Tag Archives: New York City

“We’re Getting Creamed” – NYC Small Business Owners Struggle To Confront Surge In Shoplifting, by Tyler Durden

Posted on March 5, 2022 | Leave a comment

It’s heartbreaking and infuriating when legitimate small businesses can’t survive because theft has essentially been legalized. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

New York City’s struggling small businesses are dealing with one of the worst spikes in retail theft rates in recent memory. And owners aren’t sure whether Mayor Eric Adams’ decision to roll back certain COVID restrictions will improve the situation, or make it worse.

The owner of a couple of downtown boutiques said she has never felt “more exhausted” trying to protect her businesses from emboldened shoplifters and criminal crews working small retail businesses.

Someone shattered the front door overnight and ripped out the cash drawer. The new security gates cost $2,300. The streets became quieter after four neighboring businesses closed permanently during the pandemic, emboldening shoplifters. Two security guards quit.

For Deborah Koenigsberger, who has worked in retail for three decades, keeping her two clothing stores open in Manhattan’s Flatiron neighborhood has never felt so exhausting.

“As small businesses, we are getting creamed right now in so many ways,” Ms. Koenigsberger said. “I might as well leave my store door open and say, ‘Help yourselves.”

According to data from the NYT, shoplifting complaints are up 16% over the past year, while arrests have fallen.

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Non-Citizen Voting Push Is Part Of Agenda To Rid America Of Citizenship: Election Expert, by Charlotte Cuthbertson

Posted on January 23, 2022 | Leave a comment

Is there any country on the planet that allows people who are not citizens of that country to determine who will run it? From Charlotte Cuthbertson at The Epoch Times at zerohedge.com:

The recent New York City law to allow at least 800,000 noncitizens to vote in municipal elections is unconstitutional and likely to be overturned in court, said Hans von Spakovsky, manager of the Heritage Foundation’s election law reform initiative and former member of the Federal Election Commission.

“It’s actually pretty clear that it violates the New York State Constitution—it has a provision that specifically says that you have to be a citizen to vote in all elections in the state of New York, and that includes local elections,” Spakovsky told The Epoch Times on Jan. 19.

“I also think it is bad from a policy point of view, because it basically cheapens and diminishes the concept of citizenship.

“It ought to be something that makes American citizens mad, particularly because of the potential number of aliens that’s involved.”

Hans von Spakovsky, manager of the Election Law Reform Initiative at the Heritage Foundation, at an immigration event in Washington in this file photo. (The Epoch Times)

New York City Mayor Eric Adams allowed the measure to become law on Jan. 9, which includes the provision that voting noncitizens must be in the city for 30 days or more and have authorization to work.

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Posted in Civil Liberties, Government, Immigration, Politics

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Manhattan’s Soros-Funded DA Lays Foundation For Next Crime Wave; Instructs DAs To Drop Prison Sentences, by Tyler Durden

Posted on January 6, 2022 | Leave a comment

New York city has put out the Welcome Mat for criminals. From Tyler Derden at zerohedge.com:

Manhattan’s newly elected DA, Alvin Bragg, has ordered prosecutors to stop seeking prison sentences for most offenses, and to downgrade felony charges in cases which include armed robberies and drug dealing, according to the New York Post.

Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg (REUTERS/Mike Segar)

In his first memo to staff on Monday, Alvin Bragg said his office “will not seek a carceral sentence” except with homicides and a handful of other cases, including domestic violence felonies, some sex crimes and public corruption. -NY Post

“This rule may be excepted only in extraordinary circumstances based on a holistic analysis of the facts, criminal history, victim’s input (particularly in cases of violence or trauma), and any other information available,” reads Bragg’s memo.

According to Bragg, whose campaign was funded in part with a $1 million donation from billionaire George Soros, also told assistant DAs that they must now keep in mind the “impacts of incarceration,” including whether it actually increases public safety (ZH: to keep violent criminals physically separated from the public? Uh, yeah…)

When prosecutors want to put a convict behind bars, they can’t ask for more than 20 years for a ‘determinate’ sentence – i.e. one which can’t be reviewed or changed by a parole board, according to the report.

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“This Is Reality” – NYC Is Reopening, But Businesses Aren’t Coming Back, by Tyler Durden

Posted on July 18, 2021 | Leave a comment

New York may be down and out until it rescinds many of its statist policies and exorbitant taxes. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

Signs of an economic revival in Manhattan have been shattered by the sad reality that businesses aren’t returning to the borough. Vacancies are piling up as rents plunge as the whole recovery narrative falls apart.

According to the Real Estate Board of New York’s spring 2021 retail market report, rents declined across Manhattan’s prime-time retail shops, with one neighborhood in Lower Manhattan, called SoHo, down 37%.

“Signs of a nascent recovery are tempered by the reality that traffic in most retail corridors is far from approaching pre-pandemic levels,” the report said.

In April, while everyone championed the grand reopening of the city, we showed how rents in the borough continued to slide. As long as work-at-home continues to dominate, the recovery in Manhattan will remain subdued.

It’s one thing to explain the borough’s economic demise in words, but viewing it through a series of videos is an entirely different level to gain the perspective that the city is in trouble.

The collapse of asking rents for vacant retail spaces lining the sidewalks along the borough was documented this week by YouTuber “Louis Rossmann” who has 1.56 million subscribers.

In two separate lengthy videos, Rossmann, in detail, walks around Midtown Manhattan and shows viewers dozens and dozens of vacant storefronts.

In one of the videos titled “NYC’s reopening, but businesses aren’t coming back,” he said you “can walk eight steps” down the street and find a vacant retail shop.

“This is clearly not sustainable – at some point, this [NYC commercial real estate market] will crash – and what people will tell you is that it’s impossible – there’s no way it could crash,” Rossmann said. He noted that some of these places were vacant even before COVID.

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10 Signs That “Things Are Getting Better In America”, by Michael Snyder

Posted on April 28, 2021 | Leave a comment

There’s some sarcasm in the title. From Michael Snyder at theeconomiccollapseblog.com:

Everything is great, and America is about to enter a golden new era that will be overflowing with peace, prosperity and happiness.  If you believe that, there is a very large bridge that I would like to sell to you.  There is certainly nothing wrong with being optimistic about the future, and personally I am very excited about the next chapters in my life.  But if you think that the United States is heading in the right direction you are not thinking straight.  Evidence of our advanced state of decline is all around us, and yet we continue to embrace our self-destructive ways.

Over the years, I have literally shared thousands of examples that show that our society is coming apart at the seams, and today I would like to share 10 more…

#1 New York City was once one of the most beautiful cities in the entire world, but now giant mountains of trash are piled up everywhere and approximately 2 million rats are rampaging all over the place.  In an attempt to turn the tide, city officials plan to create a “City Cleanup Corps”…

New York City is being forced to deploy an army of 10,000 cleanup workers in response to worsening problems with trash and rats.

A newly created ‘City Cleanup Corps’ will be tasked with fighting the piles of garbage on the streets of the Big Apple, with complaints surging by 150% between March and August last year.

After a $100 million cut to the city’s sanitation budget, filth and rodent infestations have become a common sight, with data revealing that waste tonnage rose 15% by the end of March compared to the early months of the pandemic.

#2 In 2020, homicide rates increased by an average of more than 30 percent in major U.S. cities, and now homicide rates in many of those cities are even higher in 2021…

A Baltimore sanitation worker was fatally shot yesterday evening on his trash truck. The city has 94 homicides in less than four months.

To the south, DC had two more homicides yesterday, bringing its tally to 62, up 41 pct over 2020.

To the north, Philly has 156, up 31 pct.

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Posted in Collapse, Governments, Law, Morality, Politics, Society

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Decentralize New York City! by Gregory Bresiger

Posted on January 4, 2021 | Leave a comment

New York City’s other four boroughs haven’t been too happy about being governed from Manhattan, since long before Bill de Blasio was mayor. From Gregory Besiger at mises.org:

New York’s Forgotten Borough Is Persecuted

Some New Yorkers have a devolution message for our Manhattan elites: let us go.

The battle between liberty and runaway big government is a history of imperious empires crushing political, economic, and geographic minorities. We see such a battle in New York City, whose Manhattan-based municipal government, operating in a mostly one-party system, persecutes a unique part of the city called Staten Island as well other distant areas.

The city’s enforcement of covid regulations has been harsh on the island. Staten Island’s bars and restaurants have been badly hurt by city and state regulations. But Staten Islanders, whose political preferences are different from those of the city’s ruling powers, had had many grievances for years before the covid lockdowns.

A Battle for Local Liberty

Staten Island is so unlike the rest of New York City that many of its citizens have been trying to win a decentralization battle for decades. Indeed, in the 1993 municipal elections Staten Islanders voted overwhelmingly to leave New York City.

Ultimately, Staten Island and some other overtaxed New Yorkers in this mismanaged sprawling city hate being governed by a Manhattan ruling class that often scorns and misunderstands “outer borough” residents. (i.e., those not living in Manhattan). This Manhattan ruling class quietly regards most of us as bunch of Guidos, Archie Bunkers, or local Babbitts. We are the New York City version of “deplorables.”

It is the essence of imperious government: a big political unit will not let a small unit quietly succeed. The nature of imperial government is always to hold on to everything.

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Posted in Civil Liberties, Government, Politics, Secession

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New York can’t buy its way out of blackouts, by David Wojick

Posted on December 28, 2020 | Leave a comment

As the politicians push for ever more “renewable” energy and electric cars, it’s become ever more apparent that their numbers aren’t going to add up. From David Wojick at wattsupwiththat.com:

New York City will soon be home to the world’s biggest utility-scale battery system, designed to back up its growing reliance on intermittent renewables. At 400 MWh this batch of batteries will be more than triple the 129 MWh world leader in Australia.

The City of New York’s director of sustainability (I am not making this title up), Mark Chambers, is ecstatic, bragging: “Expanding battery storage is a critical part of how we advance momentum to confront the climate emergency while meeting the energy needs of all New Yorkers. Today’s announcement demonstrates how we can deliver this need at significant scale.” (Emphasis added)

In reality the scale here is incredibly insignificant.

In the same nonsensical way, Tim Cawley, the president of Con Edison, New York’s power utility, gushes thus: “Utility scale battery storage will play a vital role in New York’s clean energy future, especially in New York City where it will help to maximize the benefit of the wind power being developed offshore.”

This puts the Con in Con Edison.

Here is the reality when it comes to the scale needed to reliably back up intermittent renewables. For simplicity let us suppose New York City is 100% wind powered. Including solar in the generating mix makes it more complicated but does not change the unhappy outcome very much.

NYC presently peaks at around 32,000 MW needed to keep the lights on. If Mr. Biden makes all the cars and trucks electric it might be closer to 50,000 MW but let’s stick to reality.

This peak occurs during summer heat waves which are caused by stagnant high pressure systems called Bermuda highs. These highs often last for a week and because they are stagnant there is no wind power generation. Wind turbines require something like sustained winds of 10 mph to move the blades and more like a whistling 30 mph to generate full power. During a Bermuda high folks are happy to get the occasional 5 mph breeze. These huge highs cover many states so it is not like we can get the juice from next door.

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Your Intrepid Reporter Hits The Hotspot, by Becky Akers

Posted on April 26, 2020 | 1 comment

New York City, once a shining symbol of capitalism, will never be the same. From Becky Akers at lewrockwell.com:

Ah, New York City! That most communist of dystopias, with more politicians and bureaucrats—and four-legged rats, too—per square inch than anywhere else in the universe, closets that the denizens mistake for apartments, thoroughfares ankle-deep in trash, neurotics galore, traffic jams 24/7, and a profound ignorance of and contempt for places more civilized.

Relieving the sordidness and misery are world-class restaurants—oh, wait: Our Rulers closed them. Well, how about an afternoon at Manhattan’s renowned museums? Nope, government shut them, too, though they’re still fleecing us for their upkeep. (Nor does the normal rate of plunder satisfy; as the Met confesses, “We’re joining the American Alliance of Museums to ask Congress to add $4B”–as in billion—”in relief funding to museums and cultural nonprofits.” I suppose all the newly unemployed taxpayers can eat cake and ice cream.)

Indeed, New York’s despots have obliterated everything that compensated somewhat for the Big Apple’s extortionate prices, rude natives, and intemperate weather. Thanks to politicians and bureaucrats, Gotham languishes in unrelieved squalor.

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Posted in Business, Civil Liberties, Collapse, Economy, Government, Medicine, Propaganda

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New York City is edging toward financial disaster, experts warn, by John Aldan Byrne

Posted on March 10, 2019 | Leave a comment

If you keep spending more than you take in, you’ll go broke. Who knew? From John Aldan Byrne at nypost.com:

A general view of the Lower Manhattan skyline.

New York City is careening closer to all-out financial bankruptcy for the first time since Mayor Abraham Beame ran the city more than 40 years ago, experts say.

As tax-fleeced businesses and individuals flee en masse, and city public spending surges into the stratosphere, financial analysts say Gotham is perilously near total fiscal disaster.

Long-term debt is now more than $81,100 per household, and Mayor de Blasio is ramping up to spend as much as $3 billion more in the new budget than the current $89.2 billion.

“The city is running a deficit and could be in a real difficult spot if we had a recession, or a further flight of individuals because of tax reform,” said Milton Ezrati, chief economist of Vested.

“New York is already in a difficult financial spot, but it would be in an impossible situation if we had any kind of setback.”

De Blasio has detailed $750 million in savings for the preliminary fiscal 2020 budget, but that won’t be enough to stave off a bloodbath if New York’s economy is hit by financial shocks — including a recession, which some see on the horizon — analysts warn. Gov. Cuomo’s preliminary budget has $600 million in city cuts in the coming year.

But city spending, up some 32 percent since de Blasio took office — triple the rate of inflation — may need to be cut deeper, these analysts add. The city’s long-term pension obligations have escalated, as well, as its workforce has soared by more than 33,000 in the last five years.

Other startling indicators:

  • New York state — and city — are ranked No. 1 nationwide in state and local tax burden.
  • Property taxes, almost half of the city’s revenue, is rising faster than any other revenue source — squeezing businesses and forcing homeowners, already hit by federal property tax deduction changes, to relocate to lower-tax states.
  • The top 1 percent of New York City earners pay some 50 percent of Big Apple income tax revenue.

“New York City could go bankrupt, absolutely,” said Peter C. Earle, an economist at the American Institute for Economic Research.

“In that case, the city would get temporary protection from its creditors, but it would be very difficult for the city to take on new debt.”

 

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Posted in Business, Collapse, Debt, Economy, Government, Taxes

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Here’s why the wealthiest city in America is screwed, by Simon Black

Posted on February 17, 2019 | Leave a comment

New York City used to be synonymous with wealth and opulence. Not any more if it keeps demonizing wealth and promoting socialism. From Simon Black at sovereignman.com:

Last month, Chicago hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin spent $238 million on a condo in New York City.

It was the most expensive home ever sold in the US (but only one piece of Griffin’s massive, luxury real estate portfolio).

Good for Ken… he’s incredibly wealthy and can spend his money however he wants. But most of society hates this kind of behavior.

Even if a guy has earned $10 billion through hard work and ingenuity, they don’t believe he can spend it freely… and those feelings have only been growing recently with the widening wealth gap and the rising, leftist presidential contenders.

And New York City is gunning for Griffin…

He’ll no doubt pay millions of dollars a year in real estate taxes and employ a team of people just to manage that property… and his investment firm, Citadel, has an office in NYC employing hundreds of people.

But NYC wants more, specifically for Griffin to pay more tax to fund the city’s affordable housing program.

Griffin’s purchase was the perfect backdrop for the government to bring up the “pied-a-terre tax”… the proposed tax would be up to 4% per year for people who own properties above $5 million in NYC but don’t permanently reside there.

So Griffin would be out an extra $9 million a year (on top of the 1% mansion tax New Yorkers already pay on home purchases above $1 million – mind you, $1 million in New York gets you a few hundred square feet)… and normal real estate taxes.

It’s an all-out war on the rich in New York… because the city (and state) are broke.

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Posted in Business, Capitalism, Government, Taxes

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