A Blight Grows in Brooklyn

Townhall.com ^ | January 3, 2010 | George Will

[sinanju]

“...And the cash doesn’t stop there. In May 2008, the news broke that Dale Rathke, brother of ACORN founder Wade Rathke, had embezzled nearly $1 million from the organization back in 2000. And as the New York Times reported, this crime had been “concealed by senior executives until a whistle-blower told a foundation leader about it in May.” That’s eight years of concealment by senior ACORN executives, a deeply disturbing scandal that scared away donors, dried up support, and, combined with ACORN’s notorious tax troubles, threatened to ruin the organization financially.”

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So THIS is the “Bruce Ratner” who bailed out the Rathke’s little embezzlement embarrassment. I recall the name but I never knew the connection.

Hey! In Obama’s America it’s all about who you know and who you do favors for that counts, not talent and hard work.

“You must join the party, pay your dues and attend all the meetings and rallies if you want to move up in the world,
comrade”.

[sinanju]

Oh now, get on with you. This is no worse than what those Rockefeller boys did forty-five years ago to build their wonderful World Trade Center.

Only their little outfit was called the Downtown-Lower Manhattan Development Association.

[BluesDuke]

I may be wrong about this, but I believe this was where the Brooklyn Dodgers wanted to build a new Ebbets Field -- and the City's failure to provide the necessary land use and/or zoning permits is what led the Dodgers to move to Los Angeles -- in 1958.

That's the area; it includes the Long Island Rail Road's Flatbush terminus, and Walter O'Malley was thinking of all the Dodger fans who moved out to Long Island proper---the site accommodated both LIRR commuters and car commuters who would have had an easy access to the area off the Belt Parkway. (The compelling reason why O'Malley wanted out of Ebbets Field---the swift enough growth of the neighbourhood around the park choked it in; no new parking could be built and the park itself had gotten old before its time, thanks largely to neglect during the family feud that nearly destroyed the franchise in the wake of Charles Ebbets's death, neglect Larry MacPhail and Branch Rickey could only address so far when both made some park improvements in the 1940s. Nostalgic though it may have been and beloved though it may have been, Ebbets Field had turned into something of a trap by the time O'Malley began casting a longing eye on that new property.)

But the real mover and shaker behind the city's stonewall against Walter O'Malley looking to build a new park there was Robert Moses---who wanted to all but jam down O'Malley's throat a site in Flushing Meadows where he planned to build a new multipurpose stadium. (Never once did O'Malley, contrary to the mythology, tell Moses or anyone in New York officialdom, "You build a ballpark and give it to me.") Moses, in fact, was quoted in those years as saying there'd never again be a privately built and owned sports facility in the city or state of New York so long as he ran the building and planning show for both.

You can get the whole story in two splendid books: Neil Sullivan's The Dodgers Move West; and, Michael Shapiro's The Last Pennant Race, a marvelous juxtaposition of the politicking that ended up pushing the Dodgers out of Brooklyn with the last Dodger pennant in Brooklyn, in 1956.

Among the questions nobody thought about as the years went by---if Moses was that bent on shoving a city-owned facility down some baseball team's throat in Queens, why didn't he suggest to the New York Giants, who also needed a new ballpark but couldn't afford to build one themselves as O'Malley could, that they think about moving into the Queens facility? Unlike the Dodgers, the Giants didn't have borough-specific identification and they wouldn't have had to wrestle with the kind of feeling inferred in the famous O'Malley rejoinder, "If we play in Queens we won't be the Brooklyn Dodgers anymore."

In due course the stadium got built and a baseball team did make its home there---the New York Mets who, ironically enough, spent their first two seasons of life in what was left of the Polo Grounds while awaiting the late Shea Stadium's completion . . .

[sinanju]

That’s a universal of the Liberal Agenda, from Roe v Wade/Doe v Bolton on up, it’s all been through the courts. There hasn’t been a single gay marriage initiative that has ever passed by referendum.

Too many of us like to claim it all started with Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, striking down school segregation but technically that was vacating an earlier SCOTUS ruling, the odious Plessy vs. Ferguson.

[Cacique]

The elites and oligarchies don’t like rules or impediments to their doing whatever they want. Constitutions are bothersome impediments. Laws and rules are for us peasants.

[hinckley buzzard]

Yes. Exactly why I call him and his ilk Dinner Party Conservatives Even when he is right he takes care to give no offense, and offer no challenge--prompting no thought and changing no minds.

[Alberta's Child]

That’s a great post, BluesDuke. Thanks for the education!