You know what really grinds my gears?

• NYC won't provide funding to clean up toxic materials contaminating the grounds of four new schools under development in the South Bronx (or rather, SoBro, as Curbed so tastefully insists on calling it). 8 billion dollars in tax-free Liberty Bonds for gazillionaire developers in Lower Manhattan, however? No problemo. Or, as community resident Sarah McGlothin more eloquently put it, "We know the funding is there. When they want to build a courthouse or a jail in our neighborhoods, the funding is there."
  
• This might be an apt (if belated) moment to note that the tax breaks the city offers developers to clean up toxic sites (or brownfields) are proportional to the size of the project, not the actual cost of the cleanup, which is kind of like saying "hey come build a massive(ly expensive) development here!" Which, in turn is kind of like saying, "hey come put a really expensive project here which will ultimately target affluent people instead of the people who actually live here and whom this program was actually supposed to benefit!"
• Williamsburg has the most graffiti complaints in the city. I wouldn't want ugly spray paint on my fancy hipster condo either. It's probably a good idea to get a lot of police and like, arrest people who would do such a thing. In fact why don't we arrest 780 people in the Bronx alone in 2007. After all, graffiti is not just a nuisance! It is a communication channel for gangs and if we clean up the graffiti maybe then the gang members WILL NOT BE ABLE TO COMMUNICATE WITH EACH OTHER ANYMORE.
• And finally, the New York Times tells us that we can stop worrying about poverty because poor people are not as poor as the rest of us might think they are! Why? Because they spend more than they earn! And take lots of things for granted, too. (Times op-ed link available via Feministe.)

...and that's what really grinds my gears.