‘Mayor Boasts of Tax Cuts’

Re: “Mayor Boasts of Tax Cuts While Taxes Are Higher Than When He Acceded,” Julia Levy, New York, July 26, 2005. It’s true that the city has seen tax increases over the last four years, but New Yorkers have also forgotten about what poor fiscal shape the city was in before Mayor Bloomberg took office. Let’s not forget that we were facing a $6 billion budget deficit, not to mention the uncertainty that plagued New Yorkers with regard to whether or not we’d be able to revive our economy. Nobody likes a tax hike, but I think that fewer people would enjoy a bankrupt New York. Now that we are pretty much out of trouble, I think it only makes sense for the city to reduce taxes to the level they were at before the 2001 recession. Critics can complain all they want, but it would be unrealistic to expect any cuts below what will keep our city running in top shape.

JOHN P. HOLLYWOOD
Manhattan

‘Sandbagging Mr. Bush’

Re: “Sandbagging Mr. Bush,” Editorial, July 27, 2005. The Campaign for American Leadership in the Middle East exists primarily to provide an umbrella for technical support for the Internet campaign. This Internet effort takes no position on specific policy proposals. “Active U.S. leadership” is not a euphemism for anything. The language means exactly what it says: Americans from all walks of life understand that resolution of this conflict is in the interests of American as well as Israeli and Palestinian citizens.

The initiative is intended to provide the administration with the public support necessary “to stay the course” on its own commitment to achieve a two-state resolution to this conflict. The more than 150 prominent Americans from all walks of life who have added their names in support of this nonpartisan grass roots effort include such prominent Republicans as former Senators Warren Rudman and Alan Simpson; business leaders like Fred Smith of FedEx, and Craig Barrett of Intel; academic leaders including Cecil Samuelson, president of Brigham Young University, and Nancy Cantor, president of Syracuse University; former military leaders like General Joseph Ralston, former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Admiral James Loy, former commandant of the Coast Guard; and many Christian, Jewish, and Muslim leaders from throughout the United States.

While individual signatories may have their own points of view regarding aspects of the peace process, they have added their voices in support of the administration’s efforts to help bring this long-standing conflict to an end – because it is in America’s national security interests to do so.

DOUGLAS B. WILSON
Spokesman
Campaign for American Leadership in the Middle East
Washington, D.C.

‘Ratner-Extell’

Re: “Ratner-Extell Fight Turns Ugly,” Daniel Hemel, Page 1, July 26, 2005. I was the person who was trying to discuss (and not in an ugly way) the Atlantic Yards jobs projections with Michael West of BUILD, who said, “When you reject the Ratner project and embrace the Extell project, you’re saying you don’t care about the 55% unemployment in the black community.” But Bruce Ratner’s project is not a referendum on black male unemployment in Brooklyn (that’s what BUILD cites as 55%).

I spoke at the hearing not to embrace Extell, merely to urge caution on Mr. Ratner’s plan. First, the number of projected permanent jobs has fallen from 10,000 announced in March to 6,000 announced in June. The Sun reported a different Ratner projection of 7,500 jobs.

How many of those mostly office jobs – questionably projected by Mr. Ratner’s economist to pay an average of $66,000 a year – would go to unemployed black men? And how can we even trust that promise of 6,000 jobs, when the projections for MetroTech, once 35,000 jobs, became 22,000 jobs in 2004 (and mostly jobs moved from elsewhere in the city, including government agencies and companies lured by subsidies)?

As for Mr. Ratner’s Atlantic Center mall, in 1996, Mr. Ratner predicted 1,250 permanent jobs; the most recent city report says 552 jobs. The Sun said the Ratner project promises 15,000 construction jobs, but more accurately, that’s 1,500 construction jobs a year, for 10 years. Even if 30% of construction contract dollars would be awarded to businesses owned by members of minority groups and women, we can’t expect those businesses to hire only black men from Brooklyn.

Overall, that’s not a lot of jobs created in a project that may require hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies beyond those initially announced – a reason for further scrutiny of the Ratner plan.

The unemployment rate for black men in Brooklyn is a scandal, but corporate welfare for Mr. Ratner is not the solution.

NORMAN ODER
Brooklyn

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