Anything New York

For sale by owner.

This is a two-family house in North Riverdale, one of the real estate hot spots and one of the best neighborhoods in New York City.

It was built in 1950, designed for professional people and public servants and planned to provide the pleasures and attractions of a single family home. Each floor has two bedrooms, one bathroom, large living room, kitchen and dining area. There is a garage, a terrace, a garden, and a large finished basement. There is also off-street parking space.

The house is on a quiet block, across the street from a playground and an elementary school. It is just a few minutes’ walk from a community center with a swimming pool, and a branch of the New York City Public Library, etc.

The house has quick access to Manhattan. It is just one minute from the Henry Hudson Parkway. It is also near buses and not far from Subway and Metro North Riverdale train station. It is 25 minutes by train or 40 minutes by express bus to Midtown Manhattan. There are free shuttle buses to the Metro North Riverdale train station.

The house is close to the biggest park in New York City, Van Cortlandt Park, which has Riverdale Equestrian Centre for horseback riding. It is also close to one of JFK’s former residences, and Wave Hill, one of Mark Twain’s former residences, a beautiful garden overlooking the Hudson River.

The house belongs to a community that has one of the finest school systems in the country and remarkably low taxes. Tax is just $5135/year.

Living square footage is about 1010 square feet each floor. Total construction square footage is about 3030 square feet. Lot area is about 4500 square feet (45 feet x 100 feet).

The minimum bid for this auction is $400,000. The auction has a reserve price which is not published. The auction is scheduled to end on March 14th, 2010. You may place a bid by email or by using the “Post A Comment” form here. You may also buy the property without taking part in the auction at the “Buy Now” price of $750,000. If the property was not sold at this “Buy Now” price by the time the auction ends, it will be sold to the highest bidder.

Please call 212-461-0685 to make an appointment to see the property. This property is for sale by owner only. No brokers please.

The following is taken from an article by Albor Ruiz on NYDailyNews.com.

As proof, the group quoted the President’s cursory mention of what amounts to a life-and-death issue for millions of people: “We should continue the work of fixing our broken immigration system – to secure our borders, enforce our laws and ensure that everyone who plays by the rules can contribute to our economy and enrich our nation.”

That was it, 36 words uttered in passing near the end of Obama’s speech, at best an afterthought, at worse a bone thrown to the immigration community to keep it wagging its tail and hoping against all hope.

“When communities are terrorized by ICE immigration raids, when nursing mothers are torn from their babies, when children come home from school to find their parents missing, when people are detained without access to legal counsel, when all that is happening, the system just isn’t working, and we need to change it,” candidate Barack Obama movingly told the National Council of La Raza during his presidential run.

Obviously, it is not the moral aspect of reform that will move our elected leaders to action. But the Immigration Policy Center’s director, Mary Giovagnoli, had it right when she pointed out that understanding the concrete, measurable economic benefits of immigrants might .

“We have a golden opportunity to enhance the gross domestic product, create and sustain new jobs and businesses, and maintain our competitive edge in the world if we create a system that legalizes current undocumented workers, provides for improved legal channels for families and new workers when they are needed in the future and adopts sensible policies to secure our border,” Giovagnoli said. “Such measures will help to provide the framework for an economic recovery that will allow us all to pursue our American dreams.”

Read the full news report on FeetInTwoWorlds.com.

“One QUARTER OF A TRILLION DOLLARS is what the US is spending on two nations, Iraq and Afghanistan that together have a COMBINED GDP of just $23 billion.

That is lunacy. Americans have a US President who is going to say tonight — we cannot afford our future, we cannot afford investment in ourselves, but we can afford to bail out Wall Street financiers, and we can afford to pump $250 billion into two small countries abroad, but we can’t afford to do the right things by American working families — who deserve far better.

There are parts of what the President’s team is doing — particularly what Jared Bernstein, Paul Volcker and Austan Goolsbee have been working on — that I do support.

But the broader issue that we are going to cease deep investment in the US in a way that is big, significant and consequential — while China does everything the reverse that we are doing and reaps the rewards is a sign of America’s collapse, not America rebuilding itself.” – Read the whole article here.

Steven Clemons is a Senior Fellow and Director of the American Strategy Program at The New America Foundation. He is also publisher of political blog The Washington Note.

By the way, watch Rachel Maddow’s discussion on this topic.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

WHEN: Sunday January 24, 2010  1:15pm
WHERE: Community Church of New York Gallery Room at 28 East 35th St.
ADMISSION: Free, donations appreciated

Below is information about the movie taken from RESISTANCE CINEMA, the organization presenting this movie. Read more here.

Documentary filmmaker Marie-Monique Robin’s film “Le Monde selon Monsanto” (“The World According to Monsanto”) explores the history and future direction of chemical and so-called “life sciences” industrial company Monsanto. Based in St. Louis, Missouri, Monsanto was founded in 1901 to manufacture the synthetic sweetener saccharin. The multinational biotech company in the intervening decades has produced styrene and PCBs; became the leading producer of Agent Orange used in the Vietnam War; manufactures Roundup, the best-selling herbicide; and has advanced the development of genetically engineered seeds and bovine growth hormone.

“Mrs. Robin should be congratulated for revealing the sinister practices of the world’s leading producer of genetically engineered seeds. Her film is alarming and should be a call to action for everybody who cares about the quality of our food and a healthy future for our planet.” - Geert Ritsema – Greenpeace International

“Qing Wu, 29, has been a legal and permanent resident of New York City since settling here with his family from China at the age of 5. At 15, due to negative influences from ill-acquainted friends, he partook in committing certain wrongful acts (without grievous bodily injuries to persons). He took responsibility for these childhood mistakes by pleading guilty and served three years in correctional facilities. Quickly turning this hard-learned lesson into a strong work ethic and a self-promise to reform, Qing Wu exhibited exemplary behaviors and focused on studying while in detention. Upon release at the age of 18, he worked full time while going to school in the evenings to help support his family. For the past decade, he has continued to live up to that self promise by working hard, staying in school, building a respected career and securing a good job as Vice President of IT Operations. For all of his adult life, Qing Wu by any measurement has been a productive, law-abiding and tax-paying resident of this State. Now, as a result of his application for U.S. citizenship, the ICE ironically seeks to follow rigid federal immigration procedure and deport Qing Wu from his homeland and home state, all because of his regrettable acts as a misguided teenager and without regard to his contributions to society as a productive, conscientious adult. Qing Wu has been put in detention by the ICE, pending deportation.” – Sign the petition here.

Kendrick Nguyen is a practicing attorney in New York City. He wrote a very good article concerning the case of an immigrant facing deportation for crimes he committed during his teenage years which he had served time for: Halting the Exile of an American.

I heard that in some places in the world where the gap between the poor and the rich is very wide, the rich have to build walls around their houses, hire private guards, and spend a lot of money on security.

When I think of the reason why the United States have to spend more and more on security, I think of that phenomena. The world in which America has become the only super power, has become a place where the gap between the powerless and the powerful is so wide that America’s security has become a bigger and bigger issue.

So the key to America’s security is not hard stuff such as security cameras and personnels, but soft stuff such as foreign policies. Empowering people in other parts of the world more by stopping support of regimes that are not democratic and giving other countries more says in world affairs will help improve American security fundamentally. For example, stop supporting the Saudi Arabia royal family; stop interfering with OPEC countries’ rights to decide oil prices – let the market decide oil prices rather than overturning regimes that would not allow the increase of oil production that will result in lower oil prices.