A report back on activists, who expose and overcome the corrupt nonprofit industrial complex, puppet politicans, and veal pen bouncers

PUBLISHED : WED, 04 JUN 2014, 01:55 PM
UPDATED : SUN, 15 JUN 2014, 06:10 PM

FIRST NEWSLETTER : This week in the CPR veal pen #constantcontact (06 June 2014)

SECOND NEWSLETTER : Political Pressure for #NYPD Reforms #constantcontact #VealPen #MAPModel #Stage6 (10 June 2014)

Role of big special interest political donors, like George Soros, in Bill de Blasio's mayoralty, the veal pen, and the long pattern of failed political, LGBT, and nonprofit leadership

George Soros

In the last year, billionaire hedge fund investor George Soros has emerged as the 1% power player in New York City politics, having eclipsed former Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Mr. Soros funds many liberal causes through foundation and charity structures, such as his Open Society Foundations, which triggers controversies from the Left as well as from the Right.

But Mr. Soros has not been satisfied with just funding groups from an arm's length distance. Rather, he appears to be crossing over into actual management of the political landscape of New York City by virtue of his grant-making. For example, his foundation funded Communities United for Police Reform, the primary umbrella organization that formerly called for police reform under former Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Now, CPR, as the group is known, has become demobilized and no longer calls for police reform, in spite of the fact that reforms to end discriminatory and abusive policing have yet to be fully proposed and enacted by Mayor Bill de Blasio. After Mayor de Blasio was elected, Mr. Soros' foundation also partially funded a "town hall" style tent on Canal Street that was called "Talking Transition." More on that later.

Bill de Blasio

After he won the general election, Mr. de Blasio was criticised for holding very few public events. However, he used the "Talking Transition" tent for some brief remarks and a photo op. At his appearance, the then mayor-elect made a post-election promise to select a police commissioner, who could restore trust with New Yorkers after the disastrous reign of former Commissioner Raymond Kelly. More on that shortly.

The "Talking Transition" tent gave the impression that the de Blasio administration was going to actually process all the feedback it received from the public into a responsive City Hall, however that impression turned out to be a misconception. His administration has thus far turned out to be very heavy-handed, with directives only moving in one direction, top-bottom. When Mr. Soros and other other foundations funded the "Talking Transition" tent, there was no transparency about what process would hold the new incoming elected officials accountable to the public's demands for improved programs, new policies, or government reforms. A danger of privately funding government functions, like the interaction between the public and their elected officials, is that there are no mechanisms for transparency and accountability.

Jennifer Flynn Walker

Jennifer Flynn Walker, a member of the Board of Directors of the community group VOCAL-NY, has received funding from Mr. Soros. She's used his backing to transform herself into a "professional" activist. She's organized protests against the sinister billionaire Koch Brothers, even though she's backed by the political billionaire Mr. Soros. Further, she's used this funding to exert control over certain issues in New York City, such as HIV/AIDS activism and police reform activism. But because of her reliance on big money donors, Ms. Flynn exemplifies the kind of "professional" activism that has become constrained by sensitivities to funding sources and donors. VOCAL-NY has gone through the motions to oppose issues like "broken windows theory" of policing practiced by Mayor de Blasio's controversial pick for police commissioner, William Bratton, but VOCAL-NY has completely eased off the pressure politics from last year. The only explanation for that is the cozy relationship that nonprofit executives want to maintain with their donors and with the mayor.

When the CEO of a large HIV/AIDS services organization in New York City was shown to be aiding the neoliberal Gov. Andrew Cuomo's efforts to make radical cuts to the Medicaid program, which included the closure of several hospitals in Brooklyn, Ms. Flynn defended the CEO's actions, because, in her view, nonprofit executives are counted upon by politicians to provide political cover for unpopular acts. Another time, Ms. Flynn trashed activists, possibly committing libel and character assassination, because some daring grassroots activists were pressing for deeper law enforcement reforms, which, it turns out, are opposed by Mayor de Blasio. When asked by one activist how could it be fair for Ms. Flynn to obstruct the outsider activism to demand greater reforms from the broken political system, Ms. Flynn chose not to answer. In her role, Ms. Flynn was there to protect politicians from popular uprisings from the citizenry. A large concern of hers was to keep her access to politicians and other powerholders and to protect her funding sources. And amongst the activist community, especially notable within the second wave of the women's rights movement, trashing was a vicious, nasty tactic that aims to delegitimize the activism of those, who usually call for revolutionary social movement reforms. If it was lost on Ms. Flynn the severity of what she was doing, she appeared to act with no remorse.

What obstructionist community leaders, such as Ms. Flynn, unknowingly reveal when they act to either trash grassroots activists or block government or social reforms, is that they pull back the curtain like in the movie, "The Wizard of Oz," revealing how the person turning and pulling the corrupt political knobs and switches can sometimes be a nonprofit executive.

One reason many grassroots activists encounter such grave resistance in reforming the broken political system is the very nature of nonprofit organizations. Nonprofits exist, because they provide services that the government does not want to provide, or has been defunded to be unable to provide. Since some of these services are seen to be critical to communities, some people organize nonprofit legal entities and seek funding, in order to meet people's various needs. However, nonprofits are not accountable to voters, and they become led by a "professional" class of executives with no interest in pressing for deeper, government reforms, because that would upset the economics and the politics of nonprofits. Because Mr. Soros has a hand in funding nonprofit executives, such as Ms. Flynn, he is able to, by extension, help elected officials, whom he supports, such as Mayor de Blasio, by co-opting activists and political movements, a common complaint shared by critics of the nonprofit industrial complex.

Against a backdrop of a once in a lifetime crackdown on public and political corruption, activists in New York are demanding wholesale reforms of government and nonprofits. In a world influenced by Occupy Wall Street, activists are no longer settling for the crumbs of incrementalism.

Jonathan Soros

The only problem is that wealthy investors exert great influence on politics. The case of Mr. Soros is compounded by his son, Jonathan Soros. The younger Mr. Soros calls himself as reformer, but, contrary to his self-brandished moniker, he "secretly" met with Gov. Cuomo earlier this year to try to pressure Gov. Cuomo to adopt the corrupt New York City model of campaign finance for the rest of New York State. Secret meetings between billionaire businessmen and elected officials, with no transparency or opportunity for inclusion by voters, only serves to keep rendering the broken political system outside any accountability to voters. In last year's mayoral election, scandalous but accurate tabloid reporting by The New York Daily News showed how political operatives, campaign consultants, and lobbyists were able to game the New York City campaign finance model with the aid of Super PAC and 501(c)(4) political structures. Like Ms. Flynn in her own way, the younger Mr. Soros appeared to be downgrading calls for reforms, in this instance, to the state's campaign finance system, by taking a stance that was sure to keep the campaign finance system corrupt and broken for big money, special interests. It's a vicious circle, but there is a way for activists to expose and overcome this corruption.

Voters, activists, and the LGBT community are getting wiser about the corruption that blocks government and corporate reforms.

In the last two years, activists for reform have been given hope that the stranglehold that powerful nonprofits and corrupt politicians can be weakened. Joe Solmonese resigned as president of the Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBT advocacy organization in the United States. Voters in New York City voted Christine Quinn out of office, and Gay Men's Health Crisis CEO Marjorie Hill was forced out of her job. Additionally, Lisa Winters was arrested after allegations of misusing monies of the Bronx Community Pride Center. There was a way for average people keep corrupt leaders accountable.

Joe Solmonese

For years, grassroots LGBT civil rights activists across the nation were frustrated by the Human Rights Campaign, or HRC. The largest and best-funded LGBT group always appeared to stop short of demanding full LGBT equality, contrary to the hardline position of grassroots activists. At times, activists developed the sensibility that HRC was intentionally obstructing progress on the codification of LGBT civil rights.

Time and again, this perception was right. Under Mr. Solmonese, HRC never pressed President Barack Obama to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act, never undertook direct action or other lobbying efforts to press for the repeal of the military's discriminatory policy against LGBT service members, known as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," never embraced trans* issues, and never pressed for a full federal civil rights bill to incorporate protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, amongst many criticisms that grassroots LGBT activists had of HRC. Seemingly worse, under Mr. Solmonese's direction, HRC began to score Defense Department military contractors and the manufacturers of other military equipment as some of the best workplaces for LGBT employees to pave the way to cultivate military contractors as major donors of HRC functions, raising an obvious conflict of interest. Since it was waging a campaign to recruit military contractors as donors, there was no way that HRC was going to promote military reforms, such as calling for an end of DADT. It's also been reported that some of HRC's largest donors are drone manufacturers, conflicting HRC from ever denouncing the Obama administration's use of drones. Another example of how community groups, in their quest for dollars, can obstruct radical social change.

Christine Quinn

During her 15 years in public office, former New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn never passed any meaningful LGBT civil rights legislation in New York City. While other progressive municipal politicians, such as former San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom allowed the city to issue marriage licenses to same sex couples in a move that transformed the national march toward marriage equality, former Speaker Quinn did absolutely nothing to push the envelope for full LGBT equal civil rights. Not only was she a total disappointment, but she also did damage to many reform movements during her tenure.

Former Council Speaker Quinn opposed the strengthening of tenants rights in New York City's vicious real estate rental market. She overturned term limits imposed by the electorate for her own short-term political gain. She enabled the New York Police Department to wage increasingly controversial -- and ultimately illegal, according to federal courts -- tactics that proved to be racially-motivated. When activists tried to wage grassroots campaigns to save the closure of several community hospitals across New York City, former Council Speaker Quinn did nothing to help communities save their strategic community healthcare resources. Not surprisingly, when activists began to birddog former Council Speaker Quinn at political functions, it appeared that she had ordered her police detail to menace and harass protesters. The broken corrupt political system will go to any lengths to oppress calls for reform, even exploiting law enforcement. Ultimately, former Council Speaker Quinn was seen as nothing more than a puppet of her political campaign contributors, a harsh lesson that voters had to wait 15 years to learn.

Marjorie Hill

Under Ms. Hill's rocky, seven-year term as CEO, the venerable HIV/AIDS services organization Gay Men's Health Crisis, or GMHC, began a slow-motion collapse. Ms. Hill took for granted its support amongst the most oppressed populations with high HIV infection rates, namely, the Harlem Ballroom community. GMHC's exploitation of this artistic community drove the community to cease trusting GMHC and its agency officials. On the financial front, GMHC was experiencing serious reversals of fortune, 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. After the community had suffered enough under Ms. Hill, a grassroots effort began to see to her ouster from GMHC, a task that the reform community accomplished last year, just weeks after former Council Speaker Quinn was voted out of office.

Lisa Winters

Ms. Winters, the former executive director of the Bronx Community Pride Center, was sentenced to prison after it was shown in court that she had been stealing more than $143,000 from the nonprofit, amongst other charges. Ms. Winters's corruption drove the Bronx Community Price Center into closure. The corrupt political landscape of New York City routinely extends to its many nonprofit organizations, but reforms never seem to be enacted to improve transparency, accountability, or community participation in the nonprofits' governance. These nonprofits are supposed to aim to serve the community, but the community has no role in determining the acts of these nonprofits. The reason for this is that other nonprofit organization heads, such as Ms. Flynn, seek to obstruct reforms. Nonprofit executives, just like elected officials, don't want to be held accountable for their failures.

While activists have been able to oust some corrupt community leaders, others find a way to hang on.

Dirk McCall

Dirk McCall succeeded Ms. Winters as the executive director of the now-defunct Bronx Community Pride Center. Under Mr. McCall, many of the center's programs were cut as a result of a collapse of fundraising during the corruption investigation into Ms. Winters' administration of the nonprofit. Prior to Mr. McCall's term at the Bronx center, he 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, the clients of those lobbyists, and big money donors.

When Mr. McCall worked at GMHC, he once attended a meeting with representatives of the Harlem Ballroom community. Mr. McCall was familiar with the complaints of Ballroom leaders, but Mr. McCall never undertook any efforts to make peace with activists. As many controversies engulfed the then 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. As with other "professional" activists and nonprofit executives, Mr. McCall came to be viewed by reform activists as an impediment to reform. Mr. McCall now works as the external affairs director for the office of Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr., a soft landing job that few are able to decipher, unless Mr. Diaz plans to exploit Mr. McCall's corrupt network of contacts to launch a bid for city-wide office soon.

Glennda Testone

As with Ms. Flynn, Ms. Testone, the head of the New York City's largest LGBT pride house, is also tone deaf to demands for reform. Ms. Testone notoriously blocked reporters from being able to comment on the LGBT Community Center's Facebook page to avoid press questions about transparency and accountability in the wake of the criminal financial collapse of the Bronx Community Pride Center. This was after she had deliberately instructed the LGBT Community Center's spokesperson, Cindi Creager, to avoid any media inquiries made by The Village Voice.

Ms. Testone also violated the First Amendment rights to free speech and freedom of assembly after she banned meetings by Queers Against Israeli Apartheid in the LGBT Community Center. She then added to the controversy by instituting a "moratorium" on any discussion of the Palestinian struggle for peace and self-determination. This censorship, in response to pressure from Ms. Testone's wealthy supporters of Israel's anti-Palestinian policies, flew in the face of the LGBT community's commitment to diversity. The LGBT Community Center was always counted on to offer safe space for discussion of "controversial" issues, but that changed under Ms. Testone. Petitions, appeals to meet with the Center's board of directors, calls and letters did not succeed. Ultimately, the LGBT Community Center revised its policies, but only after activists staged an occupation of the LGBT Community Center, an embarrassing act that showed Ms. Testone for the obstructionist to freedom and reform that she truly represents. For the term that the ban was in place, the censorship drew negative headlines for Ms. Testone, but she survived the scrutiny, because her patrons and donors supported the controversial censorship, another sign that the wealthy donors service their own political interests, which may not always align with the calls for reform by grassroots activists.

Ms. Testone also spearheaded a town hall at the "Talking Transition" tent on Canal Street last November on LGBT issues. At the town hall, a foreshadowing of what many reform groups would face in the coming de Blasio administration, many activists were told to discuss the needs of the LGBT community that had been left neglected after the mayoralties of Rudolph Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg. But as Ms. Testone led that discussion, there was no talk of the money that would be needed to fund community proposals. And like that town hall, Mayor de Blasio's mayoralty has largely been all talk, without fully funding the social, economic, and legal resources needed by not just the LGBT community, but by all New Yorkers. In this instance, Ms. Testone was there to just let the community vent their frustrations, with no sincere intention to press the de Blasio administration for city resources. Ms. Testone is not about reform, but about placating the community.

Chad Griffin

Succeeding Mr. Solmonese as president of HRC was Chad Griffin, who has stirred up such a dust storm of controversy almost impossible for the imagination of critics of his predecessor. Mr. Griffin, like other national presidents of large lobbying organizations (Patricia Ireland of national NOW comes to mind) have traditionally used their perch to weave fantastical biographies in order to personify the movement that they are leading. Mr. Griffin has managed, with the carefully orchestrated media help of teams of politicians, government employees, supporters, and other political operatives, to portray himself as the "Rosa Parks" of the LGBT marriage equality moment, as absurd as that may sound. But the cynical leaders of some community groups are so narcissistic that they are not self aware of how they come across to the community as they wage these self-interested machinations for their own personal gain. These desperate measures detract from the true calls for fundamental reforms demanded by grassroots LGBT civil rights activists, and Mr. Griffin is actually misdirecting the resources of HRC to fabricate a Cinderella story of his own life, instead of fighting for a comprehensive federal LGBT civil rights bill, which for years has been the strategic focus of a growing number of activists, a move on which HRC still lags.

Critics of HRC see the organization as having become captive of not only Beltway politics, but also captive to both the political machinations of its big money donors and the narcism of is leadership. With the help of notable LGBT bloggers and activists, including Andrew Sullivan, Michael Petrelis, and others, the broader LGBT community is wising up to how the leadership of our community groups lead the movements for social, legal, and economic reforms astray.

Carl Siciliano

Because former Council Speaker Quinn never made it a political and budgetary priority to fully fund the resources needed to provide shelter to all homeless LGBT youth in New York City, the community has to put up with community group leaders, such as Carl Siciliano, who safely asks for small, incremental gains in beds at homeless shelters, which fails to adequately provide shelter to all homeless youths. Mr. Siciliano is the executive director of the Ali Forney Center, a shelter for homeless LGBT youths. Rather than wage pressure politics or direct action against politicians, Mr. Siciliano prefers to stay on their good side, leaving thousands of homeless LGBT youths on the streets, just because he is too timid and insecure to make a demand for all the resources to rollout shelter to anybody who needs it. Indeed, in one nasty episode of the last few years, Mr. Siciliano was seen trying to shut down a competing LGBT homeless shelter in a move that would have reduced the number of available beds to homeless LGBT youth. At that "Talking Transition" town hall chaired by Ms. Testone, Mr. Siciliano should have demanded the resources to full fund the needs of homeless LGBT youths, but, remember, that farcical town hall was not about resources, it was just about blowing a lot of hot air.

Why are community advocacy groups pitted against each other or determined to demobilize broader social movements, instead of trying to lift everybody up ? The fact is that there's only so much public assistance and private philanthropy, leading community advocacy groups to get stuck in an "us vs. them" worldview. The price society pays is that nobody dares to make a demand for all the resources needed to fully address social issues, like providing universal healthcare for everybody or providing shelter for all LGBT homeless youths. Where's the focus on the bigger picture to get *all* the needed resources ? As a result of how nonprofit organizations place a priority on maintaining close relationships with politicians and their big money donors, society never makes the underlying gains that reform activists demand. And for billionaire philanthropists, like the elder Mr. Soros, throwing a few coins here and there to community groups is a whole lot cheaper than facing the prospect of jacked-up income tax rates to fully fund the neglected government programs that nonprofit organizations are trying to address.

Scott Wiener

Another obstruction to government reforms can been seen in Supervisor Scott Wiener, an elected member to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Although not based in New York like all the rest, Mr. Wiener hails from the East Coast, and he has come to be seen as an impediment to the demands of his community. After winning election, Supervisor Wiener voted to allow San Francisco city officials to "repeal and amend voter-approved initiatives and to legislate expiration dates for voter-approved initiative measures," according to a Change.org petition mounted to oppose Supervisor Wiener's machinations to seek a municipal legislative leadership post. Mr. Wiener's anti-democratic move was seen as reminiscent of when former Council Speaker Quinn overturned term limits, which had been adopted after two voter referenda. A classic neoliberal said to be following in the corrupt footsteps of former Council Speaker Quinn in New York, Sup. Wiener has also proposed an extensive revision of San Francisco's environmental review process that would restrict the rights of citizens to appeal zone-busting real estate development projects in a move described by the press as a "developer's wet dream" come true. As with Ms. Flynn and Ms. Testone, Supervisor Wiener has also trashed the First Amendment rights of activists when he had the controversial blogger Michael Petrelis arrested over an attempt to take a photograph of Supervisor Wiener. Motivated to end Supervisor Wiener's controversial term in office, Mr. Petrelis is now running to unseat Supervisor Wiener from the Board of Supervisors. Whether the corrupt political insiders like it or not, activists are fighting for fundamental government reforms.

Richard Socarides

The extent to which nonprofit organization executives and other permanent political insider operatives, such as Richard Socarides, will sell-out the LGBT community is vast and almost endless. A Clinton administration "Yes Man," Mr. Socarides wrote a controversial memorandum of talking points that allowed former President Bill Clinton to defend his decision to sign into law the state-sponsored discrimination in the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA. Since that time, Mr. Socarides has unsuccessfully tried to defend his enabling act. Mr. Socarides had other corrupt roles in the Clinton administration's controversial travel bans against people with HIV/AIDS and the roll-out of the discriminatory DADT military policy. Although activists are keeping track of Mr. Socarides's corrupt record of being a sell-out, the mainstream media, most notably The New York Times, refuses to take a deep dive to explain how politicians exploit unaccountable community leaders, such as Mr. Socarides, to oppose community demands for reforms.

Mr. Socarides continues to survive as a member of the corrupt political insider class of operatives in New York City. Recently, he has been serving on the board of directors of the State University of New York, where he was part of the concerted effort to close Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn. Still doing damage, Mr. Socarides must surely be aware of how activists have succeeded in ousting other corrupt community leaders.

Ed Koch

Perhaps the granddaddy of all corrupt sell-out political LGBT leaders was former New York City Mayor Ed Koch. A closet-case, former Mayor Koch was resoundingly ridiculed by the LGBT community in New York for deliberately neglecting to take meaningful municipal action to address the start of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Many interpreted former Mayor Koch's hesitance as fear that he might possibly be outed as a homosexual. Such is the media bias to refuse to expose corruption by community leaders that when former Mayor Koch passed away last year, The New York Times published a controversial obituary that was sanitized of any mention of former Mayor Koch's failings at the start of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Only after LGBT and AIDS activists caused such a ruckus on social media did the editors of The New York Times correct former Mayor Koch's obituary to reflect the historical facts of his negligence.

Before his death, former Mayor Koch had been in frail health. During that time, former Council Speaker Quinn had elicited a political endorsement for her mayoral campaign from former Mayor Koch, but former Council Speaker Quinn's campaign people never recorded the endorsement for a TV advertisement campaign, lamenting the lost opportunity to capitalize one more time from the way corrupt political insiders support each other, no matter how detrimental that support is to the community-at-large.

The only way to make room for new leadership is to keep pushing the old one out.

Without adding to each of the cynicism of politics and the herculean efforts of activists to bring about government and social reforms, what lessons can voters and activists draw from this long overview of failed leaders ?

Voters and activists can take heed from the established pattern that corrupt leaders can be dethroned. The lessons of Mr. Solmonese at HRC, former Council Speaker Quinn in public office, Ms. Hill at GMHC, and Ms. Winters at the Bronx Community Pride Center is that corrupt leaders don't hold onto power forever. The community, led by activists, can organize efforts to bring new leaders to cornerstone community nonprofit groups that underpin critical social services. The process of their ouster may take some time, organizing, and efforting, but it has been shown that it can be done. The reasons that some corrupt community leaders have a knack for surviving, like Ms. Flynn, Ms. Testone, Mr. McCall, and Mr. Socarides, to name a few, is because the corrupt political system uses these front group leaders as a buffer against reform from their respective communities. No matter how severely Ms. Flynn trashes reform activists, or how many times corrupt politicians, like former Council Speaker Quinn, use police to target activists, or go all the way, like when Supervisor Wiener had the blogger Mr. Petrelis arrested, we are living in a remarkable era of reform. Activists and bloggers can see through nonprofit leaders' failed one-house legislative strategies. The community knows when a nonprofit executive keeps promising "reforms," but nothing keeps getting done over the span of many years. The community can see the numerous times that "empty suits" organize meaningless press conferences for reforms, but nothing ever happens to follow-up to pressure the corrupt political system to actually deliver reforms. Bloggers can connect the dots and draw a true picture of the corrupt political landscape much easier now than before. More and more, activists are not willing to accept the fabricated story lines by disappointing leaders, like Mr. Griffin. Whereas the mainstream media may deliberately refuse to report the full truth of the corrupt political landscape, activists are taking to blogging and social media to self-report the truth about corruption and the ways to bring it to an end.

If foundations, such as those run by the elder Mr. Soros, really cared about making wholesale reforms to government and breaking the power of corporations, they would fund pop-up tents in the top 50 cities across America to advocate for the Wall Street transaction tax. Instead, the pop-up tents they put up are meant to diffuse, confuse, and demobilize voters. The true test of their intention is what outcome are they trying to bring about, and, more and more, people are getting wiser to this important distinction.

As activists organize new social movements, more and more citizens will learn new insights about self-determination and self-governance. And although not perfect, some federal prosecutors, such as Preet Bharara, have finally begun a campaign to renew government integrity. Taken as a whole, this is a moment of renewal and optimism. Time and history are on our side. We can make the world a better place. We are making it happen now.

Please check back for possible continuing updates.

Controversial LGBT Poster Debuted At Brooklyn Pride, First Project of "The Reformers"

(Some Of) The Faces That Sell-Out The LGBT Community

We're celebrating Brooklyn Pride pic.twitter.com/jiRcM5pff2

— Louis Flores (@maslowsneeds) June 14, 2014

RELATED The Faces That Sell-Out The LGBT Community (LGBT Sell-Outs)

At the Brooklyn Pride festival yesterday, the city's LGBT community turned out for food and entertainment, a street fair, and a rude wake-up call. A poster showing the faces and names of 16 LGBT leaders, who, over the years, have stopped fully advocating for the community on whose behalf they serve, was taped up along several blocks of Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn. Some posters were affixed to the front doors of Port-A-Potties, a popular place for festival-goers to congregate. Outside one Port-A-Potty, a group of gay men surveyed the poster. One remarked of the leadership of the Human Rights Campaign, or HRC, the largest LGBT advocacy organization in the United States, by observing, "HRC doesn't hire people of color." This observation is backed up by criticisms made by many LGBT civil rights activists, most notably, by the San Francisco-based blogger and activist, Michael Petrelis. When Mr. Petrelis blogged about HRC's sudden funding of LGBT equality efforts in Alabama, Mr. Petrelis noted the lack of any people of color in HRC's partner for that state. Mr. Petrelis is not involved in the postering effort in Brooklyn, but his observations help to underscore how many activists raise criticisms about the LGBT community's leaders, which our leadership organizations never fully address. The failure of LGBT community groups to be fully accountable and transparent to the broader constituency forms the basis of the controversial "LGBT Sellout Faces" poster that was taped up along the route of the Brooklyn Pride festival.

LGBT sellout poster reaction : "HRC doesn't hire people of color." pic.twitter.com/l1j4RvC1qz

— LGBT For Change (@lgbt4change) June 14, 2014

Another reaction to LGBT sellout poster : "OMG I have friends on this, but you're right." #BrooklynPride pic.twitter.com/hq0Kzyp2wp

— LGBT For Change (@lgbt4change) June 14, 2014

Besides poster-sized forms that were taped up along the route of the Brooklyn Pride festival, a flyer of the poster was also handed out by activists calling for reform of LGBT community groups and their leadership. At one point, a flyer was handed to a volunteer for HRC. The volunteer said he refused to take an "anti-HRC flyer." A companion HRC volunteer refused to take the flyer, as well. But a third HRC volunteer, perhaps a supervising volunteer, accepted the flyer, and this third volunteer inquired about the nature of the flyer.

When told that veterans, including Lt. Dan Choi, and GetEQUAL pressed for DADT repeal, HRC volunteer had no reply. @lgbt4change

— LGBT For Change (@lgbt4change) June 14, 2014

When a reform activist told the third HRC volunteer that the flyer represented LGBT leaders, who have "sold-out" the community, the volunteer noted that former HRC President Joe Solmonese, who appeared on the flyer, was no longer in a leadership post at HRC, but the volunteer asked why was the current HRC president, Chad Griffin, appearing on the flyer ? The activist responded that under Mr. Solmonese, HRC was not responsive to the LGBT community's demands for reform, which is why he was forced to step down. Mr. Griffin, in his relative short tenure at HRC, has created controversy by claiming credit for the nation-wide movement for marriage equality, a claim that flies in the face of the truth that grassroots activists have been pressing for equal civil marriage rights for decades before Mr. Griffin's ascention into HRC's top leadership post. The HRC volunteer replied that volunteers are "told to respond" by saying that "HRC repealed Don't Ask, Don't Tell," referring to the U.S. military's former discriminatory policy against LGBT recruits. When challenged with the truth about how U.S. servicemember veterans, such as Lt. Daniel Choi and others, as well as members of the grassroots group GetEQUAL lead the charge to press Congress and the White House to repeal DADT, and that HRC was busy soliciting donations from military contractors to fully press for a revolutionary end to the Defense Department's discrimination against LGBT servicemebers, the HRC volunteer responded that volunteers are "told to respond" by saying that HRC was responsible for passing the Matthew Shepard Act, referring to the hate crimes law named after a student, who died in 1998 of torture-related injuries he received in a vicious hate crime attack in Laramie, Wyoming. The way HRC claims the progress and successes in LGBT equality made by other groups is a long-standing complaint about how HRC disrespects the grassroots role of many LGBT activists and their grassroots organizations. As it appeared pointless to continue the conversation with the third HRC volunteer, the activist distributing the "LGBT Sellout Faces" flyer walked away, leaving the HRC volunteer with a copy of the flyer. In the last year, many grassroots LGBT activists have been questioning the equality movement's leadership. In New York City, voters rejected the fordmidable mayoral campaign of former New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. Former Speaker Quinn, the highest-ranking LGBT politician in New York City government, spent 15 years in office without having enacted one transformative LGBT equality law during her incumbency in office. In the same year when former Speaker Quinn's political career came to an abrupt halt, LGBT activists succeeded in unseating former Gay Men's Health Crisis CEO Marjorie Hill. GMHC, as the agency is better known, suffered a series of grave financial reversals under Ms. Hill's leadership. Other agency officers, such as Dirk McCall, separated from GMHC during the management reshuffle. In San Francisco, LGBT activists are working to unseat San Francisco Board of Supervisor Scott Wiener, who is viewed by many as a neoliberal Democratic politician working to serve wealth campaign contributors and real estate developers instead of San Francisco's LGBT constituency. The "LGBT Sellout Faces" poster was the first project of "The Reformers," a new activism group formed by the documentary filmmaker Wolfgang Busch and the blogger Louis Flores, who are calling on a political and nonprofit overhaul in LGBT leadership.

Chelsea Manning exposes U.S. military role in restricting freedom of the press

Chelsea Manning on the Obama administration's police of making the U.S. Military control and restrict Media Freedom

RELATED If a reporter’s embed status is terminated, typically she or he is blacklisted. (The Fog Machine of War : Chelsea Manning on the U.S. Military and Media Freedom * The New York Times) Mushroom clouds, duct tape, Judy Miller, Curveball. Recalling how Americans were sold a bogus case for invasion. (Lie by Lie : A Timeline of How We Got Into Iraq * Mother Jones) "The Justice Department has completely lost sight of the First Amendment." (A Radical Departure on Press Freedom * The Wall Street Journal)

From her prison confines in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, former United States Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning has written a scathing editorial, published in today's Sunday edition of The New York Times. "WHEN I chose to disclose classified information in 2010, I did so out of a love for my country and a sense of duty to others. I’m now serving a sentence of 35 years in prison for these unauthorized disclosures. I understand that my actions violated the law. "However, the concerns that motivated me have not been resolved. As Iraq erupts in civil war and America again contemplates intervention, that unfinished business should give new urgency to the question of how the United States military controlled the media coverage of its long involvement there and in Afghanistan. I believe that the current limits on press freedom and excessive government secrecy make it impossible for Americans to grasp fully what is happening in the wars we finance." Fromer PFC Manning, now jailed by the Obama administration as part of the White House crackdown against government corruption whistleblowers, provides a needed reality check -- really really REAL TALK -- on how the government bullies journalists into reporting government propaganda in the mainstream media, deceiving the public about the government's actions. Her editorial is a must-read for any First Amendment activist, blogger, and voter.

DELETE YOUR FACEBOOK

Instructions : How to Permanently Delete a Facebook Account (Wiki How)

Gov. Cuomo Solicits Campaign Donations From LLC's, Exploiting Loophole In State's Campaign Finance Regulations

The governor has called for closing a gap in the state’s campaign finance laws, but he’s taken far more through the loophole than his predecessors, much of it from real estate developers.

RELATED NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo Has Raised Millions Through Loophole He Pledged to Close (ProPublica)

New York State campaign finance laws make it illegal for corporations to give more than $5,000 a year to candidates and political committees, ProPublica notes in its damning examination into New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's campaign finances leading up to this year's gubernatorial election, but Gov. Cuomo has violated the spirit of this rule by drawing on corporation donations from limited liability companies, a form of corporate organization that corporations and individuals can set up in unlimited numbers, essentially gutting the state's campaign finance regulations. The scathing ProPublica investigation identifies numerous campaign contributions that Gov. Cuomo received, which appear to be timed to influence the governor's conduct of state business that would, in turn, impact the business of his campaign donors. The ProPublica article observes when Gov. Cuomo shut the whole Moreland Commission down, the panel's recommendation to close the LLC loophole was bargained away. Government reform activists are waiting to see if federal prosecutors, who assumed the investigative work of the now-defunct Moreland Commission, as well as other ethics complaints, will find any legal evidence that politicians may have obstructed the justice and reform work of the Moreland Commission.

New revelations about possibly greater coordination between controversial anti-Quinn attack Super PAC and official campaigns

Anybody But Quinn Used Voter Info From Other Advance Group Campaigns : Sources

RELATED Anybody But Quinn Used Voter Info From Other Advance Group Campaigns: Sources (The New York Observer) Did New York State Election Officials Create a Dual Mandate Loophole to Campaign Finance Caps ? [UPDATED] (NYC : News & Analysis)

Somebody from the corrupt “Anybody But Quinn" Super PAC has leaked new information about possibly illegal campaign coordination to the reporter Will Bredderman of The New York Observer relating to how information sharing was done behind the scenes at The Advance Group. That customized voter registration information belonging to official campaigns was, inturn, used by the Super PAC adds to a pattern of coordination following revelations that campaign cash flowed circuitously amongst the Super PAC, its contributors, and the official campaigns managed by The Advance Group in the last election. As if that wasn't enough, many activists taking part in the Anybody But Quinn movement carried the banner for reforms to end Quinn-like government and campaign corruption. But as soon as the new mayor was elected, the entire Anybody But Quinn movement ceased their calls for reform, raising the obvious quesiton : what was the real intention of the Anybody But Quinn Super PAC, if it was not to press for reforms of the broken political system ? It's getting ugly, but it's only when the system turns against itself, as demonstrated by the leaker of these latest revelations that voter registration information was shared, that voters find out the real truth about the duplicitious role of dubious campaign consultants, lobbyists, and other political operatives in setting up corruptive Super PAC structures, and controversies such as these are the only things that can lead to reforms to end the corruptive role of Super PAC's in our elections system. But more people need to join the call to press Mayor Bill de Blasio to make good on his outstanding campaign promises made during last year's mayoral campaign to further reform the city's campaign finance system. "The important thing is to respect the fact that we may not like the way the law is, but it's the law," Mr. de Blasio said last year after he was confronted with questions over a controversial Super PAC's attack TV ads against former Council Speaker Christine Quinn. "I certainly will put energy going forward into trying to further reform the campaign finance system," he added, but Mr. de Blasio has so far failed to keep true to his campaign promise to reform the city's corrupt campaign finance laws. Here's an opportunity to use the growing campaign finance controversy engulfing The Advance Group to press for reforms. Voters can make this opportunity work for them, to bring about reforms, but voters need to take action to demand that the mayor keep his campaign promises to reform and update the city's corrupt campaign finance laws that allow Super PAC's to exploit our elections system.

Long history of prosecutorial and ethical misconduct by Brooklyn D.A. Hynes triggers proposal for state disciplinary commission

In New York, the state Attorney General has lost control over his wayward District Attorneys. Now, the State Legislature wants to appoint a disciplinary commission to review the corrupt acts of the state's "Dirty D.A.'s"

RELATED Prosecutor misconduct commission moves forward in “Hynes” legislature (The Brooklyn Paper) After Bitter Election Loss, Charles Hynes Shredded His Office Documents : Sources (The New York Observer)

The New York State legislature, that swamp of corruption, is hoping to create an independent commission to investigate the prosecutorial misconduct of New York’s state prosecutors. The commission members would be able to recommend disciplinary actions against prosecutors engaging in "improper activity or whose performance displays a degree of incompetence not suited for the office," The Brooklyn Paper reported. The possibility that the state's district attorneys have become corrupt is too much for the state's attorney general, Eric Schneiderman, to handle. The only way hot political corruption cases like this can be handled is to outsource it to an incompetent commission, which Gov. Andrew Cuomo can then disband if the political heat becomes too much to bear, like what he did with the do-nothing Moreland Commission. The scandal with Brooklyn D.A. Hynes is only coming up now, because Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara is investigating JCOPE ethics complaints and Moreland Commission corruption files. Were it not for Mr. Bharara's ongoing campaign to clean up government corruption, the city's lazy Department of Investigations would not have investigated any of the corrupt district attorneys in New York's five boroughs, much less D.A. Hynes. Naturally, there are rumors being shared amonst activists that the DOI probe into former D.A. Hynes may have been politically-motivated, like all the other take-downs in New York City. Of course, nothing is going to happen in respect of this proposed district attorney investigation commission, unless Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver blesses this commission, which voters know he won't, because Speaker Silver has a long history of enabling corruption all across New York state. But some New York City-based bloggers and activists privately wonder if just the fear of the idea of this commission will scare the crap out of some corrupt local district attorneys, like Manhattan D.A. Cy Vance, who many good government reform activists believe avoids prosecuting political corruption cases. Besides Mr. Vance, the new Brooklyn district attorney, Ken Thompson, also avoids thorny political cases. For example, Mr. Thompson failed to examine the slimy circumstances of how one of the mayor's loyal political supporters was allowed to basically get out jail for free. The long-time Queens district attorney, Richard Brown, refused to find any wrong-doing when the New York Police Department kidnapped and held prisoner the whistleblower Adrian Schoolcraft in the psychiatric ward of a Queens hospital. In New York, whenever political or law enforcement corruption becomes so bad, the only way the corrupt justice system handles it is by outsourcing the investigation to an independent commission or to an independent prosecutor, because the district attorney, attorney general, or federal prosecutor with normal jurisdiction doesn't want the political blowback from these kinds of investigations. Look at how the Staten Island district attorney appointed a special prosecutor to investigate the corrupt Working Families Party ; the Staten Island D.A. didn't want to touch that investigation. These kinds of cases are TOO HOT for the normal investigators to handle. Investigators race to outsource probes to others, who can either afford to take the political heat or who are too stupid to know the difference. But if only voters could see why these investigations have to get outsourced, then that would show voters how the justice system truly has become corrupt, because there should be no reason why there should be a "tale of two justice systems" for political corruption. Meanwhile, as Albany considers more and more layers of supervision over the state's crumbling law enforcement apparatus, it was reported this week that Mayor Bill de Blasio has yet to appoint a chair to the city's Civilian Complaint Review Board, a do-nothing oversight panel meant to push papers about in respect of civilian complaints against the NYPD, in spite of the fact that the NYPD appear to be openly engaging in racing profiling in respect of the low-level marijuana arrests that police are making under the de Blasio administration.

Following bombardment of bad press, Mayor de Blasio spinning his way back to illusion of competency

After a barrage of negative publicity over the closure of Long Island College Hospital, de Blasio administration operatives plant a spin doctor story in Capital New York about background political machinations

Last week-end, the columnist Ginia Bellafante of The New York Times wrote a fair critique of the de Blasio administration's failure to live up to his change and hope hype for transformational progressive leadership.

Ms. Bellafante listed concrete examples, such as the closure of Long Island College Hospital ; the unsavory Working Families Party endorsement of Gov. Andrew Cuomo, which Mayor Bill de Blasio helped to orchestrate ; and the limited impact that raising the minimum wage would have on the actual cost of living hardship for average New Yorkers, amongst other observations. Ms. Bellafante balanced her assessment with news about some accomplishments that have been overshadowed by the mayor's penchant for drama.

Against a backdrop of recent press reports, which have crushed the de Blasio administration's efforts to spin a reputation for itself for being a beacon of "progressive" values, City Hall has been shaken by an emerging new impression of the mayor's neoliberal inclinations.

• RELATED : Bill de Blasio betrayed his believers in Cobble Hill (amNewYork)
• RELATED : de Blasio Used LICH as a Political Prop, Angry Ex-Supporters Say (DNAinfo New York)
• RELATED : NYTimes LICH Hospital Report Back ; Scandal : Red Hook Death (Suzannah B. Troy)
• RELATED : Bill de Blasio stumbled on Long Island College Hospital (amNewYork)
• RELATED : The tragic way Bill de Blasio supported Gov. Andrew Cuomo at the Working Families Party convention (Twitter)
• RELATED : For de Blasio, Deals, Drama and (Maybe) Progress (The New York Times)

In the wake of such criticisms in the mainstream media, the de Blasio administration is fighting back in the press with a story in Capital New York, where the mayor's political operatives leaked a rehash of backroom machinations in their supposed efforting to save Long Island College Hospital. We'd heard this before, like when the same Capital New York reporter had reported that the mayor's operatives, Emma Wolfe, had grown concerned with the crumbling deals to save Long Island College Hospital, also known as LICH.

Repeating the administration's "concerns" for the community is just a way to deflect any further criticisms of the de Blasio's apparent exploitation of the hospital closing crisis as an election year tactic.

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

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

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

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

The New York Times wakes up to a harsh reality about de Blasio's piling examples of selling out

PUBLISHED : WED, 08 JUN 2014, 01:46 PM
UPDATED : THURS, 13 JUN 2014, 19:35 PM

The NYTimes' Ginia Bellafante on Mayor Bill de Blasio : The absence of any real template for governing from the vantage point of economic liberalism

RELATED For de Blasio, Deals, Drama and (Maybe) Progress (The New York Times)

In today's Sunday edition of The New York Times, the columnist Ginia Bellafante examined new mayor Bill de Blasio's record of broken campaign promises and other compromises in his young administration. "For years since, you could get by calling yourself a liberal in New York State politics simply by loving pro-choice arguments and same-sex marriage as much as you loved Wall Street and real estate developers. That is no longer so, which leaves centrists moving toward compromises that look semi-noble, and liberals in the position of seeming to have settled for too little and sacrificed their souls too much." On the closure of Long Island College Hospital, Ms. Bellafante wrote that, "the sense that Mr. de Blasio exploited the issue, declared victory in the face of a loss and then moved on has clearly taken hold." Ms. Bellafante's observation is backed up by a column by Liza Featherstone in amNewYork : "Bill de Blasio betrayed his believers in Cobble Hill," in which the author of the column wrote : "There are signs de Blasio is willing to fight for ordinary New Yorkers. Additional paid sick leave and universal pre-K are nothing to dismiss. But when the interests of ordinary New Yorkers conflict with those of the real estate industry, which donated heavily to de Blasio's campaign, is Mayor 99 Percent setting aside his protest placards? Many in Cobble Hill think so." In respect of the de Blasio administration's plans to preserve affordable housing, Ms. Bellafante noted that there was a "mounting sense that he has reneged on promises to involve neighborhoods in decisions that intimately affect them." This is backed-up by the relentless postings on the Atlantic Yards Report blog, and you can begin by reading this post : "As de Blasio announces affordable housing plan, Atlantic Yards (delay, modular, lack of neighborhood planning) remains an awkward backdrop," in which the author of the blog noted of the mayor's affordable housing plan : "There was no mention of the planned affordable housing that he and others cited to justify their support for Atlantic Yards, likely because that housing has taken so long to be built--and perhaps because it recalls the absence of ground-up neighborhood planning." (emphasis added) With respect to Mayor de Blasio enabling Gov. Cuomo to lock up the Working Families Party nomination, Ms. Bellafante wrote : "When Mr. de Blasio recently facilitated a deal between the leftist Working Families Party and Mr. Cuomo to secure the organization’s endorsement of the governor for re-election, it pushed certain quarters of the left toward lamentation." This is backed up by one of numerous tweets in the aftermath of the WFP deal to endorse Gov. Cuomo, brokered by Mayor de Blasio, such as this one by Tom Watson : "Still some surprise/horror that progressive deBlasio cut a deal with Cuomo in the #WFP saga. Of course he did, it's politics." (emphasis added) Ms. Bellafante also provided a balance to her criticism, by noting some achievements in Mayor de Blasio's first five months in office. Taken as a whole, Ms. Bellafante's article is an indication that growing liberal disappointment with Mayor de Blasio is seeping into the pages of The New York Times, something that took 15 years to happen with former Council Speaker Christine Quinn's political career. This change is due to the impatience with which voters now express about political deals made between politicians that betray campaign promises, such as with the embarrassing Working Families Party endorsement, an observation that Ms. Bellafante herself made when she wrote, "What looked like a mayoral assertion of authority to some felt like abdication to others."

de Blasio's high poll numbers amongst minority electorate may sink, if the NYPD continue their racially-tinged, broken windows policing tactics

RELATED Mayor de Blasio’s Approval Rating Improves, Poll Finds (The New York Times)

A majority of Black and Latino voters said that they approved of the job Mayor de Blasio was doing, a new poll shows, The New York Times reported. But it is not clear that this new poll factored in the immense anger in the Harlem community in response to a shock and awe invasion by the New York Police Department to round up innocent young public housing tenants on trumpted up charges of conspiracy to commit gang activities. Already, the new poll shows that the new mayor has lost more than half of the support amonst whites. If the police continue their crackdown that targets people of color, it won't be too far long before the mayor loses support amongst his minority base.

More questions about Melissa Mark-Viverito's campaign finances and her lobbyists

Undeclared campaign finance expenses tied to a fundraising trip to Chicago and the growing role of Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito's campaign consultants increases concerns that Speaker Mark-Viverito may be further flouting campaign finance regulations and ethics rules.

Five months into her Council speakership, Councilmember Melissa Mark-Viverito continues to be dogged by questions about her campaign finances and her compliance with city ethics rules.

The latest campaign finance issue centers around a fundraising trip Speaker Mark-Viverito made to Chicago in the time leading up to last year's municipal elections. Although the trip included fundraising activities, Speaker Mark-Viverito's campaign committee neither incurred nor declared any expenses for that trip. If her campaign committee benefited from in-kind contributions from others, those contributions must be declared, according to campaign finance regulations. In a press report in The Wall Street Journal about this latest campaign finance question, it was shown that Speaker Mark-Viverito's trip was paid for by the Participatory Budgeting Project. But a review of her contribution records available online with the city's campaign finance regulatory authority, the names of Speaker Mark-Viverito's contributors do not include the Participatory Budgeting Project, not even in an in-kind capacity.

The campaign consulting firm, Pitta Bishiop Del Giorno, which managed Speaker Mark-Viverito's City Council reelection and speakership campaigns last year, has seen its influence increase in city government since last year's municipal elections. Pitta Bishop Del Giorno has even begun to lobby Speaker Mark-Viverito, a worrisome sign to good government reform activists, who fret about the growing corruptive role of money and lobbyists in the conduct of government business.

The on-going questions about how Speaker Mark-Viverito and her lobbyists managed her campaign finances, and the growing role of those lobbyists in the conduct of the city's business, raise concerns as to whether her management style leans toward a predisposition of flouting compliance with campaign finance and ethics rules. Last year, Speaker Mark-Viverito accepted unpaid and undeclared campaign consulting services from a controversial lobbying firm that has since become the subject of possible federal and municipal corruption investigations, according to several press reports. In respect of those free campaign consultant services, provided by The Advance Group, Speaker Mark-Viverito's campaign committee never declared the fair market value of the intensive lobbying efforts involved in the heated speakership campaign as in-kind contributions, either.

Public servants are prohibited from accepting valuable gifts from firms that intend to do business with the city, and lobbyists, in turn, are prohibited from giving those gifts, according to an analysis of city ethics rules by The New York Daily News.

• RELATED : New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito held a fundraiser last year in Chicago on a trip paid for by a nonprofit organization, city records show, raising questions from government watchdogs about whether her re-election campaign skirted campaign-finance laws. (New York City Council Speaker's Trip for Fundraiser Is Questioned * The Wall Street Journal)
• RELATED : During her Council speakership race, Melissa Mark-Viverito may have violated city ethics rules by accepting unpaid and undeclared assistance from a controversial lobbying firm, The Advance Group, working to further her speakership selection. (City Council Speaker candidate Melissa Mark-Viverito may have violated city ethics rules * The New York Daily News)
• RELATED : Pitta Bishiop Del Giorno, the firm that helped Mark-Viverito win her races for City Council and Council speaker, has now lobbied her on behalf of several clients. (Pitta Bishop, the consulting firm that aided Melissa Mark-Viverito's campaigns, now lobbies to her * The New York Daily News)
• RELATED : New revelations show that Mayor Bill de Blasio has had official meetings to discuss city business with the top lobbyist Vincent Pitta, who was also a campaign supporter and a paid consultant for Melissa Mark-Viverito. (Pitta Bishop and other lobbyists, who backed Bill de Blasio for mayor, have access * The New York Post)

But Speaker Mark-Viverito is not alone in stirring controversy with her close alliance with the lobbying firm of Pitta Bishop Del Giorno.

Mayor Bill de Blasio's office has released records of his meetings with lobbyists during the first three months of his term in office, and those records show that he met with Vincent Pitta, a name partner in the lobbying firm of Pitta Bishop Del Giorno that is closely allied with the mayor and with Council Speaker Mark-Viverito.

A press report about Mayor de Blasio's early meetings with lobbyists make no mention of lobbying meetings with James Capalino, a shady real estate lobbyist, who supported the mayor's successful political campaign last year. Mr. Capalino was one of the top lobbyists, who orchestrated a corrupting million-dollar, lobbyist-fuled fundraiser for the mayor's campaign last year at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Mr. Capalino also worked as a real estate lobbyist on the controversial conversion of St. Vincent's Hospital into a billion-dollar luxury condo and townhouse complex in the West Village. Activists shilling for Mayor de Blasio claimed that he was going to offer the voters a clean break from the lobbyist-enabler that was his main rival in last year's mayoral race, former Council Speaker Christine Quinn. Former Speaker Quinn had a reputation for working closely with lobbyists and campaign donors, including having meetings with former donors to discuss legislative proposals. But judging by how both the mayor and his new Council speaker have incorporated their lobbyists into the conduct of city business, there may be no detectable difference at all in the way Mayor de Blasio runs the city from how former Council Speaker Quinn would have administered the city.

Another controversial, politically-connected firm that was left out of early disclosures of the mayor's meetings with lobbyists was Berlin Rosen. Berlin Rosen was installed by Mayor de Blasio to run his outside lobbying effort to campaign for a universal pre-kinder program in New York City. Berlin Rosen was also placed in charge with assisting with the media communication of the controversial coalition of police reform groups known as Communities United for Police Reform, or CPR. Ever since Mayor de Blasio appointed William Bratton as police commissioner, the mayor has needed to have loyalists control the messaging for police reform groups, in order to demobilize calls for radical reforms to city's law enforcement agencies. It's unclear why the mayor failed to classify his administration's meeting with Berlin Rosen as not rising to the level of lobbying, when that's exactly Berlin Rosen's role.

Separately, The Wall Street Journal's report included an update from the city's campaign finance regulatory authority, namely, that the Campaign Finance Board had not yet completed its campaign audit for former Council Speaker Quinn's unsuccessful mayoral campaign.

National Park Service calls for study to landmark LGBT historical sites. Truck stop tea rooms, anyone ?

PUBLISHED : FRI, 06 JUN 2014, 07:28 PM
UPDATED : SAT, 07 JUN 2014, 10:20 AM

LGBT civil rights activists keep demanding full federal equality of the Obama administration, and all Obama can do is to keep blowing a lot of hot air.

RELATED Pelosi Photo-op at Interior Department's Gay Panel ; Historians Named (The Petrelis Files) No Drag Queens, People of Color, Stonewall Riot Vets at Federal Photo-op (The Petrelis Files)

ON TUESDAY, JUNE 10, 2014, Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell and National Park Service Director Jonathan Jarvis will host a panel discussion including leading historians and scholars to discuss ways to sweep President Barack Obama's failed LGBT agenda under the rug. Before lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender historians and academics interpret and denounce the president's many broken campaign promises to the LGBT community in the context of the broader Obama administration's failures, U.S. House of Representatives Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and U.S. Ambassador to Australia John Berry will deliver kick-off remarks at the Interior Department's panel discussion to give the administration's limp efforts some shallow liberal optics. This panel discussion is the first step in the LGBT Heritage Theme Study that Secretary Jewell announced on May 30th at the Stonewall Inn in New York City to identify places and events associated with the story of LGBT Americans for inclusion in the parks and programs of the National Park Service. While landmarking places of historical LGBT significance is noble, the real reason behind this latest initiative is to ensure that historians and academics desperate to appear on official Obama administration press releases are seduced into writing some empty and meaningless "inspirational" Obama administration talking points. The LGBT Heritage Theme Study is timed to drag on through the 2016 election cycle, so that LGBT historians and academics can placate more militant LGBT activists to prevent any dust up as Hillary Clinton contemplates another run for the White House. During her term as the Secretary of State, she basically allowed fundamental radical American evangelists and their political enablers to spread a private foreign policy of hate and discrimination around the globe, with many nations introducing, debating, and enacting laws that persecute and even execute people for being LGBT. As President Obama completes his transition from the hope and change president to a massive disappointment to a lame duck to history, his administration officials are desperately trying to fluff their credentials with the LGBT community after so many years of impotence. At a time when LGBT activists are taking a harsher look at the failed Obama's record, including Obama's tortured support for the Employment Non-Discriminatin Act (ENDA), in spite of its unacceptable religious exemption loopholes, all the Obama administration can muster in response is an offer to not only blow some more hot air about his LGBT dedication, but to gather some more people to join him in blowing even more hot air. With all this blowing, let's hope the Interior Department landmarks a few token truck stop tea rooms. Indeed, according to the Department of Interior's official media advisory, "The goals of the heritage initiative include : engaging scholars, preservationists and community members to identify, research, and tell the stories of LGBT associated properties ; encouraging national parks, national heritage areas, and other affiliated areas to interpret LGBT stories associated with them ; identifying, documenting, and nominating LGBT-associated sites as national historic landmarks ; and increasing the number of listings of LGBT-associated properties in the National Register of Historic Places." The deep-seated resentment by LGBT activists of the Obama administration's empty-suit machinations has been building up for many years. After promising to repeal the military's former discriminatory policy known as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" during the 2008 presidential campaign, President Obama dragged his feet. Not until Lt. Daniel Choi, Capt. James Pietrangelo, other service members, and other activists, including members of the direct action group, GetEQUAL, mounted a direct action campaign targeting members of Congress and the White House itself did the Obama administration finally sign into law a repeat of DADT in 2010. Similarly, activists from GetEQUAL have routinely pressed the Obama administration to enact federal laws to end legally-sanctioned discrimination against the LGBT community. In 2011, members of the LGBT activist groups GetEQUAL, Queer Rising, Join The Impact, and others protested outside an Obama administration fundraiser at Sheraton Midtown in Manhattan. The activists were demanding full federal LGBT equality. Members of GetEQUAL and Code Pink have subsequently continued to birddog the president to deliver on the community's demands for full federal LGBT equality. LGBT activists have for years communicated to the White House that the LGBT community demands full federal LGBT equality, but the Obama administration only throws the crumbs of incrementalism, or worse, more hot air in our direction. Speaking of truck stop tea rooms, I would love to see the LGBT community call out the Obama administration's LGBT Heritage Theme Study for what it is : a sham. Instead of validating the landmarking process, I wish LGBT activists would flood the White House with nominations of their favorite adult bookstores, porn theatres, and gay bathhouses. Since many of these places may have been run out of business by free Interent porn, their dwindling numbers may make them "historically" significant. Besides, places where the LGBT community used to cruise each other or meet up for sex actually do have significance in our history. Besides the larger march for equal civil rights, our history includes the long struggle for cultural and social changes that have to do with our sexual liberation -- our freedom from oppression. If you would like to nominate your favorite glory hole, please send an e-mail to Gautam Raghavan, the White House's LGBT liaison, at : LGBT@who.eop.gov -- making sure you use the subject, "LGBT Heritage Theme Study." The LGBT Heritage Theme Study was kicked-off with a press event last week outside New York's landmark Stonewall Inn, the site for the 1969 riots that marked the beginning of the modern LGBT civil rights movement. At that kick-off media event, protesters once again demanded that the Obama administration do more than just talk -- "to create a roadmap to end what they call legal discrimination against the LGBT community," according to NY1. Activists from GetEQUAL and Queer Nation NY were among a number of protesters demanding "full federal equality." Many LGBT civil rights activists were surprised by these sudden machinations of the Obama administration. New York is home to many radical LGBT activists, and none were invited to take part in the media event at the Stonewall Inn. Some national LGBT civil rights activists, such as Michael Petrelis from San Francisco, criticized the media event for its lack of inclusion. No person of color, drag queen, or veteran of the Stonewall riots were invited to speak on behalf of the broader and diverse LGBT community. The Interior Department's study, hastily timed to coincide with LGBT Pride Month, is being funded with the help of Tim Gill from the Gill Foundation. Mr. Gill contributed $250,000 to help fund this study. Mr. Petrelis, the blogger and activist, has listed the names on his blog of the historians and academics taking part in the study.

This week in the CPR veal pen

PUBLISHED : THURS, 05 JUN 2014, 05:21 PM
UPDATED : THURS, 05 JUN 2014, 11:13 PM

A reporter from The New York Times apparently was embedded with NYPD for a military style raid in some Harlem public housing projects, resulting in biased reporting that was pro-police invasions, similar to when The NYTimes sexed up its reporting by printing propaganda to sell the public on the U.S invasion of Iraq.

Commissioner Bratton is exploiting The NYTimes' weakness for shock and awe, showing us once again that the Gray Lady apparently learned nothing of its Iraq War reporting prejudices.

Selling military style police invasions like war games

RELATED A report back on activists, who expose and overcome the corrupt nonprofit industrial complex, puppet politicans, and veal pen bouncers (NYC : News & Analysis)

IN THE LAST FEW WEEKS, the New York Police Department have begun raiding homeless shelters to arrest poor people on outstanding warrants (whose only crimes are, basically, being poor), and police have begun invading public housing projects in military style to round up youngsters allegedly involved in gangs on the basis of flimsy evidence. Many professional, nonprofit organizations that lobby for police reform issued statements to denounce the police actions. "This incident goes against what this administration stands for," said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, referring to Mayor Bill de Blasio's administration, "and is going to drive people out of homeless shelters." But these profession, nonprofit organizations are nothing but talk these days. Grassroots advocates for wholesale law enforcement reforms are not as restrained as the professional, nonprofit organizations. Last week, some of these advocates attended a meeting, where advocates discussed issues that are blocking professional, nonprofit organizations from resuming the direct action, pressure politics campaign for reforms that were beginning to produce some results in the final year of former Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration. A large coalition of professional, nonprofit organizations is called Communities United for Police Reform, or CPR. These organizations are either administered by operatives loyal to the Democratic Party, or else they are funded by deep pocket donors, who are loyal to the Democratic Party. These close political ties prevent these professional, nonprofit organizations from making Mayor de Blasio look like he is betraying his many campaign promises to reform the NYPD, as these militaristic police actions most certainly confirm. One way many grassroots activists have, to determine how the CPR member organizations are committed to reforms, is by gauging CPR's actions. Are CPR's actions consistent with the intentions of the movement to reform the NYPD ? Right now, CPR is just talk and no action. Of special consternation to some law enforcement reform advocates is the apparent silence of Picture the Homeless, one of CPR's member organizations. As people in homeless shelters are being rounded up and arrested, Picture the Homeless is not calling on help from other CPR member organizations to protest the de Blasio administration's policy decision to shock shelter residents in the middle of the night, forcing them to uncomfortably witness the shackling and arresting of fellow shelter residents under such jarring conditions. Protests by the CPR member organizations against brutal and unconstitutional police tactics peaked on Father’s Day in 2012, when a silent march from Harlem to Mayor Bloomberg’s mansion drew tens of thousands of protesters. Right now, one group visibly pressing for aggressive reforms is New Yorkers Against Bratton. As Commissioner William Bratton continues to stir controversy with the police department's use of aggressive, brutal, and often unconstitutional tactics, more and more New Yorkers are going to plainly see that the CPR member organizations are not committed to reforms, because they are unwilling to back up their talk with action. While the NYPD raids homeless shelters and public projects with no visible protestations from CPR member organizations and while the media play up the dramatic military style use of helicopters and battalions of cops in dawn surprise attacks, another high-profile police reform group, the Police Reform Organizing Project, or PROP, is organizing an art exhibit next week. The NYPD's "Broken Windows Policing" escalates into "Preventative Policing" ? As if all of this just wasn't enough, the NYPD has announced a new program with Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance, whereby the police department has entered into a "close collaboration" with prosecutors, sharing electronic surveillance information between prosecutors and police officers on people, who have committed no crime, but who are targets of prejudice for possible suspicion. It's like straight out of Minority Report, where people are arrested by law enforcement for having committed no crimes, yet. The kind of "preventative policing" that NYPD and Manhattan prosecutors envision is an escalation of "broken windows policing," where people are arrested for minor crimes before they theoretically commit bigger crimes. This obsession with preventative and broken windows policing will flood the justice system with many people being tried for minor infractions or no infractions, but these discriminatory approaches to justice will not allow prosecutors to focus on complex public, corporate, and campaign corruption cases -- an imbalance in the prosecution of crimes that lead many law enforcement reform advocates to describe a legal system that treats petty criminals worse than white collar criminals. Indeed, a glaring example of this tale of two justice systems is the police department's military style invasion of Harlem public housing projects for the arrest of alleged young gang members during the same week when former Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes remains free with no imminent threat of arrest for having used the money proceeds of drug deals to pay for his campaign consultant.