The New York Spectator: Moving On Up
Tucker, William
THE NEW YORK SPECTATOR by William Tucker Moving On Up eople who should know say that p New York City's rent control administration compares favorably with other confiscatory, Third World...
...the port and naval installations of Sharm-elSheik, which safeguards Israel's access to its port of Eilat...
...Every inch of land held by the Arabs is considered "holy Arab soil" and its possession by the "infidels" is inadmissible, intolerable, a blasphemy and a case for "jihad" (holy war...
...Both countries drove very hard bargains to which the Israelis, in their unending quest for peace, acceded...
...Proponents quickly switched gears and argued that the real reason for rent control is to "prevent the middle class from leaving New York City...
...It is first of all between Israel and the hostile Arab nations...
...Thus, while the concept of "land for peace" is a brand-new one, the concept that to the victor belong the spoils is as old as history itself and had really never been questioned before...
...Every day, politicians fill the papers with visions of Upper East Side matrons packing their family heirlooms in shopping carts and trekking across the George Washington Bridge in search of housing...
...We have rent stabilization...
...Collins on rent control the other day for a TV show called "Good Day, New York...
...Yet amazingly, after fifty years, New York's nightmarish rent control system is now under serious challenge...
...Box 590359 ^ San Francisco,CA 94159 25C Flame is a 501(c)(3) educational institution...
...But Israel followed a different path...
...State Senate majority leader Joe Bruno, a staunch defender of free markets, has vowed to end the system on June 15...
...The conflict in the area is not only between Israel and the "Palestinians...
...The study said, 'Rent ceilings will cause a decline in the quality and quantity of housing...
...The Voice noted that while rent control may be creating great deals for some middle-class people, it is devastating others—particularly people who are just arriving in the city...
...After starting her own contract business, she decided to invest in New York housing...
...Instead, following the war, The Arabs pronounced their three unalterable "nos:" no recognition, no negotiation, and no peace with Israel...
...There are so many beautiful old buildings here," she said...
...Sale of land to Jews is punishable by death...
...The Israelis eagerly embraced his suggestion...
...No compromise, no concession is ever possible...
...The market tends to promote balkanization," said the Voice, quoting Tim Collins, a tenant attorney and former executive director of the Rent Guidelines Board...
...Rents in poor neighborhoods are already at market level...
...If the senate does not renew the regulations by June 15, rent control is history...
...Even Cardinal O'Connor weighed in recently, saying people had a "moral right to affordable housing...
...It was a first in history...
...Rubin pressed charges for arson and attempted murder...
...But it surely would have to work both ways in order to be valid and effective...
...Afterwards, we went to a fruit stand and chatted a bit before parting ways...
...Under New York's arcane legislative system, the majority leader virtually controls the vote of his entire delegation...
...By its victory in that war, Israel wound up in possession of these territories...
...The criminal court judge said, "This is really a housing issue," and sent it back to housing court...
...There is never any accommodation on the part of the Arabs, never even a gesture of tentative friendship...
...It is sometimes remarkable to contemplate all the insipid intellectual energy that has gone into defending rent control...
...40...
...Then she bought a building in Harlem...
...Because rent control has made such a wreck of New York's housing stock, what is left has become far more expensive...
...Yet did this mean the Voice opposes rent control...
...some of the most advanced military installations in the world...
...Land for Peace" Can it solve the problems of the Middle East...
...The real reason for rent control, they announced, is to "preserve diversity in neighborhoods...
...So if you know all this stuff, why don't you believe it...
...During the Cultural Revolution, the hotel was confiscated and most of her family murdered...
...There has been much emphasis for years on the "land for peace" formula to solve the long-simmering problems of the Middle East...
...There when they take your property they just kill you and get it over with...
...The concept of "land for peace" is a totally new one in the history of the world...
...He drew himself up in a lawyerly fashion...
...When she took him to housing court, he threatened to kill her...
...To none of the Arab countries has it ever occurred that they might trade land for peace—as, for instance, yielding the "West Bank", Gaza or the Golan to Israel for the sake of peace and tranquility...
...The day she secured an eviction, he firebombed her office...
...Yet when several studies projected the results of decontrol, it turned out that all the impact would occur in Manhattan's most fashionable neighborhoods —the Upper East Side, the Upper West Side, and Greenwich Village...
...Rubin the last time I spoke to her...
...and the oil fields Israel had developed and which had made Israel self-sufficient in its energy requirements...
...I think I may go back to China," said WILLIAM TUCKER is The American Spectator's New York correspondent...
...As it happens, I debated Mr...
...Never before in the chronicle of mankind had the victor returned conquered territory to the vanquished in order to attain peace...
...In many neighborhoods...we're able to preserve a lot of diversity...
...In 1977, President Sadat of Egypt traveled to Jerusalem and presented a peace plan...
...60 July 1997 The American Spectator You deserve to know the facts about...
...They would establish a Palestinian state...
...It doesn't apply to New York...
...From the day of victory in 1967, it waited for an offer of peace from the Arabs...
...One would expect that the concept of "land for peace" would work both ways...
...She escaped with her parents to America...
...But that offer never came...
...This is no idle boast...
...This ad has been published and paid for by FLAME Facts and Logic about the Middle East P.O...
...Israel's foes, but also some of its friends, urge Israel to yield these regions to the Arabs in exchange for "peace...
...No matter what the result June 15, perhaps the most remarkable outcome of the current debate is the complete intellectual rout of the defenders of rent control...
...Yet affordable housing is exactly what rent control doesn't provide...
...So...
...And, of course, Israel also gave up the natural buffer against aggression that the Suez Canal and the strategic depth of the Sinai itself provided...
...A far as the Arabs are concerned the "land for peace" principle is basically a one-way street...
...You might want to ask, what kind of middle class is it that can't pay its own rent...
...Tenant activists are predicting mass dislocations...
...She bought one loft building on the Lower East Side but sold it after a housing court judge ruled she could not evict a tenant who had not paid rent in two years...
...For bombing her office, the tenant got to keep his apartment...
...But there is no peace, and no peace will come about by Israel's giving up these areas of vital strategic importance to those who are its sworn enemies and who have declared over and over again that they wish to use this land as their launching pad for the final attempt at the destruction of Israel...
...THE NEW YORK SPECTATOR by William Tucker Moving On Up eople who should know say that p New York City's rent control administration compares favorably with other confiscatory, Third World regimes...
...Collins seemed defensive about my economic arguments and assured me he majored in the subject in college...
...Your tax-deductible contribution allows us to publish these important messages Has that discouraged anyone...
...Unfortunately, that is not the case...
...Claudette Rubin is a refugee from China whose family once ran a hotel in Szechwan province...
...He even quoted the citation for a study I had mentioned in which 93 percent of the world's economists agreed that rent control produces housing shortages...
...Rent control files for intellectual bankruptcy...
...It was formulated for one purpose only, namely to pressure Israel to give up territories that it has administered since the Six-Day War of 1967...
...Not one bit...
...We don't have rent ceilings in New York...
...Our own country, of course, following its Manifest Destiny, has benefited greatly and has consolidated its territory by applying this motto...
...All this has set off a firestorm in New York, the likes of which has not been seen in many years...
...For decades, the public has been convinced that the purpose of rent control is to protect the poor...
...You mean 93 percent of the world's economists are wrong and you're right...
...Egypt certainly made no territorial or other concessions for the sake of peace and neither did Jordan...
...The "land for peace" formulation is now mostly applied to Judea-Samaria (the "West Bank"), Gaza and the Golan Heights...
...Because rent control is still only a "temporary" measure from World War II, the law must be renewed every three years...
...The new housing court judge overturned the eviction...
...But the median rent of apaitments advertised in the New York Times this month is $1400—virtually double those advertised in the Chicago Tribune ($650) and the Los Angeles Times ($775...
...The newspapers run around telling people their rents are about to triple...
...In exchange for peace and normalization of relations, Israel returned to Egypt the vast Sinai peninsula, together with the city of Yamit...
...When she spoke to him about it, he slashed her tires...
...What are the facts...
...With the exception of Egypt,and now also of Jordan, virtually all of them are still in a state of war with Israel...
...This proved too much for even the Village Voice, never a big supporter of middle-class values...
...Her problem was a drug addict who never paid rent...
...For the victor to yield land for peace to the vanquished is a new idea—who knows, it might even be a good one...
...Well, don't bother...
...Not for a minute...
...After all, should not the Arabs also make some territorial sacrifices for peace...
...The median rent in New York is $620 a month, a little higher than Chicago ($600) and less than Los Angeles ($650...
...Here they torture you first...
...I asked him...
...Once that happened, it is thought that peace and tranquility would soon come to the troubled Middle East...
...Contrary to what many are led to believe, the "West Bank", the focus of today's attention, had never been part of any Arab country...
...It was part of Palestine, a territorial unit Lnat, by the Mandate of the League of Nations and in line with the Balfour Declaration, had been designated as a national home for the Jewish people...
...Translating this slogan into plain English means that Israel should surrender Judea-Samaria (the "West Bank"), Gaza and the Golan to the Arabs...
Vol. 30 • July 1997 • No. 7
