#NY Financial District

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Looking south down Broad Street, in the heart of the financial district, with the New York Stock Exchange at the right, January 16, 1924.

Photo: Underwood Archives via Fine Art America

[visit-new-york]

Financial District, Manhattan

[istandonsnowpiles]

Light Show

[evergreencarpark]

July 20, 2023 (2 of 2)

[uaeb]

haahahaha. what do we do tonight..

[hopusthebrainlessfloof]

I don't care if nobody asked, Imma ramble about Angus Ciprianni anyways (/hj)

(Ik most of my content is Mario, but I NEED YALL TO UNDERSTAND THAT THAT'S NOT MY NEIGHBOR HAS TAKEN OVER MY BNNUY BRAIN AAA)

We don't canonically see the bottom half of the neighbors at all, so by decree of the bunny, Angus uses crutches.

Rarely refers to himself by his first name. Whenever he mentions his name, it's always "Ciprianni". However, calls everyone else by their first name so long as he knows it.

Because of the lack of medical advancement at the time, he has undiagnosed ADHD. Everyone just thinks it's part of who he is and nobody really knows ADHD exists.

Doesn't really fear doppelgangers unless they're outwardly hostile.

Annoys the living FUCK out of Francis and Steven. Will literally wait at the stairs to chat their ear off. He KNOWS it pisses them off. He does it anyways.

He doesn't really understand the consequences of actions. He can understand reasoning (ex If I push this person, they'll be upset), but not the aftermath of it. (ex Because they're upset at me, they don't want to speak to me.) This costs him lots of friendships.

Doesn't have a strong connection with his family. Only really talks to his brother once in a blue moon over the phone.

Sells drugs and makes a fortune off of it. Everyone thinks he takes said drugs because he's so hyperactive, but he doesn't.

Saw someone else headcanon that he's horrible with financial literacy, so guess what?

He hallucinates his nightmare variation (Abducius Morail) pretty often and sees him in his sleep.

Speaking of sleep, he sleeptalks.

Best friends with Elenois and Selenne. They would beat the crap out of anyone that tried to hurt Angus.

Compared to the other young men in his building (Steven, Izaack, Francis, and I suppose Afton), he is super SHORT. Even upright if he didn't use crutches, he would only come to Francis' chin and everyone else's shoulders.

Bisexual but leans heavily towards men.

Due to it being the fifties and all, barely anyone calls him by she/her pronouns, but he doesn't have a preference of pronouns and doesn't strongly associate himself with any specific gender.

Because of his crutches, everyone assumes he's in his thirties or forties, but he's actually younger than Steven.

Moved to this district from Queens NY. He will tell anyone and everyone about Queens regarless of if they asked.

Hates the heat and therefore hates using a stove, will eat dinner at other houses or at a diner at any given chance.

Slight hoarder. His apartment has a lot of junk in it, but he has trouble getting rid of any of it. He know's it's junk, but he feels sentimental value in the junk.

Pretty dramatic. Will dramaticise his unwillingness to do something if anyone tries to make him do something he hates. (Cleaning, cooking, etc)

And uh, yeah, that's all the Angus I have for now <3

[mikerickson]

Lifting my self-imposed embargo because I'm weird and don't like posting on social media when I'm on vacation.

I'm at a point in my life where I can financially justify at least one international vacation a year and figured I'd finally cross off the Great White North from the bucket list. I'd never been and Andrew hadn't been back in a very long time despite having dual citizenship. Anyways, just got back, and a bullet-point breakdown of the highlights is after the cut:

I wish every international flight was under two hours; EWR to YQB was almost comically fast.

Had my first French conversation with the very nice lady at the car rental counter for about ten minutes. She complemented my pronunciation and grammar, and wished me luck on the trip. Every French interaction after this point was a linguistic battle for my life that I lost (Toutes les Québecois parlent trop vite pour moi).

We had some time to kill before the hotel check-in so we went to a mall in the suburbs just so we'd have a food court with some options. Turns out shopping malls are not only alive and well but fucking thriving in Canada. I haven't seen a mall that packed with people outside of December since the nineties.

Quebec City was very dense with old architecture which made it feel very European. It was also apparently built on a fucking cliff with streets at 60 degree inclines, which also felt very European.

Took a tour of the Quebec Parliament building (beautiful structure), and apparently they used to be bicameral, but voted to abolish their Senate in the 60's and they were the last Canadian province to do so. What a concept.

It's one thing to know on paper that Canada has about 1/8th of the population of the US, but I was not prepared for just how empty the countryside felt. For someone like me, living in the northeast my whole life, the idea that cities in close proximity to each other not having continuous stretches of suburbs and other smaller cities connecting them was completely foreign.

On the highways I kept thinking I was speeding because I'd look down at the dashboard and see the number "100", but 100 km/h is only like 62 mph, which is nothing.

Similarly, I kept getting sticker shock every time I spent money, and kept having to remind myself that $1 CAD was like $0.73 USD while we were there.

It was really cool to see that the complex for the 1976 Montreal Olympics is still maintained and actively used (we stumbled upon a skateboarding competition and I did not feel cool enough to be in that crowd). Sometimes you hear horror stories about Olympic villages bankrupting cities and falling into disuse afterwards, but that's definitely not the case here.

Montreal is apparently known for their local bagel culture, but their bagels have enormous holes in the middle of them, so you have less cross-sectional area for spreads and they don't really work for sandwiches. My faith in NJ/NY bagel superiority remains intact.

Every city we went to had dedicated bike lane infrastructure and young families with kids, but Montreal definitely had the most of both. Tons of parks, too. Simultaneously felt like a larger and smaller city than I was expecting.

Poutine is okay, but I wasn't prepared for the cheese to squeak when you bite into it. Very odd sensation.

The main Parliament building for the federal government in Ottawa (Centre Block) is stunning, but closed; apparently it's been under renovation since 2019 and isn't expected to be reopened until 2032! In the meantime, we took a tour of where the lower House of Commons is currently meeting. We learned that their electoral districts are routinely re-drafted by a non-partisan committee and that they occasionally add new seats to the legislature to account for changes in population. I had to seethe jealously in silence for the rest of the tour.

Also toured their Supreme Court building (way more Art Deco than I was expecting). We learned that there's currently a vacancy because a Justice recently retired because they're required to step down when they turn 75. I had to seethe jealously in silence for the rest of the tour.

Every single city had automatic/self-serve parking garages where you didn't have to interact with a human (which I was very thankful for), but in Ottawa they have this little jingle that the machine sings at you when you take your ticket, which I found very amusing.

On the drive to Toronto we took a quick detour into the Thousand Islands (yes, like the salad dressing) and visited Boldt Castle, which is technically in New York state. After seeing it in practice, the idea of living on your own private island is more appealing than ever.

Toronto feels like an exercise in what happens when a nation's largest city is allowed to grow without being hemmed in by ridiculous geography. As someone who grew up in NYC, this is another concept foreign to me. The GPS did get very tripped up navigating a particularly gnarly interchange however.

Toured the Ontario Legislative Assembly (yet another beautiful building). At this point we were really good at asking tour guides stuff like, "so if happens, do you guys have a plan?" To which they would reply, "well, no, but let's just hope that never happens!"

I now understand why the Great Lakes are effectively freshwater inland seas; you really cannot see the other shore, and Lake Ontario isn't even the biggest one!

YYC to EWR was under an hour. That's definitely going to spoil me for future trips going forward.

[eretzyisrael]

by Corey Walker

In the hours following Bowman’s loss, left-wing commentators immediately shifted blame toward AIPAC, the foremost pro-Israel lobbying organization in the US, attributing the election results solely to the group’s financial resources. 

Olayemi Olurin, a leftist pundit and fierce critic of Israel, floated the idea that AIPAC engineered a smear campaign against Bowman by inundating voters with misleading campaign ads. 

“It’s not a leftist conspiracy theory that AIPAC quite literally spent more money than ever before to unseat Jamaal Bowman for his stance on Israel,” Olurin posted on X/Twitter. “New Yorkers were drowned in ads smearing Bowman — that coupled with the redistricting of his district cost him the seat.”

Bowman appeared on Olurin’s YouTube channel earlier this month to discuss the state of the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. During the interview, the congressman compared Israel unfavorably to the United States, claiming that both countries were built upon a foundation of “white supremacy.” He also suggested that the Jewish state was responsible for the Hamas terrorist group’s Oct. 7 attacks, which resulted in the biggest single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

Cynthia Nixon, a former New York City mayoral candidate and progressive commentator, accused AIPAC of being operated by “far-right Republicans” and blamed the group for flooding the primary race with millions of dollars in an attempt to remove Bowman from office. Similarly, Bowman has denounced AIPAC as being an alleged tool of “racist” Republicans and allies of former US President Donald Trump. 

“Bowman is the last Congress person of color in a NY district not wholly in NYC. And let’s be clear — the record $20 mill spent against him did not come from Dems in this Dem primary but from anti-abortion, anti-climate justice, anti-worker far-right Republicans. You do the math,” Nixon posted on X/Twitter.

Blaming the Jews is standard operating position. EY

[3rdeyeblaque]

On April 6th in Hoodoo History: The New York City Slave Revolt of 1712 🔥✊🏾

23 enslaved Afrikans set fire to NYC one year after the slave trade markets officially opened by the East River on Wall Street.

• On the night of April 6th, 1712, 23 Afrikans armed themselves with swords, knives, guns - laced with prayer & faith - and fire against White Slavers in the streets of NYC. They set an outhouse ablaze at the home of Peter Van Tilborough on Maiden Lane, at what was then the northern edge of Manhattan. They then picked off any White Slavers nearby who tried to stop it, from the cover of darkness. 9 Slavers were killed and 6 others were injured by nights end.

• On the following morning, the Governor of NY ordered two militias to "drive the island" aka capture & kill the rebels. 6 Afrikans took their lives in protest. The rest were burned alive or "broken" at the wheel. This unprecedented event hitting the streets of NYC quickly spurred the NY State Assembly to pass an act that would permit Slavers to punish Afrikans to the extreme measures by "not extending to life or member", thus cementing a new precedent for their cruelty in the North. In addition, Slavers would now be required to pay $200 dollars in security fees to the State & annuity for any freed Afrikans. Despite these stringent laws, NYC would see more slave rebellions in the next two decades; the next being in 1741.

To be of Hoodoo is, and has always been, to fight back. Let this be a reminder, forever to be drilled into our psyches: We been fighting. We been sacrificing. We been spiriting. We been victorious.

Today, 83 Maiden Lane sits in the infamous Financial District of Manhattan & now serves as the headquarters of the AHRC (Association of Help for Retarded Children). But beneath the cloak of modern amenities & reconstructive efforts, the once-scorched Earth still remembers the night of April 6th. This is where we made our stand. This, & the streets along the northern edge of Manhattan, is a place of power.

It is important to remember the when & WHERE of this event (and those that followed) as many to this day falsely believe that the North was somehow the righteous exception to the Eurocentric cruelties of Maafa. The North was not the exception then & is not the exception now. May we:

• Meditate on the cost of true freedom that these Ancestors paid in blood so we wouldn't have to.

• Pour libations for them, especially those of us residing on or near the Financial District, as this is where our Ancestors were bought & sold from the docks on the East River to Wall Street.

• Remember our plight & presence in the Northern states that have lightened their reputation with the mask of progressive thinking.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Edward Helmore at The Guardian:

Former Republican congressman George Santos pleaded guilty to committing wire fraud and aggravated identity theft in a federal fraud case marking yet another low point for a politician famed for the outlandish lies and fantasies he peddled during his short but high profile political career. “I understand that my actions have betrayed my supporters and constituents,” Santos said in an emotional statement during the hearing. “I am committed to making amends and learning from this experience.” The disgraced ex-congressman faces a two-year mandatory minimum sentence under federal guidelines, but in court US district judge Joanna Seybert estimated a possible sentencing range between six and eight years when he returns to court again on 7 February. Santos, 36, had previously pleaded not guilty to a range of alleged financial crimes, including lying to Congress about his wealth, collecting unemployment benefits while actually working and using campaign contributions to pay for personal expenses.

The New York Republican entered the plea in a courtroom in Long Island just weeks before his trial was set to begin in early September. The prospect of a plea deal was raised late last week when a surprise court hearing was requested by prosecutors and Santos’s lawyers. Prior to the deal, two Santos campaign aides had already pleaded guilty to related crimes. Santos was once touted as a rising political star after he flipped the suburban Long Island district in New York state. But his story rapidly unspooled in the glare of public life as reports emerged he had lied about having a career at top Wall Street firms and a college degree along with other questions of his biography. Even in the Republican party of Donald Trump, where scandals over truth-telling have become an almost daily event, Santos managed to draw enormously negative attention. Members of his own party turned upon him, demanding he resign. New scandals then emerged about his campaign funds. Santos was first indicted on federal charges in May 2023, but refused to resign from office. Santos was expelled from Congress after an ethics investigation found “overwhelming evidence” that he had broken the law and exploited his public position for his profit.

Former Rep George Santos (R-NY) pleads guilty to federal counts for wire fraud and aggravated identity theft.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Mike Smith :: Las Vegas Sun

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

April 29, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

APR 30, 2024

In December 2020, when the pandemic illustrated the extraordinary disadvantage created by the inability of those in low-income households to communicate online with schools and medical professionals, then-president Trump signed into law an emergency program to provide funding to make internet access affordable. In 2021, Congress turned that idea into the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) and made it part of the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (also known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law). 

The program has enabled 23 million American households to afford high-speed internet. Those benefiting from it are primarily military families, older Americans, and Black, Latino, and Indigenous households. In February, the Brookings Institution cited economics studies that said each dollar invested in the ACP increases the nation’s gross domestic product by $3.89 and that the program has led to increased employment and higher wages. It also cuts the costs of healthcare by replacing some in-person emergency room visits with telehealth.  

Slightly more of the money in the program goes to districts represented by Republicans than to those represented by Democrats, which might explain why 79% of voters want to continue the program: 96% of Democrats, 78% of Independents, and 62% of Republicans.

But the ACP is running out of money. Back in October 2023, President Joe Biden asked Congress to fund it until the end of 2024, and a bipartisan bill that would extend the program has been introduced in both chambers of Congress. Each remains in an appropriation committee. As of today, the House bill has 228 co-sponsors, the Senate bill has 5. 

Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has said he supports the measure, but House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has not commented. Judd Legum pointed out in Popular Information today that the 2025 budget of the far-right Republican Study Committee (RSC) calls for allowing the ACP to expire, saying the RSC “stands against corporate welfare and government handouts that disincentivize prosperity.” More than four fifths of House Republicans belong to the RSC. 

The differences between the parties’ apparent positions on the ACP illustrates the difference in their political ideology. Republicans object to government investment in society and believe market forces should be left to operate without interference in order to promote prosperity. Democrats believe that economic prosperity comes from the hard work of ordinary people and that government investment in society clears the way for those people to succeed. 

Wealth growth for young Americans was stagnant for decades before the pandemic, but it has suddenly experienced a historic rise. In Axios, Emily Peck reported that household wealth for Americans under 40 has risen an astonishing 49% from where it was before the pandemic. Wealth doubled for those born between 1981 and 1996. This increase in household wealth comes in part from rising home prices and more financial assets, as well as less debt, which fell by $5,000 per household. Households of those under 35 have shown a 140% increase in median wealth in the same time period.

Brendan Duke and Christian E. Weller, the authors of the Center for American Progress study from which Peck’s information came, say this wealth growth is not tied to a few super-high earners, but rather reflects broad based improvement. “A simple reason for the strong wealth growth is that younger Americans are experiencing an especially low unemployment rate and especially strong wage growth,” Duke and Weller note, “making it easier for them to accumulate wealth.” 

In honor of National Small Business Week, Vice President Kamala Harris today launched an “economic opportunity tour” in Atlanta, where she highlighted the federal government’s $158 million investment in “The Stitch,” a project to reconnect midtown to downtown Atlanta. This project is an initial attempt to reconnect the communities that were severed by the construction of highways, often cutting minority or poor neighborhoods off from jobs and driving away businesses while saddling the neighborhoods with pollution. 

While some advocates wanted to use the $3.3 billion available from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act to take down highways altogether, the administration has shied away from such a dramatic revision and has instead focused on creating new public green spaces, bike paths, access to public transportation, safety features, and so on, to link and improve neighborhoods. More than 40 states so far have received funding under this program. 

The administration says that projects like The Stitch will promote economic growth in neighborhoods that have borne the burden of past infrastructure projects. Today it touted the extraordinary growth of small businesses since Biden and Harris took office, noting that their economic agenda “has driven the first, second and third strongest years of new business application rates on record—and is on pace for the fourth—with Americans filing a record 17.2 million new business applications.” 

Small businesses owned by historically underserved populations “are growing at near-historic rates, with Black business ownership growing at the fastest pace in 30 years and Latino business ownership growing at the fastest pace in more than a decade,” the White House said. The administration has invested in small businesses, working to level the playing field between them and their larger counterparts by making capital and information available, while working to reform the tax code so that corporations pay as much in taxes as small businesses do.  

“Small businesses are the engines of the economy,” the White House said today. “As President Biden says, every time someone starts a new small business, it’s an act of hope and confidence in our economy.” 

In place of economic growth, Republicans have focused on whipping up supporters by insisting that Democrats are corrupt and are cheating to take over the government. Matt Gertz of Media Matters noted in February that “Fox News host Sean Hannity and his House Republican allies spent 2023 trying to manufacture an impeachable offense against President Joe Biden out of their fact-free obsession with the president’s son, Hunter.” At least 325 segments about Hunter Biden appeared on Hannity’s show in 2023; 220 had at least one false or misleading claim. The most frequent purveyor of that disinformation was Representative James Comer (R-KY), chair of the House Oversight Committee, who went onto the show 43 times to talk about the president’s son. 

The House impeachment inquiry was really designed to salt right-wing media channels with lies about the president and, in the end, turned up nothing other than witnesses who said President Biden was not involved in his son’s businesses. Then the Republicans’ key witness, Alexander Smirnov, was indicted for lying about the Bidens, and then he turned out to be in contact with Russian spies. 

Comer has been quietly backing away from impeaching the president until today, when he popped back into the spotlight after news broke that Hunter Biden’s lawyer has threatened to sue the Fox News Channel (FNC) for “conspiracy and subsequent actions to defame Mr. Biden and paint him in a false light, the unlicensed commercial exploitation of his image, name, and likeness, and the unlawful publication of hacked intimate images of him.” His lawyer’s letter calls out FNC’s promotion of Smirnov’s false allegations. 

Last year, FNC paid almost $800 million to settle defamation claims made by Dominion Voting Systems after FNC hosts pushed the lie that Dominion machines had changed the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. 

Legal pressure on companies lying for profit has proved successful. Two weeks ago, the far-right media channel One America News Network (OAN) settled a defamation lawsuit with the voting technology company Smartmatic. Today, OAN retracted a false story about former Trump fixer Michael Cohen, apparently made to discredit the testimony of Stormy Daniels about her sexual encounters with Trump. OAN suggested that it was Cohen rather than Trump who had a relationship with Daniels, and that Cohen had extorted Trump over the story.  

“OAN apologizes to Mr. Cohen for any harm the publication may have caused him,” the network wrote in a statement. “To be clear, no evidence suggests that Mr. Cohen and Ms. Daniels were having an affair and no evidence suggests that Mr. Cohen ‘cooked up’ the scheme to extort the Trump Organization before the 2016 election.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Even the wheelers and dealers on Wall Street have a Christmas tree. Here it is on December 26, 1925, with the 116th Infantry Band playing Christmas airs and carols.

Photo: George Rinhart via Corbis/Getty Images

[visit-new-york]

Financial District, Manhattan, New York, NY, USA

[istandonsnowpiles]

P9B

[beardedmrbean]

Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) revealed Tuesday that FBI agents have seized his cellphone amid a probe into “mistakes” he claims to have made in reporting his campaign finances — including a $320,000 loan of his own money.

The first-term GOP lawmaker posted on X that the FBI “took possession” of his phone last Friday to investigate what he said were likely “mistakes” in his campaign’s “initial financial filings.”

“We have worked diligently with attorneys and reporting experts to correct the errors and ensure compliance going forward,” Ogles said, adding that he would “fully cooperate” with the bureau “as I have with the Federal Election Commission.”

“I am confident all involved will conclude that the reporting discrepancies were based on honest mistakes, and nothing more,” he added.

The Tennessee Republican is at least the third House member in the 118th Congress whose campaign finances have apparently warranted a closer look by federal authorities.

Ogles reported a $320,000 loan to his own campaign in April 2022, according to federal campaign finance filings, but amended that the following year to show a mere $20,000 loan.

House financial disclosure forms reveal he held as much as $1.1 million in assets in 2022 — but potentially $1 million in liabilities for a home mortgage in 2022 and line of credit stretching back to January 2020.

“I’m not a wealthy man who can self-fund the millions of dollars needed to run a congressional campaign,” Ogles told The Tennessean in May. “I am a grassroots representative, and I pledged everything I own to run for the honor of representing Tennessee’s Fifth Congressional District.”

“While we ultimately needed to transfer $20,000, unfortunately, the full amount of my pledge was mistakenly included on my campaign’s FEC reports,” he claimed.

Neither Ogles’ attorney, G. Kline Preston IV, nor the FBI immediately responded to a request for comment.

NewsChannel 5 in Nashville first reported on Tuesday that the FBI executed a search warrant on the congressman’s phone.

It comes after a series of similar scandals in the House.

Rep. George Santos (R-NY) faced a federal investigation just one month after his election to the House in November 2022 — and was later indicted and expelled from office.

The now-former representative from New York’s 3rd Congressional District was federally indicted on 23 counts for allegedly having laundered campaign money and defrauded donors.

Santos has pleaded not guilty and is slated for trial next month.

“Squad” Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) also acknowledged that federal prosecutors were investigating her use of campaign funds after reports surfaced about payments flowing to a security guard whom she later married.

On Tuesday, Bush was defeated in Missouri’s 1st Congressional District Democratic primary race by St. Louis County prosecutor Wesley Bell.

A member of the right-wing House Freedom Caucus, Ogles had just defeated Nashville Metro council member Courtney Johnston in Tennessee’s Fifth Congressional District the day before the FBI came knocking at his door.

The Campaign Legal Center first filed a complaint with the Office of Congressional Ethics in January over the congressman’s financial records, comparing his campaign ledger with that of Santos.

[boredgirlsclub]

new york itinerary: tourist spots

hey everyone 🎀 i just posted part one on my blog if you want to check those out too🫶🏽 i’m sooo excited for my new york tripin two weeks!! i may go to other “touristy” spots but i’m being intentional about making time to do other things as well!! so my next ny posts will skew away from touristy spots and will touch on restaurants, elite places, hidden spots…etc 💗

part two

🎀 go to the financial district and eat a hot dog (ny, ny)

🎀 go to the flower district and buy a pretty bouquet (location below)

“On West 28th Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues, you can find the sweetest smelling, most lush neighborhood there is in NYC - the floral district. Although it’s not as popular as its adjacent neighborhoods, it’s a lively gem that floral designers and flower shop owners alike frequent regularly.”

🎀 places for next time

1. rockefeller center (ny, ny)

2. summit one vanderbilt (ny, ny)

visit my blog for my new york itinerary: tourist spots part 1 and more it girl vacation planning posts