Tag: New York City

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property rights regulation

The Developer’s Lot

New York City, property rights, regulations

If you’re going to own things, don’t own them in New York City.

This town is an epicenter of official looting, as, for instance, what the city’s Parks Department is doing to “perplexed plaintiff” Theodore Trachtenberg.

Trachtenberg owns a lot in New York, on which he hopes to build housing. Before he could proceed, he had to remove a tree from the lot.

“Therefore,” the city — the Parks Department, the city, it’s all the same gang — is fining him $230,000.

Why? Well, they want money is why. If you can invest in NYC housing, this means you have money. 

If a little girl without money were to pluck a dandelion in her back yard, Parks would fine her only a quarter, maybe.

Trachtenberg is suing. The filing says: “Parks did not plant the tree, has never performed any work on, nor took care of the tree, nor has even registered it on its online resource called NYC Tree Map.”

The insanity is slightly complicated by a claim that two small trees on a nearby sidewalk were damaged by the work.

“The ownership of those two trees is not being contested, but the damage is,” says Mikhail Sheynker, Trachtenberg’s lawyer. Sheynker says he hasn’t observed the damage that the city describes.

But he has observed that in the 1990s, “the Parks Department didn’t really issue fines over trees. But they figured out this is a moneymaker.”

Trachtenberg should have developed a tract in some other burg.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability general freedom

Goods, Services, and Other Crimes

Mayor Eric Adams, New York City, illegal immigrants, busses, bus

The mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, has announced a lawsuit against bus companies for providing bus services.

The bus companies are selling transportation not to gangs of thieves that the companies know to be on their way to rob banks but to the government of Texas. Texas has been sending people arriving in Texas from the other side of the border to the Big Apple, a self-​proclaimed sanctuary city.

New York City is suing 17 bus and transportation companies for a total of more than $700 million. It wants the money to help take care of the people on the buses.

Apparently, Adams is one of that species of politician who has no standards — who will lurch in any direction at any moment, clutch at any straw, heedless of the rights of others, just as soon as an advisor says “Hey, let’s try this …”

Hey. Sue the federal government for its border policies, Mr. Mayor, if you object to those policies. Don’t sue bus companies and road pavement companies and restaurants and toll booths because they enable people to get from point A to point B.

My advice to the bus companies: countersue.

Many things bother me about the mayor’s ugly action. One is his indifference to the precedent being set, especially if the lawsuit succeeds. Doesn’t he care about the long-​range effects of suing people for millions of dollars just for earning their living in a legal, peaceful way?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom ideological culture international affairs

America’s Mayor Celebrates Communism

Mayor Eric Adams, China, communism, New York City

The American political tradition is not communist. It is anti-totalitarian. So we don’t expect our political leaders to cozy up to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

One would never want the mayor of Podunk, let alone New York City, to attend a flag-​raising ceremony to celebrate the 74th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, a brutal totalitarian dictatorship.

But that’s just what New York City Mayor Eric Adams did on October 1.

Now, Adams didn’t tell the Chinese Communist Party officials and others attending what a fan he is of the Chinese government’s wide-​scale and unrelenting repression and murder, but his very presence implied acceptance of the Chinazi regime: Hey, you made it. Seventy-​four years! Good for you guys.

A CCP-​PRC ceremony conducted to commemorate the CCP founding of the PRC is not about being nice to Chinese people or celebrating a vague diversity. If you go there in an official capacity to glad hand Chinazi officials and wave the U.S. flag along with the Chinese flag, you are sanctioning the Chinazi regime. You’re telling everybody — everybody too busy to read news or history or investigative reports — that these rulers aren’t so bad.

“That flag is a flag of repression,” says Chinese dissident Zhou Fengsuo. “It’s the CCP flag of China. The day when they killed many of my compatriots on Tiananmen Square … that’s the flag they raised there to show their victory over peaceful people.”

Adams has provided another propaganda coup for the CCP, which enjoys racking them up.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights general freedom local leaders nannyism

The Next-​Worst Thing

New York City, big apple, mayor, censorship

New Yorkers can breathe easier now — they’re finally rid of the repellent Mayor Bill de Blasio.

But — uh oh — the new mayor, Eric Adams, may be another worm to keep that bitter taste dominant in the Big Apple.

Mayor Adams dislikes guns and violence, so he wants social media to censor rap videos that display and glorify guns. It’s unclear whether he also wants social media to censor links to westerns and Matrix movies and lots of other movies and media in which guns to fight bad guys or bad algorithms are approvingly deployed.

“You have a civic and corporate responsibility,” Adams intones, enjoining social media firms to expand their list of banned things.

“We [we?] pulled Trump off Twitter because of what he was spewing. Yet we are allowing music displaying of guns, violence. We allow this to stay on the sites.”

 “Stagecoach” and a rap video proposing that one “[expletive deleted] that [expletive deleted]” may have little in common in the categories of values and sensibilities. But if violence is “glorified” in both, well, that’s bad. Right?

Adams is a government official. A “public servant.” And a functionary in such a position cannot make solemn, well-​publicized declarations about what companies should censor without thereby seeking to enlist them — deputize them, you might say — as agents of government censorship.

He is not sending police to the offices of Twitter and Facebook and ordering them to ban rap-​video tweets or else. But he’s doing the next-​worst thing.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Categories
free trade & free markets

Hardship

Regulation. It’s a tough job.

Just as regulators think they’ve got it figured out — i.e., this is what folks must do in such-​and-​such circumstance, and this is what they mustn’t do in such-​and-​such other circumstance — somebody invents something that makes things way too easy for buyer and seller alike … despite all the alternative-​strangling regulations.

It’s so frustrating!

This can get out of hand pretty quickly when one industry (say, computer hardware and software and networking) is by historical quirk much freer than another industry (say, New York City taxicabs). You guessed it, this isn’t a hypothetical: A company called Uber has created a smartphone app that lets cabbies and customers find each other more easily. Now Uber is testing its service in New York City.

But — uh oh! — rotten Big Apple taxi regulations prohibit yellow cabs from pre-​arranging rides, that is, by methods other than hailing a cab on the street. Cabbies may not use electronic devices, for example. And cabbies usually aren’t allowed to refuse a fare unless another passenger is already sitting pretty and watching the running meter.

Officials say they are “looking at” Uber’s app, and the New York Times reports that both sides are working to “resolve regulatory concerns.” Well, there are only three ways to resolve them:

  1. Prohibit Uber.
  2. Pretend that the regulations don’t mean what they say. Or
  3. get rid of the stupid regulations.

Solving regulatory problems is so hard!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
insider corruption term limits

That Bloomin’ Blatherer Bloomberg

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, once a man of the people, claimed his billions immunized him from the pitfalls of politics-​as-​usual. Who could bribe him, right?

But it seems power seduces even without payola.

New Yorkers passed a two-​term limit on city officials. But Bloomberg wants another term, and couldn’t be bothered taking the question to voters yet again. So he convinced the city council to water down the law so both he and they could run for a third term.

So, why did Bloomberg overthrow the voters’ decision? Not because he’s seduced by power. No. Because he’s so darned indispensable. In an economic downturn, the city needs a financial wizard like him to steer things.

Except this is the same maestro who dug New York’s current financial hole. The city is looking at a $7 billion budget deficit in a couple years if nothing changes. And according to a new report by the Citizens Budget Commission, the average cost of city employees has increased 63 percent since 2000. Average pay has jumped from $52,000 a year to $69,000. Then you have benefits, which ballooned from $13,000 a year to a whopping $38,000 a year.

Bloomberg can’t say no to unions, so taxpayers suffer. He can’t say no to a power grab, so democracy suffers.

Gee whiz, who but Bloomberg could give us all this suffering?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.