So absurd it needs to be reposted

From SportsTalk:

Paterson, NJ Developers Think An Arena Can Help Save A Struggling Shopping Mall

Sports as an economic generator in Paterson, NJ? 

It doesn’t appear that any sports league is looking to put a team in Paterson, New Jersey. But there is a proposal put forth by the owners of the financially struggling Center City Mall in the northern New Jersey city that calls for the construction of a 12,000 seat arena which presumably could house a minor league hockey or minor league basketball team along with an indoor football franchise and other arena fare and a hotel. The mall owners think by putting an arena and hotel near the mall, people would not only go to arena events but would shop at the mall. Center City Partners think it will cost $100 million to build an arena, a hotel and a parking garage. But the mall owners don’t want to foot the entire bill. Instead, the ownership filed papers with the New Jersey Economic Development Agency seeking $40 million dollars of tax credits. The state is giving city of Paterson $130 million worth of tax credits to help spur the local economy. Paterson is New Jersey’s third biggest city and once was an economic powerhouse with a silk industry leading the way but by the 1960s, Paterson fell into a steep decline.

Paterson was once the home of the Negro League baseball New York Black Yankees. The team played at Hinchliffe Stadium. That ballpark could also be revitalized as part of the Paterson tax credit plan. The stadium has been closed since 1997. There is a proposal on the table to reopen the park using some of the tax credits which would allow the venue that opened up in 1932 to host soccer, football and track and field events. It is unlikely that Paterson could get a minor league baseball team or have high school teams use the park as the planned renovations do not include a full sized baseball field.

This entry was posted in Economics, New Development, New Jersey Real Estate, Politics. Bookmark the permalink.

99 Responses to So absurd it needs to be reposted

  1. grim says:

    What, no monorail?

  2. Not Bloomberg News says:

    There are plans to lay “light rail” tracks along the right away of Rt 80 with eventual thoughts to connect to the Hudson light rail system, thus creating a “route of gentrification” from the NJ Gold Coast to the inner cities.

  3. grim says:

    Would be smarter to add an additional NJT Main Line station near St. Joes/Main Street.

    That area would be far more desirable to developers, outsiders, gentrification, etc.

    Nestled in between Rt’s 80 and 19, closer to Clifton and the diversity of the Main Ave/Getty area. You’ve already got the higher wage jobs around the hospital.

    Around the current train station? Too industrial/commercial/large scale/conjested – you’ll never get rid of some of those property uses. Most of the residential to the northeast is pretty rough territory.

    Light rail is a train to nowhere.

    That whole “downtown” area is a traffic disaster, the roads are far to narrow, and you it’s nearly impossible to optimize anything.

  4. Not Bloomberg News says:

    I made that up….I’m sure we’ll see a proposal soon!

  5. chicagofinance says:

    Experiences have a lasting impression
    But words once spoken
    Don’t mean a lot now
    Belief is the way
    The way of the innocent
    And when I say innocent
    I should say naive

    So lie to me
    But do it with sincerity
    Make me listen
    Just for a minute
    Make me think
    There’s some truth in it

    Promises made for convenience
    Aren’t necessarily
    What we need
    Truth is a word
    That’s lost its meaning
    The truth has become
    Merely half-truth

    So lie to me
    Like they do it in the factory
    Make me think
    That at the end of the day
    Some great reward
    Will be coming my way

    Martin Gore

  6. Fast Eddie says:

    I always thought that section of Paterson between St. Joe’s hospital and Garrett Mountain leading into Clifton would be ripe for gentrification and rebirth. It has a village feel to it right there. I thought about a train stop at St. Joe’s as well.

  7. Juice Box says:

    The T-Rex plan is the best plans for trains in NY Metro I have seen.

    Break up each of these fiefdoms, NJ Transit, Long Island RR, MTA, and Metro North, PATH and combine the budgets, staff, routes and most importantly the trains so the train are continuous across the artificial boundaries of service today.

    “A ride from Paterson to Columbus Circle in 26 minutes, or to Grand Central Terminal in 29 minutes.

    New rail tunnels at Houston and 57th streets. Those tunnels would connect to a spine tunnel running through central Manhattan from the Bronx.

    The tunnels would allow “through running” of commuter trains between New Jersey, Long Island and Connecticut, instead of terminating in Manhattan.”

    https://www.nj.com/traffic/2017/11/could_the_t-rex_make_our_commuting_headaches_extinct.html

  8. grim says:

    Extension of the 7 line into Hoboken and Secaucus Junction would have been monumental.

  9. 1987 Condo says:

    I don’t think you ever want to be part of the MTA budget or operation

  10. Libturd, can't say I didn't warn you. says:

    Or the PATH to WTC connecting with the 4/5/6 to Grand Central. Both systems are the same voltage so very short connection needed and could have been done easily (when it was suggested) before the Occulous was built. MTA said no way.

  11. Libturd, can't say I didn't warn you. says:

    I’m excited at the prospect of the first lesbian first lady.

  12. Libturd, can't say I didn't warn you. says:

    I’m excited at the prospect of the first lesb1an first lady.

  13. ExEssex says:

    Totally not real estate. Mark knopfler just went on
    Tour without his amps. He is using a Kemper modeler. Watch tube amp sales plummet. Tastes/technology changes.

  14. Fast Eddie says:

    Lib.

    I’m excited at the prospect of the first lesb1an first lady.

    We had one already – Hillary. By the way, your post from yesterday about tiger wood and ping pong paddles and tables made me almost fall on the floor. lol

  15. Bruiser says:

    MTA already controls LIRR, Metro-North, and what you referred to as “MTA” is just the MTA Subway division. The Port Authority (the “other” huge money taking agency in the area) controls PATH. State of NJ runs NJ Transit. Good luck getting all of them to play nice in the same sandbox, then give up all their toys, and standardize on a single set of voltage. Then you either have to run 3rd rail in catenary country, or catenary in 3rd rail country.

  16. Bruiser says:

    Still not as absurd as TWO stadiums existing within a mile of each other in Paterson.

  17. Fast Eddie says:

    A universal rail system for the benefit of society? What? And take away the control over the no-show, quadruple overtime?

  18. Juice Box says:

    Re: “Good luck getting all of them to play nice in the same sandbox”

    For the NY Metro Casey Jones fiefdoms, it would have to be done at the State Level by Law with plenty of Federal Funding to dig tunnels.

    Reality is we will go another 100 years with our 3rd world train service.

  19. grim says:

    Are there any democrats left not running for president?

  20. Juice Box says:

    Eleanor Roosevelt?

  21. Juice Box says:

    Opps forgot about Rose Cleveland, the “First Lady” of our bachelor president Grover Cleveland (She was his sister).

  22. grim says:

    Totally not real estate. Mark knopfler just went on
    Tour without his amps. He is using a Kemper modeler. Watch tube amp sales plummet. Tastes/technology changes.

    My brother is a engineer/designer at tech21nyc.

  23. grim says:

    A good portion of the guitars and amps you might have seen on the HBO series Vinyl were from his collection.

  24. Fast Eddie says:

    I’m announcing here that I am running for president as a democrat. My campaign slogan will be, “Obfuscate and Confiscate!”

  25. Fast Eddie says:

    unmod my important announcement please

  26. Blue Ribbon Teacher says:

    I have a 15 W 1968 univox tube amp with original tubes in it. Everyone that’s ever tried it out said it’s the best amp they’ve ever heard. The low wattage lets you crank it without blowing out your ears.

  27. Nomad says:

    Any guesses when we see the first viable 3D printed home? And on that note, if 3D printing becomes the source of much of our consumer goods, isn’t china then screwed? Why have the printers over there, they require minimal labor so put them here and save time, shipping and inventory costs? Won’t the tariff thing be a non-issue within a few years?

  28. Nomadic Nomad says:

    Nomad,

    You hit one point straight on with future 3D Printing tech, but think intellectual property and control. Think what HP/Canon/etc do to your ink jet printer and how the control that technology of what parts you can use and who can service it. Big money there and more importantly big national security there. Let’s see all 3D Printers have a part, let’s call it the “the sweet & sour gizmo” part made in China, that Chine Militiary/Intelligence controls. One web signal and it starts to malfunction in case of war.

    Bigger issue is corporate profitability. Can you picture Apple’s profit after having to reopen factories in the US. Can you picture them sponsoring a little league team, building a hospital wing, being unionize after they are force to having to interact with their local communities.

    The free cheap labor ride that China willingly entered to is over. Because we have now crossed into a higher level and complexity of the technology of the manufactured product. It’s not so much the manufacturing cost, but the total cost of losing control of the technology to the Chinese or Vietnamese Communist Party or whatever authoritarian leader or mob runs the places where they presently are offshore.

    The odds are very good that Infosys, and other Indian offshored contractors are full of Chinese/Russian spies. If something were to happen, any US Business entity that contracts with them will find themselves offline.

  29. Nomad says:

    So can’t we as a country transition away from some of the challenges you speak of? Can’t HP make the printer entirely of US parts or at least key parts that may have chips or other things that can steal the IP or monitor the machine? We buy enough stuff in this country to self sustain. Other countries, not so much and we have a lot of food and farming capacity, natural resources and raw materials sans some questions about components for car battery manufacturing. On the flip side, if we are really all co-dependent, isn’t that a good thing so we don’t blow each other up? Side note: anyone seeing smaller condos & apartments being built with better use of physical space, desks that lift to ceiling to get out of way when not in use, closets that retract so as not to intrude on space when the closet is only needed 5 minutes daily etc.

  30. Yo! says:

    Best use for Center City property in Paterson is surface parking lot. But demolition cost probably higher than parking lot value so a redevelopment won’t take place. A smaller version of American Dream. I’d estimate City Center is worth zero. Anybody know how it was financed?

  31. Yo! says:

    “Cities in Danger of A Housing Crisis This Year”

    https://www.gobankingrates.com/investing/real-estate/cities-in-danger-of-housing-crisis/#42

    Top 40 list is out. Newark #1. Paterson #6. Jersey City not on list.

  32. ExEssex says:

    10:30 the new technology would record that amp and provide “the exact sound” of that amp through a powered PA. When a guy like Knopfler decides “OK” i’ll Ditch all of my premium tube amps on this tour for this device…..

    Grim- cool Tech21 is a great little brand.

  33. Grim says:

    Tech21 invented modeling.

  34. Blue Ribbon Teacher says:

    I’d love to try it out but I’m sure it costs a boatload. I love analog equipment.

  35. The Original NJ Pumpkin Fraud Investigator says:

    LOL! First Bi had the presidency “stolen” from her.

    Eleanor Roosevelt?

  36. The Original NJ Pumpkin Fraud Investigator says:

    Wait until you find out where Nimfy works! Suddenly his education level on fb, *Attended* Clifton High School, makes a ton of sense!

  37. Nomadic Nomad says:

    “So can’t we as a country transition away from some of the challenges you speak of? Can’t HP make the printer entirely of US parts or at least key parts that may have chips or other things that can steal the IP or monitor the machine? We buy enough stuff in this country to self sustain”

    -Yeah, sure. But you are missing that the present corporate america state can not function as such. Meaning Apple’s profit per iphone sold are gigantic – double or triple or more of phone cost. Can Apple live with a 50% product mark-up vs 300%. Same for Arrow dress shirt. Which by the way, all made offshore. As a kid I used to deliver the 3 local morning paper to one of their factories.

    On the flip side, if we are really all co-dependent, isn’t that a good thing so we don’t blow each other up?

    -Not if the other guy is the Chine Communist Party, which wants to fulfill its version of manifest destiny. It took the drug addled brain, from all the 60’s LSD, and the cocaine in the 70’s, 80’s, and the p3cker pills from the 90’s of the baby boomer ntiwit generation to think they were going to change the values and raison d’etre of the Chinese Communist Party by making them more powerful and filthy rich wealthy.

  38. Walking bye says:

    There was talk of using the freight line from Paterson through mar cal and past saddle river park/Rochelle park and into Hackensack. This would have connected Paterson to nyc . But that was scuffled for some reason. Lots of Nimfy complaints as well.

  39. Libturd, can't say I didn't warn you. says:

    Another person was shot dead in Paterson last night. If it happened in your town, it would be all over the nooze.

    Paterson far from gentrifying. Really far.

  40. Thursday Walking Bye says:

    Walking Bye,

    As a train buff, I remember some bits. The original light rail planned continued north from North Bergen following the old RR line to Nyack. Rockland had a fit and they bought out the line and now is a bike/walking trail from NJ border. Tenafly had a fit also, they stopped it at Englewood border, last stop would be Englewood Hospital.

    Look face it people, the issues with transit and things like beach access down the shore is simply because as people we are 8ssh8les. The only way anything like T-Rex, new airports and correct shore rebuilding to happens is if we get a new Robert Moses for the TriState area. Until then if you want to see something new go to China where when building public infrastructure works authoritarianism has its benefits.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Moses

  41. Libturd, can't say I didn't warn you. says:

    Area where dude was shot was the relatively safe 6th ward. Paterson averages about 9 shootings a month. Way worse in the Summer. Newark will turn before Paterson.

  42. BennieIceme says:

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  43. JCer says:

    Lib, Newark has been giving out corp tax credits like pez. It has train connectivity to midtown and downtown, some of it is theoretically 24/7. It has an Airport, Seaport, and Arena. All of the pieces are in place for Newark to redevelop, it actually has taken far longer than it should have.

    Paterson has…..the falls……a very scary white castle…..fetty wap? Yeah I’m not seeing how you get anyone to make an investment there and make money excepting a halal restaurant.

  44. leftwing says:

    The idea that Paterson gentrifies anytime soon – in our lifetimes – is laughable. Better areas still have yet to gentrify. Paterson offers nothing more than those places. Why should it happen first?

    “Look face it people, the issues with transit and things like beach access down the shore is simply because as people we are 8ssh8les.”

    Yes, there’s an asshole factor but to me it comes down to density. If I’m paying the amount I am for a certain town, for the home, for taxes I don’t want to be shoulder to shoulder with anyone…especially anyone that lands in the asshole category.

  45. The Original NJ Pumpkin Fraud Investigator says:

    I am shocked, absolutely SHOCKED! that I didn’t know about the Broadway White Castle! If I’m driving down Route 80 at 3AM I always take my family to Piaget Ave. I guess that’s why they are still alive.

  46. The Original NJ Pumpkin Fraud Investigator says:

    Nimfy – Over the past week you’ve not only outed yourself, but offered up that you paid for your own college. What institution would that be? I know your sister went to Ramapo for undergrad. Kind of strange that your fb page only says “Attended Clifton High School” as your educational zenith, right? Maybe your top secret mail room job signed waivers preclude you admitting you graduated high school? I guess I could start asking your family if you are attending any reunions soon?

  47. chicagofinance says:

    He identified himself…… I didn’t even notice…. where?

  48. joyce says:

    Ahh yes, Robert Boondoggle Moses.

  49. chicagofinance says:

    • U.S. EDUCATION
    SAT to Give Students ‘Adversity Score’ to Capture Social and Economic Background
    New score comes as college admissions decisions are under scrutiny

    By Douglas Belkin

    The College Board plans to assign an adversity score to every student who takes the SAT to try to capture their social and economic background, jumping into the debate raging over race and class in college admissions.

    This new number, called an adversity score by college admissions officers, is calculated using 15 factors including the crime rate and poverty levels from the student’s high school and neighborhood. Students won’t be told the scores, but colleges will see the numbers when reviewing their applications.

    Fifty colleges used the score last year as part of a beta test. The College Board plans to expand it to 150 institutions this fall, and then use it broadly the following year.

    How colleges consider a student’s race and class in making admissions decisions is hotly contested. Many colleges, including Harvard University, say a diverse student body is part of the educational mission of a school. A lawsuit accusing Harvard of discriminating against Asian-American applicants by holding them to a higher standard is awaiting a judge’s ruling. Lawsuits charging unfair admission practices have also been filed against the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of California system.

    Adversity Index
    College Board’s new tool seeks to provide environmental context behind students’ test scores by measuring adversity in their neighborhoods, families and schools.

    Neighborhood environment
    • Crime rate
    • Poverty rate
    • Housing values
    • Vacancy rate

    Family environment
    • Median income
    • Single parent
    • Education level
    • ESL

    High school environment
    • Undermatching
    • Curricular rigor
    • Free lunch rate
    • AP opportunity
    Source: College Board

    The College Board, the New York based nonprofit that oversees the SAT, said it has worried about income inequality influencing test results for years. White students scored an average of 177 points higher than black students and 133 points higher than Hispanic students in 2018 results. Asian students scored 100 points higher than white students. The children of wealthy and college-educated parents outperformed their classmates.

    “There are a number of amazing students who may have scored less [on the SAT] but have accomplished more,” said David Coleman, chief executive of the College Board. “We can’t sit on our hands and ignore the disparities of wealth reflected in the SAT.”

    The SAT, which includes math and verbal sections and is still taken with No. 2 pencils, is facing challenges. Federal prosecutors revealed this spring that students cheated on both the SAT and ACT for years as part of a far-reaching college admissions cheating scheme. In Asia and the Middle East, both the ACT and SAT exams have experienced security breaches.

    Yale University is one of the schools that has tried using applicants’ adversity scores. Yale has pushed to increase socioeconomic diversity and, over several years, has nearly doubled the number of low-income and first-generation-to-attend-college students to about 20% of newly admitted students, said Jeremiah Quinlan, the dean of undergraduate admissions at Yale.

    “This [adversity score] is literally affecting every application we look at,” he said. “It has been a part of the success story to help diversify our freshman class.”

    Colleges could glean some of the information that the adversity score reflects from other parts of a student’s application. But having the score makes comparisons more consistent, Mr. Quinlan said.
    James Conroy, director of college counseling at New Trier High School, which serves several affluent and mostly white communities north of Chicago, said the focus on diversity by elite colleges is already high and the adversity score would magnify that.

    “My emails are inundated with admissions officers who want to talk to our diversity kids,” Mr. Conroy said. “Do I feel minority students have been discriminated against? Yes, I do. But I see the reversal of it happening right now.”

    The College Board tried a similar effort two decades ago but quickly dropped it amid pushback from colleges. In 1999, after California and Washington voted to ban affirmative-action preferences in public education, the College Board created a program it called Strivers.

    The program aimed to measure the challenges students faced. It created an expected SAT score based on socioeconomic factors including, if schools chose to add it, race. Students who scored at least 200 points more on the SAT than predicted were called Strivers. Because minorities often had lower predicted scores, they were more likely to be Strivers.

    The adversity score, by contrast, doesn’t take into account race and is superior because it is steeped in more research, said Connie Betterton, vice president for higher education access and strategy at the College Board.

    “Since it is identifying strengths in students, it’s showing this resourcefulness that the test alone cannot measure,” Mr. Coleman, the College Board CEO, said. “These students do well, they succeed in college.”

    The new score—which falls on a scale of one through 100—will pop up on something called the Environmental Context Dashboard, which shows several indicators of relative poverty, wealth and opportunity as well as a student’s SAT score compared with those of their classmates. On the dashboard, the score is called “Overall Disadvantage Level.”

    An adversity score of 50 is average. Anything above it designates hardship, below it privilege.

    The College Board declined to say how it calculates the adversity score or weighs the factors that go into it. The data that informs the score comes from public records such as the U.S. Census as well as some sources proprietary to the College Board, Mr. Coleman said.

    The College Board began developing the tool in 2015 because colleges were asking for more objective data on students’ backgrounds, said Ms. Betterton. Several college admissions officers said they worry the Supreme Court may disallow race-based affirmative action. If that happens, the value of the tool would rise, they said.

    “The purpose is to get to race without using race,” said Anthony Carnevale, director of Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce. Mr. Carnevale formerly worked for the College Board and oversaw the Strivers program.

    The dashboard may also be an advantage in a tight competition for market share with the ACT, another college-admissions exam. A spokesman for the ACT said it is “investing significant resources” in a comparable tool that is expected to be announced later this year.

    At Florida State University, the adversity scores helped the school boost nonwhite enrollment to 42% from 37% in the incoming freshman class, said John Barnhill, assistant vice president for academic affairs at Florida State University. He said he expects pushback from parents whose children go to well-to-do high schools as well as guidance counselors there.

    “If I am going to make room for more of the [poor and minority] students we want to admit and I have a finite number of spaces, then someone has to suffer and that will be privileged kids on the bubble,” he said.

  50. Grim says:

    The stalking is a little creepy but at least people don’t think I’m him anymore.

  51. Grim says:

    I self identify as a transgender sub-Saharan African now.

  52. 3b says:

    Grim : People thought you were him? I did not know that!

  53. Leftwing says:

    Re: adversity scores…

    I’ve said this ad nauseum….

    Having gone through two college applications in three years with my usual level of diligence and having experienced same with numerous friends’ multiple kids…

    If you are white and especially male in suburban NJ and a solid student your blue ribbon school is detrimental to your college acceptance, not helpful…

    I’ve related the conversation my top 10 percent first born and I had with his counselor…”take the Naviance plot and move it down left”.

    Or as I’ve also stated here many times the kids identical to yours coming from the districts in the Midwest, middle class South etc will knock your kid out of a top school. Every single time.

    Be guided accordingly.

  54. GdBlsU45 says:

    The troll outed himself when he said he lives on ping pong road. And that his dad is a deported pollock.

  55. Friday WacktheCommie says:

    What the nitwit drug addled Boomer sell out of the country to China actually means,

    This link http://www.1000plan.org/en/history.html

    And this opinion article from the NYTimes.

    China Has a Vast Influence Machine, and You Don’t Even Know It
    By Yi-Zheng Lian
    Mr. Lian, a native of Hong Kong, is a former lead writer and chief editor of the Hong Kong Economic Journal.

    May 21, 2018
    Amid all the hoopla about Russia’s covert attempts to manipulate the 2016 American presidential election, one state has been conspicuously quiet: China. Yet its leaders may well be sneering at the Russians’ heavy hand. Since the project masterminded from Moscow largely relied on social media in the United States, American techies were bound to find out about it soon enough. Likewise with the baldfaced poisoning of an ex-Russian spy and his daughter in Britain, which has also been pegged to Moscow. Too crude, too traceable, these operations could only generate a backlash.

    China, too, can be a bully, especially with Asian governments in its immediate sphere of influence — imposing economic sanctions on South Korea for deploying defensive missiles or orchestrating the kidnapping of book publishers from Hong Kong and Thailand. But it doesn’t usually set out to openly hurt or antagonize stronger opponents like the United States; instead, it tries to quietly gain an edge for the long haul.

    Rather than coercing, China manipulates, preferring to act in moral and legal gray areas. It masks its political motives behind laudable human-interest or cultural projects, blurring the battle line with its adversaries. When the job is done, the other side may not realize it was gamed, or that a strategic game was even going on.

    If this sounds like the stuff of conspiracy theories, it’s because there is a conspiracy afoot, and it isn’t theoretical. The Confucius Institutes and Chinese Communist Party (C.C.P.) cells being established on campuses outside China are but a few dots in this picture — when the whole lot are properly connected they outline a vast, smooth-running machine that taps Chinese people throughout the world to spread its influence and harvest intelligence in the service of the Chinese state.

    Mr. Yang left China in the mid-1940s and then studied under Edward Teller, the father of the hydrogen bomb. After he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1957, the Chinese authorities sent emissaries, including his father, to secretly meet him in Geneva and entreat him to return home. Mr. Yang repeatedly refused, and became an American citizen in 1964. But when China began opening up in the 1970s, he returned to help modernize Chinese physics research. Beijing, well aware of the importance of physics for China’s development — as well as the possible demonstration effect of Mr. Yang’s newfound patriotism on other Chinese scientists overseas — practically made him a national hero. And more.

    In late 2004, just over a year after his wife had died, Mr. Yang married the young Chinese graduate student whom the authorities had assigned to be his personal assistant at a major conference; in February 2017, when he was 94, it was announced that he — as well as another returnee, the Turing Award-winner Andrew Chi-Chih Yao — had renounced his American citizenship. Prudish media scorned the marriage because of the couple’s vast age difference, but serious critics pointed out that pairing a high-value target with a young wife was an established practice of the C.C.P.; there is even a stock phrase for receiving such attentions from the state: coming under “the warm concern of the Party” (or the premier). A young spouse was also the reward for Li Zongren, a former top general and acting president of the Republican government that the Communists overthrew in 1949, after he returned to China in the mid-1960s.

    Chen Ning Yang talks to his wife before delivering a speech at Southeast University in Nanjing, China, in 2006.CreditChina Photos/Getty Images
    Zhou Enlai, then China’s premier, is said to have personally overseen Mr. Li’s case. I know of no official record showing that the Chinese leadership masterminded Mr. Yang’s remarriage, but there is ample circumstantial evidence, including statements by the father of Mr. Yang’s young wife, who said that his daughter’s “sacrifice” had been “a virtue and a glory.”

    News of Mr. Yang’s reversion to Chinese citizenship reverberated across the Chinese-American community, especially among scientists and engineers. The C.C.P. gained much-needed respectability, having just poached a major human-capital asset of the United States, and one who had received most of his training there.

    In fact, ever since the California Institute of Technology aerodynamics and missile expert Tsien Hsue-shen returned to China in 1955 — and became instrumental in building China’s missile industry — the F.B.I. has been well aware of the danger this peculiar kind of reverse brain drain poses for the United States. “I’d rather see him shot than let him go,” Dan A. Kimball, the secretary of the Navy in 1951-53, reportedly once said of Mr. Tsien. “He’s worth three to five divisions anyplace.” Hundreds of Chinese scientists overseas went back to China in the 1950s.

    Mr. Yang’s renunciation of his American citizenship may have had an even greater effect, if only because there are many more Chinese-Americans in the United States today than there were some six decades ago. Certainly, his return to China in the 1970s was a great source of patriotic inspiration among my generation of Chinese studying and working in high-tech in the United States then. Again and again, such homecoming stories have helped repair the C.C.P.’s tarnished image after it lost the support of intellectuals — with its disastrous Anti-Rightist Campaign of 1957, the Cultural Revolution of 1966-76 or again after the brutal Tiananmen crackdown in 1989.

    Longtime China observers readily recognize in Mr. Yang’s trajectory the handiwork of the C.C.P., specifically the painstaking orchestrations of its well-masked machine of influence. Foreign academic and intelligence circles, however, are only just beginning to appreciate China’s method — and how it differs from, say, Russia’s — and to take the full measure of its effectiveness. China’s ploys are difficult to discern, and its plants are difficult to dislodge, especially when they take root in unsuspecting open societies, like the United States, New Zealand or Australia.

    The Chinese influence machine has nebulous outer layers, partly because connections between its members, be they individuals or organizations, are often imperceptible. But at its core is a well-defined, battle-tested structure first deployed by Mao in the 1930s. Mao famously identified it as one of his Three Magic Weapons against the Republican government of Chiang Kai-shek, alongside a Leninist party and the Red Army, and he gave it a respectable name: the United Front. The organization assumed its current form in 1946. Three years later, Mao’s Communists won the civil war, and credited the United Front in part for their victory.

    The United Front comprises two organs, which are often poorly understood outside China because there are no equivalents for them in the West. One is the enigmatic United Front Work Department; the other is the high-profile Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (C.P.P.C.C.).

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    The United Front Work Department is a nimble and tightly led party organ, headed by the chief of the secretariat of the C.C.P.’s central committee. It oversees a dozen organizations that do political networking, through both persuasion and infiltration. One of those is the European and American Alumni Association, which keeps close tabs over the ever-larger number of Chinese students and academics training or residing in the West, and enjoins them to conduct “people diplomacy” — in effect turning all those scholars into foot soldiers for the United Front.

    The C.P.P.C.C., on the other hand, is a sort of vast invitation-only club — led by a member of the standing committee of the party’s Politburo, working primarily through personal networks. During its annual meeting, it is one harmonious gabfest of 2,150-odd participants. About 40 percent of them are C.C.P. members; the rest are people of renown from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau carefully selected for their wealth, popularity and political pliability — like movie stars, religious leaders, business tycoons and university presidents. (At least that goes for the C.P.P.C.C. at the national level; lesser patriots start by joining provincial or lower-level offshoots and work their way up.)

    C.P.P.C.C. members nominally are political consultants to the C.C.P.; in fact, they must toe the party line. And their real job begins when the shop talk ends: It mainly consists of influencing other important people in their respective walks of life and eventually drawing them into Beijing’s orbit — with money, women, the promise of fame or simply by tapping their patriotism. Any recruits are given good opportunities in China: to perform, proselytize, invest or make a lot of money.

    In some ways, the C.P.P.C.C. operates like a mafia: It is secretive, relies on close personal ties and stands ready to break the law. It is also something of a political Ponzi scheme: Its members are rewarded when they entice others to become initiates — only then to come under more pressure to do even more. Patrick Ho Chi-ping, a former home affairs secretary of Hong Kong and the head of an energy nonprofit, now finds himself embroiled in a criminal case in the United States, accused of bribing African heads of states to secure oil contracts for Chinese energy interests controlled by the state. A veteran of the C.P.P.C.C., he appears to have been done in by those connections.

    Yet China’s influence machine purrs on. Earlier this year the Chinese authorities in Beijing allocated to Hong Kong a record 200-plus seats in the current C.P.P.C.C., about 10 percent of the entire membership — even though the city’s population is the equivalent of only about 0.5 percent of China’s total.

    Seven decades ago, Mao’s United Front was instrumental in catapulting the Chinese Communists to power. Since then, China’s influence machine has become infinitely more resourceful — and far more global.

  56. Grin says:

    Smart kids will be successful regardless of the college they attend, not because of it.

    The most successful person I know as an acquaintance in the same age cohort did not go to college.

    The graduate from the most prestigious school I know is a substitute teacher.

    The uneducated 40 year old is a self made multi millionaire.

    The well educated 38 year old, is not.

    If we lower the bar a few notches, I know a few successful Cornell grads, but they are all MDs.

  57. Grim says:

    I’ve worked with plenty of worthless Harvard grads.

  58. chicagofinance says:

    grin? You son of a biscuit……. left … what you say?

    Grin says:
    May 17, 2019 at 8:50 am
    If we lower the bar a few notches, I know a few successful Cornell grads, but they are all MDs.

  59. Libturd, still in Union, mainly on Thursdays. says:

    I graduated from MSC (wasn’t even a university) and look at me know! Won’t share my net worth, because it’s not appropriate, but lets just say, “I’m doing way better than the village idiot!”

    I posit, the smartest move your smart kid can make is to study electrical science at slo-tech. By the time his peers are out of college, the electrician should be well on his way to building his electrical repair empire.

  60. Grim says:

    Why would any white male ever identify as such?

    Say you are transgender – who is anyone to question your gender without being hypocritical?

    How does equal opportunity even work she. You can self identify as anything you’d like?

    Run your 23 and Me ancestry. Identify as whatever is most beneficial.

  61. Libturd, can't say I didn't warn you. says:

    I would put Jew down, but I heard they immediately forward your resume to Brandeis.

  62. Fast Eddie says:

    I’ve already decided that the next application I fill out asking for race and gender is going to be a whole lot of fun. They might as well remove Caucasian male from the list.

  63. Fast Eddie says:

    Lib,

    I’m still laughing over tiger wood and ping pongs. I guess I just love racial ridicule and making fun of cultures. lol.

  64. homeboken says:

    This is precisely right, in our effort to be accepting of all races, genders, orientations, creeds, etc. we have over-shot and now have no ability to decipher a legitimate trans/gay/whatever from a cis male.

    So now, admissions officers, are not able to question ones identity and as such, every single applicant is now a self-identified “protected class” of some form. This is the kill shot to affirmative action admission policies.

    “Grim says:
    May 17, 2019 at 9:01 am
    Why would any white male ever identify as such?

    Say you are transgender – who is anyone to question your gender without being hypocritical?:

  65. Fast Eddie says:

    So now, admissions officers, are not able to question ones identity and as such, every single applicant is now a self-identified “protected class” of some form. This is the kill shot to affirmative action admission policies.

    A confederacy of dunces. And yet, the masses will continue to be fooled into voting for a candidate who claims compassion for their cause.

  66. grim says:

    I’m a gender fluid transgender currently identifying as male, but I might identify as female tomorrow, or gender neutral too, it depends. I’m also a fluid bisexual currently identifying as heterosexual but I sometimes think that Channing Tatum is cute.

    If Elizabeth Warren can be American Indian as a result of a fractional share of DNA, I’m going to self-identify as sub-saharan african.

    Let me just top it off with a shitty hair cut, maybe a little dye.

    Who the f*ck are you to question me?

  67. GdBlsU45 says:

    I definitely think Sweeney will challenge Murphy next time around. Of course all of that is just infighting. Average citizens still won’t have a seat at the table.

  68. Juice Box says:

    Trump calling for Treason charges, we are leveling up. What did Joe know and when did he know it?

  69. Libturd, seen crazy things done with ping pong balls. says:

    Funny the way the market, laughed off the futures this morning. I think the Street has finally learned what I think was the case all along. The POTUS has little to no influence over the markets.

    The Fed. That’s another story.

  70. grim says:

    Sweeney doesn’t stand a chance at winning now.

    The unions hate him.

  71. Libturd, seen crazy things done with ping pong balls. says:

    Sweeney blew it with the Union back in 2011 when he sided with CC and his first round of reforms before CC got ruined by his presidential aspirations in 2003. Sweeney is Norcross puppet. The gorilla in the room is letting the question of pension reform be answered by public referendum. Though it’s painfully obvious that reform is needed, the people of NJ will probably vote against it like the way they take the asses side of every referendum question I’ve ever witnessed.

  72. Libturd, seen crazy things done with ping pong balls. says:

    Meant 2013.

    Sue me.

  73. grim says:

    Trump needs to push the narrative that increasing consumer prices because of tariffs and trade wars is good, it’s a positive, Americans should be happy paying their fair share to keep jobs in the US, and to fight against unfair trade practices.

  74. Blue Ribbon Teacher says:

    To be honest, most teachers don’t even realize Sweeney had anything to do with gutting them on healthcare contributions.

  75. leftwing says:

    Grim, agree on the work=success argument, especially 5+ years out of school. Problem is probabilities and starting lines. Can several exceptions disprove the rule? Yes. Fact of the matter is as long as one has moderate success at a top school the starting opportunities for that person far exceed the ordinary.

    Harvard and Yale grads had opportunities open to them I did not see.

    My investment banking group (bulge bracket, not GS/MS) hired from only six schools, all top, plus Howard. You wouldn’t even get an interview otherwise unless your father was one of three senior decision making execs at a client.

    And one’s father had enough juice to get his 2.8 idiot son from SU into our group, he really didn’t need that job or concern about his future anyway…

    Bottom line top schools generate opportunities other schools don’t which dramatically increase the probability of ‘success’. At the very least they move one’s personal starting line ahead of everyone else, so why not try?

    If I fall flat then I can always then pull the ‘work hard doesn’t matter where you start’ option.

  76. leftwing says:

    I told my youngest to self identify as a homosexual transgender.

    Get the twofer PC bump and since multiplying two negatives equals a positive, no real lifestyle change.

  77. D-FENS says:

    monorail

    I swear Star Ledger writers read the blog.

    Maybe not just lurkers but posters too.

    https://www.nj.com/traffic/2019/05/a-monorail-to-the-american-dream-mega-mall-it-could-happen-gov-says.html

  78. D-FENS says:

    We see you Larry!

  79. leftwing says:

    TSLA….the gift that keeps giving…..

  80. The Great Pumpkin says:

    That’s because the party is only getting started….

    ““The picture on inflation is puzzling this far into an expansion,” said Ms. Brainard. The historical relationship between slack and price pressures that have guided officials for decades “appears to have broken down.”

    The Fed’s introspection over inflation dynamics is happening at the same time the central bank is engaged in a broader rethink of the framework it uses to conduct monetary policy.”

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/feds-brainard-says-central-bank-should-welcome-modest-rise-in-inflation-11558023372?mod=hp_major_pos10

  81. chicagofinance says:

    left: I have a tombstone from an AT&T bond deal I worked on….. closed 3/23/1999

    Check out the leads and syndicate…

    joint leads and bookrunners
    Merrill Lynch & Co. / Salomon Smith Barney

    c0-managers
    Blaylock & Partners
    BNY Capital Markets
    Chase Securities
    Deutsche Bank Securities
    First Chicago Capital Markets
    Lehman Brothers
    J.P. Morgan & Co.
    NationsBank Montgomery Securities

    Total stiff arm to MS, GS, CSFB….. just trying to remember…. if you weren’t joint lead, you were out….. Lehman was pissed, but they sucked, and it was only 6 months after LTCM…… at the time J.P. Morgan was just a bank along with Chase….. the only thing they could offer was balance sheet for the credit facility…… Blaylock was basically a ML sub….. no capability…. we did a follow on full MWBE deal six months later…..we had to babysit the whole thing…… I still remember Jesse Jackson and PUSH writing a letter to the Treasurer dictated who was going to run the deal…. GTFOOH….. unbelievable….

  82. The Great Pumpkin says:

    I’m with lefty.

    Elite schools do provide something, it’s up to the individual attending to take advantage. If they are only a bookworm, and don’t network, they are not getting a good job, or job in general, after graduating.

    Elite education does not guarantee anything, but it sure as hell opens a lot of doors to opportunity if the individual puts in the work.

    Older you get, the less it matters what college you went to because now your career skills are what opens up doors. In your 20’s, graduating from an elite school with an elite degree is the quickest way to success for a 20 something. That’s why people fight so hard to get in at 18 years old. By 22, you are set if you played your cards right.

    Again, I can’t stress how important it is to network..they don’t have the saying, “it’s not what you know, but who you know” for no reason.

  83. chicagofinance says:

    I always liked the Merrill DCM telecom desk. Decent guys…. I just remembered his name ….. Wylie Collins

  84. chicagofinance says:

    STFU

    The Great Pumpkin says:
    May 17, 2019 at 3:19 pm
    I’m with lefty.

    Elite schools do provide something, it’s up to the individual attending to take advantage. If they are only a bookworm, and don’t network, they are not getting a good job, or job in general, after graduating.

  85. chicagofinance says:

    Finally….. pumps is at an advantage……. he doesn’t have to be concerned with this guy….
    https://youtu.be/KFIQYKhjzUM?t=72

  86. Bystander says:

    STFU 2 ..

    “That’s because the party is only getting started….”

  87. Martinjoump says:

    how to write a essay outline http://thabees.online/affordablepapers/online-research-paper.html example of a rogerian argument essay

  88. leftwing says:

    Haha, that is a trip down memory lane.

    My companies were more growth and midcap….Seeing Nations Montgomery in there made me think of the CHARM group

    Cowen
    H&Q
    Alex Brown
    Robbie Stephens
    Montgomery

    Firms like those offered real opportunity beneath the majors. And a better lifestyle.

  89. Yo! says:

    “Currently, the rail service only operates during major stadium events; however, as reported to us by ownership, NJ Transit has committed to operate trains on a regular daily schedule when American Dream opens.”

    American Dream bond docs say trains will run to American Dream thought the train platform is a long walk through a long tunnel to American Dream.

    Better approach would be NJ Transit running buses between Port Authority and American Dream. NJ Transit has a bus route connecting Port Authority and Jersey Gardens and it gets 800,000 riders per year.

  90. Juice Box says:

    Did in California just lose a billion dollars on its cancelled bullet train or a maglev train project is our governor f****** stupid

  91. ExEssex says:

    Looks like a Fed Agency cancelled the whole deal as the current Gov. wanted to scale the high speed rail initiative back.

  92. Libturd, seen crazy things done with ping pong balls. says:

    Want to see stupid in California.

    https://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-belmont10-2008aug10-story.html

    When I lived there in 99, the campus was half built, and soon to be demolished.

  93. Juice Box says:

    Essex – scale it back? What’s left is a 171 mile run from Bakersfield to Merced. A Drive you can do in three hours now cost how many billions?

    Sounds like a typical Jersey project according to Pravda.

    “The project has faced many challenges in the last decade, though it was vigorously backed by former Gov. Jerry Brown, who made it a top priority of his final years in office. The overall cost of the project was estimated at $45 billion when voters approved its financing a decade ago. Now that figure has swelled to as much as $98 billion.”

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/16/us/california-high-speed-rail.html

  94. Libturd, seen crazy things done with ping pong balls. says:

    I’ve been debating with the locals on Facebook about this new Essex country strategic energy alliance which is offering 20% more from green sources energy package that will cost $150 less than PSEG over the 16 month contract. It appears too good to be true, and I’m not sure Direct Energy (thirty party energy aggregator) can handle this kind of scale. Essentially, half the towns in Essex County will be switching all of their residents that do not OPT OUT, into this energy contract. There is no penalty for leaving nor are there any shortcomings that I can think of. Though, the question I keep asking is, where will Direct Energy find the clean energy? And if they do, good bye to PSEG. Something doesn’t smell right here.

  95. Juice Box says:

    Turd – follow the transmission, cheap gas and electric out of Canada, 4,600 natural gas wells in Alberta and a crap load of cheap power then PJM Interconnection that serves 51 million around here and legislation ie: deregulation. The nuke plants are all being shut down…Out of the 98 nuclear power reactors many now are now being shut down.

    It’s the Pikins plan with a Canadian twist.

    http://pickensplan.com/

  96. Juice Box says:

    As a child I always remembered seeing the giant coal pile that PSE&G used to maintain in Ridgefield NJ west of the NJ Turnpike. Today’s energy is natural gas. Once that runs out it will be back to Nuclear.

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