Charlie Rose

Gelles  03/15/2012 06:42 PM Report

The opening paragraphs of my 3-15-6:21 PM EST have too many typos. Please read thru them. The post reads free of typos as it move on.

This lousy software deliberately prevents a one hour window in which we in the audience can edit our posts.

Amazon allows infinite audience editing BECAUSE they want our business.

Rose wants our eyeballs. He has us by these balls and is too stubborn to give us a break. In return we give him as pokes in the eye as we can. His middle brow political economic doctrine stinks. He is too young for WWII -- where we learned the Keynesian arts. He is as useless as tits on a boar in the middle of the greatest opportunity for progress the world has ever known.

Let him start a series on reform and exponential economic growth with Diamandis, Kurzweil, Kamen, Elon Musk, Mathew Forstater, and a score or more other genuine scholars whose futurism promises rational progress and is not tainted by pedestrian legacy notions from people who never believed the human race on earth would ever see Mars close up.

Gelles  03/15/2012 06:21 PM Report

mcarmbk (and possibly Jezra)~

You two critics or Ratner and his projects, I trust, point to factual conditions that, under our system courts of law are supposed to resolve in favor of the public interest.

If you are right I hope the law succeeds in overturning crooked and even unwise deals that may have advanced solutions as bad as claim.

My reaction from this West Coast news center is based on my hope for public / private partnerships that can finance projects that are necessary.

I hope you two and other members of this audience and their friends can bring to popular notice the true facts.

Today I listened to Charlie Rose and the British Minister (of finance I believe) who I am sure is a twit. He kept saying the USA owns the global reserve currency and is the only nation that can finance necessary domestic and global growth if it has the brains and guts. He makes no sense and is, like Obama, are weak at the top of our hierarchy:

..... Any advanced industrial nation can fully implement Keynesian growth strategies, as all did in WW II. Unfortunately, the fascists implemented it for murder, and the allies implemented it for freedom.

We are poised at the cusp of real Keynesian growth, supported by high tech revolutions in information, biology, materials (nano) science, and comprehension of the WW II lesson: the human family can afford all they can produce!

..... "We will soon be able to meet and exceed the basic needs of every man, woman and child on the planet. Abundance for all is within our grasp. This bold, contrarian view, backed up by exhaustive research, introduces our near-term future, where exponentially growing technologies and three other powerful forces are conspiring to better the lives of billions.

..... "An antidote to pessimism, it is authored by tech entrepreneur turned philanthropist, Peter H. Diamandis and award-winning science writer Steven Kotler. "

The above quote is from Amazon.com. Visit its Peter Diamandis page. P.D. is co-founder with Ray Kurzweil of America's Singularity University, a public / private partnership between NASA, the intellectual heart of our government-industrial industrial complex whose threats Ike smelled and whose promise has started the Internet and ultra-high tech solutions to scarcity and long brain-dead legacies from law and economics.

Charlie Rose can be part of the solution. Or he can be there with Ike, fearful and unable to put us on the best course for our times. Ike was good. But his games were bridge and golf. Today's games reflect more Keynes' interests: economic reform and scientific advance.

Bloomberg and Ratner may be bad. I merely listened to a smidgen of what they're doing. Bloomberg has some great TV series on high-tech capitalism at its best. Singularity Univ., the University of Missouri at Kansas City, the New School in NYC, Bard University, and other reform voices around the world are calling for planning enough to balance supply and demand for ending poverty and advancing the beginning of this current age of abundance.

They are based on Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton, Lincoln, Keynes, and Lerner, etc., monetary systems of production -- and RADICALLY OPPOSED TO THE TWIN FEARS FOR CORRUPTION AND IGNORANCE AT THE VERY TOP.

How can you tell the difference between today's GOOD GUYS and SCOUNDRELS ?

..... The Good guys insist on full employment and high wages and output to make the wages effective.

..... The Bad guys insist on austerity, high return to the already rich, and protection of legacy laws and doctrines that created counter-productive inequality in the first place.

Some inequality is OK. Too much is an invitation to totalitarian tyrannies of which we've had enough for the last many thousand years.

Jezra  03/14/2012 06:21 PM Report

Did you not know that Brooklyn has fought against Bruce Ratner's "Atlantic Yards" project for eight long years, that multiple court challenges were mounted, and that the project, along with much else that Ratner has built, is widely despised? Or did you just not care?

mcarmbk  03/14/2012 05:33 PM Report

By the way, Thanks Charlie Rose, after seeing this softball 'interview' and knowing what a low life Bruce Ratner is, I will never trust another word I hear on your show.

mcarmbk  03/14/2012 05:31 PM Report

@gelles

The neighborhood in question - it was being developed and thriving long before Bruce Ratner came along in fact some of the condos seized by Ratner were valued at 700,000 - hardly in need of caring Bruce Ratner's 'public private partnerships"

How did they seize the property? In New York state, the land has to be declared 'blighted' and the state did just that. 400,000.00 Condos, blighted. Small middle class business. Blighted. Homes lovingly cared for. blighted.

Lastly, look at the chinzy, cheap buildings Ratner has put up - and the beautiful historic buildings that were torn down - long term Ratner is actually ruining the value of Brooklyn and helping to turn it into a sterile globalist 'anyplace'.

mcarmbk  03/14/2012 05:22 PM Report

Bruce Ratner used eminent domain and massive public subsidies to line his own pockets- he stole properties from legal owners and Charlie Rose gives him softball 'interview' worthy of the soviet era.

Ratner is also a development partner with the new york times, who has been reluctant to criticize him.

I happen to live in the neighborhood Ratner's busy obliterating - most urban planners, or those not in the pay of the city or ratner - thought the idea of putting an arena on the busiest corner in Brooklyn, in an area surrounded by brownstones was a disaster in the making. And it is.

As for his metrotech that was another boondoogle failure - it's only propped up by his political buddies sending govt offices there and as Norman O mentioned, what are essentially tax bribes. In order to build metrotech, ratner eliminated middle class owned businesses (again through eminent domain) that provided 1500 good blue collar jobs - not hot dog venders at his arena.

And we haven't even gotten into the ridge hill corruption scandal and numerous other bribery cases that Ratner/Forest City has been associated with.

Or the fact that there were other developers willing to pay more for the MTA land - but the MTA gave it to ratner, for 50 million under the highest bid -and he couldnt' even pay that so, they reduced it to 20 million, the rest of which he will pay later, or so he claims.

Lastly, much blame can fall on Bloomberg, Bloomberg has not been good 'for business' he's been good for his friends - and hell on the middle class - he has turned over massive amounts of public land and middle class owned land to wealthy developers and big corporations.

Gelles  03/13/2012 08:26 PM Report

We all agree with the caution, "Do not let the PERFECT be an enemy of the GOOD."

But deciding if the GOOD is good or merely LOUSY makes that caution difficult to observe in concrete situations.

I believe it is self-evident that Charlie Rose late-night interviews are the best of their kind for the show's audience. That audience is loyal and large considering its taste for something rare on Television: art, science, literature, business, technology and news at the level of our best American middle-brow content.

Bruce Ratner spoke to that audience in plain language that was no more self-serving than we demand in our ambition driven culture. I would prefer a culture driven to indoctrinate all of us in a desire to live with the Golden Rule as our top priority and "winning is everything" as a rejected lie.

But our culture is somewhere in between these two notions. People who follow nature's examples avoid acting the "rug" that others walk all over. If we object to slavery and wage-slavery, we must be willing to get results in the struggle to right all wrongs. Many results will favored more for subjective reasons than because they can be proved to please large majorities of our neighbors who do follow the Golden Rule.

A huge area of the global culture (excluding allegiance to Islamic terrorism) responds to the imperatives of laissez faire market-oriented capitalism -- not altruistic Keynesian capitalism. This killer of the win-win dream leaves me open to the best feelings when I see a real estate developer with Ratner's desire to create public/private subsidized partnerships. Subsidies are the only way a nation can correct stubborn adherence to inadequate demand and supply systems that look to ordinary shoppers to provide planning answers that are out of reach by genius as we know it. Certainly, government as we know it promotes tax systems far worse than than shoppers would ever want.

..... But government is also the tool we must use to repeal that horror -- because ordinary shoppers refuse to demand repeal of the worst of current taxes; they are even more ignorant that the lobbyists who are paid to ruin government by pleasing their corporate paymasters.

..... Subsidies may be subject to abuse. But taxes abuse us all, and never reward hard necessary work.

Overlooked  03/13/2012 01:14 PM Report

Thank you Mr. Oder for illuminating three very important facts, namely:

1- That Bruce Ratner's developments are, as Gilbert & Sullivan so aptly put it "Things are seldom what they seem, skim milk masquerades as cream".

2- That unfortunately Emperor Charlie has no clothes.

3- Sadly, it does seem apparent that either Charlie Rose can be easily had or else that Charlie can appear very wise and very smart to viewers who like him but know nothing about a subject and also would bother not to do anything but cursory research or preparation for an interview.

vongleichent  03/13/2012 01:02 PM Report

I used to want to be an architect back in the day. Great to see a turn around in Brooklyn, and all the benefits that come along with it.

NormanOder  03/13/2012 07:37 AM Report

Here's my full critique of the Ratner interview:

http://bit.ly/wBFVzX

As to whether Ratner is a "civic" developer--a real weasel word--might I remind viewers of scholar/writer Fred Siegel's characterization:: "He's the master of subsidy."

Norman Oder

Atlantic Yards Report

finalfantasytown  03/13/2012 06:49 AM Report

anne4444:

I have some emitting words in comment of charlie rose social media on July 7th, 2011, when receiving your comment here.

Gelles  03/13/2012 03:05 AM Report

http://www.ustaxreform.us/bruce.htm

above link to informal bio from a decade ago

Gelles  03/13/2012 02:49 AM Report

This interview with a real person -- with charm to spare; a reputed fortune of perhaps a half a billion dollars (perhaps much more or less -- I am uncertain of my recall of the amount); friends and opponents; good press and the opposite; a record of business success and success in government; and all the gossip a celebrity might fear or crave, etc., -- is one of my favorites among all of Charlie guests.

As Bruce Ratner spoke, I hung on to all his notions. He is a "real" player in real estate, spectator sports, politics, business, intelligence, philanthropy, etc. He might choose words more accurate than mine -- but this the my first encounter with his name and fame.

I suggest any viewer of the CR Show should read some entries in Google and Wikipedia and then re-watch the interview. Ratner is remaking famous places and creating new ones too. I say his intentions are as good as any I'm aware of -- I'm proud for this fellow whose ease with a TV audience is remarkable.

The world of politics, law and real-estate deals, is fraught with corruption in all its corners and contents within them. I believe Bruce Ratner is one of the good guys not the others. For sure if your visiting a place he had a hand in developing, you are likely to be thankful for all he's done.

anne4444  03/12/2012 08:20 PM Report

New understanding of Buddhism’s eight senses or eight consciousnesses:

5 senses: sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell by eye, ear, tongue, skin and nose.

6 sense: intuition and compassion by the invisible soul inside our body

7 sense: invisible and immortal “data cable” transferring information between 6 sense and 8 sense during sleeping.

8 sense: our united non-separable soul kept together within mother earth. Invisible and immortal.

===============================================================

There is no privacy in our world; especially when you are powerful because God will likely peep into your other half soul to see why things get screw up.

===============================================================

When we look into the sky, we are all humble by the creation.

There are total 48 dimensions in our universe. 36 dimensions are inaccessible to us. Our souls can access 12 dimensions (12 strand soul DNA) while this material world with plant earth limits us to only 3 dimensions with Double Helix DNA.

Knowledge is limitless, so does intelligent being.

Our soul has no difference; we are united as one. Our differences in body, senses, sex, intelligence, power and wealth, is only the trap into darkness which prevent us to unite our other half soul into the lightness.

NormanOder  03/12/2012 03:41 PM Report

Did Charlie Rose know there was significant opposition to Atlantic Yards? A much-praised documentary called "Battle for Brooklyn"? A play called "In the Footprint"? Apparently not.

NormanOder  03/12/2012 03:34 PM Report

"I believe this place will come back," asserted Bruce Ratner. Yes, Brooklyn's downtown had not "come back." But the neighborhoods around it already were receiving significant investment and revitalization--several were already historic districts before MetroTech was a gleam in Ratner's eye.

NormanOder  03/12/2012 01:26 PM Report

When the only thing that makes Charlie Rose remotely contentious is Bruce Ratner's removal of Frank Gehry from Atlantic Yards, and Gehry's withdrawal from the NY Times building, you know Mr. Rose did no homework.

Even Greg David of Crain's NY Business, who's a *fan* of Forest City Ratner, just described the company's business practices as "See no evil, hear no evil."

http://bit.ly/zZlmsz

NormanOder  03/12/2012 01:11 PM Report

If, as Bruce Ratner asserts, the arena is "the first building built in the city since the year 2000 that is really a contemporary building," isn't he ignoring Frank Gehry's 8 Spruce Street, which is already complete?

NormanOder  03/12/2012 01:10 PM Report

SHoP, despite Ratner's statement, is not the arena architect. Ellerbe Becket designed the arena. SHoP is the *facade* architect. SHoP was brought in to improve the unadorned, hangar-like design that leaked to the press.

NormanOder  03/12/2012 01:03 PM Report

Actually, what Charlie Rose calls "public housing" and Bruce Ratner calls "affordable housing" are not at all the same. Those eligible for public housing would be eligible for only about half the amount of subsidized housing planned for Atlantic Yards.

NormanOder  03/12/2012 12:27 PM Report

Ratner is not "redeveloping the Atlantic Yards site," because he doesn't yet control all of the Atlantic Yards site. Atlantic Yards is a brand name for a project involving 22 acres, including an 8.5-acre MTA railyard (the rights to which Ratner controls only in small part), formerly private property, former public streets, and extant private property.

NormanOder  03/12/2012 12:25 PM Report

MetroTech hasn't produced more than 20,000 jobs. Most of those jobs were moved from Manhattan, as New York dangled tax breaks to ensure that Wall Street firms would not move their back offices to New Jersey.

NormanOder  03/12/2012 12:22 PM Report

"What is it about Atlantic City Yards," asked Charlie Rose.

When the interviewer is so uninformed he can't get the name right for Atlantic Yards, you know you're in trouble.

REMant  03/12/2012 11:38 AM Report

The more I see of them and their work, the more I think developers and architects are basically ego-maniacs, who do anything but respect either public or future, because so much of their work is useless to begin with, and becomes more so as time goes on. And I could cite a number of rather famous or rather infamous exemplars, who also insisted on the good they were doing for "the people." Let's hope the Times doesn't end up like the Trib. I also cannot think of any sports complexes which haven't exploited the taxpayer.