Submitted by Mitchell Langbert, Dec 22, 2006 02:11

Nick says: "The 60s through the 80s nationwide was a period of recovery where a lot of federal money was thrown at urban blight. Some of that money did good things and some did bad things, like splitting neighborhoods in half and choking the Manhattan waterfront with freeway viaducts. I'm astonished you'd say parks are bad. Being against parks is kind of like being against puppies and rainbows."

What you're saying is rather funny. Aren't you aware that the term "inner city" became synonymous with crime, removal to the suburbs and the death of urban centers from the 1960s to the 1980s? Are you serious? Following the post-war "urban renewal" binge, all of our cities became crime-infested centers of decline. That followed directly from the urban renewal. Parks such as Central Park became associated with violent crime.

Being for or against parks is irrelevant. The question is: how do you secure the best life for the people of New York? The answer is not in building public works or through large-scale eminent domain projects. The city has done that for years and the large-scale projects have driven away entrepreneurs, the kind that Bloomberg harasses with smoking and trans-fats rules. Where do these entrepreneurs go? Try Seattle, where Brooklyn-born Howard Schultz built Starbucks. Schultz left New York to build his firm, as have so many others. While Mike Bloomberg plays with his pencils and land-stealing schemes, entrepreneurs leave in droves and the city dies.

What kind of life would bring people happiness? The kind where they can pursue their dreams unharrassed by big-government peepers ready to throw them in jail for lighting a cigarette.

As far as the "subways" go, they were a private sector initiative. They were built by August Belmont, an associate of the Rotschild banking interests. They were "nationalized" in the 1930s and began to decline almost immediately, until today they are infested with

Note: Comments are screened, and in some cases edited, before posting. We reserve the right to reject anything we find objectionable.