Long waits, overcrowding now expected following St. Vincent's Hospital closing

Quoted entirely from FierceHleathcare:

Long waits, overcrowding result from Queens hospital closings; a harbinger of St. Vincent's fallout?

May 25, 2010 — 11:08am ET | By Dan Bowman

Hospitals in Manhattan worried about the impact of closing hospitals like St. Vincent's need only look to neighboring borough Queens to see the effect hospital closures can have on a community. Three hospital closures in two years--Parkway Hospital (251 beds) in 2008 and the simultaneous closings of St. John's Hospital and Mary Immaculate Hospital (422 combined beds) in February 2009--have resulted in 17-hour wait times at one facility, and patients receiving emergency care in a hospital café at a second, reports The Wall Street Journal.

"If you want to think you're in a war-torn third-world country, just go to the ER at New York Hospital Queens on a Friday afternoon, Dr. Paul Aaronson, president of the Queens County Medical Society, told the Journal.

While Queens already was in bad shape before the closings--with the lowest ratio of beds to population of any of the five boroughs according to Greater New York Hospital Association president Kenneth Raske--the closings created a new level of misery for patients and caregivers alike. In 2008, the American Hospital Association reported that Queens hospitals had only 1.7 beds for every 1,000 patients, down 32.5 percent after the closings took place.

Emil Silberman, associate director of the Emergency Medicine Department at Jamaica Hospital, said that his facility, which was made to treat 60,000 patients annually, currently treats more than double that number--135,000 per year. As such, nurses like Larisa Kolyuyeva see as many as 28 patients in a 12-hour shift, more than double the average workload prior to the closings, the newspaper reports.

And such numbers aren't likely to improve, with emergency room visits expected to increase under reform, according to a survey from the American College of Emergency Physicians. Becker's Hospital Review lists ER closures as one of six reasons why overcrowding is likely to continue.

To learn more:
- check out this Wall Street Journal article
- here's the Becker's piece

The ''cynical and opportunistic'' New York City charter revision deal

Testimony by Michael D.D. White of Noticing New York delivered at the New York City Charter Revision Commission meeting on May 25, 2010

Michael D.D. White has posted the written remarks he delivered in testimony on May 25, 2010, at the New York City Charter Revision Commission’s hearing. Among his remarks, Mr. White also posted his own, independent commentary about the farce that has become what I've separately called the "charter revision barter commission:"

« John Keefe, a representative speaking on behalf of Assemblyman James Brennan’s office, went further: He said that because the commission had been convened to implement a pre-agreed-upon a 'cynical and opportunistic deal' between billionaires Michael Bloomberg and Ron Lauder (to repeal and then restore term limits after Bloomberg's election to a third term), that the commission should take no action at all as none could be considered legitimate. »

YouTube Hater Cyberstalker Harasser Hootchee aka MikeIsInnocent

The cyberstalker, who normally attacks Suzannah B. Troy and the commentators to her videos, has turned his attention on me.

MikeIsInnocent has sent you a message:

Sent : Wed 5/26/2010 9:40 PM

Greetings

I am aware of the fact that you have a certain opinion of me created in part by the misrepresentations of other people.

According to Wikipedia, :

Stalking is a continuous process, consisting of a series of actions, each of which may be entirely legal in itself. Lambèr Royakkers writes that:

"Stalking is a form of mental assault, in which the perpetrator repeatedly, unwantedly, and disruptively breaks into the life-world of the victim, with whom he has no relationship (or no longer has), with motives that are directly or indirectly traceable to the affective sphere. Moreover, the separated acts that make up the intrusion cannot by themselves cause the mental abuse, but do taken together (cumulative effect)."^[2]

Wikipedia adds :

When prosecuted, many stalkers have unsuccessfully attempted to justify their behavior based on their use of public forums, as opposed to direct contact. Once they get a reaction from the victim, they will typically attempt to track or follow the victim's internet activity. Classic cyberstalking behavior includes the tracing of the victim's IP address in an attempt to verify their home or place of employment. ^[7]

Teflon Mike

"Nothing's his fault," says Suzannah B. Troy.

Thousands of residents have been ordered to stop using their apartment balconies after the Department of Buildings has found that the balconies at 16 high rise buildings to be unsafe. The Department of Buildings, a New York City agency, has no credibility in the area of public safety, because it always seems to wait until after cranes collapse or balconies give way before it begins to act. And where is Mayor Michael Bloomberg in all of this ? In her latest YouTube video, Ms. Troy concludes that, "No one's holding him accountable." In fact, Ms. Troy has invented a new nickname for the mayor, "Teflon Mike."

Since its release, Ms. Troy's ''Teflon Mike'' video has been carried by at least the SoHo Journal and this blog.

The political scandal that is St. Vincent's bankruptcy

No unemployment benefits for nurses ? Really !?

Could a movement be beginning that will lead New Yorkers to start a petition or ballot initiative to recall the ill-fated, karmically-doomed third term of Mayor Michael Bloomberg ?

As has been said in first person accounts of their true experiences with the New York State Department of Labor, for example :

... nurses were unable to qualify to receive unemployment benefits, once their employment was terminated by St. Vincent's Hospital. There are questions about how long St. Vincent's had not been filing unemployment reports and paying unemployment taxes to the Department of Labor. Now, word of the unemployment benefits financial scandal has begun to spread to some blogs.

"We need a revolution Downtown," said Eileen Dunn, R.N., a former nurse at St. Vincent's Hospital.

Another activist said that throughout the entire process of the closing and bankruptcy of St. Vincents, which will leave about 3,500 without jobs, we have heard nothing but a "deadly silence" coming from Mayor Bloomberg. We need to "recall" Mayor Bloomberg, the activist concluded.

But the reality is that the mayor did know about the deteriorating financial health of the hospital.

According to an exposé on NY1, "Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the city had been anticipating the closure of St. Vincent's Hospital, and that the New York City Fire Department [was] ready to take over the hospital's 13 ambulance tours as soon as it is needed."

What kind of a mayor hears the death rattle, but never summons an organised medical emergency response ? The very kind of a mayor, who we need to recall.

Starve the Beast : Mike Bloomberg's Scorched Earth Policy

Medical emergencies loom large following St. Vincent's shady bankruptcy

Residents of the Lower Westside of Manhattan have been left to wonder how they will receive emergency medical care, now that St. Vincent's Hospital has been closed. The reality is that Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been engaged in an active campaign to eliminate the numbers of such important first responders as firefighters and police officers. Now, there is a real and valid concern whether he is also targeting medical professionals, such as doctors and nurses.

As has been reported by NY1, at the time that the Board of Trustees voted to close the storied hospital, St. Vincent's Hospital, with 400 inpatient beds, had been employing 3,500 people and had been providing life-saving treatments in its emergency room to about 60,000 patients per year.

Recall Mayor Michael Bloomberg, says activist

Recall that Bloombo Dicto once supported a Westside Stadium, but he now cares naught for any Westside Hospital.

We need to recall Mayor Michael Bloomberg and elect in his place a mayor, who has his priorities "straight."

A concerned community resident spoke at the April 30, 2010 emergency community meeting in Hudson Guild, the day that St. Vincent's Hospital was closed. Maybe the reason St. Vincent's was allowed to close under shady conditions was precisely because it would allow developers to get their hands on the "million dollar views" from St. Vincent's location in the West Village ?

See also : How to recall a bad mayor.

Disaster Relief needed after St. Vincent's Hospital has closed

If we don't restore a hospital to Lower Manhattan, then we need to recall Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Why Are They Closing St. Vincent's Hospital? (Pt. 6) - Bankruptcy Court from g. sosa on Vimeo.

Challenge of Hospital Emergency Preparedness

Public Health and Terror emergencies in NYC

Julie Menin, chairwoman of Manhattan's Community Board 1, discusses the threat to terrorism preparedness caused to Lower Manhattan by the loss of St. Vincent's Hospital. Having a fully-operating, "community hospital" in Lower Manhattan is the only way that residents, who were lured by grants to move to Lower Manhattan after the attacks of September 11, can be assured of receiving hospital emergency medical treatment.

The whole city was agitated and outraged after the Obama administration slashed $53 million from the city's terror-fighting budget -- a dozen days after a botched bomb plot to kill people in Times Square -- I want to know why isn't some of that that agitation and outrage directed to Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the New York City Council, after St. Vincent's Hospital was closed under shady conditions on April 30, 2010?

We know that now that St. Vincent's Hospital has closed, we have lost a critical part of our terrorism preparedness. Why don't our elected officials see this ?

Mayor plans to cut more first responders. Next up : street artists.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who already has a record of decimating other first responders, such as laying off firefighters and closing firehouses, laying off police, doing nothing to save critical hospitals and emergency rooms (such as St. Vincent's Hospital), has now turned his attention to the latest heroes of New York : street artists.

The Huffington Post explains the impact of the mayor's proposed cuts to street artists, not in terms of the loss of arts and culture in New York City, but in terms of national security :

"Right now, the Bloomberg administration wants to reduce park art vendors by a whopping seventy-five percent. If the city follows through with its plan, only 18 vendors would be allowed in Union Square, for example, down from the 100 or so that set up shop now on busy weekends. While the proposed changes would result in more elbow room, the regulations would also mean eighty fewer pairs of eyes that can "say something" when they "see something" suspicious in a crowded park on a summer afternoon, an appealing soft target for people bent on inflicting the most mayhem with minimal effort. Think of your typical vendor as a living, breathing time-lapse camera, attuned to subtleties we don't stick around long enough to notice. Can we really afford to risk losing so many ?"

Humility is a Gift

(Thanks to Heather Letzkus, via Queens Crap on FaceBook. Photo links to the original blog post on New York Shitty, from whence it originally came.)

Census Hospital Propaganda

Bloomberg to St. Vincent's : "Drop dead" -- and that's exactly what happened.

No City Rescue

In making his reasoning for running for an unprecedented third term as mayor, Michael Bloomberg rationalised that it was his financial acumen and success that qualified him for running New York City during the financial crisis. Just like other notions that the mayor has maintained, it was implied or promised that he had the resources or expertise to help the city survive the Great Recession. But has he demonstrated such financial leadership when it came to saving St. Vincent's Hospital from bankruptcy and financial ruin ?

In a news article published on Bloomberg.com in late January 2010, the mayor said that he was not going to be of any help to solve the financial problems of St. Vincent's Hospital.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he intends to keep the city out of St. Vincent’s financial troubles. The city controls 11 full-service hospitals run through its Health and Hospitals Corp., “which we are going to have an enormous challenge to maintain,” and wouldn’t take on St. Vincent’s to keep it operating, he said.

On April 30, St. Vincent's Hospital closed its doors. So, really, what good is Mayor Bloomberg, if he has no financial answers to offer ?

Greed and Politics destroyed St. Vincent's Hospital

"It's like a funeral inside."

New York State Assemblymember Richard Gottfried criticised New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg last night, during a town hall meeting of Chelsea and Greenwich Village residents. The mayor, who likes to get involved in issues that are important to New York City, did not participate in trying to save St. Vincent's Hospital, the Hon. Gottfried said.

Separately, as was reported by the Associated Pressin an article published yesterday on The Kansas City Star's website, Mayor Bloomberg was unmoved by attempts to save St. Vincent's.

"It's very sad. I wish the hospital could stay open. But the bottom line is, it's not going to," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Friday on his weekly radio show.

The same AP report also included the following information :

Since it opened in 1849, the famed Manhattan hospital has treated cholera victims, survivors of the Titanic and hundreds of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks. It also was at the forefront of the early response to the AIDS epidemic.

St. Vincent's was the last Catholic-affiliated hospital in New York City. The nearest top-level trauma center is now Bellevue Hospital, more than two miles away.

During a "last mass" inside the hospital's chapel, the former St. Vincent's employees became emotional, the AP added.

"There's a lot of heartbroken people inside the ER. ... They have been the heart and soul of this hospital for many years," said Eileen Dunn, a St. Vincent's nurse for 24 years. "I think on 9/11 we saw what hatred could do. We're seeing today what greed and politics can do to a hospital.

"It's like a funeral inside," she said.

Urgent care centers can't treat real medical emergencies

A less-comprehensive urgent care facility will be the only "medical lifeline" that will serve the Lower West Side of Manhattan.

Last week, before St. Vincent's Hospital was closed, Governor David Paterson announced that state grants (at least one reportedly worth $9.4 million) will fund a watered-down urgent care center in the area. Lenox Hill Hospital will operate the center at the former site of St. Vincent's Hospital, before it would move to a permanent site, The New York Daily News reported.

Yesterday's closing of St. Vincent's Hospital in the West Village, and the proposal to replace it with an urgent care center, creates a deadly public health threat for residents of the Lower West Side of Manhattan.

As was reported by WCBS News, "An urgent care center will be the only medical lifeline to serve the community. Although it will be open 24/7, it will only treat minor injuries...."

How you can decide if and when you need to go to the emergency room of a hospital : If you have a serious condition, like a stroke, heart attack, severe bleeding, head injury, or other major trauma. Don't take a chance with anything life-threatening. The ER is the best place for these and other critical conditions, including :
- chest pain
- difficulty breating
- severe bleeding or head trauma
- loss of consciousness
- sudden loss of vision or blurred vision
- heart attack
- stroke
- diabetic shock
- car accident
- severe fall
- life threatening allergic reactions

When an urgent care center might better meet your needs :
- minor burns or injuries
- sprains and strains
- coughs, colds, and sore throats
- ear infections
- non life-threatening allergic reactions
- fever, or other flu-like symptoms
- rash or other skin irritations
- mild cases of asthma
- animal bites

Suite Mayor of Charity probably in Bermuda as St. Vincent's flatlines

The uncharitable closing of St. Vincent's Hospital

Civil rights attorney Yetta Kurland and others gathered last night in Chelsea to lead a town hall meeting to discuss the public health emergency caused by the closing of St. Vincent's Hospital.

As has been reported by NY1, at the time that the Board of Trustees voted to close the storied hospital, St. Vincent's Hospital, with 400 inpatient beds, had been employing 3,500 people and had been providing life-saving treatments in its emergency room to about 60,000 patients per year.

Save St. Vincent's Hospital

Community Town Hall Meeting on St. Vincent's Hospital
Come ask questions and get involved in organizing our community to fight for a hospital in Lower Manhattan and nothing less !

Date: Friday, April 30, 2010
Time: 7:00pm - 9:00pm
Location: Hudson Guild (Fulton Center - 9th Ave between 17th and 18th Sts)
Address: 119 9th Avenue, New York, NY

Repealing self-dealing

UPDATED !
The « Pelican Brief » on Mike Bloomberg's ethics

Ever since I received the latest comment ("Somehow when Mike Bloomberg does something good, he doesn't get any credit. A few minor issues seem to invalidate all the good he does in people's minds.") from an anonymous YouTube profile ("hoochee003"), I've been thinking about how to state in one clear blog post one of the "few minor issues," which highlights how Mayor Michael Bloomberg has breached the social contract, which gives him the right to govern New York City.

John Alan Cohan once wrote that there is a "popular perception that government officials serve their own purposes and those of influential interest groups, rather than those of the public." Further, "the public sees politicians as disconnected from the fundamental principles they ought to be serving." Let's examine the record, to see how Mr. Cohan's statements, although not made about Mayor Bloomberg, can still apply to the shady way that Bloombo Dicto bent the laws to run for a controversial third term as mayor.

In early 2008, Mayor Bloomberg decided to bow out of the race for U.S. President. Because the presidential race proved to be so costly and the public was suffering from Republican fatigue, Mayor Bloomberg, who was already nearing the end of his maximum two terms as mayor of New York City, had to look for another gig. By late 2008, Mayor Bloomberg decided to keep his mayoral title, even though, at the time, it was against the law.

While he was holding a public office, Mayor Bloomberg thought that there was nothing wrong with choosing to change the law with a self-serving result to help him win another, previously-forbidden, election. In addition to striking a deal with the City Council to change the law, as was correctly predicted by artist and political activist Suzannah B. Troy in her prophetic YouTube video, but the Mayor was also able to get his way by striking another deal with a respected private citizen, who had the important role of being a government watchdog.

Within days of having publicly acknowledged or announced his intention to change the laws banning third terms for local politicians, Mayor Bloomberg reached an agreement with civic activist and term limits champion, Ronald Lauder. Mr. Lauder, who had twice underwritten voter referendums that put into place restrictions of two term for local, elected government officials. The pact called for Mr. Lauder to support Mayor Bloomberg's ill-conceived, self-serving term limits extension in exchange for Mayor Bloomberg offering Mr. Lauder an appointment to a city charter revision commission to be formed by Mayor Bloomberg, once Mayor Bloomberg had safely been reëlected to a third term.

Mayor Bloomberg's excuse for needing to run for a third term was that he offered the kind of leadership (aka "fiscal prudence") needed by the city to get through the financial crisis. His strategy involved baiting many term limits' compromised City Councilmembers to vote through a self-dealing extension of term limits; not only would Mayor Bloomberg be eligible to run for a previously-unavailable third term, but so would council members, like Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who were publicly thought of being interested in running for mayor, but who now had to kill 4 more years because they were afraid to publicly challenge the powerful mayor. Since Mayor Bloomberg had decided to bow out of the 2008 presidential race, now everybody else had to put the advancement of their political careers on hold, too.

And if that wasn't enough, midway through the 2009 campaign season, the City Council, which was caught up in a slush fund scandal and had nevertheless passed Mayor Bloomberg's extension of term limits, made its own foray into compromising another important government watchdog : the Office of the Public Advocate. After the Public Advocate publicly criticised the manner in which the City Council and the mayor were changing the term limits law, the City Council proposed a budget, which was accepted by Mayor Bloomberg, which slashed the Public Advocate's budget by an unbelievable 40 per cent. The "job of the Public Advocate is, most fundamentally, that of a watchdog, ensuring that all New Yorkers receive the City services they deserve and have a voice in shaping the policies of their government." (As a matter of fact, the City Council continues to fret anytime the Public Advocate makes mention of the City Council's slush fund scandal.)

After having spent a record amount of money as of November 2009 (over $100 million) to win his ill-fated third term, Mayor Bloomberg only "won by fewer than 5 percent points, at a cost of roughly $20 million for each point," The New York Times reported. Undoubtedly, there was a backlash by the voting public to the cynical method used by Mayor Bloomberg to win reëlection. Fast-forward to March 2010, and Mr. Lauder decided to decline the offer he had accepted in October 2008 (to have served on the karmically-doomed city charter revision commission, which was widely expected to have reset term limits back to two terms). Looks like Mayor Bloomberg was losing the political cover he needed to cloak his machinations and transactions with any shred of credibility.

In social contract theory, it can be said that public servants have a responsibility of respecting a duty of care when carrying out their official tasks. The idea of this theory is that when you first run for public office, you are making an implied promise to give up self-dealing and self-interest for the greater good of society. It's supposed to motivated by a selfless act of wanting to give, not a selfish act of expecting to receive.

In response to hoochee003's request to show cause, the bottom line is that, when we all look back at what hoochee003 may call a "minor issue," we rightly see the manipulative manner in which Mayor Bloomberg fabricated a case to win his third term as mayor of New York City. Mayor Bloomberg essentially and intentionally deceived voters into believing that we needed the business expertise of his billion dollar deal-making in this time of financial crisis so that we could benefit from his personal business acumen. And just like there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to justify its invasion, likewise there is no proof that New York is served better as a result of Mayor Bloomberg's financial expertise to justify the enactment of a self-dealing loophole to the term limits law. Two prime examples come to mind : the bottomless hole in the MTA's deficit and the closing of St. Vincent's Hospital. If it can be said with genuine sincerity that each new announcement of the MTA's budget deficit, which incidentally seems to come far more frequently than the G train, only come as a "surprise" to politicians, then what explains the fact that the Bloomberg administration actually "anticipated" the closing of St. Vincent's Hospital -- yet did nothing about it ? Where has the mayor's financial acumen been on display ? If the financial insolvency of neither a subway system that carries millions of people each day, nor a hospital critical to the care and lives of many thousands of New Yorkers trigger the leadership of such a financial genius that we have in Mayor Bloomberg, then what will ?

Meanwhile, it is difficult not to imagine that Mayor Bloomberg stands to personally gain from clinging onto the mayoral office for four more years, until such time as he could perhaps reconsider running for president in the next election cycle. This has all been a patent violation of public trust, which is, if you will recall, an important underpinning of the social contract we make with one another in a representative democracy. Whereas, in the case of Mayor Bloomberg's third term win, his acts of self-dealing involved misappropriation of opportunities, not money. In contrast to what Mr. Cohan wrote, the "key to reëlection or winning an election" may not necessarily only be "money," but could also include compromising the integrity of government watchdogs, like Mr. Lauder or the Public Advocate.

Now, therefore, if social contract theory calls for selflessness, then we can all agree that that is not how we can describe the political machinations and transactions Bloombo Dicto needed to bring about, in order to to win his third term. He used his position of power and influence over the City Council and government watchdogs.

Sometimes, I wonder whether if it can be shown that a self-dealing politician can be considered a fiduciary, whose powers of the purse make him accountable to a higher standard of ethics and professionalism, then would it constitute a breach of the fiduciary responsibility or relationship for that self-dealing politician to have engaged in machinations or transactions that benefited himself ? Could a courageous citizen come forth and make a showing that they were harmed by the self-dealing changes in term limits or the decimation of the Public Advocate's budget ? Could such a cause be able to recover the citizen's loss of property or rights, as well as disgorge the politician's wrongful profits or winnings ?
What kinds of profits or winnings can a wealthy mayor pocket if all he earns is $1 per year ? The perks that come with being a top government official can actually save a billionaire a lot of money. The high level of security that an otherwise wealthy private citizen would have to pay can be substantial. But if you also happen to be wealthy and mayor of New York City, you can make out very well by receiving security in form of NYPD escorts at your discretion. A wealthy citizen, who just so happens to also be mayor, can put many of his campaign workers onto the city's payrolls, in order to transfer the expenses of their employment from one's pocketbook to the city's treasury. Furthermore, a wealthy politician can also appoint city employees to represent his various private charitable efforts, which also serves to help one save money and perpetuate his power over important city cultural institutions. Still further yet, a politician can also save money on publicity, like asking the city to create or broadcast video footage of one's numerous vanity trips, for the sole purpose of building one's political brand.

For billionaires, whose assets are comprised of or concentrated in one single large investment or business ownership (but who may or may not also be cash poor), finding ways to transfer one's lifestyle expenses can save a billionaire from having to draw down his ownership, or turn to borrowing against his ownership interest, in his flagship enterprise. This is all hypothetically-speaking, mind you, but besides the prestige, there are all of the above financial motivational factors that can inspire a wealthy businessman to become a politician or, at least, encourage him to cling to his political title, even if he deceptively claims he is a selfless public servant. It could take the form of this : pretending to do public service as charity by paying oneself only $1 per year. Do you see how that might work ? Taxpayer money is going to pay for a wealthy person's lifestyle, not to further any service to the public.

Meanwhile, that other government watchdog, the editorial board of The New York Times, which endorsed Bloombo Dicto's third term campaign, suddenly is finding something wrong with the rubber stamp nature of the city charter revision commission. This is the very city charter revision commission, which was supposed to include Mr. Lauder and which was born out of a deal to let Bloombo Dicto keep his office until the next presidential campaign. Why should it come to anyone's surprise that nothing good can ever come out of such ill-fated, karmically-doomed self-dealing ? How can a reasonable person have any altruistic expectation from a compromised city charter revision commission that was created with no regard to public trust ?

The return of the YouTube Hater, Online Bully, and possible Identity Thief

Anonymous YouTube Hater profile hoochee003 (possibly aka BloombergForLife, CIoeBuckingham, LordCarruthers, hoochee002, et al.) strikes again.

On YouTube, we all know about members who leave nasty comments. We call them, "haters." But some members cross the line, like the owner of the anonymous profile, "hoochee003."

During the 2009 campaign for New York City mayor, hoochee003 posted many harassing comments on the activist YouTube videos that were made by Suzannah B. Troy and I. Some of hoochee003's comments were inane and harmless, but the volume of comments were sometimes great, and the fact that hoochee003 would jump from one activist's YouTube account to another showed that his intention was to harass and bully online activists.

Since many anonymous comments were posted on our videos leading up to last year's mayoral election, it has become suspicious that so many hateful, nasty, and negative comments could be generated in such a short period of time from a series of anonymous YouTube profiles. One of the anonymous profiles even represented that he was Tony Avella, the former New York City Councilman. At times, it has been thought that all of these anonymous profiles were the act of one person working under different YouTube usernames. After Ms. Troy informed the real Mr. Avella of the suspected identity theft, action was taken to suspend the fraudulent account.

As a result of the way Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the New York City Council denied voters a referendum on term limits last year, an internet community was created, in opposition to the unethical and highly questionable official acts by the Mayor and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. Because many online activists were linking to each others' blogs, online posts, and YouTube videos, these anonymous profiles were able to stalk the opposing online activist community. There is evidence to show that the owner of an anonymous profile would jump from one activist's message to another's, in a series of coordinated actions, the sole intention of which could only be described as harassment.

This week, one of those anonymous YouTube profiles has returned to further post hateful comments.

If the Internet is all about the democratisation of communication and interconnectedness on a massive, world-wide scale, then there is something wrong when the likely owner of a series of YouTube profiles abuses the platform that is supposed to facilitate a two-way conversation over the Internet. Where the owner of these anonymous profiles may cross the line is that his or her actions can be deemed harassment, because the hateful comments are perpetual, there is no way to have a meaningful conversation with the profiles' owner, and the one-sided nature of the offensive comments only causes frustration and are clearly intended to disturb or upset the productive online community. It threatens to disturb, silence, or censor the independent voice of online activists, who are trying to make a positive contribute to the online community and to New York society.

From September 22-23, 2009, Ms. Troy's YouTube account was suspended by YouTube for reasons that were never clearly explained. This possible act of censorship by YouTube (many of Ms. Troy's videos involve the subjects of her art, her reviews of the arts, and her views of politics) is in striking contrast to how YouTube tolerates anonymous users like hoochee003 (and other online bullies), who post pejorative, racist, sexist, offensive, and homophobic comments.

How can YouTube respect hoochee003's freedom of speech, when it clearly lacks the integrity to respect Ms. Troy's ?

Reflecting badly on Bloombo Dicto

Quoted entirely from The New York Times, but with an added hyperlink at the very end :

Editorial : Redoing the City Charter
Published: April 9, 2010

To help quiet the uproar about changing New York City’s term-limits law so he could run for a third term, Mayor Michael Bloomberg promised to set up a commission to rethink the City Charter from top to bottom. The mayor has said “every issue will be on the table, and every voice will be heard,” which is appropriate for what amounts to the first major review of the city’s governing constitution since 1989.

The committee began work last week and already there are uncomfortable signs that issues of particular interest to Mr. Bloomberg — like term limits and nonpartisan voting — will be hurried through in an effort to get them on the ballot in November. That would be a serious mistake, and reflect badly on the mayor and the 15 able civic leaders he has named to the commission.

Any broad recasting of the City Charter has to be done methodically and fairly. That cannot possibly happen in time for this November’s ballot. The following November is not a good choice either, because there would be little else to draw voters to the polls. The most sensible date would be 2012, even if that means reappointing the commission beyond its two-year term.

The commission’s chairman, Matthew Goldstein, chancellor of the City University of New York, has promised to keep some distance from City Hall and engage in “extensive public outreach” before any proposals are made. His first effort was not encouraging. On very short notice, only about 100 people showed up for the commission’s only scheduled public hearing in Manhattan. One official rightly deemed the turnout as “disgraceful” for a city of opinionated people.

The abbreviated session further reinforced suspicions that the whole exercise is really aimed at getting a swift vote this year on term limits and nonpartisan elections. Term limits are a seductive but fundamentally undemocratic idea that can prematurely terminate the careers of some very good public servants. Voters should decide who gets thrown out of office and who stays longer on the job.

Nonpartisan elections are another lofty-sounding idea that create more problems than they solve. Political parties can keep good candidates from succeeding, but parties vet many more. Winners in nonpartisan elections often turn out to have only one real asset: loads of cash. Nonpartisan elections also could undermine New York’s model campaign financing laws.

There are other important issues that need to be addressed. The comptroller, not the public advocate, should assume the mayor’s duties if the mayor can no longer serve. The city’s land use system needs rethinking. Ways should be found to encourage more candidates to run for office and to increase voter turnout.

The last major charter revision was almost three years in the making. Slapping a few politically charged items on the ballot this fall is a recipe for mischief. The commission must do it right: aim for 2012.