Richard Ravitch: Gotham's Savior, Beaten by Albany

Wall Street Journal

In the pre-dawn gloom of Oct. 17, 1975, with New York City hours away from declaring bankruptcy, real-estate developer Richard Ravitch hosted a secret summit at his Upper East Side apartment. In attendance were Gov. Hugh Carey and teachers' chief Albert Shanker. "Ok, I'll do it," said Shanker, agreeing to invest large amounts of union pension funds in bailout bonds. The deal rescued Gotham.

In November 1979, Mr. Ravitch took the helm of the city's Metropolitan Transportation Authority (for no pay). The transit system was starved of capital; its decaying $50 billion physical plant was held together by glue and spit. Labor unrest exploded over pay cuts, culminating in an 11-day strike in April 1980. The next year, Mr. Ravitch began wearing a bulletproof vest to work after someone fired a .22-caliber bullet into MTA headquarters and struck a transit cop in the groin.

After relentless lobbying in Albany, Washington and on Wall Street, Mr. Ravitch prevailed: By 1982, he won approval to sell fare-backed bonds, coaxed new revenues out of tax-credit schemes with private businesses, and set in motion a multi-billion dollar "Marshall Plan" of capital improvements that kept the subways running.[...]

Full Wallets, but Using Health Program for Poor

NYTimes

AFTER immigrating to New York City from China in the 1970s, Z. Y. Tung and his wife worked hard — he as a bank manager, she as a public school secretary — lived frugally and saved every penny they could for the next generation.

Until five years ago, when his wife, Wen Mei Hu, racked by bone-marrow cancer, had to be put in a nursing home, where the bills ran past $100,000 a year, threatening to quickly drain the couple’s life savings of $500,000. The nursing home told him not to worry: If he signed a document essentially refusing to support his wife of several decades, Medicaid, the federal insurance program for the indigent, would pick up the bill.

“What about me, because I am responsible?” Mr. Tung inquired. He was told that only millionaires had to pay such high costs, and reluctantly, seeing no other choice, he agreed. [...]

Kissinger: Gassing Jews would not be a US problem

JPost

New tapes show Kissinger and Nixon opposed helping Soviet Jews escape Communist repression because it did not affect "US interests."
 
Henry Kissinger is heard saying the genocide of Soviet Jews would not be an American problem on newly released tapes chronicling President Nixon's obsession with disparaging Jews and other minorities.

Kissinger's remarks come after a meeting between the two men and Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir on March 1 1973, in which Meir pleads for US pressure on the Soviet Union to release its Jews.[...]

In Tapes, Nixon Rails About Jews and Blacks

NYTimes

 Richard M. Nixon made disparaging remarks about Jews, blacks, Italian-Americans and Irish-Americans in a series of extended conversations with top aides and his personal secretary, recorded in the Oval Office 16 months before he resigned as president.

The remarks were contained in 265 hours of recordings, captured by the secret taping system Nixon had installed in the White House and released this week by the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. [...]

Madoff’s Elder Son Found Dead in Suicide

NYTimes

Mark Madoff, the older of Bernard L. Madoff's two sons, hanged himself in his Manhattan apartment on Saturday, the second anniversary of his father's arrest for running a gigantic Ponzi scheme that shattered thousands of lives around the world.

"Mark Madoff took his own life today," Martin Flumenbaum, Mark Madoff's lawyer, said in a statement. "This is a terrible and unnecessary tragedy." He called the dead man "an innocent victim of his father's monstrous crime who succumbed to two years of unrelenting pressure from false accusations and innuendo." [...]

Debate Starts on Crown Heights Rabbis’ Gag Order

NYTimes

A debate on free speech is rippling through the Lubavitcher Hasidic community in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.

Last week, the rabbinical court known as the Beth Din of Crown Heights ordered members of the Lubavitcher community not to speak to the police or the news media on a range of issues related to crime.

The one-page edict (see below) bars members of the community of 20,000 from giving the news media information about another community member that could lead to "an investigation or intensified prosecution by any law enforcement agency." [...]

Madoff Trustee Seeks $19.6 Billion From Austrian Banker

NYTimes

The trustee seeking money for victims of Bernard L. Madoff’s fraud has sued Sonja Kohn, an Austrian banker, seeking $19.6 billion in damages and accusing her of masterminding a 23-year conspiracy that played a central role in financing the gigantic Ponzi scheme.

Amid an avalanche of lawsuits filed in recent weeks as the trustee nears a Saturday deadline to file claims, the complaint against Ms. Kohn stands out for its stark allegations of criminal behavior and the size of the financial recovery sought.

“In Sonja Kohn, Madoff found a criminal soul mate, whose greed and dishonest inventiveness equaled his own,” the trustee, Irving L. Picard, said.[...]

Oy Vey! Belief in Santa used to bolster Jewish self-esteem

Jewish Week

My 3-year-old nephew, his voice raspy from a recent cold, has been directing a long-winded narrative my way. I catch only a few words, but they startle me: Santa will be sliding down chimneys, and then there will be presents.

“Oh really?” I say, my eyebrows rising, inwardly vowing to speak with my sister.

Although my sister and I did not grow up in a strictly observant Jewish home, Christmas remained a world apart. When the revelers caroled in our Queens neighborhood, I listened from a safe distance, peering behind porch curtains. When holiday lights twinkled through the windows next door, I stared, enraptured, envious. If I reaped some small compensation from my Jewish identity at Christmas time, it was the satisfaction of sharing in the adult secret. Santa Claus was a fake.[...]

Baruch Hashem! Stormy weekend ahead as winter finally arrives in Israel

Haaretz

Snow expected on Mount Hermon and Golan heights, heavy rains throughout Israel, accompanied by very strong winds and possible floods. [...]

Millions of illegal immigrants drive without license or insurance

NYTimes

It was just another suburban fender-bender. A car zoomed into an intersection and braked too late to stop at a red light. The Georgia woman driving it, an American citizen, left with a wrecked auto, a sore neck and a traffic fine.

But for Felipa Leonor Valencia, the Mexican woman who was driving the Jeep that was hit that day in March, the damage went far beyond a battered bumper. The crash led Ms. Valencia, an illegal immigrant who did not have a valid driver’s license, to 12 days in detention and the start of deportation proceedings — after 17 years of living in Georgia.

Like Ms. Valencia, an estimated 4.5 million illegal immigrants nationwide are driving regularly, most without licenses, according to an analysis by The New York Times. Only three states — New Mexico, Utah and Washington — currently issue licenses without proof of legal residence in the United States. [...]

Crown Heights Beis Din issues orders not to report anyone to police

Daily News

A Brooklyn rabbinical court has a new commandment for the thousands of religious Jews under its jurisdiction: Thou shall not snitch.

The Beth Din of Crown Heights has ordered an estimated 10,000 members of the Lubavitch Hasidic sect not to gripe about cops or blab about crimes to outsiders.

"No one shall bring to any media outlet information about any resident that could, if publicized, lead to an investigation or intensified prosecution by any law enforcement agency," reads an edict issued last week.[...]

Education:Success measured by resume & test scores?

NYTimes

It isn’t often that a third of a movie audience sticks around to discuss its message, but that is the effect of “Race to Nowhere,” a look at the downside of childhoods spent on résumé-building.

“How do you help your children balance when the whole education system is pushing, pushing, pushing, and you want your kids to be successful?” Alethea Lewis, a mother of two, asked a roomful of concerned parents who had just seen the film, a documentary, last week in Bronxville, N.Y., at a screening co-sponsored by the private Chapel School.

With no advertising and little news media attention, “Race to Nowhere” has become a must-see movie in communities where the kindergarten-to-Harvard steeplechase is most competitive. [...]

Rav Sternbuch: Behind the Fire

'Christian Conservative' Should Replace Jewish Speaker, Some Texas Pols Say

Fox News

The race to lead the Texas House of Representatives has taken a religious turn, with some conservatives in the state suggesting that the speaker of the House, who is a Jewish Republican, should be replaced by a "Christian conservative."

Over the past month, in a spate of e-mails and political pitches, conservative opponents of incumbent Speaker Joe Straus have said they want him replaced not because of his Jewish religion, but because of his betrayal of Republican principles. [...]