Things currently occupying space on Manhattan sidewalks:
1. Garbage and recycling bags on trash day
2. Restaurant and bar advertising signs
3. LinkNYC WiFi towers
4. Restaurant and grocery store food deliveries, which are literal pallets of food just left out on the sidewalk for long periods of time in the morning.
5. Bikes
6. Outdoor restaurant seating
I’ve seen one of these little doghouse things and they seem useful enough for the few square feet they occupy. At least as useful as any of the above given the number of dogs in the city.
The fact remains, at least as far as I understand from the article, that without a change in law the doghouses are illegal.
Furthermore, after receiving two cease-and-desist letters, the owner of the company ignored them and continued to expand the company. The article phrases it as 'being unfazed by the letters'. One could also phrase it as willful neglect.
The city can just go remove them if they want to, but this illustrates one of my primary complaints with local government here:
The left hand does not know what the right hand is doing. She developed this project with help from the government, albeit a different department. Instead of that being enough to continue, she gets threats.
I hope she continues to ignore them, and her expansion goes well elsewhere. They’ll come around once she can prove they drive more business (read: taxes) to the area.
This is not how any of that works. It's one thing to be a startup and get some seed money from the government supportive of small businesses. It's another thing to just claim public space as your own, without any permits. Restaurants need permits to put sidewalk seating and tables; they can't just privatize the space in front of their property, because it's not theirs.
Just because the government helped pay to develop drones doesn't mean you can use them anywhere, at any time, on public property without any restriction. The same goes for these doghouses.
That should've been figured out first. It's not as if the city is opposed to changing the regulations. She just didn't bother getting it sorted out before she actually did anything.
There is a method of permitting them, it's just that the business did not pursue the hoop-jumping and form-filling paper trail because occupying public space in the pursuit of profit was more important than complying to local regulations.
If you read the article, there is no method of permitting them because the city didn't forsee their existence. There's literally no form she could fill in or hoop she could jump through that would make it possible to install them. They're not one of the uses of sidewalk space that New York City is familiar with, so she's screwed. (Naturally, they didn't tell her this until after a whole bunch had been installed.)
That's untrue, they can petition the law be changed. It's a harder hoop than just getting an existing permit, but to say there's literally no avenue forward is disingenuous.
> Where did the city development group she worked with want her to put them? Outer space?
In the country where I live, we have something called 'private property'. Conveniently, it is generally not located in outer space. You can pay to purchase it, and then you can put whatever you want on it (within reason).
After getting caught flatfooted by Uber, I think cities have wised up and now come down hard on startups whose game plan is “break the law and ignore cease-and-desist letters, but move so fast that you can’t be pushed out“. Future entrepreneurs with this strategy in mind should not expect to get away with it just because Uber did.
> The fact remains, at least as far as I understand from the article, that without a change in law the doghouses are illegal.
It's not the doghouses per se that are illegal, it's arbitrarily using the public's right of way that's illegal. What if people put sidewalk-blocking tents in front of their houses in summer (it'd be a good idea to give your kids a bigger, and cooler, place to play in the summer heat.) That also wouldn't be allowed, but it would be perfectly fine in your back yard (assuming you have one).
Reminds me of the one interesting job creating 'loophole' that is a weird sort of working exactly as intended. You might notice sign waver/wearer jobs at public intersections depending on your area. The person is allowed to be there with right of way but just leaving the signs behind would not be allowed. While it is technically a loss of labor to have someone waving the signs (even considering the attention getting) having someone carrying the signs actively ensures that it won't lead to any cluttering and imposes the cost of their salary for the public space they are occupying.
Sidewalks are public right-of-way, and an important piece of transportation infrastructure, and there is a civic interest in ensuring that they can, first and foremost, be used for that purpose. In a city as dense as NYC, that is naturally going to lead to rules limiting what can use the space, and then those rules are naturally going to be given exceptions for things like sandwichboards and sidewalk cafes and newspaper stands, because everyone wants to have those things, too. But that's going to be done by creating specific exceptions, which may require a permit, in the interest of not throwing it to the wolves all over again.
Which means, in turn, that there are always going to be uses that at least some people like, which don't fit cleanly into any of the official categories of exemption.
I don't think there's any perfect answer here. Lean too far in one direction, and you get news articles like this complaining about entrepreneurship being obstructed. Lean too far in the other, and you've got people who use wheelchairs being unable to easily navigate their neighborhoods.
There is a reason why the city licenses exist though. In Chicago, if I recall sandwich boards can cost up to $30k per year. I'm not saying this dog house needs that license but perhaps there should be a fee if you want to put something in front of your store that blocks the sidewalk to pay for the additional inspections needed.
I don't see a specific line item for sandwich boards on the publicly posted fee schedule[1]. But $30,000/year is a good 2 orders of mangnitude more than anything else on that list.
I'm not surprised it's getting banned. Lots of the sidewalks around the trains can be pretty narrow and with snow on the ground, it was pretty bad. As for the $30k, that's what someone told me, obviously they were wrong.
That said, licenses are still a good alternative for those that want to colonize public space because it gives people a method to apply and potentially start something new like the dog house. It also gives a municipality the opportunity to manage issues by only distributing n per period of time or provide a caveat.
Well, the fine is up to $100, so, assuming you this could possibly get to the point where you get nicked with a fine every day for a year, that would be $36,500.
I doubt that could happen in reality though because they threatened removal. Ideally, NYC DOT and they city Assembly need to figure out a framework that inverts the policy where anything is allowed, with licensing, except ____. The purpose of fines penalties for compliance failures.
That would be ideal. Though, I think what's going on with A-frame signs in Chicago, where you have to go through your alderman or city council representative to get the change championed, is a more likely model. They have a more direct interest in supporting business in their districts, and a bit more ability to get things done.
I don't think that bureaucrats in city hall are malicious, so much as that they are busy, have limited authority, and have very little incentive to put much effort into championing individual causes.
Oh, I agree they're not malicious but they do have power especially aldermen in Chicago. Out of college, I worked at a real estate law firm right out of college for a time and had a first-hand view of the power they've got in city hall along with the power in the county. In the case of NYC, It's normally just not summed up to wanting to use their social and political capital to get dog houses on the sidewalks on the books.
Yup - just try and walk somewhere using them in Thailand where there is no effective regulation, you cant really because they are either blocked or people drive onto them. It can take an hour to get a km at times.
I would say around 20% of sidewalks in chicago are not handicap accessible. Tons of sidewalks are built without on ramps. Poorer areas are way worse than others. Its shocking to see this is pass.
I am planning to take pictures and report to the city, but i have no hope anyone would care.
The state calls them “vending amenities” which sounds perfectly apt to me. The city is defining a new category they call a “dog harbor”.
The business model is unproven. I think the US is the wrong place to start this. People are too nervous about leaving their pets, but it seems unfounded.
I feel the title is willfully insulting to the city. How about "She had a genius idea: Putting private doghouses in the middle of public property as handy tripping hazzards for the blind, which couldn't even be used without paying. Then the city showed up"
As other commenters, and the article itself, have pointed out, there's already plenty of stuff on sidewalks. The fact that this even needs a new law to be passed points out how ridiculous regulation is. There should be a law that talks about who has de-facto right to approve/object to it (probably business/residence which it is in front of), some law on the minimal amount of side-walk space that should be left, etc, and not have to re-license every single thing people might want to put there. You can always pass laws to exceptions that people don't like, rather than having a policy of default-deny.
Your argument doesn't really make sense: regulation is bad because it regulates some stuff... but since some stuff is regulated then we should be able to do some different stuff?
Things are on that sidewalk because they were "analysed" and accepted, they are regulated. They are sidewalk-legal things. Just like on the road there are road-legal cars and what you're saying is that illegal cars should also be allowed because they're cars and we already have plenty.
So regulation is bad because you're not allowed to do illegal things that are sorta' like legal ones but not really.
Regulation can't cover everything perfectly from the get go because it would imply that the people making it can know with perfect accuracy every single issue that might come up in the future. So you make it more restrictive and then adjust case by case. The genius idea can be covered by a permit unless there's a real blocker somewhere.
If you're in IT you'll understand this example: try writing a RegEx that matches all those words and only those words (strings?) that I will be using in my comments over the next 2 days.[*]
i read the argument as regulating types of behaviour and outcomes, rather than individual things.
much current regulation seems to be frustrating because they failed to do more root cause analysis: why don’t you want things on the sidewalk? regulate so that these things are met, then people can do what they like.
That's exactly how it works. But regulation is there for years or decades. Sometimes "types" might be something too generic to be valid for so long. You will invariably end up with things that shouldn't be allowed but (arguably) are. That can be really bad. Or things that should be allowed but aren't. That shouldn't be that bad since you can get an exception.
In this case the regulation probably says: You are not allowed to put any type of thing on a sidewalk that doesn't belong to you unless explicitly permitted by the owner.
The only reason we're discussing it is because the title is clickbait. Might as well have been: Person breaking rules is stopped.
Good news - the is a law that talks about who has the right to approve use of public space; it's the City, and not the business / residence that happens to be next to the public space.
The minimal amount of side-walk space that should be left is... all of it.
I don't see this being far from those coin operated kiddie rides where you plop a child on a poor plastic copy of Donald duck or Mickey mouse which bobs up and down like a rocking boat for 30 seconds or so. Used to be popular outside of grocery stores and the like. Coin operated doodad would fit this. My bet is on ignorant city admins who don't have enough brains to figure out the designation so they simply say no so as not to take on any responsibility for their decision.
”Property lines sometimes extend beyond the building line and into the surrounding sidewalk. That means that a portion of the sidewalk in front of your business might be within the property that you own or rent.
[…]
Any structure or activity extending beyond private property lines requires revocable consent from the City, which gives you permission to occupy or use the space on, under, or over a public street or sidewalk. If you are a tenant, you will need permission from your landlord as part of your revocable consent application”
”(probably business/residence which it is in front of)”
As I understand it, the city owns this ground. Why would the owner/renter of a neighboring plot have (sole) say over how the sidewalk gets used and, thus, force the city to build (and pay for) a wider sidewalk (assuming there is room to do so)?
If a shop wants to put something outside its building, it should either keep room on its plot for it, or try and reach agreement with the owner of the sidewalk about placing stuff there.
I'm not saying government should have no say, but if the owner of the neighboring land was fine with it, that's a pretty good sign that it's ok, and the city shouldn't hassle them unless people complain to the city.
That doesn't really work in Manhattan. You may use your bit of sidewalk more than almost anyone else, but in terms of the fraction of total use, you are likely less than one percent. Hundreds or thousands of people walk on any given stretch of pavement every day. To say that the owner of the adjoining property should have the right to impose upon their use of public space just doesn't scale.
Your concept would work marginally better in an exurb where almost no one uses the sidewalk, but even there, it's not really workable.
So your position is that anyone should have the right to place any artifact of commerce they want on a public way, so long as it’s novel enough to not be regulated?
Please reconsider what you’re saying from a pragmatic point of view.
I mean, it's bad enough that dog owners have their dogs piss and shit all over the sidewalks. Now they gotta have air-conditioned dog houses on public right of ways too? Not a reasonable ask, in my opinion. Then again, the status quo isn't reasonable either.
Damn, I didn't know it was illegal! I can honestly say that I have seen maybe one instance of a dog doing its business on the road since I started living here eighteen months ago. In the vast, vast majority of cases I have personally observed (at least hundreds), owners let their dogs piddle on the sidewalks.
I would love to see this law enforced and I will complain to my representative. But I would also love for dog owners to have some decency and do the right thing without enforcement actions.
Honestly, in Manhattan, trash is a bigger issue for smell because it is just everywhere on trash days. We need to adopt the Barcelona dumpsters-in-parking spots method.
Yeah, without some sort of permit and/or payment to the city, she's just putting a vending machine on a sidewalk that doesn't belong to her. It's not categorically different from building a store to sell phones in the middle of a public park--she's stealing part of a shared public resource, and keeping the profits. Sidewalk space doesn't belong to the first person to setup shop on it.
Damn, what would cause someone to write something so biased? Surely it couldn't be someone as incompetent as a city government. Not sure why people have to let everyone know they're a horrible person and all their opinions can be discounted.
The problem, though is that there are allowances for many other uses of the public sidewalk (for example, a restaurant having outdoor seating, or a store having coin-operated kids rides). It's just that there's no specific process for this product, and they speculate that it would be impossible to allow doghouses without changing the law.
Yup. In NYC these things are handled by license (for cafes, restaurants) and consent (for rides), and both come with strict planning guidance to protect the right of way for pedestrians.
The UK is almost identical except you need permission from the local council (for planning) and highways consent from national government.
Either which way, I think it's pretty naïe of somebody to think they're not going to need permission of some sort to [semi-]permanently occupy a public highway.
Did you read the article? She was working with the mayor's office, and even contacted the DOT to obtain licenses. They just refused and ordered them removed anyway, since the law literally doesn't allow for issuing of licenses for this type of product.
> She [...] even contacted the DOT to obtain licenses
Retroactively, after she'd installed at (at least) 28 locations.
I get that some people work like that (better to ask for forgiveness, etc) but that just doesn't fly in bureaucracies. File your applications, then do what you've permission to do.
I do think they could have been a little more generous with scope to try and find a path through (granted we're only hearing half of one side of this) but I could see how this would need a better thought out process, given that this sits somewhere between a life support pod and a toilet.
City planning is tough. You have to have answers to tough questions, ahead of time. Questions like "what happens if the power goes out?" and "how do we clean around it?" and "what are the hazards of fluids leaking out of it?". Charging ahead without getting all parties on side is not a good way to get permission.
This kind of thing absolutely flys in bureaucracy. I guarantee your local bodega either doesn't have a sidewalk license (if they have stuff on the sidewalk of course) or only got it when the city cited them and forced their hand.
And as I said before, she thought she had permission. The government was literally funding and endorsing the project. It's just that not the right part of the government was involved, which is the classic example of excessive red tape.
There’s a difference between performing a licensed activity without a license, and performing an activity that’s not licenseable.
As to the red tape argument, you’re sort of implying that every niche of a massive bureaucracy ought to be familiar with every other niche. That’s simply impossible at scale.
The prescribed nature of permits means they know exactly what they have to factor into their planning decisions. It means vending machines and coin operated rides all meet certain specs, and that allows for speedy turnaround.
Open it up and you have to spend extra time classifying what you're allowing for before you can decide if it's allowable.
I don't get the USA's obsession with banning dogs from anywhere that serves food. In Europe, this is typically standard practise as long as the dog is well behaved. It's not as if food safety is more of an issue anywhere in Europe than in the USA in recent times. Something similar seems to also be the case when it comes to babies.
Just let the dogs in if they're well behaved. No big deal...
I think it also depends where you are. Seattle is way worse for people bringing dogs than Germany or UK, and way more people have emotional support animals, whatever the fuck that is.
I'm allergic, it's a huge pain. Just leave your pet at home.
It's a subjective cultural preference. In the same vein, why should foreigners obsess so much about what America likes or doesn't like? The world is very diverse on such things, there is no right or wrong.
It's only no big deal to you, due to a subjective preference. I find it disgusting to allow most dogs into restaurants (with an exception for well-behaved service dogs only), that's my subjective preference.
What happens if the machine loses power on a hot summer day? Seems like either the dog would be incinerated or the door unlocks in a failure mode. Either scenario sounds like a nightmare.
Seems like the logical response short of waiting for the laws to change or expanding elsewhere would be to partner up with businesses themselves to get them onto private property. The doghouse company and property owner could split the income, and the property owner could market it as a reason to do business there.
Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker had a heated and air conditioned dog house in 1980's, paid for by their followers' generous donations to the "PTL Club". (PTL = "Pass The Loot", not "Praise The Lord"!)
>At the same time, the Bakkers were reveling in an extravagant, go-go life style more akin to "Dynasty" than Christian ministry. Tammy wore mink. Jim drove luxury cars. They cruised about in one of three black Cadillac limousines, bought a houseboat, a vintage $62,000 Rolls, a Corvette, an $800 Gucci handbag and vacationed in $350-a-night hotel suites in Hawaii. They built a heated and air-conditioned dog house for Tammy's pooches. For a 1981 Christmas bash for PTL executives at a Charlotte restaurant, Cafe Eugene, $9,000 worth of truffles was flown in from Brussels. All of this was paid for by charitable contributions, say officials with access to the files.
Yes, the same Jim Bakker who recently said "God Personally Told Me He Sent Donald Trump to Delay the End Times":
I mean it seems reasonable that the city wouldn't allow you to put anything you want on public property, especially if that thing is generating you revenue. I'm glad the city steps in and prevents people from doing things like this without permission.
God, the saturation of framing! Every sentence spiked with adjectives (either overwhelmingly positive for the owner or negative for the city), big friendly picture of the owner, name of her dog gets mentioned, tirade of irrelevant positive details about the owner...honestly just reads like WWII propaganda. At least be a little more subtle about your message!
81 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 136 ms ] thread1. Garbage and recycling bags on trash day
2. Restaurant and bar advertising signs
3. LinkNYC WiFi towers
4. Restaurant and grocery store food deliveries, which are literal pallets of food just left out on the sidewalk for long periods of time in the morning.
5. Bikes
6. Outdoor restaurant seating
I’ve seen one of these little doghouse things and they seem useful enough for the few square feet they occupy. At least as useful as any of the above given the number of dogs in the city.
Furthermore, after receiving two cease-and-desist letters, the owner of the company ignored them and continued to expand the company. The article phrases it as 'being unfazed by the letters'. One could also phrase it as willful neglect.
The left hand does not know what the right hand is doing. She developed this project with help from the government, albeit a different department. Instead of that being enough to continue, she gets threats.
I hope she continues to ignore them, and her expansion goes well elsewhere. They’ll come around once she can prove they drive more business (read: taxes) to the area.
Just because the government helped pay to develop drones doesn't mean you can use them anywhere, at any time, on public property without any restriction. The same goes for these doghouses.
It is trivial to see they wanted them installed in Manhattan in the sidewalk. The fact that there is no method of permitting at all is the problem.
Ignorance of the law excuses no one.
In the country where I live, we have something called 'private property'. Conveniently, it is generally not located in outer space. You can pay to purchase it, and then you can put whatever you want on it (within reason).
Expropriating public space is illegal, unsurprisingly.
It's not the doghouses per se that are illegal, it's arbitrarily using the public's right of way that's illegal. What if people put sidewalk-blocking tents in front of their houses in summer (it'd be a good idea to give your kids a bigger, and cooler, place to play in the summer heat.) That also wouldn't be allowed, but it would be perfectly fine in your back yard (assuming you have one).
Sidewalks are public right-of-way, and an important piece of transportation infrastructure, and there is a civic interest in ensuring that they can, first and foremost, be used for that purpose. In a city as dense as NYC, that is naturally going to lead to rules limiting what can use the space, and then those rules are naturally going to be given exceptions for things like sandwichboards and sidewalk cafes and newspaper stands, because everyone wants to have those things, too. But that's going to be done by creating specific exceptions, which may require a permit, in the interest of not throwing it to the wolves all over again.
Which means, in turn, that there are always going to be uses that at least some people like, which don't fit cleanly into any of the official categories of exemption.
I don't think there's any perfect answer here. Lean too far in one direction, and you get news articles like this complaining about entrepreneurship being obstructed. Lean too far in the other, and you've got people who use wheelchairs being unable to easily navigate their neighborhoods.
NYC also fines for things out of code on the sidewalk. https://www1.nyc.gov/nycbusiness/article/sidewalk-usage-guid...
[1]: https://www.cityofchicago.org/content/dam/city/depts/bacp/bu...
edit: Looks like they're just straight-up illegal. Some aldermen (including one who's pretty good at getting things done) are working on that: https://blockclubchicago.org/2018/06/28/a-frame-sandwich-boa...
That said, licenses are still a good alternative for those that want to colonize public space because it gives people a method to apply and potentially start something new like the dog house. It also gives a municipality the opportunity to manage issues by only distributing n per period of time or provide a caveat.
I don't think that bureaucrats in city hall are malicious, so much as that they are busy, have limited authority, and have very little incentive to put much effort into championing individual causes.
I am planning to take pictures and report to the city, but i have no hope anyone would care.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/little-library-hintonb...
Of course, they were taken down..
The business model is unproven. I think the US is the wrong place to start this. People are too nervous about leaving their pets, but it seems unfounded.
I didn’t mean pets should be left unattended.
Personally I think it’s a great idea if they are clean, safe, and dogs like them. This opens up options for people with dogs.
Regulating as a vending amenity makes perfect sense. The city is being daft if they had that category available and decided it couldn’t apply.
Things are on that sidewalk because they were "analysed" and accepted, they are regulated. They are sidewalk-legal things. Just like on the road there are road-legal cars and what you're saying is that illegal cars should also be allowed because they're cars and we already have plenty.
So regulation is bad because you're not allowed to do illegal things that are sorta' like legal ones but not really.
Regulation can't cover everything perfectly from the get go because it would imply that the people making it can know with perfect accuracy every single issue that might come up in the future. So you make it more restrictive and then adjust case by case. The genius idea can be covered by a permit unless there's a real blocker somewhere.
If you're in IT you'll understand this example: try writing a RegEx that matches all those words and only those words (strings?) that I will be using in my comments over the next 2 days.[*]
much current regulation seems to be frustrating because they failed to do more root cause analysis: why don’t you want things on the sidewalk? regulate so that these things are met, then people can do what they like.
The only reason we're discussing it is because the title is clickbait. Might as well have been: Person breaking rules is stopped.
The minimal amount of side-walk space that should be left is... all of it.
”Property lines sometimes extend beyond the building line and into the surrounding sidewalk. That means that a portion of the sidewalk in front of your business might be within the property that you own or rent.
[…]
Any structure or activity extending beyond private property lines requires revocable consent from the City, which gives you permission to occupy or use the space on, under, or over a public street or sidewalk. If you are a tenant, you will need permission from your landlord as part of your revocable consent application”
As I understand it, the city owns this ground. Why would the owner/renter of a neighboring plot have (sole) say over how the sidewalk gets used and, thus, force the city to build (and pay for) a wider sidewalk (assuming there is room to do so)?
If a shop wants to put something outside its building, it should either keep room on its plot for it, or try and reach agreement with the owner of the sidewalk about placing stuff there.
Your concept would work marginally better in an exurb where almost no one uses the sidewalk, but even there, it's not really workable.
Please reconsider what you’re saying from a pragmatic point of view.
I would love to see this law enforced and I will complain to my representative. But I would also love for dog owners to have some decency and do the right thing without enforcement actions.
Gotta get those clicks somehow.
It's unclear from my skim if it would be OK if the usage were free -- I hope that's not that case!
https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/dsny/site/resources/streets-and-...
The UK is almost identical except you need permission from the local council (for planning) and highways consent from national government.
Either which way, I think it's pretty naïe of somebody to think they're not going to need permission of some sort to [semi-]permanently occupy a public highway.
Retroactively, after she'd installed at (at least) 28 locations.
I get that some people work like that (better to ask for forgiveness, etc) but that just doesn't fly in bureaucracies. File your applications, then do what you've permission to do.
I do think they could have been a little more generous with scope to try and find a path through (granted we're only hearing half of one side of this) but I could see how this would need a better thought out process, given that this sits somewhere between a life support pod and a toilet.
City planning is tough. You have to have answers to tough questions, ahead of time. Questions like "what happens if the power goes out?" and "how do we clean around it?" and "what are the hazards of fluids leaking out of it?". Charging ahead without getting all parties on side is not a good way to get permission.
And as I said before, she thought she had permission. The government was literally funding and endorsing the project. It's just that not the right part of the government was involved, which is the classic example of excessive red tape.
As to the red tape argument, you’re sort of implying that every niche of a massive bureaucracy ought to be familiar with every other niche. That’s simply impossible at scale.
The prescribed nature of permits means they know exactly what they have to factor into their planning decisions. It means vending machines and coin operated rides all meet certain specs, and that allows for speedy turnaround.
Open it up and you have to spend extra time classifying what you're allowing for before you can decide if it's allowable.
Just let the dogs in if they're well behaved. No big deal...
Dogs are not guaranteed to be well-behaved, some are dangerous, they're dirty, and plenty of people are scared of them or are allergic.
They're in far too many places as it is.
I'm allergic, it's a huge pain. Just leave your pet at home.
It's only no big deal to you, due to a subjective preference. I find it disgusting to allow most dogs into restaurants (with an exception for well-behaved service dogs only), that's my subjective preference.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1987/05/22/t...
>At the same time, the Bakkers were reveling in an extravagant, go-go life style more akin to "Dynasty" than Christian ministry. Tammy wore mink. Jim drove luxury cars. They cruised about in one of three black Cadillac limousines, bought a houseboat, a vintage $62,000 Rolls, a Corvette, an $800 Gucci handbag and vacationed in $350-a-night hotel suites in Hawaii. They built a heated and air-conditioned dog house for Tammy's pooches. For a 1981 Christmas bash for PTL executives at a Charlotte restaurant, Cafe Eugene, $9,000 worth of truffles was flown in from Brussels. All of this was paid for by charitable contributions, say officials with access to the files.
Yes, the same Jim Bakker who recently said "God Personally Told Me He Sent Donald Trump to Delay the End Times":
http://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2018/06/27/jim-bakker-god...
God, the saturation of framing! Every sentence spiked with adjectives (either overwhelmingly positive for the owner or negative for the city), big friendly picture of the owner, name of her dog gets mentioned, tirade of irrelevant positive details about the owner...honestly just reads like WWII propaganda. At least be a little more subtle about your message!