February 6, 2024
We already knew the New York City Housing Authority is the city’s biggest slumlord. Now we’re reminded it’s a corrupt slumlord. Just five years after a federal court found its employees had lied about a vital public-health matter — conducting lead-paint inspections of apartments — we learn NYCHA supervisors solicited bribes in exchange for no-bid repair contracts. US Attorney…
January 31, 2024
Introduction Legal cannabis has become a fact of life in much of the United States. The District of Columbia and 24 states now permit the sale of recreational marijuana; they, and 14 additional states, also permit marijuana sale for supposedly medical purposes. Of course, the Food and Drug Administration has not actually approved marijuana for…
January 16, 2024
There is nothing at all objectionable about the Dry (or semi-dry) January idea. The National Institute on Alcoholism reports that there were some 13,000 drunk-driving-related deaths in 2021—and that, overall, some 140,000 annual deaths can be linked to excessive drinking. For those who drink too much, drinking less is an obvious benefit. What makes the movement notable,…
January 15, 2024
Some Americans never register to vote. Those of us who do usually register just once. But over the past two years I’ve registered three times. I might even do it again—for the reason progressives say they endorse: I want my vote to count. In New York, where I live, it isn’t easy. My deep-blue state…
December 31, 2023
New York City residents are facing the ill-effects of drastic, across-the-board budget cuts affecting the most basic city services. It would hardly seem to be the right time for the Adams administration to undertake an expensive new housing program with the city’s own funds. Yet that’s exactly what the Department of Housing Preservation and Development announced last week….
December 26, 2023
Only two government-sanctioned “safe-injection sites” operate in the U.S., one in East Harlem, the other in Washington Heights. Their impact—on both those who use their facilities to inject hard drugs under medical supervision and on the neighborhoods where they are located—is thus of national significance. Other states, cities, and the federal government are doubtless closely…
December 19, 2023
Increasing numbers of Americans get their news from Facebook and Apple but nonetheless, every day, six American television networks — ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox News, CNN and PBS — continue to broadcast a nightly newscast. Only one of these, however, is subsidized by taxpayers. The PBS NewsHour receives direct annual support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB); it…
December 18, 2023
Progressives have long claimed that the only problem with New York’s largest collection of slum housing—our public housing projects—has been a lack of federal funding. Former mayor Bill de Blasio liked to blame the decline of what was once the nation’s best-managed public-housing system on someone who left office in 1989: Ronald Reagan. Now, thanks…
December 11, 2023
The post-pandemic rise in rents has fueled the view that the private housing market inevitably fails those of modest means. The left-leaning Center for Budget Policies and Priorities summarizes the idea that the short-term spike in rents merely dramatizes that essential market failure. It asserts that the “rent burden among families with the lowest incomes is a…
December 4, 2023
Recreational cannabis is now legal in 24 states and more are likely to follow suit. But the black market in pot has not disappeared; in fact, it has continued to thrive. New York City alone is estimated to have some 1,500 unlicensed sellers of marijuana products with a combined inventory predicted to be worth nearly half a…