Don’t be fooled by Brad Lander’s anti corruption lecture!
Because of the key role Brad Lander played in the City Council’s most shameful act of corruption, one of denying democracy against desperate small business owners and their workers, Lander forfeits any right to lecture on corruption.
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If New Yorkers knew the full truth about the blatant abuse of Brad Lander’s leadership role when he was in the City Council, to stop a vote on the Small Business Jobs Survival Act, Jobs Survival Act,* they would never again call him a true progressive. A disgraceful abuse of his leadership role to assist a lobby to stop good government from working to end a crisis and save the American Dream for all business owners. His unconscionable act of joining with the city’s Democratic leadership in colluding with a lobby in the destruction of the only real lifeline to stop the closing of good businesses and end their over a decade long crisis is reprehensible.
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* The Jobs Survival Act gives every business owner the right to renew a 10 year lease, equal rights with the landlord to negotiate the new lease terms and an arbitration process based upon a “case by case” guidelines if mutual agreement is not reached. The original Jobs Survival Act was created by a diverse coalition of citywide business groups in 1986. For over three decades it has had 8 prime sponsors and 12 hearings in the Council. For over three decades the real estate lobby, Real Estate Board of New York, REBNY, has used its undue influence over the Democratic leadership to stop any vote on the bill, even when the majority of Council Members sponsored the bill.
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The Jobs Survival Act has been amended seven times, but always keeping the intent of the legislation the same. That intent is to make legislation guidelines for the commercial lease renewal process that are: fair, simple for all parties, legally sound, less expensive for both parties, with no government involvement, and an arbitration process based upon a “case by case” proven guidelines to encourage bargaining in good faith, compromises, and an end to rent gouging and landlord abuses like extortion.
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These links* expose the full backstory truth of the greatest betrayal of small business owners and of democracy in Council history. For over three decades in the Council a debate has raged over the critical commercial lease renewal process. At the center of this debate is whether government should pass legislation to regulate the process by giving rights to either party to make it a fairer process. Or to make rules that would eliminate any severe disadvantage to one of the parties, thus “level the playing field” in the negotiation process. In NYC, commercial business tenants have no rights whatsoever. The outcome of this one-sided process where only the landlord has all the rights can be seen by a walk down any main street where long established businesses once grew and prospered and now show empty stores. Also, on every main street is the trend of overly optimistic new business owners who grossly underestimate the heavy burden of NYC’s “operating costs.” Costs that will likely make them become another victim of the record shocking “turnover” rate of new businesses.
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What was Brad Lander’s critical role in this debate that determined the future of every business owner in NYC?
Brad Lander, in his high position held in the Council, willfully sanctioned a lobby to block a vote on the Jobs Survival Act and then intentionally permitted the lobby too create their own self-serving legislation to replace it. Even though the lobby's legislation, Commercial Rent Stabilization bill, CRS, gave no right to renew their lease to business owners and no real rights in the negotiation process and cleverly structured the bill so that regulated rent rates would only go up from 20 years of insane levels and never down, Brad Lander never once protested this lobby’s anti-small business, anti-jobs and anti-immigrant bill. REBNY had the loyalty of several key Democratic leaders to make their “Machiavellian scheme” to stop a vote on the Jobs Survival Act and then substitute their own bill (CRS) a major success. In no other major city in America that practiced “good government” would the lobby’s CRS bill be allowed to exist.
Which politician could REBNY trust, or control enough, to promote their destructive status quo bill? The real estate lobby, REBNY, chose one politician to promote and deceive the public while betraying the small business owners, that politician was Brad Lander. He eagerly rushed to serve the lobby's commands, even though he knew for an absolute certainty that without the right to renew their commercial leases, this lobby’s bill would not save a single business owner or job unless the landlord wanted the business to be kept open. The lobby’s bill, CRS, that Brad Lander was aggressively selling to the public as legislation to save small business owners when their leases expired, was the Council’s BIG LIE.
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* https://www.savenycjobs.com/why-lander-must-resign
https://www.savenycjobs.com/brad-lander-leads-rigging
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Brad Lander’s petition to save small businesses, a deceitful fraud on the public.
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To fully appreciate the blind political ambition of Brad Lander and his willingness to throw the city’s business owners under the bus and rush to eagerly serve the wishes of a lobby, one needs only to understand how vital the Jobs Survival Act is to the future survival and prosperity of every business owner when their leases expire and they have no rights. Rights that the Real Estate Board of New York, REBNY, and Brad Lander never want small business owners to ever have.
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With NYC the epicenter of worldwide real estate money, hyper real estate speculation followed. This unchecked speculation being promoted and protected by unethical politicians, combined with big banks and national chain’s insane bidding for prime locations on main streets produced sky high rents which mom and pop merchants could not compete with, which resulted in a crisis being born. The landlord controlled one-sided and grossly unfair commercial lease renewal process became the root cause of long-established businesses being forced to close when their landlords refused to offer reasonable lease terms. This manipulated commercial rental market, which was out of control, resulted in "windfall" profits for landlords and a citywide small business crisis with record closings of good established businesses.
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The Jobs Survival Act was, and still is today, the only real solution to end this crisis and restore the American Dream for our business owners. If a Council Member has true empathy for the dire plight of their merchants and made a priority to stop the closing of their long established businesses when their leases expire, there is no other option but to pass legislation that gives the tenants the right to renew long term leases and an arbitration process to level the playing field for tenants to negotiate fair lease terms. The only true formula for a fair commercial lease renewal process where the business owner’s profits also matter, is with these two compatible necessary rights, the right to renew the lease and an arbitration process. One right without the other would produce a useless “status quo” commercial lease renewal process.
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The majority of Council Members recognized this reality and became sponsors of the bill over the past decade (28 sponsors in Dec. 2021). Brad Lander was once one of these proponents and a loud voice supporting the bill. This is part of his testimony given at a hearing on the Jobs Survival Act in June 2009, the last honest hearing on the bill in the Council. Brad Lander, “ I believe that one being proposed here today (Jobs Survival Act) of a fair lease renewal process comes out high up at the top and I strongly support it… So let's put in place this one very reasonable additional regulation (Jobs Survival Act).”
He went on to accurately make this prediction, Lander, “ As you know, the challenges facing small business have grown from a problem to a real crisis in the city. But you're still seeing a stunning number of places where when a lease renewal comes up, what people are being forced to do is absurd. If we don’t do something about it soon we're going to lose them more and more and more.”
Lander knew a crisis existed for merchants, its root cause, and that it would only get worse without regulation legislation giving rights to merchants in the commercial lease renewal process. But after he was elected to the Council he did absolutely nothing for the next 9 years to give even a single right to owners needed to save even one business or one job. Whatever the deal with the devil (lobbies/party bosses/powerbrokers) Lander made for his political future, Brad Lander would never call for legislation to regulate landlords in the commercial lease renewal process.
He withdrew his name as a sponsor of the bill (the same bill he called for a vote on) and began mimicking only the real estate lobby’s talking points that the bill had "legal issues." Even after this lobby inspired bogus legal claim was soundly debunked by a Legal Review Panel of former Bronx President Ruben Diaz Jr., Brad Lander and others continued to hide behind it for doing nothing to end the crisis. By allowing a "lie to live" at City Hall, Brad Lander allowed a crisis to grow out of control under his leadership.
Even as Co-Chair of the Progressive Caucus he never once called for an honest hearing to find a solution to end the crisis, which he knew was growing citywide and that there was a real solution (Jobs Survival Act) to end it.
Was the true intent of forming the Progressive Caucus with Brad Lander as Co Chair to promote progressive legislation or to protect and promote the profits of lobbies and power-brokers? Under Lander's watch for the first time in over 3 decades the Jobs Survival Act did not have an honest Council hearing!
Brad Lander knew from a Hispanic business owner's survey done in 2009* that at least 31% of the immigrant owners were targeted and being extorted for cash by unscrupulous landlords and he testified calling for an investigation to end it. His public outcry call to expose this reprehensible act against helpless immigrants was never again mentioned by Brad Lander. Even when his influence and political power were enhanced in the City Council, he turned his back on the city's multi-generational business owners and never once attempted to end the illegal extortion he knew many experienced. The outcome of Lander’s betrayal of immigrant owners can be seen in a 2021 survey of immigrant business owners** that showed at least 41% were now being illegally extorted for cash in order to remain in business.
Brad Lander should be embarrassed and ashamed of the results of this survey. Also, every member of the Progressive Caucus should share in this shame. When will the future of our city’s multi-generational immigrant owners matter to the Progressive Caucus, or for that matter to those Council Members representing immigrant communities? How can unscrupulous landlords target immigrant owners to rob them of their life’s savings and think they can get away with this cruelty? Under Brad Lander’s leadership all injustices and discriminations against immigrant owned businesses are but “collateral damage” of the real estate speculation strategy ruling our city’s economic policy.
* https://www.savenycjobs.com/latin-chamber-study
** 2021 Immigrant Business Survey | savenycjobs
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A Council Member's record matters, especially as the Co-Chair of the Progressive Caucus. CM Lander as Co Chair gave credibility to a lobby orchestrated charade of many years of worthless initiatives, useless legislation, distraction studies, misinformation and inadequate programs all promoted by real estate lobby's shills pretending to help our small businesses. All government acts dealing with small businesses were purposefully avoiding the real "root cause" of good businesses being forced to close in record numbers, which was the obvious destructive commercial lease renewal process. CM Lander was going along with the lobby's disingenuous charade of using government to cover-up a crisis, as well as, hiding the existence of the only real solution (Jobs Survival Act) to end it.
Year after year, Lander was using his authority and role to "do nothing" and ignore a growing citywide small business crisis. Due to his high position in the Council and as Co-Chair of the Progressive Caucus, a strong case can be made of his own responsibility in allowing this cover up of an unresolved and ignored growing crisis to become worse and be the cause of our city's "empty store blight." Once again, Brad Lander’s deliberately ignoring a crisis that resulted in it spreading to every main street in the city causing the “empty store blight”, is appalling.
After the 2008 nationwide financial crisis, each year in every large city in the nation a vibrant recovery was taking place on their main streets. Only one major city in America during a booming economic recovery had an “empty store blight.” An empty store blight after continuing to lose record numbers of its very best long established businesses, that city was NYC. Why did Brad Lander, in his leadership role, accept the new "norm" for the backbone of our economy? That new "norm" was when a long established successful business, with a large loyal customer base, whose lease expired and the owner was willing and able to pay a reasonable rent increase and survive if given reasonable lease terms was forced to close only because the landlord demanded oppressive lease terms with extreme rent increases.
Why was it acceptable to Brad Lander that landlords would force those successful businesses that were the stabilizers and foundation of their local economy, who also were the major creators of good paying jobs, force them to close and then leave the storefronts empty, sometimes for years? Let Brad Lander explain who benefits when a long established popular businesses that has created good paying jobs and has the potential for growth with more job creation, that every day was collecting revenue for the city's budget, but is forced to close and left empty for sometimes years?
Brad Lander willfully accepted, promoted and protected the real estate lobby created insane greed economics in the extreme.
If CM Brad Lander would have allowed his caucus to promote their progressive values by calling for an honest hearing on finding a real solution to stop the closing of long established businesses who were willing and able to pay reasonable rents if given the right to negotiate fair lease terms, the city’s "empty store blight" would have been prevented. Yes, shameful but true, that the “empty store blight’ resulted from a lobby controlled City Council whose ambitious leadership the lobby unduly influenced.
His disgraceful record of promoting REBNY'S false talking points and schemes to stop a vote on the Jobs Survival Act was shameful. The key role he played in helping to stop a vote on the bill and then stand silently by permitting a lobby, “in plain sight”, to break every rule of the Council and of “good government” when they inspired the creation of their own bill, the Commercial Rent Stabilization (CRS) bill, was dishonorable. Brad Lander knew that the CRS bill had one goal, to keep the “status quo” for the lobby’s landlords.
After Brad Lander helped introduce and promote the lobby’s status quo bill, CRS, a response came from the true small business advocates. While the lobby’s shills: SBS, BIDS, Chambers, EDC, fake business organizations, and government funded NFP all joined in praising the CRS bill by falsely claiming it would stop rent gouging, the true advocates knew it was 20 years too late and nothing but a REBNY TROJAN HORSE, that would not save a single owner. A Small Business Congress media release in Jan.7, 2020 shows the comments made by Sung Soo Kim, “the Godfather of Immigrant Businesses,” and who was also a prime author of the Jobs Survival Act. Mr. Kim was calling out the truth of who Brad Lander really is, not a true progressive, and who he really serves, REBNY.
Don’t fall for Brad Lander's lie that doing a little is doing enough
to save our small businesses and their worker’s jobs.
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With little debate, Brad Lander is one of the smoothest political talkers at City Hall. He can be very persuasive on just about any issue. But there is one issue he can never fool the small business owners on, or the public. That issue is the truthful answer to the question of, “is government doing enough to protect a business owner when their lease expires?” Did the merchant’s own lawmakers make every effort to pass legislation that would give local business owners the rights needed for a fair commercial lease renewal process? Did their lawmakers at least promote legislation that would give every business owner rights needed to have a fighting chance to survive and negotiate fair lease terms?
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Being able to negotiate in good faith a fair lease is a BIG deal for business owners. For the past 20 years negotiating a fair lease in NYC is almost an impossible task under the present commercial lease renewal process. Few business owners in NYC have fair rents with fair lease terms.
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Why the REBNY shills and political loyalist never wanted to talk about the critical commercial lease renewal process.
Business owners make future plans based upon the terms of their leases. Instead of planning for growth and job creation, many will walk away from decades of investing their money, hard work and sacrifices made to build their businesses. Many were forced to close only because their landlord refused to negotiate fair lease terms that would allow the owner to survive and make a good profit. The life and death of a business depends upon the right to negotiate terms equally with the landlord. The jobs of their employees depend upon fair lease terms. The ability of owners to hire the “hard to employ” depends upon fair lease terms. Keeping local businesses open as the pathway for immigrant jobs and less skilled workers depends upon the lease terms. The inflation rate (cost of living) for NYC depends greatly upon the fairness of the commercial lease renewal process.
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Who do the lawmakers believe pays for the insane rents in NYC? In the end it is always the customers. The revenue collected from 210K plus businesses for our local city’s budget depends upon fair leases. The potential for business growth and thus job creation growth depends upon the lease terms. The increase in property taxes depends upon the stability of the “backbone of the economy” collecting revenue for the budget that the homeowners will not have to make up any shortfall. How much revenue is collected from empty stores? The future of every business owner’s American Dream depends upon a fair commercial lease renewal process!
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Brad Lander only cares about his own political future. He promoted rights for the landlords, the jobs killers, and not the job creators, the small business owners.
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Brad Lander had the rare opportunity to use his influence in the Council to pass the Jobs Survival Act and give every business owner the right to renew a 10 year lease, equal rights to negotiate fair lease terms that would allow the owner to remain open and make a good profit, and an arbitration process that would stop rent gouging and any landlord abuse. An arbitration process that would level the playing field for the business owner and even possibly lower the rents in those neighborhoods with many empty storefronts. Yes, under Lander’s CRS bill the rents will only go up. Under the Jobs Survival Act most rents will likely go down. Yes, the truth hidden for over a decades by REBNY’s shills is exposed, it is only the Jobs Survival Act that will stop rent gouging and result in lower rents.
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Brad Lander had a clear choice to make: a clear humanitarian choice, and a clear decency choice, but Lander instead choose to side with REBNY and deny economic justice and rights to business owners. He willingly pledged his support to the lobby’s Commercial Rent Stabilization bill that gave NO RIGHT TO RENEW the lease to the tenants. Also, NO rights to the business owners in the negotiation process. He supported a status quo commercial lease renewal process controlled only by the landlords, a “take it or leave” destructive process. A walk down any main street in any neighborhood where empty stores are, where once prosperous business were, show that many business owners made the only choice given them, to LEAVE instead of becoming involuntary servitude to their landlords.
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Brad Lander’s role in the most despicable mockery of democracy by stopping a vote on the Jobs Survival Act and then substituting a lobby’s status quo bill is simply indefensible. Indefensible, no matter how smooth a talker a career politician is.
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No true small business advocate is fooled by Brad Lander’s disingenuous political rhetoric. His total lack of any empathy for business owner's dire plight and his lack of respect for small business owners, especially immigrant family owners, is reflected in his long record of betraying them in the Council, while only serving the needs of REBNY. We know, look at his actions not his nice sounding words.
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Mr. Kim’s comment, “With a growing small business crisis out of control citywide, CM Lander should be ashamed of using his office to create a policy that in reality is the real estate lobby’s policy to stop any law from giving any rights to small business owners when their leases expire. CM Lander’s actions are despicable and do not fool any small business owner with his REBNY created bill that was created with only one goal, to stop a vote on the Jobs Survival Act.
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Mr. Kim, “ A warning to all immigrant families in NYC, do not trust CM Brad Lander. He does not deserve your trust because he betrayed his progressive values and abandoned his ethics and our immigrant families and will never respect or fight for our rights. CM Lander, like Mayor de Blasio and Speaker Johnson treat the immigrant families as second class citizens. His policies in the City Council are all anti immigrant because none gives a single right to our owners when their leases expire. He lied when he falsely claimed the many useless bills and worthless programs were created to help small businesses. All of his policy decisions are made to keep big real estate in power and stop any legislation to save small businesses.”
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Mr. Kim, “Lander is a disgrace to good government by his colluding behind the scenes at City Hall to create a substitute bill for the Jobs Survival Act, which he knows is the only real solution to save small businesses. Instead of working with the Speaker to change the Jobs Survival Act, as the Speaker pledged at the Oct 22, 2018 hearing and move it on to a vote, CM Lander worked with REBNY to create and fast track a bunch of: worthless bills, fake studies, useless initiatives and now the Levin Bill (CRS) to maintain the “status quo” for the landlords.”
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Mr. Kim, “His “political theater” at City Hall only shows clearly that CM Lander has abandoned his progressive values to serve his campaign donors and his political ambitions. In the long 34 year fight for economic justice for small business owners, never once has there been two bills dealing with the commercial lease renewal process been in play at the same time in the City Council. But under CM Lander’s policy, he has allowed this to happen by authorizing REBNY to high-jack the Jobs Survival Act, and to CM Lander’s policies created legislation that empowers the landlords’ position by “keeping the free rental market intact” which is destroying our local economy. CM Lander’s policy gives new meaning to the word, “Hypocrite”, when he testified in 2009 of exactly what would happen if the free market was not regulated, Brad Lander,” I just think the evidence is there before us if we let the free market reign, we know without any additional regulation what it's going to continue to give us. In two years, three years, five years, we'll be back here with fewer of the small businesses.”
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Mr. Kim “ I want to give CM Lander some advice to gain retail diversity and especially revitalize small businesses. That advice is pass the Jobs Survival Act immediately, disband all BIDS, and fire all SBS and EDC officers and replace them with real business owners who started businesses from scratch and built successful businesses in NYC. Another advice for CM Lander to expand your business awareness, “what good is any program or bill if the business closes?” Stop the closings first, stabilize the small businesses and then maybe your programs may help a few.”
In claiming to be a true progressive leader, what plausible explanation could Brad Lander give for purposely partnering with a lobby to stop a vote on the Jobs Survival Act during the entire Covid Crisis? To intentionally allow the only real lifeline that could have saved thousands of desperate business owners and tens of thousands of jobs to sit bottled up in Committee with 28 sponsors, year after year. Can the case be made against Lander that after November 2018, when the Jobs Survival Act had a hearing and should have quickly had a simple amendment made ( 2 hours to make) and then voted on and easily passed by the full Council, that the role played by Brad Lander in preventing a vote on the bill makes him share in the responsibility for every long established business that was forced to close after Nov. 2018, due only to merchants being denied a fair lease?
Why doesn’t Brad Lander want small business owners in NYC to have the right to renew 10 year leases? Or the right to equally negotiate fair lease terms that would allow a reasonable profit. Why doesn’t he want legislation of the commercial lease renewal process that has an arbitration process that would end rent gouging and landlord abuses like illegal extortion targeting mostly immigrant owners. Why does Lander think it is OK that the business owners pay their wealthy landlord’s property taxes? Brad Lander does not want any business owner to have any rights when their leases expire because REBNY does not want them to have any rights.
There is a challenge for Brad Lander to show his true progressive values. He should go and look any Hispanic bodega owner in the eye, one who has been extorted for tens of thousands of dollars by the landlord and is on a cruel month to month/one year lease and paying his landlord’s property taxes. He should try to convince him that Brad Lander’s progressive legislation will make the owner much better off and will make him more money. Lander will argue that the owner doesn’t need the right to renew a 10 year lease, and that the owner will have a much brighter future continuing to be extorted every time his lease expires and when he continues to pay his landlord’s growing property taxes. Yes, a hard sell even for a career politician.
After touting that he has the bill (CRS) that will save our small businesses and end rent gouging, how can Brad Lander possibly explain why none of the city’s 210K owners have ever heard of his bill? How can Brad Lander explain that his bill, which he claims is a better solution to end the city’s small business crisis than the Jobs Survival Act, NEVER had a hearing to prove it!! Being a leading Council Member in charge of policy and Co Chair of the Progressive Caucus, but he doesn’t call for a hearing on a bill that he is promoting, it is called rigging for a lobby! In truth, with the help and collusion of other Council leadership and the usual REBNY shills: BIDS, SBS, Chambers and EDC there is no Council hearings on either the Jobs Survival Act or the lobby’s CRS bill. Even during the Covid Crisis!! Shame!
If REBNY and the Speaker’s Office would have allowed “good government” to work, the Jobs Survival Act should have unanimously passed into law in Oct 2009. Brad Lander strongly supported it and called for a vote on the bill. Again, in Nov 2018 the Jobs Survival Act should have easily passed into law, but again REBNY used the Speaker’s Office to stop any vote. This time Brad Lander gave no support for the Jobs Survival Act and instead mimicked REBNY’s talking points. In the new Council in March 2022, the Jobs Survival Act should have been resubmitted and voted on with easy passage into law. But as a result of Brad Lander using his Council authority to stop any vote on the bill for over three years, and instead he promoted the lobby’s CRS status quo bill, the Jobs Survival Act died on Dec. 31, 2021. For the first time in over 3 decades the only lifeline and only hope to save small businesses was not resubmitted in the City Council. It is the low point of morality for the City Council.
Brad Lander’s proclaimed progressive legislation (CRS bill) if ever passed would have destroyed the American Dream for every merchant and lead to an economic catastrophe in NYC.
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Council Members today cannot protect their long established successful businesses from closing when their leases expire and cannot keep their new businesses open long enough to become stable and growing to create jobs. Which raises the question, are our Council Members so profoundly ignorant of the workings of their own small business owners and what they really need from government to become more stable and offer more potential for them to be more profitable long term? Or are most playing “willful ignorance” and under the influence of lobbies and political powerbrokers?
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The over a decade long unstable local small business economies, with record closings of good businesses and the record “turnover” rate of new businesses, and an ignored small business crisis, makes every politician’s political rhetoric, our “small businesses are the backbone of our economy”, totally disingenuous.
Will enough true progressive Council Members find their political will and courage to stand up against REBNY and resubmit the Jobs Survival Act in the Council? Will Council Members find their moral compasses and decide to “do the right thing” for their own merchants and pass legislation giving every business owner the rights needed to negotiate fair lease terms? Has the City Council been so corrupted by a lobby that it is incapable of restoring the American Dream for its small business owners?
Mr. Kim, “ I call upon all good government citizens who want to save our small businesses and the jobs of workers and are angry and have had enough of the corruption of our lawmakers. Get involved and support new candidates who can reform the corrupt Democratic party controlled by big real estate.”