justice and non-violence in the United States and abroad. He also served as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s president, a position his father once held.

During his 2009 inauguration, President Barack Obama declared the holiday honoring King should be spent as a national day of service.

At Friday’s event, 15 youngsters from the Lauderhill YMCA were honored for their service to the community. The young friends managed to clean up a popular overpass and get rid of gangs who were harassing children.

They called their project “Own the Overpath.” The idea started when 14-year-old Kervens Jean-Louis was attacked by a gang on a fenced in walkway that spans the Florida Turnpike while coming from the YMCA, based at Boyd Anderson High School. But Jean-Louis didn’t back down.

He and other students mobilized and launched a campaign to clean-up the area surrounding the “overpath.” The youngsters made a formal presentation to the Lauderhill City Commission and Florida Department of Transportation officials.

Now, there is a $400,000 project in the works to install more lights on the bridge to increase visibility. The city broke ground in November.

“I learned that when you speak out loud it makes a difference,” said Jean-Louis.

For Jean-Louis, speaking loud meant going back to the bridge to warn others of the dangers of traveling across it at night.

He will spend this upcoming Saturday as a volunteer, painting and cleaning up a garden.

“Now I tell others what’s going on and how they can help out,” he said, much like the man they had all come to honor.

After the youngsters were honored, King III left the crowd to ponder a final thought: “We can either be a thermometer or a thermostat.”

A thermometer, he explained, takes the temperature while a thermostat regulates the temperature.

Despite the progress his father saw in his lifetime, and the decades since his death, there is still much work to be done, King III said.

“I always come with a heavy heart in January,” he said. “Because we have not fully realized the dream.”

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Twitter co-founders move Obvious Corp into spacious new digs

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Evan Williams and Biz Stone, the co-founders of Twitter, have leased three sprawling floors in a historic downtown San Francisco tower for their low-profile start-up incubator, The Obvious Corporation.

Obvious said Friday it leased 75,000 square feet at the busy 760 Market Street location – known as the Phelan Building – in one of the city’s larger commercial real estate deals in recent months.

The downtown space will be able to hold roughly 500 employees and signals ambitions at Obvious, which was re-constituted when Williams and Stone both left Twitter in 2011.

The incubator, with no more than two dozen employees, has mostly stayed out of the press except when it unveiled two new blogging platforms called Medium and Branch last September.

Although still thinly staffed, Obvious’s new space is larger than start-up Pinterest’s recently inked lease in the city.

“We need the right space from which to grow the Medium team and position Obvious to focus on bringing our new ideas to life,” Obvious CEO Williams said in a statement Friday about the new lease.

The company will occupy the seventh, eighth and ninth floors of the triangular building, which wraps around a central courtyard, said Jenny Haeg, a real estate agent who has brokered leases for Square Inc, Dropbox, Airbnb and other large tech startups.

(Reporting by Gerry Shih; Editing by Bob Burgdorfer)

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Drew Barrymore on Oprah's Next Chapter

Drew Barrymore opens up about her complicated childhood and the lessons she's learned when it comes to being a new mother on Oprah's Next Chapter, and we have a sneak peek!

Pics: Celebs and Their Cute Kids

Marking the first time cameras have ever been allowed inside her home, Drew also talks to Oprah about her new marriage to Will Kopelman, shares details about their newborn baby Olive, and reveals the story behind why her mother did not attend her wedding.

Related: Drew Barrymore's Daughter Olive Lands First Cover

Oprah's Next Chapter with Drew Barrymore airs Sunday at 9 pm ET/PT on OWN.

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Bam’s gun-plan misfire: using children as props

The Issue: President Obama’s press conference on gun-control, in which he was surrounded by children.

***

President Obama’s big plan to curb gun violence is more of a wish list of things he would like to see than an actual plan to stop the violence (“Gunning for...What?” Editorial, Jan. 17).

Obama should be ashamed of himself for exploiting children to promote his agenda.

He and his ilk want to disarm law-abiding citizens while ignoring the fact that only criminals will have weapons.

If you tell kids that guns are dangerous, then you are asking them to see for themselves.

Reuters

Signing an executive action on Wednesday.

If you show them the do’s and don’ts, it takes away the mystery.

If the school systems implemented a psychological test and an aptitude test twice during a child’s development, they might be able to tell who should be watched and helped.

If children are taught safety and respect for weapons, then gun violence could be nipped in the bud before it happens.

Gregory J. Topliff

Warrenville, SC

Obama’s shameful use of children was a disgusting display of political grandstanding that exploited the terrible Newtown tragedy.

To allow him to bypass Congress, the Second Amendment and other issues would just be another step in his incremental moves toward tighter control over the citizens of this great nation.

Congress needs to stand strong against Obama’s arrogant, self-serving actions.

John W. Fox

Galloway, NJ

Obama came out the other day, guns blazing (pun intended) with all of these gun-control measures, working up over 20 executive actions.

Why hasn’t he been as brazen and quick to the draw about Attorney General Eric Holder and the Fast and Furious debacle?

Tommy DeJulio

New Rochelle

Obama gave an emotional speech while surrounded by small children, citing the victims of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School as his motivation.

He’s got some nerve. That hypocrite is killing the future of all our children by spending trillions of dollars and saddling them with debt for the rest of their lives.

Tom Ennis

Whitehouse Station, NJ

All America need do is look back at Holder’s botched Fast and Furious operation to realize that the Obama administration knows nothing about gun control.

Nichola Maffei

Croton-on-Hudson

Both Obama and Gov. Cuomo followed the maxim “let no crisis go to waste.”

In their haste, they used a “shotgun” approach — pardon the pun — to a complex problem. They touched the surface on some issues, but missed others that require prolonged study and analysis.

The president’s use of emotional theater was uncomfortable to watch, and the governor’s actions were just a shameful political attempt to co-opt the matter.

Rarely is the timing so appropriate for the formation of a commission to study gun violence in America.

The problem has many tentacles and each one needs separate analysis. These hurried actions have only set the stage for more rancor and arguments.

Phil Serpico

Queens

So it’s the style of the weapon that people find offensive?

What if the guns were painted pink?

The editorial states that “they’ve not given us any clear way to put what they’ve done to the test.”

But we do know what these bans accomplish.

We did have an “assault-weapons ban” and it did absolutely nothing to the crime rate.

A. Levy

Manhattan

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