Dem Rule Slides It From Top of the Heap: New York, New York

“I’m a Republican because I grew up in Brooklyn, New York. And every day the taxes were higher, the crime was more widespread, the streets were dirtier, the welfare rolls were longer and the schools were failing. And New York was a one-party town. I knew I would never join that one.”

That was my opening statement when I would speak to mostly Democrat audiences during my ten-year tenure as Chairman of the Republican Party of Palm Beach County, Florida.

It wasn’t always like that. New York was the crown jewel of the American empire, from the Statue of Liberty to the Empire State building. The United Nations made it the de facto capital of Western Civilization. There was the Brooklyn Bridge, Times Square, Macy’s, Central Park, Lincoln Center, Madison Avenue, 5th Avenue, Tin Pan Alley, the Diamond District, Wall Street, the museums, the planetarian, three major zoos and 8 million people.

Fast forward to 2022. As we clean up from the awful COVID years, we see that New York City has lost 300,000 people. The destinations of choice were neighboring New Jersey, thriving Florida and a host of friendlier states.

What happened? In a word: government. Over a period of three quarters of a century New York became the city of high taxes and higher crime.

This two-pronged assault ate at the core of the middle class, giving their citizens living and work alternatives that became increasingly attractive. Let’s look at some of those policies.

New York was always the leader in culture and education. In my youth, New York City had seven major newspapers.

My parents were World Telegram readers. The Daily News cost 4 cents and everybody read the Sunday comics.

For reasons that I still don’t understand, the printers’ unions knowingly drove the costs through the roof and the papers out of business. Seven became three, two liberal and one conservative.

And, as an aside, the conservative New York Post, founded by Alexander Hamilton and liberal in my youth, is today’s leading national voice for tabloid conservatism. The app is on my phone an should be on yours.

New York became the first major city to have its own income tax, its own gun control laws, and, the kiss of death, an all-encompassing residential rent control law. Passed in 1941, rent control remains the clear-cut destroyer of affordable housing in New York, to this day.

The saying is: “New York has plenty of low-cost housing. It’s just that the middle-class lives in it.”

And then there’s the welfare attraction. New York takes pride in having the most generous public assistance benefits. Indeed, Mayor Lindsay would brag about having a New York City welfare office in Puerto Rico so that those who wanted to relocate and collect benefits could sign up before they left.

Somebody had to pay for all of that.

New York City effectively had the original replacement program. The middle-class went to Long Island, New Jersey and Westchester County and poor people filled those vacant apartments.

You get the idea. Fewer middle-class taxpayers, higher taxes. More struggling welfare recipients, higher taxes. It’s a vicious cycle that exists to this day.

But poor fiscal management could not deliver the knockout blow. New Yorkers are a very hearty breed. They can accept a lot, everything except crime.

It is crime that is literally killing New York. Crime rose sharply nationally in the '70’s and no city suffered as much as New York.

With families rapidly breaking up and gun control keeping the store owners from defending themselves, New York City was under attack. From the subways to Central Park, serenity was replaced by fear.

A series of Democrat mayors could not, or would not, go to war against the criminals. Eventually, crime became the number one political issue.

In 1989, Democrat David Dinkins beat out prosecutor Rudy Giuliani in the mayoral election. Democrats always won.

In a single year of the Dinkins administration there were 2,400 murders. 2,400! It’s a record to this day.

Giuliani won the 1993 rematch. Eight years of Giuliani (punctuated by 9/11) followed by 12 years of Michael Bloomberg gave New Yorkers a 20-year reprieve.

The tourists flooded in. The real estate values were sky-high and the Yankees were winning championships.

But, no, it was too good to last. New Yorkers elected a guy named DeBlasio, a true and proud socialist.

The criminals ruled. No bail. No jail. No peace. Empty streets. No tourists. No restaurants. And, saddest of all, no coming back.

I loved my childhood in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn. I appreciate the great education I got at Brooklyn College.

My immigrant parents knew that New York was a great place to emigrate to. Today it’s a great place to emigrate from. Whither New York?