By: Eli Verschleiser
When I was growing up, Times Square was a seedy place full of adult movie theaters, greasy fast food joints, video game arcades and souvenir shops that – open secret -- also made and sold fake IDs.
In the early 90s, started under Mayor David Dinkins and continued under his successor Rudy Giuliani, the makeover began and all those mom and pop businesses were swept away, replaced by big chain stores and restaurants and media headquarters for Reuters, MTV, ABC and Conde Nast.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg took the beautification a step further in his reign, sealing off a large section of Broadway to traffic and creating a place for tourists to dine, hang out between shopping and matinees and take in the view and excitement from the Crossroads of the World.
Now, the Square is once again in danger of becoming the kind of place you can’t take your kids. It started with the aggressive panhandlers in Elmo costumes, some of whom have displayed unstable and even violent behavior. But even when they behave it’s a nuisance to traverse the area when every four feet a costumed character wants to snap a picture with you for a buck. Mayor Bloomberg wisely recognized the legal reality that you can’t stop people from free commerce or dressing any way they please, and pretty much left the situation alone.
Now comes the scantily clad women who make Vegas showgirls look overdressed. Perhaps inspired by the novelty of the Naked Cowboy, who has been raking in the dough for years (not in fact fully naked), an influx of entrepreneurial women are taking advantage of a 1992 state court decision that there is no fundamental difference between a man or women going shirtless in public. Parents of small children who feel otherwise may enter the area at their own risk.
It’s not just a matter of protecting young eyes. One of the women was reportedly arrested on Sept. 2 on drug and prostitution charges hours after a man accused two others of stealing his wallet. With complaints pouring into City Hall, Mayor Bill de Blasio has decried the situation and even put together a task force to address the problem.
Good luck. Since they are breaking no law, any effort to remove or restrict the women or their overdressed Muppet or superhero counterparts will land the city in court, bringing us back to the days when Mayor Giuliani frequently fought losing battles with civil liberties groups. The women can easily declare themselves performance artists and invoke their Constitutional right to free speech, commerce and assembly.
Bill de Blasio may also see fit to reopen the Square to traffic and let cabs and buses do his dirty work.
But there’s a better way to address the problem: Let them work. But make it expensive. After all, the main appeal of this kind of work is the low overhead.
As we know all too well, the city can tax and regulate almost anything it wants. It already taxes hotels, taxis and street vendors. What if the performers had to get on waiting list for a limited number of permits, with a fee and taxes? Every street vendor in NYC does.
Right now the performance artists are only subject to personal income tax on their earnings. To get their permit renewed, they’d have to show they met their tax obligations.
Bill de Blasio and City Council should earmark the proceeds for specific and related purposes. How about paying for the increased sanitation and police service necessitated by the upswing in tourist activity thanks to these performance artists.
My City Council sources tell me there is no reason this scenario can’t happen. All it would take is appropriate legislation, required registration of the vendors/artists/panhandlers or whatever you want to call them, and then collection. So instead of cops chasing them away or sticking them in penned off areas, the city could just send a team of tax collectors to make sure everyone is paying their share.
Shave 20 percent off the day’s cash earnings, and I can almost guarantee you this pesky population of performers will trickle down in no time. Here’s a chance for bureaucracy to improve quality of life, for a change.
This won’t happen any time soon, since nothing gets passed in City Hall without vigorous debate (as it should be), a bunch of partisan bickering and obstruction and perhaps a lawsuit or two. (Remember, Bloomberg couldn’t quite get his soda ban passed.)
But in the interim there is one unstoppable force waiting in the wings in the coming months that is guaranteed, at least for the short term, to remove the naked nuisance from Times Square and bring some modesty back.
Its called winter.
Originally Published: The Huffington Post
By: Eli Verschleiser
Could a nuclear deal with Iran accomplish more than decades of diplomacy in the Middle East and, rather ironically, create new alliances between Israel and Arab neighbors?
That’s a key question as we gear up for the battle on Capitol Hill over President Barack Obama’s controversial pact with Tehran to limit uranium enrichment in return for lifting of sanctions. Critics say the agreement paves the way for a double reward of Tehran— a huge influx of cash and an eventual, unfettered path toward nuclear arms.
Neither the Saudis, the Kuwaitis, nor the United Arab Emirates or for that matter any of the other Persian Gulf states are too excited about the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran. The role of Iran in the conflicts in Iraq and Syria, and the rise of Islamic State terror and the Muslim Brotherhood, have become a much bigger problem for Arab leaders than the tired conflict with Israel. Those countries have a Sunni majority, while Persian Iran is led by rival Shia Muslims.
Iran, of course, is also a major oil rival for the Gulf States and became more powerful following the fall of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.
The Saudis have been publicly moderate on the deal but said to be privately angry over it. Epitomizing the old Middle East adage that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, the Saudis were reported to have offered Israel the ability to use their airspace to strike at Iran. This is a crucial step in keeping a military option on the table as it would save time and fuel if such a strike were necessary. “The Saudi authorities are completely coordinated with Israel on all matters related to Iran,” a European official was quoted as saying in an Israeli TV report.
Clearly momentum for alignment with Israel in some form is building.
“To all those who think the Persian state, and the regime of the Rule of the Imprudent… the dictatorial fascist Persian regime which controls it, is a friendly country, whereas Israel is an enemy country, I say that a prudent enemy is better than an imprudent one.”
Those words were written by Abdallah Al-Hadlaq in the official newspaper of Kuwait, Al-Watan.
It is not the first time the author has expressed support for ties with Israel. As far back as 2009 he called on his government and other Gulf states to put aside their differences with Jerusalem and forge an alliance against Iran.
But the fact that his column was published in a government daily in a country without full press freedom speaks volumes.
“The state of Israel and its various governments have waged more than five wars with the Arabs, yet never in the course of these wars did Israel think to use its nuclear weapons against its Arab enemies,” Al-Hadlaq wrote. “Conversely, if the Persian state, with its stupid, rash and fascist regime that hides behind a religious guise, ever develops nuclear weapons, it will not hesitate to use nuclear bombs against the Arab Gulf states in the first conflict that arises.”
Were the Saudis to show leadership in rallying other Sunni-led states against Iran it could have a significant impact on a new order in the Middle East.
Furthermore the new coalition could collectively work wonders to get rid of ISIS, as Jordan’s King Abdullah recently declared in a CNN interview that the war against ISIS ‘is our war’. The Iranian nuclear threat and the ISIS threat can top the agenda in this new coalition.
“Iran does have enough politico-military and economic potential to counter-balance Saudi led “Sunni” states in the Middle East and beyond,” wrote Salman Rafi Sheikh in an essay for the magazine Eastern Outlook last March. “It is precisely for this very reason that Saudi Arabia’s anxiety about an agreement has fueled a flurry of intense diplomacy in recent days to bolster unity among “Sunni” states in the Middle East in the face of “shared threats”, especially those emanating from Iran.”
Rafi Sheikh, a research-analyst of International Relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs, noted that “this deal is most likely to send political jolts across the entire Middle Eastern political landscape, with Saudi Arabia and Israel standing as the most sensitive areas to bear its shocks; and as such, are most likely to clutch their hands into an alliance against Iran, and by default, against the US ambitions as well.”
There is great potential for Saudi Arabia’s King Salman to rally Gulf states as well as Turkey, Egypt and Jordan to stand up to an Iran that will only become more emboldened with the huge influx of post-sanctions billions and new political bona-fides that will make Tehran bolder.
Increased security cooperation as Iran bides its time for an eventual bomb --after the agreement period, or in the worst-case scenario, in violation of the agreement -- may eventually lead to more nuclear proliferation in the region.
Will that mean a nuclear pact between Israel and its former enemies? That will be a fascinating development that could never have been imagined even a decade ago.
And it will truly be a sad irony if, after nearly 70 years of a solid relationship between the United States and Israel, the Jewish state had to turn to despotic regimes with little or no human rights to solidify its security position, feeling far less than confident that Washington has its back than it has in the past.
However this may simply be the beginning of an Arabic Israeli accord where both groups can begin to understand and accept each other.
Originally Published: The Hill
