Friday, September 14, 2007

STATEN ISLAND RETREAT. ONE REASON WHY THE NEW YORK STATE LEGISLATURE IS “THE WORST IN THE COUNTRY.

UP FRONT News September 1, 2007
Published by Tom Weiss
Editorial Advisor: Willard Whittingham
“The paper that can’t be bought and can’t be sold.” http://www.tomsupfrontnews.blogspot.com/

STATEN ISLAND RETREAT. ONE REASON WHY THE NEW YORK STATE LEGISLATURE IS “THE WORST IN THE COUNTRY.” THE CASE OF MATTHEW TITONE. MESSING WITH MY HUMAN RIGHTS, THE NYPD, AND A HIGHER AUTHORITY.
(REV.) CAROLINA NICE

Because this article is very critical of several gay elected officials, and so that I am not falsely accused of being anti-gay, it is necessary for me to state at the outset that, while I am not gay, I am for full gay rights, including the right to marry. Considering the human rights legacy of the famous Stonewall Rebellion late in the last millennium, this is a story about stonewalling politicians.

Because I am in need of assistance from at least one elected official with regard to some very serious problems – some involving my health and welfare – with several government agencies, last spring I contacted my State Assemblyman Matthew Titone, (D.-Staten Island). I chose him because I had previously been angrily refused assistance by my City Councilman Michael McMahon, who in an e-mail informed me that he objected to my criticism in UP FRONT News of City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. Indeed I did criticize her for her non-response to my January 30, 2006 e-mail to her via her Chief of Staff Chuck Meara urging a City Council resolution, citing the Chinese Communist Genocide in Tibet, calling for the removal of the 2008 Olympics from Beijing. Ms. Quinn in 2001 had taken credit for resolution #802, which I did most of the lobbying for with her Council colleague at the time, Kathryn Freed, which denounced the Chinese Communists for their actions in Tibet but did not mention that absolutely critical Olympics matter. Ms. Quinn, in trying to stop Council action opposing the Olympics, is doing the nefarious bidding of her nefarious boss Hillary Clinton who, anxious to continue making a lot of money in China, like her pal Rupert Murdoch, is quite tight with the Chinese Communist government. I also have criticized Quinn about her record of support for real estate developers at the expense of the tenants she claims to speak for. More recently I have criticized her for her high-handed, arrogant effort to veto the renaming of several blocks of a Brooklyn Street after black nationalist Sonny Abubadika Carson. I am on record as being strongly opposed to her planned mayoral candidacy since I think she would continue the Giuliani/Bloomberg record of over-development and hostility to civil liberties. If the Democratic primary for mayor were today, I would vote for long shot but very serious candidate City Councilman Tony Avella (D.-Queens).

Regarding the aforementioned constituent assistance, I did not approach my State Senator Diane Savino for a very good reason. Several years ago, when I was homeless and had been robbed of my hotel rent money, after U.S. Senator Clinton refused to assist me on a very urgent related Social Security matter, I went to Ms. Savino’s office on Richmond Terrace with an appointment to see her Chief of Staff Robert Cataldo. When I got to the office, no one was there except Cataldo. As soon as he saw me he bolted out from behind his desk and, advancing on me in a distinctly menacing manner, threw a profanity-laced tantrum and threatened me with arrest if I didn’t leave at once. When I later spoke by telephone to Savino about the matter, she said, “Don’t worry about Cataldo” and then completely and willfully screwed up on the Social Security matter. My complaint against him for criminal harassment is on file with the NYPD.

Previously I had gone to the office of then Assemblyman John Lavelle, whose staff consisting of Chief of Staff Keith Pascandarola and constituent services liaison Dorothy Crimmins, totally bungled everything and then referred me to U.S. Congressman Vito Fossella, whose office made things worse. What was needed, as per the law, was a letter in my behalf to the Commissioner of the U.S. Social Security Administration in Balti- more and Washington – not to a local or regional official – requesting that I receive an expedited Social Security check. Very belatedly, after Crimminms contacted the locals and was predictably turned down, Pascandarola belatedly faxed a letter to the SSA Commissioner, but, after no receiving a reply, refused to follow up. I was pretty much without funds and ended up traveling to the Bronx and Queens to borrow money from my friend Willard Whittingham and my minister Rev. Timothy P. Mitchell.

Mr. Lavelle died quite suddenly of a stroke earlier this year and, after the Michael Mc- McMahon-controlled Democratic Party machine that runs the north shore of Staten Island like Carmine DeSapio used to run Manhattan, anointed Matthew Titone as the nominee to succeed Lavelle, Titone won in a special election. Indeed, after I had listened to some-thing of a brief campaign speech supporting Titone from Staten Island gay rights and peace activist Marjorie Ramos, I voted for him and indeed told him so directly on Election Day when I met him as he was campaigning at the Staten Island Ferry terminal in St. George.

My initial calls and e-mails to Mr. Titone received no response whatsoever. When someone finally picked up at Titone’s apparently rarely occupied office (I went out to his new district office on Forest Avenue one warm spring day during business hours and it was closed without even a listing of hours; this is what our tax money goes to) after several weeks, it was Keith Pascandarola, charitably hired as the Chief of Staff to Titone. He said he wasn’t “set up” yet and asked me to call again in a few days. That led me nowhere because the pattern of non-response resumed.

Through a friend with good Democratic Party connections, I was able to access Jessica Loeser, a staffer for Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. With some prodding, she agreed to contact Titone. That generated an obscenely belated e-mail from Pascandarola offering to help but only via e-mail. He was unresponsive to my reply that, because of various documents and the complexities of the issues involved, a face-to-face meeting was necessary. From that point on Titone began his quite convincing impersonation of Dick Cheney being asked about quail hunting. Ms. Loeser, (whose husband is Stu Loeser, Michael Bloomberg’s Press Secretary; it is known as a “power marriage”), who is about as advocacy oriented as Marie Antoinette, said that there is nothing more she would do.

In January I had met State Assemblywoman Janele Hyer-Spencer at a Martin Luther King event at the First Central Baptist Church in my current home community of Stapleton, S.I. She is known as a progressive with strong ties to the peace and civil rights movements. She was in the company of, aside from he husband, lawyer Norman Siegel and Rev. Demetrius Carolina, Pastor of FCBC. Since I am quite well acquainted with Mr. Siegel and quite well known in political circles in Staten Island (having, with great difficulty, penetrated the tightly controlled Staten Island Advance, resulting in a front page story on August 21, 2006 about my Democratic write-in candidacy for the U.S. Senate against Mrs. Clinton) I was able to meet Ms. Hyer-Spencer, and exchange e-mail addresses. She has since become familiar with UP FRONT News.

Getting nowhere with the very secretive and non-responsive Titone, I paid Ms. Hyer-Spencer, who represents the Assembly district adjacent to mine, an unscheduled visit in her district office in Grant City. She happened to be in at the time and, instantly recognizing me, invited me to sit down. We spent over an hour together, during which time, among some legislative matters, I told her of my problems with Titone - as well as with Clinton McMahon, and Savino. She took some information about the very serious constituent matters warranting Titone’s intervention and said that she would contact “Matt” and urge him to meet with me. A number of weeks went by before, following a number of e-mail exchanges, Ms. Hyer-Spencer sent an e-mail to me and to my advisor, college professor Steven Gradman, advising me that Mr. Titone was willing to meet but stating that he wants the meeting to be held at the 120th precinct.

The quite evidently extremely insecure Titone was apparently frightened as a result of the very slanted reporting in the Staten Island Advance on August 27, 2005 in a story about me having been publicly defamed as a “stalker” by the quite overtly paranoid NYC Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum, with whom, via a family member of mine, I’ve been personally acquainted since 1979. Gotbaum, you see, aside from covering up staff abuse of homeless people in drop-in centers (such as Project Hospitality in the Titone/Lavelle/Savino/McMahon district, and Peter’s Place in Quinn’s district), is (at least maritally) linked to the CIA. Indeed, Sgt. Al Fiore, the police officer Gotbaum summoned to arrest me some years ago when I was at her Municipal Building office with a scheduled appointment to discuss the abuse of the homeless matter, turned out to be far more competent and mentally healthy than the psychologically impaired Gotbaum. He interviewed me at some length, realized that I was no “threat” to Gotbaum and advised me to go home at leave Gotbaum alone at least for awhile. Sgt. Fiore, who understands politics, has long since officially cleared me security-wise and made that fact known in writing to Mr. Titone – and any other government official who might be interested. Titone ignored Sgt. Fiore’s e-mail and continued to insist on meeting me at the 120th precinct.

My attorney, Jacob J. Goodman (who is very seriously ill at this time), citing the previous harassments against me in the offices of Gotbaum and Savino, has advised me never to go to a meeting with a government official in a government official without a prior written guarantee that I will not be harassed or arrested. Since Titone did not respond to my suggestion of a more appropriate civilian venue for the meeting, I asked for a guarantee letter. Titone’s “response” has been to continue his impersonation of Dick Cheney.

Some weeks ago I joined Rev. Carolina’s First Central Baptist Church. Rev. Carolina, like African-American Baptist ministers everywhere, knows Rev. Mitchell, the prominent civil rights leader and friend and advisor to Dr. King who some years ago baptized me at his Ebenezer Missionary Baptist Church in Flushing, Queen. (I did not “convert”; I am a Judeo-Christian.) Rev. Carolina, whose eloquent sermons evoke both King and Mitchell, and I met several weeks ago about the Titone problem. Rev. Carolina agreed that the 120th precinct is not an appropriate place to meet and at my request offered his church as the venue. He then contacted Mr. Titone and they met at his church. Titone, after having rebuffed me, and then having ignored the NYPD, in refusing to meet at FCBC, is messing with a higher authority. As Rev. Carolina – and Mr. Titone – are aware, I will not be intimidated by the Assemblyman’s effort to create a police state in Staten Island.

Matthew Titone, whose Chief of Staff Pascandarola is in direct violation of his constituent responsibilities as specified in his publicly available job description (there is no written job description for State Assemblymembers; no wonder these characters do what they feel like even if it means screwing over a constituent who makes them nervous) is, for Clinton/Quinn/
McMahon /Savino/Gotbaum-related political reasons, violating my rights as a citizen of his district.

Titone and Quinn, as far as I am concerned, are two corrupt politicians who have managed to use their biological gay rights credentials as a Trojan Horse with the overlapping categories of liberals and Democrats. In fact, especially since they are in service of the Republicrat Clinton – not to speak of Savino (who seems to have no concern that her Chief of Staff has had at least one overtly psychotic episode in her office) and the really arrogant McMahon, they are defrauding the public since, at least in my case, they are not doing what they are being paid to do.

Just about anyone that I have talked to about this agrees that this kind of corruption by elected officials in Staten Island is a story for The Advance. It is also true that there are reasons why many progressives in Staten Island refer to that newspaper as “The Retreat.” One of the reasons for that has to be political editor Tom Wrobleski. Wrobleski for months suppressed the news of my Senate candidacy. Wrobleski, however, in August of 2005 had no choice other than to write about me because he let The Advance get scooped by NYC Newsday on my U.S. Senate candidacy and the Gotbaum vs. Weiss matter. Indeed, Dan Janison’s Newsday article on me, appearing on August 26, 2005 was much fairer and objective than Wrobleski’s error-riddled and pro-Gotbaum/Savino slanted piece. Indeed, the Daily News and New York Times stories, appearing on August 27, 2005 as did Wrobleski’s in The Advance, by respectively reporters Celeste Katz and Jonathan Hicks, were more accurate that Wrobeski’s. And when it came to my Senate candidacy, after Wrobleski continued in his pursuit of a spot on the U.S. Olympic team competing for a gold medal in not answering calls or e-mails, I went over his head to news editor Dean Balsamini. The aforementioned front page story (which was okay but, thanks to Wrobleski, went very, very easy on Clinton) was published as a result. Maybe The Advance can do better this time. All they need to do is contact a minister – and me.

There are many reasons why the New York State legislature has earned the title of “the worst in the country.” Matthew Titone – among some aforementioned others the taxpay-ers are subsidizing – is one of those reasons.
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FASCISM IN AMERICAN POLITICS: LYNDON LAROUCHE AND THE LEFT. THE FIFTH COLUMN AT WORK. FULANI, ZULKOWITZ, BLANK, ET. AL. “SPEED” TRAP IN NEW JERSEY. “

UP FRONT News September 7, 2007
Published by Tom Weiss
Editorial Advisor: Willard Whittingham

“The paper that can’t be bought and can’t be sold.” http://www.tomsupfrontnews.blogspot.com/

FASCISM IN AMERICAN POLITICS: LYNDON LAROUCHE AND THE LEFT. THE FIFTH COLUMN AT WORK. FULANI, ZULKOWITZ, BLANK, ET. AL. “SPEED” TRAP IN NEW JERSEY. “ANARCHIST” GROUP INFILTRATED. REMEMBER SPAIN!

In the 1930’s perhaps the most potent anarchist movement in modern times lived in pre-Spanish Civil War Spain under the democratically elected governments of the Fifth Republic. The Spanish anarchists, some of whom ran for office and many of whom voted, were a significant part of the large Spanish left, which also included all sorts of socialists and the Stalin-controlled Communists.

The anarchists and just about all of the Spanish left were nearly obliterated by General- issimo Francisco Franco, aided and abetted openly and infiltration-wise by Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini – with substantial assistance from Stalin, who enjoyed killing anarcists and non-Communist socialists as much as he did shooting Franco’s fascists (known as Falangists).

Hitler, et. al. aimed at bringing fascism to Spain (in which he succeeded) and bringing Spain into the Axis (in which he failed, as the partly Jewish Hitler-detesting Franco defied Hitler’s demands to enter World War II as a German ally, in a not sufficiently famous meeting between the two in 1941 in the village of Hendaye on the French side of the border with Spain in the Pyrenees; Franco did not want Hitler on even a centimeter of Spanish territory).

Aside from helping Franco win the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) by having his Luftwaf- fe and Mussolini’s air force practice up on the citizens of Guernica, and providing much other military support, Hitler accomplished his goal of bringing fascism to Spain through the use of The Fifth Column. The Hitler-conceived Fifth Column was made up of fascists masquerading as leftists: infiltrators who sold out Spain from within the left.

The same thing is happening today – and it is the master of the revived Fifth Column, the mega-fascist and megalomaniac Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. who is orchestrating mat- ters and exercizing a direct and vicious influence on American, and therefore world, politics today. And he is getting help from some in a group calling itself the New York Metro Alliance of Anarchists (NYMAA). Aiding and abetting LaRouche in his impersonation of the left in the service of totalitarianism and racism are a bunch of infiltrators in the Green Party, and a host of “left” groups such as World Can’t Wait, ANSWER, Troops Out Now, the International Action Center, the Workers World Party, and to be very sure the fraudulent operation calling itself “9/11 Truth.”

Fascists are different from “conservatives”, although both are identified with the Right. Conservatives (e.g. John McCain, George Will, William Buckley) denounce the left. Fascists impersonate the left. Adolf Hitler campaigned as a working class advocate of “socialism.” His first political grouping was the German Workers Party, which later became the National Socialist German Workers Party, or Nazis. In order to undermine the very fragile democratic Post World war I Weimar Republic, Hitler, using “proletarian” thugs like the Brownshirts, collaborated with the Communists – and then of course murdered the Reds. And then first gradually and later cataclysmically he went primarily after the Jews. Lyndon LaRouche is doing the same.

Various political events draw open members of LaRouche’s political cult, which, since LaRouche, (particularly during the pathetic Bush years) has gone “left” raps peace and populism. They sit at tables distributing literature that denounces Bush and declares that Lyndon LaRouche is an infallible savior and genius. Like ants at a picnic they showed up in some numbers at the recent anti-War march in Newark sponsored by the Peace and Justice Coalition. They were led by the wife of New Jersey LaRouchite Dennis Speed; sort of a “Speed trap.”

LaRouche has declared that the only music worth listening to is German classical and that all other forms of music should vanish. I always have the same response. I think Beethoven, at least musically speaking, was a genius, especially taking into account the fact that he wrote some of his greatest work when he was stone deaf. If also am quite sure that if he had to listen to LaRouche’s polysyllabic drivel, he would wish he was deaf. I mention this so that those who consider themselves “apolitical” and therefore profess to have no interest in the doings and don’tings of laRouche, will contemplate a LaRouche-ruled America without the music of for example, Johnny Cash, Charlie Parker, Elvis Presley, Otis Redding and my favorite Marty Stuart.

It’s the camouflaged LaRouche-ites throughout the somewhat amorphous landscape of the left (which includes non-voter registered anarchists and quite a number of registered Democrats – such as for example New York City Councilman Charles Barron, and me) who are the most dangerous. LaRouche is a convicted felon, having spent about seven years in a couple of federal penitentiaries for mail and credit card fraud (which, considering LaRouche’s history, is analagous to convicting George Bush of a parking violation). While the octogenarian LaRouche entertains his cult (larger in Europe where he has his Germany-worshiping Schiller Institute) with webcasts and his newspaper, The New Federalist and magazine, Executive Intelligence Review, he knows that most Americans who know of him regard him as a perhaps obsolete crackpot. He therefore works the left through surrogates.

His most well known surrogates are the African-American racist Lenora Fulani and her self-hating Jewish mentor “Dr.” Fred Newman, a “psychotherapist” and creator of the sex-with-your-patient practice of “social therapy.” Fulani, who is falling all over herself in, after many years, retracting her claim that Jews an masse are responsible for the murders of “people of color”, has consistently split the left with her repeated candidacies and endorsements of reactionaries and is very responsible for the elections of George Pataki, George Bush and Michael Bloomberg in that order. Newman, who is regarded as an ad-vocate of pedophilia (sort of like Mao Zedong, who had a taste for pre-pubescents), once described Jews as the “stormtroopers of decadent capitalism.” LaRouche, back in the 1960’s and 1970’s known at City College as the Marxist Lyn Marcus, then collaborated with faculty colleague Newman to create something called “If…then”, which, when combined with Newman’s International Workers Party (sound familiar?), became the voice of “left” neo-fascism known as the New Alliance Party. After a number of years of polluting the political atmosphere in New York – and getting exposed by this newspaper – the NAP died.

Singing the seductive siren song of “independent” politics, after trying to climb into a series of political beds with Ross Perot and Patrick Buchanan among others, Fulani launched the so-called Independent Party of New York. It was the Fulani-dictated IPNY endorsements of Michael Bloomberg that have given us his regime of real estate over- development and hostility to human rights. Fulani however got into trouble with others in the IPNY for her Jew-hating rhetoric and she was at least nominally deposed from her positions of authority. By that time Fulani, whose every move is dictated by LaRouche (best source is investigative reporter Dennis King at http://www.dennisking.org/), had already moved in on the Greens.

The major infiltrator in that effort has been Paul (“Zool”) Zulkowitz of Long Island (and sometimes Brooklyn). Zulkowitz, a dedicated Fulaniite, is a ranking member of the Green Party of New York. He works closely with the autocratic Green Party boss Howie Hawkins of Syracuse. If Zulkowitz needs politically motivated violence against someone like me he calls on one or more of three horrible people who should be deported from the borough of Queens: the psychopathic and now disgraced demagogue Geoffrey Blank, the thug George Tatevosyan or the twice soundly defeated Green Party City Council candidate Gerald (“Can’t”) Kann. Zulkowitz in April, 2004, when I was invited by presidential candidate Ralph Nader to attend his Manhattan news conference, had me physically assaulted by Tatevosyan under the watchful eyes of Kann in the lobby of the press conference building to prevent me asking Nader a question about Fulani, who was there.

The Ralph Nader Green Party candidacies were in fact orchestrated and, at least in New York, run by Fulani/LaRouche for the specific purpose of electing the reactionary Cheney Bush team, even as, in typical fascist fashion, they denounced the Republicans. With the “elections” of Bush/Cheney, social conditions as expected deteriorated. And that is precisely what fascists need to advance politically. The best case example is post-World War I Germany where, in the midst of mass economic misery, Hitler rose to power.

LaRouche, like Fulani, hates Jews. It is not surprising therefore, to find the way out “left” (which LaRouche covets even as he praises FDR and has LaRouche moles like Charles Lenchner tapeworming Democrats like Dennis Kucinich and John Edwards) spouting some anti-Jewish racist trash. Some of that is to be found on Saturday afternoons on the traffic island next to Union Square in a protest disguised as being for Palestinian rights. That group is led by a out-and-out Holocaust denying neo-nazi named Andy Kellerman, said to work for the NYC Department of Consumer Affairs. Kellerman, who has a very short and violent temper, and who can almost instantly vanish if he sees his picture about to be taken, has told me that there was no Nazi Holocaust and that the whole story was made up by the Jews. His pals include a dour-faced lady named Ann Roos who sometimes wears signs supporting suicide bombers.

Les Jamieson and Webster Tarpley play a similar LaRouche infiltration role in the so-called “9/11 Truth” group based at St. Mark’s in-the-Bowery Church. Jamieson, who can sometimes be seen chatting amiably with the zombies at LaRouche tables, is also an operative in the Revolutionary Communist Party-spawned World Can’t Wait cult.

Until being exposed in this newspaper after manipulating Cindy Sheehan with his Union Square-based “Camp Casey” in 2005 (see UFN article “Dear Cindy Sheehan: Don’t Get ‘Zooled’ Again…”) Paul Zulkowitz had been a ubiquitous figure on the left: at peace meetings, anti-police brutality press conferences, and sometimes at meetings of the so-called New York Metro Alliance of Anarchists.

NYMAA, which is supposed to be an organization that, at the very least, respects the rights of free speech, is anything but. Based on my experience at some meetings and at the NYMAA discussion forum, Joe McCarthy could find a home among New York’s anarchists. Some months ago, when I sent an e-mail to the NYMAA discussion forum (list-serve) containing a mildly complimentary comment about Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, the response was something of a mini-tsunami of hate mail, a good deal of it from a guy who hides behind an e-mail moniker of “J” and who likes to play his race cards early. When I responded to critical e-mails, I was told that I was over-using the list-serve and, without a hearing, “unsubscribed.” That Stalin-like purge was retracted at a later NYMAA Assembly after I and some of my supporters demanded a hearing.

A couple of weeks ago, in response to a NYMAA person’s posting of an e-mail in connection with her contemplated trip to China, I replied in an e-mail, stating that China has perhaps the worst human rights record in the world and that, what’s more, the Chinese government is rather notorious when it comes to surveillance – of Americans and Chinese. I certainly mentioned the fact of China’s over half century long genocide in occu-pied Tibet. In response I got some support but also a torrent of abuse from “J” and a sort of fatwa from a character named Skip. I think I’ve been “unsubscribed.” These are the tactics of fascists. And since Paul Zulkowitz and other pseudo-left infiltrators like the one time Geoffrey Blank go-fer Benjamin Maurer have been quite active with NYMAA, the LaRouche infiltration is evident.

UP FRONT News will do everything possible - even if the major media (NBC’s Brian Willams knows something about all this) continue to cover up the story of LaRouche’s intensifying fascist infiltration into American politics - to expose the facts. The fascists have helped to give us Cheney/Bush/Bloomberg.
Remember Spain!
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Saturday, September 01, 2007

THE GANGS OF NEW YORK: THE DEVELOPERS! IT’S ECONOCIDE: MURDER BASED ON CLASS.

UP FRONT News August 24, 2007
Published by Tom Weiss
Editorial Advisor: Willard Whittingham

“The paper that can’t be bought and can’t be sold.” http://www.tomsupfrontnews.blogspot.com/
THE GANGS OF NEW YORK: THE DEVELOPERS!
IT’S ECONOCIDE: MURDER BASED ON CLASS.

The deaths of two firefighters at the thoroughly condemned Deutsche Bank building by Ground Zero is another in a long list of econocidal consequences of developer greed and political protection, of private gain over the public good that characterizes New York in the time of Cheney/Bush/Clinton/Bloomberg/Quinn & Co.

For decades multibillionaire Michael Bloomberg and his precedessors as mayor, aided and abetted by the City Council and State Legislature, have been pillaging the public treasury to reward avaricious real estate developers and their allies in the contracting, maintenance, construction and “nightlife” lobbies. The usual mechanism is the tax abatement, which allows real estate predators like Donald Trump, the Cheney/Bush linked Carlyle Group and, on a smaller level, my former loftlord Thomas Berger to not pay millions in real estate taxes to “encourage” them to build housing. And what they build is what New York City least needs – luxury housing and hotels that in may cases over-runs working class neighborhoods and causes economic displacement and thereby homelessness. Just take a look at the Real Estate Section of the Sunday Times. It’s like something out of monarchial Europe. The resl eastate developers are doing stuff here not at all unlike what Halliburton and Blackwater pull off on a national and international scale.

The public, unrepresented by (s)elected officials like Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn – watched over like a vulture by, among others,
Hillary Clinton – is forced to accept concessions like 10% “affordable housing.” One of the reasons why real estate predator Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards Project is so contro- versial is because a coalition involving Rev. Al Sharpton, Rev. Herbert Daughtry and ACORN, extracted a relatively large percentage of “affordable housing” and some other amenities involving free use of the Nets basketball arena a few times. (I think Atlantic Yards is ill-conceived from the get-go because, aside from the fact that is has the negative effect of Manhattanizing Brooklyn, its success rests on a basketball arena to be used by the athletically schizophrenic but grossly overpaid Nets, who cannot even fill seats in heavily populated North Jersey when they win. And as surely as the sun rises and sets - even in New York - the Nets will lose often and Ratner is going to complain about diminishing profits, and maybe play some rent games.)

Once working class neighborhoods in Lower Manhattan are now islands of hip but aristocratic wealth. I lived in Tribeca as it was DeNiro-ized. My aforementioned crooked landlord Berger, the Ed Koch pal who founded the loft (not left) wing of the real estate lobby known as the Association of Commercial Property Owners, used rent gouging, violence, and keeping me heatless and waterless for 5 1/2 years at 190-A Duane Street, top floor, as part of his campaign to get rid of me by any means necessary. He succeeded after 16 years with the help of a reportedly gender-biased corrupt judge named Marilyn Shafer, who displaced me and those living with me, including a little girl and her mother, because I let someone play a flute at a poetry reading at my home. Berger is the fake Orthodox Jewish public figure living in Forest Hills, Queens, who attends synagogue “religiously” but, during business hours, treats the Ten Commandments like toilet paper. One of his lawyers, at one of the many court and Loft Board events we appeared at, actually anticipated Michael Douglas’ “greed is good” declaration.

The Lower East Side of Manhattan is being transformed from a diverse working class community into a sea of condos and hotels whose guests and residents on bloated salaries paying bloated rents relax by overflowing the profusion of local bars which render for example the corner of Ludlow and Stanton Streets suitable for targeted “congestion pricing.”

The consequences of tax break-subsidizing the super-rich at the expense of everyone else go way beyond housing. The City of New York is unable to properly protect its citizens, as has been shown in the dead firefighers and in cases of patients dying unnecessarily in City Hospitals. Among the most dramatic cases of econocide occurred in the 1970’s at City-run Queens Hospital Center when a bunch of patients died as a direct consequence of the budget cut caused nursing shortage part of the genocidal (victims in City Hospitals were disproportionally black) policy of “planned shrinkage” or balancing the budget by cutting back on services to the poor. (It was I, a social worker and an elected member of the QHC Community Advisory Board, who blew the whistle on the Beame-Koch Administrations coverup. I lost my job but, thanks to some major media publicity, got some serious money for the hospital and also got somewhat famous.

New York City does not have enough inspectors to check vital services such as stand-
pipes for water to fight fires. The City does not have enough inspectors to properly check restaurants (and apparently employs some really bad ones). We have plenty of cops – many of whom are (unlike City Councilmembers) underpaid. Nonetheless, while Giuliani and Bloomberg have often used the NYPD to suppress our civil rights, the line “Where’s a policeman when you need one?” remains relevant.

The City, however, found money to pay all City Councilmembers fat salary increases thanks to a really sneaky bill (Intro. 458) pushed through by the Quinnberg Administration. City Councilman Tony Avella, a Democrat from Queens, not only confronted the imperial Quinn in testifying and voting against the increase, he refused to take the money.

Indeed that is one of a number of reasons why Tony Avella – who does not seem to be intimidated in the least by the autocratic Speaker – should be taken very seriously as a candidate for mayor in 2009.

Among the reasons that the developers are so ominous here is because of the de facto assistance they get from pseudo tenants rights activists - such as most conspicuously the increasingly discredited Mike McKee. McKee and his weird pal Chuck Delaney, who ran the Lower Manhattan Loft Tenants like Stalin ran his groups, by spouting populism and denouncing Republicans, delayed and weakened loft tenant protection legislation, thereby expediting the luxurization of neighborhoods like Soho and Tribeca. McKee is largely responsible, during the latter years of the last millennium, for repeatedly helping to kill the oft-introduced Flynn-Dearie Rent Protection Act that would have required landlords seeking rent increases for any reason to first open their books. The only question I have is if the landlord lobby actually paid McKee for his divisiveness and if so how much.

I am involved with a new tenants rights group, the Union of New York Tenants, UNYTE, which is at this point NYC-based with most of the slowly increasing number of participants at meetings coming from Manhattan. UNYTE expects to be a serious counterforce to the well-organized real estate, which gets big support from people like Hillary Clinton (and her Democratic machine, well entrenched in places like Staten Island, where I live), Michael Bloomberg and Christine Quinn.

Aside from the fact that New Yorkers are being gouged, too many people are dying because of the greed of what can fairly be called the ruling class.
It’s time to take on the developers – the gangs of New York!
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