Posted by Leonard Steinberg on March 1st, 2014

Here are some crazy double standards to ponder…..

1)   NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden has sought refuge in Russia (the world’s shining bastion for human rights) from the abusive horrors of the US spying on its citizens…..while Mr. Putin boasted during the Sochi Olympics that every e-mail, text and phone call would be monitored in Russia……for security reasons of course!

2)  Arizona wanted to give the right to its citizens to decline providing services to gays because of their religious beliefs: why did they not include in this legislation the right for gays everywhere to decline Arizonians the right to receive gay-earned Federal tax dollars? Arizona gets $ 1.19 back from the Federal government for every dollar they send to the tax coffers….

3)  Politicians keep touting the value of THE AMERICAN FAMILY, yet real estate brokerage law forbids us from mentioning anything about familial matters……no, we cannot say whether a building has families living in them, nor can we advertise ‘family’ rooms…..the American family has to thrive, but where and how they live is a SECRET your broker may not reveal….. shhhh…

4)  BUILD AFFORDABLE HOUSING!!!!!….. That’s the cry from all in New York: but how do you build it when the unionized labor, land, materials and financing are so incredibly un-affordable? (see this month’s LUXURYLETTER: https://www.theleonardsteinbergteam.com/luxuryletter.php )

5)  The IRS charges a 1% MANSION tax for all properties sold for $1 million or more: HAS ANYONE SEEN A MANSION ANYWHERE CLOSE TO NEW YORK FOR $1 MILLION???? Maybe we should re-name it the “thank-you- foreign-buyers-for-buying-expensive-New-York-apartments” tax.

I end on a less cynical note with the words of Warren Buffet (who revealed today that his company’s 2013 profits rose to just shy of $19.48 billion) that should be encouraging to us all:

“Though we invest abroad as well, the mother lode of opportunity resides in America.”