PrintSeptember 7, 2010
Gov. Paterson, do you miss Rush yet?
A number of months back, Governor David Paterson famously taunted Rush Limbaugh as Rush sold his New York City apartment and left the state, complaining about a raise in New York taxes. "If I knew that would be the result, I would've thought about the taxes earlier," the governor said.
Let us compare Rush Limbaugh as a taxpayer to the owner(s) of the proposed Ground Zero mosque property, one of the high-profile New York real estate holders in the news.
Rush Limbaugh paid his New York taxes every year, despite frequent audits to determine if he was cheating. The owner(s) of the Burlington Coat Factory, the proposed mosque site, owe New York City nearly one quarter of a million dollars in back taxes. When the City of New York will receive payment is anyone's guess.
Rush Limbaugh made a profit on the sale of his apartment, a sale that met and exceeded market prices for other apartments in his former New York neighborhood. Contrast this with the previous owner of the proposed mosque site having sold the building for way below market price and turned down over $12 million for the sale to the current owner. That is millions more in taxable profits to the State and City from offers that commercial developers would have paid. And the commercial developers do not require the U.S. State Department to fly them around the world on junkets of dubious value. But I digress.
Rush Limbaugh never announced plans to put up a triumphal capitalist building near the site of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire and open it on Labor Day 2011 or the March 25, 2011 one hundredth anniversary of that fire. For those of you not familiar with the Triangle Fire, it happened in a shirt manufacturer located on the eighth through tenth floors of a building in New York's Greenwich Village, and it is considered the second-worst workplace disaster in New York history after 9/11. The factory's labor force consisted of young immigrant women, and the owners had a policy of keeping the building stairway doors locked to stop any possibility of pilferage of cloth. When a fire broke out in 1911, 146 mostly young women died, and another 71 were injured, as the New York Fire Dept. didn't have the technology to reach the upper floors of the site. Many workers jumped to their death, just as people did at the World Trade Center on September 11. The fire became -- and rightfully so -- a national rallying cry for the labor movement and led to changes in national building safety laws. There is a commemorative plaque outside on the building that is today New York University's Brown Building of Science, and it is designated as a National Historic Site.
The owners of the proposed Ground Zero mosque site have outraged the memory of family members of those who perished on 9/11 with their huge mosque proposal. That they want to open the mosque on the September 11, 2011, is a further outrage to the memory of those that died. This has resulted in street protests, both against and in favor of the project. Those protests have cost the City of New York great expenses in police overtime, probably equaling and exceeding the tax monies collected from the sale of Rush Limbaugh's property.
So although fans of Rush Limbaugh have not put up a billboard in New York with his image and the words, "Miss me yet?," Governor Paterson may want to contemplate how " bad" Rush was for the State of New York compared to some of his state's current real estate owners.
Graphic by Big Fur Hat of The Obamas and iOwnTheWorld.com
Graphic by Big Fur Hat of The Obamas and iOwnTheWorld.com
