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It’s bad enough when government acquiesces in societal degradation by winking at “broken windows,” the “minor” crimes that precede murder, rape, assault and overall civic breakdown.
But it’s immeasurably worse when elected officials and their functionaries themselves wield the bats and throw the stones. This is the lamentable state of things in New York City, a hapless creature of the state government in Albany that wields far too much sway over Big Apple affairs.
Our elected governors and legislators actively abet activities once widely and properly understood to be serious vices, but are today regarded in many elite minds as harmless habits and mere “lifestyle” choices.”
A rendering of the casino proposed by Wynn at Hudson Yards. Wynn recently withdrew their casino plan citing unviability, a move other casino operators vying for a spot in Gotham should also consider. Related Companies and Wynn Resorts
Casino gambling, like lotteries and sports betting, effectively imposes a regressive tax on those least able to afford it. It facilitates organized crime and rarely, if ever, delivers the economic and employment benefits claimed for it by well-paid lobbyists.
Albany legislators in 2022 voted to authorize up to three new casino licenses downstate, including in the Big Apple. Real estate companies teamed up with casino operators and rushed in with proposals. One prominent partnership, Related Companies and Wynn Resorts, yanked its scheme for a complex at Hudson Yards from consideration this week, leaving eight proposals still in contention.
Today, the city’s economy is on an upswing from COVID-era doldrums. The COVID-hobbled real estate market is surging anew. Nearly all the jobs lost to the pandemic have been regained. Tourism hit a near-record high in 2024.
What purposes, then, would casinos serve at, for example, the Coney Island Boardwalk or next to Citi Field? Only to further impoverish lower-income residents lured by the false promise of riches. And, of course, to fatten the wallets of developers, casino moguls, and politicians, to whom will redound incalculable largesse from the beneficiaries of their support.
Next up: marijuana. The risks of unchecked consumption are no secret, including the weed’s addictive properties that can lead to mental illness and to abuse of stronger drugs, legal and illegal.
New York has a dubious history in its efforts to legalize vice. The state legalized marijuana in 2021, which led to hundreds of illegal pot shops, along with a handful of fancy cannabis dispensaries like Doobie. Emmy Park
New York decriminalized marijuana in 2019. But, as one socially conscious Mafia don thundered in “The Godfather,” the trade would be “controlled.” There would be strict licensing agreements! Big fines for ignoring them!
Ahem — removing criminal penalties sparked a whole new industry of thousands of unlicensed vendors in the five boroughs.
City Hall and the NYPD cracked down, shuttering many hundreds of creepy establishments (the Times Square Alliance points out that all but two of 13 unlicensed merchants working out of storefronts on Seventh and Eighth avenues have been padlocked since last summer).
Rather than mitigate the damage done by pot, the posh new shops merely camouflage it in high design. Emmy Park
But while the closings of dope shops full of visibly sinister activities came as a relief, the Legislature’s zeal to flaunt its Woke credentials didn’t spare us from the scourge of legal pot peddlers, whose numbers have multiplied.
The motto of Charlie Fox, a three-story emporium at Seventh Avenue and West 49th Street that looks more like a supper club, is “cannabis presented through a luxury lens.”
The proliferation of nicely designed, state-sanctioned “dispensaries” might have a worse effect on public perception than their creepy predecessors. Surely, products sold in a “curated” environment by “knowledgeable budtenders,” as the inaptly named Travel Agency on Fifth Avenue boasts, can’t be bad for you, right?
There are now rumblings that New York may consider decriminalizing prostitution. NYPJ
Prostitution is the next frontier for those who would decriminalize everything short of first-degree murder.
The state has chipped away at laws governing “sex workers” since 2013. Women arrested for flesh-peddling were diverted to “Human Trafficking Intervention Courts,” where arrested perpetrators often had charges reduced or thrown out. As noted by City Journal’s Seth Barron, the result was that New York City prostitution-related arrests fell from tens of thousands in the 1980s to barely 100 in 2022 (also due to less aggressive policing and to “bail reform”).
Perceptions that the law was going easy on prostitutes yielded sidewalk concentrations of hustling, body-selling women for the first time in decades. The scourge on Roosevelt Avenue in Jackson Heights went unchecked until this newspaper recently called attention to it, prompting the NYPD to finally crack down.
It took months before Queens’ prostitution problem was tackled, which only further compromised the safety of the women impacted by the sex trade, critics claim. NYPJ
However, radical legislators including state Senate members Julia Salazar and Jessica Ramos, whose districts include parts of Queens and Brooklyn, advocate for total decriminalization.
But who are the victims of casinos, dope stores and “sex work”? Those who can least afford them, the disadvantaged and poor for whom lefty legislators pretend to advocate — never mind the miserable consequences for them of what we once called vice. scuozzo@nypost.com
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