Marching to Brooklyn

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The de Blasio Administration has entered a bid for Brooklyn – not New York City — to host the 2016 Democratic Party Convention.   I hope this one borough gets bragging rights to the convention and even more. Brooklyn should host all city parades now held on Fifth Avenue in tired and sanitized Manhattan. Let the St. Patrick’s Day Parade of 2015 lead the way from the Grand Army Plaza all along Eastern Parkway. All the other my-group-is-better-than-yours cavalcades could follow – including those that require heightened near-military security.

Equally fine, parades could be shifted to The Grand Concourse in the Bronx.

Please comment.

Monopoly Alert: Amazon.com Makes The Price Too High

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The trending topic at BookExpo America in New York City this week is Amazon’s abuse of its near-monopolistic hold on book publishing and how it is discouraging consumers from buying books from the Hachette Book Group, currently the lone publisher standing up for better pricing for authors (and of course better income for itself). Recently when customers have gone to the Amazon website to buy a Hachette title, Amazon has told them that it can’t be shipped for weeks. To be helpful, the company suggests that the customer buy a similar (non-Hachette) book instead. Now that Amazon’s practice has been exposed to the nation, perhaps it will yield. Or not.

Amazon is led by Jeff Bezos who also owns the Washington Post. He must feel some pressure because his company just issued a rare statement about its position. The gist is that Amazon wants to pay book sellers and authors what it wants to pay them. If vendors want a price they think is fair, they can go elsewhere. Take it or leave it. The problem is that there is very little elsewhere to go. Barnes & Noble is just holding on, and of course there are the valiant independent book sellers whose prices are deeply undercut by Amazon. Obviously, once Amazon’s struggling competitors go out of business, and Amazon has a stranglehold on book publishing and the written culture of the nation, Amazon will stand alone able to dictate sales terms.

Will U.S. book buyers will let Amazon get away with this? One of them won’t. A consumer standing up against abusive practices is so rare that David Streitfeld published a piece about her in the N.Y. Times. Ardelle Cowie, who estimates that she spends $5,000 a year buying products, including books, from Amazon, was so appalled she called the company to complain. The Connecticut woman, the daughter of a Presbyterian minister, found that Amazon had no mechanism for taking complaints about its policies and so she has switched to another bookseller.

I was on the brink of buying Amazon’s Kindle Paperwhite, which I am persuaded is the best device for reading, just as Amazon says, but now I won’t. This will certainly hurt me more than it hurts Amazon, but I will have exercised one of the dwindling ways that an American consumer can stand up for competition in the rigged marketplace.

Why rigged? Well, it’s complicated. The Justice Department has actually protected Amazon from having to face real competition. When the Authors Guild, Apple and various book publishers tried to break Amazon’s near stranglehold on the book business, the Justice Department sued that group alleging that publishers were in collusion with Apple and restricting competition. The N.Y. Times editorial board agreed with the Justice Department, but noted that the settlement did nothing to protect consumers from Amazon. Consumers need that protection again Amazon, because clearly we have a preview of Amazon’s monopolistic practices. Ida Tarbell, who wrote the classic exposé of how John D. Rockefeller used illegal tactics to build Standard Oil, said that the most appalling thing about him was that his intelligence, drive and focus would have enabled him to capture the nation’s oil business without using criminal means.

So if Amazon were not discriminating against a vendor standing up for fair prices, I could have bought that Kindle and downloaded a very worthwhile e-book. I want to believe my action is Amazon’s loss, but I don’t think the Fortune 500 company will be as inconvenienced as I am.

Remember the Alamo, Rizzoli Bookstore, and Jim’s Shoe Repair

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Rizzoli Bookstore is still expected to close and Subway Inn was shuttered, but Jim’s Shoe Repair at 50 E. 59th has been given a new lease!!

See Present in the City blog of Feb. 17, 2015 for details as well as this fine ABC News New York story with an appearance by me.

Here’s the original post on the subject from May 2, 2014:

Jim’s Shoe Repair on Manhattan’s at 50 East 59th Street has been in business for 82 years. Now the adjacent Duane Reade chain wants its space, reportedly so it can sell frozen foods. Duane Reade, which Walgreen purchased in 2010 for $618 million dollars, is forcing the family-owned artisanal service to shut its doors.

Now is the time and here is the place for New Yorkers to take a stand if they are alarmed by seeing productive businesses destroyed by the combination of out-of-control generic big box stores, New York real estate interests, and the complicit Giuliani and Bloomberg Administrations. Maybe Jim’s Shoe Repair Store can be the place where the de Blasio Administration steps in to help small businesses and preserve what is left of commercial diversity in Manhattan. Surely small businesses are as worthy of salvation as carriage horses, even if their supporters are less organized.

Without a public outcry against Duane Reade and Walgreen ($72 billion in sales in fiscal 2013) and landlord SL Green Realty, Jim’s Shoe Repair will join the famed Rizzoli’s Bookstore, and the less iconic Nemati rug and tapestry store on Third Avenue and Vacesi Hardware on East 23rd, along with hundreds of other successful or promising small businesses that have been victims of predatory real estate interests.

Two Duane Reades, two Walgreens and a CVS all operate in a 1.5 block radius of my apartment, and most Manhattanites below 96th Street can say much the same of these interchangeable outlets. We do not need more of them and we do not need them to be bigger than they are. They should not gobble up more space and they should not destroy more productive businesses. Jim’s is trying to get redress through the Landmarks Commission, which ignored it in the past, but here’s a plan for the rest of us:

  1. Patronize Jim’s Shoe Repair at 50 East 59th Street near the Fifth Avenue N,R,Q subway. This support will help it to pay its legal bills to fight these greedy businesses that prey on the spirit of New York. In addition, you will also see what expert shoe repair looks like.

  2. Sign an electronic petition at http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/save-jims-shoe-repair   or this site.

  3. Phone Customer Relations at Duane Reade (and why is this office not in New York City where it could hire the city residents who patronize these stores?)
    Here are two numbers – 800-925-4733, which I obtained from a company source, and 866-375-6925, which is on the website. Provide Jim’s address – 50 East 59th Street — and 625 Madison Avenue, the address of the building that houses it and the rapacious Duane Reade that is gobbling up its business.

  4. Phone Walgreen at 800-925-4733

  5. Call SL Green Realty, ask for the leasing agent of 625 Madison Avenue, and tell them that they should renew Jim’s lease. They will give you a polite runaround. Probably SL Green thrives on bad will, but perhaps it would like to generate good publicity by doing something decent.

  6. Contact REBNY – the Real Estate Board of New York. Its website says that questions about the commercial Brokerage Division should be directed to Desiree Jones at (212) 616-5226 or djones@rebny.com

Taking these actions would be constructive use of smartphones. On a personal note, without Jim’s to repair my shoes, I may have to use them less. Certainly if Walgreen and Duane Reade takes Jim’s down, I will never again walk into one of these outfits again. Drugstore.com* is looking good – and it sells cheaper branded contact lens solution too.

*Correction: In a demonstration of the importance of a family business, after this blog was posted my nephew David, a business grad student, informed me that drugstore.com is owned by Walgreen. One of us has made me proud.

Coupon Power! Is The Right To Sue More Important Than Jobs?

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Why can the American public not save jobs, stop the sell-off of public property at bargain rates to private interests, protect our private records, halt the sale of Uzies for recreational purposes, or have traffic laws enforced?

We did win one fight. We managed to make General Mills, with its nearly $18 billion in annual sales, back down after it changed its coupon policies, so let’s find a way to use the power of public opinion for greater good. Please use the reply box at the bottom of this blog to provide suggestions – you won’t forego any rights if you do.

A bit of background, if necessary: General Mills established a new requirement that disputes from those using its “benefits,” including coupons, would have to be submitted to binding arbitration rather than the courts, but after four days of backlash, the company behind brands like Cheerios, Wheaties and Pillsbury, was so scared that it will allow us to sue it again, as Stephanie Strom of the N.Y. Times reported.

If the public is able to weigh in with such force to maintain its right to be litigious — a right most of us will never use — how can we use the weight of public opinion to persuade corporations, and even our problematic local, state and federal governments, to take measures more likely to be of greater worth to us, like promoting job growth and a reliable banking system?

Could we use our power to persuade Sallie Mae, the student loan firm, to bring ALL its jobs back to the U.S. and hire the students and parents who are its customers and wealth source? Could consumers target a corporation that announces job layoffs at the same time it increases executive salaries exponentially? Would our politicians and the interests that own them take note that the natives are finally restless?

Surely part of the reason why we do not recognize and claim our public clout for greater good is a lack of focus – unemployment is a more complex issue than the right to sue, and the corporate-government alliance that has decimated U.S. manufacturing is murkier and more diffuse than one corporation, even the mega-sized General Mills. As is the case with General Mills, it would have to be one corporation at a time and we would have to protest layoffs that don’t involve ourselves.

To be fair to processed food companies, they are struggling in the courts. Strom pointed out in her earlier story that General Mills has been plagued by suits – like the one it settled in late 2012 when it had to take the world “strawberry” off the label for its Strawberry Fruit Roll-Ups because the product did not contain strawberries.

Even now the Supreme Court is considering arguments over whether Coca-Cola’s Minute Maid brand misled consumers when it put only traces of pomegranate and blueberry in its pomegranate-blueberry blend. Coke’s lawyer said the public was too sophisticated to be misled by its label. After Justice Anthony Kennedy told her that he himself had thought it was pomegranate juice, Justice Antonin Scalia opined that Justice Kennedy “sometimes doesn’t read closely enough.” It sounded like a rare day of fun for the justices.

Would Americans be galvanized to action if what sophisticated writers call “the hallowing out of the middle class” involved saving fifty cents off a box of cereal or provoking some laughs? As it is, thanks to General Mills’ capitulation we should be able to sue processed food companies for some time and the good will generated by Poppin’ Fresh, better known as the Pillsbury Doughboy, has been restored.

NYC Charter Schools Play With Matches: Who’s Getting Burned?

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When Bill de Blasio was a candidate for Mayor he created shock waves by saying that he would make charter schools that operate in public school buildings pay rent. Whether or not that helped him get elected last November, a few weeks ago when he refused to allow former City Councilwoman Eva Moskowitz to co-locate three of her Success Academy charters in crowded public schools with special needs students, he set off a firestorm. She claims, basically, that the Mayor is victimizing low-income students and their parents and she has engaged the help of Gov. Andrew Cuomo to reinforce that message.

Do she and her charter school peers and benefactors not have the ability and connections to find space for their charges? Do they not have money to pay rent? Could they succeed if they did not usurp the space intended for public school students that charters do not enroll? Success Academy pays Moskowitz $485,000 per year. Last year it hired the political consulting firm SKD Knickerbocker for $519,000. For that money, SKD could have lit the match that set off the fireworks, singeing de Blasio with charges of being mean to minority children, and inspiring Cuomo to promise to “save” charter schools. With this posture he seizes the opportunity to appear to defend the poor even as he benefits his hedge fund campaign contributors.

Basically charters are public schools that are allowed to operate free of the regulation – such as union rules governing teacher salaries and working conditions – that most public schools must abide by. In exchange they must demonstrate better results. Many do. Others don’t. Through the years the New York City Department of Education had to close a few of them for poor performance even before their charters came up for renewal. Others have been outstanding. The same can be said for New York City’s public schools. The two operations are so different that they thwart real comparison. [The charters make their case at http://www.nyccharterschools.org  Public school teachers explain theirs at http://www.uft.gov ] Clear, reliable data on the long-term benefits of charter schools versus public schools is hard to come by, which may mean that ultimately the schools are on par with each other. I have not heard either side declare unqualified victory, which could mean something as well.

Let’s take a brief and truly insufficient look at charter schools: at one extreme was Courtney Sale Ross, socialite widow of billionaire Steve Ross. Granted a charter to create Ross Global Academy, she was given space in Tweed Courthouse, landmarked headquarters of the city’s department of education. In 2010 after five years of poor performance and the development of a middle school that was described as “violent,” it was closed for poor performance. At the other end of the spectrum are the Promise Academy Schools, created in partnership with the Harlem Children’s Zone. Its website reports that at Promise Academy II, 100 percent of third-graders were at or above grade level on the 2008 statewide math test. At Promise Academy I, 97 percent of the third-graders were at or above grade level in math.

The well-funded public relations offensive for three Moskowitz schools makes one wonder if the charter school movement, notably in New York City, seeks not to inspire, but to discredit. Seeks not to augment, but to drain public schools of resources. Well-funded private financial entities, traditionally enamored with the privatization of public goods like schools and libraries, and hostile to unions that preserve jobs and wages, are bringing themselves under scrutiny as well.

Charter schools have refused to open their books and be as fiscally transparent as public schools and their administrators are required to be. Moskowitz successfully filed suit to bar the state comptroller from auditing her 22 schools, all of which are funded by tax-payers but which also receive the above-mentioned private support.

Happily, journalists have pointed out the whopping salaries that charter school administrators earn and the cash-fueled political alliances at the root of many of these schools. In the N.Y. Daily News Rachel Monahan provided a list of more than 16 such schools. At the top was Deborah Kenney, chief executive officer of Harlem Village Academies, which has two schools. She is paid $499,000. Compare this to New York City Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña who earns $212,000 and is responsible for 1.1 million students, including those with special needs who seldom find a place in charters. In the N.Y. Times, Michael Powell discusses Eva Moskowitz who is paid her $485,000 to administer 20 schools.  A separate foundation established by hedge fund manager Joel Greenblatt and his wife pays half her salary. Both are Cuomo’s campaign contributors. Powell’s column is rich with political connections and a word on Moskowitz’s political action committee.

This Sunday Ginia Bellafante of the N.Y. Times observed, among other things, that charter school advocates have a public relations operation that rivals Paramount in the 1940s. She also pointed out that KIPP charter schools, with 141 schools in 20 states and the District of Columbia, including 11 in New York City, conducted a study in which it found that only a third of students who had completed a KIPP middle school in the previous decade had graduated from a four-year college. This is better than the average for low-income schools around the country, but still far short of KIPP’s mission.

At their best, charter schools could serve as laboratories for new models of education. Maybe a longer school day and an 11-month school year could lead to a better-educated nation. Data may show that some day. Meanwhile, it seems that education is not truly what charter schools, which began to take their present form after state legislatures authorized them in 1990, are really all about. Based on overall results for students so far, I don’t see that they are doing a better job than public schools. Certainly when it comes to their finances, charters and their backers don’t want officials to do the math. They may find that they would have done better to just pay the Department of Education some rent.

Latest Unemployment Figures Are Dire — A Jump of 3 Points

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The lead N.Y. Times editorial for Saturday, March 8 takes a detailed and alarming look at what new unemployment figures really mean. If 5.7 million Americans who are waiting for jobs were included in the count, the actual national unemployment rate would have been 10 percent instead of 6.7 percent — more than 3 points higher. The Times calls for “long-run investments. ” More immediately, however, customer service jobs (see  March 6 post) should be brought back to the U.S. Not everyone can work construction. Along with helping a wide range of the jobless, repatriated customer service would bring honor and good will to banks and corporations that have exported the well-being of the U.S. along with the paychecks of one-time tax payers.

The employment population ratio of 58.8 percent was unchanged, according to figures for February announced March 7.

“Afrulals” and “Concessions” With The Chase Debit Card

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Full disclosure: I am not sure that the Chase Banking customer service representative in the Philippines said “afrulal” on the telephone last Sunday. I am not really sure what those syllables were, although she repeated them several times. I do know that she never said “Withdrawal” clearly. After I guessed right, she confirmed that was what she meant, so I repeated my question about the charge for withdrawing currency from ATMs abroad using my Chase debit card. She said it would be $5 for each ATM withdrawal and then three percent on the difference between the currencies. Call me dumb, if you can pronounce it so I can understand the observation, but I had to ask her how that worked. She couldn’t explain, so I thanked her (?), hung up and called Chase Banking again.

Additional examples of garbled and useless offshore customer service are numerous and tedious, so I will cut to the point: consumers must complain to U.S. companies, through the offices of their leaders, about this. The U.S. is said to be a service economy, but service jobs are melting away like a polar icecap. Service now is largely unacceptable and customer satisfaction is low. So are U.S. employment numbers. In 2013, the employment-population ratio, the proportion of working age people who are employed, stood at 58.6, down from a high of 63.3 in 2007. In New York State, the e-p ratio is 56.8.

Americans who speak clear English, even if it is not their first language, should have all customer service jobs. We are supposed to believe that exporting jobs keeps our bills down (have they been dropping?) because hard-working foreign employees earn a fraction of what U.S. workers do. But why should the American worker, who has direct and multiple value to the U.S. economy, pay this price? Jamie Dimon, chair and CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co., earned $18,670,000 in fiscal 2012 alone and a lot more since. Time Warner Cable’s brand new chair and CEO Robert D. Marcus, earned $9,968,326 as president and COO even before his promotion this January.* Verizon’s Lowell C. McAdam earned $13,835,632 (salaries are total compensation for fiscal 2012 and source is salary.com). Such purported leaders place the reputations of their companies in the hands of people who, try though they might, provide poor service. If imperial executive compensation were reduced to the salaries of kings, perhaps more American citizens could be hired. These bottom-rung employees would pay taxes on their salaries instead of collecting unemployment benefits.

U.S. banks, particularly before they brought down the U.S. economy with the help of lax regulators, proudly say they are global operations. However, when they cause disaster to themselves and the world, it is the citizens of the U.S. who are called upon to bail them out both through tax money and through the loss of their jobs. Americans must demand these companies provide jobs to Americans. We cannot rely on elected officials to do this for us. They have not so far.

To return to the story of Chase debit card consumer service: My second rep, also in the Philippines, said he was ready to explain my “concession.” After a long pause I confirmed that he was talking about “transactions” and our call continued to conclusion. I had agreed to take a satisfaction survey after each of my inadvertent calls to the Philippines, but in the middle of each survey, in which I gave low marks for everything but politeness, the lines went dead and the survey was cut off. Did Chase record me as satisfied or unwilling to take a survey? I was neither. Would I have been cut off if the computer systems sensed I was happy with the service?
One final recent example: Every few months my Time Warner Cable goes funky in the evening hours, when I watch tv. My calls for service go to Costa Rica where the inevitably-male service rep tells me to reset the cable box. That tedious procedure did not work a few weeks ago (static on my Verizon line compounded other communication problems) so the next morning I called Time Warner Cable service again and I reached a native-born middle-age American woman working in the U.S. She instantly knew that I had to type in new settings. During our twenty-some minutes on the phone I mentioned that I was happy that an American had a job at Time Warner Cable. She told me, her voice dropping, that she doubted she would have it for long. Guess she doesn’t think she’ll make the cut if the Comcast $5 billion (read five Billion dollar) acquisition of Time Warner Cable goes through. If history is an example, Time Warner Cable executives will receive golden parachutes so they can continue to enjoy multiple unused mansions and she will be eligible for shrinking unemployment benefits before she depletes her savings.

Saddest of all is that the American consumer deserves exactly what we are getting because we have accepted poor service and the off-shoring/exporting of jobs without protest. [Maybe unions had an important purpose after all and NAFTA and succeeding trade agreements were not so good for us.] We grumble among ourselves, perhaps, but we do not protest. Our elected officials have proven themselves to be largely unwilling to save U.S. jobs, so if we don’t like the service we are paying for, it is time to take time to complain directly to the offices of the CEOs of faithless companies. Starting jobs like consumer service used to be career ladders to future advancement. At present, routine annoyances indicate a systemic problem to our economic security and one that seems too tedious for us to deal with.

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* A few weeks after this posting Robert D. Marcus agreed to receive $80 million dollars for six weeks of “work” in selling Time-Warner Cable to Comcast.

Pedaling Within The Law

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Cyclists in Manhattan are taking better care of themselves and possibly of pedestrians too, according to a recent study from Hunter College.

More bike riders are stopping at red lights. Fewer are riding against traffic. Citing articles saying that there have been only two dozen minor injuries involving Citi Bike riders and no fatalities, the report suggests that this is because Citi Bike share riders are more cautious and rule-compliant than other cyclists.

Here are some other findings:

• The number of female cyclists has increased by 9 percent in the last four and one-half years, possibly because of the bike-share program that began last May.

• Almost three-fourths of commercial cyclists now wear helmets, three times as many as in 2010. Nearly half of male “general” cyclists now wear helmets, up from 32.2 percent in 2009.

• Nearly sixty percent of commercial cyclists wear “upper body apparel” identifying the name of their business, as required by law, twice as many as in 2011.

Graduate and undergraduate students of professors Peter Tuckel and William Milczarski observed 4,316 bicyclists at 98 different locations in central and lower Manhattan. Comparison was made against a study the professors published in 2011.  Kudos to them and to Hunter College for developing data on something all New Yorkers have opinions about.

The report Bike Lane + Bike Share Program = Bike Safety predicts that safe cycling in New York City is likely to increase. It is true that the delivery guy who nearly cycled into me while I was walking down the sidewalk was wearing a helmet, so I am prepared to hope, if not yet to be convinced.

Ferries Could Save Tax Payers from the Second Avenue Subway

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A decade ago, the Metropolitan Transit Authority held public meetings at the old Hunter College School of Social Work to prepare East Side residents for the construction of the Second Avenue Subway, and for the destruction and damage to homes and businesses. Mysore Nagaraja, then president of MTA Capital Construction Company, nearly wept as he described the plight of those of us living east of Third Avenue in the 70s who had to walk 20 or 30 minutes to reach the subway. That was why, he told us, construction of the Second Avenue was so important and inconvenience was to be darned. He was so aggrieved about our situation and so agonized over those who live around York Avenue and 77th Street, that he advocated construction of multiple entrances on the north, south, east and west sides of every station so that after years of suffering we would not have to cross one more avenue, or tarry at one more traffic light, before we could descend to a train each day.

As it turns out, residents of the far East 70s or 80s will continue to be under-served by train service, even if the Second Avenue Subway is ever completed. There is no stop between the 86th Street and 72nd Street stations. Michael Horodniceanu, Nagaraja’s successor, told me during neighborhood tour of the underground construction this is intended to speed travel on the line. I had suspected that plans to construct a station in the high 70s were dropped because a developer pal of former MTA chairman Peter Kalikow was building a new high-rise on the spot, but clearly I was wrong.

Although Second Avenue Stubway, when it opens, will not shave much time from the commute of those living on East 79th Street and First Avenue or York, a more efficient and cost-effective service for them and everyone else is on the way.

The East River, the greatest transit artery in New York City, is one that few travel today, but the New York City Economic Development Corp. recently proposed five new ferry routes that would exploit its possibilities. Such service would connect waterfront neighborhoods in Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island and the Bronx to Manhattan and to each other. It would also improve transit from midtown to the Lower East Side and Wall Street.

Current ferry service on the East River has proven to be a success. It served 1.2 million total riders last year, some 3,200 riders daily. Fare is $4.00 each way, and like the rest of public transit, it is subsidized. The city pays $2.22 or 55 percent, for each one-way trip, compared to 62 cents, or 35 percent, for the subway, which because of the varying fare structures averages $1.73 per trip. Increased use of ferries would make the water system more cost-effective.

Currently there is a pier at 34th Street on Manhattan’s East Side and shuttered one near Gracie Mansion at East 90th Street. An additional one in the mid-70s has been on the drawing board. Happily, construction of ferries would also cost taxpayers far less than the subway. A NYCETD report notes that the extension of the 7 train cost $1.6 billion per mile served, compared to the cost of construction of infrastructure serving the East River Ferry at $8 million per mile served. Unlike busses, ferries don’t travel on congested roads and bridges. Based on what figures I can glean from MTA reports and a helpful 2010 post on the 2nd Ave. Sagas blog, I calculate that construction of the Second Avenue subway ballooned to a cost of  $2.75 billion per mile.

Phase 1 of the Second Avenue Subway will end at Lexington Avenue and 63rd Street and is supposed to be operational by December, 2016 after much delay. Increased ferry routes, and the relatively new Select Busses on First and Second Avenue that have improved surface transit, should mean that other Manhattan neighborhoods will not be needlessly and pointlessly blighted at enormous cost to taxpayers.