(2003-05-22) Nyc Books

In honor of NYC's depression, a couple items I should browse for my Book List:

• The Assassination of New York by Robert Fitch ISBN:1859844014 In this fascinating new edition, Fitch shows how Rudy Giuliani provided a record transfer of wealth from welfare poor to real estate rich. His most lasting legacy turns out to be the accumulation of the greatest debt in urban history, turning New York into the Enron of cities. The city and the state now owe more than Argentina.

• A Plague on Your Houses: How New York Was Burned Down and National Public Health Crumbled by Deborah Wallace ISBN:1859848583 some notes: At the New York City RAND Institute, RAND developed a series of simplistic pseudoscientific mathematical models that concluded city services could be allocated in a way that would permit the City to cut services and still deliver adequate coverage. In 1969, the City reduced the number of fire companies dispatched to fires on the basis of the RAND models. RAND's early work inspired Daniel Patrick Moynihan's 1970 "BenignNeglect" memo to President Richard Nixon in which, citing RAND data showing many fires in poor neighborhoods, the future New York senator declared black and Latino neighborhoods inherently pathological. The large number of fires were arson, Moynihan argued. Blacks and Latinos were burning down their own neighborhoods. Inner cities across the country should be left to neglect, Moynihan concluded. (and talks about the outcomes in terms of TB, AIDS, etc.)