[jazz music]
[Peter] In the great city of New York,
Benjamin thanks for meeting up.
-It’s good to be back.
-Yeah right.
-DC, Chicago, New York.
-Yeah.
New York is the city
that invented grifting.
It invented corruption.
But what separates it from Chicago
it could stare itself in the face
with sobriety
and say we can do better.
It both invents the greatest corruption,
the worst, the smartest forms,
but then it figures out ways to improve it
and to make this city really run.
So we’ll start in 1870s, we’ll go
to the 1970s, and we’ll go to today.
And we got a nice performance going on.
We got the performance
and right over here
I just spotted this view.
We have the Statue of Liberty.
Look at that.
This is right as people
are getting off the boat
we got folks here doing the entertainment.
And Peter, this is what happened
in America’s early days
’cause Fort Clinton, Castle Clinton,
is right over there.
Prior to Ellis Island days
that’s where immigrants came in.
They got processed.
And as they were coming off the boat
there’s a guy named Boss Tweed.
He runs the city machine during the time.
His agents are coming down
just as they’re coming off the boat here
and they know to get them.
Boss Tweeds folks are coming down
and they say you need a job,
you need a place to stay,
and I don’t want you minding
what we’re doing in City Hall.
And they figured out
how to define corruption in New York.
And we’ll talk about that soon.
[high energy music]
[man speaking Spanish]
Peter you remember
when we went through Chicago
we tried to think about
how do we define corruption
and how do we look at
how well is a city operating.
So let’s do that with New York
and just kind of go through
some of the top line numbers.
Okay.
Crime is generally down
about 4 to 5% across the board.
Homicides are down 40 to 50%,
somewhere in there.
-40 to 50?
-40 to 50%.
-Wow that’s great.
Youth shootings have gone way up.
That’s largely due to a change
in state law about when teenagers
go to family court or adult court.
-It’s more permissive now.
-Okay.
So there’s not as hefty of consequences.
So there’s been some uptick unfortunately.
And they’re looking at
getting rid of that change in the law.
Pretty low levels of satisfaction
with New York City performance.
About 25% of the populace is satisfied
with the services that are being provided.
Education concerns,
public safety concerns,
and the quality
of what’s being done in the city
are the number one complaints here.
Okay.
When we think about New York it’s really
important to think about how unique it is.
It has a budget of $110 billion a year.
-Wow.
-That is more than 46 states in America.
Only four states
have budgets that are larger
than the metropolitan New York City area.
-Okay so greater metro
which is roughly around 20 mil.
Somewhere in there.
So Benjamin before we get going on this
you’re going to
come up with information today.
Can we put all the sources down below?
We will. Just as we did–
So when you drop these crime numbers
you’re going to give me the sources?
Every one I’ll give you a source
and I can guarantee you
on one or two of these
I will mess something up
and we’ll get comments on it.
Someone’s going to comment
which they should.
-They should. Absolutely.
-The goal here is truth.
I hope you’re not pushing
a political angle.
-I don’t think you are.
-No.
As we know from before I come from
a background, I’m a Republican.
Yeah.
I do a lot of
fun constitutional litigation
but I acknowledge good faith arguments
from the Left.
It’s what our founders did.
Hamilton and Madison didn’t agree
on all aspects of the Constitution.
But they had
good faith arguments about it.
Corruption is not a partisan issue.
-Right. So there is
a demographic in the country
that wants truth as the North Star.
-They’re not with a party necessarily.
-Right.
For example I don’t have any allegiance.
I’m a registered Independent.
I’m going to go with
whose policies I like better.
And I’ll switch quickly.
I’m crossing over.
It’s not like sports teams for me.
You’re with a lot of Americans.
A lot of Americans are moderate.
Many are independent and… yeah.
The goal of what I do is not to
ramp up and be a cheerleader
for my side or to double down
on political controversy
but to educate you and for everyone to
walk away with a little more information,
a little more history and principles.
Okay. And your background for those
that don’t know, First Amendment attorney.
I do constitutional litigation
and mostly First Amendment work
across the country
usually in the federal courts.
And I studied corruption.
I was counsel to two chairmen
of the Federal Election Commission.
I’ve worked in campaign finance
and anti-corruption measures.
So I’m in New York a lot.
I’ve got two, three, four cases
pending here now.
-Okay.
Two in federal court, two in state court.
So I’m here a lot.
I know a good deal about the stories
but I’m not a resident
so I can’t offer that part.
-You’ll have other folks who do that.
-Yeah right.
[siren blares]
[Peter] They’re arresting you. [chuckles]
[man] What’s going on?
What’s up man? How you doing?
-Good.
-Good. All right mate.
-Oh yeah yeah.
-Are you from Aussie, mate?
-No England.
-Oh England. Sorry. That was…
I watch you on YouTube.
Okay. How’s New York?
You having a good time?
Yes. Amazing time.
-You’re loving it?
-Yeah.
We just came from Chicago.
Chicago’s cleaner.
I think Chicago is way better.
No. It’s different.
This is chaos is its best.
-Yeah.
-It’s like London on steroids.
[Peter] Oh. So what’s more thriving
right now, New York or London?
-Probably here.
-Here I would say.
Okay.
Okay, our Uber’s here. Take care you guys.
Have a good trip.
Where are we off to Benjamin?
We are heading to City Hall Park
and to Tweed Courthouse.
Okay.
-Thanks.
Hello. How are you?
[jazz music]
[Peter] Take care.
That’s what’s so awesome about New York.
Guys like this from Tajikistan,
just cool guys.
I remember going to his country
many years ago they were so good to me.
But it’s just everything, you know?
It’s like it’s hard to put into words
you have to feel it.
-Right.
-The energy here.
You’re in 8.5 million people.
You’re in a giant economy
and all the world
is at your fingertips right here.
And we were just talking about in the car
it attracts both hustlers and con men
but it also brings
really smart people the reformers.
Right.
Some of the greatest minds
about how do we clean this mess up?
Let’s turn on in here.
We’re going to go to City Hall Park.
And as the name suggests,
City Hall is here.
The mayor’s office is here.
The 51 members
of the city council meet here.
But right near City Hall
is the Tweed Courthouse
and that’s a fantastic story
that not everybody knows about New York.
So Boss Tweed was called the grand Sachem
of the New York democratic
political machine of Tammany Hall.
These were Native American terms.
They often used these to dress
themselves up as authentic Americans.
They weren’t part of
the aristocratic tradition from Europe.
And so they would use
art, imagery, and titles
that were common to Native Americans.
We’re going to go by the fountain
because I think it’s beautiful.
So Boss Tweed was simply famous
for figuring out,
as we talked about
when we were down by the Clinton Castle,
immigrants are coming off of
the boats in record numbers.
This is the start of the Gilded Age
in the 1860s, 1870s.
We have an influx of people
from all over the world coming here.
And they need jobs.
They need to figure out
how they fit into society.
And a smooth political operator
sent his team down
to figure that out and put them
in different parts of the city.
And at the same time to be able to
build an expansive machine
that said whenever
you do business in New York
whenever you’re doing something
for the city of New York
my team is getting at least 15%
of that coming back.
So we’ve got City Hall
but just adjacent to it
is the Tweed Courthouse.
Originally budgeted at
about $250,000 in the 1860s.
New York paid more than twice
of what we paid for the state of Alaska.
So that was about $14 million.
Which equates to today’s dollars
of about $250 to $300 million.
Carpenters came in and they
would make over $100,000
during that timeframe’s period money
in rooms that had no wood.
So everything was padded.
There was no work
or it was excessively billed for hours.
15% of it going back to the Tammany crew.
They pocketed
somewhere between $1 to $5 billion
among their little gang running New York.
Now Boss Tweed was eventually indicted
on 204 counts of conspiracy, embezzlement,
all these sorts of things.
Using public funds for private purposes.
And he tried to flee to Spain.
He took a boat to Cuba with his mistress.
And then he went on over to Spain.
But here’s how you capture,
how you stop corruption.
Journalists of the day,
New York Times and Harper’s Daily,
they were both writing about him.
New York Times from an intellectual side.
But Harper’s Daily was doing
weekly comic cartoons
for immigrants who weren’t as
accustomed to the English language.
And Harper’s Daily
was published in Spain as well.
So when he arrived in Spain
the authorities recognized him immediately,
captured him and brought him
back to New York.
He was found guilty
in the very courthouse
that he had built
through his grift and corruption.
New York, although it starts
with these schemes
and figuring out ways
to bring thieves into public office,
it brings some of the greatest minds
who start thinking about things
we take for granted today.
How did we get civil service exams
in government?
It came out of the Tammany Hall affairs.
Okay.
How did we get the idea that
maybe the public needs some transparency
about budgeting and about
monetary figures from government?
That came out of Tammany.
And so they started to build in
these protections
in the law to be able to provide
some level of accountability to the public.
And I think that’s a great thing.
To give you a sense of
how freewheeling it was at the time
another one of his associates
George Washington Pluckett,
his famous quote is
“If I see an opportunity, I take it.”
There’s no harm as long as money’s
not coming out of the government’s budget.
Pluckett went around and bought up swamp
parcels and different land that he knew
because of inside information
working in government
would be beneficial in the future.
So he knew a park
was being built somewhere.
He knew a new financial center
was going up.
He’d buy up all these little parcels.
Today we would think of that as usually
violating various ethical provisions
and against good standards
of public service.
But it was openly celebrated
in the Gilded Age.
And so we’re left with this today.
I believe there’s pre-K
and educational services that are here.
There’s some other governmental offices
that are in the building.
It’s a beauty of course to see.
[Peter] It’s beautiful here.
-But is it worth more than
twice the state of Alaska?
-That is wild.
-I think Alaskans might say no.
-Do you want to check it out?
-Yeah.
See if we can go inside here.
Okay so I like your approach Benjamin.
You always go to historical bedrock
before you talk about…
-Where we are.
-Where we are.
-And everything comes from something.
-Yes.
If you don’t understand
the patterns and the principles
you’ll never solve them today.
It’s not about the people
and the particular drama you see today.
There’s a long history
of how it got to where it is.
And by understanding that
we can do better to stop it
and have responsible government today.
[Peter] Let’s see if we can get in here.
[Peter] Alright. That’s not gonna happen.
Well we’re not feeling a sense of
openness or transparency that
I think the reformers from
the Tammany Hall era might have said
would be good for the public
to be able to enter a government building.
This is the Department of Education
administrative offices.
You’d think maybe the public
could come in and take a tour but…
-Yeah to be fair
they might have tours right?
-We don’t know.
-They might.
Yeah she wasn’t having it.
[Peter] Look at that beauty.
That’s a Frank Gehry building.
It is so awesome down here.
I forgot how great it is here.
[Benjamin] This is the New York I know
because this block
is where I spend most of my time.
Why? Well this building right here
is the federal courthouse.
The United States District Court
for the Southern District of New York
as well as the Second Circuit
Federal Court of Appeals.
I have a journalist free speech case
going on in the Southern District.
I have a Second Amendment challenge
to New York law
at the Second Circuit right now.
And as we move over to the next building
we have the State Supreme Court.
New York calls its trial-level courts
Supreme Courts.
It’s not the Supreme Court
as you might think of it.
It’s their lowest-level court.
-So being the corruption video it is
with the corruption expert,
how are our courts functioning overall?
I know that’s a wide question
but say at this level.
I think they function admirably well.
And in particular in New York,
the Southern District,
the prosecutor’s office here has taken
a very aggressive no-nonsense stance
when it comes to corruption
and dealing with bad actors.
So we’ll talk about
folks like Sheldon Silver
who was the assembly speaker
in New York
and all the corruption
and dishonest dealings he was engaged with
and courts deal with it well.
But the side you don’t want to hear,
the side your audience doesn’t want to hear
the First Amendment
also puts kind of limits
on what people might want
to be made corrupt or illegal.
But there’s a balance.
So I think from the popular eye
there’s probably more that people
think should be done.
I think they’re doing pretty well.
So all the beauty of New York
also has a downside.
If we look forward where we’re going here
you can see some
extensive scaffolding on the side.
-They’re doing work on the building.
-Oh, up there? Yep.
Other areas of New York you can see
literally blocks worth of scaffolding
and these sidewalk tents
to protect your head
in case something drops down.
New York has 8,000 scaffolding projects
going on simultaneously.
There’s over 500 miles of scaffolding
in the city of New York.
-Seriously?
It’s far greater than any other
municipality across the United States.
So you have to ask yourself
is there something that’s really special
about New York buildings
that maybe it requires more work
and more scaffolding?
Or is there something else that’s going on?
Well there’s been a lot
of complaints about this.
We’ve gotta look in
pretty deep into the system.
Looks like we have a perp walk
coming up by the way.
I’ll wait a second.
-Something happening here. Going to court?
-Yeah.
So what we need to do is look deeper.
And so New York we know is
heavily a union-favored city.
To be able to do work here
means higher labor costs.
It has pretty stringent standards
compared to almost any other municipality
about what housing
and building safety codes look like.
And their calls for inspections
are far more frequent
than say Chicago, Los Angeles,
anywhere else in the nation.
So if you are owning
say this building here
and you have to have
these inspectors come in every so often
and tell you that
you need to replace some facade
and do stonework and the like.
That’s an expensive amount of money
that goes into the uptake of it.
What if you had a way out of this?
-Gimme the way out Benjamin.
-Here’s a way out.
And I’m sure there was a creative lawyer
like me figuring this out.
Get some scaffolding put up.
You’re in compliance
temporarily with the law.
You don’t have to spend
the hundreds of thousands on the stonework.
Well your three months run up.
“Could we get a six-month extension?”
“Could we get another six-month extension?”
There are scaffolding projects in New York
that have been here more than 10 years.
And it’s likely because
it’s so expensive to do the work
and there are rumors, these are unproven,
that the people who do this
contracting work, the scaffolding work,
put political pressure within the city hall
to allow for this flexibility
so that they can rake in this money
and that the property owners
don’t have to put out that money.
So on paper it looks good.
We have these stringent safety codes
that are in place.
But if you can delay it 7 years, 10 years,
and just put up scaffolding
and pay a fraction of the cost
well you get this.
You get 500 miles of scaffolding.
-We don’t know that’s the case here.
-We don’t know what’s going on.
This is just an example of scaffolding.
-But it is–
-It’s widely reported.
-It is Monday.
-Yes.
Nobody’s working up there.
And I was… I… So…
Because I like to be prepared
for your tours I do a pre-walk.
I got in last night.
I did about three hours of walking around.
I walked this morning too
during work hours.
I haven’t seen a soul
on any scaffolding project.
-It looks almost permanent.
It’s been here a while.
-It detracts from the beauty
and the architecture of New York.
Right.
Maybe it deprives New York citizens
of some of the public safety
that they’ve voted in
to have in their buildings.
-Here we go. All down here.
-Yeah.
Yeah this has been around.
You can see it’s just…
-It’s got cracks.
[Peter] We’re in Chinatown now.
[Benjamin] We’re just touching Chinatown.
We’re gonna go a few more blocks forward
to the old police headquarters.
All right guys. Take a little break
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Now back to the story.
[Benjamin] So we’re jumping forward
100 years from Tammany Hall days
where we passed reform and we tried
to clean up city government
and did in many ways.
This is the police headquarters
until the 1970s.
But in the 1960s
a police officer named Frank Serpico
starts coming to the New York Times
and other newspapers
suggesting that nearly all of the New York
Police Department is on the take.
And it sounds so outrageous
and so conspiracy oriented
that newspapers largely ignore him.
So for half a decade
he takes copious notes.
He gets evidence, gets the receipts.
Okay.
of what’s actually going on
and he along with another police partner
come to the New York Times
and they run a story
and it gets to the point of asking
Peter, are you a meat eater
or a grass eater?
-I like grass fed beef.
-So kind of a mix.
-I like… Yeah.
At the time in 1960s New York
the New York Police divided themselves
between what they called
grass eaters and meat eaters.
Grass eaters were folks,
police officers who said,
“You know if I give somebody a pass
on a parking ticket
I get that five dollars that ten dollars.”
They got little trinkets
for every little thing that they did.
Yeah.
The meat eaters set up extensive rackets.
-Yeah.
So these guys are similar to the mafia
in that you open up a floral shop in town
police department officer shows up
and he says, you know,
welcome you to the neighborhood.
There’s been so many accidents
and crime here
it would be a shame if anything happened
to your little floral shop
but for a hundred dollars a month
to the police auxiliary fund
we’ll be sure to make sure
you’re taken care of.
And they ran these
sort of rackets extensively.
The
later review is about 90%
of New York’s police
were on the take or as they called it
at the time, on the ham.
-Okay how long did that go on until?
So it’s busted open
in the early 1970s right?
-So this is when the New York Times–
-That late?!
-…runs the story.
-Wow.
We have what’s called the
Knapp Commission
where we bring the officers forward
there’s wide scale
investigations that are done.
They bring in dirty officers
who admit to what’s going on
and how extensive and how deep this is.
And again, a lot of the things
that we think of as common sense today
happened because New York took the time
through the Knapp Commission to study this.
So better civil service entrance exams
for police.
Identifying who’s
more likely to be on the take.
Who’s an officer who’s
more likely to do that.
Common sense things
like we need to boost up salary.
The higher government salary goes up
and you’re able to pay for your family
and pay for your expenses
the less likely you are to be on the ham.
To be on the take.
And to enter into these kind of things
to create real consequences
if you break the law.
Beforehand
it was a lot of wrist slapping.
Development, if you’ve watched
a police show on television
you see internal affairs
and that kind of a thing.
We think of that as common.
It wasn’t common.
New York invented that and were able to
create a separate internal affairs unit
that could withstand political pressure,
wasn’t subject to the normal police
chain of command and these sorts of things.
So it was really big steps forward
to take care of that.
Okay so that existed
in the early ’70s here.
I’ve lived in a few places in the world.
I’ve traveled extensively.
I was just in Columbia this last winter.
We had to pay off a cop.
My buddy was driving, got pulled over.
It was more like give me some mo
and I’ll just leave you alone type stuff.
So I always thought living abroad,
and living in Ukraine,
I lived there for four years,
you could see the corruption in your face.
As in the bridge that’s not completed
that started in 1993 right?
Yeah.
Or Chernobyl which the international
community has put $2 billion towards
in decommissioning it.
And they’ve built the sarcophagus
and they’ve, you know,
decommissioned a lot of it.
But the project is supposedly
supposed to go on another 40 years.
So when I’m 87 years old
that’s supposed to come to a close.
Who knows exactly when.
But my point being is
I would have always thought
in the United States
yeah there’s corruption but so much less.
And with the petty on the surface stuff
you don’t see it as much
unless you point it out
like the scaffolding.
Right.
But at a deeper level
you think we’re a pretty corrupt
country overall?
I think well
what I mentioned at the beginning
New York, a budget of $110 billion a year.
Whenever you concentrate money
in a particular place of that size
you are waving a flag to attract thieves
and attract charlatans to come in.
And I gotta hand it to New York City.
It’s really good at figuring out
how do we stomp this out?
How do we stop it?
And the key is not to think
that you can rest on your laurels
or that the reform
you passed in 1870 or 1970
somehow cures corruption for all time.
There are always new tricks.
There are always new games.
It’s ever vigilant staying on top of it.
And it’s voices from the Left
and voices from the Right
who come together
and figure out solutions to all of this.
And New York,
it’s the place that does it.
And I have a pride in seeing that.
And so long as you stay on top of it
and you can be as dynamic as the thieves
I think we’re doing okay.
And don’t expect it to go away.
-Better than Chicago?
-Yes.
How about Los Angeles?
I think better functioning
than Los Angeles too
in terms of debt.
In terms of performance for education.
I don’t know crime off the top of my head.
-Okay.
Sir, do you know what these are?
Is that a water tank up there?
[man] I have no idea.
I’ve never noticed that
in New York before.
I’ve seen them all over the place now.
-Chicago.
-Yeah. It’s interesting.
[man 2]…how am I supposed to know?
-Your friend?
-Maybe ask him.
[chuckling]
[man 3] Street pressure goes
up five stories. About 85 feet.
[Benjamin] Aha, there ya go.
-Anything above that…
-You need your own water tank.
The water tank gets pumped up
and then it gravitationally…
This building is one of
the most famous buildings in the city.
-This is?
-One of the original
ten landmark buildings.
It was a department store.
It opened in 1858.
It was like the Bonwit Teller,
Saks Fifth Avenue.
Broadway was…
This was like the hot stretch.
Uptown didn’t happen yet.
Oh yeah?
Happened very quickly.
[Benjamin] Yeah, but at the time–
But at the time there were the store,
Brooks Brothers, and Lord & Taylor.
-The original.
-Right here?
Right here on Broadway.
It’s called Haughwout,
H-A-U-G-H-W-O-U-T.
So he was a merchant.
It’s modeled after some building in Venice.
[Peter] And you were saying off camera
you’re dealing with a little
corruption here right now in New York?
Fire department summons.
Generally the fire department
was the good agents.
[Benjamin chuckles]
But with COVID
nobody stopped working at the office
and they put everything into
some computer system.
And it keeps spitting out the same summons
no matter how many times we show them
the paperwork that we resolved it.
And they’re trying to get
a thousand dollars from me.
Your building here?
This is my building.
We have a sprinkler system which is
required to be inspected, pressure tested.
It’s called a hydrostatic pressure test.
Determine whether the pipes
will hold the pressure if there’s a fire.
And the fire department
brings in their pumpers
and they attach it to the standpipe there
and it pumps up the pressure
in the sprinkler system.
So you’re required by law.
Besides to have monthly,
and quarterly, and annually,
and there’s a five year test.
Which involves an inspector
from the fire department
and not just the sprinkler company.
And he came and we did it.
I have the paperwork. I notarized it.
We signed this document.
And what’s really terrible actually
to start it off they used to notify you
have to do your five year hydrostatic test.
This year they came in on January 6th
a Russian woman inspector
and they issued a summons
instead of a notification.
So you start off
being in violation of the law
even though you have all of 2025
to do the hydrostatic test.
So that just starts it off.
So of course we do everything by the book
because you know
you’re gonna have problems if you don’t.
But it’s just I’m on a carousel
of getting notices
saying violation has been cured
no further action is required.
And then you get a new violation.
And then they say you didn’t show up
for the hearing even though it says
you’re not required
to show up for a hearing.
[laughter]
And these are the benefits
of big government
protecting you.
This is… yeah.
[Peter] You don’t pay many taxes though
so it’s probably not an issue.
-[Benjamin laughs]
-What?
It’s pretty cheap in New York.
One of the few municipalities
with an income tax.
I used to have a gallery here
but I couldn’t afford it anymore.
They raised the taxes to such a point that
there’s no culture in SoHo.
SoHo had 300 galleries
until the 90s and then the taxes just…
-Pushed the galleries out?
Pushed the creative enterprises
out of SoHo.
It’s still thriving as
a commercial district
but retail stores haven’t.
You see them go out of business
all the time.
Because who can afford?
I…
What I charge for rent you think that
I would have a house in the Hamptons.
But it all goes to the government.
-All of it.
-Right.
It’s all siphoned.
I have my loft and my studio
and my memories
and I can sell the building
and live in Delray or some place.
But I’m just a masochist.
[laughter]
[subway train passes]
[Benjamin] In addition to
police corruption in the ’60s
as it turned out New York City
was gravely in debt to the tune of
several billion dollars.
It was tinkering on bankruptcy.
Publicly threatening that.
It reached out to
the federal government for a bailout
to which President Ford at the time
famously said that they could drop dead.
He later reconsidered that and there was
limited federal aid for New York.
But the question is
didn’t we cure all the problems
in the 1870s?
Didn’t we get to the root of all this?
My insistent lesson to everyone is
thieves get smarter and figure out
new ways to purloin the public purse.
Those of us on the Right
and those of us on the Left
who care about this issue
have to be ever vigilant about this.
So in the ’60s those who weren’t
so honest of government actors
figured out a couple tricks.
The first one was they figured out
what is the reporting scheme
for when we have to show the public
the exact money that we spent?
And if we wait till
just right at the end period time…
Okay.
…we can do a balloon payment to a–
[engine revs]
Love those.
If we wait till the end point
of a reporting period
we can show a clean book to the public.
But then maybe we spend
an additional 25, 30
that won’t show up for some time
and the public won’t get upset about it.
And looks like we’re all good clean actors.
They also figured out this trick.
Create quasi-government
private corporate service organizations.
So if you’re the Department of Education
and you’re running deep in the red
and you don’t want to show that
you create the Department of
New York Education Services Corp.
Then you shift all of your debt
into the corp entity.
The corp entity has
no reporting obligations at that time
under state or city law
to be able to show that.
So New York Department
of Education, it’s running in the black.
It’s doing all these great programs
and it’s doing so well.
Meanwhile this mountain
of debt is growing.
So you see this promulgation.
Explosion of all these little
corporate government entities
hiding debt from the taxpayer.
And so a result of all this
they had I think it was the Council of 71.
A wide array of smart reformers,
lawyers, retired judges,
getting together and figuring out
how do we stop this in the future.
-Looks like we got a street market.
-Yeah.
[Peter] They got
the name brands out here, Prada.
Is this stuff legal in New York?
[Benjamin] I don’t know
the exact status of this.
Do you need permits or no?
-Yeah I don’t know that.
-Doubt it.
The better question is is that stuff legal?
-Oh the Prada?
-Yeah.
-He’s telling me I can’t record.
-Yeah.
-He’d be wrong about that.
-Sorry dude.
Be wrong about that.
So
the point of all what I was just discussing
1960s they figure out new creative ways
to hide debt and to be able to
be slow in reporting what actual spending
looks like to the people.
And so they put firm limits
in the 1970s on
use of these entities.
Corporate entities that could hide debt.
They increase transparency requirements.
They require more timely reporting
of all money that is spent
and if you have these balloon payments
that they’re reported
more quickly to the public.
-Benjamin it’s just a process
of someone very savvy
and corrupt figuring out
how to maneuver the system
and then how fast
can the system catch up with it
change the laws
and then how fast is the next…
Opportunist go down that direction.
It’s just a constant game, huh?
And I think there’s a usual set of actors
because if we go back to Tammany Hall
if we go back to Frank Serpico
what do we have?
We usually have a whistleblower.
Someone who possesses.
extraordinary courage.
Someone who’s willing
to put their life on the line.
Serpico by the way
after he testified
and provided all this evidence
he was called to a heroin sting site.
He was shot
in doing the investigation.
Left dead on the floor, seemingly dead.
None of his fellow officers
called for backup
or for a paramedic to come rescue him.
-Oh geez.
It was a butcher local businessman
who found him.
He just barely lived.
That was how disliked he was.
So he became a pariah
in New York at the time.
And it takes whistleblowers
but then it takes media.
Honest media whether it’s
a left-leaning organization
like the New York Times or
a right-winger, James O’Keefe.
Any of these sorts of entities to be able
to take that story and run with it
show it to the American public
and then you usually have
commissions of individuals
lawyers, political activists,
folks who have been embedded in this
who can sit down and figure it out.
Now I mentioned before I’m conservative.
I’ll give credit to the Left.
I think New York’s
done a good job with their comptroller
and some government agencies
in giving them a little more power
to root this out and find corruption.
I’m not a big fan of government power
or government authority
but in this area you do need some
aggressive watchdogs.
And sometimes
it’s not just the press and not just the
uh, courageous whistleblower.
Sometimes you need that
sort of comptroller auditor and the like.
-So the comptroller auditor right now
are they doing a good job would you say?
Based on what they’ve pulled out
about spending during COVID
and spending on
the asylum migrant supposed crisis
I would say they’re doing fantastic.
We’ll get to that pretty soon.
Okay.
But they’ve uncovered
some interesting stories
and again it goes back to,
okay we thought we cured this in the 1970s,
50, 60 years ago.
-Turns out–
-It’s just whack-a-mole.
Not so much because there are always
loopholes there are always exclusions…
Okay.
And it just takes some clever folks
to figure out how to maneuver around it.
[Benjamin] Now we are approaching
56 Leonard Street.
It’s no surprise to anyone
that rents in Manhattan
and real estate prices
are dramatically high.
Manhattan has one of
the highest prices in the nation.
Average is $5,000 a month
for rent in Manhattan.
We get some buildings like this
which draw attention
because these tend to be very pricey
pieces of development.
And they’re often done in cooperation
of a program called the 421-a
Real Estate Affordable
Housing Tax Exemption.
So a developer says
I want to build a luxury unit
and I’m going to agree to somewhere somehow
build some affordable
housing units in New York.
Now when this particular
building was developed
it gets a certificate of 421-a compliance.
So it gets tax breaks and the people
in here have less taxes as well.
But it lost its 421-a exemption
because it wasn’t actually building
affordable housing anywhere in New York.
And there’s been a series of these
sorts of developments including 427-1.
One which is
Billionaire’s Row in Manhattan.
That’s up by Central Park.
And there we’re looking at
in the billions of lost revenue every year
that go to New York
because of these tax breaks.
They allow rather wealthy individuals
to have less tax exposure
when developing these.
These are often empty.
They call them ghost apartments
because foreigners often purchase these up
as a sort of investment property.
And you come by at night
and you’ll see in a lot of these properties
that the lights are not on.
They’re not occupied or they’re occupied
a couple days out of the year.
There have been suspicious people
involved in money laundering
and these sorts of things.
Using it as an investment property
flowing money in and out.
This property in particular
has had a lot of listings
that the properties get sold,
bought, traded get flipped.
-Okay.
-And not a lot of people
actually live in there.
So this is something that’s sort of
stooping people in New York City
because everyone wants affordable housing.
They want access to that.
They don’t think that foreigners
buying up property and land
seems inherently fair.
Nor do tax breaks where they don’t actually
deliver affordable housing seem fair
to the people in New York.
And why are they sitting vacant?
Why are they sitting empty
most of the time?
Is this the way you want to run a country?
Now a lot of the details
still have to… Not a country, a city.
A lot of the details
still have to be filled in.
So anything that’s modern
we’ve got to be careful
about making any allegations
about what’s happening and occurring.
But affordability and housing accessibility
is a really important issue
especially for friends on the Left.
That’s a particular issue
they’re focusing on.
So this is just one example in New York.
If we went up by Central Park
we’d see Billionaires Row.
Again something that
I think is one-third full.
It’s full of these tax exemptions
that the Comptroller of New York
and other good government groups
have said this is costing
the city and state of New York
billions of dollars in revenue every year.
They’re not out performing
and doing their obligations
and we need to do better than this.
[Benjamin] Now personally
I don’t have any problem
if you’re a billionaire
or a hundred millionaire
and you want to live in one of those
two days out of the year.
I do have problems and concerns if
you’re taking money out of the public dole.
I mean it’s a problem
all over the country right? Housing.
Yeah.
Especially young people.
How do you get into your starter home?
Now in New York you’re not getting…
Or Manhattan at least there’s no
starter home that you can buy into.
Everything’s probably
in the millions to start right?
Yeah.
You get out of Manhattan
for your starter home.
You have to get out of Manhattan
but I do have a problem.
New York is
such an international place right?
So I don’t know how it would work here
but I do have a problem with
parts of the country
where a lot of foreign investment comes in
and buys up real estate stock.
Like mainland Chinese money
can buy land here.
There’s no way we can invest
in real estate over there.
Yeah.
And if the prices, the more demand,
the more the prices go up,
and if we let the world
just park their money here
then it drives the prices up
for our residents.
And that’s the problem ’cause you want
people to have skin in the game.
You want them to have a place
they can call their home.
Right.
States are exploring options
on that and limiting ownership.
Piercing LLCs that buy land
under mysterious conditions.
[Peter] I was just in Palisades in LA.
There’s some foreign investment money.
-Buying up lots.
-Yeah. Right.
I think it’s fundamentally wrong.
I’d say that if we had an abundance
okay I could understand but we don’t
and it’s a big problem in the country.
It creates instability
within your neighborhood.
It creates doubt
about who your neighbors are.
It creates real problems
for being able to get that starter house
get that mid-level house
whatever it may be.
And yeah, so…
I think both sides would come together
on that one don’t you think?
The populist element of both sides
would come together on that.
I think so. And you’re going to test
how far you can go with that in the courts.
Because you can imagine a system
that is too severe
and makes it almost impossible
for a foreigner to come
live somewhere or do business.
But it’s probably likely that you can
impose some modest restraints and limits
on how much they can invest
and how extensively they can
in a particular neighborhood.
There’s a lot of that in Miami too.
A lot of Latin America
parks its money in Miami.
-Buys apartments.
-Yeah.
And then you get
the ghost apartments like you have here.
Yep.
It’s hard to find a restroom here
even at Starbucks, no restroom.
Peter is having an emergency.
He needs a bathroom.
I drank a lot of Black tea this morning.
I need a restroom.
-And this is actually
a weird issue in New York.
And I don’t have the answers for all this
but something smells suspicious.
Because it has a profound lack of
actual public bathrooms that are available.
When the comptroller and other
government agencies have done audits
they’ve often found that
up to two-thirds of them
are either closed or they’re missing things
like toilet paper, soap,
the water doesn’t work.
Things that you would expect.
Public restrooms here?
I don’t see many though to be honest.
There aren’t many.
And so as they’ve worked on
an initiative to build more
here’s the more curious thing.
It can cost on average somewhere between
two to five million dollars
per new bathroom that they create.
But when you look at other cities
they can do it on the cheap end
somewhere around quarter million.
On average around half a million dollars
to create a bathroom.
Now not all of that is me
creating some conspiracy hoax here
because New York has
heightened cost of labor
due to union presence so that adds in.
So let’s tack something on for that.
We have different transportation costs
or being able to come in
and bring heavy equipment and machinery
incurs additional costs for contractors.
So that brings things up a bit.
But probably not a scale of
ten times the price.
-Okay.
-So something’s happening.
Three to five million for just
like a men’s and women’s…
Standard ugly public bathroom.
-In a park type thing?
-In a park.
And New York doesn’t have them.
They know this so as I’ve mentioned
they are doing a program
to deploy more public bathrooms
at exaggerated prices.
Okay.
But there’s been
appropriate pushback on that.
Are you kidding me?
Five million dollar bathrooms?
They’re not penthouse suites?
They’re just average?
Right.
We have to get this under control.
So I don’t know
what all the prices are there
but my guess is there’s
a little bit of corruption.
There’s probably a little bit of
some padding going on there.
Heavy padding.
And I think as they investigate
New York will do what it does.
Smart people will get together
and they’ll uncover the other smart people
who weren’t so ethical and figured out
this program to get rich off of
building public bathrooms in New York.
-Okay.
-And we’ll have the details.
-[Peter] Congratulations.
-[woman] Thank you.
[photographer] Feet together, so…
[Peter] Guys, city’s looking better.
Thank you.
-How’s it been?
It’s been Okay.
-Rough?
More trash these days or less?
Um…
We’re consolidating trash.
-Consolidating?
-Yeah.
Okay.
Like it’s supposed to be.
You see the city like no one else.
What’s your take on the city right now?
Getting better.
Yeah I guess.
-It’s getting a little better?
-It’s starting to get a little better.
Always.
-It’s always improving.
-[chuckles]
[Benjamin] That’s what New York’s good at.
It’s always improving.
Yeah.
[Benjamin] You guys have
an industrious innovative spirit.
Without you guys the place stops.
So thank you.
You’re welcome.
-Thank you.
-We gotta do the trash but we have control.
Those are sort of the I hate to say,
“invisible jobs” right?
But that keep a place like this going.
Without that nobody’s doing anything.
-You know what I mean?
-Yeah I do.
Where was the bathroom?
Oh man.
I don’t think that’s happening.
Oh maybe there. I’ve been to this park.
-Success Benjamin. We made it.
-Yeah.
It took a while to find
but what a cool park. What park is this?
-Columbus Park Court.
-Oh yep.
[Peter] Haven’t done a pretzel
since last New York trip.
So I’m going to give that a go.
-Hello sir can I get a pretzel?
-Yes sir.
All right here we go.
Want some pretzel Benjamin?
I’ll just take
a little bit off if that’s okay.
It’s the same as 1985.
-[chuckling]
-There’s no difference.
Probably the same company.
They come in a pallet frozen.
But…
Yep. Tastes about that.
[Benjamin] So we’re going to
jump into modern corruption
because every era gets a new iteration.
So we’re going to start
in the early 2000s.
We’re equal opportunity here.
Democrats and Republicans
engage in this equally.
Let’s start with a Democrat.
Early 2000s we’ve got Sheldon Silver.
He’s one of the long-standing speakers
of the New York Assembly.
He prides himself
a real hero of the people.
Particularly in his ability
to help cure cancer
and to be able to bring government research
and funding to be able to do this.
So Sheldon Silver in the background
is doing special deals.
And he’s saying to doctors,
“I need asbestos patients.
So if you refer your asbestos patients
to my law firm
that does personal injury claims
I can get your government funding grants.”
So he routinely was able to get
half a million dollar cancer grants
to particular doctors
in exchange for
this lucrative business coming in.
He took in over $700,000
in that particular scheme alone.
He did another set of enterprises where
he
worked with another law firm
that would do tax appeals.
So if your property
had been overvalued or errantly valued
they would work to do that.
And so he would get business to come in
guaranteed to this particular law firm
and he got a cut out of that.
In exchange he was working to make sure
that these people were treated decently
by the New York government.
So he was tried here
in the Southern District of New York
in federal court
on money laundering,
on corruption-based charges,
fraud, embezzlement, and the like,
and he served his time and eventually died.
But we have a Republican as well,
Dean Skelos.
Who had a son who needed work.
If it sounds similar
to a recent president it should.
And this time it was Dean Skelos,
a Republican from Long Island
who said that when constituents
and powerful people came to him,
“How would you like
a new consultant on your business?
I’ve got a son. He does excellent work.”
-He’s an expert in every field.
Expert in every field and
“Just sign him up as a phantom consultant
for your particular business
and we’ll take care of
your tax property problem.
We’ll take care of your zoning issue.
We’ll take care of that licensing problem
or that summons that keeps showing up
like the gentleman told us before.”
And so all of a sudden his son,
I think it was Adam Skelos keeps showing up
as this phantom consultant everywhere.
He too was tried
in the Southern District of New York
for corruption-related charges,
money laundering and the like,
served his time.
Now out of these two stories
New York learned some rules
and they just recently enacted
some reform to help pass this
because a lot of this
came to light around 2005 to 2015
and now we’re seeing
the legislative changes come into being.
So one of them that they just passed
and is highly controversial
is that no legislator can have
side business income that exceeds $35,000.
In other words
being a legislator is a full-time job
and your time is expected to be there.
Yep.
Now there are good arguments to say
it doesn’t pay enough
and we need to be able to do our side work
that we regularly do to be able
to live in a place like Manhattan.
Yeah, sure.
So it’s under judicial review.
It’s being challenged in court.
But similar restrictions
have passed scrutiny in other states.
Let’s just say the two cases
you talked about
both the Democrat and the Republican
if they let’s just say happen
at the same time in 2025.
So if you were to read
the New York Times
you’re not going to hear
about the Democratic case.
And if you’re reading what, The Post here?
Yeah.
You’re not gonna hear about the Republican
and that’s the world we’re in.
-Right?
-It’s unfortunate.
Or there’s going to be a strong bias
or skew or in the Times
the Republican guy is gonna have
his eyes wide open
and then the lights flooding out his face
so he’s pale white.
And the Democratic guy
is gonna look better and vice versa.
And that’s the world we’re in.
We’ve lost so much right?
Because as we noted
a few times in the video.
-Corruption is not a partisan issue.
-Right.
If you’re caught putting your son
into favorable business positions
for graft purposes, that’s wrong.
Whether you’re a Republican or Democrat,
whether your team’s doing it or not.
So the public…
It’s very hard for the public
to navigate this stuff
and really understand it
unless they want to put a ton of time in.
And people usually have
their go-to media sources right?
Yeah.
And the average person
is going to stick to those.
And not crossing over to the other side
and trying to understand it
from both angles.
That’s the problem huh?
But there are new apps and I think
one of them advertises on your channel.
And I just might…
-This is true. I wasn’t even gonna.
-Ground News, I have right there.
And I happen to find them favorable
because they do the Blind Spot feature.
-I like it yeah.
-And you can get that.
Because I’m a Republican
my news trends to the right
but I have a subscription
to the New York Times like you do.
I read well-thought-out good positions
from folks I wouldn’t ordinarily agree with
because that makes me a better person.
Sometimes my tribe is wrong.
My camp is wrong.
Totally.
And I wish the Right
had a Times-type publication.
Actually I wish
there was just one publication
that sought truth as the North Star right?
-That would be better.
-Yeah.
But the New York Times,
they do have intelligent people there.
Their user interface is excellent online.
There’s a lot of
interesting stuff in there.
But any of the big stories
I know how it’s going to be covered.
It’s pretty clear. Like border for example.
If it’s the border they’re going to
talk about the one out of ten
legitimate asylum claims
in the last four years
versus the nine out of ten
that are economic migrants.
And so they choose the side and if you’re
only in that space that’s what you see.
Then you think the other side is insane.
-Right. Yep.
-How do they not get this?
It seems to be working unfortunately
as a business model.
-It is the business model yeah.
It’s an emotional trigger
to get people scared
and get them worked up
about the enemy marauders
or about how good their team is.
If the Times did a pro-Donald Trump story
they would piss off their audience.
-The majority of them.
-Yes that’s right.
And vice versa,
say Fox does a pro-Biden story.
Yeah.
Maybe you know the CHIPS Act.
The factory being built north of Phoenix.
Maybe that’s a plus for the country right?
-They’re not going to talk about it.
-No.
You know they talk about food deserts.
-We live in news deserts of sorts.
-Right.
They’re self-selected and self-imposed.
And we have to be willing
to shake ourselves out of that.
And there’s a lot of good data
on cognitive dissonance
and how difficult it is for us to do that.
But it’s the most worthwhile thing
in the world if we want a good government.
-If we want a better system.
-Yeah agreed.
All right. So you had one more case
you wanted to talk about.
Yeah. I want to check one thing
and then we will chat on that.
One second.
Guys, Benjamin is so organized here.
One of the easiest guys
to make a video with.
He knows all the locations.
He knows what to say.
It’s pretty much me just following
with a camera asking a few questions.
But I gotta say
it’s interesting getting into
his world.
Because for most of us we’re not
in this stuff all day long and he is.
So that’s what I try to do is
find these people that have the expertise.
I’m saying you have the expertise Benjamin.
Fair to say?
-[man] Hey Peter.
-How are you doing?
I saw you on the video,
I’ve been watching you.
Thank you sir.
-What’s your name?
-Henry.
-Henry.
-I’ve been watching your videos.
All right. Well we got another one
coming for you soon from New York.
-Too bad you can’t go in there right?
-Oh what’s that?
That’s a federal building
where the bad stuff happens.
[Benjamin] Yeah that’s right. [chuckles]
-We’re talking about corruption today.
-It is a corruption tour.
This was a corruption of morals.
[Peter] Oh it is?
This is where the ICE is.
-Oh the ICE.
Taking people and disappear…
-Wow.
That’s why there’s a lot of protests.
Yeah.
Thank you sir.
-Good to meet you.
-I appreciate it.
Okay so you had to bring this one in.
-This is where people love or hate you.
-Yeah.
I’m going to be fair on both sides
because I think neither one
is particularly interesting
and neither one really reaches
to the heart of true corruption
that we should care about
but it is an example
of how different tribes get worked up
about actors in different camps
and we shout corruption and that’s
the case of Donald Trump and Letitia James
both involving litigation here again
in New York and federal court.
Of course litigation
against Donald Trump was that
he routinely over-inflated the value of
certain business entities for loan purposes
and that he undervalued them
for purposes of tax compliance.
So at least at the early
district court level he lost
and that’s currently on appeal
and they’ll figure that out.
legal experts weighing in on it say that
you usually have a great deal of latitude
in terms of that estimation
that he relied on
professional accountants and appraisers
to be able to do that.
That people routinely have a difference
in how you report that
for tax purposes versus banking purposes
and that everyone’s doing that.
And if Donald Trump is guilty
then most of New York
business owners are likely guilty too.
People get very riled up about it
because Donald Trump
is a lightning rod sort of figure
and some folks really hate him.
And other people really tribally love him.
But the question is does it go to
the deep systemic sort of fraud
where we’re using public power
or we’re using public money
to effectuate public policy
in some distorted way?
And that’s not the case.
This is a battle of forms.
What did you mark on a form
that you submitted to a bank?
What did you Mark on a form
that you submitted to tax authorities?
Now this gets turned around
because Letitia James,
who is the Attorney General of New York,
She got caught in two instances.
One she had two properties
and she had marked a property
in Virginia Beach
as her principal residence.
Well the New York Constitution
says if you’re an officeholder
you have to live in New York.
-You can’t be living in Virginia.
-Okay.
Similarly she has a
rental property that has five units.
She marked it as four units
because there’s a tax break
if you have a four-unit or less property.
And there’s not a tax break
if you have five.
Sorry man.
Those on the Right
tend to get very excited about this.
In a similar way those on the Left
get excited about Donald Trump.
But it’s not an issue
where we’re taking taxpayer money
and distorting policy
or doing this in a way…
It’s a battle of forms and of lawfare.
What did you check on a certain box
when you submitted that in?
And these seem to me like very pedantic,
very low-level concerns.
Maybe there’s small fines and penalties
that are involved with it.
But overall this doesn’t mark
the true heart of corruption.
The sort of scandals that
we want to be concerned about.
It certainly doesn’t rise to the level of
Skelos or Silver
that we talked about earlier
where we’re distorting funds that are
for cancer and where those might go
or how the treatment
of tax appeals work in the state
or whether you have to hire
a particular assemblyman’s son
just so you can work in New York.
-Those are real issues.
-Sure.
What you mark on a form that goes to a bank
what you submit on tax filings
that’s fairly low level.
It’s red meat
for tribalistic concerns I think
but it’s all being duped out.
The DOJ is now investigating
Latitia James over this issue.
The appeal for Donald Trump
is ongoing about the business affairs.
They’re mirror images of the same issue.
You think they’re similar,
they carry the same weight?
Yeah which is to say
not very much. [chuckles]
But they make for good political drama
and people really like these stories.
So we’re at the Dinkins building.
Former mayor of New York
and as you can see on the sign
the home of city-wide
administrative services.
So your bureaucratic nest is right here.
I am usually prone
not to be too fond of bureaucrats
but I’m going to show
an element of good faith here
and say they did a really good job
in looking at abusive spending
that happened during COVID
and during the recent
asylum migrant crisis in New York.
City of New York awarded
a $482 million contract
to a company called DocGo D-O-C-G-O.
And this was to provide
emergency migrant housing
to buy up hotel spaces,
hotel rooms and the like.
Right at the start of this
the Comptroller of New York had concerns
because DocGo barely had
any business operations or experience
and was a new entry.
It was politically connected
to actors in New York City.
And New York decided that it would suspend
all the usual rules that we have
for competitive bidding
and simply award it
to somebody who looked good.
Well somebody who was connected.
Right.
Studies that have gone into this show
that about 80% of that $482 million,
so about half a billion dollars
were for unused rooms.
Were for hotels just sitting empty
with not a single migrant in them.
And a whole lot of money
that came into DocGo.
Similarly there was another organization
running an operation.
It got a $287 million contract
that ballooned to $987 million,
almost a billion dollars.
And similar findings
of suspicious spending
unused hotel rooms, a public facade of
“We’re here to help the migrants
and provide asylum resources.”
When nothing was being delivered.
And that was done by actual…
and I’ll give them credit this time,
hardworking bureaucrats
in the Dinkins building.
-That’s great. Do you have any names?
Can we do any shout outs?
I don’t have any particular names.
But similar thing happened
during the COVID era.
They dug into the receipts and they
examined the spending that went on
and all the unused material
and the overbuying of masks,
ventilators from
politically connected vendors
who went through no competitive bidding.
So how did this all happen again?
We had the 1870s.
We had the 1960s and 1970s.
We had real reforms.
We put real teeth in.
We were going to stop this.
It was going to be the end of corruption.
Well we left a loophole.
And what we said in New York
was that if there is an emergency
well we can put these rules aside.
So as soon as government
comes together and says emergency
then all the competitive bidding
all the things that would show
transparency for spending go out the door.
And what we’re left with
is people who are politically connected
saying I’ll put together an LLC.
I’ve got something here.
I don’t know.
It’s going to cost half a billion dollars.
Does that sound good?
Sounds good. Let’s go do it.
And this is literally what happened
with DocGo on the ground.
So we’re looking at this now.
And again New York’s doing
what New York has done
every 70, 100 years or so.
It has a reflective eye on it saying
okay maybe there are emergencies.
But that doesn’t mean
that you should be able
to spend money
like a drunken sailor for a year.
Let’s limit it to maybe a month.
That’s what they’re thinking about now.
We’ll give you emergency
powers for a month.
Then you’ve got to comply with the law.
Show us that this is necessary.
Show us that it’s a truly competitive bid
compared to other people et cetera.
This is all fairly recent, the revelations.
So they may be investigating.
There could be grand jury investigations
going on for defrauding government.
There’s plenty of angles
that you could use to prosecute this.
So that’s a stay tuned thing.
And one of the criticisms
by some commenters from the Chicago video
is why are you talking about
corruption from so long ago?
Well it takes so long
for these cases to go through.
And so I can’t tell you right now
about whether or not
we’re gonna see legal action on DocGo.
That’s all happening if it is happening
behind closed impaneled grand jury doors.
And nobody knows anything about that.
We might know in two to four years from now
the story about DocGo, COVID spending,
about the asylum migrant status
and all that.
What we do know is that at least folks,
good governance folks in New York
are starting to say
“Yeah we can’t give that broad
of a grant of spending authority
just because government says emergency.
More problems are going to pop up.
Now we have laws in place that say
if you abuse the public trust
and do these things
you lose your New York state pension.
That seems common sense.
You know it’s an interesting city.
It offers its own
state-funded healthcare system.
It has extensive social spending
that many cities in America don’t have.
But then they also have
a pretty good policing unit on top of it
tracking down that money and making sure
it’s not spent in massively corrupt ways.
Unlike Chicago
when we walked through it
and I talked about a city charter
that has no definitions of what’s wrong.
Yeah.
And councilmen that had unlimited power.
They’re on the right track.
So I’m optimistic.
That’s good to hear.
Because I didn’t think that was
going to be the story today.
Yeah.
I thought it was going to be
more like Chicago.
So this actually had a little bit
of an optimistic flair to it.
Yeah. As long as you can appreciate
that a lot of people want a magic solution
that’s going to stop corruption
and it’s gone
and we don’t have to think about it.
Sure.
If you can go back
to Roman times going forward
you can follow every Western city state.
As long as there’s been humans around.
Yeah.
There’s charlatans, thieves, and folks
who are purloining the public purse.
And we just gotta stay on top of it
and keep hammering it.
Some cities like New York
are really great at doing that.
That’s great to hear.
-Other cities like Chicago. Yeah.
-I learned a lot.
And guys I want you to know
Benjamin has an excellent channel
about all sorts of law related
First Amendment related topics.
Is that how you classify it?
Yeah. Constitutional law.
Constitutional law.
And the most recent video
was about gerrymandering.
-Yeah.
-But all sorts of interesting topics.
Benjamin goes
into the details extremely well.
Very thorough.
Check it out down below in the link here.
Thanks for coming along on that journey.
Until the next one.
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