‘This is an attack on America’ says Kevin O’Leary; what NY AG is doing will change business well past Trump

Kevin-OLeary-on-NY-AG

Important Takeaways:

  • Shark Tank” star Kevin O’Leary said
    • “You think about America, the reason this is the number one economy on Earth is that we have laws and we have due process and we have property rights. It attracts foreign capital from around the world,” O’Leary began on Fox News’s “Outnumbered” Tuesday. “All of that is being shaken to the core here. The concept of seizing assets is on a 30-day bond number has never been issued. No insurance company has ever issued anything near this so there’s no chance it was gonna happen. And only giving 30 days’ notice in time, that’s a really bad message and I think New Yorkers should think well past Trump, whether he’s president or not or either this attorney general is gone [in] four or not, it’s irrelevant.”
    • “This is case setting against the American brand. The most stable country on Earth anywhere to put capital for a long period of time, particularly in real estate, is the United States of America,” he continued. “This is an assault on what we believe to be core and I find it extraordinary; I think it’s very troubling, it has absolutely nothing to do with Donald Trump at this point in my view and it is completely bipartisan. This is an attack on America, and I don’t how you can look at it any other way.”
    • Judge Arthur Engoron ruled Trump liable for allegedly deceiving banks and insurance companies in September. He ordered the former president to pay $350 million in damages in a Feb. 16 ruling following a three-week trial and banned him from being an officer or director of any company or organization in New York for three years.
    • Trump’s lawyers said that Trump paying the full amount by the March 25 deadline is a “practical impossibility,” Politico reported. Engoron denied Trump’s legal team’s request last month to pause the judgment.

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‘Do I need to be here?’: Some New Yorkers decide to pack up and leave

By Maria Caspani and Angela Moore

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Rebekah Rosler and her husband did not intend to leave Manhattan for good in March when they packed up their three children and headed 50 miles north to wait out the coronavirus pandemic in her parents’ vacant home in upstate New York.

“My kids were all dressed in their pajamas, we loaded up the car with paper towels and toilet paper and food,” said Rosler, 40, who works in mental health. “That was what I thought was going to be a commitment for a week.”

A week became months as New York City emerged as the global epicenter of the outbreak. The Roslers postponed their return again and again until in May, they broke the lease on their apartment after they decided to stay upstate.

Rosler said she loved her Manhattan neighborhood but it was nearly overwhelming to care for her small children in a two-bedroom apartment where her husband was also working remotely at his full-time job for a nonprofit.

The Roslers are not the only New Yorkers re-evaluating whether to stay in the country’s largest metropolis. High costs, small living spaces, density and reliance on public transport make it extra hard to deal with social distancing and staying at home.

This has pushed some New Yorkers to consider alternatives, said Bess Freedman, chief executive of Brown Harris Stevens, a real estate firm specializing in luxury Manhattan properties.

“There’s some that are going to leave because they don’t want to be in vertical living, they don’t want to be in an elevator with other people, they don’t want to raise kids here,” she said. “That’s part of what happens during a time like this.”

There is no hard data on how many New Yorkers fled the city during the pandemic or whether those who relocated will eventually move back. New York has proved resilient in the past, defying predictions of a permanent exodus after the World Trade Center attacks in 2001 and after Superstorm Sandy in 2012.

Still, New York City’s population was declining even before the pandemic. The city of some 8 million lost more than 53,000 residents during the 12-month period ending on July 1, 2019 – the third straight annual decline, according to an Empire Center for Public Policy analysis of U.S. Census Bureau estimates.

But many New Yorkers cannot afford to pull up stakes and move out even if they wanted to do so.

When the lockdown began in March, Judy Dodd, an actor and director who lives in Manhattan, said a sense of solidarity almost compelled her to stay in her beleaguered city. She changed her mind after sporadic looting in her neighborhood during recent civil unrest, but concluded she could not afford to move away, even temporarily.

“I just don’t have the cash, my work has been decimated,” she said.

As many as 300,000 workers were expected to return to their jobs on Monday as the city entered Phase 2 of reopening, Mayor Bill de Blasio said last week. But with many businesses allowing employees to continue working at home in the coming months, some questioned the need to go back to the office.

“It has a lot of people asking the question, ‘If I can work from home, do I need to be here?,” said stay-at-home mom Stephanie Ellis, 33.

She said the pandemic not only forced her to think about her family’s health and safety, but also to ask whether it was still worth living in a city whose energy and glitz has faded, at least for now.

“To pay such an extremely large amount of money to live there and not really have it be the city that we want it?” said Ellis, who moved from Manhattan to Marlboro, New Jersey in March with her husband and toddler.

“We sort of slowly realized and accepted we are not going back.”

(Reporting by Maria Caspani and Angela Moore in New York, Editing by Frank McGurty and David Gregorio)

New Yorkers sing ‘Lean on Me’ to honor essential workers during coronavirus pandemic

By Aleksandra Michalska

(Reuters) – It starts as it has around the world with people leaning out of windows and standing on balconies clapping, cheering and banging pots and pans to honor essential workers still operating during the coronavirus pandemic.

And then a rousing collective rendition of the Bill Withers 1972 song “Lean on Me” begins.

“It’s amazing,” said Robert Hornsby, director of fundraising at the Peace of Heart Choir non-profit in New York City, after he had finished playing the song from his window in Manhattan’s Upper West Side.

“The amount of energy that we’ve received, and the amount of energy that we’re giving, has really lifted the spirits of New Yorkers, and we hope people across the nation, too.”

Organizers of the “New York Sings Along” event said the goal was to boost morale and honor all workers on the front lines battling the COVID-19 pandemic, and to share the healing power of music while obeying social distancing rules.

Every week, the nonprofit picks one song, and plays it after the applause for essential workers on Thursday nights.

Last week, it was Frank Sinatra’s “New York” and next week, it will be the Ben E. King classic “Stand by Me.”

U.S. coronavirus deaths have topped 48,000, with the number of lives lost in April rising by an average of 2,000 a day, according to a Reuters tally.

Withers, a soulful singer best known for the 1970s hits “Lean on Me,” “Lovely Day” and “Ain’t No Sunshine,” passed away at the age of 81 from heart complications, his family had said earlier this month.

(Reporting by Aleksandra Michalska, Editing by Karishma Singh and Michael Perry)