Trump: Ford to Keep Lincoln Plant in Kentucky

President Coolidge, 1st Presidential Film (1924)

Little Italy is on the brink of extinction

Little Italy at Mullberry and Broom. Photo: JC Rice

By Kate Briquelet

(New York Post) A piece of New York City history is bidding arrivederci.

Rising rents and changing demographics have driven Little Italy to the verge of extinction. Once a teeming neighborhood stretching 50 square blocks, it now barely covers three blocks of Mulberry Street — and even that strip is under threat.

“You can’t rebuild Little Italy,” said Robert Ianniello Jr., owner of the famed Umbertos Clam House. “If we go away, it will never be here again. You can’t build an Olive Garden and say it’s Little Italy.”

Ianniello is battling a rent increase from a new landlord who bought the building last month for $17.5 million. He recently got a rent bill for $34,000 a month — more than double what he used to pay.

“It’s a landlord problem,” said Ianniello, who heads the Little Italy Merchants Association. “They think this is Fifth Avenue.”

Eight eateries have shut down in the past year.

Il Fornaio, once owned by Gambino mobster Joseph Corrao, remains empty.

Giovanna’s shuttered after a six-year run when the landlord doubled the rent. Ads show the owner wants $32,000 monthly for the space.

A block south, at Positano Ristorante, a legal notice in the window shows the city marshal took over the storefront on behalf of the landlord in January.

At S.P.Q.R., the monthly rent jumped to more than $50,000 and the eatery was forced to close. The space currently is home to a year-round Christmas shop.

One Mulberry Street apartment building is converting the ground floor into retail, while a hotel is being constructed on Grand Street next to the now-shuttered Florio’s restaurant.

But it’s not just development that’s pressuring Little Italy. Cultural conflicts are also cutting it down to size.

In 2011, Nolita boutiques demanded the city remove three blocks from the famous Feast of San Gennaro to keep revelers’ “greasy hands” from besmirching their $300 frocks.

The shopkeepers’ request had festival boosters hotter than a plate of baked ziti. More than 100 protesters packed a community board meeting.

“We had Italians from all over writing to the mayor,” said John Fratta, whose grandfather co-founded the annual festival in 1926. “It’s something that’s very sacred . . . You’ll see venom if you try to change it or stop it.”

Italian immigration surged in the late 19th century. By the early 1900s, nearly 10,000 Italians lived in the neighborhood, which once spanned roughly from Lafayette Street to the Bowery and from Kenmare to Canal streets.

Many residents flocked to the outer boroughs after World War II, and an influx of Chinese immigrants moved in, blurring the lines between Chinatown and Little Italy.

Today Little Italy’s heart is three blocks of Mulberry Street between Canal and Broome streets.

Emelise Aleandri, an author on Italian history and theater, said that the neighborhood remains a cultural touchstone for Italian Americans across the country — and that it would be a huge loss if it disappeared.

“Right now, there is just enough of a population to keep up traditions,” Aleandri explained. “But it’s going to be more difficult to keep the area Italian if the merchants and businesses leave.”

Link:

• Little Italy is on the brink of extinction

Clinton: I Thought Obama 'Was Going to Cry'

By DANIEL HALPER

(The Weekly Standard) At a campaign event for Barack Obama's reelection campaign, Bill Clinton said that Mitt Romney's argument "is true, we're not fixed":



"Governor Romney's argument is, we're not fixed, so fire him and put me in," said Clinton. "It is true we're not fixed. When President Obama looked into the eyes of that man who said in the debate, I had so much hope four years ago and I don't now, I thought he was going to cry. Because he knows that it's not fixed."

UPDATE: A Romney spokesman comments: "We agree with former President Bill Clinton.  The economy has not been fixed under President Barack Obama.  Today, more than 23 million Americans are struggling for work, poverty has increased and food stamps are at record levels.  Mitt Romney believes we can do better by creating 12 million new jobs with higher take-home pay, cutting spending to put our nation on course for a balanced budget, and actually fixing our economy."

Link:

• Clinton: I Thought Obama 'Was Going to Cry'

Nigel Farage: The Euro Titanic Has Now Hit The Iceberg (The Genius of Mutual Indebtedness)

Creative Destruction: When Mitt Romney Came to Town - Full Video

Click the above image or here to see the film

Mitt Romney. Was he a job creator or a corporate raider?

That's the question this film answers.

And it’s not pretty.

Mitt Romney was not a capitalist during his reign at Bain. He was a predatory corporate raider. His firm didn't seek to create value. Instead, like a scavenger, Romney looked for businesses he could pick apart. Indeed, he represented the worst possible kind of predator, operating within the law but well outside the bounds of what most real capitalists consider ethical.

He is exhibit number one the left wants to use in the coming election to give capitalism a bad name.

He and his friends at Bain were bad guys. Any real capitalists should disavow Romney's ‘creative destruction’ model that made him wealthy at the expense of thousands of American jobs.

Mitt Romney and his cronies pioneered ‘deindustrialization,’ a process by which they searched out vulnerable companies, took them over, loaded them with debt, and collected obscene fees while doing so. He sent jobs overseas or killed them altogether, and then picked apart the remains - including pension funds - before the companies went bankrupt.

Some might call that the free market. Most of us think its just plain wrong.

If you wonder why America has lost so many manufacturing jobs overseas, look no further than Mitt Romney – the King of Bain.

Think you know Mitt?

Think again . . .

• When Mitt Romney Came to Town - Full Video
• King of Bain Web Site