The Art of the Comeback, by Donald Trump: on Environment
Asbestos got a bad rap from miners & mob-led movement
Asbestos is the greatest fireproofing material ever used, and everybody in the construction industry knows it. It is also 100% safe, once applied. But early on, asbestos got a bad rap because of the fact that miners who were digging asbestos for many
years would often develop asbestosis, and therefore people thought that asbestos was not safe. I'm not saying it's the greatest material to work with. I'm only saying it's the safest material in terms of fire. A huge and concerted effort was made to have
asbestos removed from buildings, causing tremendous dislocation and destruction and creating a new problem: asbestos floating in the air.I believe that the movement against asbestos was led by the mob, because it was often mob-related companies
that would do the asbestos removal. Great pressure was put on politicians, and as usual, the politicians relented. Millions of truckloads of this incredible fireproofing material were taken to special "dump sites" because of this stupid law.
Source: The Art of the Comeback, by Donald Trump, p. 83-4
Oct 27, 1997
Humiliated NYC Mayor by finishing ice rink on time on budget
Ed Koch may have respected me, but he sure didn't like me. Our relationship went south for one reason: the Wollman Rink in Central Park. You may remember the tale. Local government had been trying for 7 years--and $20 million--to get that thing rebuilt.
In 1986, I stepped in, and--with $2 million, or 10% of the city's dollars--New Yorkers were gliding across the ice four months later. Koch was humiliated. He took it personally. Rather than compliment me on saving the Wollman Rink, one of the great
bureaucratic disasters in New York City history, Ed Koch tried to make light of my triumph by saying that the city could have done the same thing, that is, build the rink in four months rather than in seven years, if only it were not forced to go
through the bureaucratic red tape. This was nonsense, and everyone knew it, but nevertheless, Ed's feeling toward me came out loud and clear. He felt I'd shown him up and from that point forward my relationship with Ed Koch was the pits.
Source: The Art of the Comeback, by Donald Trump, p.153
Oct 27, 1997
Bureaucratic land use reviews make projects unbuildable
[In planning an NYC project] I identified my bloodiest battle: the Uniform Land Use Review Process. ULURP is an impossible situation. All applicants are approved by the Board of Estimate, composed of the 5 borough presidents, the city council president,
and the comptroller. In order to move from one level to the next in the approval process--from the community board to the City Planning Commission & so on--the applicant is forced to negotiate blind, clueless as to the opponent's demands. It's a circus.
And it often produces approval packages that are essentially unbuildable. Koch decided he'd change all this. I was optimistic--until I learned of his plan. In his infinite wisdom, Koch created yet another bureaucratic entity, the Charter Revision
Commission. It was a complete disaster. The process became more cumbersome, expensive, and time-consuming than ever. I was appalled. Nothing, I had thought, could have made this process more inefficient, more ill-conceived, but I was wrong.
Source: The Art of the Comeback, by Donald Trump, p.157
Oct 27, 1997
Page last updated: Mar 19, 2019