Monday, March 17, 2014

Vogue's Delightful But Rapid Interview With Sarah Jessica Parker

A delightfully fun interview with Hollywood superstar Sarah Jessica Parker. Through a series of questions, Ms. Parker says that she'd love to sing a duet with Doris Day and that she admires the author and activist Jane Jacobs.

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Sunday, March 16, 2014

Irish Queers Protesting Tomorrow's Discriminatory NYC St. Patrick's Day Parade

Irish activists will protest against the decision by organizers of the Fifth Avenue St. Patrick's Day Parade to deny open LGBTQ participation

The world's largest St. Patrick's Day Parade, running along New York City's tony Fifth Avenue on Monday, includes over a quarter of a million marching participants, according the parade organiser's Web site. This year, amongst the millions, who will be watching the parade from the sidelines, will be members and allies of the group Irish Queers, who will be protesting the parade's record of discriminating against open LGBTQ participation.

Numerous elected officials from Ireland and New York are refusing to march in this year's parade, members of Irish Queers claim, because organizers of the parade discriminate against open LGBTQ participants. But New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and his police commissioner, William Bratton, are allowing thousands of uniformed NYPD cops and firefighters to nevertheless march in their uniforms, which sends the wrong message to LGBTQ New Yorkers, especially those who are already at risk of being targeted for harassment by the police, according to the Facebook event for the Irish Queers protest.

LGBTQ activists and allies have called on Mayor de Blasio to ban the use of official city uniforms by, for example, police and firefighters who plan to march in the parade, but the mayor refused to acquiesce to their demands. Notwithstanding, Mayor de Blasio has said that he will not participate in tomorrow's parade. Since the parade is a private event, it is allowed to discriminate against determine who participates in its event. "The city, however, bound by its human rights law, does not have the right to lend its authority and stamp of approval to that discrimination. And it does have the right to determine when its workers can use their uniforms and other symbols of their employment in public settings," wrote Paul Schindler, the editor of Gay City News, in the LGBTQ's rebuttal to the mayor's denial.

New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito issued a separate statement, informing the the LGBTQ community that she would not authorize an official City Council contingency in the discriminatory St. Patrick's Day Parade, but she would not ban City Council employees from participating. Last year, Speaker Mark-Viverito sparked controversy when she hired the lobbyist Scott Levenson to work on her speakership campaign. Mr. Levenson, and his lobbying firm, The Advance Group, worked for the City Action Coalition PAC, which lists 'traditional marriage' as its platform and supported opponents of gay City Council candidates. Questions were also raised by bloggers whether Mr. Levenson sabotaged LGBTQ civil rights attorney Yetta Kurland's political campaign ?

In contrast to the timid city officials, the large commercial beer brewer Heineken announced last week and the makers of Guinness announced today that they had withdrawn their support of the discriminatory St. Patrick’s Day Parade in New York City.

Protesters are gathering at 10:30 a.m. tomorrow between 56th and 57th Streets on the westside of Fifth Avenue (basically, across the street from Tiffany & Co.).

RSVP for the protest here : Cops Out or Queers In ! Protest the Fifth Avenue St. Patrick's Day Parade ! (Facebook)

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In radio interview, Gov. Andrew Cuomo bemoans bloggers and 24-hour news cycle

24-Hour News Cycle Makes Government More Transparent, An Aspect That Gov. Cuomo Apparently Dislikes

In a radio interview conducted this morning by John Catsimatidis, Gov. Andrew Cuomo complained about the scrutiny that social media, bloggers, and the 24-hour news cycle place on elected officials, a problem that his father, former Gov. Mario Cuomo, never had to face.

“I don’t believe it raises the quality,” Gov. Cuomo said during the radio interview. “As a matter of fact, I think it lowers the quality, but it increases the frequency. These 24-hour blogs. Everybody’s in a competition. They have to get it up first. They have to get it up fast. So you have this constant chatter, that is not necessarily the most credible, the most insightful. But it’s constant and that dictates a rhythm to the governmental dialogue, which again is fast, and quick and facile, but not necessarily intellectual or correct.” (via The New York Daily News)

Bloggers are notoriously difficult to control. Each one is independent, and bloggers strenuously defend their autonomy. Perhaps this independence is a cause of concern for Gov. Cuomo. The armies of lobbyists and campaign consultants employed by elected officials and big business interests are always calling newspaper, radio, and TV reporters to control the daily talking points that elected officials want to see advanced in the mainstream media. But bloggers generally find the motivations of the backroom class of political insider operatives more suspect than mainstream media reporters, who are more resigned to go with the flow. Witness how reporters basically failed to vet -- and refused to accept responsibility for vetting -- Bill de Blasio in last year's mayoral race. If it weren't for bloggers, nobody would have covered the shady, undeclared lobbying that corrupted the race for New York City Council speaker.

But for bloggers, few would read information, for example, about how Gov. Cuomo's Medicaid Redesign Team has been a front group to make wholesale cuts to healthcare by closing entire hospitals, a furtherance of austerity measures begun by former Republican Gov. George Pataki's Berger Commission, a view you wouldn't get from, say, Anemona Hartocollis, the metropolitan healthcare reporter for The New York Times. A Web site administered by the housing activist and blogger John Fisher contributed to the years-long, grassroots effort to vote former City Council Speaker Christine Quinn out of office. The Atlantic Yards Report blog has published a wealth of information about the real estate corruption and community betrayals that took place in the furtherance of Forest City Ratner's zone-busting development for the Atlantic Yards section of Brooklyn. And many mainstream reporters are said to check in daily on the Queens Crap blog for news tips that regularly show up as full-fledged reports on local New York City TV news broadcasts. Since bloggers aren't afraid to tell the political truth, no matter how unflattering it may be to elected officials, the followers of certain political blogs will actually learn about how voters get short-changed by the shortcomings of the political expediency that elected officials practise.

But the steadfast independence of bloggers hasn't stopped politicians from trying to control bloggers. Concerned about parental backlash to administration attacks on charter schools, New York City Mayor de Blasio recently announced an effort to subvert bloggers' independence by spoon-feeding parent bloggers with campaign-styled messaging on his universal pre-kinder program. Mayor de Blasio had to scurry into the arms of parent bloggers after he angered the City Hall press corps by restricting their access to him, hiding appointments from his public schedule, and by walking away from reporters' questions. His predecessor, former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, was king of his own media empire, and he didn't need bloggers. Hence, Mayor Bloomberg once derided all bloggers as lawless partisans.

This is a breaking-news post. Please check back for possible updates.

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Saturday, March 15, 2014

Is Bill de Blasio doing enough about St. Patrick's Day Parade's LGBT discrimination controversy ?

PUBLISHED : SAT, 08 MAR 2014, 10:10 PM
UPDATED : SAT, 15 MAR 2014, 03:09 PM

The large commercial beer brewer Heineken has withdrawn its support of the discriminatory St. Patrick’s Day Parade in New York City even after Mayor Bill de Blasio has said that he will allow city workers to march in uniform in the parade, which bans open LGBT participation.

"Bill de Blasio is the first New York mayor for 21 years to boycott the St. Patrick's Day parade over its ban on gay participants – but is he doing enough ?" asked Ed Pilkington in The Guardian.

LGBT New Yorkers, activists, allies, and several community groups have beseeched Mayor Bill de Blasio to ban city employees from wearing their city uniforms if they plan to participate in the discriminatory St. Patrick's Day Parade that runs on Fifth Avenue. Opponents of the discriminatory parade charge that by allowing city employees to wear their uniform to the parade, the municipal government is tacitly endorsing the parade organizers' discrimination against open LGBT participants.

The mayor has announced that he is not marching in the parade on March 17, but his police commissioner, William Bratton, will be marching, along with other city employees, who are being allowed by the mayor to participate in their city uniforms.

The mayor's Council speaker has announced that she will not allow a formal City Council contingent to participate, but she is allowing City Council employees to participate unofficially, if they so choose.

All of this allows the St. Patrick's Day Parade to continue its discrimination against open LGBT participation, notwithstanding the minuscule steps taken by the mayor and his Council speaker, and this leaves many LGBT activists upset that the mayor may actually be violating the city's human rights law that bans discrimination, as alluded to in a recent editorial in Gay City News. If city resources are used to support or endorse the discriminatory policies of the parade, LGBT activists may have a case to request a court-ordered injunction that would could bar city employees from wearing their city uniforms in the parade or the use of other city resources for the parade. It remains to be seen what course of action LGBT activists take between now and March 17, the date of the parade.

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WATCH : WSJ Video Explains Possible Sabotage To Malaysia Airlines MH370, Conceivably Highjacked, CBS Reports

Malaysia Air MH370: Possible Sabotage to Communications System, Explained

After the jet's transponder was disabled, the communications systems on Flight 370 were cut off by "deliberate action," said Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak. U.S. officials are investigating whether a third system, on the plane's lower deck, was also compromised, The Wall Street Journal's Jason Bellini explains in this YouTube video.

Flight 370 disappeared one week ago while carrying 239 people from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing, China.

As the investigation turns to identifying criminal responsibility for the missing flight, will the U.S. government focus on the spectacular intelligence failure that appears to allow airplanes to remain vulnerable to criminality over a decade since the Sept. 11 attacks and susceptible to going missing almost five years since the 2009 accident that befell Air France Flight 447 over the Atlantic Ocean ?

For the U.S. government, which is caught up in a controversy over the indiscriminate dragnet surveillance by the National Security Administration, the blind spots in aviation safety patterns recent blind spots in foreign policy risks, such as the Russian takeover of Crimea. These blind spots are proof that real threats are not being assessed while the N.S.A. is wholly consumed with the distraction of dragnet surveillance -- a dangerous situation about which civil libertarians and journalists had warned would happen as a result of the Obama administrations's faulty obsession with collecting Internet data.

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Thursday, March 13, 2014

Campaign Finance Board Penalizes NYC Is Not For Sale Super PAC For Campaign Violations

Million-Dollar Anti-Quinn Super PAC Fined Pennies On The Dollar

Ushered in by the corruptive Citizens United Supreme Court decision, a Super PAC that helped end former Council Speaker Christine Quinn's mayoral ambitions was fined $7,050 by the Campaign Finance Board Thursday morning for failing to report $70,000 in expenditures, The New York Daily News reported.

Activists had spent years organizing against former Speaker Quinn for allowing the NYPD to institute a protest parade permit, for over-turning term limits, and for doing nothing to save St. Vincent's Hospital, amongst other betrayals. But then last year, the Super PAC, NYC Is Not For Sale, supplanted the long-term reform activists by launching a million-dollar TV commercial campaign against Speaker Quinn when she was ahead in the polls, rendering the long-term activists to nothing more but useful idiots to the Super PAC. With its very visible negative attack ads on TV, NYC Is Not For Sale took public credit for defeating Speaker Quinn's mayoral campaign, decidedly handing victory in the mayoral race to former Public Advocate Bill de Blasio. In exchange for having received the benefit and support from the Super PAC, the new mayor helped raise money for at least one of coalition members that organized the Super PAC, and the mayor has repeatedly promised to honor the legislative request of the wealthy donors behind the Super PAC.

The fine levied by the Campaign Finance Board represented a financial penalty of about 10 cents on the dollar for the infraction amounts that the Super PAC failed to declare.

That NYC Is Not For Sale flouted city campaign finance regulations revealed how some of the long-term reform activists, who were initially excited for the Super PAC's help to defeat former Speaker Quinn's mayoral campaign, were not fully aware that NYC Is Not For Sale represented trouble.

The Super PAC, NYC Is Not For Sale, supplanted the long-term reform activists by launching a million-dollar TV commercial campaign against Speaker Quinn when she was ahead in the polls, rendering the long-term activists to nothing more but useful idiots to the Super PAC.

Following the Campaign Finance Board's announcement of the fine, reform activists were troubled by the relatively small penalty against the Super PAC. The whole purpose of the activism to defeat former Speaker Quinn was to reform government processes to end corruption and the appearance of corruption. Since the board members of the Campaign Finance Board answer to Mayor Bill de Blasio and the present Council speaker, Melissa Mark-Viverito, it is not known how independent the Campaign Finance Board can be in reviewing violations of groups that have relationships with the administration. Both the mayor and the Council speaker have close ties to the coalition of left-leaning unions, Democratic donors, and animal rights activists that formed NYC Is Not For Sale. NYC Is Not For Sale was advised, in turn, by the political lobbying firm, The Advance Group, which is headed by Scott Levenson. The Advance Group and Mr. Levenson have close ties to the mayor and to the Council speaker. If city campaign finance regulators only assessed this politically-connected Democratic Super PAC with a nominal financial penalty, then reform activists may not reasonably expect just outcomes in respect of complaints about other controversial electioneering work during last year's municipal elections. For example, many of the campaigns and/or Super PAC's advised or administered by The Advance Group have triggered critical press reports questioning possible financial or ethical improprieties.

Notwithstanding, the Campaign Finance Board denied John Liu any public matching dollars in last year's mayoral race over questions of the integrity of his fundraising. Yet, the Campaign Finance Board allowed Councilmember Mark-Viverito to keep all of her public matching dollars, even though she exceeded the spending cap by opening a second campaign finance account with the state Board of Elections in Albany during the same election cycle to fund her speakership race. Separately, the Progressive Caucus of the City Council employed their own lobbyist, Alison Hirsch, in the Council speaker race. However, the Campaign Finance Board has not indicated whether it is comfortable with allowing undeclared or possibly unpaid electioneering work made at the direction of elected officials that take place during an election cycle that subjected those same election officials to spending caps and other public matching dollars restrictions ?

The regulations for campaign finance do not guarantee that every politician is owed a right to keep raising money for post-election leadership races, like the campaign for Council speaker, during the same election cycle where there were spending caps and other matching public dollar restrictions. Every time that politicians raise money, they create opportunities for the undue influence of wealthy campaign donors and lobbyists to have even great influence over our public officials, always at the expense of the mere voter. By allowing Councilmember Mark-Viverito to exceed the spending cap, the Campaign Finance Board has now opened a backdoor to allow any public official to open up campaign accounts with the state Board of Elections that can be used for electioneering purposes that would effectively allow those public officials to game the public matching dollar system through the Campaign Finance Board and still raise more money through a state Board of Elections account. This is a dangerous precedent that the Campaign Finance Board has set. Compounding the concerns of reform activists, the board members of the Campaign Finance Board are now partly answerable to the Councilmember Mark-Viverito, because she has since become the Council speaker as a direct result of questionable electioneering work that falls under the jurisdiction of the Campaign Finance Board.

Judging by the tiny fraction of a fine levied on NYC Is Not For Sale, the Campaign Finance Board is not sufficiently independent to review complaints of campaign finance violations of parties, such as The Advance Group, Mr. Levenson, the animal rights group NY-CLASS, and others, who have as close, if not closer, ties to each of the mayor and the Council speaker than the coalition of left-leaning unions and Democratic donors that formed NYC Is Not For Sale. Indeed, as the Campaign Finance Board continues with its post-election audit, one of the very campaign accounts it must review belongs to the Council speaker, herself.

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DNC chair blocked support for ENDA directive : sources tell The Washington Blade

Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) has discouraged House members from asking President Obama to take administrative action to protect LGBT workers from discrimination, a gay Democratic activist claims.

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Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Crumbling Infrastructure, Gas Explosions, Hospital Closings, and No Permanent NYC Buildings Department Head

At press conference, Consolidated Edison said that a report about a gas leak was made at 9:13 a.m. this morning, but others have been warning about city's crumbling infrastructure for far longer than that.

The explosion and collapse of two adjacent apartment buildings in Spanish Harlem raised fresh concerns that New York City government is not adequately dealing with the city's infrastructure problems.

Carmen Vargas-Rosa, a member of the Spanish Christian Church, which was destroyed by a gas explosion, spoke with CBS 2 New York news, saying that there had been a gas leak several months ago in one of the buildings that collapsed earlier today. It's not known why ConEdison did not detect other problems with the buildings after it inspected the previous repairs. A tenant in one of the collapsed buildings, Ruben Borrero told The New York Daily News that for a period of several months dating back to last fall, several tenants had sought help for reports about gas problems by calling the city's 311 help service, adding that once, just before last Christmas, firefighters responded to complaints. The report by The New York Daily News indicated that, "The tenants’ claims contradict Mayor de Blasio’s statement Wednesday that the 'only indication of danger' came 17 minutes before the explosion when a tenant next door called Con Ed about a gas smell." One of the buildings also had indications of structural cracks dating back to 2008, The New York Times reported, which raises questions about lax code enforcement by the city's Department of Buildings. Complicating the rescue and recovery efforts, a large sinkhole opened up in front of the collapsed buildings. Officials are trying to determine if a a water main break may have caused the sinkhole, The New York Times reported.

They mayor may not want to accept responsibility for the city's negligence in not fully inspecting the infrastructure and utilities around the collapsed buildings, but New Yorkers deserve that he do something about it. The history of previous gas problems at these buildings are examples of other problems with New York City's aging and deteriorating infrastructure. The bursting of water mains are a common occurrence in New York City, and who can forget the spectacular 2007 explosion of the steam pipe in Midtown.

As the city makes excuses for why it was O.K. for fire rescue and other first responders to arrive after the gas explosion in Spanish Harlem when there indications of impending danger, let's consider how the warning signs about the city's crumbling infrastructure have always existed. Thousands of miles of main gas lines in New York City are decades old, The Christian Science Monitor reported. WNYC reported that the gas main that runs near the buildings, which exploded and collapsed, is 127 years old. Last year, it was reported that a building was damaged by a partial collapse in Chinatown. The aging and collapse of city buildings comes on top of a report published today by Politicker, where the mayor was unapologetic for not having yet appointed a permanent head for a major city infrastructure agency.

Isn't it about time that the mayor got around to finally appointing a permanent commissioner to head the city's Department of Buildings ? After that, the de Blasio administration should complete an assessment of the city's crumbling infrastructure, map it against prior complaints, and prioritize the renewal of the city's basic physical and organizational structures, facilities, and utilities. And he should use this opportunity to make the city go green. Get rid of that dangerous Spectra natural gas pipeline running under the West Village.

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Will Mayor de Blasio withdraw subpoenas to former Village Voice editor over NYPD Quota Recordings ?

PUBLISHED : WED, 12 MAR 2014, 06:23 PM
UPDATED : SUN, 23 MAR 2014, 01:55 PM

''In what The New York Times described as a 'broadly worded, five-page subpoena,' New York City lawyers are demanding that former Village Voice reporter Graham Rayman turn over tape recordings police officer Adrian Schoolcraft made of his superiors at the NYPD’s 81st precinct in Brooklyn," Time magazine reported last December, adding, "The tapes were the basis for Rayman’s book, The NYPD Tapes, which alleges officers manipulated crime data in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in Brooklyn."

It's questionable why city lawyers are infringing on Mr. Rayman's free press protections under the First Amendment, and many bloggers are concerned that the NYPD is harassing Mr. Rayman in retribution for Mr. Rayman's exposé of police corruption. Because of the legal wrangling with the city, one activist, Suzannah B. Troy, wondered whether the litigation was an excuse used by the new owners of the Village Voice to lay-off Mr. Rayman.

"The city should always be challenged when it uses subpoena power against a journalist," Mr. Rayman told amNewYork.

Will the so-called "progressive" new mayor withdraw these questionable subpoenas and end the police department's other violations of the First Amendment ?

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John Liu sues New York City for blocking public matching campaign funds

"John Liu's campaign did nothing wrong," says lawyer Richard Emery.

John Liu, the former Comptroller for New York City, filed a federal lawsuit today against the City of New York, alleging that he was "denied the opportunity to compete on an even playing field with the other mayoral candidates, and his reputation was irreparably damaged," The New York Post is reporting, adding, that the Campaign Finance Board's decision to deny Mr. Liu $3.8 million in matching public dollars amounted to a “death sentence” to his mayoral campaign.

Mr. Liu's complaint alleges that the Campaign Finance Board unlawfully “crippled” his bid to become the city’s first Asian-American mayor by citing the court convictions of others, even though Mr. Liu himself was never charged with any wrong-doing.

The investigation into Mr. Liu's campaign finances originated in a report published in 2011 by The New York Times at a time when Mr. Liu was attracting serious attention and support for his expected mayoral campaign in 2013. Many activists have alleged that the editors of The New York Times preferred the mayoral candidacy of former City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. After the Campaign Finance Board denied Mr. Liu's public matching funding dollars, former Speaker Quinn received the glowing endorsement of The New York Times' editorial board.

In a further example of the politicization of the Campaign Finance Board, city campaign finance regulators appeared to obsess over Mr. Liu's troubled donations, identified as only 35 out of over 6,300 donations, but city campaign finance regulators did nothing to scrutinize the corruptive influence of super PAC's in the 2013 municipal election.

In a video made last year by The Queens Courier, Mr. Liu described how investigators deceived his campaign workers into accepting tainted donations. Essentially, he was the victim of entrapment.

2014-03-12 John Liu v NYC Campaign Finance Board - USDC-SDNY COMPLAINT (Stamped Copy) by Connaissable

QUESTIONING THE NEW YORK CITY CAMPAIGN FINANCE BOARD

With John Liu's lawsuit against New York City over conflicted city campaign finance regulators, this makes three federal referrals of elections violations, forcing Mayor de Blasio to lawyer-up, recruit special inside election counsel.

After a wave of federal complaints that have been lodged over electioneering violations in last year's municipal elections, Mayor Bill de Blasio has hired a special legal advisor specializing in election law.

Since Mayor de Blasio and City Council Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, and/or their political operatives, are entangled in some of these federal complaints, it should come as no surprise that Mayor de Blasio is now maneuvering to use his public office to defend himself against allegations of wrong-doing that took place during the electioneering of last year's municipal elections.

The three federal complaints lodged following last year's municipal elections :

  1. GOP consultant E. O'Brien Murray argued to the State Department that Patrick Gaspard, a former top White House aide with a deep history in Gotham politics, violated the federal Hatch Act by getting involved in Mayor de Blasio's campaign -- and City Councilwoman Melissa Mark-Viverito's subsequent election as speaker -- while representing the U.S. in South Africa. (GOP Operative Files Hatch Act Complaint Against U.S. Ambassador Patrick Gaspard * The New York Daily News)
  2. Louis Flores, a local political gadfly who ran a blog and wrote a book criticizing Christine Quinn, has filed a complaint with U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara’s criminal division against Scott Levenson and The Advance Group consulting firm, which came under deep scrutiny during the mayoral campaign. (Federal Complaint Filed Against The Advance Group for Election Work * Politicker)
  3. Former New York City Comptroller and failed mayoral candidate John Liu has filed a federal lawsuit against the city and its Campaign Finance Board. He says the board unfairly crippled his campaign by denying him matching funds in last year's race for mayor. (Ex-NYC mayor hopeful sues Campaign Finance Board * AP/The San Francisco Chronicle)

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Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Bill de Blasio, New York Liberals, and the Veal Pen (Updated)

PUBLISHED : WED, 08 JAN 2014, 11:11 PM
UPDATED : MON, 21 APR 2014, 04:10 PM

A moment of truth for "liberals" in New York City, as they are corralled into veal pens.

photo 540x360_cows_vealrow_fs-veal-pen_zps846829d7.jpg

Calves have no choice and would certainly not volunteer to be trapped in veal pens, where cattle factory farmers intend for calves to atrophy into valuable sources of veal, but liberals in New York City, following the lead of liberals in Washington, DC, check into proverbial political veal pens, eager to take their stated, if cramped, place with conscious volition.

The backroom selection of Melissa Mark-Viverito as City Council speaker on January 8 signaled the end, according to The New York Times, of "weeks of bitter, behind-the-scenes jockeying among county political leaders, union officials and others, who tussled over the speakership using such municipal prizes as committee chairs and patronage jobs as bargaining chips," adding that before Ms. Mark-Viverito was unanimously selected, there had been "rumors up until the noontime vote of a possible floor fight." Although the discord was real, it was safest to tussle in private, because none of the backroom fighters carried on their battles outside of the restrictive confines of the veal pen. There were certainly some expressions of exasperation shared with the media, but for the most part, the large activists groups, good government groups, corporations, and even billionaire business leaders publicly kept mum. Hmmmmmmmmmmmm....? Why was that ?

The Mayor Of Magical Thinking

When Mayor Bill de Blasio argued for a special income tax surcharge on the wealthiest New Yorkers, a tax that is certainly needed to help fund a needed expansion of social services, he said that the income tax surcharge was needed because the annual budget dance of proposed service cuts and minimal budget restorations would make pre-kinder students unnecessary political victims of the vicious annual city budget negotiation process. “When the budget cuts come, children are often the first to take the hit. The vulnerable take the hit,” Mayor de Blasio said. Little did he own up to the fact that now that he's in charge at City Hall, it would be Mayor de Blasio, who would throw pre-kinder students under the bus. (It's the mayor, who plays the leading role in the annual budget dance, a sleazy process where the mayor first proposes budget cuts, then the Council speaker pretends to put on a show to restore the budget cuts, and then once the budget passes, the cuts are restored, and the City Council get to look like heroes, even though this process makes it impossible for city agencies and community groups dependent on city grants to adequately plan any kind of medium-term fundraising or long-term budgets.) Even though the mayor is proposing that the high income tax surcharge be dedicated to expanding pre-kinder, the mayor's failed to propose any budgetary mechanism to ensure that the mayor and the City Council don't cut other areas of public education during the annual budget dance. What does earmarking a dedicated revenue stream for pre-kinder mean if funding for kinder remains insecure ? Seems like it's almost double-speak to make such a big deal about ring-fencing the monies from the high income tax surcharge, doesn't it, if it leaves kindergarden students at risk for budget cuts ?

It's precisely because of this sick and twisted annual budget dance that homeless youths have grown wary of the shady municipal budget negotiations : a few brave homeless youths have turned to the Legal Aid Society to make a full, legal demand for the complete resources to finally provide shelter to homeless youths rather than take a risk that the new mayor will force homeless youth shelters to play along with the disingenuous annual budget dance. More on this shortly.

Going into today's speakership selection, Mayor de Blasio had received resounding criticism from the Editorial Boards of The New York Times, The New York Daily News, The New York Post, and even amNew York. An anonymous attack video catching Mayor de Blasio in actual hypocrisy over having criticised former Council Speaker Christine Quinn for having been former Mayor Michael Bloomberg's puppet only to want to install his own puppet in the municipal legislature went viral.

Some bloggers dared to stick their necks out, but they were not joined by any large activist groups. The two good government groups in New York City, for their part, either danced on the graves of the County Bosses or issued toothless Cover-Your-Ass editorials, never mind that the deposition of the County Bosses is only replacing one corrupt political machine for another. But for the most part, given the mixed messaging, folks essentially stayed in the familiar surroundings of the veal pen.

Some Calves Refuse To Take Their Place In The Veal Pens

With the exception of the police reform protest group New Yorkers Against Bratton, the pro bono service agency Legal Aid Society, and the AIDS activist group ACT UP, many activists say that they will keep Mayor de Blasio accountable, but they agree to stay put in their veal pens.

For weeks before the new mayor was inaugurated, a group of activists seeking to fully end stop-and-frisk in New York City came together to protest and reject the appointment of William Bratton as the new NYPD commissioner. Even though the new mayor had campaigned to "end the stop-and-frisk era," the mayor appointed the man widely credited as the architect of stop-and-frisk, Mr. Bratton. The group has been the leading force to keep Mayor de Blasio accountable to his biggest broken campaign promise thus far.

Two days before the new mayor was publicly sworn into office on the steps of City Hall, the Legal Aid Society filed a federal lawsuit against the City of New York, demanding the full resources to provide shelter to homeless youth. They did so, because the New York City budget never before provided the full resources to make shelter available to homeless youth, as required by law, because before the Legal Aid Society stepped forward, all the homeless advocacy groups had remained in their veal pens like good little calves. The Legal Aid Society, tired of the annual budget dance of proposed cuts and minimal restorations, decided that homeless youth shouldn't become political victims to the way City Hall and City Council probably plan to only concentrate on social service groups or causes that hire The Advance Group as their lobbyists.

Like the Legal Aid Society, ACT UP sees the writing on the wall : they'd been patiently waiting in the veal pen for the last few months, stretching back to before the mayoral primary, hoping to get a meeting with the mayor's campaign team, then his transition team, and now his administration team. But the mayor has not deigned to receive AIDS activists, to hear out their demands for a comprehensive city-wide AIDS agenda that begins by appointing a responsive city health commissioner.

When too much time passed, ACT UP broke free of the veal pen, and they protested outside of the mayor's inauguration ceremony.

"By Your Command" : The Calves Know That The Veal Pen Is Guarded From The Inside

When Mayor de Blasio saw that the Legal Aid Society was challenging it on government policy, how did the de Blasio administration respond ? The mayor recruited the top attorney at the Legal Aid Society, Steve Banks, into his administration. To further neutralize the field of outside activism, the de Blasio administration also lured the noted government reformer Lincoln Restler and at least three Spanish language journalists : Maibe Ponet, Roberto Perez, and Erica Gonzalez into the veal pen, just to be sure. Other activist groups have folded, like Queers for Economic Justice and the Brecht Forum, because now that a Democratic mayor has taken office, entrenched political interests don't want to encourage political pressure from the Left. A large foundation that funds non-profit community groups, the North Star Fund, accepted monies from lobbyists loyal to the mayor, Dan Levitan, a vice president at BerlinRosen, told The New York Times. For the few activists and community groups, which do not fold before the mayor's pressures to impose his top-down policies, there are growing numbers of civic leaders, who are being silenced and rendered immobile by the veal pen.

In contrast to the bold leadership of New Yorkers Against Bratton, two former prominent critics of stop-and-frisk have actually turned their backs on the overwhelming community demand to keep the NYPD accountable. After the Bratton appointment was announced, Councilmembers Ydanis Rodriquez and Jumaane Williams said that they supported the controversial appointment, leading to a sense of betrayal among police reform activists. Even the notoriously independent head of the NYCLU, Donna Leiberman, has climbed into the veal pen. Police reforms that the prior police commissioner never adopted remain outstanding, and Ms. Leiberman has not dared to confront the new police commissioner with the NYCLU's recommendations made following the massive 2003 anti-war protest and the 2004 Republic National Convention. Supposedly, the police department enacted some reforms in 2008, but the NYPD's promises were short-lived, because reforms of controversial police tactics were proven to be situational. Witness the police's militaristic response to Occupy Wall Street.

The message being telegraphed to the community is clear : climb into your veal pen and shut up.

Similarly, the LGBT poster child of police entrapment and unconstitutional sexual orientation profiling, Robert Pinter, has disappeared from any public demonstrations condemning the new police commissioner. Prior to the selection of Mr. Bratton, Mr. Pinter had visibly taken part in demonstrations calling for reform of the NYPD, including having once called for the end of stop-and-frisk. Apparently now, Mr. Pinter takes cues on police issues from Bratton-enablers.

Even Yetta Kurland, who I love, because she saved my job for me when they were trying to fire me at Credit Suisse, does not want to encourage ''left leaning friends'' who ''bemoan'' the appointment of the controversial new NYPD commissioner. The message is clear : the new mayor's supporters want to silence critics.

Other activists noted for their work during the primary campaign have also become muted.

The activist-administrator of one very active Twitter account keeping tabs on the corrupt Councilmember Maria del Carmen Arroyo from the Bronx in the time leading up to the municipal primary elections, @arroyowatch now seems to want to stop short of calling for reforms, and only seems content with changes in figurehead politicians without getting to the root of the broken political system.

Separately, in an article in Gay City News, Charles King, the CEO of Housing Works, said of Mayor de Blasio, "I think the community needs to hold his feet to the fire," but Mr. King's done nothing to actually hold the mayor's feet to the fire.

When a corrupt lobbyist tied to both Mayor de Blasio and Speaker Mark-Viverito was exposed for working to defeat LGBT candidates for the City Council, no LGBT civil rights group dared speak out against the politically-connected bigot. Indeed, a corresponding Change.org petition only attracted a few signatures. At today's selection of the new Council speaker, LGBT Councilmembers voted for Ms. Mark-Viverito, even though she had rigorously defended her close working relationship with the bigot lobbyist.

The LGBT community fought so hard to come out of the closet only to, out of political expediency, climb into the veal pen.

Animal rights activists used to carry the banner against the corrupt record of Speaker Quinn, but now they are quick to denounce any activist who tries to hold the de Blasio-Mark-Viverito administration accountable for delivering reforms.

Even powerful business leaders, seeking to do billions of dollars worth of "business" with New York City, have obediently kept quiet, "saying they are worried about the consequences of offending the mayor," wrote two City Hall reporters for The New York Times.

Noam Chomsky photo Noam-Chomsky_zps93db4798.jpg

The Council speaker takes her post in the veal pen.

The prospect of Speaker Mark-Viverito, who was an organiser with the 1199SEIU, the healthcare union that backed Mr. de Blasio's winning mayoral campaign, serving hand-in-hand with the mayor has been invoked by big business interests in the manner of a menacing scare tactic : the rich are going to leave New York City in droves, business are going to close and move to Florida, and the de Blasio-Mark-Viverito administration is going to choke off enterprising new businesses from forming in an era of leftist over-regulation, like a planned nominal expansion of the paid sick leave law. Ms. Mark-Viverito also owes her speakership to the interventions of Mayor de Blasio. When some activists criticised the mayor's violation of separation of powers to advance Ms. Mark-Viverito's speakership, they weren't invoking "checks and balances" to help prop up a big business agenda, as some claim, but to, instead, question Speaker Mark-Viverito's resolution to challenge the mayor on controversial neoliberal moves, like the Bratton appointment or the decision to embrace a close relationship with real estate developers. The new mayor has a failed record of fighting for affordable housing in connection with large, controversial zone-busting development deals, like at the Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn. The tragic irony is that for everybody supporting a Democratic take-over of both Gracie Mansion and City Council, Speaker Mark-Viverito may not have the courage to openly challenge the mayor to deliver a truly progressive reform agenda that would include letting the calves know that they could very easily walk out, free from the confines of the veal pen. One need not look any further to how councilmembers refused to either criticise the Bratton appointment or to call for campaign finance reforms following the various scandals tied to the lobbying firm, The Advance Group.

In New York City, the calves get just enough water and feed brought to them that they willingly accept the inhumane conditions of their own existence, and they lash out at anybody trying to fix this system of atrophy and waste. Politicians, like factory farm ranchers, have successfully conditioned voters to mistakenly think that this is all there can be, too, except for the few brave calves who have learned to break free of the veal pen.

As was seen with Ms. Mark-Viverito's successful speaker race, even after the Editorial Boards of four major newspapers challenged the mayor and the Council speaker, the calves still defended their place in the veal pen. What will it take for them to escape this prison of their own making ?

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Senator Feinstein Outraged by CIA Spying on Senate, But She Defends NSA Spying on Citizens

Sen. Dianne Feinstein is shocked -- SHOCKED!! -- that the government has been discovered to be illegally spying and subverting the U.S. Constitution !

This, from the same madame chairwoman, who so righteously defends N.S.A. spying powers :

Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California and the chairwoman of the Senate intelligence committee, said that the Central Intelligence Agency had violated federal law and undermined Congress’s constitutional right to oversee the actions of the executive branch. The dispute stems from the agency's illegal search of computers used by the Senate intelligence committee to investigate C.I.A. interrogation procedures at its secret Bush-era prison system. “I am not taking it lightly,” she said.

And in a forceful editorial, the likes of which we have not read in ages coming from normally staid Editorial Board of The New York Times, the editors excoriated President Obama over the C.I.A. torture and detention programs. The Editorial Board demanded that the Obama administration release a Senate report and a C.I.A. internal review of the torture and detention practices, and the editors further demanded that President Obama reverse an earlier decision to forego an investigation into the C.I.A.'s interrogation procedures, calling for an end to the "lingering fog about the C.I.A. detentions."

Some of the comments to The New York Times's article and editorial plainly indicate that Sen. Feinstein has recourse to the rogue actions of the C.I.A :

"Congress has the power of the purse. Demand the ouster of anyone, and I mean anyone, involved in this illegal action and the appointment of an ombudsman accountable only to Congress and with full security clearance to monitor the agency's actions, or defund it and transfer its responsibilities to one of the other intelligence agencies, which also needs a Congressional ombudsman. Checks and balances must not be circumvented or short-circuited; they are our Constitution's key safeguard against tyranny," wrote Mark from Boston, MA, in response to the article.

"Senator Feinstein has been providing a professional courtesy to the CIA and the administration by withholding the committee's report since December 2012. If she wants to demonstrate that Congress really does have independent oversight authority, she could simply release the report as is. Of course, that would set off a firestorm and occupy the White House and parts of Congress for a few months, to the detriment of other pressing matters. Nonetheless, if she feels wronged by the CIA, she has a potent tool at her disposal," wrote Ken L from Atlanta, GA, in response to the editorial.

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Monday, March 10, 2014

Proposed NYS public matching dollars at risk of being gamed, just like with "model" NYC campaign finance system

  • During the same election cycle, campaign finance loopholes allowed Melissa Mark-Viverito to accept, on one hand, New York City public matching dollars hinged on a spending cap through a city campaign finance account with indifferent oversight from the New York City Campaign Finance Board for a total election cycle spend of $284,000 ;
  • Followed by a parallel state campaign account, that allowed Councilmember Mark-Viverito to raise and spend more campaign money subject to no cap and with no oversight by the New York State Board of Elections for her speakership campaign for an additional spend of $72,000 ; and
  • And book-ended by another city Campaign Finance Board account that allowed Councilmember Mark-Viverito to raise $30,000 from real estate developers and other supporters for her transition/inauguration celebration.
    •

The Moreland Commission, a state panel formed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo and delegated with the charge to investigate public corruption, is recommending nominal reforms to the campaign finance system for New York State elected officials.

"New York needs comprehensive campaign finance reform. The Commission recommends, among other things, lowering contribution limits and closing campaign finance loopholes, empowering regular New Yorkers with a small donor matching system of public financing, limiting the use of campaign funds, and creating tough new disclosure rules for shadowy outside spending groups," the Commission is recommending on its Web site.

But the general Moreland Commission recommendations will do nothing to address how municipal candidates can open several campaign accounts at city and state levels to exceed spending caps imposed on the city level. Because city campaign regulators are not accountable to state Board of Elections and vice versa, candidates for public office can exploit weaknesses of laws relating to lobbying, conflicts of interest, and public ethics, as was seen in the case of the $386,000 spent by New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito during one single election cycle when the private spending cap imposed by the New York City Campaign Finance Board was $168,000 for her official post at the City Council -- a limit more than once over exceeded.

The "compliance apathy" noted by Moreland Commission co-chair Kathleen Rice in the panel's report calls into question how city and state campaign finance regulators will police spending caps, public matching dollars, and rules violations when some candidates can jurisdiction-shop for the loopholes between city and state regulations. Extending the New York City model of campaign finance to the rest of New York State will do nothing to curb the undue influence of large-money donations and lobbyists in our elections if there is no robust regulatory compliance review. What effect does a spending cap have on the campaign finance account of a candidate in one jurisdiction, if the candidate can skirt that spending cap by opening a campaign finance account in another jurisdiction ?

Campaign finance regulators with the state's Board of Elections should have been able to determine that Councilmember Mark-Viverito's intent in opening a state campaign finance account was to skirt the spending cap imposed by the city's Campaign Finance Board. But the Board of Elections did nothing to stop the exploitation of the loophole that did not subject state Board of Elections account openings to spending caps governing an elected official's public post. In this past election cycle, Councilmember Mark-Viverito was running for reëlection. Campaign finance laws help candidates run for public office ; these laws do not promise that candidates, once elected, can keep opening further campaign finance accounts to fund further political campaigns, either for leadership posts, to lobby other publicly-elected officials, or for other purposes -- during the same election cycle. If candidates can open a series of parallel campaign finance accounts across various jurisdictions, what good is it to impose spending caps ?

The dangerous precedent set by Melissa Mark-Viverito : An elected official can hire outside lobbyists to "lobby" other elected officials.

By receiving lobbying services from The Advance Group, Pitta Bishop Del Giorno & Giblin LLC, and others, Councilmember Mark-Viverito effectively outsourced official acts, which she needed to personally undertake, to seek the speakership post. This means that Councilmember Mark-Viverito very visibly retained, as an elected official, teams of lobbyists, either paid or unpaid, to lobby other elected officials with dangerous consequences to transparency and democracy. Cloaked behind the imperfections of the same campaign finance regulations which allowed Councilmember Mark-Viverito to open three campaign finance accounts during the same election cycle, these lobbyists skirted the reach of the do-nothing Campaign Finance Board ; took advantage of the fact that only dollar amounts associated with their activities, not their activities themselves, would be disclosable to the public ; took advantage that some payments, if any, for post-Election Day work could be had by opening a Board of Elections campaign finance account in Albany ; may have enjoyed the opportunity made available by the further loophole that allows subcontractor operatives to skirt disclosure requirements ; and took advantage of the fact that the dueling city and state regulators would not have exclusive authority over the provision of free campaign services. The combined effect of this imperfect system gave unfair advantages to each of (i) The Advance Group, other lobbyists, and the clients of those lobbyists over other lobbying firms and (ii) Councilmember Mark-Viverito over other candidates for the City Council speakership. When elected officials are allowed to hire lobbyists to do the public's business, all the work that those lobbyists do constitutes a subversion of the government's work.

Indeed, it was believed that this was the first reported instance when a public official intentionally opened at least three campaign finance accounts during one election cycle for the same elected office, but the public official, flush with about $400,000 in cash, still needed, for economic or other reasons, to receive free lobbying services. At each step of the way, Councilmember Mark-Viverito's "need" to raise money opened new opportunities for wealthy campaign contributors to have a role in and to influence Councilmember Mark-Viverito's public activities. It was reported by Crains Insider that Jon Del Giorno, a lobbyist with Pitta Bishop, on Councimember Mark-Viverito's behalf, was "involved in setting up the structure of an 'appointments committee' charged with council staffing." Another lobbyist, Alison Hirsch, also worked to select the Councilmember Mark-Viverito as Council speaker, but Ms. Hirsch's work was reported to have been being provided on behalf of the Progressive Caucus of New York City Councilmembers. It's not known who was paying for the post-Election Day functions of Pitta Bishop or Ms. Hirsch in relation to Councilmember Mark-Viverito's "transition." Were members of the Progressive Caucus expected to file fundraising and expense disclosure reports to campaign finance regulators, too, for the outside lobbying services they directed ? If so, to which campaign finance regulators, at city or state levels, or both, were the Progressive Caucus supposed to report ? Moreover, further reporting by Crains Insider has revealed that, that separate from campaign finance regulation loopholes, another exception that lobbyists exploit are City Clerk Office's disclosure rules that specifically do not require the reporting of lobbying for leadership posts. These serious questions and loopholes come on top of the fact that neither The Advance Group nor Ms. Hirsch were not paid through Councilmember Mark-Viverito's state Board of Elections campaign account for their roles in Councilmember Mark-Viverito's successful speakership campaign. When lobbyists are not paid for work they provide to elected officials, the provision of these free lobbying services are said to violate city ethics regulations. "The city’s conflict of interest rules bar public officials from accepting freebies from lobbyists, and they prohibit lobbyists from dispensing same to public officials," wrote the Editorial Page editors of The New York Daily News.

Councilmember Mark-Viverito accepted public matching dollars from the Campaign Finance Board in exchange for promising to keep her political expenditures under a cap during the 2013 election cycle. But she opened a state campaign finance account to skirt around the cap under the loopholes of state regulations, opening the door for others to do the same.

Campaign finance regulations aim to each of expand disclosure and transparency, enforce spending caps to limit undue influence of special interests, and to add elements of public financing, like matching public dollars, to level the playing field. Campaign finance regulators are supposed to monitor electioneering to maintain voters' faith in the acts of elected officials. Regulators maintain the integrity of fair elections by curtailing the situations whereby contributors of large campaign donations or free lobbying services give some candidates unfair advantages over other candidates. It's supposed to be a level playing field.

Since Councilmember Mark-Viverito raised nearly $400,000 through three separate campaign accounts, she signaled to other Councilmembers that big business interests and other wealthy constituents had voted with their dollars to give her a special dominance over other elected officials. One consequence of this unfair advantage is that voters of other Councilmembers, seemingly equal to Councilmember Mark-Viverito's own voters, have had their voices and roles diminished before the City Council compared to the contributors to Councilmember Mark-Viverito's three campaign finance accounts. This opens the door to lobbyists and insiders, like The Advance Group, Pitta Bishop, Mr. Levenson, Mr. Del Giorno, Ms. Hirsch, NY-CLASS, and other Super PAC-funded groups, to have greater access to Councilmember Mark-Viverito than mere voters, especially voters, who were not wealthy enough to be campaign contributors.

Besides determining whether there was illegality in each of the provision of unpaid lobbying services and the possible coordination of independent expenditures, city and state campaign finance regulators must deal with how "compliance apathy" and "regulatory apathy" have created Swiss cheese out of city and state campaign finance and ethics regulations. But as has been noted before, city campaign finance regulators answer to the mayor and to the Council speaker, leaving voters to conclude that city campaign finance regulators are not independent enough over the public officials whose campaign finance accounts they are charged to regulate.

The politicized Campaign Finance Board spent the first municipal election cycle under the undue influence of Citizens United by seemingly persecuting John Liu's campaign, but not focusing on the obviously corruptive role of Super PAC's.

Councilmember Mark-Viverito was allowed to keep her public matching dollars, even though she opened three campaign finance accounts through two different jurisdictions, but former Comptroller John Liu was denied public matching dollars when his mayoral campaign was beset by controversy when it was reported that his campaign may have received "straw donations," an illegal tactic that masks the true identity of donors in an attempt to game the city's public matching dollars. Mr. Liu's campaign challenged the allegations, but his campaign's ex-treasurer and a former fund-raiser were charged with wrong-doing. Martin Connor, Mr. Liu's campaign finance attorney, acknowledged issues with 35 out of more than 6,300 donations, but the Campaign Finance Board, in an unusual move, denied any matching money to Mr. Liu's mayoral campaign in a move that did not seem proportional to the problem, if it was, indeed, isolated to only a small percentage of donations at the same time when, for example, Crains Insider was reporting serious questions with the finances of some Super PAC's operating during the same election cycle.

The impact of the Campaign Finance Board's controversial decision essentially put an end to Mr. Liu's mayoral campaign. Because he was denied matching money, totaling approximately $3.5 million, he was put in a "severe financial disadvantage," The New York Times reported, "because he will now have significantly less money to buy television advertising." To the last, Mr. Liu challenged the decision by city campaign finance regulators, because he said that his campaign committed no wrong-doing, and prosecutors never had proof of wrong-doing against he himself. "There’s no question that this weakens my campaign. For the last couple of years, I have taken body blow after body blow," Mr. Liu said after the Campaign Finance Board's decision. Many astute political observers never understood why The New York Times metropolitan reporters seemed obsessed with taking down Mr. Liu's campaign, since it was The New York Times, which first reported these allegations in 2011 after having sent reporters to stalk Mr. Liu's donors, and The New York Times never seemed to let up, in spite of the questions being isolated to such a small proportion of donations. Less than three weeks after the Campaign Finance Board dealt its lethal blow to Mr. Liu's mayoral campaign, the editors of The New York Times endorsed Mr. Liu's rival, former City Council Speaker Christine Quinn in the Democratic mayoral primary. Speaker Quinn, who had a role in approving the board members of the Campaign Finance Board, was said to have a close working relationship with the editors of The New York Times, some activists said.

2014-03-08 Moreland Commission - Follow-Up E-Mail Re Loopholes

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