Seeking to recruit disenchanted Democratic Party voters, Green Party candidates Jones and Jimenez visit to Queens

Overflow crowd greet Greens at Flynn's Garden Inn in Woodside

Greens reach out to reform-minded voters turned off by Gov. Cuomo's neoliberal priorities “A few months ago, there was a lot of attention around the Democratic primary,” said Brian Jones, the Green Party candidate for Lieut. Governor. “A lot of progressives were thwarted [when] top party leadership rallied around Andrew Cuomo.” Mr. Jones said that progressive voters, who want other options in the Democratic Party, have no candidate to support. “A lot of that energy is coming our way.” Ramon Jimenez, the Green Party’s candidate for the state Attorney General, was asked about one of the leading issues in this year’s election season : government corruption. During Mr. Jimenez’s campaign, he has made prior remarks about the Cuomo administration’s mistake in bringing to a premature end the corruption-fighting work of the Moreland Commission. At the meet and greet function in Queens today, Mr. Jimenez said that he found fault with Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s handling of the Moreland Commission’s demise. Mr. Jimenez noted that the commissioners serving on the corruption-fighting panel had been deputized by Attorney General Schneiderman, giving his office a special responsibility in seeing to it that the commission’s work was handled appropriately. “It was wrong for him to remain silent as the commission was disbanded,” Mr. Jimenez said, adding, “The attorney general has to be more aggressive in prosecuting government corruption.”

RELATED In Queens, Green Party candidates Jones and Jimenez talk about issues, momentum (Progress Queens)

Financial irregularities at the Corona-Elmhurst Center for Economic Development remain enshrouded in a mystery

With seemingly endless public corruption scandals in Queens, one goes overlooked

The Queens District Attorney, the State Attorney General, and the U.S. Attorney for New York's eastern district all look away as half a million dollars go unaccounted for A shuttered Queens-based non-profit, the Corona-Elmhurst Center for Economic Development, has never publicly accounted for its use of $500,000 in funding. The news Web site Progress Queens contacted various prosecutors, finding a wall of silence from local, state, and federal investigators. Are the political ties to high-ranking elected officials the reason no prosecutor wants to investigate the missing money ?

RELATED The collapse of the Corona-Elmhurst Center for Economic Development, a nonprofit partly organized by State Senator Jose Peralta, remains a mystery (Progress Queens)

MORE ETHICS PROBLEMS : Cuomo's corrupt budget machinations intersect with state and local prosecutors

REUTERS EXCLUSIVE : Gov. Cuomo intervened in BNP Paribas settlement deal to get $1 billion more for New York state fund

Gov. Cuomo has claimed that the state is broke, that it can neither afford to support community hospitals, nor fully finance the construction of a new Tappan Zee Bridge ; meanwhile, the state is rolling in new billions in Wall Street fines In an update to a blog post from last December about the Hunger Games behind the New York City and New York State budgets gimmicks, now comes Reuters with an exclusive story detailing the billions in windfalls from Wall Street corruption settlements. The biggest revelation in the Reuters article was that Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) had bullied Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance out of an extra $1 billion from his original $2.2 billion share of the mammoth $9 billion settlement paid by the French bank BNP Paribas to end investigations into the bank's violation of banking sanctions against the nations of the Sudan, Cuba, and Iran. Gov. Cuomo won the additional $1 billion on top of a $2.24 billion slice that the state was already set to receive, bringing Albany's cut of the BNP Paribas settlement to a whopping $3.29 billion. For the office of the Manhattan DA, Mr. Vance kept $449 million, and the government of New York City kept $447 million. The balance of the BNP Paribas settlement, $4.5 billion, was kept by the U.S. federal government. The settlement has already been paid and divided up, according to the Reuters report. New York State's haul of $3.29 billion is in addition to the IPO-sized $8 billion Medicaid waiver that the Obama administration granted to New York State following Gov. Cuomo's scorched earth campaign of austerity cuts to the state's Medicaid program. Gov. Cuomo's Medicaid cuts were so draconian, leading to healthcare service cuts and hospital closings, that some Medicaid patients are suing the state in a federal class action lawsuit to roll back some of Gov. Cuomo's cuts. The $8 billion Medicaid waiver is expected to be paid, in the form of extra budget allocations, over a period of five years, according to Capital New York. The Reuters report referred to another possible $500 million that New York State received in settlements from Standard Chartered Bank and ING Bank NV. A further $700 million, not included in the Reuters report, was received by New York State after banking giant Credit Suisse pled guilty and paid to end an investigation into the bank's controversial tax evasion operations. Gov. Cuomo, a neoliberal Democrat, is facing a tough reelection this year following endless controversies surrounding the political machinations at play in his decision to prematurely close a corruption-fighting panel, the Moreland Commission. As a result of a pattern of interference with the investigation panel, Gov. Cuomo is vulnerable to a possible federal criminal investigation for obstruction of justice, amongst other likely charges. Under normal circumstances, the governor would use these extra state resources for pork barrel projects to buy up large voting blocks he needs to win a glorious reelection by a margin of victory wider than his father's, which has been said is his goal. But nobody knows what the governor is doing with the approximately $12.5 billion in new-found revenue. Some of the Medicaid waiver is meant to go for healthcare services, presumably to help fund the state's expansion of Obamacare under Medicaid, but when the governor recently announced a plan to bend back the infection curve for HIV/AIDS in the state as part of a landmark effort to effectively end the AIDS crisis, his politically-timed announcement only promised to allocate a measly $5 million for this effort, an amount that some AIDS activists do not believe in enough to do outreach in some of the hardest-hit communities. If there is an $8 billion pot of dedicated healthcare resources available that is supplemented with another $4.5 billion in Wall Street settlement monies, why is the governor only allocating $5 million in next year's budget to ending the AIDS pandemic in New York State by the year 2020. Achieving this noble but ambitious goal in less than 6 years with a kick-off budget of only $5 million seems unrealistic. It doesn't add up. In the last year, the Cuomo administration kept saying that New York State could not afford to bail out Long Island College Hospital, or LICH, in Brooklyn, but yet here is the governor sitting on a pile of billions while hospitals are closed and Medicaid home care services are uniformly being cut for people most in need. More generally, when New York State planned to build a new $4 billion Tappan Zee Bridge, the governor initially proposed funding some of the construction costs with a controversial loan of over $500 million from a state environmental fund in a bizarre budget maneuver. Government reform activists were horrified by the governor's budget gimmicks. Activists demanded to know how the governor planned to really pay for the costs of the new bridge, and the release of the financial information was stalled until finally the state government released redacted financial plans, keeping voters in the dark about how Gov. Cuomo intended to pay for the new bridge -- in spite of having billions in resources. Similar criticisms can be made of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who has garnered hundred of millions of dollars in Wall Street settlement monies for the city's coffers. The city is also poised to raise approximately $1 billion from the proceeds of the sale of zone-busting air rights around Grand Central Terminal. With these resources at hand or on the horizon, the mayor did nothing to bail out LICH, either, and as progressives demand all the resources to finally end homelessness for youths in the city, the mayor keeps stalling, afraid to part with the city's millions, and, like Gov. Cuomo, refusing to account for his plans for these jackpots. Of the hundred of millions of dollars of the Wall Street settlement monies remaining with the Manhattan DA's office, some of that money is being allocated for costly tech contracts to upgrade police capabilities, whilst other parts of the Manhattan DA's proceeds will be used to pay to upgrade security at public housing developments. These two areas are plagued by corruption. New York City has a history of approving and funding outsourced technology projects, like CityTime and the ECTP 911 emergency call system that have led to combined cost over-runs nearing $2 billion, because there is no oversight. The security at the city's public housing developments is grossly inadequate, and even after millions of dollars are allocated to improve security doors, security cameras, and other measures, those improvements never seem to materialize. Since there is no taxpayer oversight of the city's five district attorneys' offices, taxpayers have no watchful eye supervising these gargantuan settlements. Former Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes, for example, faces city, state, and possible federal investigations over using funds seized from criminals to pay for a campaign consultant. As the Reuters piece pointed out, Gov. Cuomo saw these billions, and he sent his loyalists to upset sensitive settlement negotiations until he managed to enlarge his cut. Even New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has clashed over proceeds in respect of still yet another settlement, that one involving $613 million (not reflected in the amounts indicated above) from JPMorgan Chase, only to be similarly challenged by Gov. Cuomo, too. But nobody knows what really happens to this money, or to the budget offsets that they create, once politicians become involved. At first, DA Vance had planned to send his office's entire $2.2 billion (before the governor slashed that by about half) to a federal asset forfeiture fund, which appears to be some kind of slush fund of the U.S. Treasury. Do Gov. Cuomo, the district attorneys, and the mayor plan to account to voters where all this money is going to, and who can account to voters how this money is actually being used ? Where is the transparency ? As federal prosecutors continue their possible criminal investigation into the governor's interference with the Moreland Commission, government reform activists wonder why the state attorney general and local prosecutors have been loath to serve as a check on the governor's political over-reach. Perhaps Gov. Cuomo's heavy-handed budget machinations, which intersect with the budgets of state and local prosecutors, serve as one possible explanation. If all things were equal (and they are not), is Gov. Cuomo trying to starve prosecutors of the resources they need with which to investigate political and campaign corruption ?

RELATED Gov. Cuomo intervened in BNP Paribas settlement deal to get $1 billion more for New York state fund (Reuters) Inquiry Widens Into Hynes’s Spending as Prosecutor (The New York Times) Gov. Cuomo pleas for federal help on Brooklyn hospital closures (The New York Daily News) New York State board approves scaled-back loan for Tappan Zee Bridge project (The New York Daily News) Michael Hayes, LMT, has practiced massage for more than 20 years as a licensed massage therapist in New York City. Flatiron Massage is located in the Flatiron District of Manhattan.

Still no arrest by AG Schneiderman in "dirty DA" Hynes corruption probe

A stunning probe by the city’s Department of Investigations revealed last week that former Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes may have used drug money to pay more than $200,000 to the political Svengali Matz, and that was just in 2013.

RELATED The state’s top cop is looking into possible criminal charges against former Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes. (Attorney General Eric Schneiderman subpoenas former Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes aides in state theft probe, says source * The New York Daily News) Hynes's campaign committee paid over $600,000 to The Advance Group. (NYC : News & Analysis)

How broken is the system ? You have the normally do-nothing state Attorney General begrudgingly have to investigate corruption by one of his very own former district attorneys. This is the very tip of the iceberg of how corrupt the justice system is. Since this story first broke last week, police have raided housing projects for youth gang members not yet committing any crimes, but here you have the normally do-nothing city Department of Investigations and the press conclusively prove that Charles Hynes used the seized assets from drug deals gone bad to pay for one of his campaign consultants, and still there is no arrest. But the true booby prize is that we are only hearing about how corrupt former Brooklyn DA Hynes is because he was unfortunate enough to get on the wrong side of the mayor and his supporters, thus making the Hynes take-down all about dirty, vindictive politics -- and not actually about reforming the broken justice system. At this rate, the only way to expose the other dirty district attorneys, is to elect a mayor, who is their sworn political enemy. This is the best we can expect from the current state of the broken political system.

Schneiderman Scrambling To Arrest Corrupted Officials Before Federal Prosecutor Hands Down Embarrassing Grand Jury Indictments [UPDATED]

PUBLISHED : WED, 07 MAY 2014, 05:54 PM
UPDATED : SUN, 11 MAY 2014, 06:00 AM

Attorney General Eric Schneiderman Finally Gets Around To Arresting Councilmember Ruben Wills On Investigation That Is Over Two Years Old

With federal prosecutors hot on a corruption crackdown across New York state, the state's attorney general, Eric Schneiderman, today arrested New York City Councilmember Ruben Wills on a charge of misusing some of the proceeds of a $33,000 state grant to New York 4 Life, a charity the councilmember managed.

• RELATED : Councilmember Ruben Wills was charged with misuing tens of thousands of dollars in taxpayer funds -- even spending some of the money on a $750 Louis Vuitton designer handbag. (Ruben Wills, Queens city councilmember, busted in corruption investigation * The New York Daily News)

The $33,000 grant to Councilmember Wills' charity was sponsored by former New York State Sen. Shirley Huntley in 2008. Two years ago, Councilmember Wills' charity refused to fully comply with a subpoena issued by the state's top prosecutor's office, forcing state prosecutors to file a court motion to compel the charity to comply. After that, the state's case went dormant. During this time, Gov. Andrew Cuomo formed an anti-corruption panel to great fanfare, but the governor ditched the panel as soon as it appeared that the panel would investigate the governor's own questionable political supporters. Recently, the outrage by good government groups and government reform activists reached such a fevered pitch at the government's inept prosecution of corruption that the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, Preet Bharara, took over the corruption investigations of the now-defunct anti-corruption panel, known as a Moreland Commission. In the time since the feds took over, Mr. Bharara has empaneled a grand jury, obtaining subpoenas for corruption records. As government reform activists await possible grand jury indictments, all of a sudden the state's attorney general has begun to look busy. One fruit from Mr. Schneiderman's scurrying efforts was today's arrest of Councilmember Wills.

Ruben Wills Arrested : Best comment : "You know election day is getting closer. @AGSchneiderman did something." https://t.co/8qWDK3nwhc

— Informed Voting (@informedvoting) May 7, 2014

But Councilmember Wills' corruption arrest is complicated by many factors. One of the publicly-elected officials, who State Sen. Shirley Huntley was asked to wiretap and photograph as part of an undercover FBI sting operation on political corruption, was Councilmember Wills, according to Politicker. Prior to that, former City Council Speaker Christine Quinn endorsed Councilmember Wills for re-election one day after he had appeared in court to face a misdemeanor stealing charge. Councilmember Wills earned his incumbency on the City Council in a special election in southeast Queens in 2010 to succeed Thomas White, who died in August in 2010, and Councilmember Wills was re-elected in 2011 to continue to serve the remainder of White’s four-year term. Councilmember Wills later appeared in court in March 2011 on charges in connection with a 1996 incident. He was accused of damaging a wall and removing a fan and track lighting at a downtown business.

After Councilmember Wills' March 2011 court appearance, Speaker Quinn defended Councilmember Wills. "I'm extraordinarily proud of my City Council and proud of the members that I get to serve with every day on behalf of the people of the City of New York," she told The New York Daily News at the time.

In spite of Councilmember Wills' troubles, Speaker Quinn had awarded Councilmember Wills $584,000 in discretionary funding in the city's 2012 budget.

That Councilmember Wills is being singled out in the attorney general's sudden efforts to catch up with the state's long backlog of corruption investigations is troublesome. As has been noted by others, it can sometimes appear that state and federal prosecutors seem to obsess with the petty crimes of minority politicians, which conveniently allows larger corruption scandals to go uninvestigated and unprosecuted. It doesn't help when the media portrays the political corruption problem as only being isolated to Queens, for example. Corruption is a bigger problem, and the bigger corruption scandals rarely receive the kind of scrutiny as petty crimes. Councilmember Wills was arrested for allegedly misusing the proceeds of a $33,000 state grant. Former Sen. Huntley is serving a one-year prison sentence in connection with the misuse of $80,000 in tax payer money. Meanwhile, there's still no update on whatever happened to the corruption probe into how Aqueduct Entertainment Group landed a multibillion-dollar casino contract. But in that AEG probe, two more black leaders, State Sens. John Sampson and Malcolm Smith, appear to be targets. Each of Sens. Sampson and Smith are also being investigated in connection with still yet other corruption charges. Another possible corruption scandal in Queens, a questionable $20 million construction project by the Queens Public Library, will probably drag on for years before any indictments or arrests are made. State Sen. Jose Peralta, another minority leader from Queens, is the subject of a possible corruption investigation that is almost five years old involving over $500,000 in taxpayer money that was funneled to Corona-Elmhurst Center for Economic Development, a dormant non-profit organization. No arrest or indictment has yet to be made in connection with state Sen. Peralta's non-profit. Moreover, there's also been no update into an alleged investigation into the awarding in January 2010 of a $50 million voting machine contract to Election Systems & Software by New York City election officials. The new voting machines turned out to be an embarrassment to city officials, when it was revealed that the new machines would be unable to timely tally votes for the primary and general elections, even though they are "electronic" machines, forcing New York City elections officials to drag out clunky voting booths that work with levers, pulleys, and wheels in the last mayoral primary election. Even after the $2 billion fiasco that is the ECTP 911 emergency call EMS system that keeps crashing over and over -- and over again -- there's still no investigation into cost over-runs, failures, or other possible wrong-doing. Also pending is the outcome of the city's investigation into the corrupt campaign spending by Super PAC's administered by one lobbying firm, The Advance Group. And all there is, is silence about the other corrupt Super PAC's from last year's municipal elections.

• RELATED : The Advance Group Federal Complaint Referred To Moreland Commission (NYC : News & Analysis)
• RELATED : Roger Bennett Adler, a special prosecutor investigating the Working Families Party's corrupt relationship with Data & Field Services, a corporation formed by the left-leaning party to provide its candidates with get-out-the-vote staffing and expertise at possibly illegal discounts, has sought an interview with one of Mayor Bill de Blasio's highest-ranking aides, Emma Wolfe, people familiar with the matter said. Data & Field Services, a corporation formed by the left-leaning party to provide its candidates with get-out-the-vote staffing and expertise. Mr. de Blasio was elected in 2009 to become the city's public advocate thanks to, in part, the deeply discounted services of Data & Field. (Prosecutor in Working Families Corruption Case Seeks Interview of de Blasio Aide, Emma Wolfe * The Wall Street Journal)

While the attorney general follows up on the missing $33,000 that Councilmember Wills cannot fully explain, there are millions and billions of taxpayer dollars in outstanding corruption investigations, and allegations that may call into question the integrity of our entire election system, that appear to be going cold. This pile-up of corruption cases proves that city and state prosecutors are inept at fully investigating political corruption. Instead, state and local prosecutors just looked the other way, and the incidence of corruption just kept piling on up until nothing less than a dedicated Moreland Commission would be needed to flush all this corruption out of the system. But since Gov. Cuomo scuttled the Moreland Commission, now the task of prosecuting all this corruption lands on the laps of the U.S Attorney's Office. Indeed, federal prosecutors received the files of about two dozen possible investigations from the now-defunct Moreland Commission that city and state investigators never got around to worrying about before now. When the governor first formed the Moreland Commission, the press never asked why lazy city and state prosecutors had allowed corruption to grow to become a stage 4 cancer on our government. Once the feds excise this cancer of corruption from our body of government, will we have enough good officials left to right this ship ? After all this is over, one of the first things voters should demand is for the elected officials to determine why did the state's attorney general and all of the district attorneys let corruption become so out-of-control in New York in the first place. Prosecutors should also determine the legality of allowing government officials to subvert the conduct of the public's business by elected officials, who use private e-mail services to hide the government's official work from the reach of sunshine laws, a tactic embraced by Gov. Cuomo. The shady use of private e-mail accounts to subvert the reach of freedom of information laws or the discovery process of litigation is a practise typical on Wall Street and their big money law firms. Now, Gov. Cuomo has apparently rolled out this shadowy machination to New York state government. Gov. Cuomo's pattern of political subterfuge may have contributed to the failure of the Moreland Commission to refer any criminal case for prosecution before its disbanding, and the appearance of sabotage is said to be being the focus of federal prosecutors. Government reform activists privately hope that Gov. Cuomo's interference with the doomed Moreland Commission can meet the legal definition of obstruction of justice, opening the door to a political pressure point to force government reforms, if not at least to give federal prosecutors additional evidence to hand down indictments against more crooked politicians, who are responsible for enabling political corruption in New York state government.

• RELATED : After Pledge of Sunlight, Gov. Cuomo Officials Keep Their E-mail in the Shadows (ProPublica)
• RELATED : Good government group calls for investigation of Cuomo administration's e-mails (The New York Daily News)
• RELATED : Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington requests that New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman investigate the Cuomo administration's controversial use of private e-mail accounts and Blackberry PIN messages to deliberately hide official government business (CREW Letter to Schneiderman)

In the meantime, Speaker Quinn's successor, Councilmember Melissa Mark-Viverito has indicated that she will not allow Councilmember Wills to decide the fate of his slice of this year's City Council slush funds. Instead, her office will decide where his allocation of the discretionary funding will go, in consultation with the chair of the Queens Councilmembers' delegation. At all costs, the Council Speaker's office is intent on keeping its councilmember slush fund. Even though many officials have been charged with fraud in connection with the misuse of the City Council's discretionary funds, the corrupted elected officials are too addicted to the power that comes from doling out these grants.

• RELATED : Rigging Campaign Finance to Rig Elections (The Wall Street Journal)
• RELATED : Mark-Viverito spent big on speaker race (Crains Insider)
• RELATED : The lobbying firm, Pitta Bishop Del Giorno & Giblin, which helped Melissa Mark-Viverito win her races for City Council and Council speaker, has now lobbied her on behalf of four clients. (The New York Daily News)

Last year, former Council Speaker Quinn approved the disbursement of $3.2 million in member items requested by Councilmember Dan Halloran, even though the councilmember had been charged in a conspiracy and bribery scheme relating to his member items. In the criminal complaint against him, Councilmember Halloran suggested to an undercover FBI agent that Councilmember Halloran could increase the size of the discretionary funds he was using as a bribe by calling in favours from other councilmembers. For all the corruption that the City Council did to hide the speaker's multimillion-dollar slush fund, former Speaker Quinn herself was never prosecuted.

Lazy @AGSchneiderman hustling to arrest backlog of corrupteds before @SDNYnews hands down indictments. http://t.co/BNrkY2cSl6 #Moreland

— Informed Voting (@informedvoting) May 7, 2014

With millions and billions in taxpayer dollars at stake in uninvestigated political corruption, law enforcement under the de Blasio administration continues to focus on NYPD Police Commissioner William Bratton's obsession with his "broken windows theory" of policing. Instead of focusing on the "criminal networks" of political corruption and corporate corruption, law enforcement instead over-police the poor and people of color, targeting them, amongst other places, on public transportation systems of subways and buses, a regressive move that may violate the Civil Rights Act.

Barfing into bags, voters face a moment of truth about Democratic Party incumbents

Democratic Party bouncers give voters no choice but to re-elect Gov. Cuomo

"Every place is not Greenwich Village," said Assemblyman Keith Wright, who is also chair of the state's Democratic Party, referring to a lack of support in the rest of New York State as an excuse for why Gov. Andrew Cuomo has failed to roll out any liberal reforms.

• PEOPLE'S EXHIBIT A : Get out your barf bags : Assemblyman Keith Wright pitches Gov. Cuomo to Manhattan progressives (Capital New York)
• PEOPLE'S EXHIBIT B : Don't put your barf bags away, yet : Former Council Speaker Christine Quinn returns, to help Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and Gov. Cuomo (Capital New York)
• PEOPLE'S EXHIBIT C : Time for fresh barf bags : Gov. Cuomo huddles with Eric Cantor, Working Families Party, veal pen reformers on watered-down campaign finance machinations (Capital New York)
• PEOPLE'S EXHIBIT D : Forget bags, we need barf barrels : Queens residents fed up with constant corrupt lawmakers (The New York Post)

The ironic thing is that everybody knows where there are concentrations of liberal thought. Gentrification does a very good job of corroding these neighborhoods to disperse like-minded individuals. Dissent almost doesn't exist anymore, and nobody respects autonomy. The last few hold-outs are haggard, and true solidarity has all but shriveled up. After the number that real estate developers have done to the Village, especially the harvesting of St. Vincent's Hospital before the poor corpse had even died, isn't it more true that Mr. Wright's quote should be, "Greenwich Village has become like every place ?"

The hopeful thought would be that activists would realize that going back to fighting for single issues is the fastest way for everybody to lose. Thinking small is a losing way to think. Caring about our own pet issues makes us unprincipled, because it means we are only in this for ourselves and not for all of us. This pressure is real. After all the evidence of corruption coinciding with the Cuomo administration, look at how the only ones practising discipline are Democratic Party "leaders," who want your votes in exchange for more cheap-ass talk. Somebody complained yesterday that there is nobody, who can run against Gov. Cuomo, but that is a lie, because there are other people running against Gov. Cuomo. But people seem to be more impressed with the celebrity of a candidate than with casting a vote for an alternative that involves the slightest bit of taking a chance on a new face. Keeping voters in this place of fear works nicely for incumbents.

If people fail to achieve solidarity and fail to take a chance on someone new, then the only winners here will be Gov. Cuomo, Democratic Party bouncers, and their permanent government operative insiders, who double as big business lobbyists. It's enough to make one barf.

Former Met Council Leader, Wm. Rapfogel, Enters Guilty Plea in Corruption Case

Following guilty plea convictions of Rapfogel and Cohen, Attorney General's investigation into public corruption continues.

William Rapfogel, the former leader of the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, pled guilty today in state court to charges of "grand larceny, money laundering, tax fraud," and filing false documents with the city's campaign finance regulatory authority, the Campaign Finance Board, The New York Times reported today, adding that the guilty plea followed Mr. Rapfogel's arrest last September on charges of "grand larceny, money laundering, conspiracy and other crimes in a criminal complaint filed by the state attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman."

Mr. Rapfogel's predecessor, David Cohen, entered into his own guilty pleas to charges of grand larceny and conspiracy. Both men laundered some of their illicit gains into campaign contributions with the intention of manipulating the public matching dollar system of the city's Campaign Finance Board. "Mr. Cohen said he and Mr. Rapfogel also funneled some of the illicit money to candidates running for office, asking Mr. Ross to make contributions not only in his name but also in the names of straw donors," The New York Times report added. A press release from the Attorney General's office noted that, "These campaign contributions were made to politicians whom Rapfogel and Cohen believed could help Met Council."

• RELATED : William Rapfogel Pleads Guilty in Scheme to Loot New York Charity (The New York Times)
• RELATED : The $25,000 Century Coverage William Rapfogel Donations Christine Quinn Wants To Return Not Listed On Campaign Finance Board (No Third Term Blog)

Mere hours after bloggers had noted on August 12 of last year that Mr. Rapfogel's charity had received discretionary funding from former Council Speaker Christine Quinn's slush fund, former Speaker Quinn's mayoral campaign announced that her campaign was returning $25,000 in campaign donations at the center of the William Rapfogel scandal.

The Attorney General's press release of today concluded that, "These convictions are a result of an ongoing investigation by the Attorney General’s Office in conjunction with New York State Comptroller DiNapoli, as part of the Joint Task Force on Public Integrity. The joint investigation by the Attorney General’s and Comptroller’s offices continues."

Let's hope former Speaker Quinn has a good defense attorney.

William Rapfogel : Another corrupt bundler of campaign contributions exploiting the @NYCCFB matching dollar system. http://t.co/es6EFlwAc8

— Louis Flores (@maslowsneeds) April 23, 2014

U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara has said that a "show me the money" culture pervades all of New York government, and many bloggers and government reform activists agree. Last year, the political blogger and YouTube producer Suzannah B. Troy confronted New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who has had a decades-long close association with Mr. Rapfogel, and she asked Speaker Silver, "Are you part of the corruption ?"

Who is politically responsible for obstructing the work of the Moreland Commission ?

PUBLISHED : THURS, 10 APR 2014, 10:26 AM
UPDATED : SUN, 13 APR 2014, 08:03 PM

The culture of corruption up in Albany mirrors the cultures in Washington and New York City, and the lax justice departments at each level of government play politics with justice, except for one man, Preetinder Bharara

• RELATED : Twin $50,000 donations were made to Andrew Cuomo’s campaign by two companies that have the same address as Extell Financial Services, which is part of Extell Development Co. — one of five developers to receive hefty tax relief thanks to a bill signed by the governor two days after the contributions. (Gov. Cuomo got $100,000 from developer, then signed law giving it big tax breaks * The New York Daily News)
• RELATED : Manhattan-based Extell Development was one of five firms subpoenaed by the Moreland Commission last week. Its affiliates donated $100,000 to Cuomo's campaign days before he signed a bill earlier this year that included tax breaks for one of its marquee projects. (Cuomo real estate donors among Moreland subpoena targets * Times Union)
• RELATED : Gov. Cuomo is doing damage-control over anti-corruption commission subpoenas. (Governor Andrew Cuomo Quashes Moreland Commission’s REBNY Subpoena and Other Follow-The-Money Subpoenas Hitting Too Close To Home * Noticing New York)

Journalist superhero Matt Taibbi was interviewed by Leonard Lopate on WNYC earlier this week during which Mr. Taibbi said that our broken justice system allows "massively destructive fraud by the hyper-wealthy to go unpunished, while it turns poverty itself into a crime." But Mr. Taibbi doesn't even address who politicizes the wide swath of city, state, and federal prosecutors that renders our justice system so broken.

Last year, Suzannah B. Troy ambushed Sheldon Silver : "Are you part of the corruption ?" http://t.co/9g5oFrhHdb @NYMag

— Louis Flores (@maslowsneeds) April 11, 2014

The top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, Preetinder Bharara, has asked the press to step up their investigation work against a backdrop of Justice Department budget cuts made by the White House and Congress. On the state level, Gov. Andrew Cuomo's most recent state budget stripped valuable resources from state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, leaving him with fewer resources to fight corruption. In another controversial move in the same budget deal that further undercut the state's important prosecutorial work, Gov. Cuomo disbanded the Moreland Commission, a public corruption investigation panel tasked with cleaning up government across New York state. More locally, the corrupt DA in Manhattan, Cy Vance, can't keep running for office without the consent of the Manhattan Democratic Party chair ; same for the other county prosecutors in New York City. That approval acts as a backdoor check on what kind of corruption cases the county DA's can bring, because the DA's have to be mindful not to investigate corrupt political operatives and supporters, who are loyal to the county chairs. Look at how all this corruption happens all over New York City, but nobody ever gets prosecuted by the Manhattan DA's office.

With these conditions undermining our justice system, the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, like the hero in "High Noon," is forced to rescue almost single-handedly a town from crooks, who are about to lay siege. Indeed, The New York Times reported that Mr. Bharara is going to take possession of all of the Moreland Commission’s case files, or whatever is left of them. "Staff members of the panel, several said, regularly deleted emails and often communicated with BlackBerry messages not recorded on government servers," the article in The New York Times noted.

ICYMI Fitzpatrick on end of Moreland Commission: People erroneously thought we were 'super cops' http://t.co/JpZAQJJHI5

— Teri Weaver (@TeriKWeaver) April 1, 2014

Gov. Cuomo’s obstruction of the Moreland Commission's work, some bloggers said, represented politically-motivated machinations to prevent the potential for an embarrassment for the governor during an election year, particularly since the Moreland Commission had subpoenaed records from some of the governor's shady political supporters, such as those in the corrupt real estate industry known for making big money campaign contributions in exchange for zone-busting approvals and huge tax breaks. Examples of how Gov. Cuomo obstructed the investigations of the Moreland Commission included actions by Lawrence Schwartz, the governor’s secretary, and Mylan Denerstein, Gov. Cuomo’s counsel, who each "would routinely call and say, ‘How can you issue a subpoena like this?’ or ‘These people shouldn’t be on it,’" a Moreland Commission member told The New York Times. Further complicating the Moreland Commission's own work was the fact that one of its co-chairs, Bill Fitzpatrick, an upstate district attorney, publicly disavowed the investigation panel's crucial role in busting up public corruption in New York state. Another panel co-chair, Kathleen Rice, a district attorney from Long Island, ditched her responsibilities on the Moreland Commission once she had gained enough fame to run for Congress.

• RELATED : U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara Criticizes Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Closing of Moreland Commission Public Corruption Investigation Panel (The New York Times)
• RELATED : To scuttle possibly devastating investigations into public corruption in his own political party during an election year, Gov. Cuomo announced that he was shutting that whole Moreland Commission down (NYC : News & Analysis)
• RELATED : Cuomo’s Push to End Moreland Commission Draws Backlash, Angers Government Reform Activists (The New York Times)
• RELATED : Preet Bharara won't rule out ethics probe into Gov. Andrew Cuomo's possible interference with Moreland Commission (The New York Daily News)
• RELATED : ‘Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day:’ Preet Bharara Continues Cuomo Criticism on Anti-Corruption Commission (The New York Observer)
• RELATED : Bharara on the premature end of Cuomo’s ethics commission (Capital New York)
• RELATED : Preet Bharara Criticizes Gov. Cuomo For Closing Corruption Commission (The Wall Street Journal)
• RELATED : The Advance Group Federal Complaint Referred To Moreland Commission (NYC : News & Analysis)
• RELATED : Scott Levenson, NY-CLASS, Citizens United Super PAC Investigation (NYC : News & Analysis)
• RELATED : Extell George Arzt Moreland Commission Christine Quinn One57 Connections (Christine Quinn Sold Out)

And to make it more painful, the whole focus of the justice system has become deliberately distracted with the failed "broken windows" theory of law enforcement by such discriminatory police commissioners, such as New York City's William Bratton. But who makes these decisions ? It's one thing for Mr. Taibbi to point out that this paradox exists. But where is the community pressure to appropriate political blame for these misplaced priorities ? Who defunds the Justice Department and the state Attorney General's office ? Who disbands the Moreland Commission ? Who appoints irresponsible police commissioners to lead the troubled NYPD ? Which legislative bodies consent to all this ?

What's plainly missing is rolling up political responsibility for these failures to politicians. People have to fully engage/challenge the corrupt political system in order to reform these failures. There is no other way, and, like our hero Sheriff Preet is demonstrating, there is no short cut.

2014-04-01 Moreland Commission - Follow-Up E-Mail Re Pitta Bishop USAO

Letter From U S Attorney Preet Bharara Re Moreland Commission Investigations 2 by katehinds

Letter From U S Attorney Preet Bharara Re Moreland Commission Investigations by katehinds

Cesspool of Political Corruption Will Only Get Worse Until Sheriff Preet Shuts It Down (Updated)

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SPECIAL NEWS UPDATE: FRI, 25 APR 2014, 09:50 AM

In the past few weeks, FBI agents have been asking questions about the campaign by the animal rights group NY-CLASS to strong arm former Council Speaker Christine Quinn (center) to support a ban on the iconic horse-drawn carriages, two sources familiar with the matter told The New York Daily News. The horse lobbyists in question include Scott Levenson, and they are linked to Mayor Bill de Blasio (inset). (FBI investigating claim that Christine Quinn was threatened by Scott Levenson for refusing to support carriage horse ban during the mayoral race * The New York Daily News)

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PUBLISHED : WED, 19 MAR 2014, 09:07 AM
UPDATED : FRI, 25 APR 2014, 05:40 PM

Super PAC's already lead to corruption, regardless whether annual individual contribution cap is kept at $150,000 or is raised.

Federal prosecutor crackdown on campaign finance corruption said to ensnare Rep. Michael Grimm http://t.co/8DiId2wbiO

— Informed Voting (@informedvoting) April 25, 2014

Campaign finance expert and Georgetown University government professor Clyde Wilcox added the authority of his expertise to a filing made by New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman in an effort to block a "Republican-backed political action committee to topple the state’s $150,000 annual contribution limit for individuals," The New York Daily News is reporting.

From yesterday MT @josephax: Era of the super PAC in New York? Judge strikes down NY limits http://t.co/wPt6EXfoB7

— Lawrence Hurley (@lawrencehurley) April 25, 2014

Professor Wilcox warned that many Super PAC's “would be closely linked to individual candidates or to political parties,” inviting quid-pro-quo corruption, The New York Daily News report added.

• RELATED : An effort to topple the state's $150,000 annual contribution limit for individuals poses 'a substantial risk of corruption,' says one expert. It could lead to an 'explosion' of huge contributions by uber-wealthy donors to the new super PACs if the cap is repealed. (EXCLUSIVE : New super PACs could lead to corruption if state law is repealed * The New York Daily News)
• RELATED : The animal rights group NY-CLASS has an edge in enacting its plan to replace horse carriages of Central Park with electric cars, because NY-CLASS played a key role in funding a million-dollar Super PAC, New York City Is Not for Sale, which helped sink former Council Speaker Christine Quinn in the mayoral election, a move, which benefitted the mayoral campaign of former Public Advocate Bill de Blasio. (Anti-carriage horse activists split on electric car alternative * Metro New York)
• RELATED : The independently-financed group that helped end former Council Speaker Christine Quinn's mayoral ambitions was fined by the Campaign Finance Board Thursday morning for failing to report expenditures. (Anti-Quinn Group Fined $7,050 by City's Campaign Finance Board * The New York Daily News)
• RELATED : Were possible coordination of Independent Expenditures and free gifts of lobbying services violations of federal laws ? Will the Moreland Commission investigate possible campaign corruption ? The Advance Group Federal Complaint Referred To Moreland Commission (NYC : News & Analysis)
• RELATED : Common Cause/NY calls for Super PACs to be required to disclose their top five donors on all public materials (Common Cause on NY Jobs Now contributors * The Times Union).
• RELATED : Extell George Arzt Moreland Commission Christine Quinn One57 Connections (Christine Quinn Sold Out)

NYC Is Not For Sale, "a coalition of left-leaning unions, Democratic donors and animal rights groups," according to a report by The New York Daily News, spent $1.1 million broadcasting several TV commercials that were critical of former Council Speaker Christine Quinn in an effort that ultimately boosted Public Advocate Bill de Blasio's mayoral campaign. As if validating Professor Wilcox's fears, in the days leading up to the general election last November, a Republican political activist filed a complaint with city campaign finance regulators, accusing Mr. de Blasio and key supporters of illegally coordinating the activities of the NYC Is Not For Sale Super PAC that spent more than $1 million attacking former Speaker Quinn in the Democratic primary race for mayor, The New York Post reported.

As it stands, city and state campaign finance regulators are being pressed by wealthy campaign contributors, big business interests, and corrupt lobbyists to weaken campaign reform laws under the false guise that caps on contributions "unconstitutionally restricts free speech." The only truly impartial and independent authority to enforce regulations is the U.S. Attorney's Office. Pending before those federal prosecutors is a complaint, asking that the Department of Justice determine whether Super PAC's and their lobbyists broke federal laws pertaining to bribery and the illegal coordinating of Super PAC activities with official campaign activities.

2014-03-12 New York Progress and Protection PAC - Declaration of Clyde Wilcox (57)

2014-03-17 New York Progress and Protection PAC - Defs Memo of Law Opposing MSJ (53)

Scott Levenson, NY-CLASS, Citizens United Super PAC Investigation (Updated)

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SPECIAL NEWS UPDATE: FRI, 25 APR 2014, 09:50 AM

In the past few weeks, FBI agents have been asking questions about the campaign by the animal rights group NY-CLASS to strong arm former Council Speaker Christine Quinn (center) to support a ban on the iconic horse-drawn carriages, two sources familiar with the matter told The New York Daily News. The horse lobbyists in question include Scott Levenson, and they are linked to Mayor Bill de Blasio (inset). (FBI investigating claim that Christine Quinn was threatened by Scott Levenson for refusing to support carriage horse ban during the mayoral race * The New York Daily News)

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PUBLISHED : SAT, 08 MAR 2014, 02:06 AM
UPDATED : FRI, 25 APR 2014, 12:17 PM

The mayor and his Council speaker, who both reject checks-and-balances, oversee city campaign regulators nominally tasked to investigate campaign corruption of groups with close ties to the de Blasio-Mark-Viverito administration.

In an article posted on The Daily Beast, NY1 political reporter Josh Robin reported that "city campaign regulators have begun investigating" Scott Levenson, the lobbyist-advisor to NY-CLASS, the animal rights group that organized Super PAC's to defeat Mayor Bill de Blasio's chief mayoral challenger, former City Council Speaker Christine Quinn.

Information about this investigation was first reported by Michael Powell in The New York Times back in November 2013.

• RELATED : Bill de Blasio Whipped by Horse Lobby (The Daily Beast)
• RELATED : In Campaign, Cash Flowed Circuitously (The New York Times)
• RELATED : Complaint Filed Against Advance Group for Election Work (Politicker)
• RELATED : The Advance Group Federal Complaint Referred To Moreland Commission (NYC : News & Analysis)

When questions were first brought to the city's Campaign Finance Board about the role of Mr. Levenson and his lobbying firm, The Advance Group, doing unpaid lobbying work in the New York City Council speaker race, city campaign regulators looked the other way as Mr. Levenson provided a valuable gift to Councilmember Melissa Mark-Viverito to possibly influence her performance as Council speaker in respect of official acts that could benefit The Advance Group and its lobbying clients.

But the board members of the Campaign Finance Board are selected by both the mayor and the Council speaker, thereby preventing it from rendering an independent review of the controversies that surrounding Mr. Levenson, who likes to accept responsibly for each of Mayor de Blasio's primary win and for Ms. Mark-Viverito's selection as Council speaker. As a reward for Mr. Levenson's NY-CLASS's crucial support, the mayor attended a fundraiser for NY-CLASS, which was closed to the press. Meanwhile, Speaker Mark-Viverito, who benefitted from free lobbying work provided to her by The Advance Group, has expressed support for enacting legislation sought by NY-CLASS. This cross-support has all the appearance of a quid pro quo.

An undeniable perception exists that the Campaign Finance Board is a political organ of the occupants of City Hall. As was noted in a comment to The New York Times story, "The real scandal is the Campaign Finance Board, which spent most of its resources tracking down addresses of donors to John Liu rather than paying attention to the big money controlled by the likes of Scott Levenson." This is among the many reasons why the Campaign Finance Board cannot be trusted to lead an investigation into the co-electioneering activities of Mr. Levenson and the NY-CLASS Super PAC's.

If the Campaign Finance Board answers to the mayor and to the Council speaker and if the mayor and the Council speaker have close ties to Mr. Levenson and to NY-CLASS, then can city campaign regulations exert enough independence to fully investigate whether possible coordination of independent political campaign expenditures and free gifts of lobbying services were violations of federal laws that ban, respectively, Super PAC coordination and bribery ?

• RELATED : Under campaign finance scrutiny, animal-rights advocates NY-CLASS ditches The Advance Group, moves out, lawyers up (NYC : News & Analysis)
• RELATED : Rich backers raise $473,000 for Bill de Blasio in just three weeks (The New York Daily News)
• RELATED : Bill de Blasio won't appear at fund-raising events unless it raises $75,000 minimum (The New York Daily News)

Separate from violating campaign finance laws, the role of each of Mr. Levenson and the NY-CLASS Super PAC's had damaging effects on the opportunity for reform in a post-Quinn municipal government. Because of the independent campaign expenditures that nearly totaled $2 million, the influence of NY-CLASS perverted the ability of other issue reformers from being taken seriously by the media. Witness how the media accepted the controversial appointment of William Bratton as police commissioner, even though he still supports unconstitutional tactics, such as stop-and-frisk and the broken windows theory of policing, which unfairly targets low-income communities and people of color -- but does nothing to combat the white collar crimes by political operatives or by Wall Street. Further, the NY-CLASS Super PAC's misappropriated the grassroots work by reform activists, including tenants' rights activists like John Fisher, police reform activists, QUILTBAG civil rights activists, and St. Vincent's Hospital activists, who each had separately and collectively spent years organizing to vote the former Council Speaker Quinn out of office. There was even a serialized book, recounting former Council Speaker Quinn's long record of community and political betrayals.

Using the distorting influence of Super PAC money to control media attention, political operatives loyal to Mayor de Blasio, chief amongst them, Mr. Levenson, usurped activists' abilities to continue pressing the new administration to roll out a truly progressive reform agenda, not one that has been noted to be slipshod in its attempts at "reform," like the education advocates pushing for universal pre-kinder only for New York City at the same time when those same education advocates are neglecting to call for an expansion of kindergarten to become a full-day program in its own right for the rest of New York State. While NY-CLASS awaits the enactment of its noble-minded ban on horse drawn carriages, other reform activists are left scratching their heads, wondering what happened at real attempts at government reform, like ending the Council speaker's slush fund, reforming the corrupt ULURP zone-busting approval process that continues to favor large real estate developers, the need to finally allocate all the resources that can provide shelter to the homeless, and pursuing other humane policies that would use the gains of our economy to help the people most in need.

• RELATED : When is it okay for "progressives" to vote against a Democrat ? (This Week)

The issue of reforming the process of zone-busting real estate development projects becomes all the more impossible with Mr. Levenson and NY-CLASS, since one of the group's founders is Steve Nislick, a real estate developer, who, in a shady confluence of events, is said to be trying to develop a zone-busting project on land currently used as horse stables for the horse-drawn carriage industry that he is coincidentally trying to outlaw. Add to that the fact that Mayor de Blasio has appeared to be courting large real estate developers and their lobbyists, such as James Capalino.

As Mr. Levenson and NY-CLASS continue to advance the narrative that the sole actions of the NY-CLASS Super PAC's defeated Speaker Quinn and helped to elect Mayor de Blasio, that should help federal prosecutors seal their investigation into coordinated campaign corruption, a karmically-doomed trap that Mr. Levenson and NY-CLASS operatives have documented in a series of press reports that they were too blind to see. But the still larger question for Democrats, who are said to largely favor campaign finance reform, is why do they accept that the Democratic mayor and his Council speaker have yet to call for campaign finance reform to end the corruptive role of lobbyists and big business and special interest money in the election system. As was noted in the comments below, if Mayor de Blasio and Speaker Mark-Viverito lack the political will to enact real campaign finance reforms on the municipal level, then they also have the option of pressing on Washington or Albany to enact federal- or state-level reforms. But all voters seem to get is nothing.

The Advance Group, which provided unpaid consultants to Mark-Viverito, worked for the City Action Coalition PAC, which lists 'traditional marriage' as its platform and supported opponents of gay City Council candidates. (The New York Daily News)

Did Scott Levenson sabotage LGBT civil rights attorney Yetta Kurland's political campaign ? (Scott Levenson : Biggest Loser Of The Week * NY Pop Culture & Politics)