Newsday Spins for Spitzer - Welcome to the Year 1712

An archetypical war of interests which has replayed throughout modernity is and has been raging violently more than usual in the past few years in New York State.

Eliot Spitzer, real estate man, Attorney General, and almost inevitable Governor of the State of New York is, like something out of Highlander, leading the fight in the centuries old battle: It is the clash between landed wealth and liquid wealth.

Sure, Wall St. barons these days own lots of land. Sure, real estate companies are tied to markets. But at the end of the day, a representative of wealth that comes from actual land or "real estate" has been making a name for himself crusading against those that buy/sell/trade pieces of various entities or currencies. Maybe he will make markets more efficient and stop abuse. (In the process, he'll kill New York City's restaurants by ending the expense account.) Perhaps not. At any rate, I'm more concerned about the hundred million new parking spaces being created on Long Island than Dick Grasso's hundred million dollar pay package! (Real Estate interests should be able to make money too, but Grasso is not destroying the environment.)

Digression: In a round about way, we've come back to Britain, circa 1712, when the landed (Tory) interest opposed to financial (Whig) interest. The Whig interest, curiously enough was war-profiteering due to what many saw as an uneccesary war (The War of Spanish Succession). Today, the real estate interest in represented by the "liberal" Spitzer and his enemies, the financial interest, tend to be more conservative. Eventually, the new money needed prestige and titles and since estates weren't the medieval cash cows they once were, the old money needed, well, money - so they all intermarried and lived happily ever after drinking tea and playing croquet.

Now, as for the title of this post, back to I'm sorry I cannot resist Snoozeday. Page A21, July 21, 2006: "Spitzer Pulls in Money on LI". The summary reads "He raises almost $1M from businesses, individuals with ties to the home turf of opponent Suozzi".

This makes it sound like no-executive-experience-having Spitzer is somehow gaining popularity on Long Island while poor Tom Suozzi, the man who only rescued Nassau County from the jaws of oblivion, fails to the wayside. Newsday has a table in the middle of the page which lists 6 out of the ten names it names, all of whom gave between $22, 500 - $63,000 are in real estate. It does not mention that Spitzer is in real estate! If the money did not come from croneydom (or is it croniedom?) then it at least came from a common interest - and interest in glass office parks. A donor by the name of Gherardi is quoted as saying he believes Spitzer would be good for the building industry. Newsday, please can the far fetched sensationalism. Spitzer good for the parking lot industry? Never happen.

The last sentence of the propaganda piece says that "Roger Tilles, a member of the state Board of Regents from Great Neck, gave Spitzer $6,500".

"A member of the state Board of Regents"? Of course I don't doubt that fact, but it might have been more fair to note that Roger Tilles is the biggest real estate developer since William Penn.