Word: auletta
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Auletta, former politico, now columnist for the New York Daily News and commentator for New York public television, wrote The Streets Were Paved With Gold to sort out how the self-proclaimed greatest city in the world self-destructed. His book is the best overview and analysis yet to appear of the four years of near bankruptcy and the circumstances that led to that debacle. Auletta's discussion avoids hackneyed liberal or conservative interpretations and provides convincing explanations of where the fault for New York's troubles lies...
Dismissing New York's problems with a wringing of hands and perfunctory laments about federal support of the Sunbelt the flight of the middle class to the suburbs, and the greediness of banks and unions, achieves nothing, but Auletta notes that New Yorkers have been offered little more. He says to blame "historical and economic forces, everything and everybody, is to blame nobody. We run the risk of learning nothing from what happened to New York. So Auletta looks at each party's involvement in the collapse and outlines specifically how each is responsible...
...primary culprit is the city itself. "At the risk of overdramatization," Auletta cites 21 "original sins" which the city, state and federal governments committed. In addition to rather prosaic "sins" like the growth of the suburbs and high taxes, Auletta reveals financial shenanigans that politicians and bankers employed to allow the city to continue its spendthrift ways. His discussion of the Nelson Rockefeller championing of moral obligation bonds clearly explains how an irresponsible procedure, responsibly put forth, grew into common practice. Moral obligation bonds, designed by then little-known bond lawyer John Mitchell, allowed the state to sell bonds...
...central question of the fiscal crisis, and of Auletta's book, is why did New York need to borrow all this money in the first place? He answers by calling the city "Liberalism's Vietnam" and provides a cogent parallel of how "more money, more programs, more taxes, more borrowing--didn't work here; just as more troops, more bombs, more interdiction, more pacification programs didn't work" in Vietnam...
...more a reflection on the sorry state of American magazine writing than on the two magazines' brilliance, New York provided an outlet for talented writers like Richard Reeves. The Voice, besides press critic Cockburn, probably the best of his ilk since A. J. Liebling, printed Nat Hentoff, Ken Auletta, and Robert Christgau, probably the best pop music critic around. Andrew Sarris is arguably the best film critic in America. And "The Greasy Pole," a political column co-written by Cockburn and James Ridgeway, provides some of the best leftist commentary on American politics today. It's hard to see these...