“These Cuts Sting” (Sept. 14) gets a couple of key facts wrong that combine to yield an exaggerated conclusion regarding the city budget.
The local corporate tax rate tops out at 8.85%, not 35%.
Secondly, the local tax only applies to the corporate income allocated to New York City, which often is much less than worldwide profits.
The city budget does have a revenue problem. We should be looking for ways to address that, so that next year’s budget cuts don’t further harm the city economy.
We should start by looking at the $3 billion in business tax breaks the city hands out, many of which are on automatic pilot without regard to any benefit to local jobs and income.
James Parrot
Manhattan
Bush and 9/11
As Kyle Smith correctly asserts, George W. Bush was right to call for Americans to return to normal living after 9/11 (“Triumph of the Normal,” PostScript, Sept. 11).
Bush has been widely condemned by the left for asking Americans to continue shopping and traveling, but he wasn’t the only one. Many Democrats and The New York Times, among others, exhorted Americans to come to New York and spend money in the months after 9/11 to keep the city’s economy afloat. Anything less, they insisted, would be letting the terrorists win.
The phoniness of the left’s charges about what Bush should have done became clear when Barack Obama became president and Democrats controlled both houses of Congress.
Suddenly, all the demands for a mandatory civilian corps and a military draft stopped. Truth was, the left never wanted those things, either.
George Bush didn’t squander the support of the left. It was never there to begin with.
Mark Godburn
North Canaan, Conn.
I find it interesting, but not surprising, that Smith used the 10th anniversary of 9/11 to attack the president specifically, and liberals in general.
At a time when we should be united in remembering that tragic day, Smith saw fit to once again trot out the tired old lie that liberals hate America and take great joy in seeing it hurt, humiliated and hopefully destroyed.
Has he no decency?
Peter Nicholls
Manhattan
DHS on High Alert
“$cuffle Over Terror Tab,” (Sept. 15) alleges that the Department of Homeland Security chose not to issue a National Terrorism Advisory System (NTAS) alert to avoid paying for increased security.
Funding considerations are not a factor in decisions relating to how DHS shares information with law-enforcement partners and the public.
When an NTAS alert is issued, grantees are not required to seek approval to divert existing grant funds to pay for operational overtime costs.
DHS grant funds can also be used in circumstances like the 9/11 anniversary, where there was specific, credible information about the potential for a terrorist attack, but insufficient confirmation of the threat to warrant an NTAS alert. The only difference is the grantee must receive prior approval from the FEMA administrator.
Prior to last weekend, DHS approved requests to use grant dollars for operational overtime costs from New York City and several other grantees.
John Cohen
Principal Deputy Counterterrorism Coordinator, US Department of Homeland Security, Washington, DC