The New York Times - USA (2020-12-07)

A18 MONDAY, DECEMBER 7, 2020

N

It’s never been easy to run a small business in New York

City. The city’s entrepreneurs have long faced dizzying

odds: high rents and high taxes, byzantine restrictions from
City Hall and fierce competition from corporate big-box

stores as well as the bodega next door.

And that was without the coronavirus pandemic.
Between March and July alone, more than 2,800 small
businesses in New York permanently closed. By November,

revenue from small business in the city had fallen by more
than half since January. The Partnership for New York City,

a business group, said New York’s 236,000 small businesses
employ roughly 1.3 million people. The group has estimated

that one-third of small businesses might never reopen.

Though it’s a grim figure, roughly 20 percent of small busi-
nesses fail in their first year, even in a healthy economy, sug-

gesting that a decline in new business creation may also be
playing a role this year.

Across New York, the landscape of shuttered store-

fronts is gutting. Thousands of jobs have been lost, adding to
the collective grief of a city where more than 24,000 people

have died from Covid-19, and the lives of millions more have

been upended.
Helping small businesses get back on their feet is es-

sential work.

What would New York be without its bakeries and its
bodegas? Its flower districts and fish markets and shoe-re-

pair shops? Its falafel stands and taco trucks, its tiny restau-

rants filling the streets with sweet aromas from every cor-
ner of the world? A recovery without small business is un-

imaginable.

The surest way to help these businesses survive right
now is by giving them direct federal aid and access to inex-

pensive capital.

New York, like most state and local governments, does-
n’t have those kinds of funds. But the city can step up now to

help small businesses cut through onerous red tape to gain
access to roughly $134 billion in untapped federal stimulus

money. Ideally, that effort would begin with businesses

owned by minorities, immigrants and women, which are al-
ready at a disadvantage in securing investment and are like-

lier to serve communities that have been hardest hit by the
pandemic.

Comptroller Scott Stringer’s August report on small

business recovery is filled with good ideas, like simplifying
licensing requirements for such businesses by allowing

owners to file paperwork with a single point of contact and

making it easier to obtain liquor licenses. Mr. Stringer and
others have encouraged the city to help small businesses es-

tablish an online presence to compete with large retailers like Amazon. Some of those efforts are already underway. Cinch Mar- ket, a Brooklyn start-up gaining popularity, is offering same- day delivery from scores of local retailers. In September, the city teamed up with the Partnership for New York City, the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, bor- ough chambers of commerce and other entities to start a support network to connect small business owners with vi- tal resources like legal and accounting services. To become a truly small-business-friendly city, though, New York will need to go big. Rethinking the city’s approach to development, pandemic or not, may be a good place to begin. One way is to house small businesses alongside much larger ones, allowing the larger tenant to shoulder a greater burden of the rent, much like market-rate tenants do in many affordable housing buildings. Es- sex Crossing, a mixed-use development on the Lower East Side, offers a glimpse at what that might look like. That development includes a Trader Joe’s grocery store, as well as a Target. But it offers lower rent to smaller businesses, and is also home to neighborhood joints like Veselka, the classic New York Ukrainian restaurant, and Tortilleria Nixtamal, a beloved Mexican restaurant originally from Queens. But that’s just a first step to addressing New York’s no- toriously high commercial rents. One thing the state can do is ban the common New York practice of requiring minimum rents for commercial mort- gages, which keeps too many properties vacant even when an owner is willing to accept lower rents. Another idea? Adopting government disincentives against keeping properties vacant for long periods of time. One bill, introduced by State Senator Brad Hoylman, would allow New York City to collect taxes on storefronts that have been vacant for at least six months. In some parts of the city, particularly outside of Manhattan, this may be more puni- tive than helpful. But in wealthier areas of the city where some owners are content to keep a storefront empty until they can get top dollar again, it may prove useful. In the darkest days of the pandemic this year, it was New York’s small businesses — its coffee shops and restau- rants, groceries and bakeries — that remained open, serv- ing up comfort and normalcy to millions who sorely needed them. Now they need our help in return.

Save New York’s Small Businesses

EDITORIAL

Giving businesses direct federal aid and access to inexpensive capital is the surest way to help them survive.

LANNA APISUKH FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

TO THE EDITOR: Re “Congress Should Revive Ear- marks” (editorial, Nov. 30): Leaving aside whether a return of earmarks will bring comity to the Capitol, I want to clarify one aspect of your editorial promoting them. While Democrats deserve credit for transparency reforms initiated in 2007, they did not propose lim- iting earmark beneficiaries to “nonprofit entities or public projects” until March 2010 and only in the House (the Senate refused to go along). Regardless, many for-profit companies found ways to skirt the House rules before the overall moratorium swept them all away in 2011. But to dig a bit deeper on the issue, a Congressional Quarterly analysis of our earmark database found that Black and Hispanic Democrats in Congress got on average half the amount the average white Democrat got. They actually received less than the average Republican even though Democrats were in the majority. Political muscle trumped project merit. If Congress chooses to revive earmarks, it has significant work to do to make the system truly transparent and fair. STEPHEN ELLIS, WASHINGTON The writer is president of Taxpayers for Common Sense.

TO THE EDITOR: Thank you for the well-reasoned suggestion for addressing gridlock in Congress — to bring back pork- barrel legislation. You made salient points and a persuasive argument. The demise of pork barrel a

decade ago coincided with the decline in safe seats in Congress. By “bringing home the pork” back then, legislators helped to ensure their re-election. Because seniority in Congress meant more power, and more power meant more pork, voters could not afford to unseat their senior senators or represent- atives, lest they give up the pork. Earmarks not only brought out the votes at election time, they could also be used to encourage campaign contributions. It’s inter- esting that the end of earmarks coincided with the increased “con- tribution” of lobbyists to formulat- ing legislation over the last decade. CHARLES L. PAYNE BARRINGTON, R.I.

TO THE EDITOR: The suggestion that our current bloated, overspending, wasteful budget process can be ameliorated by allowing members of Congress to slip in earmark spending is as ludicrous as giving an alcoholic person more opportunities to drink. ARI WEITZNER, NEW YORK

TO THE EDITOR: Hear! Hear! Maybe reviving earmarks would encourage lawmak- ers to actually talk to one another, to negotiate in good faith to make life for their constituents better and, in turn, to understand why another member is asking for funds to build a youth center in a rural area in his or her district. Opposing parties might even start to listen to one another and to respect one another.

ANNE C. STALFORT, EASTON, MD.

Should Congress Bring Back Earmarks?

LETTERS

TO THE EDITOR: Re “Saudis Brace for a Less Friendly White House” (front page, Nov. 21): President-elect Joe Biden’s rhetoric on Saudi Arabia over the years has been far tougher than the monarchy is used to. But words alone won’t make much of a differ- ence. Mr. Biden’s policy toward Riyadh should adopt a more cleared-headed look at what the kingdom is, and, crucially, what it is not. Saudi Arabia is not entitled to U.S. military or diplomatic support. It’s not a treaty ally like Japan. Its importance to U.S. security has dwindled as the United States seeks to reorient its foreign policy away from the Middle East. And if

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s tutelage is any indication, the kingdom is proving to be a wildly destabilizing force in the region. Mr. Biden should base the U.S.- Saudi relationship on first-order principles: cooperate when possi- ble and deviate when U.S. and Saudi interests don’t match up. For Washington, that means under- standing when Saudi requests for help are counterproductive; re- moving itself from a war in Yemen that serves no purpose for the U.S.; and all the while continuing a pragmatic intelligence sharing on terrorism. Ultimately, Saudi Arabia needs the United States more than the United States needs Saudi Arabia.

DANIEL R. DEPETRIS NEW ROCHELLE, N.Y. The writer is a fellow at Defense Prior- ities.

TO THE EDITOR: Saudi Arabia shouldface a less friendly White House. The first thing President Joe Biden should do when he moves into the White House is to issue an executive order barring Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman from visiting the United States. JIMMY DUNNE, HOUSTON

The Moment to Rethink U.S.-Saudi Ties

The Times welcomes letters from read- ers. Letters must include the writer’s name, address and telephone number. Those selected may be edited, and short- ened to fit allotted space. Email: letters @nytimes.com

TO THE EDITOR: Re “When Will We Throw Our Masks Away? I Asked Dr. Fauci,” by Elisabeth Rosenthal (Sunday Review, Nov. 22): Dr. Fauci: You say you have been getting a haircut every 12 weeks. I have been cutting my husband’s hair at home during the pandemic, and he looks as hand- some as he ever did during his 83 years of going to the barber. It’s fun, and think of how much money we are saving. He will go back to his local barber to support his business as soon as it is safe.

ELLEN OFFNER, NEWTON, MASS.

A Haircut for My Husband

IT WOULD APPEARthat the people in
American hit hardest by Covid-19 —
Black people — are also the group most
leery about the prospects of a vaccine.
As a Pew Research report published
last week pointed out: “Black Americans
are especially likely to say they know
someone who has been hospitalized or
died as a result of having the coronavi-
rus: 71 percent say this, compared with
smaller shares of Hispanic (61 percent),
White (49 percent) and Asian-American
(48 percent) adults.”
But that same report contained the fol-
lowing: “Black Americans continue to
stand out as less inclined to get vacci-
nated than other racial and ethnic
groups: 42 percent would do so, com-
pared with 63 percent of Hispanic and 61
percent of white adults.”
The unfortunate American fact is that
Black people in this country have been
well-trained, over centuries, to distrust
both the government and the medical es-
tablishment on the issue of health care.
In the mid-1800s a man in Alabama
named James Marion Sims gained na-
tional renown as a doctor after perform-
ing medical experiments on enslaved
women, who by definition of their posi-

tion in society could not provide in- formed consent. He performed scores of experimental operations on one woman alone, an enslaved woman named Anarcha, before perfecting his technique. Not only that, he operated on these women without anesthesia, in part because he didn’t believe that Black women experienced pain in the same way that white women did, a dangerous and false sensibility whose remnants linger to this day. When he finally got his experiments to be successful, he began to use them on white women, but he would begin to use anesthesia for those women. As medical writer Durrenda Ojanuga wrote in the Journal of Medical Ethics in 1993: “Many white women came to Sims for treatment of vesicovaginal fistula after the successful operation on Anarcha. However, none of them, due to the pain, were able to endure a single operation.” Sims would go on to become known as the Father of Gynecology, even though, as one researcher put it: “Sims failed utterly to recognize his patients as autonomous persons and his own personal drive for success cannot be

minimized, especially as a balance to the enormous amount of praise accorded Sims for his work and for subsequent ap- plications of the technique developed in Montgomery and elsewhere.” After the Civil War and the freeing of the enslaved, the limited and fragile in- frastructure for Black people in this country collapsed and an epidemic of disease flourished.

Many formerly enslaved people were estranged from the small gardens they used to grow things for home remedies. The larger plantation that had sick houses saw operations cease. White doctors refused to see Black people and white hospitals refused to ad- mit them. Furthermore, federal, state and local governments squabbled over whose responsibility it was to provide health care for the newly freed men and

women, with no entity truly wanting to assume that responsibility. Because of all of this, Jim Downs, a professor at Gettysburg College, esti- mates that at least one quarter of all for- mer slaves got sick or died between 1862 and 1870. For nearly half of the 20th century, women — often Black — were forcibly sterilized, often without their knowledge. As The Intercept reported in Sep- tember, “Between 1930 to 1970, 65 percent of the 7,600-plus sterilizations or- dered by the state of North Carolina were carried out on Black women.” As Ms. Magazine pointed out in 2011: “Some women were sterilized during cesarean sections and never told; others were threatened with termination of wel- fare benefits or denial of medical care if they didn’t ‘consent’ to the procedure; others received unnecessary hysterecto- mies at teaching hospitals as practice for medical residents. In the South it was such a widespread practice that it had a euphemism: a ‘Mississippi appendec- tomy.’ ” Even famed Mississippi civil rights heroine Fannie Lou Hamer was a victim of forced sterilization. As PBS has

pointed out, “Hamer’s own pregnancies had all failed, and she was sterilized without her knowledge or consent in

She was given a hysterectomy
while in the hospital for minor surgery.”
Hamer would later say, “[In] the North
Sunflower County Hospital, I would say
about six out of the 10 Negro women that
go to the hospital are sterilized with the
tubes tied.”
Furthermore, as the Centers for Dis-
ease Control and Prevention explains:
“In 1932, the Public Health Service,
working with the Tuskegee Institute, be-
gan a study to record the natural history
of syphilis in hopes of justifying treat-
ment programs for blacks. It was called
the ‘Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphi-
lis in the Negro Male.’ ”
Hundreds of Black men were told they
were being treated for syphilis, but they
were not. They were being observed to
see how the disease would progress. The
men suffered under this experiment for
40 years.
I hope that America can overcome
Black people’s trepidations about this
vaccine, but it is impossible to say that
that trepidation doesn’t have historical
merit. 0

CHARLES M. BLOW

How Black People Learned Not to Trust

Vaccination concerns are

unfortunate, but they

have historical roots.

The New York Times - USA (2020-12-07)

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