Dear New Yorkers,

 

Thank you for visiting my campaign website!

   

The only reason I’m running for mayor of New York is because I am convinced I’m the only candidate with a transformative platform, the only one capable of really and sustainably solving our serious problems and quickly leading the city to economic and social prosperity. Judge for yourself! Compare my platform with the platforms of the other candidates. It’s night and day! Keep in mind that details are everything. Vague platforms are just wish lists, they don’t show the way to solving problems and reaching goals. The reason New York hasn’t solved its problems for decades and decades is that all our mayors had only vague ideas of what to do. If we keep electing mayors with vague platforms and no effective solutions, New York will continue to be a city with many undereducated citizens, widespread poverty, homelessness, unemployment, crime, recidivism, addiction, violence, abuse, low high school graduation rates, and high taxes.

 

My platform is a win-win platform: it solves social problems without chasing away the wealthy and successful businesses with high taxes. Social prosperity is essential, but it cannot exist without economic prosperity. A prosperous city needs all its citizens to be well educated. It also needs many wealthy residents and many highly profitable businesses. They create jobs and generate income and sales taxes. Chasing them away with high taxes is counterproductive.  Once our social problems are solved we can drastically reduce all taxes. That is the formula for a socially and economically prosperous New York City. 

 

For a quick summary of my platform, take a look at my platform flyer, Imagine the Enormous Difference! It is posted here on the campaign website.

 

 

My Number One Priority Is Making All New York Public Schools “Elite” Schools

 

• Teaching economics and investing in various “failing” NYC public high schools for a year as a volunteer was eye opening: it made me understand what the problems were and what the solutions were. The problem was lack of discipline, little homework, lack of basics, and a deficient curriculum. I had a total of about 150 high school seniors and had to teach them fractions and percentages! They had learned practically nothing in all their years in public school. I also volunteered teaching economics/investing in a New York State prison on Staten Island. All the inmates were high school dropouts from tough neighborhoods with inadequate parenting growing up. Had they gone to an elite public school, they never would have become criminals.

 

• It’s clear to me that our main problem is the low level of education imparted by many of our public schools. It’s common knowledge that truly well educated people are highly unlikely to be poor, to be homeless, to be unemployed, to be violent criminals, to be addicted. So New York’s priority must be to ensure that every single public school imparts a truly excellent education to every single New York youth. As mayor, my priority will be ensuring that every single one of our public schools is a truly elite school, just as good as the best private schools in the country. The formula of all successful private schools is strict class discipline, lots of homework/study hall, and an enlightened curriculum. That must be the formula for all of New York’s public schools if we want to solve our problems and become a socially and economically prosperous city with low taxes.

 

• Here are the crucially important details for transforming our public schools into elite schools. I don’t need to explain strict class discipline and lots of homework/study hall. But I do have to explain what an enlightened curriculum is. An enlightened curriculum is absolutely essential for having truly well educated citizens. It’s not nearly enough to teach math and science. Our youth need to understand how the economy works, how to invest. They need to understand how the stock market works, and how to make accurate economic forecasts, therefore a four-year high school course in economics and portfolio management is required, along with annual citywide competitions in economic forecasting and portfolio management. They also need a course in advertising and marketing, along with annual citywide competitions. They need to understand the causes of violence, crime, abuse, addiction, racism, gender discrimination, religious discrimination, sexuality discrimination. They need to study introductory law, including Constitutional law. They need a course in ethics and empathy. They need culture, which includes history of art, architecture, and design, history of music, and foreign languages/culture. They need to understand themselves and others, meaning they must study psychology and participate in “group therapy” and “good parenting” workshops. They need a course in logic and critical thinking, to better distinguish between right and wrong, between reality and myths, between truth and disinformation. They need to learn the history of the 20th Century in great detail, and understand the causes of World War I and World War II, the causes of the Great Depression, the causes of communism and fascism and why they failed, the causes of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, the causes of the Cold War, the causes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the causes of Islamic terrorism, the causes of our failure in Viet Nam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria. They need a course in comparative religion, and a course on the history of human rights violations and the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They need a course on the major mistakes in economic, social, and foreign policy over the past 100 years, and which would have been the correct policies.

 

• Beyond having an enlightened curriculum, we need mandatory afternoon study hall with individual tutors/mentors for students with academic or psychological problems in order to prevent them from falling behind and dropping out. 

 

• Also absolutely necessary is for the public schools to provide well-organized arts and sports activities with citywide competitions, as well as vocational courses, on weekends, holidays, and during the entire summer break. 

 

• And we need all day public school, from pre-school through high school, to free parents to work and to keep our youth constructively occupied and out of trouble. 

 

• All of our public school graduates will be eligible for scholarships to NYC colleges proportional to their financial needs.

 

• This education reform will provide real, true equal opportunity, and ensure that New York City has a highly educated and well-adjusted population. That will guarantee a socially and economically prosperous society on a sustained basis. Companies will flock to New York City when its citizens are highly educated with lots of culture. High quality jobs will multiply.

 

 

Other Important Reforms

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Public Safety Reform​

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1. We need to ensure the highest level of training and screening for police officers, a model for the nation, in order to eliminate all instances of excessive use of force, unprofessional and abusive behavior. We need to have neighborhood beats wherever there is a concentration of crime.

2. Rikers Island Prison is a disgrace. We should not close it but reform it to provide high quality education and psychological rehabilitation services full time. The prison should be run as a strict, high quality boarding school, so that the inmates are transformed into well-educated and well-adjusted individuals. That will serve to greatly reduce the criminal recidivism rate. Furthermore, we must provide socially productive city jobs and strictly supervised city housing for parolees unable to find employment and lodging in the private sector.

 

Beautification of NYC

 

1. Create a New York City Beautification Corps open to all comers, both to beautify New York and to eliminate unemployment. All city blocks must have beautiful sidewalk pavements and plantings, along with atmospheric energy-efficient lighting. Make all subway stations stylish. Beautifully landscape all roads.  

2. Multiply outdoor public swimming pools in the parks. They will be large, beautifully landscaped, and very well run, some for families with children, others only for adults.

3. Transform the Manhattan Central Park Reservoir into a swimming oasis with multiple well run “beach establishments”, some for families with children, others only for adults.

4. The city’s entire riverfront and oceanfront  must be beautifully landscaped as a promenade, just like on the lower West Side of Manhattan from 13th Street along the Hudson River down to Battery Park.

5. All public housing beautified and upgraded for security. Greatly beautifying New York increases tourism, one our city’s premier businesses.

 

“Green” New York City 

 

1. Have dedicated street lanes and parking spaces with charging stations for electric vehicles.

2. Mandate that all trucks and buses in New York City be electric by 2030.

3. Make outdoor restaurant seating on parking space frontage permanent.

4. Have wider sidewalks along avenues.

5. All sidewalks with flower beds, plants, and trees.

 

Welfare/Homeless Reform

 

1. Create well-run, attractive, strictly supervised welfare housing campuses with on site schools and health clinics. Separate housing for families with children. No more shuttling homeless adults and children between SRO’s or hotels/motels. Stability is required for homeless people to develop productive lives for themselves and their children. Adults required to work, provided with socially productive city jobs (such as with the NYC Beautification Corps) if unable to find employment in private sector. Children in school all day long, getting very well educated and benefiting from organized afterschool activities in the arts and sports.

2. No more welfare/SRO housing in established residential neighborhoods since that is unfair to residents and counterproductive, reducing real estate values and the city’s real estate tax revenues. 

 

Healthcare Reform

 

Create well-run local NYC clinics 24/7 in all neighborhoods giving timely medical advice and treatment for minor illnesses, which helps reduce hospitalizations and emergency room admissions, thereby reducing healthcare expenditures by the city and even medical insurance premiums for NYC residents. NYC neighborhood clinics to be very well coordinated with medical insurance companies and healthcare providers, Medicare and Medicaid. Mandate that medical insurance be administered fairly and efficiently, with simplified, streamlined administrative procedures for policyholders. Create a very efficient NYC agency to resolve all complaints related to insurance policies and billings. Eliminate all “surprise” charges. Mandate transparent, easily understood insurance policies, and maintain real-time price comparisons online for health insurance policies, as well as for medical procedures and hospitalizations at all NYC hospitals. 

 

           

Shelter Animal Reform

 

Institute a companionship and adoption program of sheltered animals linked to NYC public schools. Treating abandoned animals humanely is the mark of a civilized society, and that’s what New York must be. The program will not only bring happiness to abandoned animals but also to the many citizens who will adopt them or become occasional, repeat companions on weekends and holidays. 

 

Tax Reform

 

1. ​For sustained stronger economic growth and lower unemployment, we need to attract more wealthy residents and highly profitable companies to New York City by eliminating the taxation of long-term capital gains (more than 5 years) on stocks and principal homes of New York City residents (of more than five years), and push New York State to do the same. That will bring in much more tax revenue overall as economic activity increases dramatically.  Long-term capital gains taxes are economically counterproductive, encouraging tax avoidance schemes such as “tax shelters” and causing a misallocation of capital. They are also unfair, as they tax gains due to inflation. They are particularly unfair to homeowners who want to move, for retirement or any other reason, and sell their home, ending up after tax with insufficient funds to buy an equivalent new home.

2. New York City and New York State must also push for a reduction in estate taxes for long-term residents (more than five years), as they are economically counterproductive, resulting in tax avoidance schemes (tax shelter investments and trusts) and in misallocation of capital. Furthermore, they chase away many wealthy residents, leading to lower income and sales tax revenues. Reducing NYC and NYS estate taxes must be coordinated with the federal government, otherwise the reductions in NYC and NYS estate taxes will simply go to the federal government. Without federal approval and coordination, NYC and NYS must maintain their estate taxes, but will have to institute a system of rebates in order to partially offset them. It is no secret that many wealthy New Yorkers leave and set up their residence in states with no estate tax. We should avoid that. 

 

            

Conclusion

 

These reforms will lead to enormous social and economic prosperity in New York City, much faster than most would imagine. 

 

The federal government must be made to consider that since a very well educated citizenry is in the national interest, it should pay a substantial share of the budgets of all public schools across the nation, particularly those which provide the right educational environment and the right core curriculum. This is especially logical since the federal government doesn’t have to worry much about its budget deficits or the federal debt, contrary to the conventional economic wisdom, because it can avail itself of QE financing by the Federal Reserve. 

 

In any case, I’m sure many of our philanthropists would contribute large amounts if they saw a persuasive, enlightened holistic plan to quickly generate social and economic prosperity in New York, a model for the nation’s cities. What could be more rewarding to philanthropists than to participate in a truly transformative, highly effective comprehensive plan to end poverty, violence, crime, addiction, abuse, homelessness, and unemployment; to greatly reduce the number of mentally disturbed; to beautify the city; to guarantee that every single public school student gets a truly “elite” education, thereby ensuring a very well educated and psychologically well-adjusted citizenry?