No Third Term : Th3 ill-fat3d, karmically-doom3d th3rd t3rm of Micha3l Bloomb3rg
Mic Check : Christmas Caroling in front of St. Vincent's Hospital
Protestors gathered on Christmas Eve in 32 degree weather -- and some spent all night on the frigid sidewalk to symbolize the patients "Left Out In The Cold" after the closing of St. Vincent's Hospital. Activists and community members modified a classic Christmas Carol, "Here Comes Santa Claus" in this YouTube video.
Rudin-Quinn HANUKAH Christmas Protest St Vincent's Hospital
"Praying for miracle -- very windy used Occupy Wall Street signs to protect candles," wrote Suzannah B. Troy.
NYDaily News : John Haggerty was sentenced to 1 1/3 to 4 years on each of two counts of supposedly "stealing" money from Mayor Michael Bloomberg. After being sentenced, Mr. Haggerty was taken into custody.
From The New York Daily News :
The Queens political operative who stole nearly $1 million from Mayor Bloomberg is heading to the slammer.
A judge dismissed pleas for leniency and sentenced John Haggerty to one and a third to four years in state prison.
Probation was not enough, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Ronald Zweibel said, “in order to restore the public confidence in the electoral process and to serve as a deterent.”
Also, Haggerty will have to return the $900,000 or so he stole from Bloomberg, the judge said.
That means Haggerty will likely have to sell the $1.6 million Forest Hills house he grew up in — and which he ripped off the mayor to buy out his brother’s share. ...
Mayor Bloomberg's shady campaign finance scandal is an outrage, not to mention the fact that Mayor Bloomberg was hiring political operatives to suppress the vote through "thinly-veiled ballot security operations," but, just like the Watergate scandal, only the aids to the executive politician go to jail, not the crooked politician, who gets blanket immunity/pardon.
It's a Wonderful Life : Christmas Caroling for St. Vincent's Hospital
On Christmas Eve night, joins us as we welcome local residents, who are walking from house to house, singing Christmas Carols.
Activists will be standing outside the closed Bailey Savings and Loan -- I mean, the closed St. Vincent's Hospital -- where we will be singing Christmas Carols and handing out band-aids, because band-aids will be all the healthcare you'll get from the new first aid clinic that will replace St. Vincent's.
You see, old man Potter -- I mean, old man Rudin -- has bought the old St. Vincent's for pennies on the dollar, and he now awaits the New York City Council to give final approval for the luxury condo conversion of St. Vincent's. Some activists will spend the entire evening outside to demonstrate first hand how emergency care patients have been "left out in the cold" by the Rudin luxury condo conversion.
2011 St. Vincent's Protest Flyer (Dec 20 and Christmas Eve Caroling) Left Out in the Cold - PottersvilleUNC-Chapel Hill students launch online petition to overturn University's decision to invite Mayor Michael Bloomberg to serve as the 2012 commencement speaker.
"Students at UNC Chapel Hill are trying to convince the university to change speakers for this spring's commencement. They've started an online petition protesting New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg as the commencement speaker," reported News 14 Carolina.
St. Vincent's Hospital activist bird-dogs billionaire Bill Rudin over controversial luxury condo conversion plan.
Artist and political commentator Suzannah B. Troy confronts Bill Rudin on West 12th Street. Community anger towards Mr. Rudin has inspired many protests, including a sustained protest and vigil outside the sales office of the new luxury condos. Mr. Rudin has ruthlessly ignored the community’s need for a full-service hospital. Mr. Rudin paid pennies on the dollar to buy St. Vincent’s real estate, and Mr. Rudin now stands to sell luxury condos and townhouses that, once constructed, are expected to have a combined fair-market value of over $1 billion.
Is the Rudin Family the Mother Teresa of real estate ? Really ?
The artist and political commentator Suzannah B. Troy has fun with Michael Powell, a reporter for The New York Times, about how the Bloomberg administration exerts control over the press.
'' At least since the Republican National Convention of 2004, our police have grown accustomed to forcibly penning, arresting, and sometimes spraying and whacking protesters and reporters. On Monday, The New York Times and 12 other organizations sent a letter of protest to the Police Department. 'The police actions of last week,' the authors said, 'have been more hostile to the press than any other event in recent memory,' '' wrote Mr. Powell.
Health Petition : Mayor Michael Bloomberg : Stop the Rudin Luxury Condo Conversion Plan
Sign Our Petition ! The Rudin Luxury Condo Conversion Plan will set a dangerous public health precedent. City politicians would be saying that a top 1% real estate developer can make hundreds of millions of dollars in private profit by converting the charitable public real estate buildings of the former St. Vincent's Hospital, whilst the 99% have no replacement Level One Trauma Center or Full-Service Hospital. If Rudin's Condo Plan is approved, Mayor Bloomberg would be saying that it is O.K. for an entire section of New York City to have no full-service hospital. How can this be a responsible public health care policy ? Mayor Bloomberg needs to stop the Rudin Condo Plan for St. Vincent's Hospital until a full-service hospital is created.
No comment from openly lesbian New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn to the homophobic comments and attitude by the private security guards employed Brookfield Properties. An unidentified security guard used the pejorative epithet of ''faggot'' against Joey Boots.
Note that at 0:24 appears Deputy Inspector Edward Winski, the chief of the First Precinct of Manhattan. An anonymous source said that many of the private security guards that work for Brookfield Properties are off-duty or retired officers from the NYPD. And because Brookfield Properties hires off-duty and retired police officers, it gives Brookfield the inside line of being able to pick up a cellphone and reach a direct line to NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly. For his part, Mayor Michael Bloomberg appealed a favourable gay marriage ruling in 2005, because he opposed marriage equality for LGBT New Yorkers.
Activists Expose that the Association for a Better New York is a front group for billionaire real estate empire.
Activists that support a new hospital to replace St. Vincent's have exposed that William Rudin and his so-called ''civic'' group that operates under the name of the Association for a Better New York only to further the real estate development opportunities for the Rudin Management Company. What do you think ? Please post your comments.
Bill Rudin Gang Laugh at Us ; Meanwhile, We Still Need A Hospital
Activists and community members showed up for the first day in an on-going protest and vigil outside the Rudin Management Company's luxury condominium sales office at 120 West 12th Street, at one of the Manhattan buildings that used to comprise the campus of St. Vincent's Hospital.
In a separate action, started by LGBT civil rights activist Alan Bounville, the community is being asked to take part in a phone zap against Rudin Management Company. Mr. Bounville is asking that everybody contact John Gilbert, the COO of Rudin Management Group by calling 1-212-407-2400 and by e-mailing : jgilbert@rudin.com
"Please join the masses and flood Rudin Management Company's phone and email this week so they are aware of the growing wave of public disgust with them stealing a hospital from the community!" urged Mr. Bounville.
Record your phone calls, upload the sound files, and copy and paste your e-mails and links to the Rudin Phone Zap Facebook event page.
The economics of the Rudin luxury condo conversion plan for St. Vincent's is proving to be a very lucrative real estate development plan. Rudin paid $260 million for the St. Vincent's campus, and it obtained $525 million in construction financing for the project. If you combine these two figures, then the total cost going into the luxury condo conversion is about $785 million. If Rudin sells the luxury condos and townhouses for a combined value of over $1 billion, then it would be very easy for Rudin to net well over $200 million in profit from the closing of St. Vincent's Hospital.
The lure of profit well in excess of $200 million during this Great Recession may be one reason that Rudin has spent easily over $200,000 on hiring the real estate lobbyist Melanie Meyers and made a bundle of approximately $30,000 in donations to the 2013 mayor campaign of Christine Quinn.
The lure of profit well in excess of $200 million during this Great Recession has also triggered a possible fraud probe. Two months ago, The New York Post reported that the Manhattan District Attorney was investigating whether hospital executives intentionally let St. Vincent’s fail, so that the Rudin could buy the hospital’s real estate on the cheap.
No wonder that William Rudin and City Council Speaker are laughing all the way to the bank, while community members are stuck in crosstown traffic or suffering through long Emergency Room wait times in order to get emergency medical attention.
Google Issues Apology ; Tries To Explain Away Censorship As ''A Processing Error.''
Following the censorship of the No Third Term blog, which triggered the suspension of all of my blogs, I spread word about the censorship and asked all my friends to write to Google, asking that they restore my blogs and reïnstate my account. Following is a great YouTube video by Suzannah B. Troy :
I also received help and support from Queens Crap, who posted a blog post about the occurrence of political censorship.
The suspension of the blogs took place before 5 a.m. this afternoon, and the blogs were fully restored shortly after 1 p.m. this afternoon. Here is Google's apology, with no other explanation :
Hi Louis,
Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We have reviewed the account and determined that the blogs were removed due to a processing error. The blogs have now been reinstated. We are sorry for any inconvenience or misunderstanding this may have caused.
Best,
Rachel
Google press team
Thank you to everybody, who contacted Google, to ask them to restore my blogs. I am very grateful to you.
The requirement for "protest permits" in New York City, which bedevils the #OccupyWallStreet movement, can be traced back to Christine Quinn.
On September 24, 2011, what was then the eighth day of the #OccupyWallStreet protest, about 1,000 protesters went on an unpermitted march from Zuccotti Park to Union Square Park in Manhattan. Along the way, 80 people were arrested for various reasons, according to Gothamist :
The majority of the arrests, which were for disorderly conduct, obstructing governmental administration, blocking vehicular traffic, and one assault on a police officer, occurred around Union Square yesterday afternoon after nearly a thousand demonstrators marched down Broadway. Videos show NYPD officers corralling women with nets, indiscriminately discharging pepper spray, and tackling protestors.
How New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn figures into the arrests of what now numbers well over 1,000 #OccupyWallStreet protesters is a matter of historical record : just take a look at who approved the protest permit requirement in the first place. Not surprisingly, the development of protest permits in New York City can be ascertained by following the course of how Speaker Quinn sold out her liberal roots in pursuit of mayoral electability.
According to a discussion topic posted on September 15, 2007, by David S. Cohen on the Queer Mutiny's Facebook account, Speaker Quinn is responsible for the protest permit requirements in New York City :
In 2006, multiple courts ruled the City’s assembly rules unconstitutional, and City Council was charged with fixing them. Instead of conducting public hearings and placing the matter into the hands of City Council, Speaker Quinn abdicated her responsibilities and allowed the NYPD to write these rules behind closed doors.
In February 2007, she rubberstamped the new rules into effect. Suddenly, it became illegal for 50 or more people to gather and process through New York City—unless they request and are given prior permission from the police.
Of course, the NYPD has a long history of attacking political groups, and one of their favorite tools is to deny permit requests of groups—like the organizers of the 2007 Trans Day of Action—who they don’t like.
Why do police decide who can assemble and who cannot? And since when do the police write rules? And why is all of this okay with Quinn?
Quinn so desperately wants to be mayor that she has sold the queer community and her constituents down the historical river for her own political gain. We’ll remind Quinn that she has her pot of gold, but she better not forgot the rainbow that led her to it!
A political enabler with aims to minimise, and even silence, dissent.
It should come as no surprise that Speaker Quinn "abdicated her responsibilities." When Speaker Quinn is faced with the dilemma between doing the right thing and picking what renders her with an immediate political advantage, Speaker Quinn always picks what is most politically expedient. Even those, who should be her most ardent base of support, leftist LGBT radical activists, know that Speaker Quinn cannot be counted upon to stay true to her liberal roots.
Speaker Quinn has a reputation for bluffing her way through critical public policy issues, like the hole in public health caused by the impending luxury condo conversion of St. Vincent's Hospital. As has been written on this blog before, Speaker Quinn has mastered the art of the non-answer answer : "She likes to be evasive, but she is definitive about giving you the run-around. She doesn’t have to give you either a proverbial bait-and-switch or back-pedal, provided she never has to first give you any policy position with which to lure you."
But Speaker Quinn's evasiveness begins to wear thin amongst radical activists, who know that the only way to make our elected politicians deliver a tangible solution to a societal problem is by keeping them politically accountable. Here is where direct action protest organisers enter into the political equation.
A Gay City News news report, which is no longer available online, was copied on the Radical Homosexual Agenda's website :
PRIDE AT CITY HALL
by Jefferson Siegel
Gay City News
6/21/2007On Wednesday night over 500 people filled the City Council chamber for a celebration of "LGBT Pride and the Journey to End Violence and Hate." Among those honored were NYPD Detective Kevin Czartoryski, the Rashawn Brazell Memorial Fund, established in recognition of the brutal 2005 murder of a 19-year-old gay man from Brooklyn, and the Gay-Straight Alliance at Port Richmond High School in Staten Island.
Tony-winning actor Stephen Spinella opened the evening, and Speaker Christine Quinn, the first openly lesbian or gay leader of the Council, flanked in the front row by her partner, Kim Catullo, and her father Lawrence, recalled the city's decades-long struggle to achieve gay rights.
In the midst of her speech, half a dozen protesters from ACT UP and the Radical Homosexual Agenda unfurled protest banners from the balcony. They were criticizing a new police regulation requiring groups of 50 or more to first obtain a police permit. "You've criminalized the Dyke March and the Drag March," Tim Doody (pictured with Nina Resnick) of ACT UP yelled. Quinn allowed the protesters to have their say [for one minute], after which they were escorted from the building. There were no arrests.
Councilwoman Rosie Mendez, the chamber's other out lesbian member, who has been a vocal critic of the regulation, spoke up on Quinn's behalf. "My speaker cannot do anything until the Council is behind her," Mendez told the chamber.
''A Council Speaker Who Tightens the Purse Strings on Dissent''
Back on June 20, 2007, when activists with the Radical Homosexual Agenda were targeting Speaker Quinn over the NYPD's anti-assembly rules, activist James Wagner charged that Speaker Quinn had "made herself inaccessible" to activists, who had been seeking to meet with her about the requirement for protest permits. Mr. Wagner wrote that after the activists had been removed from the City Council Chambers, following their banner drop, Speaker Quinn said that she was "willing to meet with anyone who disagreed with her on the question of Police rules for assembly." But, as Mr. Wagner further wrote, Speaker Quinn's expression of willingness turned out to ring hallow : "For the record, I have been assured several times by those who know groups that have tried to engage her that she has repeatedly refused to do this in the past."
Sometime between the mass NYPD arrests during the 2004 Republican National Convention and the 2008 revelation of Speaker Quinn's slush fund scandal, Speaker Quinn decided that the best way to campaign to become mayor of New York City was to hitch her wagon to Mayor Michael Bloomberg's gravy train. But because she does not have Mayor Bloomberg's billions, she was going to use taxpayer money to buy her way into higher office. When even The New York Times, with its many puff and fluff articles about Speaker Quinn's career, dares to report about how Speaker Quinn uses taxpayer money to stifle political dissent, you know that Speaker Quinn has begun to tread on thin political ice.
And now that activists with #OccupyWallStreet are confronting the use of excessive force of, and even brutality by, NYPD, those very activists are going to question Speaker Quinn's role in approving the restrictions on civil liberties caused by her rubber stamp on the NYPD’s anti-assembly rules. And once again, here comes another time when direct action protest organisers enter into the political equation.
From The New York Times :
Days after a carriage horse collapsed and died in Midtown, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg on Wednesday dismissed calls for a ban on the carriage industry, saying he could not imagine why “anybody wants to destroy something that is part of New York’s heritage and that tourists love.”
Activists from and allies of #OccupyWallStreet participated in a march to St. Vincent’s Hospital to highlight the greed and corruption that lead to the hospital’s devastating closure in 2010.
''The whole planet pays homage to Ground Zero, but they pay lip service to the hospital that was on the front lines that day,'' said a man named Christopher, who spoke at a rally at the end of the march, at St. Vincent's Hospital. Because St. Vincent's was a Level 1 Trauma Center, it was the hospital designated to receive those injured by the September 11 attacks.
St. Vincent’s was a Catholic-run hospital, which had a charity mission to serve the under-insured and uninsured. St. Vincent’s lacked the corporate clout to negotiate fair reimbursement rates from profit-driven insurance companies, leading to financial instability. Moreover, the short-term focus of the highly-paid executives and consultants pushed St. Vincent’s into bankruptcy – leading to a public health emergency: there is now no hospital on the Westside below 57th Street.
Politicians ranging from New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn to Manhattan Community Board 2 Chair Brad Hoylman to Mayor Michael Bloomberg did nothing to save St. Vincent's.
Two months ago, The New York Post reported that the Manhattan District Attorney was investigating whether hospital executives intentionally let St. Vincent’s fail, so that the Rudin Management Company could buy the hospital’s real estate as part of a controversial luxury condominium development project.
Rudin paid pennies on the dollar to buy the hospital’s real estate, and Rudin now stands to sell luxury condominiums and townhouses, once constructed, that are expected to have a combined fair-market value of over $1 billion.
Anger towards the Wall Street-controlled healthcare system inspired today’s march, which is set to also target Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield and WellCare. The march was initiated by a working group of Occupy Wall Street called Healthcare for the 99%, which is composed of healthcare workers and people who seek to end inequality in our healthcare system and our society.
Protest to mark the Third Anniversary of the Term Limits Extension
2011-10-23 Term Limits Protest - Third Anniversary
Bloomberg and Quinn sold the lie that they would save the economy. Have they helped you with the economy ?
Taxpayers and voters are gathering at City Hall Park on Sunday, Oct. 23, at 2 p.m., to commemorate the three-year anniversary of “The Day That Democracy Died” : when Speaker Christine Quinn strong-armed the City Council to extend term limits, allowing herself, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and others to run for a third term in office.
“Since they changed term limits, more people are living in poverty in New York City. Meanwhile, Mayor Bloomberg’s wealth has grown over three-fold while has been in office,” said Louis Flores. “With Christine Quinn’s help, Mayor Bloomberg has been laying off police, firefighters, and teachers ; closing senior citizen centers ; cutting childcare ; and closing hospitals – just basically shredding the social safety net. Also, how is Mayor Bloomberg allowed to make money from inside information through his new company called Bloomberg Government ?”
Protesters will hold a rally, make speeches, and distribute voter registration applications, so that Speaker Christine Quinn and other City Council Members, who passed the term limits extension, can be voted out of office in 2013.
The Rudin Luxury Condos won't save lives. Likewise, a new parking garage won't treat heart attacks.
One of the participants at last night's "mass civilian trauma exercise" at St. Vincent' Hospital asked, "Where is Christine Quinn ?"
NYPD charge horses into peaceful #OccupyWallStreet protesters in Times Square.
At many times, protesters can be heard saying to the horse-mounted police officers : ''Get those animals off those horses.''
This is not the first time that NYPD have used horses against protesters. During the mass protests against President's Bush deadly mistake to invade Iraq after the September 11 attacks, police officers from NYPD also used horses to intimidate peaceful protesters.
"HOW can the NYPD even FATHOM bringing horses into this mess? Not only is this an enormous safety hazard for ALL involved, but this is the exact opposite of conditions that are safe for a horse," wrote an animal rights activist on his Facebook page.
Bloomberg Lays Off 672 School Employees in Largest Firing in Three Terms
The school employees, who were laid off today by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, had worked as school aides, parent coordinators, family workers, and other support positions at roughly 350 schools, The New York Times reported.
The union representing the workers, District Council 37, had ''made three proposals to the city that included giving up paid holidays and reducing the maximum number of hours school aides were allowed to work as ways to save money,'' The NYTimes reported. Mayor Bloomberg rejected each of the union's proposals.
Mayor Bloomberg is on a rampage to bust all of the municipal workers' unions before his third term is up.
New York City Housing Official Is Accused of Taking Bribes
'' ... Wendell B. Walters, the assistant commissioner at the Department of Housing Preservation and Development responsible for new construction, was arrested on charges that he took money from developers involved in building about $22 million in moderately priced housing overseen by the agency in the Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn since 2002,'' reported The New York Times.
It was alleged that Mr. Walters awarded contracts to developers in exchange for cash. He was charged with racketeering conspiracy, extortion, bribery, wire fraud, and money laundering, according to The NYTimes.
The charges against Mr. Walters further calls into question the pattern of corruption under the Bloomberg administration. Under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, we have seen multiple cases of fraud and corruption, from the overbilling of several high tech deals, most notably in connection with CityTime, in addition to the investigations and indictments under the City Council slush fund scandal.
Not only that, but The NYTimes reported that the charges against Mr. Walters ... ''represented another black eye for the administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, whose third term has been clouded by controversies involving senior officials. They include the tumultuous tenure of Cathleen P. Black as schools chancellor and the abrupt departure of Deputy Mayor Stephen Goldsmith, who said in August that he was leaving to work in municipal finance, but had been arrested in Washington on a domestic violence charge days earlier, a fact that neither he nor the mayor had mentioned in their announcements.''
After all these cases of corruption or official misconduct, you would think that we would need to protect the progressive era reforms, not roll them back, the way that Mayor Bloomberg has been trying, ever since he came into power.
From The New York Times :
October 4, 2011, 8:44 AM
By CLYDE HABERMAN
Political ploys under way in Russia could almost serve as an instruction manual for the leadership at either end of New York’s City Hall. You have to slap your forehead in wonder that the New Yorkers didn’t think up comparable high jinks for themselves.
In case your idea of foreign news is a revised menu at the International House of Pancakes, allow us to explain.
Dmitri A. Medvedev, who is Russia’s president but not the guy in charge, plans to step aside so that his place can be taken by Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin, Mr. Medvedev’s predecessor and still the true power. Once Mr. Putin is installed anew as president, Mr. Medvedev will move in as prime minister. In some countries, leaders swap political favors. In Russia, it seems, they swap jobs.
The reason for this folderol is that Mr. Putin, though not thrilled with the idea, yielded the presidency three years ago in accordance with a constitutional provision limiting him to two consecutive terms.
In other words, this former K.G.B. man, known for strong-arm tactics, was more scrupulous about observing the niceties of term limits than were New York’s political leaders: Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and his Medvedev equivalent, Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker.
You will recall that Mr. Bloomberg and Ms. Quinn could not bother themselves with observing the letter, let alone the spirit, of a voter-imposed city law limiting them to two terms. With the help of complaisant council members, they simply changed the law to reward themselves with third terms. Generally speaking, it’s not a good idea to look less faithful to democratic formalities than Vladimir Putin.
There is no need to belabor the wobbly nature of this third term. Names and phrases like Cathleen P. Black, the 2010 blizzard, Stephen Goldsmith and the CityTime scandal tell you at a glance how things have often gone.
For the privilege of presiding over all that, Mr. Bloomberg distorted campaign financing beyond all recognition — yet again — by spending $108 million in 2009.On Monday, he was forced to testify at the trial of a political consultant accused of stealing $1.1 million from that campaign. Theft, if proved, is bad, of course. But Mr. Bloomberg tosses around money so freely that his losing a million dollars is like an average person’s having coins slip between the sofa cushions.
Nor are finances the only area of distortion. The normal balance between the executive and legislative branches in this city has been knocked askew in the Bloomberg-Quinn era. Theirs is not quite the Putin-Medvedev relationship, but it bears a certain resemblance, sort of a second-rate Moscow on the Hudson. Not unlike the Russians, Mr. Bloomberg and Ms. Quinn are trying to make sure that power remains within their alliance.
He leaves no doubt that he wants her to take his place after 2013. His administration goes out of its way to include her in news conferences even when the Council’s role is close to nonexistent, whether the issue is Hurricane Irene or, as was the case last week, an announcement that New Yorkers were eating more fruits and vegetables.
In turn, Ms. Quinn often acts as if she were not the Council speaker but, rather, the deputy mayor for legislative affairs. The latest example came a week ago when she bottled up a bill loathed by the mayor. It would have required mayors, including the wandering, Bermuda-loving Mr. Bloomberg, to let the rest of us know when he strays far from the city — certainly when he leaves the country, as he did before the 2010 blizzard. Ms. Quinn made sure that the Council would not even debate this proposal.
There is, however, such a thing as excessive coziness. A NY1-Marist College poll last week confirmed that, for now anyway, Ms. Quinn is the Democratic front-runner in the 2013 mayoral election. But it also showed that nearly half of Democratic voters would be less likely to vote for a candidate who had Mr. Bloomberg’s support.
How does that aphorism go about being careful what you wish for?
The New York Times exposes another failed tech deal under the Bloomberg administration's mismanagement of large taxpayer-financed tech deals.
The New York Times reporter David Halbfinger spoke with Brian Lehrer from WNYC about Mr. Halbfinger's recent article about the New York City Automated Personnel System (NYCAPS) and the problems with the Bloomberg administration's wildly over-budget personnel tracking system. Nine years after work began, the Bloomberg administration has spent $363 million on the NYCAPS tech deal — and the work is far from done.
Live Mass Arrests on the Brooklyn Bridge #occupywallstreet - Streaming Video by We are Change
In a flashback to the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City, >police rounded up and arrested over 700 activists on the Brooklyn Bridge during a political demonstration.
Police said that those activists, who impeded vehicular traffic on the bridge were were arrested. But The New York Times reported that "many protesters said they believed the police had tricked them, allowing them onto the bridge, and even escorting them partway across, only to trap them in orange netting after hundreds had entered." Look at this independent video :
Some of the activists, who were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge, had their hands bound with plastic ties that the NYPD has used at other mass demonstration. Separately, the NYPD admitted that they police force had taken their own videos of the protesters, who had taken part in the demonstration, deliberately and intentionally tracking and monitoring the peaceful activists.
Attorney Wylie Stecklow, whose law firm represents many of the activists, who were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge, said that the pattern of the NYPD's behaviour toward the Occupy Wall Street protesters was reminiscent of the mass arrests that police made during the 2004 Republican National Convention.
Defense Lawyers for John F. Haggerty, Jr., attack Mayor Michael Bloomberg over Campaign Finance Scandal.
In shocking opening statements by John Haggerty's defense attorney, Raymond R. Castello, it was said that Mayor Michael Bloomberg hired Mr. Hatterty to conduct a voter suppression campaign, in order to ensure that Mayor Bloomberg would win a previously illegal third term in office.
Mr. Haggerty, a GOP operative, is accused of stealing over $1 million of secret campaign-related payments made by Mayor Bloomberg from one of his private banking accounts. By making the campaign-related payments from his private, personal monies, Mayor Bloomberg was able to funnel the payments to Mr. Haggerty via the Independence Party, thereby circumventing and violating the spirit of campaign finance disclosure requirements. For his part, Mr. Haggerty used a majority of the secret campaign-related payments to buy out his brother's interest in a house.
“The story here is not about theft,” Mr. Castello said. “There was none. This case is about winning at all costs. That’s what Michael Bloomberg is all about, and that certainly is what he was all about in 2009.”
Mayor Bloomberg -- this is all according to The New York Times' article about the opening day of Haggerty Trial -- is expected to testify against Mr. Haggerty.
Meanwhile, even though Mayor Bloomberg has accused Mr. Haggerty of saying anything to avoid prison, Mr. Haggerty has nonetheless found prominent political consultancy work after the accusations of the Bloomberg campaign finance scandal, including serving as an advisor to failed 2010 GOP gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino. Stay tuned.
Mr. Haggerty, right, escorts 2010 GOP gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino during the Columbus Day Parade in New York City on October 11, 2010. Photo by Anonymous.
Peaceful Female Protesters Penned on the Sidewalk and Pepper-sprayed by the NYPD in a Show of Excessive Force.
Is Mayor Michael Bloomberg going to denounce the NYPD for their use of excessive force against unarmed women ?
Video of the flashmob protest last Thursday night -- one day after the execution of Troy Davis, a man believed to be innocent of the crimes charged against him. Protesters were harassed by NYPD, pushed and shoved, and one protester was peeled away from the crowd, shoved the floor, and arrested.
Is Mayor Michael Bloomberg sanctioning this kind of behaviour by the NYPD ? What is City Council Speaker Christine Quinn's opinion about the NYPD's use of weapons and vehicles against passionate citizen assembly in protest of the death penalty ? Activists worry that Mayor Bloomberg will again resort to mass arrests, the same way he wholesale violated due process and civil liberties during the 2004 Republican National Convention.
After William Rudin's giant scheme to take over St. Vincent's Hospital real estate properties has triggered an investigation by prosecutors, the Rudin Family went to great lengths to make sure that its luxury condominium conversion plan would be fast-tracked, pulling out all the stops.
But new information came to light this week : one top official of the North Shore-LIJ hospital system, Jeffrey Kraut, is chair of the committee, which will recommend or deny North Shore-LIJ's application for a Department of Health license to operate a controversial stand-alone Emergency Department.
The so-called ''Emergency Department'' is a consolation prize to the community of the Lower West Side of Manhattan after the loss of a full-service hospital and Level 1 trauma center when St. Vincent's Hospital closed on April 30, 2010. Thus far, Mr. Kraut's actions has not been referred to the Attorney General's office, which oversees the ethics of the State's executive agencies, such as the Department of Health.
Mr. Kraut's conflict of interest in having influence over his own company's financial contracts and government licenses provide fresh evidence about the lack of integrity in the Rudin condo version plan.
In order to build its luxury condos, the Rudin Family encouraged North Shore-LIJ's application for the stand-alone Emergency Department. Because the Rudin condo conversion plan depends on the approval of North Shore-LIJ's application before the Department of Health, community members question Mr. Kraut's influence on other members of the Committee on Establishment and Project Review Meeting and Public Hearing, which will determine the outcome of North Shore-LIJ's permit application.
The information about Mr. Kraut's conflict of interest is another negative blight on the Rudin Family, who have also tried astroturfing, lobbying, and distribution of propaganda by mail. The Rudin Family has also been criticised for opposing freedom of information requests that might be useful in investigations.
Separately, the Department of Health has been criticised for its inaction in saving other hospitals from closure, and for the absence of any investigation or prosecution of individuals, who were involved in the hospital closure crisis. In the time that Christine Quinn has been Speaker of the New York City Council, at least eight city hospitals have closed. In 2010, North General Hospital in Harlem declared bankruptcy and St. Vincent's Hospital in the West Village shut down after shady backroom meetings. In 2009, two hospitals in Queens – St. John's Queens Hospital in Elmhurst and Mary Immaculate Hospital in Jamaica – went bankrupt. In 2008, Cabrini Medical Center in Manhattan, Parkway Hospital in Queens, and Victory Memorial Hospital in Bay Ridge closed. And in 2007, St. Vincent's Midtown in Manhattan was closed. Separately, one other hospital in Brooklyn, Long Island College Hospital, was recently saved : it had been on the brink of closing, and the only way the hospital was saved was by merging it with SUNY Downstate. (And all this is not counting the bankruptcy filing made by Peninsula Hospital Center of Queens.)
The New York Times Editorial to Christine Quinn : Shut Down Your Slush Fund !
Last week, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg was hand-picking Christine Quinn to be his heir to the mayoralty of New York City, because Quinn's use of a taxpayer slush fund for political corruption reminded him so much of Bloomberg's three-tiered campaign finance scheme.
Quinn, who is the Speaker of the City Council, is the openly-lesbian politician, around whom many LGBT New Yorkers are rallying around, even though Quinn has had one of her friends diagnose LGBT civil rights activists with ''confusion,'' and this on top of the fact that Quinn has done nothing to investigate the illegal NYPD raid on the Eagle Bar, just some of the many examples of how Quinn has thrown valid LGBT issues under the bus.
Is Christine Quinn going to hold the NYPD accountable for raiding the Eagle on the very night when marriage equality became law ? What kind of an LGBT leader is she, if she does not fight for our LGBT civil rights ? Join our Facebook page : Gays Against Christine Quinn.
Is Christine Quinn going to hold the NYPD accountable for raiding the Eagle on the very night when marriage equality became law ? What kind of an LGBT leader is she, if she does not fight for our LGBT civil rights ? Join our Facebook page : Gays Against Christine Quinn.
Christine Quinn Uses City Council Funds (aka Taxpayer Money) to Reward Political Bosses
After City Council Speaker Christine Quinn got fluffed by NYTimes reporter David W. Chen, now comes Michael Powell, a columnist for the Gray Lady, who pulls back the curtain on Speaker Quinn's slush fund-tinged campaign for mayor.
Mr. Powell reports that Ms. Quinn was appointed Speaker of the City Council after she "charmed" political bosses from Queens, the Bronx, and Brooklyn. At her coronation ceremony, she put Vito Lopez, the notorious Brooklyn political boss (who is the target of several ethical and corruption investigations) in the front row. Speaker Quinn has also scratched Mr. Vito's back in exchange for his political support. "The fates have smiled on Mr. Lopez’s social-service empire, the Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Council ; this year the Council sent more than $4 million its way," reported the NYTimes.
In a statement posted Facebook, a government integrity watchdog activist questioned why the latest NYTimes article stops short of probing the status of the federal investigation into Speaker Quinn's slush fund scandal.
"Instead of reporting on Quinn's criminal activity, the NY Times merely raises questions about her ethics and leadership: "But there are questions to be asked about her leadership, and not all cheery." Is it a fear of Bloomberg that prevents the Times from reporting on the well-documented budget and campaign corruption ?" Donny Moss posted on the social network.
This is how the NYTimes article ends :
Last year, a Council majority favored mandatory sick days for New Yorkers with less than a week of vacation. The mayor opposed it. Ms. Quinn killed it.
Some suggest that she has gotten lost in the game, that she can no longer recall the questions she once asked as an advocate. That sounds too definitive. Her arc is not done.
She affects nonchalance when described as a mayoral puppet: “You can call me Mini-Me. I don’t really care.”
The rub is that voters might care a lot.
Manhattan District Attorney is investigating St. Vincent's ''go-for-broke plan'' that has supposedly enriched the Rudin Managedment Company, which has been waiting in the wings for the hospital to flatline.
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St. Vincent's Hospital is under investigation by the Manhattan DA's office for allegations that the Rudin Management Company has been planning a real estate harvesting/luxury condo conversion plan of the shuttered hospital.
St. Vincent's closed on April 30, 2010, after it laid off many of its employees. Many employees later learned that the hospital was not paying into the state's unemployment fund, so those who were laid off were not eligible for unemployment benefits.
Ever since it closed, the impacted community of the Lower West Side of Manhattan has been calling for investigations into what lead to the hospital's sudden closure. The hospital failed to file a closure plan, as it was required to do, with the New York State Department of Health.
From an article in The New York Post :
Going broke allowed the hospital to get an OK from the state Health Department to sell to the Rudin family, which is building luxury housing on the site. Without bankruptcy, state officials would not have been permitted the hospital to shut down, the sources said.
"This was a well-thought-out plan," said Tom Shanahan, a lawyer for a group of former St. Vincent doctors and nurses suing St. Vincent's. "They wanted out and had to justify it to the state. They were running it into the ground."
DA Cy Vance's team is looking into whether vendors double-billed for services, gave kickbacks for contracts and hired relatives of hospital employees, sources said.
Seeing as how we live under a weekly threat that he is going to close down firehouses, layoff teachers, flush more taxpayer money down the toilet with the CityTime project, and look the other way as the MTA and PATH jack up our fares, Mayor Michael Bloomberg's popularity has hit record lows. Isn't it about time that New York City voters opened their eyes ? Will they do the same about Christine Quinn ?
To find out how real journalists assess City Council Speaker Christine Quinn's record, one needs to look no further than the sensibility expressed in this blog post on True News From Change : NYT Sets the Definition on How To Judge and Pick the Next Mayor and It Fits Quinn
In his blog post, the journalist Gary Tilzer makes many astute observations about David W. Chen's infomercial fluff piece about Speaker Quinn, and perhaps this is the most sharpest of Mr. Tilzer's criticisms : ''It was the publisher of the NYT, along with the NYP and Daily News, that used their papers to support changing the term limits law to allow Bloomberg and Quinn to run for a third term. Mr. Chen does not challenge Quinn when she brushes off her term limits and other critics as 'naïve' ideologues.''
It's already been documented how Christine Quinn bluffs her way through important social issues.
What Speaker Quinn is doing by making her ''unapologetic'' ''move to the middle'' is selling out the working class families of New York City. Her policies favour real estate developers -- and come to the detriment, suffering, and mass displacement of working class New Yorkers. Speaker Quinn's vision of New York City is a continuation of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's vision : more glass and steel luxury condos and less hospitals, firehouses, public schools, and senior centers. Speaker Quinn wants to make life so unbearable to the average wage-earning New Yorker that we all pick up and leave town.
How do we know that Christine Quinn has sold out her values and beliefs and still find herself to be in a place of denial about it, so much so that she accuses her critics of being “naïve” ideologues ?
Speaker Quinn's ideas about leadership in New York, by supporting the luxury condo conversion of St. Vincent's Hospital, which used to be the only full-service hospital with a Level 1 Trauma Center below 14th Street, is like GLAAD publicly supporting the proposed AT&T/T-Mobile merger. Not only would AT&T be in an even stronger position to undo net neutrality, but what is GLAAD doing by meddling in a telecom merger approval process with the FCC ? Likewise, why is a ''supposedly!! celebrated LGBT third-term politician like Christine Quinn rushing toward the ''middle'' of the political spectrum, if it means that she has to abandon her idealistic beginnings and instead now oppose paid sick leave and a living wage bill ?
"AT&T was one of the companies whose local representatives sits on the board of directors of the Tennessee chamber of commerce," wrote John Aravosis at Americablog. "You remember them, the group that endorsed and actively lobbied for the measure repealing gay and trans rights ordinances in the state, mandating it so that no trans person can ever change their birth certificate gender in the future, and banning any future civil rights ordinances for anyone in the future. That AT&T."
What does the intersection of St. Vincent's Hospital/Rudin Family Luxury Condo Conversion and the GLAAD/AT&T T-Mobile mega deals have to do with Christine Quinn and New York City politics ?
In each case, you see the erosion of core values of fighting for an activist's central reason for being : serving their constituency. But once you get to be so big, you can blow off you constituency as “naïve” ideologues (or drop the F-bomb on them, the way that one of her administrative assistants did).
If, throughout our nation's history, our goal has been to distribute power and authority equally among voters, then the voters, who have less choices on election day, get their voices muffled. Who is going to challenge GLAAD to focus once again on its original intention ? Who is going to put pressure on Christine Quinn to deliver on the community’s demands to stop all the hospital closings that are happening across New York City ?
It is not too much to expect that the people, who you elect to City Council, start to deliver something tangible for New York City voters.
Speak now, or forever hold your peace.
Christine Quinn - Plaza Hotel - Gays Against Quinn (Protest Video)
Over 20 activists gathered outside the Plaza Hotel in a demonstration against City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. Watch as protesters speak against Christine Quinn to former Mayor David Dinkins' entourage and hand anti-Quinn literature to Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver.
One of the Speaker Quinn's fellow guests was patronising to protesters, and did you notice how a homeless man was collecting aluminum cans on the red carpet of the Plaza Hotel, while Speaker Quinn dined inside the Plaza Hotel ?
Some of us were there because of Speaker Quinn's use of a $50 million slush fund during a time when we live under constant threat by Mayor Bloomberg, that he is going to lay off teachers and close down fire houses. Others were there, because Speaker Quinn pushed through a controversial extension of term limits, allowing Mayor Bloomberg, herself, and others, to run for a third term in office. Still yet others were there because of Speaker Quinn's complete abdication of full civil rights for LGBT New Yorkers, do-nothing record over hospital closings, horrible animal rights record, and use of city staff for campaign work.
Please join us for a Third Anniversary Protest of the Term Limits Extension at 2 pm on Sunday, October 23, at City Hall.
Please also join our Facebook group : Gays Against Christine Quinn.
Peninsula Hospital Center - Protesters Take Over Lobby - Hospital Closings in NYC
Approximately 200 union employees, residents of Far Rockaway, in Queens, and local officials, gathered in the rain outside Peninsula Hospital Center, across the bay from JFK Airport. Peninsula Hospital Center has filed a plan to shut its doors. The hospital’s owner is embroiled in a political and financial scandal, but employees and residents are worried about the threat to public health, should the hospital’s closure plan be approved.
Attendees of the rally braved the rain, then, once the rally had ended, stormed into one of the lobbies of the hospital, until hospital officials called the police, to clear the lobby of its own employees.
In the time that Christine Quinn had been speaker of the City Council, eight hospitals (not counting Peninsula) have closed. If Peninsula closes, it would mark the ninth hospital to close under Speaker Quinn's watch.
This week, President Obama agreed to severe budget cuts to social safety net programs, that underpin the social contract we make with our government and amongst ourselves. More budget cuts to Medicaid and Medicare will lead to a further collapse of our healthcare system. Is Christine Quinn in Bermuda with Mayor Michael Bloomberg each time a hospital closes in New York City ? Is President Obama surfing in Hawaii each time a hospital closes in America ?
If we obediently listen to people, who are in power (the same people who work for us, the very same people who are closing our hospitals), telling us to leave the lobby of a closing hospital, then it just makes it that much easier for the New York State Department of Health/Christine Quinn to keep closing hospitals.
Is the Rudin Family eyeing their next real estate harvesting operation on the dead carcass of the Peninsula Hospital Center in Queens ?
After he's done with St. Vincent's Hospital, it has been heard on the street that William Rudin is considering another real estate harvesting operation, this time at the Peninsula Hospital Center in Queens.
LO AND BEHOLD ! Joel Klein awarded a no-bid $27 million Department of Education contact in apparent conflict of interest.
News Corporation head Rupert Murdoch, through a subsidiary controlled by former New York City Chancellor Joel Klein, has snatched a $27 million New York State Department of Education contract without a public bidding process, The New York Daily News has reported.
No surprise, but The Daily News also reported that the Murdoch subsidiary, known as Wireless Generation, paid as much as $5,000 a month to the lobbying firm Public Strategies, Inc., to gain "agency support" for a no-bid contract, The Daily News reported.
Playing dumb, the spokesman for the State Department of Education, Tom Dunn, said that he was not aware of any "lobbying."
Late last year, Murdoch's News Corp. decided to go after a bigger slice of corrupt government tech deals by agreeing to buy data firm Wireless Generation for $360 million in cash, The New York Post reported in November 2010.
Wireless Generation builds large-scale, out-of-control data systems that nominally "help educators and parents keep track of student progress," but which News Corp. hopes will help it fluff its profits.
Are Systems Test Analysts, like Amy Clayton at SAIC, responsible for the monitoring the rollout of complex information technology projects like CityTime, or should the fall guys be the people at the top, who kept submitting the inflated invoices -- and then approving their payment ?
Is there an update that the Department of Justice can give us ?
Queens' Peninsula Hospital Center set to close ; New York Downtown Hospital putting patients on stretchers in the hallway to accommodate unmanageable influx of emergency patients.
"Sources say the Far Rockaway, Queens, hospital will shutter after owing millions to vendors and falling behind on its union benefits funds payments; the closure would cost the area about 1,000 jobs," reported Crain's.
The Queens Crap blog published a post today, indicating that Peninsula Hospital Center had filed a 90-day closure plan, a requirement under the law that was violated when St. Vincent's Hospital closed on April 30, 2010.
Is our social safety net not too big to fail ?
Does nobody in City Council have any concern about the financial collapse of so many hospitals across all five New York City boroughs ?
Does Mayor Michael Bloomberg not care, either ?
Meanwhile, following the illegal closing of St. Vincent's Hospital last year, there reamins only one hospital south of 16th Street in Manhattan, New York Downtown Hospital, which The New York Post has reported as being ''overwhelmed,'' and is leading to an ''emergency-care crisis,'' the newspaper reports.
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