Karen's Cancan Dancers - Bastille Day NYC 2014
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Merveilleux, comme toujours. A video of the can-can dancers from today's Bastille Day festivities on East 60th Street in New York City, sponsored by the French Institute Alliance Française. |
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de Blasio family flying to Italy for luxurious 10-day vacation of Italy's finest tourist destinations practically on eve of possible LIRR strike
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Italian vacation will feature stops in Rome, Naples, and romantic Venice -- meanwhile, LIRR straphangers face possible strike and commutes from Hell. 
The lure of Italy in summer is too great for the de Blasio family, who are expected to depart on July 18 for a 10-day Italian vacation, even as the deadline of a potential strike by Long Island Railroad workers is set for two days later -- on July 20. |
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MTA Chairman goes to DC, seeking federal help, Mayor de Blasio calls travel agent
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Last Wednesday, a delegation of New York Congressional Representatives -- including three from Long Island -- said that Congress won’t get involved in negotiations for new labor contracts for LIRR employees.  “We’ve made it clear to both sides that neither should count on congressional intervention,” said Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY). "Hundreds of thousands of Long Islanders would have to work from home, stay with friends in the city, carpool or take a crowded shuttle bus to a Queens subway if a strike moves forward," The New York Post reported. |
RELATED Congress will not help the MTA avoid an LIRR strike (The New York Post) |
Suburban Long Island commuters are on their own ; meanwhile, WNYC wonders how a strike may impact the race for governor
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THE POLITICAL FALLOUT OF A RAIL STRIKE CAN BE SERIOUS : The last time LIRR workers walked off the job, it contributed to Gov. Mario Cuomo losing his reelection campaign in 1994, WNYC reported. Facing discontented Democratic voters, Gov. Andrew Cuomo is busy trying to help LIRR union officials and the railroad to strike a new deal to forestall the need for a union strike. If Gov. Cuomo can't avert a strike, then he faces the prospect of a dire political fallout that could cost him his gubernatorial reelection campaign -- much like his own father faced under similar circumstances exactly 20 years ago.
How convenient that Mayor de Blasio, who got elected with the help of many unions, is rushing out of town to miss all this political and commuter drama. Will his absence be construed to mean that he doesn't care about LIRR workers, if a strike does take place ? |
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It's an election year, do you know where Gov. Cuomo's running mate, Kathy Hochul, is ?
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Has Kathy Hochul been abducted by space aliens ? 
Nobody knows where Gov. Andrew Cuomo has hidden his running mate for Lt. Governor, Kathy Hochul. In order to control all the press attention, Gov. Cuomo has detained Ms. Hochul at a safe, undisclosed location.
New York voters only know about Kathy Hochul's whereabouts until after they happen. Nobody can say that they have known in advance her comings and goings. It's as if, voters are not being told where Ms. Hochul is going to be appearing, so that voters cannot have a chance to interact with the candidate for lieutenant governor. Most politicians would like nothing better than to avoid having to interact with voters all together, but what Gov. Cuomo is doing by keeping Ms. Hochul in her proverbial place is sick, twisted, and sexist. Whilst Gov. Cuomo is out in the parlor, diverting the media, Ms. Hochul is nowhere to be found, not even to be looked at, much less to speak. What is Gov. Cuomo's purpose is running a phantom of candidate for Lt. Governor ? |
RELATED NY1 ItCH : The Milk Carton Campaign for Lieutenant Governor Kathy Hochul (NY1) Is Kathy Hochul Being Muzzled ? (WGRZ) Tim Wu Wants Kathy Hochul to ‘Come Out of Hiding’ (The New York Observer) |
Gov. Cuomo has not yet delivered on his promise to clean up Albany out of fear that he might implicate his political enablers, or, worse, himself
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Taxpayers' best hope in cleaning up government corruption rests with U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, who has proven his effectiveness operating outside of Albany. 
When former New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo ran for governor four years ago, he made a promise central to his campaign that he was going to clean up Albany of the scourge of political and campaign corruption. Four years later, Gov. Cuomo has done nothing to clean up Albany. Indeed, more and more state legislators keep getting indicted, arrested, or sentenced to jail for political or campaign corruption, and the corrupt legislators on top, like Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, remain firmly in power. This vacuum in progressive reform leadership has created a pass through which U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara has rode into Albany as the new out-of-town, anti-corruption sheriff that can't be bought off by the corrupt bandits running our government. The clock is about to tick "High Noon." The corrupt bandits still think the old rules of the broken political system apply, but the new sheriff with his federal posse are ready. Everybody microwave your popcorn, because the part where the sheriff cleans up the town is about to begin. |
RELATED Corruption with a Capitol ‘C’ (The New York Daily News) Another Indictment in Albany (The New York Times) Albany outsider cracking down on corruption (The Democrat & Chronicle) |
PUBLISHED : SUN, 06 JUL 2014, 02:10 PM
UPDATED : MON, 07 JUL 2014, 09:30 AM
Adams' shady nonprofit, the One Brooklyn Fund, is set to pattern itself after the mayor's own shady nonprofit, the Mayor's Fund to Advance New York City
Across New York State, many corrupt politicians get indicted for misusing monies from nonprofits for illegal personal or political activities
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Before he was elected Brooklyn Borough President, former State Sen. Eric Adams endorsed the failed reelection bid of ex-Brooklyn D.A. Charles Hynes. Brooklyn Beep Adams now wants to use a nonprofit charity to serve as his political arm in Brooklyn nonprofit circles. 
In its house editorial yesterday, the board of editors that oversee the Opinion pages of The New York Times reminded its readers that Gov. Andrew Cuomo has failed to make good on his campaign promise to clean up the corruption in Albany. The editors point to the sad statistic that 26 state legislators have left office due to political scandal. But the editorial overlooks the role that funneling donations or tax dollars through nonprofit groups plays in the corruption charges against several notable politicians. Despite this, the editors of The New York Times see no need to worry that more and more politicians are creating nonprofit groups that operate as the political arms of politicians. The One Brooklyn Fund, a nonprofit that Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams is running out of his own office, had not yet received approval from the city's corrupt Conflicts of Interest Board before Brooklyn Beep Adams began soliciting donations for his controversial nonprofit with admitted political motivations. Another violation, failing to register the nonprofit with the New York Department of State, came to the fore after The New York Post reported that the city’s Department of Investigation was probing Mr. Adams' new nonprofit. Two of the directors of the controversial One Brooklyn Fund have previously run afoul of ethics regulations, and one of the directors has become the target of journalism investigations over her role in using still yet another nonprofit group to fund an 11-day vacation to China for Mr. Adams and Diana Reyna, a top female deputy, The New York Post reported. Whenever Brooklyn Beep Adams appears at public forums, Ms. Reyna is at his close side, clutching her pearls. 
Ms. Reyna, a former City Councilmember from Brooklyn, had previously served as chief of staff to embattled Brooklyn political boss Vito Lopez, who, himself, is a former New York State Assemblyman. The objective of the One Brooklyn Fund is to provide or support public services to the residents of Brooklyn, not too dissimilar to the objective of a larger fund overseen by the mayor's wife. The Mayor's Fund to Advance New York City is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization, which facilitates innovative public-private partnerships throughout NYC. It is headed by First Lady Chirlane McCray, and its goals are to support the mayor's political ambitions. Parallel to the Mayor's Fund to Advance New York City is The Campaign for One New York, the group formerly known as UPKNYC, the 501(c)(4) not-for-profit organization that the mayor has used to funnel money into his political agenda, ranging from paying for a million-dollar political TV ad featuring the First Lady and deceptive astroturf mailers supporting the closure of Long Island College Hospital. Now that First Lady McCray has benefitted from the million-dollar TV ad blitz to fluff her name recognition at the expense of a nonprofit, she has reportedly began shopping around a political memoir, with political bloggers gossiping that she is seeking a seven-figure book deal. At every turn, the repeated pattern of political activities involving charity nonprofit organizations is that politicians use these tax-free vehicles for personal gain -- whether for 11-day trips to China or to build up one's name recognition -- not for public service, contrary to the very purpose of nonprofit objectives.
State Sen. Malcolm Smith faces corruption charges involving the possible use of City Council nonprofit slush funds allocated to Councilmember Dan Halloran to buy the GOP nomination for Sen. Smith's doomed mayoral campaign. After former State Sen. Shirley Huntley was sentenced to jail for allegedly misusing tax money funneled to a nonprofit organization, her former Chief of Staff, who is not a New York City Councilmember, Ruben Wills, faces his own investigation into the possible misuse of nonprofit for personal gain. State Sen. Jose Peralta has also been being scrutinized over $500,000 directed to a nonprofit he helped to organize. After nonprofit don William Rapfogel was arrested, it was revealed that there was a scheme to use tax money funneled through the Metropolitan Council to pass through inflated insurance premiums as a way to fund illegal straw donations to political candidates. On the day when the Metropolitan Council-straw donations scam was announced, former Council Speaker Christine Quinn's doomed mayoral campaign immediately announced that they were returning $25,000 in tainted donations. Since the New York City mayoral race of last year, political bloggers and government reform activists have continued to demonstrate how the corruptive role of money and lobbyists in politics work to move shady campaign financing from official campaign committees, to Super PAC's, to political party committee accounts, to 501(c)(3) nonprofit groups, to 501(c)(4) nonprofit groups, etc. -- through any entity that can act as a "pass through" for illegal personal or political gain. Whenever a nonprofit appears in the political landscape around elected officials, the lobbyists, campaign consultants, other political operatives, and the elected officials themselves aim to exploit that nonprofit for short-term political gain at every point possible instead of serving the greater public good. One of the largest sources of tainted nonprofit funding in New York City is the annual Council Speaker's slush fund. There is a long history of corruption tied to the misuse of this nonprofit funding source. Former New York City Councilmembers Hiram Monserrate, Larry Seabrook, and Miguel Martinez were convicted for their role in the slush fund scandal and political aides to former Councilmember Kendall Stewart also pleaded guilty to charges in connection with the nonprofit funding-related scandal. Continuing former Council Speaker Quinn's pattern of funding nonprofit groups that do the speaker's bidding, the new Council speaker, Councilmember Melissa Mark-Viverito has allocated over $830,000 to a nonprofit group tied to one of her chief campaign consultants. And the City Council, under Speaker Mark-Viverito, has allocated over $7 million from this slush fund to nonprofit groups, including VOCAL-New York, that are deliberately deescalating political pressure for police reforms in exchange for receiving City Council funding. If the editors of The New York Times are serious about reforming the broken political system, then they should mount a public campaign that ends the misuse of nonprofit organizations for personal and political gain. And this proposed campaign should begin with investigating why the city's ethics board can continue to clear politicians to operate nonprofit groups in parallel to their political offices. If voters reviewed the list of corrupt politicians, who have had to leave office due to criminal charges involving nonprofit funding, there is never any accountability for the big name politicians, who control the large pools of slush funds that enable this kind of nonprofit corruption. It's as if the big-name corrupt politicians know that cases consisting of violations of local or state law and involving the possible prosecution of significant political or government individuals pose special problems for the local prosecutor. If voters are to take The New York Times seriously, then the editors must address this paradox, too -- not just bemoan the on-going corruption by elected officials. |
RELATED Nonprofit run out of Adams’ office hit up donors before city OK (The New York Post) Nonprofit paid for Brooklyn borough president’s trip to China (The New York Post) |
Withholding of City Budget Details Undermines Financial Oversight and Checks and Balances
| RELATED Council Staffers Withheld Budget Documents From Lawmakers (The Wall Street Journal) New York City Budget : Vote First, Read Later (The Wall Street Journal) Melissa Mark-Viverito Is Quiet on City Council’s Budget Losses (The New York Observer) |
City Council Central Staff, reportable to Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, delayed sharing with all municipal lawmakers some of the budget paperwork for several hours on the day that the Council voted on the city budget. IN A CONTINUATION OF corrupt strong-arming of City Council votes, Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito's central staff deliberately withheld some budget documents from Councilmembers for up to six hours before the full Council would vote on the Fiscal Year 2015 $75 billion city budget. The phony reason that Speaker Mark-Viverito's central staff gave for holding back some of the budget paperwork was because all of the budget had not yet printed, and that staffers were told that “you don’t slow drip the budget,” as one person told The Wall Street Journal, whose City Hall reporter broke the story. But this blatant lie flies in the face of that fact that Council Speaker Mark-Viverito did "slow drip the budget" -- by dropping the 400+ page budget report of the speaker's slush fund, otherwise known as "Schedule C," the night before the Council voted on the city budget. Releasing the Schedule C report of slush fund allocations to politically-connected charities, Council Speaker Mark-Viverito satisfied Councilmembers' first order of business : how much tax dollars were they going to be able to award to nonprofit groups that helped Councilmembers with get out the vote efforts, mailing lists, and other soft forms of political contributions. By withholding the details of the FY2015 city budget up until the very last minute, the Council Speaker aimed to thwart any debate on or challenges to the budget by her fellow Councilmembers. Details of the city budget were probably largely dictated to the City Council by de Blasio administration Budget Director Dean Fuleihan on the mayor's behalf. Suppressing debate, examination, or challenges to the $75 billion budget is detrimental to the healthy function of the City Council. Political bloggers and government reform activists, such as Suzannah B. Troy, have long argued that the Council leadership under Speaker Mark-Viverito's predecessor deliberately thwarted investigations into corrupt multi-billion dollar technology outsourcing contracts, such as CityTime employee timekeeping system and the ECTP program of the 911 emergency call system. Who knows how many corrupt over-payments, contract-overrides, or payment extensions were granted under the city budget documents that Speaker Mark-Viverito's central staff deliberately withheld for several hours. But the Councilmembers surely did know how many millions they gave to quiet down police reform groups, to deescalate political pressure from the Left on the neoliberal de Blasio administration. |
Mayor de Blasio's high poll approval ratings from minority communities will soon clash with the summer police offensive by controversial NYPD Commissioner William Bratton that targets communities of color.
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In last month's Quinnipiac University Poll, it was affirmed that Mayor de Blasio had lost support amongst a majority of White voters. How long will the mayor enjoy support from people of color as Commish Bratton releases the Kracken upon minority neighborhoods and the city's public housing developments ?  According to a Quinnipiac University Poll release in June, Mayor Bill de Blasio had lost support amongst White voters, but he still has the support of some minority groups. How long that support will last under the racist ''broken windows policing'' policies of NYPD Commissioner William Bratton will soon be revealed. Commissioner Bratton is unleashing approximately 400 desk cops onto the city's "troubled police precincts" -- a euphemism for public housing developments and other minority neighborhoods -- in a policing crackdown that appears to be discriminatory based on income and race. The new NYPD offensive, known in the department as “Summer All Out,” will last 90 days, and it follows the controversial, military-like "shock and awe" raids conducted at dawn one day several weeks ago targeting low-income residents, who live in public housing developments in Harlem.  Mayor de Blasio, Commissioner Bratton, and their public relations advisors, such as Dan Levitan, left, from the corrupt lobbying firm Berlin Rosen, are tone deaf to the concerns of minority communities. During the Harlem public housing raids, the police mobilized helicopters, officers in riot gear, and even counterterrorism officials, and the cops even hauled out all of their expensive police toys that they use to make themselves feel so strong and powerful, and, instead of targeting the suspects of interest, the police under Commissioner Bratton drew the entire residents of the public housing complexes of the General Ulysses S. Grant Houses and the Manhattanville Houses in Harlem into the dawn raid. It's clear that the intent of the NYPD was to instill fear and terror into the residents, to make the major psychological impression that to round up suspects of interest the police will raid entire public housing developments using "militaristic invasions" to make communities of color more submissive to police in a perverse form of sociological behavior modification. This was what the U.S. military meant by using "shock and awe" under former President George W. Bush in the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003. But the implications for Mayor de Blasio may be the same as they were for former President Bush. U.S. popularity plummeted when we are seen as the aggressor. As more and more voters become disenchanted with the duplicitous political machinations of Mayor de Blasio (witness the collapse of Long Island College Hospital on Mayor de Blasio's watch and the swift community sense of betrayal and anger that that engendered), and you have a open window into what the mayor will likely soon face, as the residents of low-income and minority neighborhoods have to put up with aggressive policing that targets the poor and people of color. The mayor's last vestiges of political polling support amongst minorities will likely collapse before this summer is over. Already, the police are targeting low-income artists and performers, who put on shows in the subway system for tips. The unemployment rate for minority youths is stubbornley high, and the mayor has no alternative plan to give subway artists a legal and meaningful way to earn a living. These, and other violations of minority New Yorkers' civil rights, such as the right to be publicly accommodated on buses without fear of being brutalized or discriminated, are driving minority leaders and activists to question Mayor de Blasio's unbridled support for Commissioner Bratton's racist ''broken windows'' theory of policing. And if Interfaith Medical Center in Brooklyn closes this year, the political perceptions of more and more minority communities will turn decidedly anti-de Blasio. Yesterday marked the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a legislative landmark that was meant to address the violent discrimination in the South. Perhaps the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice needs to look into the actions of the North, starting right here, with the NYPD. Commissioner Bratton's "broken widows" theory of policing is a form of de jure discrimination, and it must be dismantled. It can be done through the work of the Justice Department, or voters can vote Mayor de Blasio out of office after one term, after he loses critical voting support amongst minority voters as early as this summer, at the rate that he and his police commissioner are going. |
Did political operatives for Gov. Cuomo bully The New York Times into changing its headline ?
the @nytimes are a changing. #BeforeAndAfter cc @tmcgev @joepompeo @HuffPostMedia @brianstelter @onthemedia pic.twitter.com/dHT4cLXxsw
— Azi (@Azi) July 1, 2014| RELATED G.O.P. Power Broker in Albany Accused of Lying to F.B.I. (The New York Times) | When The New York Times published its article about the federal indictment of State Senator Thomas Libous, the headline read, "G.O.P. State Senator, Ally of Cuomo, Is Indicted." Minutes later, the headline was altered to remove any reference to embattled Gov. Andrew Cuomo, "State Senate's No. 2 Republican is Indicted." The alternation of the headline, mentioned on Twitter by intrepid reporter Azi Paybarah, triggered scrutiny from Mr. Paybarah's Twitter followers. Rebecca Baird-Remba replied to Mr. Paybarah's tweet with, "hmm. is there a particular reason they edited cuomo out of the headline?" Many political bloggers and government reform activists await the fallout of grand jury findings and other investigatory outcomes as a result of the premature implosion of Gov. Cuomo's Moreland Commission. The Moreland Commission was a state-wide, corruption-fighting panel with subpoena power, staffed with various hot-shot district attorneys. But before the Moreland Commission could indict any corrupt politicians, or publicly name corrupt politicians facing corruption-related investigations, Gov. Cuomo bargained away the Moreland Commission's existence for short-term political gains. In the time since the Moreland Commission ceased to exist, a few local and state level indictments have been made, but so far the heavy hand of the powerful federal prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney's Office for New York's Southern District have yet to fully open the flood gates to what bloggers and activists anticipate may be a deluge of corruption indictments that reach higher than local and state prosecutors have ever dared to attempt. The backpedalling in The New York Times headline may be an indication that political operatives close to Gov. Cuomo fear a public relations backlash, or worse, as federal prosecutors ratchet up their investigation of corruption up in Albany. If State Senator Thomas Libous "flips" on other corrupt high-ranking Albany politicians, does his indictment foreshadow the opening of the floodgates of the federal corruption crackdown that government reform activists have been expecting since the break-up of the Moreland Commission ? 
The indictment against State Sen. Libous came about as a result of a sitting grand jury in the Southern District's White Plains office. Three months after Gov. Cuomo pulled the plug on the Moreland Commission, scandal and controversy still swirls around his motivations. Moreland Commission Executive Director Regina Calcaterra is still drawing her annualized salary of $175,000 after Gov. Cuomo disbanded the corruption investigation panel, The New York Daily News reported, leading some astute political observers to question the reason why Ms. Calcaterra needs to be being paid off like this. |
Overcrowded public schools, more public students in homeless shelters, hospital closures : the distraught de Blasio administration desperately trying to "spin" its way out of problems with rhetoric and deceptive mailers
| RELATED 38 Percent of Applicants Did Not Get a "Universal" Pre-Kinder "Offer" (WNYC) Sources : de Blasio aide pushed rent increase (Crains New York Business) For de Blasio, Deals, Drama and (Maybe) Progress (The New York Times) SHAME : de Blasio mailer praises LICH closure (Bill de Blasio Sold Out) "Mayor's Fund to Advance NYC" is full of notorious developers (Queens Crap) |
MORE AND MORE, the political bloggers in New York City are seeing through the smoke and mirrors of the de Blasio administration. As the media awaits Mayor Bill de Blasio to address school overcrowding, conditions made worse by his expansion of pre-kinder, political bloggers are asking tougher questions. Do the stumbles by the de Blasio administration on the politically-motivated early release of Bishop Orlando Findlayter from jail, the de Blasio deal to strong-arm the Working Families Party to endorse the reelection campaign of neoliberal Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and other missteps point to a one-term mayoralty ? These are the hush-hush questions being asked amongst activists and bloggers. Autonomous police reform activists see how Mayor de Blasio implicitly approves of the arrest of over 240 subway artists and performers so far this year under controversial "shock and awe" NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton. These same autonomous police reform activists also see how the mayor's puppet in the City Council, Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, allocated over $7 million in taxpayer dollars to community groups that guard the veal pen of nonprofit police reform activism from the inside. As the summer heat bears down on New Yorkers, their patience is going to wear thin with how the mayor is dragging his feet on long, outstanding reforms for which activists have waited over 15 years. For example, instead of saving Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn, a move that could have been made revenue-neutral by just entering into a hospital licensing agreement between the city's Health and Hospitals Corporation and a new operator, the mayor did nothing to save LICH. The failed opportunity to save LICH keeps in place a decades-long, state plan to keep closing community hospitals to make radical cuts to the Medicaid program by denying expensive healthcare procedures to the poor and to people of color. Now, to cover his tracks, Mayor de Blasio has asked Berlin Rosen operative Dan Levitan to fabricate deceptive community mailers, trying to sell the spiel that the luxury condo conversion of LICH is actually a community "win." New Yorkers are a bright bunch of people. They know a scam when they see one. The sad story of what happened to LICH under Mayor de Blasio's watch, as are the on-going threat of NYPD's discriminatory "broken windows theory" of policing and the unaddressed problems with public education, point to a moment of truth for the de Blasio administration. Is he going to deflect blogger's rightful questions about his duplicitous political machinations into a problem for which his teams and teams of public relations operatives plan to blame the media, or is Mayor de Blasio going to own the problems of New York City -- including the very ones he creates himself ? |
| RELATED Charity tied to Council Speaker Mark-Viverito quadruples its slush funding (Crains New York Business) VIDEO : Cy Vance Dirty D.A. (Dropbox) | POLITICAL BLOGGERS and government reform activists today expressed frustration that another corrupt New York City Council speaker was going to use her control over a large multi-million slush fund to reward her lobbyists and campaign consultants, and there was nothing that Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance was going to do about it. The Hispanic Federation, a nonprofit organization founded and represented by Luis Miranda, a chief political consultant of Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, saw its pork-barrel funding quadruple in the speaker's first budget, through a slush fund system that critics say remains politicized despite some obligatory lip service to reforms. Press reports from The New York Post and Crains New York Business show that the Hispanic Federation consistently funnels money back to Mr. Miranda's campaign consulting and lobbying firm, the MirRam Group. Steering flush fund money to charities that then act as a "pass through entity" back to favored lobbyists and campaign consultants is business as usual in the City Council. Political bloggers and government reform activists alleged that Speaker Mark-Viverito's predecessor, Christine Quinn, did the same thing, reportedly using the High Line park as the "pass-through" to ultimately benefit Bolton-St. Johns, the lobbying firm headed by former Speaker Quinn's best friend, Emily Giske. The political, campaign, and slush fund corruption in New York City comes from learned behavior about how to rig the broken political system to keep enabling still yet more and more corruption. The possibility that Council Speaker Mark-Viverito's allocation of large, six-figure sums to charities that pay some of their money back to Speaker Mark-Viverito's political operatives is a blatant conflict of interest. Is this part of the way that the Council speaker "compensates" her campaign consultants through transactions that circumvent the city's campaign finance regulatory authority, the Campaign Finance Board ? The optics of these kinds of financial arrangements merit investigation, possible charges of corruption, and at the very least the issuance of new ethics rules of recusal and oversight. But we live in a city, where District Attorney Cy Vance is Mr. Fix It. Corrupt politicians, lobbyists, and other permanent government insiders know that D.A. Vance won't prosecute anybody, meaning, "the fix is in." Former Council Speaker Quinn and Ms. Giske got away with it, and Speaker Mark-Viverito and Mr. Miranda are gambling that they will, too. So, the crooked politicians keep exploiting the system. Does that mean D.A. Vance is a power bottom for every crooked politician in this city ? (No offense to power bottoms.) Corrupt politicians know that the prosecution of significant political or government individuals pose special problems for local and state prosecutors. 
Voters can tell how the clients of lobbyists and campaign consultants get preferential treatment over other schmucks, who lack the political connections with prosecutorial insiders. When Crains New York Business requested the e-mail correspondence between the New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and his ex-wife, political consultant powerhouse Jennifer Cunningham, the attorney general denied the Freedom of Information Law request. Similar to how the attorney general appears to be protecting his ex-wife from media scrutiny, some political bloggers and government reform activists charge that the attorney general protected politician clients of Ms. Cunningham from scrutiny. Ms. Cunningham worked on former Council Speaker Quinn's mayoral campaign at a time when activists were demanding investigations into allegations of corruption during former Council Speaker Quinn's administration of the City Council, investigations which never came to pass. |
The Hispanic Federation received more than $830,000 in FY2015 City Council Slush Funds. The charity was founded and is represented by a partner of the MirRam Group political consultanting firm, which is close to Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito.
| RELATED | IN THE NEW CITY BUDGET, the New York City Council, headed by Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, has steered over $830,000 to a charity with close ties to one of her chief campaign consultants, Crains New York Business reported.  The charity, the Hispanic Federation, was founded and is represented by Luis Miranda, a partner of the MirRam Group. The MirRam Group advised Councilmember Mark-Viverito's reelection race for her City Council seat, and it "quietly provided assistance in the midst" of Councilmember Mark-Viverito's speakership race, according to the Crains New York Business report. The disclosure of expenditures of Councilmember Mark-Viverito's speakership race fails to show that the speakership campaign committee ever paid the MirRam Group for their services, an apparently similar arrangement that Councilmember Mark-Viverito's speakership campaign had with The Advance Group. A potential conflict of interest comes to the fore with respect to the City Council allocation of slush funds to the Hispanic Federation in that the MirRam Group lobbied the City Council, including Speaker Mark-Viverito, for the funding. Moreover, the large allocation to the Hispanic Federation may invoke "veal pen" concerns. The Hispanic Federation is a fund of funds-type structure, which means it uses its resources to fund other Hispanic charities. Will the Hispanic Federation only fund groups that express their loyalty to Speaker Mark-Viverito ? Furthermore, the slush fund allocation to the Hispanic Federation has a potential to move circuitously back to the MirRam Group, according to the Crains New York Business article. The Hispanic Federation retains the MirRam Group on an $8,500 monthly arrangement. Over the years, the Hispanic Federation has paid over $600,000 to the MirRam Group and to another firm "registered to Mr. Miranda and his wife," according to a 2012 report by The New York Post. The circuitous flow of slush funds that "pass through" charities and into the pockets of lobbyists with close ties to the Council Speaker. Former Speaker Christine Quinn began earmarking slush funds to the High Line park before she became Council Speaker, and those and other budget allocations overlapped with the High Line park retaining the lobbying services of Bolton-St. Johns, a firm headed by former Speaker Quinn's best friend, Emily Giske. To close the circuitous loop of money, real estate developers, who stood to make tens of millions of dollars, if not more, from the gentrification that the High Line park ushered in, turned around and made large campaign contributions to Speaker Quinn's campaign committee accounts. For years, good government groups have asked that the City Council slush funds either be eliminated entirely or to be reformed to prevent the politicization of the controversial budget allocations, so that there are no pay-to-play, conflicts of interest, or quid pro quo aspects to how the slush funds are divided up by the Council Speaker. Now that Crains New York Business has brought the role of campaign consultants to the fore, the city's Campaign Finance Board and the Department of Investigation must investigate the appearances of corruption. If the potential established pattern of criminality in these cases consist of violations of local or state law but involve the investigation and prosecution of significant political or government individuals, who may pose special problems for the local prosecutor, then federal prosecutors must lead the charge. |
Delete your Facebook account and never look back.
| RELATED Facebook's massive psychology experiment likely illegal (Boing Boing) Facebook will treat you like a lab rat, until you close your Facebook account (CNN Money) | THE TROUBLED SOCIAL MEDIA GIANT Facebook was exploiting the News Feeds for hundreds of thousands of its members as part of a sick and twisted psychology experiment to study how emotions travel through social networks.
“Doing psychological testing on people crosses the line,” Brian Blau, a technology analyst with the research firm Gartner, told The New York Times. Delete your Facebook account and never look back. |
PUBLISHED : SUN, 29 JUN 2014, 07:52 PM
UPDATED : MON, 30 JUN 2014, 12:10 PM
It's been 25 years since Andrew Cuomo led the charge on an AIDS initiative.
| RELATED Cuomo Plan Seeks to End New York’s AIDS Epidemic (The New York Times) | Gov. Cuomo is paying for the stepped up fight against AIDS by having first made radical cuts to Medicaid and and by hospital closings. This week-end, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced plans to end the AIDS epidemic in New York State by the year 2020. How nice of him to revisit the AIDS crisis after a 25 year sabbatical. The last time Andrew Cuomo spearheaded an AIDS initiative was in 1989, when he led the charge to build a segregated health facility for people with AIDS. This was at a time when there was a rise in AIDS phobia, and it seemed like putting people with AIDS into isolation or in sub-par health facility situations was another form of reactionary discrimination. It's difficult to know how much money Gov. Cuomo is dedicating to his plan to end AIDS. In an article in The New York Times, the Cuomo administration said $5 million has been set aside from Medicaid and the state's AIDS Institute. But according to information on the Housing Works Web site, the Cuomo administration proposed to cut $12 million from the AIDS Institute in the new budget. Ooops ! It's great that Gov. Cuomo wants to join with healthcare activists to end the AIDS epidemic. But, the last time Gov. Cuomo made healthcare promises, he promised to save hospitals in Brooklyn. But then he let Long Island College Hospital close down. Ooops ! Besides people with AIDS, people of color have been calling on Gov. Cuomo to do the right thing on healthcare. As a gay man, I'd love nothing more than to see an end to the AIDS epidemic. Why Gov. Cuomo's plan is coming 25 years too late, and why he's paying for it by closing more and more Brooklyn hospitals is not clear. What is clear is that Gov. Cuomo's announcement was timed for today's Gay Pride Parade, giving the governor an opportunity to hand-out all these campaign-looking signs to parade supporters to hold up for the cameras. How thoughtful. He must be looking for votes. But I wonder how many lives could have been saved if decades ago "LGBT for Cuomo" were the campaign signs being used, instead of "Vote for Cuomo, not the Homo." |
Are we watching the sunset of the U.S. technology industry ?
| RELATED | FOLLOWING REPORTS THAT the U.S. technology giant and National Security Agency partner Verizon was providing Internet services to the German Parliament, the German public exploded in outrage at the possibly of having their government's national security and privacy rights further violated by the U.S. government and by its technology partners. After NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden exposed the corrupt and unconstitutional spying programs of the United States, including by U.S. technology partners such as Verizon, the German government was forced to terminate its technology contract with Verizon. It's not yet known the size of the financial loss to Verizon, or how many jobs will be lost as a result of the canceled German government technology contract. Many U.S. technology firms are having to privately grapple with the economic and political backlash to the on-going cooperation between U.S. technology firms and the U.S. spy agency.
Last winter, Facebook head Mark Zuckerberg called President Barack Obama to complain about the NSA spying programs. Mr. Zuckerberg's leaked his displeasure to the public as a growing movement of activists are exposing Facebook for its corrupt ''like'' advertising programs and for the creepy cyberstalking policies it carries out against its members, in addition to Facebook's role in being a core source for NSA surveillance activities. Although the obstacles facing Facebook may be unique to its own troubled business premise, the reality is that many U.S. technology giants, including social media companies, are facing real political and economic blowback as a result of questions being raised by each of foreign governments and foreign businesses about the trustworthiness of U.S.-based sources for NSA spying and hacking, such as Verizon and Facebook. Not only are the NSA spying programs unconstitutional and are going to lead to serious costs to the U.S. legal system, as civil rights and civil liberties activists clog the system with their noble efforts to rightly restore basic Constitutional principles to the wayward American spying framework, but now the NSA spying programs are going to have a financial cost to the economy, too. And all, on President Obama's watch. |
de Blasio administration PR staff told to "attack" the media in "incredible" and "truly historic" pep talk
| RELATED | 
Mere weeks after Ginia Bellafante excoriated the de Blasio administration's record of accomplishment in a Sunday edition of The New York Times, the mayor's spokesman, Phil Walzak, strikes back !
Mr. Walzak's instructions to "attack" the media came the same week when the de Blasio administration continued to deny reporters access to the police arrest report for City Hall supporter Bishop Orlando Findlayter, even though the court system reached a disposition of Bishop Findlayter's case in his favor, as City Hall expected. Bishop Findlayter peaded guilty to lesser charges in exchange for being sentenced to time served. Apparently, denying Freedom of Information Law, or FOIL, requests is now part of City Hall's efforts to "attack" and "control" the media. Is the de Blasio administration afraid of being held accountable for delivering on a progressive reform agenda that combats public corruption ? Many New York City-based political bloggers and reform activists wonder if Mayor de Blasio's new-found aggression towards media scrutiny of his administration has anything to do with the public corruption scandals playing out right now from City Hall all the way up to Albany. |
