Showing posts with label Chirlane McCray. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chirlane McCray. Show all posts

Monday, July 7, 2014

NYTimes Editorial Board bemoans corruption as Brooklyn Beep Eric Adams cleared to funnel money through shady nonprofit

PUBLISHED : SUN, 06 JUL 2014, 02:10 PM
UPDATED : MON, 07 JUL 2014, 09:30 AM

Adams' shady nonprofit, the One Brooklyn Fund, is set to pattern itself after the mayor's own shady nonprofit, the Mayor's Fund to Advance New York City

Across New York State, many corrupt politicians get indicted for misusing monies from nonprofits for illegal personal or political activities

Before he was elected Brooklyn Borough President, former State Sen. Eric Adams endorsed the failed reelection bid of ex-Brooklyn D.A. Charles Hynes. Brooklyn Beep Adams now wants to use a nonprofit charity to serve as his political arm in Brooklyn nonprofit circles.

In its house editorial yesterday, the board of editors that oversee the Opinion pages of The New York Times reminded its readers that Gov. Andrew Cuomo has failed to make good on his campaign promise to clean up the corruption in Albany.

The editors point to the sad statistic that 26 state legislators have left office due to political scandal. But the editorial overlooks the role that funneling donations or tax dollars through nonprofit groups plays in the corruption charges against several notable politicians. Despite this, the editors of The New York Times see no need to worry that more and more politicians are creating nonprofit groups that operate as the political arms of politicians.

The One Brooklyn Fund, a nonprofit that Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams is running out of his own office, had not yet received approval from the city's corrupt Conflicts of Interest Board before Brooklyn Beep Adams began soliciting donations for his controversial nonprofit with admitted political motivations. Another violation, failing to register the nonprofit with the New York Department of State, came to the fore after The New York Post reported that the city’s Department of Investigation was probing Mr. Adams' new nonprofit. Two of the directors of the controversial One Brooklyn Fund have previously run afoul of ethics regulations, and one of the directors has become the target of journalism investigations over her role in using still yet another nonprofit group to fund an 11-day vacation to China for Mr. Adams and Diana Reyna, a top female deputy, The New York Post reported. Whenever Brooklyn Beep Adams appears at public forums, Ms. Reyna is at his close side, clutching her pearls.

Diana Reyna photo diana_reyna_zps0f96899b.jpg

Ms. Reyna, a former City Councilmember from Brooklyn, had previously served as chief of staff to embattled Brooklyn political boss Vito Lopez, who, himself, is a former New York State Assemblyman.

The objective of the One Brooklyn Fund is to provide or support public services to the residents of Brooklyn, not too dissimilar to the objective of a larger fund overseen by the mayor's wife.

The Mayor's Fund to Advance New York City is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization, which facilitates innovative public-private partnerships throughout NYC. It is headed by First Lady Chirlane McCray, and its goals are to support the mayor's political ambitions. Parallel to the Mayor's Fund to Advance New York City is The Campaign for One New York, the group formerly known as UPKNYC, the 501(c)(4) not-for-profit organization that the mayor has used to funnel money into his political agenda, ranging from paying for a million-dollar political TV ad featuring the First Lady and deceptive astroturf mailers supporting the closure of Long Island College Hospital.

Now that First Lady McCray has benefitted from the million-dollar TV ad blitz to fluff her name recognition at the expense of a nonprofit, she has reportedly began shopping around a political memoir, with political bloggers gossiping that she is seeking a seven-figure book deal.

At every turn, the repeated pattern of political activities involving charity nonprofit organizations is that politicians use these tax-free vehicles for personal gain -- whether for 11-day trips to China or to build up one's name recognition -- not for public service, contrary to the very purpose of nonprofit objectives.

First Lady Chirlane McCray picked gentrification king developer Bruce Ratner to serve on the board of the Mayor's Fund to Advance NYC, which is Mayor Bill de Blasio's political arm in the charity world.

State Sen. Malcolm Smith faces corruption charges involving the possible use of City Council nonprofit slush funds allocated to Councilmember Dan Halloran to buy the GOP nomination for Sen. Smith's doomed mayoral campaign. After former State Sen. Shirley Huntley was sentenced to jail for allegedly misusing tax money funneled to a nonprofit organization, her former Chief of Staff, who is not a New York City Councilmember, Ruben Wills, faces his own investigation into the possible misuse of nonprofit for personal gain. State Sen. Jose Peralta has also been being scrutinized over $500,000 directed to a nonprofit he helped to organize. After nonprofit don William Rapfogel was arrested, it was revealed that there was a scheme to use tax money funneled through the Metropolitan Council to pass through inflated insurance premiums as a way to fund illegal straw donations to political candidates. On the day when the Metropolitan Council-straw donations scam was announced, former Council Speaker Christine Quinn's doomed mayoral campaign immediately announced that they were returning $25,000 in tainted donations.

Since the New York City mayoral race of last year, political bloggers and government reform activists have continued to demonstrate how the corruptive role of money and lobbyists in politics work to move shady campaign financing from official campaign committees, to Super PAC's, to political party committee accounts, to 501(c)(3) nonprofit groups, to 501(c)(4) nonprofit groups, etc. -- through any entity that can act as a "pass through" for illegal personal or political gain.

Whenever a nonprofit appears in the political landscape around elected officials, the lobbyists, campaign consultants, other political operatives, and the elected officials themselves aim to exploit that nonprofit for short-term political gain at every point possible instead of serving the greater public good.

One of the largest sources of tainted nonprofit funding in New York City is the annual Council Speaker's slush fund. There is a long history of corruption tied to the misuse of this nonprofit funding source. Former New York City Councilmembers Hiram Monserrate, Larry Seabrook, and Miguel Martinez were convicted for their role in the slush fund scandal and political aides to former Councilmember Kendall Stewart also pleaded guilty to charges in connection with the nonprofit funding-related scandal.

Continuing former Council Speaker Quinn's pattern of funding nonprofit groups that do the speaker's bidding, the new Council speaker, Councilmember Melissa Mark-Viverito has allocated over $830,000 to a nonprofit group tied to one of her chief campaign consultants. And the City Council, under Speaker Mark-Viverito, has allocated over $7 million from this slush fund to nonprofit groups, including VOCAL-New York, that are deliberately deescalating political pressure for police reforms in exchange for receiving City Council funding.

If the editors of The New York Times are serious about reforming the broken political system, then they should mount a public campaign that ends the misuse of nonprofit organizations for personal and political gain. And this proposed campaign should begin with investigating why the city's ethics board can continue to clear politicians to operate nonprofit groups in parallel to their political offices.

If voters reviewed the list of corrupt politicians, who have had to leave office due to criminal charges involving nonprofit funding, there is never any accountability for the big name politicians, who control the large pools of slush funds that enable this kind of nonprofit corruption. It's as if the big-name corrupt politicians know that cases consisting of violations of local or state law and involving the possible prosecution of significant political or government individuals pose special problems for the local prosecutor. If voters are to take The New York Times seriously, then the editors must address this paradox, too -- not just bemoan the on-going corruption by elected officials.

RELATED


Another Indictment in Albany : Charges Against Senator Thomas Libous Add One More Stain (The New York Times)

Nonprofit run out of Adams’ office hit up donors before city OK (The New York Post)

Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams cleared to raise money for his One Brooklyn Fund (Celeste Katz Daily Politics)

Nonprofit paid for Brooklyn borough president’s trip to China (The New York Post)

Bruce Ratner joins de Blasio's Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City (as he did with Bloomberg) (Atlantic Yards Report)

Friday, January 31, 2014

On Checks-And-Balances and the Disappearance Of Dissent in NYC Politics

The Sheriff in Town is Looking for Deputies, but No Deputies Agree to Step Forward. It's Almost Straight Out of "High Noon."

U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara is Gary Cooper in "High Noon," the 1952 Western film that happens to be one of the best American movies ever made. In the film, Mr. Cooper portrayed a small-town sheriff, who just got married and was about to go on his honeymoon when a band of thieves ride into town with corrupt plans to unite with another bandit and then set out to attempt to murder the town's law enforcement.

As with Mr. Cooper in the movie, Mr. Bharara finds that he's the sole law man in this dust bowl with an intention to fight corruption. How long before Mr. Bharara becomes dispirited and just plain ditches his tin badge into the dirt road and climbs into a carriage and rides off into the sunset ?

Last fall, Mr. Bharara had noted that investigative journalism had been on the decline by the old, established media. Counteracting this trend was the spread of online news Web sites, which were acting to revive the investigative journalism needed to combat corruption.

The power of the press to hold elected officials accountable is one of the most powerful gears in the political machine that runs our government ; it's the reason the media has come to be known as the fourth estate. The power of the press can compliment his own work to fight corruption. Wise as he is beyond his age, Mr. Bharara knows the limitations of his office. Three months after Mr. Bharara expressed optimistic views of online journalism, he complained about the budget cuts imposed on the U.S. Attorney's Office that deny federal prosecutors the full resources to fight public corruption.

In a strange twist of fate, one of the Editorial Board members of The New York Times groused that a state corruption investigation panel didn't do the kind of thorough investigative journalism typically expect from The New York Times itself. What a zany Catch-22 ?

If the sheriff of New York City is counting on the media to investigate corruption, and some of the establishment media is counting on a state panel to investigate corruption, and the government is cutting the budget of the dust bowl's sole sheriff, where does that leave us ?

Ostensibly, Mr. Bharara isn't the sole sheriff in town. There are also city and state agencies that have some authority to investigate public corruption. When it comes to the undue influence of money and lobbyists in politics, the city is supposed to turn to the Campaign Finance Board, the Conflicts of Interest Board, and possibly the Department of Investigations. But the board members of the Campaign Finance Board and the Conflicts of Interest Board are appointed either by the mayor, the Council speaker, or the City Council, or a combination thereof. The nominee to head the Department of Investigations, Mark Peters, is a long-time close personal friend of the mayor, so close, in fact, that he has been the mayor's long time campaign treasurer. If campaign corruption involves any of the elected officials, who appoint these panels' board members, then there's no way to independently investigate allegations of misconduct, because these three city agencies answer in some form to either the mayor, the Council speaker, or the City Council.

When one of the lobbyists connected to Councilmember Melissa Mark-Viverito became implicated in managing a controversial $1 million Super PAC at the same time when the lobbyist was managing independent campaigns, which appeared to be benefiting from the Super PAC's spending, the Campaign Finance Board was sign to be investigating the circuitous flow of campaign money. But when the same lobbyist firm provided free lobbying services to Councilmember Mark-Viverito's speakership campaign, The New York Daily News urged the Conflicts of Interest Board to investigate the relationship. When it became apparent that The Advance Group had close ties to the mayor and the new Council speaker, both of whom have oversight over both the Campaign Finance Board and the Conflicts of Interest Board, the matter was referred to the U.S. Attorney's Office for review. The article, by the enterprising reporter Jill Colvin, followed other articles in which Ms. Colvin examined the role of big business interests and lobbyists in the new mayor's gargantuan $2 million transition team funding.

More and more, the media, in whom the last sheriff standing relies, is waking up to the blatant power grabs, conflicts of interest, and lack of oversight in the de Blasio-Mark-Viverito administration. Earlier this week, Morgan Pehme wrote an editorial column for the publication City & State casting doubts about the independence of the mayor's nominee to head the Department of Investigations. At the DOI nominee's hearing, Councilmember Inez Dickens pulled out the City & State editorial, saying that "serious issues" raised in the column make her believe that Mark Peters, the nominee, would not be independent enough from the mayor. Mr. Peters has had a close working relationship with the mayor for two decades.

Further complicating Mr. Peters' role at DOI will be the fact that under the Community Safe Act bills passed last year to reform, in part, the scandal-laden New York Police Department, the DOI chief will need to appoint an Inspector General, who is expected to independently oversee the NYPD.

But at his confirmation hearing, Mr. Peters said he would let the mayor have “significant input” in the selection of the new NYPD Inspector General. The DOI's role is to be independent of the mayor, and yet here again (as with the Speaker's race), another source for checks-and-balances on the mayor is going to be corrupted.

Some activists to the Left of the mayor have been critical of the mayor's reappointment of William Bratton to be NYPD commissioner. (Many activists believe the controversial appointment was made in contravention to Mr. de Blasio's campaign promises to "end stop-and-frisk era" and possibly as a give-back to the big business establishment and real estate developers, who worry that any imaginary uptick in crime would lead to a collapse of the stratospheric, high-end real estate market for luxury condos in New York.) Now that the NYPD Inspector General is going to be picked with the mayor's blessing, activists wonder where's the independent oversight of the police department is going to come from ?

Many of the mayor's early enablers counter that the mayor campaigned to be the "anti-Bloomberg" "progressive" Democrat, but already in the mayor's first month in office, the relatives of innocent New Yorkers, who had been killed by NYPD officers, have joined activists to protest the Bratton appointment. These sets of early protests have brought to the fore the police department's refusal to examine the many other areas in need of reform : from the NYPD's overuse of brutality and unnecessary gun violence against civilians, the impotent Civilian Complaint Review Board, the conflicted Internal Affairs Bureau, the over-militarization of the police force, the continued religious profiling and stalking of innocent Muslims, among many other issues. What is more, on the same day when the mayor announced that he was dropping the city's appeal of the landmark stop-and-frisk ruling, approximately 100 LGBT activists protested the lack of justice in the hate crime beating death of Islan Nettles. Two weeks ago, the police department made global news when it was reported that the police used physical violence against an 84-year-old man for jaywalking.

One of the mayor's most visible enablers, besides the new Council speaker, is Tish James, the city's new publicly-elected Public Advocate. However, she owes her entire political career to the Working Families Party, the same political party co-founded by the mayor, and whose political operatives now double as lobbyists in their effort to silence or demobilise opposition to the mayor. Besides the Campaign Finance Board, the Conflicts of Interest Board, and the Department of Investigations, the office of the Public Advocate is supposed to be our last line of defense against the unchecked powers of the mayor. But she's already in his pocket.

When it's said that we need a check-and-balance on the mayor, it's necessary to understand what one's motivation is in wanting to place a restraint on the mayor. Right now, the big business community and their lobbyists want to hold back the mayor's plan to place a tiny tax increase on the most wealthy. To do that, you can see the chess pieces move, for example, as big business interests put pressure on our neoliberal governor to deliver a small amount of state tax resources to the wily mayor in order to make it politically convenient for the mayor to forego the tax hike for the very rich. But why would grassroots activists, at the opposite end of the political spectrum from big business interests, want to place a check on the mayor ? What possible motive could grassroots activists have ?

Will the Mayor betray healthcare activists the same way he betrayed police reform activists ?

Without a public advocate-like government officials keeping a check on the mayor's powers, there will be no way to stop the mayor from carrying out the wishes of the permanent government players that always have a say in what government does, regardless of who holds elected office. Big business groups, sometimes organised like chambers of commerce-like groups like the Partnership For New York City, or organised like civic-minded groups like the Association for a Better New York, are pools of sharks infested with hacks and lobbyists for big business interests. You are already seeing their influence in some of the mayor's early actions because of the early start they got in helping to elect the mayor. As susceptible as former Speaker Quinn was to the influence of lobbyists herself, she was absolutely right in pointing out that when the mayor was only a candidate, he refused to release information about all the meetings he had with lobbyists. "Bill de Blasio has shown that he is quite consistent -- at talking out of both sides of his mouth," said Ms. Quinn's spokesman, Mike Morey, adding, "He rails against real estate and professes transparency -- except for when he is raising money from the industry and secretly meeting with its lobbyists." Another early indicator that the mayor's campaign had been compromised by lobbyists was their very role in his campaign. The corrupt real estate lobbyist James Capalino was an early supporter, raising warning flags about duplicity in the mayor's campaign about the controversial closing of St. Vincent's Hospital. As a candidate, the mayor denounced the closing of that hospital and others ; meanwhile, Mr. Capalino was handsomely paid by the real estate developers, who basically foreclosed on the hospital in order to raze it as part of a controversial $1 billion complex of luxury condominiums and townhouses. There was an even greater role for lobbyists to play in fundraising when former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton helped to raise $1 million in campaign money for the mayor for his November general election at a tony fundraiser that took place at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Very powerful lobbyists served on the organizing committee of that fundraiser, which was unprecedented for the amount of money it raised. Later reporting showed that lobbyists, including the disgraced lobbyist Stanley Schlein, were also serving on or raising money for the mayor's transition team. The unrestricted flow of lobbyist money of this scale doesn't get given without strings attached. The influence that money from big business lobbyists is having on the mayor can be seen in how the mayor is altering his tune when it comes to saving two hospitals on the verge of closure : Long Island College Hospital (LICH) and Interfaith Medical Center, both in Brooklyn, that have been targeted for closure by Gov. Cuomo's healthcare cuts hatchet man, the Wall Street banker Stephen Berger.

cognitive dissonance : an inconvenient truth -vs- a reassuring lie : propaganda -vs- media ethics photo an-inconvenient-truth_zpsfed7b5e4.jpg

At a joint meeting, the mayor and the governor "carefully avoided saying that Brooklyn hospitals would be maintained at their current sizes," the biased reporter for The New York Times, Anemona Hartocollis, wrote, adding that Gov. Cuomo had said at the meeting that there were “excess hospital beds in Brooklyn” that needed to be eliminated. Even though her role in the community is as a reporter, Ms. Hartocollis appeared on a radio show in 2010 to oppose any deal to save St. Vincent's Hospital. The mayor campaigned for office on a promise to save hospitals from closing, and after he appointed the corrupt political opportunist Stanley Brezenoff to his inner circle of advisers, all of a sudden now the mayor is backing off his promise to save full-service hospital care in Brooklyn. Mr. Brezenoff has a checkered past and a controversial record. In the early 1980's, he served as chief of the city's Health and Hospitals Corporation under then Mayor Ed Koch when the city's hospitals failed to respond to the early outbreak of the AIDS pandemic. He milked LICH dry of its endowment fund, and he later opposed a deal to save St. Vincent's Hospital, too. "Under Brezenoff’s management, Continuum had a prior history of selling property of other hospitals under their jurisdiction," reported The Red Hook Star. It's painful to see how just a couple weeks following the announcement of Mr. Brezenoff's appointment, all of a sudden the mayor is turning his back on his past promises to save Brooklyn hospitals. But all this is a function of the undue influence of big business interests and their teams of political operatives that now guide the mayor's policies. With no check on the mayor, big businesses are already winning this early into the new mayor's term.

Adding to the Lack of Checks on the Mayor's Powers, the First Lady Will Oversee A Large Private Fund of Discretionary Civic Projects

The same Conflicts Of Interest Board, which one critic said was too close to the mayor to be an impartial arbiter of ethics compliance, has given the mayor's wife its approval, allowing her to serve as the unpaid chair of the board of directors of the Mayor's Fund to Advance New York City.

Chirlane McCray, the First Lady, will have oversight over a large private fund that will be "in substantial sense a surrogate for the mayor," The Conflicts of Interest Board ruled, excepting that there will be no oversight, real or pretend, of the First Lady's functions as board chair.

The Mayor's Fund to Advance New York City raises millions of private monies each year for civic projects that circumvent, for example, the transparency and other compliance regulations, such as they exist, for the Council speaker's slush fund. In past years, the Council speaker's slush fund has been a source of corruption charges where discretionary funds have been used, at times, for political retribution and even bribes, among other criminal intentions. That the First Lady will now oversee a similar fund, but with no oversight, should raise a red flag for possible politicalization of community project funding, as has been charged for some projects that have received allocations from the Council speaker's fund. But this far, none of the large good government groups have questioned the First Lady's role with the Mayor's Fund.

Wavering faith in the media, when political operatives and war rooms shepherd the news cycle, leaving voters uninformed at best, or deceived, at worst.

Good government groups won't challenge the potential for corruption in all of the unchecked power grabs by the mayor and his wife, but the media goes overboard in what appears to be a coördinated campaign to take down New Jersey Republican Gov. Chris Christie, who is believed to be a prospective if undeclared candidate for the 2016 GOP presidential primary. Prior to the George Washington Bridge scandal, Gov. Christie had been a formidable rival to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who is believed to be the presumptive 2016 Democratic presidential primary nominee. Another Republican political scandal, that in which Staten Island Congressman Michael Grimm was caught on tape assaulting and threatening battery to a political reporter, reveals that politicians make use of intimidation to shut down politically embarrassing or damaging reporting. Intimidation was seen as a motivation when the troubled lobbyist Scott Levenson telephoned an LGBT blogger and activist in what was seen as an attempt to thwart new media reporting of Mr. Levenson's questionable financial and political backroom dealings.

Which brings us back to Mr. Bharara's hopes that the spread of online news Web sites will carry the day. But that presupposes that voters are actually tuning in. As it is, the mayor has manufactured a low voter turn-out rate of 24% of an already low voter registration rate to represent a blank check political mandate that is now being translated into open power grabs at every turn.

Noam Chomsky photo Noam-Chomsky_zps93db4798.jpg

Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice, one of the co-chairs of the do-nothing Moreland Commission, is leaving law enforcement for the seeming glamour of DC politics in Congress. With the compromised situation that Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance finds himself, where for unexplained (and unreported) reasons he refuses to prosecute public corruption cases, the burden must be carried by our sole, courageous sheriff, Mr. Bharara.

The municipal elections of last November were the first time that the corruptive influence of Citizens United tainted local races. But the media has yet to fully examine the funneling of money into Super PACs. And, as we have seen, the media essentially left unchallenged the mayor's campaign theme of "a tale of two cities," even though the mayor's campaign contributors were virtually interchangeable for some of the city's most influential lobbyists and big business interests. We are only one month into the new administration of the mayor. There is still time for deputies to come forward, else continued voter complacency will only allow big business interests and lobbyists to complete their takeover of our government.

Let's hope the voters of New York City care enough to get involved, come out from hiding in their "veal pens," and do not end up like the do-nothing townspeople in "High Noon."

You believe that there's nothing wrong, because that's what the media tells you in the newspapers. But watch them in this frank panel discussion, to hear some backchannel realness.

CUNY journalism director Greg David moderated a panel discussion on Nov. 19, 2013, amongst several reporters about the quality of the journalism coverage during the 2013 New York City mayoral campaign. The reporters, who took part on the panel, were Brian Lehrer of WNYC, Errol Louis of NY1, Joel Siegel of The New York Daily News, Kate Taylor of The New York Times, and Maggie Haberman of Politico. They were joined by two political insiders : Stu Loesser, the former spokesman for outgoing Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and Scott Levenson, a lobbyist who administered a controversial $1 million Super PAC.

The self-congratulatory media panel, embedded with two political operatives to keep reporters in check, tell you that the media did a good job of reporting the truth during the mayoral campaign, even though the consensus that night was that the media failed at vetting the mayor when he was only a candidate.

Watch as Mr. Siegel says, "I think, collectively, the media saw 20 years of Republican and Republican/Independent rule and thought that was the norm -- where the norm really is this is a city that voted 80% for Barack Obama. It's a very liberal city, and we all sort of -- I believe -- misread how serious a contender Bill de Blasio really was from the very beginning. I don't think he got the scrutiny from the beginning that Chris Quinn got or Bill Thompson got."

And so now we've come full circle : part of the reason that Sheriff Preet is relying on new media Web sites is that he partly needs new ways for voters to become informed about government corruption. Because if the old media won't tell you, who will ?

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Lis Smith, Anthony Weiner, Chirlane McCray, Christine Quinn, and Chiara de Blasio : The media hypocrisy

Sex and drugs : Personal privacy should matter, but in politics, love affairs and rehab gets manipulated, depending on what there is to gain.

When news broke that mayor-elect Bill de Blasio's spokeswoman, Lis Smith, was having an affair with a married man, former Gov. Eliot Spitzer, Mr. de Blasio tried to downplay the story. "I respect Lis as a professional," Mr. de Blasio told The New York Daily New, adding, "But I also respect her right to privacy, so I’m not going to get any further into it."

His reaction to Ms. Smith's love affair with a married man contrasted with how the de Blasio campaign reacted to news of former Rep. Anthony Weiner's extramarital sexting.

Indeed, there was a lot of pressure on Mr. Weiner to resign from the mayoral campaign "for the good of the city," in particular from Mr. de Blasio's political operatives.

But Mr. de Blasio is not applying that same standard to Ms. Smith.

A year ago, the reporter Hunter Walker wrote an "exposé" of Mr. de Blasio's wife, Chirlane McCray, who formerly identified as a lesbian in her youth, a time when she also experimented with marijuana.

Even though Mr. Walker was confronted by LGBT activists over his sensational story, he today alluded to possible political motivations would drive the media to attack the sexual proclivities of Ms. Smith, a motivation he never acknowledged about his own article on Ms. McCray. Essentially, all these stories that violate a person's privacy, whether the subject is a politician's wife, his daughter, his spokesperson, or his challengers, call for sensibilities that at the very minimum put into perspective the timing and relevancy of such stories, to at least minimize the sensationalism and to maximize the benefit to the public, if that is the "real motivation" behind these kinds of stories.

Mr. Walker may not have been entirely motivated by malice, perhaps it was only a lack of awareness of his heterosexism. Maybe after LGBT activists confronted him, he may have become aware of the heterosexism bias. There are ways to bring about cultural competency, but when politics is the backdrop, it's difficult to exactly gauge motivations.

Meanwhile, reaction to a controversial column by Andrea Peyser in The New York Post triggered a passionate defense of Ms. Smith that didn't seem to exist for Mr. Weiner.

When former Democratic mayoral primary candidate Christine Quinn confessed to her problems with bulimia and alcoholism, there was a reaction by some to what seemed like a blatant press manipulation play for sympathy by the Quinn campaign.

But when earlier today, the de Blasio campaign put out a video featuring Chiara de Blasio recounting the story of her recovery from depression, alcoholism, and drug abuse, the de Blasio campaign were fully dumping on the public's lap very private details about Miss de Blasio's life.

The contrast between Mr. de Blasio's treatment of his spokesperson and his daughter reveals that when the campaign can milk sympathy from the media, there is no such thing as a right to privacy.

The contrast between the Mr. de Blasio's treatment of his spokesperson and Mr. Weiner reveals that when you can score political points, there is no such thing as a right to privacy.

The contrast between the political response to Ms. Quinn's recovery and Miss de Blasio's recovery reveals that not everybody recovering from addiction will get sympathy.

And the contrasts between Mr. Walker's aggressive treatment of Ms. McCray, the press's hands-off approach to Miss de Blasio's addictions, and an emerging narrative of manipulation in Miss de Blasio's revelations, reveal that the de Blasio family may now be pressuring the media in order to give its own spin to thorny issues.

One troubling aspect with all these stories is that leaders can truly have a positive impact on others, when they take to the news or talk shows to discuss social problems. Ms. Quinn had an undoubtedly positive impact in talking about bulimia and alcoholism that may have changed the course of some peoples lives -- for the better. As Miss de Blasio might have done, as well.

However, it's the situational ethics that lead politicians to scheme and manipulate either political attacks or pleas for sympathy -- each for their own benefit -- that discredit these kinds of stories.

Was the de Blasio camp trying to distract the media from another story by dropping Miss de Blasio's recovery story on Christmas Eve ? One may never know.

Sunday, December 23, 2012

Political Spouses, Gender Roles, And Heterosexism

From City & State :

Earlier this month, a miniscandal erupted over a story with a lurid headline: “The Lesbian Past of Bill de Blasio’s Wife.” The central thesis seemed to be that Chirlane McCray (a.k.a. Mrs. de Blasio) is somehow duplicitous, because as a married woman with two children, she once identified as a lesbian.

Anyone who lived through the sexual revolution or received a liberal arts degree in the last 30 years might have failed to grasp the inherent conflict. Nevertheless, the sensational article strongly implied the existence of a public fraud.

Read more : Mrs. De Blasio And The Pigeonholing Of Political Spouses

Friday, December 7, 2012

Hunter Walker Responds To LGBTQ Critics ; Stays In Denial

Does Hunter Walker's response to LGBTQ critics reveals that he's a heterosexist in denial ?

Following a barrage of comments questioning the motivations and competency of Hunter Walker's article, Mr. Walker posted an inadequate response to his critics. Consider firstly how Mr. Walker claims that he wrote his story about Ms. McCray as a "political figure in her own right," but notice how Ms. McCray was subjugated as "Bill de Blasio's wife" in the original article's headline. Secondly, Mr. Walker avoids expressing any arguments as to why Ms. McCray's exploration of her sexual orientation should be political news in respect of the 2013 mayoral race. How did he intend to use "news" about Ms. McCray's sexual orientation ? What was his purpose to focus so much attention on Ms. McCray's marriage to Mr. de Blasio ? What do you think ?

Mr. Walker criticises the de Blasio-McCray marriage because of Ms. McCray's lesbian writings, but Mr. Walker never explains what kind of conforming wife a lesbian should be, to make her suitable for marriage ? Do you think that Mr. Walker comes across as a heterosexist in denial ?

From : "The Lesbian Past of Bill de Blasio's Wife" :

This article has generated many responses, including from some who have suggested it was inappropriate to cover this or that I have displayed a misunderstanding of human sexuality and the fluidity of sexual identity. One of the main issues raised by those who were not pleased with this story is that it is somehow not newsworthy and/or that family members of politicians should be "off limits."

There is no question in my mind that this story is news. Ms. McCray is a political figure in her own right. She is a top advisor on her husband's campaign, regularly speaks at his events, has taken a leading role on many political initiatives with him and writes regularly on the campaign site. Additionally, both Ms. McCray and Mr. de Blasio regularly write political columns together and have given several interviews about political aspects of their personal life. She has chosen to be a public, prominent figure on his campaign and in the New York City political world in general.

Furthermore, this story is not about digging into her private life. As outlined in this article Ms. McCray's past life as a lesbian involved being a fairly prominent lesbian activist. As this story notes, Combahee River Collective was a landmark group. It is incredibly interesting that Ms. McCray and her husband's campaign have (rather actively) omitted mentioning this aspect of her past including the characterization of the CRC as simply a "feminist" group. I do not think there is any question that identifying the past activism of a prominent political figure is news. It adds to her biography and raises interesting questions about why she and her husband's campaign have strenuously avoided noting this part of her past.

Critics of this story have cited the sentence where I said, "It is unclear how she transitioned from a self-described lesbian who was confident that she 'had always been more attracted to women, both emotionally and physically, than to men' to a political wife in a heterosexual marriage." It has been suggested that this displays some fundamental misunderstanding of the fact that people's sexual identities are often subject to change. That is not the case at all. Most people have evolving and individual concepts of their sexuality. I would have loved to discuss this with Ms. McCray and to have heard about how her identity evolved directly from her. I made many attempts to do this and would still be very interested in a conversation. Without speaking to Ms. McCray, making any definitive statements or assumptions about the evolution of her sexual identity would not have been respecting the fluid and changing nature of human sexuality. It would have been the exact opposite.

Lastly, and I debated whether to even dignify this with a response and give it further attention, some people have suggested this article is somehow "shaming" Ms. McCray and/or criticizing her and her husband. I defy anyone to point to any passages here that imply in any way that there is anything wrong about being homosexual. Those who would suggest that pointing her past activism and self-identification out is somehow "shaming" her are the ones implying being gay is something to be ashamed of, not me.

Many dissenting messages were also delivered to Mr. Walker via Twitter. Check out his @hunterw Twitter feed for the period of December 5-7, 2012.

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Hunter Walker Tabloid Story On Mayoral Candidate's Wife's Sexual Orientation

The reporter Hunter Walker from The New York Observer wrote an article that was published today that sensationalises Bill de Blasio's wife's sexual orientation. The tabloid headline was : "The Lesbian Past of Bill de Blasio's Wife." Mr. Walker seems to want to make an issue of Chirlane McCray's exploration of her sexual orientation. Why does Mr. Walker believe that Ms. McCray's sexual orientation is a campaign issue ? In Mr. Walker's small mind, is Ms. McCray's sexual orientation an impediment for Mr. De Blasio to do his job, or to run for public office, or to continue his work for the citizens of New York City ?

Mr. Walker seems to have forgotten that marriage equality is now the law in New York State. He also seems to think that sexual orientation can only fit into a false social construct of a binary world of either heterosexual or homosexual. How does Mr. Walker's binary worldview inform his discriminatory and sensationalistic writing ? Do bisexuals not deserve to get married and have children ? You decide.

Look at some of the hate that Mr. Walker's article has already inspired : "Born That Way" -- Not !