Down by the Hamptons’ Riverside
Long Island’s town of Southampton covers 295 square miles including a varied range of communities, some quite different from the village of Southampton that is familiar to seasonal visitors. One...
View ArticleTight End of the College Sports Craze
Sometimes journalists look for the opposite of the silver lining. That’s the case with this month’s New York Times report on how the now-giant business of “college” football has tightened the...
View ArticleA Top College for Long Island–Two Cheers
The New York Times at year end caught up with a significant academic story in its backyard, the emergence of Stony Brook University on Long Island as a prestige state research institution. But, being...
View ArticleTrashy People in Fancy Zip Codes
Litter and large-scale refuse dumping is a continuing–perhaps even worsening–problem in the towns of Southampton and East Hampton, N.Y., as this week’s article in the local Star reports. As more...
View ArticleLong Island Supe Wants to Build
Even with diminished editorial resources, like most “dailies,” Newsday remains often the only public-affairs coverage resource for much of its home base of Long Island, N.Y. So this week it reported...
View ArticleLosing the Virtue of Volunteerism
The Wall Street Journal last week published this ungenerous review of Chris Anderson’s new book, Infectious Generosity. And I can’t say the critic was wrong to zing the boss of TED Talks for...
View ArticleHamptons Farmland: A Death and a Legacy
A significant but underappreciated aspect of the South Fork of Long Island land-preservation story is the role that old farming families have played. This is particularly true of the Polish clans that...
View ArticleChase Is Happy to Be ‘Just Another Bank’
This Wall Street Journal article of the past week spotlights the unusual (for today) strategy of opening numerous bank branches by the nation’s largest such financial institution, J.P Morgan Chase. It...
View ArticleHe Comes to Bury the Tax Cutters
Michael J. Graetz long ago established himself as a nettle in the side of those who promote lower tax rates for economic growth–in recent times what’s known as a “supply-side” agenda. Today Princeton...
View ArticleA Twilight Strategy on Hong Kong
The grim progression of bloody autocrats in major as well as lesser quarters of the globe can make for personal and political paralysis here in the U.S. When Alexei Navalny is snuffed out in Russia...
View ArticleRuptured Democracy? Add a Think Tank
A full-page advertisement (there are still a few!) in today’s print New York Times salutes an act of philanthropy but is full of ironies. The gift is $59 million from the HMO fortune of Leonard...
View ArticleYIMBY Can Populate Conference Halls
This weekend’s New York Times article marvels over the apparent embrace of New Urbanist notions of densified and commercially active housing corridors by a seemingly fresh breed of market-oriented...
View ArticleLast Shot at New Golf in Greater Hamptons
When an 18-hole golf club—private and exclusive—opens in the next few years at the controversial Lewis Road luxury development in East Quogue, it will mark the latest and probably the last of 135...
View ArticleA Dollar Store with a Difference
A few months short of its 42nd birthday, the California-based sundries-and-more chain 99 Cents Only is going to die. An Orange County columnist for the Los Angeles Times delivers this fond obituary...
View ArticleThe Housing Issue Begins to Bite
As we’re reminded constantly, the U.S. is an increasingly polarized society, politically and otherwise. It is getting ever more so “otherwise” in the housing market, where many enjoy rising property...
View ArticleDictator, Not Democracy, Initiated Korean Miracle
The most interesting aspect of yesterday’s discussion at the Korea Society in New York concerned Park Chung Hee, the transformative autocrat who ruled from Seoul for most of the 1960s and 1970s. He...
View ArticleEmpty or Illicit? NYC Shops for a Solution
New York City, like many urban areas, has suffered vacant storefronts in recent years. The causes are likely many: online shopping, property crime, difficulty in hiring low-wage staff or paying the...
View ArticleTipplers Tax: How NY Hamstrings ‘Big Grocery’
The antitrust-activist Federal Trade Commission (FTC) under the Biden administration and chair Lina Khan moved earlier this year to block a merger between grocery oligarchs Kroger and Albertsons. Its...
View ArticleBedroom Reform for Today’s Housing Crisis
Long Island, N.Y.’s East End has a housing price/supply crunch, like the United Kingdom. So it might want to look at an earnest argument out of the UK for addressing the scarcity by restricting or...
View ArticleHome Prices Tend to Level Out, If Not Off
Wait long enough, and many difference in residential real-estate prices get arbitraged away. That’s one takeaway, at least down to the metropolitan area, from this week’s data release from the Federal...
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