Daily News: “AUTOCRAT!” The word was first used to describe Napoleon more than 200 years ago, and my how it's grown! But there is a pun here: President Obama is setting policy for American auto-makers that are benefiting from government bailout money. It's actually pretty nice, except that the overall tone of the article Read More
Several days after Lynn Tilton learned that she had lost out on a multibillion-dollar defense contract, she woke up in the midst of an epiphany. “I’m going to stand up to the U.S. government,” she remembered thinking, “and stand up to the U.S. Army and call foul.” Ms. Tilton, a 46-year-old vision of cleavage and Read More
Earlier this summer, I read Bill Clinton's startling insight on the assasination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 2005, passed along by the great columnist MJ Rosenberg: In 1997, President Bill Clinton told me that he believed that Yigal Amir was that rare assassin whose act of murder succeeded in achieving its goals. Read More
Our tale this week of university real estate woe left out a lot of worthwhile research from the City Project paper on which we reported. One bit of that is how the Chrysler Building has been standing there, all 1,048 tall of it, for 76 years without it contributing any property tax to the Read More
At 70, developer Larry Silverstein watched his most important property, the iconic and world-famous World Trade Center—which he’d bought despite any amount of industry odds-making only weeks before—dissolve into cinders. “My life was spared,” he said. “The lives of my children were spared. The lives of most of our employees were spared; we lost four. Read More
Second Thoughts On Term Limits With the Mayoral election over and a mad race underway for Speaker of the City Council, word comes that many Council members would like to see a change made in the city’s term-limits law. That change would extend Council members’ terms from two to three. The proposal has inspired lots Read More
Victoria’s Secret’s “Very Sexy” bra collection is flying off the shelves. Unfortunately, not everybody is paying for the push-up, padded, embroidered and bejeweled bodices. And by the way, “Very Sexy” is a registered trademark; it’s not simply a description of the garments given to police after a thief visited the store on Nov. 19 and Read More
Victoria’s Secret’s “Very Sexy” bra collection is flying off the shelves. Unfortunately, not everybody is paying for the push-up, padded, embroidered and bejeweled bodices. And by the way, “Very Sexy” is a registered trademark; it’s not simply a description of the garments given to police after a thief visited the store on Nov. 19 and Read More
What has happened to the great American auto industry? Are General Motors, Ford and Chrysler headed for oblivion? And, more immediately, is there any way for General Motors to stop its dizzying free fall? Last week, the world's largest automaker announced that it expects to post a devastating loss of almost $1 billion for the Read More
What has happened to the great American auto industry? Are General Motors, Ford and Chrysler headed for oblivion? And, more immediately, is there any way for General Motors to stop its dizzying free fall? Last week, the world's largest automaker announced that it expects to post a devastating loss of almost $1 billion for the Read More
Something has been missing from the New York night-and when I found out, I felt responsible.
I should have been more attentive. I should have gotten up earlier. I let my guard down. I let the city down. I felt that I-literally-let the lights go out for at least a year without taking action. But now Read MoreThe invitations had arrived the day before with much fanfare: A 21-year-old Mormon knocked on my condo door and gingerly handed me two large white envelopes. God knows how I would have gotten the things if I hadn't been home watching cartoons. From the precious, reverent way that he passed them to me, it was Read More
They were driving across the East Side, deep in conversation
as they inched their way to the 66th Street transverse. The sun roof was open, but my husband and his partner were talking business, and they weren't paying much attention. Then they heard the hoots coming from above. "Nice car!" "Cool!" "All right!" It was a Read MoreSo I get a call from a producer on the Today show who wanted to know if I was willing to be interviewed for a segment they were doing on Seinfeld mania, Jerry hysteria, in the run-up to the final episode. I was, needless to say, supposed to be the Dissenting Voice, a role I'm Read More
I'm not saying this new crusade of mine is as critically urgent to the intellectual life of the city as last year's noble but doomed effort to rescue Books & Company from eviction by the Whitney Museum of Small-Time Real Estate Hustlers. (The Whitney, by the way, for all their grand master-planning-you know, the super-impressive Read More
