THE BIG APPLE
Cities, especially big cities, run on political engines…not just on the politics of government but on the politics of people, of industries, of power.
It is that power which makes things happen…which industries prosper and which don’t; which real estate developments succeed and which don’t; which neighborhoods get the services they need and which don’t; which municipal needs and wants are met and which aren’t.
Nowhere in America is that more obvious than in New York City… for centuries the most important city in the country. And perhaps the World.
New York quietly financed the American Revolution even if none of those financiers signed the Declaration of Independence.
New York became an important stop on the journey of the Underground Railway which moved former slaves from the difficult South to the safety – and hope – of the North.
New York became THE city of immigrants coming through Ellis Island. As America gave refuge to oppressed Europeans and gained an enormous population of new workers for its exploding manufacturing and industrial environment, NYC was most often the first stop in the process. While such cities as Chicago, Pittsburgh and port cities in the South also gained new immigrant residents, no city matched the flow into New York and it changed the entire ethic of the city as it opened the door to the American Dream for so many millions.
Everything was being manufactured in New York as the 19th became the 20th Century; from clothes for men and women, to shoes and hats to artificial flowers. If Boston became America’s financial center after World War II, New York became the center of everything else.
In education, advanced classes for bright high school students and free colleges in every borough – with annual entry fees at $200 to $300 attracting students unable to afford a Columbia or New York University.
The center of America’s theatrical industry – 42nd Street was appropriately sleazy but everyone came to Broadway shows. The center of the News industry…seven daily newspapers and all the Network TV stations broadcasting across America.
Mass transportation as no other city in the World…subways crisscrossing all the boroughs…people worked in the “city” …took the subway home to the boroughs.
Unions were everywhere in every industry. If you worked in New York City you were a union member unless you worked as an administrator in an office or were a lawyer.
The Big Apple was juicy with work and workers and visitors from all corners of the World.
And beneath it all was a political system primed to deal with the realities of power- how to win it, how to use it. The two-party system favored Democrats in city-wide elections, liberal Republicans in Federal elections, and Republicans generally in statewide races…including Governor.
No matter the political affiliation the struggle for power – and what it took to achieve it and hold it – was at the heart and soul of who and what ran the Big Apple.
And who did? In 1943, when the founders of the Liberal Party, New York State’s first independent “third party” issued its initial statement of purpose and its role in New York State politics, it said this, “To make the Democratic Party honest and the Republican Party humane.”
80 years later it can still say the same thing about the Democratic Party as it does here.
But it cannot say the same thing about the Republican Party because it exists in name only.
One-party government produces all the wrong results, the poorest response to public needs. And it is always dirty, always crooked from the top down, because there is no one to hold it accountable for the corruption that exists.
THE APPLE SOURS
The 20th Century would see the accumulation of Democratic rule in New York City as becoming more and more suspect regarding the sale of the city to those who could afford the price and wanted the power.
That Democratic rule is apparent when we know that in 100 years of government, there were only four Republican Mayors…two of them became Mayor because of the support of the Liberal Party and one simply bought the Party and anyone else who could help him secure and hold the office.
The not-so-subtle form of crime that existed at the top of government – all the way to Governor and back – became known as Pay to Play. If it was going to exist at the top of State and city government without push back. And because of that fact, it was going to exist in other levels of government as well. And it did.
If a primary role of government is to keep its citizens safe, New York’s Criminal Justice system, should be at the helm. New York City had two significant District Attorneys during the 20th Century: Frank Hogan and Robert Morgenthau, who held the job for more than 40 years. Both seemed beyond reproach and retired with high honors.
And yet the system below them – the New York Police Department (the NYPD) was rife with criminality at every level. While in recent days, the country has struggled with the racial aspects of Police brutality and there have been those incidents in New York City, the greater more frequent problems were with Police “on the take” at every level. And how that “take” went from free coffee and donuts and lunches and dinners to fixed tickets and then drug involvements and money passed up the line from beat cops and detectives up through the ranks to inspectors and beyond.
There were attempts to stop it. The Moreland Commission, the trial of Serpico, the undercover cop who talked, the fifty year effort to develop a Civilian Complaint Review Board made up only of civilians and not members of the NYPD.
Did they matter? Who has been asking?
And so when the City Council gave DeBlasio’s wife $280 million to make a difference in the development of a stronger, more effective mental health system and nothing happened, more money was requested. The Council asked where the $280 million had gone. No one knew. There were no answers. Then and now. And there never will be.
Despite clear indications that the Mafia actually “ran” NYCHA, you could never get the addresses of the contractors supposedly working for it though work was never done, nothing has been said or done about the connection.
No one questions why workers on the tracks, not administrators, in the MTA actually take home more than a million dollars a year in overtime pay. Nor do they question whether the Mafia has a direct hand in that system as well.
THE APPLE ROTS
No one discusses why the United States of America decided to become a service nation instead of the World’s greatest producer of goods. The change came as we entered the 21st Century.
If you understand capitalism, you understand how leading corporations and industries decided that they could make a greater profit (and save tax money) by producing those goods overseas.
And so they did.
And so very quickly, America’s productive capacity got lost in the new Global Economy, which is totally a matter of using the capitalist system with a very willing “Communist Nation” in charge.
That’s a big story for another time.
But what it has meant to New York City is that its chief and only product is tourism. That’s it.
People keep coming to our various attractions and uphold the theater district and the hotels and restaurants…although because of the pandemic, that has been limited as well. It remains the only productive game in town.
Because New York’s public education system has failed along with all of public education in America, our young essentially ignorant, legislators have passed laws which have allowed criminals to prosper and make New York more of a jungle than it has ever been.
Laws hampering the Police have made them “solvers” of crime rather than protectors against it.
And all of it exists in a one party town with no accountability.
Real estate remains the ultimate power broker in New York City. Every major city has a power broker…it varies.
Real estate selects the Republican candidates or simply allows some to exist when they make deals with the Democrats in power.
When they found they could make deals with DeBlasio, Assemblywoman, now Congresswoman Nicole Malliotakis became the Republican candidate for Mayor. With no executive experience and little recognition in the city as a whole, she had no chance of winning.
When real estate found it could deal with Eric Adams, Curtis Sliwa, a radio talk jockey with no government experience at all, became the Republican candidate with no chance of winning.
Power is the key. Those who control government get what they want.
One party government makes the control of that government as easy to get as a Nathan’s hotdog in Coney Island.