FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT WWW.QNS.COM APRIL 5, 2018 • THE QUEENS COURIER 33
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As the old jingle went, “You can trust your car to the man who wears the star.” The Kaschner service station, which specialized
in Texaco gasoline and Quaker State motor oil, is pictured in this May 1934 photo taken at the corner of Edsall and Cooper
avenues in Glendale. Look carefully and you’ll see a vehicle hoisted on a hydraulic lift for service and a sign in the background
for the nearby Knickerbocker Coal and Ice Company. Send us your historic photos of Queens by email to editorial@qns.com
(subject: A Look Back) or mail printed pictures to A Look Back, ℅ Schneps Communications, 38-15 Bell Blvd., Bayside, NY
11361. All mailed pictures will be carefully returned to you.
letters & comments
THREE WAYS TO
PUNISH NYCHA
LEADERSHIP
A few things that could be done to
the people responsible for the current
NYCHA mess:
They should be fired.
They should be sentenced to live in
the filth they created for one year (no
heat in winter, no A/C in summer,
rooms infested with ants, spiders, bedbugs,
etc...).
There should be surprise unannounced
inspections to make sure
this doesn’t happen again.
James Jagiello, Forest Hills
PRESIDENTIAL
DOUBLE-STANDARD
It is laughable when President
Trump gets up on his high horse and
alleges that Joe Biden has threatened
him with physical assault. What about
the time he said that he would hit “little”
Michael Bloomberg so hard that
his head would spin? Rank hypocrisy.
Robert Berger, Bellerose
REST IN PEACE, RUSTY
Rusty Staub was a man of all seasons.
Not only did he have a long and
colorful career with the Mets, but he
also dedicated himself to doing charity
work that benefited thousands of
children and adults.
He was a very giving person who
never thought of himself first, but
always put his best into everything
he did, both on and off the baseball
field as well.
The sports world has lost another
true icon — a shining star. He will
be missed by the legacy of those thousands
of fans who liked him throughout
his long and distinguished career.
John Amato, Fresh Meadows
FINDING A SOLUTION
TO BIKE LANE WOES
Regarding bike lanes on Northern
Boulevard (March 29 issue): The bike
lane on 223rd Street is part of what
is causing this problem. It takes multiple
red lights before you can go the
one block from 46th Avenue onto
Northern Boulevard during many
times of day. Therefore, people are
going to rush to make the light more
than they used to. There needs to be a
right turn lane on 223rd Street.
QNS member Ian Resnick
GOVERNOR MUST FIX
THE NYCHA MESS
Editor’s note: The following is an
open letter by the authors to Governor
Andrew Cuomo.
As you know too well, the tenants
at the New York City Housing
Authority (NYCHA) are in desperate
need of help. In one of the richest
cities in the world, our tenants have
endured unacceptable conditions for
years, living in squalid conditions —
apartments infected with toxic lead
and mold, without heat and hot water,
infested with roaches and rats, trash
piling up everywhere (attracting more
vermin), walls crumbling, and lacking
the most basic safety features (i.e., broken
locks and intercoms).
Our rent-paying community has
begged the city and local leaders for
help on humanitarian grounds for
years, and all to no avail. Judicial determinations
have found that the current
NYCHA conditions pose grave safety
and health threats. NYCHA’s incompetence
is now almost a daily topic in
headline news.
NYCHA needs funding. Even more
than funding, NYCHA needs competent
management. No objective indicators
support any rational conclusion
that NYCHA’s current management
is capable of fixing the systemic
problems faced by tenants. NYCHA’s
leadership and management needs to
change. That much is evident and clear.
We urge you to deliver on your
promise by issuing an Executive Order
declaring an Emergency over NYCHA
and to appoint an independent monitor
who can bring in a qualified contractor
to make the repairs necessary. We also
want a seat at the table in making such
selections and in overseeing the process
for selecting both the monitor and the
contractor, because we pay rent and it is
our lives that are being affected.
We do not understand why City
Hall is lobbying borough presidents,
the City Council and the State
Assembly to stop you from taking the
action we need. Perhaps it is because
they have not seen the conditions for
themselves.
We hope that Mayor de Blasio and
NYCHA will come to the table. Since
they have not as yet, we ask you to
intervene now.
Danny Barber, Chair of the
Citywide Council of Presidents
Jim Walden, Lawyer for the
Citywide Council of Presidents
Eliezer Hecht of At-Risk
Community Service
Email your letters to editorial@qns.
com (Subject: Letter to the Editor) or
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letter by regular mail to Letters to the
Editor, 38-15 Bell Blvd., Bayside, NY
11361. All letters are subject to editing.
Names will be withheld upon request,
but anonymous letters will not be
considered for publication. The views
expressed in all letters and comments
are not necessarily those of this publication
or its staff.
Canadian newsprint
is not the enemy
BY DAVID CHAVERN
Every day at the News Media Alliance headquarters, a
stack of newspapers arrives for me and the staff. But with
the Department of Commerce and the International Trade
Commission currently considering tariffs on Canadian newsprint,
those days of screen-free reading could be coming to
an end.
The fact that newsprint is being threatened is the work of one
newsprint mill in the Pacific Northwest, NORPAC. In August
2017, NORPAC petitioned the United States Department of
Commerce to begin applying tariffs to newsprint imported
from Canada, claiming the imported paper was harming the
U.S. newsprint industry. But NORPAC is not acting in the best
interests of newsprint consumers or the U.S. paper industry at
large — they are acting in their own interest and no one else’s.
The buying and selling of newsprint has always been regional
without regard for the border. Consumers of newsprint —
from newspaper and book publishers to telephone directory
manufacturers — tend to buy newsprint in their region, close
to their printing operations. The printers who typically utilize
Canadian newsprint are those in the northeast and Midwest,
where there are currently no U.S. mills operating.
But those regions are not newsprint deserts because of unfair
trade by Canadian paper mills. Rather, newsprint mills shut down
or converted to producing other, more profitable paper products
when the demand for newsprint fell, something that has been
happening steadily for decades. Since 2000, the demand for newsprint
in North America has dropped by 75 percent.
But affordable Canadian paper has helped keep the printed
news alive and flourishing well into the 21st century. With
new tariffs, many smaller newspapers will feel their belts tightening.
The combination of preliminary countervailing and
antidumping duties increases the cost of imported newsprint
by as much as 32 percent, and a number of newspapers have
already experienced price increases and a disruption in supply.
If the International Trade Commission and the Department
of Commerce make these tariffs permanent in the coming
months, it could lead some small local publishers to cut their
print product entirely — or even shut their doors.
What we’re seeing with the newsprint tariffs is not a government
acting to try to better the economy for its citizens.
Instead, it is “political arbitrage” by one private investment
group — where they are effectively looking to use the U.S. government
to tax local and community newspapers across the
United States in order to bolster their own bottom line.
When considering whether to take NORPAC’s claims seriously,
the Department of Commerce excluded input from U.S.
newsprint mills owned by Canadian companies — specifically
Resolute Forest Products and White Birch. Excluding manufacturers
who, during the period of investigation, had three
functioning newsprint mills in the U.S. because they have sister
mills in Canada shows an unwillingness to understand the
borderless newsprint industry and the restructuring that has
taken place in recent decades.
If the tariffs on Canadian newsprint are allowed to stand,
we’re not only risking a centuries-old relationship with our
neighbors to the north, but we’re putting our own U.S. news
industry in jeopardy. While the big national and regional
papers may have less trouble finding the funds to keep their
print editions coming, we could see small publishers lose footing,
and those tiny local papers are some of the most vital
members of our news community. Under the right conditions,
those papers can find a way to maintain their footing, but if the
newsprint industry can’t support them, those communities
will become news deserts, and that’s a future none of us want.
We may not be able to save the entire industry by keeping
tariffs off our paper, but we can keep it thriving while we re-position
ourselves for the years to come. Having affordable newsprint
will help us do that.
David Chavern serves as president & CEO of the News Media
Alliance. Chavern has built a career spanning 30 years in executive
strategic and operational roles, and most recently completed
a decade-long tenure at the United States Chamber of
Commerce.
A LOOK BACK
Ridgewood Times archives/Greater Ridgewood Historical Society
link
