Word: balke
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...value, half or more of the real estate in Albany and Ithaca, N.Y., and Washington, D.C., is taxfree. The ratio is 33% or more in New York City, Pittsburgh and Harrisburg, Pa., and Montpelier, Vt. In a penetrating new book, The Free List (Russell Sage Foundation; $7.50), Journalist Alfred Balk argues that the exemptions have become so large, loose and inconsistent as to hurt all other property-taxpayers and the nation as a whole. Balk cites several authoritative estimates that $600 billion worth of real estate-one-third of the U.S. total-is not taxed at all. The cost...
...Balk points out that Manhattan's 77-story Chrysler Building pays no property tax because its collegiate owner, Cooper Union, has an 1859 charter from the state legislature granting permanent exemption. The Chrysler Building will soon lose its distinction as the world's tallest tax exemption to the 110-story World Trade Center, now rising, says Balk, "like a tombstone over the tip of downtown Manhattan." The twin towers are being built by the quasi-public Port of New York Authority, which is tax-exempt but will make a token payment for city services...
...surprising that one of Mailer's sharpest criticisms of Kate Millett is that "she has a mind like a flatiron, which is to say a totally masculine mind." He reacts against Millett and her feminist tome, Sexual Politics, on an immediate, instinctual level, the way he might balk if a woman sauntered into an all-male sauna in which he was sweating and luxuriating. He seems to feel instinctively that Millett simply doesn't belong where she roams, that she's misguided and out of her ken. His bafflement over another liberationist, a female pamphleteer he mentions early...
Aboard a Scandinavian Airlines flight from Oslo to Copenhagen last month. Borten handed a document marked for-trolig (confidential) to another passenger, saying: "This is interesting. Read it." The document was a report indicating that the European Economic Community would probably balk at the special terms Norway demands as a condition of its entry into the Common Market. The other passenger was Norway's leading Common Market opponent, Arne Haugestad, head of a pressure group called the People's Resistance Movement Against Membership in the EEC. "For your private information," Borten cautioned as he gave the paper...
...members in 10,000 locals can be persuaded to surrender some of their extraordinary bargaining powers. This week the first indications of the union position are likely to appear when the construction trades' executive council holds its annual midwinter meeting in Miami Beach. If the unions balk at cooperating with Nixon, say top Administration officials, the President will hardly be able to escape a bruising battle. Nixon would prefer to avoid a showdown because the hardhats have enormous political influence...