Save democracy; watch this film

The
Film
You
Must
See
This
Election
Year !

The Promise of New York is an award-winning documentary that follows the entertaining antics of three underdogs who try to unseat billionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg during the 2005 mayoral election. Featuring: Michael Bloomberg, Ed Koch, Christopher Brodeur, Jessica Delfino, Seth Blum, Andy Horwitz, and Chris Riggs.

Upcoming Screening Dates:

* Tuesday Sept. 8, 8PM; Monkey Town; $10/$10 Minimum
58 N 3rd ST, Brooklyn, NY ; 718.384.1369
Reservations highly recommended. Click here for Tickets or Information.

* Friday Sept. 11 & Saturday Sept. 12, 9PM; Dixon Place; $10
161 Chrystie ST, New York, NY
(212) 219-0736; www.dixonplace.org
Click here for Sept. 11 Tickets.
Click here for Sept. 12 Tickets.

From the publicity materials :

"A blogger turned stand-up comic, an obsessive political gadfly and a high-school math teacher compete against each other and arch rival incumbent Michael Bloomberg for the post of New York City mayor. As these ordinary citizens take politics into their own hands, The Promise of New York explores the meaning of democracy and the identity of a city with hilarious irreverence and thought-provoking sensitivity."

Billionaires for Wealthcare

Putting Profits before People !

"Good stuff. But don't bother the right wing nuts with facts, they can't be bothered with such things, It would leave so little time for Rush." -- pastol

Don't Pull the Plug on the Status Quo !

"Wealth means you are right, if you are poor don't try to educate yourself just go die!!! " -- studio7manga

Can we trust Republicans ?

Can we trust Mayor Michael Bloomberg's judgment ?

Mayor Bloomberg not only endorsed, but he also supported and campaigned on behalf of McCain-Palin.

Please note ! This post was inspired by Block Bloomberg, a website opposing Mayor Bloomberg's third term electioneering robbery.

Kinldy help me spread the word of Mayor Bloomberg's arrogance. He's belittled the democratic political process many times over, and he's now begun to minimise his political opponents. He's already diminished voters' say on term limits by denying us a referendum. He's going to continue to marginalise and disregard us, people. WAKE UP !

Bloomberg Denies Dissing Bush

Flashback to April 2008: Michael Bloomberg Denies Dissing President Bush

Bloomberg ignores the Black community

No Economics—No Vote!

Tell Your Family and Friends, No Third Term for Mayor Michael Bloomberg!

Inconvenient Truth about Michael Bloomberg's ads

Don't vote for Mayor Michael Bloomberg !!! Part 1

"Mayor Michael Bloomberg thinks that he can use his power and enormous wealth to fool New Yorkers into thinking he actually cares about the poor and middle class. In his two terms as mayor he has done absolutely nothing but cut funding to every facility that the middle class and poor depended upon to get by and has raised every tax he could get his hands on. He has rewritten the law by increasing term limits so he can run for mayor and possibly serve a 3rd term, New Yorkers had absolutely no say in this decision. This man has shown New York just how heartless you have to be to be a billionaire without winning the lotto by taking everything and giving back nothing. Don't vote for this man, he is transforming New York into a tourist attraction and a resort for himself and his fellow millionaire and billionaire friends. This advertisement is on me Mayor Mike Bloomberg."

You Better Look Before You Vote For Mike Bloomberg

The one main reason you don't see roses growing in NYC.

Political Sky is Falling in on Mike Bloomberg: For the last 8 years, what has he done about maintaining our infrastructure ?

"A few days ago, at the West 181st Street station of the No. 1 subway line, the roof literally caved in.... "

"There are three critical pieces of infrastructure that make a city as dense and complex as New York work. One is the water and sewage system, the second is the power system and the third is the subway system. It costs more to maintain these pieces of infrastructure in a city as built up as ours than it does in less crowded places. A lot of our infrastructure is old and in need of maintenance. Some of that infrastructure maintenance is well financed. Some, like our mass transit system, is not...."

"One would like to think that the roof falling in would be a signal that change is needed...."

--Steve Cohen, "The Roof is Caving In: Time to Find Funds for Infrastructure" in The New York Observer

Bloomberg resistance now on radio

Crotch Shot Radio Show interviews Suzannah B. Troy.

Listen as Ms. Troy discusses the slush fund scandal, pension fund scandal, over-development, the third term power over-reach, and the collapse of our infrastructure.

Empty Coronary Care Unit at St. John's Queens Hospital

Video of empty and eerily silent Coronary Care Unit of St. John's Queens Hospital, after the hospital was closed earlier this year.

Where are we going to go, if we get sick ? And when the H1N1 flu strikes again this winter, it isn't going to look good, people.

Look at all the healthcare infrastructure, resources, and technology that are going to go to waste. What you don't see is all of the highly educated and trained medical staff -- what is happening to them, where are they going to work now ? So many people don't have access to healthcare, and here we are taking entire hospitals offline.

OUT-rage !

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Councilwoman Helen Sears must surely have no sense of compassion or caring for the 2,000,000 people in Queens, who keep losing more and more hospitals, firehouses, and post offices.

The New Yorker magazine exposes Bloomberg's ego-driven third term campaign

"The Untouchable: Can a good mayor amass too much power?" by Ben McGrath. Illustration by: Gerald Scarfe.

Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York: ambitious younger mayors around the country call him Papa Smurf. Photograph by Platon. Read the article by clicking here or on the picture.

NY City Council extends Term Limits

Flashback to October 2008: Amid High Emotions, Council Clears Bloomberg's Third Term Bid by WNYC reporter Kathleen Horan.

"Speaker Christine Quinn, who brought the mayor's bill to the floor, defended the extension of term limits by saying it was increasing voter choice."

""Make no mistake," said Speaker Quinn. "I believe that our great city will get through these challenges and emerge stronger than ever before. I also believe that in challenging times like these, the voters should have the choice — the choice to continue their current leadership. They should have the right to vote for the current mayor, or a new one, for their current City Council member, or a new one. That is exactly what is at stake today."

To listen to the entire WNYC radio report, please click on the mp3 player above.

Remember Term Limits NYC 2009

We need a new Mayor in NYC, a new Councilman in Queens, and a whole new State Senate in Albany.

Vote for change in 2009. Vote for Daniel Dromm and Tony Avella.

Michael Bloomberg Loves George W. Bush

Flashback: 2004 at the Republican National Convention

Remember: Michael Bloomberg is a Republican at heart.

Mayor Bloomberg beholden to Republicans, says Bill Thompson

" How can Bloomberg fight for us, when he's defending the Republican Party line ? "

"88 percent of Bloomberg’s political contributions since 2002 has gone to the Republican Party," so reports Azi Paybarah.

This information, already widely perceived by many, was compiled and released by Bill Thompson’s campaign to the press.

Bloomberg hiked our taxes in 2002 by 18.5%

Flashback to 2002: Record NYC property tax hikes -- requested by Mayor Bloomberg !

New York City property owners and tenants swallowed a bitter pill in 2002 after the New York City Council passed an 18.5% property tax hike aimed at shoring up a multibillion dollar budget shortfall. Mayor Michael Bloomberg had originally proposed a 25% property tax increase, but critics had blasted his budget plan as outrageous.

At the request of Mayor Bloomberg, the New York City Council introduced and passed on November 25, 2002, a law to increase property taxes in New York City beginning in fiscal year 2003. The law was sponsored by council members David I. Weprin, Leroy G. Comrie, Jr., Tracy L. Boyland by request of the Mayor.

As you decide in 2009 who to vote for, here is a reminder of how the votes were cast :

Gifford Miller - Yes
Joseph P. Addabbo, Jr. - Yes
Tony Avella - No
Maria Baez - Yes
Charles Barron - Yes
Tracy L. Boyland - Yes
Gale A. Brewer - Yes
Yvette D. Clarke - Yes
Leroy G. Comrie, Jr. - Yes
James E. Davis - No
Ruben Diaz - Yes
Erik Martin Dilan - Yes
Simcha Felder - Yes
Lewis A. Fidler - Yes
Helen D. Foster - Yes
Dennis P. Gallagher - No
James F. Gennaro - Excused
Alan J. Gerson - Yes
Eric N. Gioia - Yes
Martin J. Golden - Excused
Sara M. Gonzalez - Yes
Robert Jackson - Yes
Allan W. Jennings, Jr. - No
Melinda R. Katz - Yes
G. Oliver Koppell - Yes
Bill de Blasio - Yes
Andrew J. Lanza - No
John C. Liu - Yes
Margarita Lopez - Excused
Miguel Martinez - Yes
Michael E. McMahon - Yes
Hiram Monserrate - Yes
Eva S. Moskowitz - Yes
Michael C. Nelson - Yes
Bill Perkins - Yes
Madeline T. Provenzano - Yes
Christine C. Quinn - Yes
Domenic M. Recchia, Jr. - Yes
Philip Reed - Excused
Diana Reyna - Yes
Joel Rivera - Yes
James Sanders, Jr. - Yes
Larry B. Seabrook - Yes
Helen Sears - Yes
Jose M. Serrano - Yes
Kendall Stewart - Yes
Peter F. Vallone, Jr. - Yes
Albert Vann - Yes
David I. Weprin - Yes
David Yassky - Yes
James S. Oddo - No

Revolution in New York City Government

Pig roll call: oust these Queens councilmembers

List courtesy of Queens Crap :

Queens councilmembers who voted YES on congestion pricing:

Eric Gioia
John Liu
Hiram Monserrate
James Sanders, Jr.
Thomas White, Jr.

Queens councilmembers who voted YES on term limits extension:

Leroy Comrie, Jr.
Melinda Katz
Diana Reyna
James Sanders, Jr.
Helen Sears
Peter Vallone, Jr.
Thomas White, Jr.
(Anthony Como voted no but also voted no on referendum amendment.)

Queens Councilmembers who voted YES on Willets Point:

Joseph Addabbo, Jr.
Anthony Como
Leroy Comrie, Jr.
James Gennaro
Eric Gioia
Melinda Katz
John Liu
Hiram Monserrate
Diana Reyna
James Sanders, Jr.
Helen Sears
Peter Vallone, Jr.
David Weprin
Thomas White, Jr. (absent)

Queens councilmembers who are/were clients of the Parkside Group:

Tony Avella (dumped them after 2001)
Leroy Comrie, Jr.
James Gennaro
Eric Gioia
John Liu
Diana Reyna
James Sanders, Jr.
Helen Sears
Peter Vallone, Jr.
David Weprin

Dump Bloomberg now !

FOR PROMOTING RACISM AND INEQUALITY IN NYC

• DISPLACING COMMUNITIES OF COLOR – Michael Bloomberg has passed more rezoning plans than the past 6 mayors combined, assisting developers to build luxury high-rises in low-income communities of color in Harlem, Chinatown/ the LES (Lower East Side), Sunset Park, and Willets Point, while protecting wealthy white areas like Riverdale, the East Village, Park Slope, and Little Neck.

• The City’s passing of a racist rezoning plan has already accelerated the destruction of Chinatown and the LES. Immediately after, the City announced selling NYCHA lots in the LES, and used city agencies to evict building after building of long-time residents.

• STEALING FROM THE POOR TO FEED THE RICH – Bloomberg is still spending city money to subsidize his developer friends while slashing jobs and resources for our health, education, public housing and other services. He has called for city budget cuts totaling $1.4 billion. As a result, we have seen hospitals, bus lines and firehouses closed - mainly in neighborhoods of color.

• “WORLD’S MOST POWERFUL BILLIONAIRE” - Under Bloomberg’s administration the gap between rich and poor in NYC has grown to be the 9th largest in the world, on par with Nairobi, Kenya. New Yorkers with the lowest incomes are people of color whose standard of living and life expectancy are comparable to those of the poor of China and India. But since becoming mayor, Bloomberg has become the wealthiest man in NYC, gaining $13 billion or more in personal wealth.

• BLOOMBERG HAS SOLD AWAY N.Y. CITY to foreign and domestic investors, sucking money, resources, and jobs out of NYC and allowing the city to sink into recession. He has sunk our community and our city into disaster levels of debt that we working people now have to pay for !

Michael Bloomberg New York City Term Limits

Update! I invite everybody to read this excellent post by Suzannah B. Troy about the questionable ethics of Simcha Felder.

New York City is on the wrong track !

I have no confidence in Mayor Bloomberg's ability to lead the city out of the recession.

Mayor Bloomberg wants to sanitize New York City by imposing limits on the use of vehicles and bicycles, imposing tolls on bridges, building luxury condos that nobody can afford, and by forcing the inhumane deportation of homeless people (can we call them refugees?), who are being displaced by Mayor Bloomberg as an election year ploy.

From dumpbloombergnow.org : NY Times: Poll Finds Lukewarm Support for Bloomberg :

According to David W. Chen and Marjorie Connelly (6/9/2009), a poll conducted by The New York Times, NY1 and Cornell University suggests that a majority of New Yorkers think Bloomberg does not deserve another term.

As fear increases in response to the economic downturn, confidence in Bloomberg's ability to lead the city out of the recession has plummeted. This is a troubling sign for Bloomberg, whose entire justification for seeking to circumvent the will of the people as expressed in the term limit law was that his business expertise would be indispensable in these tough times.

According to the polls, 51 percent of New Yorkers believe the city is on the wrong track; over one-third were not able to answer when asked what they thought was the best thing Bloomberg has done as mayor.

An angel feeds the hungry in Queens

While Mayor Michael Bloomberg complains about the amount of money that the city spends on helping the homeless and those less fortunate, an angel named Jorge Munoz is feeding over 100 people each night in Jackson Heights, Queens.

Instead of simply shifting the cost of helping poor people to different places, as Mayor Bloomberg's homeless program does, what Mr. Munoz has been able to accomplish is to show compassion, humanity, and caring for the people who are -- and belong in -- our community: our neighbors.

How about throwing out the biggest bum himself -- Bloomberg ?

Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration is rounding up homeless people and offering them one-way tickets to send them back to their original home towns.

ABC News is reporting that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been operating a controversial program that is forcing out homeless people from New York City.

This callous and insensitive program banishes the homeless to where ever they originally came from.

'' The program, which has been in operation since 2007, has sent people back to Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, Puerto Rico and even Paris. Sometimes the travel comes with big price tags like $2,500 to go to South Africa.

'' Bloomberg has defended the controversial program, saying relocation is much less expensive than spending up to $36,000 per year to keep a homeless family in a shelter. "This saves taxpayers of New York an enormous amount of money," Bloomberg said. "Also keep in mind nobody's forcing these people to go. They want to go." ''

The double-edge sword of TV ad blitz

Poll Suggests Mayor May Be Losing Ground

SKV, a reader of the NYTimes blogs, has posted an interesting take on Mayor Bloomberg's use of TV advertisements to make a hard sale for his third term :

"Bloomberg can’t buy enough air time to make me forget that his face shouldn’t be in front of me at all. New York City voted twice for term limits."

Money can't buy you love, Mister Mayor.

Bloomberg's undercovery spy campaign revealed

Mayor Bloomberg has a history of spying on protest groups during the 2004 Republican National Convention. Now, his third term re-election staff have started spying on Bill Thompson's campaign events.

Remember when, back in 2004, Mayor Michael Bloomberg admitted that he had ordered the NYPD to collect surveillance on groups protesting the Republican National Convention ?

Well, now comes the blogger Roy Edroso of The Village Voice, and he has reported that Mayor Bloomberg's campaign operatives are shopping around secretly-recorded audio tapes to humiliate NYC Mayoral candidate Bill Thompson. It is known that at least one media outlet, The New York Post, has been taken this bait.

"The Post says his operatives sent them a tape of Bill Thompson not reacting when the co-owner of the delightful West Village Brit boite Tea and Sympathy called Christine Quinn a "whore." "

The prefabricated outrage that is being intentionally generated by this scandal is ludicrous. Restauranteur Sean Kavanagh-Dowsett's only wrong-doing was that he had no thesaurus within easy reach; his poor choice of an adjective to describe a sell-out is understandable. When I can't think of a word to describe my disappointment in someone, I usually do turn to profanity as a literary clutch.

Meanwhile, it seems Nixon-esque for Mayor Bloomberg's political campaign to go around audio-taping his rival's campaign events. Should that be cause for more concern than the wrong use of the word, "whore?"

Bloomberg manipulates tea party for political gain

The following is an exact quote (links and all) from a blog post in The Village Voice:

Bloomberg Shops Tape of Man Calling Christine Quinn a "Whore" in Front of Bill Thompson

By Roy Edroso

We see Mayor Bloomberg is getting serious about his election campaign. The Post says his operatives sent them a tape of Bill Thompson not reacting when the co-owner of the delightful West Village Brit boite Tea and Sympathy called Christine Quinn a "whore." Restauranteur Sean Kavanagh-Dowsett also said Quinn could "kiss my ass." We speculate that Thompson was distracted by the finger sandwiches.

PolitickerNY has the tape, which reveals the source of Kavanagh-Dowsett's rage: the tripling of Tea & Sympathy's rent, and a perceived lack of support for small business owners by Quinn. You have to listen really hard at the end to hear, amid the chatter, the "whore" and "ass" parts...

Later on a Thompson spokesman, noting at the event at T&S was "a forum open to the public," said the candidate nonetheless found the comments "inappropriate and offensive." It's Barack Obama and Reverend Wright all over again! (Does this mean Thompson wins?)

You don't want to get caught talking smack around Quinn. In 2007 Quinn orchestrated the blockage of a proposal to rename a street after activist Sonny Carson, leading a council aide, Viola Plummer, to threaten to "assassinate" councilmember Leroy Comrie. Quinn had her fired. Plummer is now suing Quinn, claiming her firing was racially motivated.

Flashback

A little bit crummy and a little bit chummy

Council Votes, 29 to 22, to Extend Term Limits

The City Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, was congratulated by two supporters, Councilmen Lewis A. Fidler of Brooklyn, left, and Larry B. Seabrook of the Bronx, after the October 23, 2008, vote by the New York City Council to extend term limits. (Photo: James Estrin/The New York Times)