Saturday, May 17, 2014

With no effort at reform after past missteps, Dirk McCall keeps exploiting the broken political system

After separating from Gay Men's Health Crisis, Dirk McCall now works for Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr., in a post many see as a soft landing political operative post.

After separating from GMHC at the end of last year, Dirk McCall, former communications officer for GMHC, now works as the external affairs director for the office of Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr.

Mr. McCall was the former executive director of the now-defunct Bronx Community Pride Center. The Bronx center closed following Mr. McCall's stint as executive director after a prior executive director, Lisa Winters, was accused of stealing more than $143,000 from the non-profit. Prior to that, Mr. McCall worked as a campaign operative for several politicians, and he was a former president of the Stonewall Democratic Club, the city's largest LGBT political organization. Prior to that, Mr. McCall worked for the shady real estate lobbyist, James Capalino. Given Mr. McCall's career pattern with many of Manhattan's permanent government insiders, he has learned the ropes of what it means to protect the broken political system from community demands for reform. Because no matter how many "change" elections New Yorkers vote for, or how many "progressive" campaign promises that voters hear, the New York City government keeps on working only for permanent government insider-operatives, their lobbyists, and the clients of those lobbyists.

Mr. McCall's post with Borough President Diaz allows Mr. McCall to remain firmly ensconced within other permanent government insider-operatives in New York City, inspite of his uneven record.

When he worked at GMHC, Mr. McCall once attended a meeting with representatives of the Harlem Ballroom community. Ballroom activists were upset that GMHC was, among other complaints, appropriating Ballroom culture in New York City for its own financial gain, at the expense of Ballroom houses and their artistic members. Mr. McCall did nothing to resolve Ballroom community concerns, leading Ballroom activists to call for Mr. McCall's ouster from GMHC. To this day, the Ballroom community views GMHC with distrust over the way agency officials, including Mr. McCall, disrespected the Ballroom community. One sign of that distrust was expressed when the Ballroom community called for a boycott of GMHC's Latex Ball last year. Mr. McCall's separation from GMHC followed years of controversies at the agency, including how the agency wasted so much money on fundraising expenses in connections with its annual AIDS Walk event and how the agency lost so much money on a controversial move to new office space. Despite the controversies that many viewed to be mistakes by former GMHC CEO Marjorie Hill, Mr. McCall never demonstrated autonomous leadership by showing a different vision for the agency. Instead, as criticism piled up on Ms. Hill for the agency's financial losses, Mr. McCall reportedly arranged for Ms. Hill to receive an award from the Winter Pride gala organized by the Queens Pride Committee. At times, he appeared to be working as Ms. Hill's personal publicist rather than for fighting to serve the agency's best interest. At GMHC, Mr. McCall's philosophy was go along to get along.

In-between Mr. McCall's stints in political posts, some government reform activists question whether Mr. McCall uses his jobs with LGBT community groups as temporary jobs until he gets another political post. When government reform activists try to build support amongst community groups to press elected officials for reforms, the reason why some community groups refrain from building public pressure for reform may be that these community groups are populated by political operatives trying to maintain good networking relationships with elected officials. Political operative-insiders, who work in the non-profit world, are always on the look-out for opportunities to land another well-paying and prestigious political appointment.

And now, after years of cultivating an expansive network of relationships across political and LGBT community groups, Mr. McCall is using those connections to prop up the political career of Borough President Diaz. The political motivations behind this partnership are unclear.

That Mr. McCall keeps bouncing back, no matter how corrupt the finances of community groups like the Bronx Community Pride Center and GMHC are shown to be, is a testament to how the broken political system keeps rewarding political insiders, who know to leave well enough alone. Like a cat jumping off of a hot tin roof, Mr. McCall always lands on his feet.

Mr. McCall is safe at his new post all the way up in The Bronx as this year's AIDS Walk continues to show that GMHC is having trouble turning itself around. The agency's chief fundraiser resigned after the year-to-year cash inflows from AIDS Walk appear to be collapsing. Critics of Mr. McCall don't fault him for making mistakes like any human, but, rather, for the long string of mistakes that leave the LGBT community and voters having to pick up the pieces left by selfish political operative-insiders. So long as critical community groups that underpin the LGBT community in New York City keep hiring from the same corrupt pool of permanent political insider-operatives, it shouldn't be too long before GMHC ends up like the Bronx Pride Community Center : closed.

The only glimmer of hope that government reform activists have is that in the last year, activists were able to oust Ms. Hill from her post at GMHC and former Council Speaker Christine Quinn from public office. There is a hunger within the community for deeper reforms. For New York City government and its key non-profit groups to embrace reforms, activists wonder whether the only way to bring about change is to continue pressing to oust permanent government insider-operatives, like Mr. McCall.

Friday, May 16, 2014

Looking for a donor to make a challenge grant to ACT UP-Paris's crowdfunding campaign

The HIV/AIDS organization ACT UP-Paris has successfully completed an online crowdfunding campaign to raise it's goal of €15,000. Actually, they have exceeded their goal by about €3,000 as of late Friday evening.

Would any philanthropic donors be interested in issuing a challenge grant conditioned on ACT UP-Paris's supporters continuing to raise funds in excess of their goal ? An example of a challenge grant would be a donor challenging ACT UP-Paris's supporters to raise up to €5,000 in excess of the group's original goal, at which point a donor could match 1:1 or 2:1 of this excess amount ? If a donor would pledge to match excess contributions at a ratio of 2:1, this would mean that if ACT UP-Paris's supporters raised a total of €20,000, then a challenge grant donor would look at making a donation of €10,000 to ACT UP-Paris (or, effectively doubling the excess of €5,000) ? This is only a suggestion, and a challenge grant donor would be able to suggest alternative matching ratios and caps on their total contribution commitment.

Any American-based donors interested in issuing a challenge grant, or making a completely private contribution, can contact the group directly by phone at their Paris office : 011 (33) 1 49 29 44 75.

As of Friday evening, 20 days remain before ACT UP-Paris's crowdfunding campaign comes to a close. Contributions can still be made before then through the French crowdfunding platform of KISS KISS BANK BANK.

Please read this very moving essay written by Christophe Martet about the historical impact of ACT UP-Paris.

IBS Support Group in New York City

PUBLISHED : FRI, 16 MAY 2014, 07:30 PM
UPDATED : MON, 28 JUL 2014, 11:09 PM

If anybody is interested in meeting to talk about IBS treatment in New York City, please contact me. You can e-mail me at : lflores22 (at) gmail (dot) com -- thanks.

Over the course of many years, I've had no luck with a long string of gastroenterologists. Some gastroenterologists are useless. I've seen 5 or 6 gastroenterologists in the last many years. My last gastroenterologist was the most caring of them all. We have to change the mindset of doctors : we won't accept and don't deserve to be jilted by the medical community like this.

One idea that people should support is writing to your Congressional representative, asking them to co-sponsor the Functional Gastrointestinal and Motility Disorders Research Enhancement Act of 2013 (HR 842). HR 842 is supported by members of both political parties and is a revenue-neutral bill. Through this legislation, Congress can direct the National Institutes of Health to allocate existing discretionary resources specifically to IBS and other functional gastrointestinal and motility disorders, which collectively affect about 25% of Americans. Military service members and veterans are at disproportionately high risk for functional gastrointestinal disorders like IBS. Another idea would be to help garner support to enact a state-wide restroom access law in New York.

This video helps to advocate for support for restroom access for people with GI disorders and diseases. Please contact your New York State Assemblymembers to support the Crohn's and Colitis Fairness Act, also known as the restroom access bill.

Why a support going doing medical advocacy makes sense

From an online community group, I got the sense that it seems like some doctors hesitate to offer treatments that actually make improvements to the lives of people with IBS. There are many reasons for this. Some of the reasons are complex and require organized advocacy, other reasons are simple enough that could probably be solved by just a handful of people. Here are some observations/ideas that I've collected from doing research and conducting interviews with some doctors and with some other people living with IBS :

  • All general practitioners and some GI doctors don't have viable solutions for people with IBS. So much research is coming out on gut bacteria, and I have inquired with doctors about how can people with IBS receive treatments that are informed by this new information about gut bacteria. Specifically, I said that there are some procedures that are approved for people with FGID more severe than IBS, for which people with IBS may benefit from having received, but which are not yet approved. How can people with IBS get approved for these and other experimental procedures ? I was told that experimental procedures can be given to patients in a process to get them approved, but that process is through clinical trials. I asked one doctor how do we start clinical trials for people with IBS ? My doctor told me that we need funding for clinical trials. When I asked how much, my doctor would not say, except that the doctor alluded to major amounts of money. Therefore, any support group for people with IBS has to take the long-view that we need to advocate for funding for clinical trials as a way to speed up the deliver of new treatments for people with IBS, along with the process that could get these new and possibly other treatments approved for more people. The doctor heard what I was saying, but she said that clinical trials would take a long time, and that for right now, there are no immediate solutions, excepting for the use of a few known medications that have already made the rounds amongst the people living with IBS.
  • From one online community that I had briefly belonged to, it seemed like everybody went online to complain about symptoms for which there are no known treatments. As a support group, we can offer each other support, but we should not find it acceptable to hear that there's nothing that can be done, and we should strive to be more than just a place where people complain. One doctor told me that there are some treatments for other known diseases that are still not where we want to be. Therefore, people with IBS are not different than people with other incurable diseases. The challenge for a new support group based in New York City would be to offer the community the right amount of care and support, along with focusing our energy toward finding better treatment solutions.
  • One doctor recommended yoga and relation exercises, but when I asked how do yoga and relaxation help to rebalance our gut bacteria, one of my doctors could not answer my question. As we seek alternative therapies, I think there have to be doctors or advocates to make space for non-traditional therapies, but still hold a space for advancements in rebalancing our gut bacteria. If we can get this support group off the ground, we need to find a doctor or other medical professional, who can help give our support group a grounded medical source of information that has a sensibility for the larger vision about what successful treatment looks like.
  • Another idea that can be examined is if a database of "better" gastroenterologists would be in order.
  • If nothing else, we could create a face-to-face support group for each other, which in and of itself would be great. Some FGID groups, like the Crohn's & Colitis Foundation of America, seem to exclude people with IBS. So, a support group that just meets for people with IBS would be a breakthrough.

If anybody in the New York City area wants to gather and discuss how we can press the medical establishment to offer alternative IBS treatments and to support greater medical research, please let me know. You can e-mail me at : lflores22 (at) gmail (dot) com -- thanks.

Thursday, May 15, 2014

Register for the Left Forum to attend the police reform "Veal Pen" Workshop

How Can NYC Police Reform Activists Break Free from the Veal Pen ?

Veal Pen Workshop - The Left Forum 2014 photo VealPenGraphicFacebookEvent_zpse9d5225c.jpg

Workshop : How Can NYC Police Reform Activists Break Free from the Veal Pen ?
Date : Saturday, May 31, 2014
Time : 03:20 p.m. - 04:50 p.m.
Place : Session 3, Room 1.92, 540 West 59 Street, New York, NY 10019

Registration is required to attend the Left Forum 2014 : Register here.

Jane Hamsher appropriated the term “veal pen” to describe how the Obama administration subjugates liberal groups and activists in order to demobilize political pressure for reform from the Democratic left. Join us for an intensive workshop designed to challenge groups and activists, who have voluntarily de-escalated political pressure for police reform following the election of New York Mayor Bill de Blasio. To demobilize some police reform groups, lobbyists loyal to the mayor now control the media relations for these reform groups. What has been removed from the messaging from these groups has been the urgency for reform that was present before the mayor won last year’s election. In this workshop, designed for experienced activists, we will undertake a specific action and then strategize about how to create new opportunities for organizing in the area of police reform against a backdrop of this new political landscape. In a real "Veal Pen," the bodies of calves atrophy by design. Under the de Blasio administration, which is sensitive to political pressure from the Democratic left as is President Obama, activists’ ideas for police reform are meant to atrophy by design. Since this workshop is designed to overcome frustrations faced by activists, who refuse to be demobilized, the rigorous activities are intended to stretch participants’ ideas and to draw attention to the Veal Pen.

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Forty years after Rep. Abzug filed Equality Act of 1974, LGBT elected officials lack such vision

40th Anniversary of the filing of the proposed Equality Act of 1974

From Queer Nation NY :

Forty years ago today, Bella Abzug quietly introduced legislation in the House that would have added sexual orientation to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. With a single reference in the Congressional Record reading “H.R. 14752. A bill to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex, marital status, and sexual orientation, and for other purposes; to the Committee on the Judiciary,” Abzug made the very bold statement that lesbian, gay, and bisexual people are entitled to the same rights and protections that are extended to every other American. That statement is as bold and as true today as it was 40 years ago.

The next year, Abzug took to the House floor to introduce the legislation again.

“This bill would insure that gay individuals would be entitled to jobs, to housing, to education, to utilization of public accommodations, to participation in federally assisted programs, on the same basis as other Americans and would be provided with a legal remedy if such rights and opportunities were denied to them,” the New York Democrat said in 1975.

"What is at issue here is equal rights for all Americans,” she said. “Equal protection of the laws and respect for the rights of individuals are fundamental principles of our Constitution. I have long been a proponent of measures which would insure that these principles are guaranteed for all individuals -- women as well as men, married individuals as well as those who are unmarried, people of every nationality, ethnic groups, race, or religion. Likewise, sexual orientation should be no barrier to equal treatment under the law."

In 2014, our political leaders lack such a vision. They consider only what they believe can be won using focus group-tested rhetoric and slick ad campaigns. Their views are driven by polling and what the Democratic and Republican parties will tolerate. And so they will spend millions to enact legislation such as the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) that only bans employment discrimination and has religious exemptions that are so broad that our leading legal groups have refused to support it.

What remains true, whether any poll produces this result or not, is that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans are equal in every way and in all things to every other American. The sole exception to this principle, which is rooted in the founding documents of this nation and in the founding of our community, is that we are not equal before the law.

ENDA will not make us equal before the law. On the contrary, its religious exemption will enshrine discrimination in federal law and guarantee that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people will continue to experience discrimination in employment.

Only comprehensive federal civil rights legislation will make us equal under the law. It is time for us to seek that and to win that.

Anybody But Quinn Super PAC donor deflects questions about FBI investigation into campaign corruption

"I don’t have any comment on any of that."

Anybody-But-Quinn-Super-PAC-Cover-Up

Mayor Bill de Blasio's cousin, John Wilhelm, was the former leader of the union, UNITE HERE! The union made a large contribution of $175,000 to the animal rights group New Yorkers for Clean, Livable, and Safe Streets (NY-CLASS) on June 1, and, two days later, NY-CLASS regifted the same large contribution to a Super PAC that was funding a flood of TV attack ads against former City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who was the leading Democratic mayoral primary candidate at the time. When Mr. Wilhelm was asked by The New York Daily News to identify who directed UNITE HERE! to make the donation to NY-CLASS, Mr. Wilhelm replied that he had "no comment."

The size and timing of the union's campaign contribution are enough to raise questions about coordination between the mayor's cousin and the anti-Quinn attack Super PAC, but the way that UNITE HERE! structured the donation to pass-through NY-CLASS first in order to get to the anti-Quinn attack Super PAC raises further legal problems, because the pass-through contribution was cloaked in "anonymity for months," The New York Daily News reported. NY-CLASS wasn't required to disclose UNITE HERE!'s contribution until NY-CLASS "began its own campaign spending, an event that occurred on Sept. 7, three days before the Sept. 10 mayoral primary." The $175,000 was practically hidden from voters and activists autonomously working to defeat former Speaker Quinn's mayoral campaign, because NY-CLASS "disclosed the contributions on Sept. 17, 10 days after the primary," The New York Daily News's report added. NY-CLASS's questionable finances have been the subject of a series of reports by Crain’s New York Business reporter Chris Bragg.

The union UNITE HERE! last triggered controversy when its former political director, Maura Keaney, was raising campaign donations from unions on behalf of former Speaker Quinn, even as Ms. Keany was working on municipal legislation involving unions. Ms. Keaney's actions were a "potential violation of the city’s conflicts of interest law," The New York Times reported at the time. At the conclusion of the city's investigation, Ms. Keaney was slapped on the wrist with a $2,500 fine to dispose of the corruption investigation into her political machinations. To dissipate political blow-back to Speaker Quinn, Ms. Keaney served on former Mayor Michael Bloomberg's 2009 reelection race. After Mayor Bloomberg won that election by a slim margin, he paid Ms. Keaney a lottery-sized bonus of $150,000, which more than made up for her ethics fine.

According to federal law, it is illegal for Super PAC's to coordinate their activities with official campaigns of politicians. Does handing off the same, sizable campaign contribution, apparently timed just right, through an intermediary meet the scrutiny test to prove coordination ?

Both NY-CLASS and the anti-Quinn Super PAC shared the same political lobbying firm, The Advance Group, which is headed by Scott Levenson, a political operative who further shares connections with Mayor de Blasio, given their long history of supporting the Working Families Party, one of the mayor's key political supporters. In the last election, Mr. Levenson further attracted scrutiny for possibly coordinating the 501(c)(4) political expenditures of NY-CLASS and other Super PAC monies with official political campaigns that he also managed in his capacity as a campaign consultant. The anti-Quinn Super PAC was known as NYC Is Not For Sale, but it organized under an astroturf campaign known as "Anybody But Quinn."

Monday, May 12, 2014

Fifty years after Griswold v. Connecticut, NYPD to accommodate safer sex, but stops short of recognizing privacy rights to contraception [UPDATED]

2013-04-11 Protest against Christine Quinn - Condom Banner photo Image_zps30c06990.jpg

At a nighttime protest in Jackson Heights, Queens, last year, activists held up a banner with a giant drawing of condom locked in a police handcuff to represent the NYPD's criminalization of the use of contraception.

New York Police Department to stop criminalizing use of contraception -- in some cases

Advocates for sex workers and improved public health won a major concession from the New York Police Department's on-going oppression against citizens when police officials announced that they would stop seizing reproductive contraceptives, namely, condoms, as evidence of criminality in police crackdowns against sex workers.

Police announced the change in policy after years of demands from activists that the police were stigmatizing the use of condoms, so much so that health officials had long criticized the police practice as undermining their efforts to protect sex workers from disease. In fact, during the 15 years that former Council Speaker Christine Quinn was in public office, she was the city's most visible female and LGBT politician, and she never made any advancement on overturning the police criminalization of condoms. Indeed, under her incumbency, police biases against trans and gender non-conforming citizens extended the anti-condom dragnet against sex workers to include members of the LGBT community. In several media reports, LGBT New Yorkers attested to being harassed, arrested, and stigmatized by the police for innocently carrying contraception -- in direct violation of their privacy rights. What is more, many HIV/AIDS activists had long objected to the police's stigmatization of the use of condoms as flying in the face of advice from city health officials, who advocated their use for safer sex as a way to decrease the incidence of sexually-transmitted diseases and to prevent unwanted pregnancies. For years, if New Yorkers were caught carrying condoms, the prophylactics could be used as criminal evidence in sex worker prosecution cases -- even though the city's Department of Health distributed condoms to all New Yorkers to promote safer sex and greater public health.

In announcing their change in policy today, NYPD officials carved out a backdoor loophole to retain the right to use condoms as evidence in sex trafficking cases, however.

The nominal changes in NYPD condom policy, being spun under the guise as an advancement to public health, comes almost 50 years since the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in the landmark 1965 case of Griswold v. Connecticut that overturned a state law that had criminalized the use of contraception. In The New York Times article posted to their Web site, there was no mention by police as according any reasoning in the policy change to respect New Yorkers' right to privacy. Nor was it mentioned whether police would stop menacing LGBT New Yorkers as part of its new compromised policy. In respect of reproductive rights, it was never explained how police departments across the United States could opt out of compliance in the first place with the Griswold decision.

The partial backpedal on the condom policy is the NYPD's latest half-measure at reform since the election of Mayor Bill de Blasio. Mr. de Blasio campaigned to end the "stop-and-frisk era," but the mayor contradicted his campaign promise by making a regressive appointment of William Bratton as the city's new police commissioner. Commissioner Bratton has promised to continue to use the controversial police tacking known as stop-and-frisk, which has been ruled to be unconstitutional for its racist impact on the community. Mr. de Blasio also campaigned on the promise to stop the arrests of New Yorkers carrying small amounts of marijuana, but Commissioner Bratton's arrest rate for marijuana possession is actually up from the rate of his predecessor, Raymond Kelly. The NYPD has also promised to disband a controversial demographics unit, which targeted New York's Muslim community, but the police department continues to its practice of racial and religious profiling, and surveillance, of Muslims. As Mayor de Blasio tries to resolve many outstanding litigation cases against the police department over its killing of unarmed, innocent civilians and its policy of using brutality against New Yorkers, the de Blasio administration seems to be neglecting long outstanding cases of minority plaintiffs, such as the Central Park 5, further causing tensions over the new administration's insensitivity to the concerns of people long oppressed by the police. Since Mayor de Blasio supports Commissioner Bratton's "broken windows theory" of policing, the NYPD is expected to continue to target its aggressive policing tactics against the city's poor and people of color.

The government compromises its citizens' right to privacy in the new surveillance state, but what happens to citizens' other fundamental rights that are predicated on privacy ?

Meghan Newcomer, a brilliant future lawyer graduating this year from Fordham Law School, published a "Pelican Brief" of sorts last year in the Fordham Law Review entitled, "Can Condoms be Compelling ? Examining the State Interest in Confiscating Condoms from Suspected Sex Workers," about the criminal crackdown by police departments in New York City, Washington, DC, and Los Angeles against sex workers carrying condoms. In Ms. Newcomer's legal analysis, she examined the government's burden in proving it could violate the fundamental right to contraception, and she found that the government could not achieve a compelling state reason to do so. Ms. Newcomer expertly framed her legal reasoning around the constitutional privacy rights established under the landmark Griswold case and other related rulings and laws. After examining the law, Ms. Newcomer concluded in her article that :

Because the Supreme Court has identified a right for all individuals to be free from state interference in their choice of whether to use contraceptive devices, state actors confiscating condoms from suspected sex workers infringes on that constitutionally protected privacy right. The government’s lack of a compelling state interest in taking condoms, coupled with the failure to narrowly tailor the policy so as to involve the least restrictive infringement of the right, means that the conduct cannot survive strict scrutiny. For this reason, New York City, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles are enforcing unconstitutional policies and must stop confiscating condoms from suspected sex workers.

There are more issues that need review, which were not the focus of Ms. Newcomer's fascinating article in the Fordham Law Review. Since New York City officials, privacy rights advocates, and women's rights groups are not raising alarms about the privacy violations of the police department's condom policy, are citizens basically consenting to the government's gutting of the Griswold decision ?

In the time since the Supreme Court issued its ruling in the Griswold case, the impact of the court's decision has been unmistakable in expanding constitutional rights to privacy in subsequent jurisprudence. Prior to Griswold, there was no court case that found a privacy right guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution. After Griswold, the fundamental right to privacy was found from the court's interpretation of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Further landmark Supreme Court case decisions, such as Roe v. Wade, Bowers v. Hardwick, and Lawrence v. Texas, the latter which expanded Bowers by overturning its narrower interpretation, were made possible because of legal precedent that citizens' privacy was protected by the due process clause.

With police departments essentially given discretion to opt out of the law established by the Griswold decision, advocates for police reform are focused on the public health aspects of the dangerous condom policy. Meanwhile, silent are citizens, who appear to be consenting to the wholesale undermining of reproductive freedoms and LGBT civil rights, in addition to the right to privacy established by Griswold. As the government conducts mass warrantless surveillance of its citizens to the outrage of voters, the state doesn't have to go to great lengths to legally violate citizens' privacy rights if the state can first undermine the case law establishing citizens' fundamental rights to privacy. With crime rates so low, why are police departments targeting sex workers carrying condoms ? Perhaps it is to sufficiently restrict citizens' rights under the Griswold case in order to serve the government's "compelling interest" to conduct its unconstitutional surveillance activities. If the state can chip away at privacy rights just enough, it won't technically be violating its citizens' fundamental rights if the state can, ipso facto, succeed at gutting Griswold.

As the government wears down Griswold, where does that leave citizens' rights to an abortion under Roe and to further rights to privacy and substantive due process under the Fourteenth Amendment under Lawrence ? What about the long social movement to end discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity to which Lawrence helped to give critical mass ?

In the face of dooms-day science, The New York Times continues to publish pro-fracking editorial propaganda

PUBLISHED : WED, 30 APR 2014, 09:56 AM
UPDATED : MON, 12 MAY 2014, 03:30 PM

Science keeps showing mankind that we face of a dooms-day once the West Antarctic ice sheet collapses and melts, but The New York Times keeps publishing pro-fracking propaganda in its editorial pages, making one wonder if the newspaper's new angel investment objective must secretly involve investing in oil and gas companies as a way to make money, because obviously its editors have decided that it can't turn a profit while remaining objective about the environmental catastrophe caused by fracking and other environment-destroying industries. The newspaper's latest installment is an editorial co-written by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Environmental Defense Fund veal pen "Yes Man" Fred Krupp in which both men advocate fracking without one single mention of the earthquake consequences of the controversial and poisonous gas extraction procedure.

After many European nations panicked over Russia's hostility toward the Ukraine, threatening Russian petroleum sales and shipments to Europe, editors of The New York Times jumped on the opportunity to again advocate for more fracking in North America, so that gas could be shipped across the Atlantic to Europe, going so far as portraying fracking as a tool of diplomacy and rendering a financial windfall to the dirty and dangerous fracking industry.

In spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary available in 2012, reporters for The New York Times proclaimed in January 2013 that fracking was safe in New York state.

Burning more fossil fuels will only further cause more greenhouse gases to build up in the atmosphere, leading to global warming, warns the National Wildlife Federation.

Sunday, May 11, 2014

Did New York State Election Officials Create a Dual Mandate Loophole to Campaign Finance Caps ? [UPDATED]


SPECIAL NEWS UPDATE: SUN, 11 MAY 2014, 09:30 PM

Now that federal prosecutors have empaneled a grand jury to investigate political corruption, all of a sudden Gov. Andrew Cuomo is pushing changes to the state campaign finance system -- but only after he amassed a $30 million war chest for this year's reelection race.

But the governor wants the state to adopt the New York City campaign finance model, even though this model easily allows for unscrupulous candidates and Super PAC's to engage in campaign finance corruption.

In spectacular articles in The New York Daily News, it was reported the FBI is investigating a Super PAC for possibly violating the law. These articles portrayed former Council Speaker Christine Quinn as the victim, even though Speaker Quinn weakened campaign finance laws in the New York City model.

Christine Quinn's replacement as Council speaker, Councilmember Melissa Mark-Viverito, collected her public matching dollars from the New York City model, then she opened another campaign finance account to go around restrictions of the New York City model.

The only answer real campaign finance reform advocates should support is a ban on all private campaign donations, and, in its place, 100% public financing of campaigns with heightened oversight. Any reasonable person can see how the New York City campaign finance model can be gamed, but maybe Gov. Cuomo can't see straight ?


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

Scott Levenson NY-CLASS Christine Quinn Bill de Blasio FBI Investigation into Campaign Corruption photo 2014-04-25TheNewYorkDailyNewsFBIReport_zps189d95ac.png

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)


PUBLISHED : THURS, 27 MAR 2014, 05:30 PM
UPDATED : SUN, 11 MAY 2014, 01:30 PM

By Approving Double Electioneering Accounts For Melissa Mark-Viverito, Did Election Officials Create a Dual Mandate Loophole to Campaign Finance Caps ?

Last year, New York City Councilmember Melissa Mark-Viverito raised $149,151 in private donations for her primary reëlection race. Because she remained under the $168,000 cap on private donations set by city campaign finance regulations, the New York City Campaign Finance Board granted Councilmember Mark-Viverito's campaign $158,502 in public matching dollars, according to the Campaign Finance Board's formula. City campaign finance rules require that all donations and in-kind contributions to political campaigns be disclosed to the Campaign Finance Board. But last year was the first time when the corrupt Citizens United Supreme Court ruling opened the floodgates of outside independent expenditure Super PAC money in the New York City municipal elections, and Councilmember Mark-Viverito received the benefit of about $26,868 in outside Super PAC spending in a super-heated primary election campaign ; she won her primary bid with barely 36% of the vote. If any of that extra money, which Councilmember Mark-Viverito desperately needed to defeat her five other challengers, was coordinated with her campaign, then she might have exceeded her cap on fundraising.

Since Councilmember Mark-Viverito's district is overwhelmingly Democratic, she faced no serious challenge from the Republican or Liberal party candidates after she won the Democratic primary. Having succeeded at being reëlected, she initiated a semi-private campaign to lobby her fellow councilmembers in order so that she could become selected as the next City Council speaker. Although the spirit of campaign finance laws is to regulate and decrease the corruptive influence of money and lobbyists in elections, Councilmember Mark-Viverito opened a second campaign account during the same election cycle in order to hire a team of lobbyists, this time for the Council speaker race. Instead of campaigning before voters, Councilmember Mark-Viverito sought to persuade her fellow councilmembers to vote for her in the Council speaker race. She also used the second campaign account to make patronage-like donations to other political supporters. Traditionally, the Council speaker race has been an "insider's game," where political party heads, operatives, lobbyists, and special interest operate in backroom meetings to barter for support, obscuring from public scrutiny the true extend of the negotiations that go into determining who becomes the Council speaker. True to tradition, much of the political machinations that went into winning the Council speakership for Councilmember Mark-Viverito were never transparent to the public.

Melissa Mark-Viverito photo melissa_mark-viverito_3_zpscc49b72b.jpg

Because of the caps on fundraising, Councilmember Mark-Viverito could not open that second electioneering campaign account through city election regulators at the Campaign Finance Board. Instead, she opened that second electioneering campaign account through state election regulators at the New York State Board of Elections. Subject to no cap in fundraising and ineligible for public matching dollars, that second electioneering campaign finance account allowed Councilmember Mark-Viverito to raise another $100,828 for the Council speaker race. In addition to the resources afforded to Ms. Mark-Viverito by this other $100,000 in contributions, she also benefitted from having employed the services of The Advance Group lobbying firm for free. Councilmember Mark-Viverito also benefited from the lobbying services provided by Alison Hirsch, a union political operative. Ms. Hirsch had been retained by the Progressive Caucus of council members. In an apparent example of how inconsistent the Campaign Finance Board is, it's unknown how the Progressive Caucus paid for Ms. Hirsch's lobbying services or who made campaign contributions to the Progressive Caucus in order for Ms. Hirsch to be paid for her lobbying services, or whether the Progressive Caucus was required to establish a legal political committee with state campaign finance regulators.

How could city and state campaign finance regulators condone two electioneering accounts during the same election cycle for one City Councilmember when all other councilmembers were subjected to a cap in fundraising and limited to one campaign finance account ?

The only way the Campaign Finance Board could approve Councilmember Mark-Viverito's use of two electioneering accounts during the same election cycle would be if the Campaign Finance Board were affirming that New York City would treat a City Councilmember and any leadership post held by that Councilmember as two separate, public offices, also known as a dual mandate. But does a City Council leadership post rise to the level of being treated as a "public office" separate and distinct from the underlying Councilmember's public office ?

On background, a supervisor at the New York State Board of Elections was contacted about two questions : (i) is it legal for an elected official to hold more than one simultaneous publicly-elected office, and (ii) how do state campaign finance regulators treat a second campaign finance account for a candidate, when the same candidate is subject to caps for a first campaign account. In a phone conversation, the supervisor admitted that these questions were too complex. "You could have three election lawyers in a room, and you would get three different answers," the supervisor said. The questions were separately submitted as a FOIL request to the state Board of Elections. Although the request sought the legal reasoning that would allow the Board of Elections to grant Councilmember Mark-Viverito the right to open a second, unregulated campaign finance account, the Board of Elections provided a response nine days after the request was made, describing the underlying request for information as not a "request for records." Instead, the Board of Elections passed the buck to their legal staff. "We have forwarded your request to the Counsel’s Office for their reply," the Board of Elections response read, in part. The Counsel's Office never provided a response. In a further discussion with a Board of Elections official, the official stated that there is no specific statue that prohibits a candidate for elected office to open a state election account for a Council leadership race. When the official was asked how could a campaign finance regulatory authority enable politicians to keep opening serial campaign accounts, when the very act of perpetual, unregulated fundraising violates the spirit of campaign finance regulations, the elections official clung to the reasoning of an absence of a prohibited statute. Even after it was pointed out that press reports questioned the way one political candidate, Councilmember Mark-Viverito, used a state Board of Elections account to finance post-Election Day campaign activities that are otherwise distinctly prohibited by the campaign finance regulatory authority nominally tasked to supervise municipal officeholders, the state elections official clung to the reasoning of an absence of a prohibited statute. The state elections official said that as far as the State Board of Elections knew, the state campaign account established by Councilmember Mark-Viverito was for a race in 2017 cycle. Consequently, the FOIL request was modified to request "copies (preferably in .PDF format, if available ; if not, in physical form) of : any agency application or designation document(s) ; any campaign committee formation documents ; list(s) of campaign committee officers ; written certifications, affidavits, or attestations ; committee registration and information document(s) ; committee authorization status document(s) ; and all other required due diligence documents filed or submitted in respect of any campaign committee(s) for the political candidate Melissa Mark-Viverito that correspond with the establishment of these two BOE campaign finance accounts : Filer ID's : C02515 and C02516." In response, the Board of Elections provided the following documents : Committee Registration : Treasurer and Bank Information, Committee Authorization Status, and Candidate's Authorization For A Committee To Make All Campaign Financial Disclosures. The forms submitted to the Board of Elections, which were signed and attested to by Councilmember Mark-Viverito and her campaign treasurer, Randolph Mark, indicated at first that the campaign committee being formed by Councilmember Mark-Viverito was going to be for an office "TBD" with a date of election "TBD." The date of election was later scratched out and replaced with "2017." Even though it has been widely reported that Councilmember used her state Board of Elections account to finance her Council speakership race, the state Board of Elections refuses to acknowledge that Councilmember Mark-Viverito's campaign committee deliberately deceived the state's campaign finance regulatory authority, and so far the city campaign finance regulatory authority refuses to admit that its public matching dollar system was gamed by Councilmember Mark-Viverito. This is even after many scandals, where politicians, their teams of lobbyists, and questionable donors continue to game the system. Today, the Editorial Board of The New York Daily News opined that if political campaigns can scam the public matching dollar system of the Campaign Finance Board, imagine what kind of campaign finance fraud can be perpetuated through the Board of Elections, if the state's regulator adopted a public matching dollar system ? The Editorial Board singled out how the Board of Elections is a compromised regulatory body : ". . . the see-no-evil Board of Elections . . . is party-controlled and paralyzed in the face of runaway lawbreaking." In an environment where city and state campaign finance regulators don’t even care to reign in the corruptive role of big money donors, special interests, or lobyists, a candidate can do whatever it takes, even violating the law outright in order to keep gaming the broken campaign finance system in New York. Against this backdrop of corruption, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that he was dissolving a state commission that was investigating public corruption, thereby decreasing the amount of regulatory scrutiny on corrupt candidates, donors, and lobbyists at the very time when it’s most needed.

There's nothing to stop shady politicians from opening never-ending electioneering accounts or setting up secretive 501(c)(4) organizations to violate the spirit of campaign finance regulations.

A dual mandate is a controversial practise that allows politicians to hold more than one simultaneous elected office. The practise was banned in New Jersey by then Gov. Jon Corzine in 1992 over concerns that such politicians would create conflicts of interest in government. In examples that were noted by The New York Times, sometimes a municipal official would also concurrently hold a state-level office. But in Councilmember Mark-Viverito's case, she is holding what she considers two simultaneous offices : a seat on the City Council subject to a city campaign finance regulations and a leadership post on the same City Council, which is not subject to any city campaign finance regulations. It is said that until recently, Councilmember Mark-Viverito was also a District Leader of the state Democratic Party. She had only won the District Leader race last September, but she reportedly resigned her position, but the Web site for Manhattan Democratic Party still shows her holding the position. It’s not known why Councilmember Mark-Viverito resigned her position, if other elected officials hold a publicly-elected office at the same time when they serve as a District Leader. Although a District Leader is still publicly elected by members of that political party during that political party’s primary race, a District Leader is not a government office. For example, Keith Wright, the chair of the Manhattan Democratic Party and a District Leader, is also a state assemblyman. A search for Councilmember Mark-Viverito’s name with state campaign finance regulators showed no state campaign finance account for her District Leader race. It apparently was never disclosed how Councilmember financed her race for District Leader. Such races can involve considerable expense. In 2010, Lincoln Restler raised $66,066 for his District Leader race, and in 2012, Mr. Restler raised $92,513, demonstrating that a candidate for a mere political party leadership post could use a District Leader race to raise vast amounts of campaign donations, over which campaign finance regulators have limited some say, but impose no overall fundraising or spending cap.

Candidates can further game city and state campaign finance regulations by receiving the benefit of electioneering activities of independent expenditure groups or Super PAC’s. A New York City Democratic Party official, who spoke on background, said that a candidate for District Leader could raise large sums of campaign contributions, like Mr. Restler, according to complex formula that is neither entirely clear or fully transparent, and still receive external help from an independent expenditure group or Super PAC. Mind you, this is only for a political party leadership post that can be served concurrently with a publicly-elected office, which would be subject to its own campaign finance restrictions that could further be augmented by further electioneering activities of an independent expenditure group or Super PAC. What good is a spending cap in one election race, when a candidate has so many options to game the system ? In Councilmember Mark-Viverito’s case, she further opened a third campaign finance account, this time to pay for celebrations and other transition functions, even though she had been re-elected to her Councilmember district, and it remains unclear what transition functions an incumbent office holder needed to conduct outside of her official public duties ?

One major issue that good government groups and government reform activists face is to know why city and state campaign finance regulators would accord Councilmember Mark-Viverito the advantage of having so many electioneering accounts during the same election cycle, but deny that right to other candidates seeking a public office, but maybe it has something to do with how city and state campaign finance regulators can’t keep up with the many ways that candidates and their lobbyists make Swiss cheese out of regulations and restrictions ?

In New York, politicians generally shuttle between posts in municipal and state-level elections. Before she was a City Councilmember, Melinda Katz was a legislator with the New York State Assembly. She now serves as Queens Borough President, a municipal post. But she never held any of these posts in a concurrent fashion. Similarly, Thomas Duane ran for a seat in the New York State Senate while he was still a New York City Councilmember. After he won his State Senate race, he resigned from the New York City Council in order to take his state-level post. In New York, however, it appears that a distinction known as double-dipping is allowed, which is separate from a dual mandate. For example, the current New York City schools chancellor, Carmen Farina, came out of retirement to run the city’s public schools in the de Blasio administration. Mayor Bill de Blasio negotiated a deal which allowed Ms. Farina to continue to collect her retirement income at the same time she collected a full salary for serving as the schools chancellor. It's not transparent how the mayor has discretion to approve double-dipping, or when voters approved that councilmembers could treat the seeking of a City Council leadership post as a separate "election." Lobbyists would be interested in maximizing the number of times that candidates could mobilize an army of lobbyists, because lobbyists would be motivated by seeking additional opportunities for compensation, sometimes inflated by public matching dollars, or establishing a special insider access relationship with elected office holders. Contrary to some perceptions, some candidates for leadership posts, who are prolific fundraisers, would also welcome further opportunities to raise money, because the added contributions would give the candidates an unfair advantage over challengers, who are not adept at raising vast amounts of campaign donations. But why would voters deliberately want a situation like this, that would be so susceptible to the corruptive influence of money and lobbyists in determining the leaders of the City Council ?

The Campaign Finance Board was contacted by e-mail to determine its view of dual mandates. "The NYC Campaign Finance Board does not regulate which offices individuals can run for or hold, nor do we have the authority under the law to do so," Campaign Finance Board press secretary Matthew Sollars said in an e-mail. The more campaign finance reform advocates examine the role of city campaign finance regulators, the more it becomes apparent that the regulations have not kept up with the corruptive machinations of politicians or their lobbyists.

Besides the uniqueness of Councilmember Mark-Viverito's dual electioneering accounts, should advocates for campaign finance reform conclude that Councilmember Mark-Viverito's situation disadvantaged her challengers by disallowing her challengers the same opportunities to open serial campaign finance accounts, an unexplained advantage that Councilmember Mark-Viverito enjoyed, or should Councilmember Mark-Viverito's double electioneering accounts be seen as having set a dangerous precedent, whereby an elected official can keep opening electioneering accounts, even after having won a general election, to continue raising money from wealthy and special interest donors in order to arguably campaign for dual mandates or special interest causes ? In the effort to reign in the corruptive influence of money and lobbyists in politics, where can voters expect city and state campaign finance regulators to draw the line ?

The danger of dual mandates and perpetual campaign fundraising in New York City politics

How can a seasoned politician, like Councilmember Mark-Viverito, argue that she can remain eligible for $158,502 in public matching dollars for her primary City Council reëlection race, but still go outside the spirit of campaign contribution caps in order to raise over $100,000 for her run for City Council speaker ? What Councilmember Mark-Viverito seeks to do is to create a backdoor that will allow politicians to treat leadership posts as further elected offices that are separate from the underlying elected office that first permitted a politician the privilege, but not the right, of serving the public.

There's no written guarantee that politicians can keep raising money whenever they want. If they did, this would violate the spirit and nature of campaign finance regulations. What is more, it would treat any leadership race in the same legislative body as a separate "election," thereby leading to never-ending campaign fundraising cycles within government, regardless whether the campaigning would take place before or after what we traditionally view as the first Tuesday in November, or "Election Day." If Councilmember Mark-Viverito can treat the Council speakership as a "separate" election, why didn’t Councilmember Daniel Dromm declare any expenditures in his campaign to be named chair of the City Council Education Committee ? As early as a last December, the press was reporting that Councilmember Dromm was seeking that leadership post. Do city and state campaign finance regulations only require disclosure for some City Council leadership posts, but not all ? Are regulations meant to root out corruption only applied on a voluntary basis ?

In Councilmember Mark-Viverito's view, she has a right to raise money to "lobby" other elected officials for a leadership post the same way she has a right to "campaign" before voters for an elected office. This is an example of the addiction to the corruptive role of money and lobbyists by entitled elected officials, who become unprincipled after they become elected. As a self-identified "progressive," Councilmember Mark-Viverito should be moving away from the corruptive role of money and lobbyists in government, not moving towards it. Likewise, Mr. Restler, who some describe as a reformer, in spite of his dependence on prolific fundraising just to earn a political party leadership post. As it stands, good government groups already criticize other loopholes that allow officials seeking unelected municipal appointments to hire lobbyists cloaked in secrecy to game the appointment process. When officials seeking unelected government appointments, they can hire lobbyists, and how these lobbyists are paid, whether any fundraising is conducted, or other details about the relationship between prospective and elected officials and their corresponding lobbyists are not required to be disclosed to the public. In the example of Ms. Farina, the schools chancellor, it's unknown if she employed a team of lobbyists to negotiate any terms of her employment, including her double-dipping. If she had, there's no rule that would require Ms. Farina to disclose the details pertaining to her lobbyists, how they got paid, or if there was any fundraising to pay for her lobbyists. The same goes with lobbyists, if any, that may have had a role in negotiating the controversial appointment of Willliam Bratton as commissioner of the New York Police Department.

Added to all of the questions of suitability and compliance of twin electioneering accounts and dual mandates is the objectivity of the Campaign Finance Board to review these serious issues. Few advocates for campaign finance reform believe that the city's Campaign Finance Board can be trusted to police the corruptive influence of money and lobbyists in government. Already, three complaints about municipal campaign finance or electioneering violations have been filed at the federal level, because there are reasons to suspect that city campaign finance regulators have become politicized in their review of violation cases. Since the board members of the Campaign Finance Board are selected by a combination of either the mayor or the Council speaker, the board members are not truly independent from influence from City Hall or City Council. When violation cases roll up to either the mayor or to the Council speaker or to political operatives connected to either, as they do in the review of Councilmember Mark-Viverito’s twin electioneering accounts, how can the Campaign Finance Board truly act free of undue influence from either the mayor or the Council speaker ?

When the NYC Is Not For Sale Super PAC was found to have violated reporting requirements, the Campaign Finance Board essentially fined the Super PAC ten cents on the dollar for the infraction amounts. It's been asserted by others that the NYC Is Not For Sale Super PAC acted in concert or to directly benefit the mayoral campaign of Mr. de Blasio, and, in apparent gratitude, Mr. de Blasio consequently attended a key fundraiser for one of the large donors behind the Super PAC last year, an event that was closed to the press, further frustrating transparency. Given the Super PAC's close association with the mayor, it shouldn't come as any surprise that the Campaign Finance Board would levy a proverbial slap on the wrist when the target of an investigation is connected to the mayor. This contrasts greatly to when the Campaign Finance Board dealt a death blow to John Liu's mayoral campaign, one of Mr. de Blasio's challengers, by denying Mr. Liu any public matching dollars in last year's mayoral race. Furthermore, Mayor de Blasio seems to be allowed to set up 501(c)(4) advocacy groups that work in tandem with City Hall without question from the city or state campaign finance regulators.

  • RELATED : The Campaign Finance Board is the judge, jury and executioner of New York City's campaign finance law. As Albany eyes the CFB as a model for a statewide public financing system, City & State probes how the agency has wielded its enormous power over city elections. (Cracks in the Campaign Finance Board * City & State)
  • RELATED : Reform advocates and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo tout New York City's public campaign finance system as a model for the state to follow. But some political figures who insist they support the city Campaign Finance Board's mission are questioning its stewardship. (Campaign Finance Board leadership questioned * Newsday)

Going back to the unknown regulatory reasoning for Councilmember Mark-Viverito's need to establish a second electioneering account outside of the jurisdiction of city campaign finance regulators, how is the Campaign Finance Board going to rule in her case ? Presumably her first campaign finance account is undergoing a post-election audit. The only way the Campaign Finance Board knew that the NYC Is Not For Sale Super PAC had violated disclosure requirements was because investigators found inconsistencies after having cross-checked the Super PAC's reported disclosure filed with the Campaign Finance Board against the reported disclosure filed with the state's Board of Elections. But in Councilmamber Mark-Viverito's case, she couldn't file the Council speaker race disclosure report to city campaign finance regulators, because that report would have violated the spending cap in place for the primary and general election campaigns. The Campaign Finance Board does not have rules for allowing fundraising beyond the general election, nor does it guarantee a politician the ability to perpetually raise campaign donations after Election Day, unless we are witnessing the final politicalization of municipal elections by board members of the Campaign Finance Board, wherein the board members will allow the de Blasio-Mark-Viverito administration to decimate the spirit of campaign finance laws ? Only time will tell.

The questions surrounding Councilmember Mark-Viverito's speakership race add to the largely unexamined role that other Super PAC's, other lobbyists, and the flood of money had in last year's municipal elections, the first time the corruptive influence that the Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United would be observed in local political races. None of all that is being examined. If the mayor and the City Council were truly progressive, they would be calling for a real investigation of allegations of campaign finance corruption. Unless, of course, it turns out that the elected officials occupying City Hall and City Council were progressives in name only ?


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)


Emma Wolfe

  • 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)

The impact of the never-ending corruptive influence of money and lobbyists in politics : Has it come back to bite Mayor Bill de Blasio in the ass ?

To continue the mayor's plan to extend his influence across New York City, his administration has installed the lobbying and consulting firm of Berlin Rosen, political operatives who worked on the mayor's campaign, in the media relations role of the mayor's universal pre-kinder initiative. Berlin Rosen will be able to "control" the universal pre-kinder messaging for the mayor this way. Berlin Rosen also serves as consultants to a coalition of major police reform groups, Communities United for Police Reform. The latter allows Berlin Rosen to control the messaging coming from one of the mayor's most politically sensitive quarters : police reform activists. Tampering down police reform activists is all the more important to the mayor, even as the NYPD continues to become embroiled in more racially-profiled controversies. It was reported that another political insider and lobbying firm, Pitta Bishop, helped Council Speaker Mark-Viverito with City Council staffing, and now Pitta Bishop, like The Advance Group, are being paid to lobby the same Council speaker they helped to install by gaming the city’s and state’s campaign finance system. Left out in the lurch as a consequence of the these political machinations are voters, who will have no say in what the messaging will be that comes out of the universal pre-kinder or the police reform movements that are now controlled by the political operatives loyal to the mayor and to the Council speaker.

But the mayor's reliance on outside astroturf groups that double as political operatives for his municipal agenda has its price : his political opponents also have at their disposal the same tactics, and so it was that when Mayor de Blasio sought to place restrictions on the growth of charter schools in New York City, his political opponents organized their own public relations campaign. Buying up TV ad time to broadcast political attack ads, an innocuous-sounding, pro-charter school group named Families for Excellent Schools portrayed Mayor de Blasio as deaf to the grassroots needs of the community, a campaign eerily similar to the one used by NYC Is Not For Sale against Mayor de Blasio's former political nemesis, former City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. Whereas Families for Excellent Schools is structured as two entities : Families for Excellent Schools, Inc., a 501(c)(3) entity and Families for Excellent Schools-Advocacy, a 501(c)(4) entity, NYC Is Not For Sale was set up as a Super PAC. Mayor de Blasio and his supporters decried the Families for Excellent Schools' TV attack ads just like former Council Speaker Quinn had decried the NYC Is Not For Sale's TV attack ads. Confronted last year about the NYC Is Not For Sale campaign, then candidate de Blasio initially defended NYC Is Not For Sale's attack ads, saying, "People decided to speak out, and that's their legal right. But the fact is in our system, everything can and will be disclosed, and that's what the people require," although, contrary to then candidate de Blasio, the Super PAC got into trouble for failing to fully disclose its activities, as "the people require." At the time, Mr. de Blasio added that he'd be open to later reforming campaign finance laws (presumably after NYC Is Not For Sale sank former Speaker Quinn's mayoral campaign). "The important thing is to respect the fact that we may not like the way the law is, but it's the law. I certainly will put energy going forward into trying to further reform the campaign finance system, but so long as the law is the law, people will make choices within it. That is their right, but I will certainly never ask anyone to engage in such behavior." The Campaign Finance Board should be reviewing whether the de Blasio campaign coordinated any activities with the NYC Is Not For Sale Super PAC, but it’s not clear if any campaign finance authority would regulate or restrict how the mayor appears to coordinate official policy with the 501(c)(4) entity that has each of lobbied for an enactment of a universal pre-kinder program for New York City and refused to disclose its contibutors and expenditures, as "the people require."

But we saw this week a news report that one of the mayor's political supporters, New York Communities for Change, opted out of a multiple plaintiff lawsuit against the spread of charter schools. New York Communities for Change, which appears to be structured as two separate entities, New York Communities for Change, Inc., a 501(c)(4) entity, and The New York Communities Organizing Fund, Inc., as a 501(c)(3), appears to take political cues from City Hall. After it became clear that Mayor de Blasio was going to support charter schools after he initially communicated that he was going to oppose their spread, New York Communities for Change decided to pull out of the lawsuit in order to stay on the same side on the issue as Mayor de Blasio. But what the charter school debacle showed was that Eva Moskowitz, the charter school administrator who helped to lead the $5 million charter school attack ads on the mayor, was able to hurt the mayor's political poll favorability ratings with her TV attack ads. A recent poll showed that only 39% of poll respondents had a favorable view of Mayor de Blasio's performance. So long as Super PAC's, independent expenditure groups, 501(c)(3) community groups, or 501(c)(4) political entities can mount million-dollar TV attack ads and city and state campaign finance regulators abdicate their responsibilities, public policy will continue to fall victim to big money donors, special interests, and lobbyists. So long as the mayor does nothing about reforming the corruptive influence of big business donors, special interests, and lobbyists in municipal politics, he's going to have to endure being the focus of political attack ads from his wealthy, big business opponents. What will it take for the mayor to follow through on his campaign finance reform promise ? Maybe his approval poll numbers need to sink below 30% ? I'm sure that there are many lobbyists and big business interests in New York City, who'd like to take credit for causing the mayor's poll numbers to sink that low. So long as the law is the law, the law appears to favor more campaign corruption.

Carl Espen "Silent Storm" (Norway) Eurovision 2014

This ballad by Carl Espen, "Silent Storm," was Norway's entry in Eurovision 2014, and it was my favourite song.

Falete sings "S.O.S."

The Spaniard flamenco singer Falete sings "S.O.S." on the show, "Ratones Colorados."

In one word : demasiado !