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Rose Siding

(32,623 posts)
Thu Oct 27, 2016, 09:38 AM Oct 2016

Poor 'tax paying' man of the people. Vets were getting some humanity all over his posh

Trump’s War on Disabled Veteran Vendors
In the 1990s, Trump had a real problem with a protected class of New York street vendors. We paid a visit to some of them today.

They are as much a part of the New York City landscape as the Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building and Times Square. But the presence of street vendors along New York City’s posh Fifth Avenue corridor gave Donald Trump heartburn in the early 1990s. Back then, he, along with other local business leaders, urged city and state officials to restrict vendor access to Fifth Avenue, including the space in front of Trump Tower. One target of his lobbying efforts included a special class of business operators: disabled veteran street vendors.

“While disabled veterans should be given every opportunity to earn a living, is it fair to do so to the detriment of the city as a whole or its tax paying citizens and businesses?” Trump wrote in a 1991 letter obtained by the New York Daily News. “Do we allow Fifth Ave., one of the world’s finest and most luxurious shopping districts, to be turned into an outdoor flea market, clogging and seriously downgrading the area?”

The fight went back to an 19th-century law that gave every veteran in New York the right to “hawk, peddle and vend any goods, wares or merchandise” throughout the state. Designed to create economic opportunities for Civil War veterans, the law has been amended a number of times at various state and city levels. Advocacy groups say what remains today is an overly complicated legal system that has, in fact, discouraged veterans from obtaining this protected license. Of New York City’s 2,555 general vendor licenses, only 105—and only those held by disabled veterans—permit work in the so-called "midtown core," a restricted zone created in the 1990s in part to respond to lobbying efforts of the Fifth Avenue Association. It’s a flawed process, veteran street vendors say. Not only is the number too low, but it has led to abuse of some disabled veterans through corruptive “rent-a-vet” schemes where civilian operators pay veterans to use their licenses in this prized area.

Politico photographer M. Scott Mahaskey walked the streets of New York City to document these vendors, who today battle cops, long hours and meager compensation—and many of whom still have fresh memories of Trump’s war against them.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/gallery/2016/05/trumps-war-on-disabled-veteran-vendors-000637#ixzz4OI8xPKCb


He's garbage.

He has a history of actively undermining the deserving for his own enrichment. Extra precious, in that letter he associates himself with tax paying citizens at a time when he was writing off the very loss that allowed him to leech off the rest of us for 20 year. When I see the Clinton's attacked on personal finance it boggles my brain. He was the f'ing president, and their charitable giving puts gop types to shame. If it involves their highly rated charity, well that's money that saved lives. Of human beings. Children, the poor, the hopeless. If they squeezed it out of the hands of dirt bags, whether they're Saudi or Trump himself, good for them!

Trump's record, his self stated preeminent qualification proves it; He's. Garbage.
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