Seth Barron

The Last Days of New York: A Reporter's True Tale

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

"Barron cuts through the noise and provides a devastating account of a city’s decline under the delusional leadership of socialists and con men.” — GREG KELLY, host of Newsmax Greg Kelly Reports THE LAST DAYS OF NEW YORK: A Reporter's True Tale tells the story of how a corrupted political system hollowed out New York City, leaving it especially vulnerable, all in the name of equity and “fairness.” When, in the future, people ask how New York City fell to pieces, they can be told—quoting Hemingway—“gradually, then suddenly.” New Yorkers awoke from a slumber of ease and prosperity to discover that their glorious city was not only unprepared for crisis, but that the underpinnings of its fortune had been gutted by the reckless mismanagement of Bill de Blasio and the progressive political machine that elevated him to power. Faced with a global pandemic of world-historical proportions, the mayor dithered, offering contradictory, unscientific, and meaningless advice. The city became the world’s epicenter of infection and death. The protests, riots, and looting that followed the death of George Floyd, and the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement—cheered on and celebrated by the media and political class—accelerated the crash of confidence that New York City needed in order to rebound quickly from the economic disaster. Through reckless financial husbandry; by sowing racial discord and resentment; by enshrining a corrosive pay-to-play political culture that turned City Hall into a ticket office; and by using his office as a platform to advance himself as a national political figure, Bill de Blasio set the stage for the ruin of New York City. He has left the city vulnerable to the social, economic, and cultural shocks that have leveled its confidence and brought into question its capacity to absorb the creative energies of the world, and reflect them back in the form of opportunity and wealth, as it has done for hundreds of years. As New Yorkers slowly adjust to their new reality, they ask themselves how we had been so unprepared—not so much for the coronavirus, which caught everyone by surprise—but for the economic shock, which was at least foreseeable. THE LAST DAYS OF NEW YORK is the story of how a lifelong political operative with no private-sector experience assumed control of a one-party city where almost nobody bothers to vote, and then proceeded to loot the treasury on behalf of the labor unions, race hustlers, and connected insiders who had promoted him to power. Bill de Blasio’s term in office in New York City is a demonstration of what those impulses actually produce: debt, decay, and bloat. THE LAST DAYS OF NEW YORK: A Reporter's True Tale is a history of New York City from its recovery from the recession of 2008-2009 through the triple disaster of the pandemic, civil unrest, and collapse in revenue of 2020. Mayor Bill de Blasio, now widely appreciated as the WORST mayor in the history of the city, is presented as the instrument of decline: a key symptom of the rot that expedited the city’s downfall.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Humanix Books
• Seitenzahl: 304
• Erscheinungstermin: 1. Juni 2021
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 229mm x 152mm x 25mm
• Gewicht: 540g
• ISBN-13: 9781630061876
• ISBN-10: 1630061875
• Artikelnr.: 60018660

Autorenporträt

HEATHER MAC DONALD is the national bestselling author of The War on Cops, the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and a contributing editor of City Journal. A former aspiring academic with roots in deconstruction and postmodernism, she has been the target of violent student protest for her work on policing. Mac Donald holds a B.A. from Yale and an M.A. from Cambridge in English, and a J.D. from Stanford. In 1998, Mac Donald was appointed to Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's task force on the City University of New York. In 2004, she received the Civilian Valor Award from the New Jersey State Law Enforcement Officers. She is a recipient of the 2005 Bradley Prize. In 2008, Mac Donald received the Integrity in Journalism Award from the New York State Shields, as well as the Eugene Katz Award for Excellence in the Coverage of Immigration from the Center for Immigration Studies. In 2012, she received the Quill & Badge Award for Excellence in Communication from the International Union of Police Associations.  Mac Donald's work at City Journal has canvassed a range of topics, including higher education, immigration, policing and "racial" profiling, homelessness and homeless advocacy, criminal-justice reform, and race relations. Her writings have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, The New Criterion and Partisan Review, among other publications. https://www.manhattan-institute.org/expert/heather-mac-donald

Inhaltsangabe

Table of Contents to Last Days of New York: a reporter's true tale of how a
city died by Seth Barron
Introduction
* Past is prologue: all of de Blasio’s fumbles and misallocations of
resources created a weak city that would be especially vulnerable to
a major crisis.
Section One: De Blasio the Man and his Rise
Chapter One
* Who is Bill de Blasio? This chapter treats his biography, and delves
into the family history of the man who legally changed his name as an
adult not once, but twice inspired, he has said, by the experience of
reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X.
* His paternal grandfather Donald Wilhelm was the personal secretary of
Herbert Hoover—the same president whose name de Blasio condemns
constantly—and interviewed William Howard Taft and Theodore
Roosevelt. The chapter examines the marriage of de Blasio’s parents,
who were both implicated in the postwar investigations into Communist
influence in public affairs.
* De Blasio’s early life as a radical socialist included solidarity
work with the Sandinista regime of Nicaragua, which he visited. His
work in the Dinkins administration exposed him to a cauldron of
racial animosity during the Crown Heights riots. 
* His marriage, to a black lesbian seven years his senior, became the
basis of his later political appeal, when he used his
family—especially his son—as a constant feature of campaign
literature.
* De Blasio worked for two figures who would become important later in
his career: Hillary Clinton and Andrew Cuomo. His complicated
relationship with both of them would affect his mayoralty.
Chapter Two
* De Blasio’s rise to power cannot be understood without reference to
the formation of the Working Families Party (WFP), a local political
party that took advantage of New York’s unique “fusion” voting
system, whereby candidates can occupy multiple ballot lines. The WFP
was the creation of labor and housing activists, and funded by major
unions, including public-sector employee unions. The party had some
successes, but by the 2009 election had created a Byzantine financial
structure, with a complex network of associated entities, and even a
for-profit arm to perform campaign work, ostensibly for
non-affiliated candidates.
* Scandals emerged following the 2009 election suggesting rather
strongly that the WFP engaged in rampant violation of campaign
finance laws, essentially coordinating campaign work among its slate
of candidates in conjunction with consulting firms—and ostensibly
unrelated independent expenditures made by major unions. This
corruption came to full flower in 2013 when de Blasio won the mayoral
election, and is essential to understanding the many scandals that
dogged his administration, and his mercenary approach to politics
generally.
Section Two: Spend Every Dime
Chapter Three
* This chapter begins with de Blasio’s first inauguration, on New
Year’s Day, 2014. The mayor inherited a city that had rebounded from
the 2008 financial collapse in relatively good health, buoyed by
federal bailouts and Michael Bloomberg’s steely control of city
finances.  The new mayor pledged to end the “tale of two cities” that
he claimed divided New York into haves and have-nots and to make New
York the “fairest big city” in the nation. Equity—not
opportunity—would be the guiding principle of his administration.
* At the time of his accession to City Hall, de Blasio installed a key
ally, Melissa Mark-Viverito as the speaker of the city council. An
extreme leftist, Mark-Viverito would facilitate de Blasio’s firm
control over budgeting and legislation, enabling him to expand
spending and hiring at breakneck speed.
Chapter Four
* Over the last six years of unsurpassed prosperity driven by a booming
stock and property market, tax revenues flowed in, and de Blasio
spent every dime, rewarding his friends and the essential
constituencies—unions, community groups, property developers—that
ensured his election and facilitated his dealings. The mayor was
never required to budget, in the sense of choosing between competing
priorities, but was able to expand spending at greater than three
times the rate of inflation, and to hire tens of thousands of city
employees for the powerful public-sector unions that formed his base.
* A key illustrative section details de Blasio’s dedication to the idea
of a “Millionaire’s Tax,” a special supplemental tax on the highest
earning New York residents. De Blasio initially demanded this tax as
a means of paying for universal pre-Kindergarten. After the state
government agreed to fund pre-K, de Blasio revived the tax in order
to build housing for senior citizens. After that idea failed to catch
on, he declared that the tax was necessary in order to fix the
subways. Ultimately, all these projects were just excuses to impose a
tax.
* Upon assuming office, one of the first measures de Blasio took was to
settle a contract dispute with the powerful United Federation of
Teachers, which represents more than 118,000 educators. Bucking their
post-recession demands for a large pay raise, Bloomberg left the
teachers without a contract for four years, though under state law
they still received seniority-related healthy “step” raises. De
Blasio immediately negotiated two 4 percent raises, retroactive to
2008. The cost of these raises, almost $4 billion, was too much for
the city to cough up all at once, so they would be paid out in lump
sums over the next eight years. The city is still paying for work
done 12 years ago.
* Voices of caution warned that, when a downturn came, the city would
be ill-prepared, with barely enough in its “rainy-day fund” to pay
for more than a few weeks of operations. Mayor de Blasio dismissed
these objections, and insisted that his budgets were fair and
responsible. He did put some money aside, but largely to cover future
retiree health-care costs, liabilities that the city is obligated to
pay, but not obligated to account for now.
Section Three: Education
Chapter Five
* From the beginning of his administration, Mayor de Blasio pursued a
two-pronged offensive on New York City schools. He sought to end what
he called “segregated schools,” and—mostly at the behest of the
teachers union—he waged war against the successful charter school
movement.
* New York City public school students are 70 percent black and Latino.
So it is not surprising that many individual schools are more than 90
percent black and Latino. As in every school district in the country,
an “achievement gap” exists between these students and their white
counterparts. Mayor de Blasio and his Department of Education hold it
as a core value that the cause of disparate achievement is
old-fashioned segregation—what some officials call “apartheid
schooling.”
* Mayor de Blasio has pursued a radical, equity-based restructuring of
the city’s school system—which educates 1.1 million pupils—based
around the idea that proximity to white students will improve black
and Latino performance, because white families are hogging resources.
* But in fact, NYC schools are among the most richly-funded in the
nation, and schools with higher need, based on poverty and other
factors, receive more money, not less.  The way this debate has
played out has caused significant schisms among the well-heeled
neighborhoods where there are enough white residents to even make
trying to achieve racial parity a plausible project. Parents who have
complained about having their children shuffled around as part of a
social engineering campaign have been called racist by the
Chancellor, and advised to take part in “implicit bias” training,
which teachers are mandated to attend.
Chapter Six
* A flash point arose around the admission standards to the system’s
elite high schools, which require a high score on a standardized test
as the sole criterion for entry. The number of black and Latino
students who achieve a high score on this exam is extremely low, and
Mayor de Blasio and activists have cast this in terms of racism,
specifically white racism. But it is Asian students, who come from
comparably poor, often immigrant backgrounds, who have driven up the
cutoff score for admission to the specialized high schools, which are
widely seen as a path to success for talented youth. The de Blasio
administration is committed to dismantling this system, arguably
destroying the value of the schools, because the disparity of results
on the standardized admission test is prima facie evidence of racism.
Chapter Seven
* At the same time, the city’s network of charter schools has proven to
do an excellent job of educating almost exclusively black and Latino
kids from poor neighborhoods, producing test results among the best
in the entire state, including all-white wealthy suburbs. Instead of
looking to the charter sector for answers to improve education for
all students, de Blasio—at the express behest of the teachers’ union,
which demands a monopoly on education tax dollars—has fought to limit
charters or shut them down.
* In sum, de Blasio has approached public schools, which account for
tens of billions of annual spending, as a vehicle to promote divisive
equity-oriented goals that serve a larger Progressive agenda of
“dismantling white supremacy,” rather than as a means of educating
New York’s children.
Section Four: Quality of Life, Homelessness, and the Mentally Ill
Chapter Eight
* Perhaps no area of life in New York City has seen as much degradation
under Bill de Blasio as the quality of street life, which has become
dirtier, rowdier, and more dangerous. This owes directly to policies
pursued by de Blasio in the name of equity.
* Crime in New York City used to be very high, with more than 2,000
homicides in 1990. Through an intense, data-driven policing effort,
as well as the application of the “Broken Windows” theory of
criminology, low-level and major crime declined radically under
mayors Giuliani and Bloomberg, creating a virtuous cycle of community
improvement that bore generational fruit as New York City grew more
prosperous, and thousands of lives were saved.
* Hard left anti-incarceration advocates long decried the supposedly
racist policing practices of the NYPD, ignoring the fact that crime
is concentrated in particular neighborhoods and communities, and that
the perpetrators of major crime are disproportionately black. These
activists promoted a narrative of “occupation” of black neighborhoods
by a militarized police force, even though the residents of those
neighborhoods are the primary victims of violent crime, and are the
first to call for a greater police presence when assailed by
disorder.
* De Blasio backed and signed a major package of legislation that
effectively decriminalized a host of “minor” quality of life crimes,
including public urination, marijuana possession, public drinking,
and hanging out in parks at night. Later, this relaxation of civil
norms was expanded to include subway fare evasion, long a key means
of snaring people with outstanding criminal warrants, and people
carrying illegal guns.
* This effort paralleled a general move to reduce the number of people
in jail, and was accompanied by extensive propaganda that the NYPD
systematically arrests and jails black and Latino New Yorkers for
non-violent offenses, or “crimes of poverty,” like turnstile jumping.
But in fact, the number of people arrested and jailed in New York
City has been declining for years, and almost everyone on Rikers
Island is jailed for a serious, usually violent offense. Furthermore,
Rikers is largely populated by repeat offenders, and their average
age is around 37.
Chapter Nine
* At the same time, street homelessness has become a much more
entrenched problem in New York City. Despite doubling the amount of
money spent directly on homeless services—to $2 billion annually—the
shelter system is rife with complaints of waste, corruption, and
insanitary and unsafe conditions. Thousands of homeless people, often
with serious mental illness, roam the streets and subways. Loath to
force mentally ill people into treatment, despite the nation’s most
robust legal resources, de Blasio has been content to allow sick
people to fend for themselves.
* The nadir of his rule occurred when the subways—which had always run
24 hours a day, as the symbol of the “city that never sleeps”—were
shut down at night during the height of the pandemic, ostensibly for
“deep cleaning,” but really because they had become an unofficial
annex of the homeless services department. De Blasio had lost control
of policing and social services to such an extent that hundreds of
homeless people had to be forcibly dislodged from the subways,
because they otherwise wouldn’t leave, and they were scaring off
legitimate passengers.
* Rather than address the problem of serious mental illness, the mayor
poured hundreds of millions of dollars into ThriveNYC, a “mental
wellness” initiative that became his wife’s pet project. Thrive used
valuable resources encouraging anxious or depressed New Yorkers to
breathe mindfully, get things off their chests, and an eye out for
signs that their neighbors might be stressed out. ThriveNYC
emphasized the need to end the “stigma” around mental illness, but
the seriously mentally ill, who are stubbornly difficult to treat and
pose an actual danger to themselves and others when they are not
compliant with doctor’s orders, do not suffer from stigma.
* Decriminalization, decarceration, and a failed mental illness policy
have returned the streets of New York City to the proverbial “bad old
days.” Crime is creeping up as police, increasingly vilified, take a
hands-off approach to disorder. Drug sales, random street and subway
crime, and hate attacks are back. In his reckless pursuit of a “fair
city,” Bill de Blasio has fractured the civic calm upon which New
York City’s prosperity and normalcy depend.
Section Five: Corruption in Consultant City
Chapter Ten:
* Perhaps the most corrosive, insidious aspect of Bill de Blasio’s two
terms of office is the legacy of pay-to-play cronyism that now
defines city politics. This chapter runs through his litany of
scandals: the Campaign for One New York PAC; his 2014 effort to work
around the campaign finance system by directing donors to give money
to county committees instead of politicians; the Rivington House
scandal, whereby a powerful lobbyist was able to get a deed
restriction lifted on a nursing home so it could be sold for enormous
profit; his association with multiple people who pled guilty to
federal charges of bribing him, while he eluded prosecution; his
purchase of slums at an inflated value from connected insiders.
* Throughout all of these scandals and investigations, de Blasio stuck
to the principle that he “obeyed the letter of the law.” But, the
chapter concludes, staying within the letter of the law is tantamount
to violating the spirit of the law. It’s a low ethical bar that de
Blasio has set, and one that will be difficult to ever elevate.
* De Blasio became beholden to a coterie of “consultants” who operate
between the cracks of lobbying law. These consultants work for
political parties, candidates, unions, and corporations. They help
decide who should run for which seat, manage campaigns, raise money,
and negotiate deals and legislation. At one point, Mayor de Blasio
argued that five of his consultants were effectively “agents of the
city,” and thus his communications with them were protected,
intra-governmental discussions exempt from disclosure.
* In a very real way, politicians in New York City work for their
consultants, who organize their funding, and who are typically owed
money by previous campaigns. The rise of the consultant class is an
untold story, and its entrenchment in our politics is perhaps de
Blasio’s most degrading legacy. Now that we are in a major crisis, we
no longer have the democratic institutions to help pull ourselves
out.
Section Six: The Road Ahead
Chapter Eleven:
This concluding chapter offers some hope for recovery from Bill de Blasio’s
squandered mayoralty, including:
* A square focus on fighting crime and preserving order so working
people feel safe in their neighborhoods and going about their
business.
* Overhaul of contracts with municipal workers with a recognition that
the party has ended; the city cannot afford to pay 100 percent of
retiree health benefits forever, for example.
* Fixing the subways to ensure that the spine of commerce is preserved.
* Expansion of choice throughout the school system.
* Full use of all legal means to ensure the seriously mentally ill
receive and maintain compliance with treatment
Conclustion
* New York City faces a tough road back. As many as a million jobs have
been lost and may never return. The future of tourism, Broadway, live
music, sports, and dining are in question. Retail, already shaken,
could be wiped out. Will office workers return to their buildings,
and will companies continue to locate in Midtown, if commuters don’t
trust the trains and subways?
* The city needs strong, courageous leaders who are willing to buck
entrenched and special interests to overcome the deep culture of
corruption and entropy that has infected our political class.
* Last Days of New York: a reporter's true tale of how a city died is
an autopsy of the de Blasio administration that should give us clues
about how to proceed from here.