As I stood witness to the Triangle Shirtwaist fire centennial commemoration at the corner of Washington Place and Green Street on Friday, March 25, I was surprised and impressed by the size of the crowd, but the most unexpected moment of the day came when New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg stepped to the microphone.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, one of America’s most horrific industrial accidents, happened 100 years ago today, on March 11, 1911. Though New York City’s fire department arrived on the scene within two minutes of the call, the fire at this “modern” high rise at the corner of Washington Pl. and Greene St. still claimed the lives of 146 people, most of them young women and teenage girls. Some were burned, some died of smoke inhalation, some were crushed pushing for the exits, some fell from a faulty fire escape, and some jumped nine stories in an attempt to escape the flames.

It was a catastrophic, once-in-a-lifetime failure of what were considered more than ample emergency response systems. No one could have possibly anticipated. . . .

While opposition to marijuana prohibition has risen in recent years; yet under Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration New York City has dramatically stepped up its marijuana arrests. The NYPD now spends a huge amount of police time and money arresting people for low-level marijuana offenses.

Shouting “Broken Promises KILL!” a group of LGBT and AIDS activists heckled President Obama as he began to speak at a NYC fundraising event that raised $1.4 million for his party and fellow Democrats seeking election this November.

The unexploded vehicle will yield a great deal of evidence, including fingerprints; and the propane tanks can be traced.

Eric Holder came to NYC this week. He met with the NYPD, the FBI, the US Attorney’s Office and the US Marshals Service. Lower Manhattan in a post-9/11 world is a hardened target. Very hardened. I suspect he came away very impressed by the changes that have taken place in NYC in recent years.

MSNBC and AP are now both calling the race for Republican Chris Christie. With 70% of the precincts reporting, Christie holds a 50% to 44% margin over Corzine. Across the river, in New York City, number-crunchers are in quite a tizzy as the exit poll company has pulled back their projection of a Bloomberg victory [...]

As the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs was holding a hearing on veterans’ healthcare, we sat down with Iraq vet Kris Goldsmith of Long Island who chose to take his own life rather than be “stop-lossed.” Kris puts a face on the latest, horrific, government statistic, namely, that deaths from suicide may exceed combat deaths among soldiers who’ve served in Afghanistan and Iraq. Watch this interview sitting down, then get up and DO SOMETHING.

Americans are working more, real wages are going down. American wealth inequality is greater today than in the pre-World War One age we called the Gilded Age. How did it get so lop-sided? We ask our roundtable participants, Ed Ott, Saru Jayaraman, and Tamara Draut.