Reason to keep new year's expectations low

It's so arbitrary. A 2 becomes a 3, and somehow that's supposed to change everything.

It never does, of course. And yet here we are again, ringing in another new year with the usual naive exuberance, as if we didn't go through exactly the same hope-and-disappointment ritual last year, the year before and the year before that.

Happy Memory Loss!

We can't blame the under-1 crowd for failures in pattern recognition. But anyone who's made it out of the crib should understand the concept of dashed New Year's expectations. Just look at all we've tried to do and failed.

Despite persistent optimism, we haven't slashed property taxes, ended LIE traffic jams, eliminated political cronyism, reversed the LI brain drain or shaken off a development mentality stuck in the 1950s. This year, we couldn't even figure out how to keep our one major professional sports franchise.

But hope, we keep being told, springs eternal, especially this time of year. And we've just gotten a nice boost of confidence saying "oh, yeah?" to some calendar-gazing Mayans who were predicting the end of it all.

Well, we're still here, aren't we? And that's a start.

Now isn't it nice to know we have a whole new year ahead of fresh disappointments?

2. Tim Bishop is very beatable.

3. Overhead power lines are a great idea.

4. Tax caps will not hurt schools.

5. Donald Trump is totally committed to Jones Beach.

Here's what's easy to forget as we continue recovering from the ravages of superstorm Sandy: Much of what've accomplished -- and it's an awful lot already -- has been dramatically boosted by the feds. The numbers are still trickling in. But the tally of federal assistance to New Yorkers in the Sandy's wake has already topped $2 billion. That includes grants, loans and National Flood Insurance filings and all the FEMA workers who are keeping LI hotel-occupancy rates so high. Yes, we've done much of this ourselves. But we've gotten enormous help, too. For that we have to thank the ones who've been helping to pay for it. There are more than 300 million of them. So it could take a while.

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