Barack Obama and his erstwhile Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton will be in New York City this week to host three fundraisers, with the joint purposes of getting Obama elected President and paying off Clinton's campaign debts. Get out those checkbooks because both will be pricey endeavors. Two of the fundraisers will be held on Wednesday night. One will raise funds for the general election and the other will be to pay down Clinton's debts. It's......

Sure, the 2008 election is exciting, but hundreds of candidates are expected to run for city office next year. Of the current City Council, 36 members out of 51 are up for reelection or getting the boot due to term limits. Former Bloomberg aide William Cunningham advised the Sun, "Put on your helmets and put on your seat belts: It's going to be like a demolition derby." It'll be a donation derby as candidates who......

A lawsuit filed Monday against the City Campaign Finance Board seeks to overturn a recently enacted funding law that opponents assert will just make the City Council richer - and whiter. The recently-enacted campaign finance restrictions reduces the contributions from companies who do business with the city by a whopping 92%. Translation: In a mayoral race, the individual limit on giving is now $400, versus $4,950; in City Council races, it's $250, down from $2,950.......

Andrea Schwartz, the Brazilian ex-pat who settled in Manhattan and became a madam with powerful clients, is back in the news. And she's as saucy as ever, this time denying that she's a lesbian. Tell us more! Schwartz, who was arrested in 2006 after the vice squad busted her Midtown prostitution ring from her apartment (where she also sold coke to customers), was sentenced to 18 months in jail, which she's already served, and probably......

New York City's Department of Finance is projecting that real estate values in the city will remain nearly flat this fiscal (ending September) year. More precisely, it expects only a 1.4% increase in property values, versus an 18% climb this past year. It will be the slowest increment of growth since Mayor Bloomberg took office in 2002, during a real estate boom that enabled budget surpluses, tax cuts, and astounding growth in city spending. The......

Last week we learned that all New York taxis will soon be held to higher fuel efficiency standards; starting next October new cabs must get at least 25 miles per gallon. But the cab changes don’t stop there – in addition to upcoming GPS and touch-screen video technology, the Taxi and Limousine Commission is considering selling an unlimited card for cab riders, which may feature “fare integration” with buses and subways. Over half the city’s......

Ahead of tomorrow's vote on a proposed fare hike, the MTA finance committee committee has approved an increase in fares for subways, buses and commuter trains as well as bridge and tunnel tolls. The committee voted 5-1 in favor of the MTA's proposed 2008 budget, which includes the increased rates. The increase comes despite the authority's projected $521 million surplus at the end of the year and the possibility of another large surplus next year......

For many 1010WINS listeners, some sad news: Financial analyst Larry Wachtel who would gave financial advice on 1010WINS for 33 years died on Sunday. He died suddenly of a heart ailment on Sunday. Wachtel grew up in Brooklyn, attended Long Island University and had worked in the finance industry, retiring from Wachovia Securities in 2005. He also retired from daily commentary on 1010WINS in 2005, but remained a guest commentator. The Journal News notes how......

MUSIC: If you aren't at your local hometown bar this Thanksgiving-eve, drinking with old high school buddies -- we suggest a sonic alternative. Tonight The Hold Steady and Art Brut do their best at making Terminal 5 feel a little bit cozier this holiday season. Buy tickets here. 7:30pm // Terminal 5 [610 W 56th St] // $30 MUSIC MOVIES: If you're sick and tired of the bands playing around town, go check out two......

Elizabeth Currid's new book, The Warhol Economy: How Fashion, Art, and Music Drive New York City, posits that the city's culture is the key our fiscal well-being. With insights culled from many of New York's leading players in the worlds of art, fashion and music, she draws a detailed blueprint of how these creative processes become big-money industries. Currid's thesis is that the conditions that have made New York one of the cultural capitals of......

Derek Jeter isn't alone when it comes to accusations of dodging taxes. The New York Post features a rundown of other famous New Yorkers who are on the hook for taxes owed. Near the top of the list is rap mogul Damon Dash, who allegedly owes the state $2 million.Dash, 36, is one of almost 225,000 city debtors who together have shortchanged the city and state more than $1 billion in income taxes, penalties and......

The Staten Island homeless man who repeatedly attempted to lay claim to the SoHo Grand Hotel has pleaded guilty and faces a year in prison. Kouadio Kouassi is an immigrant from the Ivory Coast and has been jailed since last December. He repeatedly filed claims with the city's Dept. of Finance in an attempt to assume legal ownership of the $76 million boutique hotel. Upon sentencing, Kouassi will like be quickly released and then deported......

Derek Jeter's mom is claiming that her son wouldn't cheat on his taxes, days after the NY State Dept. of Taxation and Finance claimed that the Yankees captain owed the state hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars in back taxes. Jeter says that his primary residence is in Florida, which doesn't have a state income tax. He does, however, live in the Trump World Plaza building on 1st Ave., across from the United......

The NY State Department of Taxation and Finance is pretty sneaky. After years of observing the Yankee captain's comments, lawyers are saying that DJ owes hundreds of thousands in back taxes. Though Jeter's Yankees salary is partially taxed by NY State, he has claimed that his primary residence is in Florida, which has no state tax. The argument from tax officials is that Jeter has made statements "professing his love for New York" and that......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a stabbing on Monument Walk in Brooklyn, a stabbing on West 31st St. in Brooklyn, and a stabbing on Hughes Ave. in Brooklyn. Cops are looking into the death of a man who was found unconscious in the bathroom of the Knitting Factory. They're deeming the incident suspicious. A Columbia University hunger striker was carried off a couch after passing out from hunger. Meanwhile, a group of drunken students......

Mr. Brownstone is reuniting this weekend with a show at Bowery Ballroom. The Guns n' Roses cover band is led by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah drummer Sean Greenhalgh (who makes for a pretty good Axl!) and touts themselves as the World's Drunkest Tribute to G n' R. We asked them to give us their Top 5 all-time best reunions list to commemorate the event. THE FIVE GREATEST REUNIONS by Mr. Brownstone, the World's Drunkest......

Last night, Stephen Colbert had a reading for his book I Am America (And So Can You) that was full of fans of truthiness and enemies of bears. The Washington Square News reported that the erstwhile maybe-presidential candidate said, "It's time to impregnate this country with my mind." Unexpected, though, were probably the members of a theatrical anti-war group, Sparkle and Cybil War, who were decked out as "patriotic Texas oil baronesses with patriot......

The St. John's student who was found carrying a .50 caliber rifle in a black plastic bag on the school's Queens campus and caused the campus to be locked down yesterday afternoon was charged with criminal possession of a weapon. Omeash Hiraman, a 22-year-old finance student, had been wearing a Fred Flintstone mask and was stopped by campus security. A guard and another St. John's student who happens to be a police cadet restrained......

Rudy Giuliani replaced his lead fundraiser. Anne Dunsmore joined the Giuliani campaign in May, and her credentials as the California finance director during President Bush's 2000 and 2004 elections prompted Giuliani to create a special position for her - deputy campaign manager for finance. Dunsmore was leading the drive to raise more than $100 million; she told the Washington Post's The Fix last May, "When you have $100 million situation hitting or missing by 10......

Presidential hopefuls can scurry around the country, choking down rubber chicken dinners and hustling for campaign cash, but Mayor Bloomberg knows that it's best to just sit back and let one's money work for you. He's certainly busy working for his $1-a-year salary, and even pays for his own travel when on jaunts to places like London where he's addressing another world capital. Still, our Mayor managed to more than double his wealth from last......

If The New York Times needs a rationale for allegedly discounting the ad rate it offered the advocacy group MoveOn for its ad alleging that General Petraeus was betraying his country my misrepresenting the true state of Iraq, we suggest characterizing it as a loss leader, because a lot of ink is being spilled and paid for in response to it. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani hasn't even won the Republican nomination yet,......

In an announcement that surely pleases voters, State Controller Thomas DiNapoli released a report saying the MTA should think again before raising its fares and tolls. DiNapoli said that the MTA hasn't made enough internal budget cuts yet to warrant an increase in fares and tolls. The proposed increases in fares and tolls is 6.5% in 2008 and another 5% in 2010. With the MTA set to vote on the fare increase in December,......

Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped more than 300 points by mid-day as worldwide financial markets worry about the U.S. credit market. The Dow Jones, as well as the Standard & Poor's 500 and Nasdaq, have lost 10% since July, and a strategist at Absolute Strategy Research tells the Times, "The psychology is shifting notably today. When a market drops by 10 percent, people start to feel it in their portfolios. People are used to......

Will Manhattan's clubs be moving to the 10013? With the group that opened Cain on 27th Street having opened Gold Bar at 389 Broome Street in February; and uber-promoter Danny A having opened the VIP-only Upstairs on Spring Street and Broadway, The Observer is reporting on a move of "clubland" to Chinatown. Following the flock is former model Emma Cleary who purchased Double Happiness at 173 Mott Street. The lounge will open as a "hip......

Queens Councilman Dennis Gallagher was arraigned yesterday on charges that he raped a 52-year-old woman in his district office. Gallagher maintains that the sex he had with the woman after a night of heavy drinking was consensual. The councilman faces ten criminal counts, including rape, assault, and sex charges, and could face up to 25 years in prison if found guilty. He was released after his arraignment on bail of $200,000. Gallagher's office was raided......

Ladies, it's time to throw your hat in the air a la Mary Tyler Moore: It turns out that young women are earning more than young men in cities like New York, Chicago, Boston, Dallas and Los Angeles. Apparently women between 21 and 30, of all income levels, are earning 117% of men's wages, according to analysis by Queens College demographer Andrew Beveridge for Gotham Gazette. The latest census data shows that women in their......

When Omar Freilla founded Green Worker Cooperatives, an incubator for eco-friendly worker coops, he set the initial goal of $700,000. “We weren’t even sure how we were going to raise that much,” he said in a recent telephone call. Almost four years later, the organization has raised well beyond their initial goal, thanks to RSF Social Finance and numerous local churches. Environmental justice isn’t new to Freilla. Before founding GWC, Freilla spent his days as......

Senate Majority Joseph Bruno's and Governor Eliot Spitzer's epic Choppergate fight grows each and every day. Yesterday, Bruno demanded that investigations be opened to focus on Spitzer's administration and whether Spitzer staffers were engaged in trying to sabotage him. Bruno said, "A lot of people in authority think there was criminality in the executive branch... I want to know how much the governor knew ... This is not going to go away, not going to......

Now that a political accord has been reached to bring congestion pricing to New York City that makes driving into the city more expensive, the city is turning its attention to mass transit riders, and the MTA is proposing a fare hike for buses, subways, and other area transit railways. The story at CBS 2 News notes the irony that Mayor Bloomberg sold his congestion pricing plan to New Yorkers by heavily emphasizing that revenues......

The NY Sun details Senator Hillary Clinton's fundraising agenda in the NY area. Most notably, she and former President Bill Clinton will be on a "48-hour, six fund-raiser blitz" in the Hamptons that includes events at billionaire Ron Perelman's East Hampton home and Entenmann's heir Robert Entenmann's North Fork vineyard. From the Sun:The Hamptons trip highlights just how crucial New York's wealthy donors are to Mrs. Clinton, and to all of the 2008 presidential candidates.......