Thursday, November 19, 2015

A SALARY INCREASE FOR THE NEW YORK CITY COUNCIL - AND DEBI ROSE? THE POLITICAL THEATRE OF THE ABSURD!


                                                                            UP FRONT News    November 19, 2015
                                                                   "The paper that won't be bought and can't be sold."
Published by Tom Weiss
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Allen Smith - Economics Reporter
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 The views expressed in UP FRONT News are those of the publisher or of the contributing writer and do not necessarily represent the views of staff.
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A SALARY INCREASE FOR THE NEW YORK CITY COUNCIL - AND DEBI ROSE? THE POLITICAL THEATRE OF THE ABSURD!
      Some years, when the New York City Council was a de facto colony of then New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, with autocratic control exercised by his close ally Council Speaker, Queen Christine Quinn,  Ms. Quinn surreptitiously introduced a bill backed by Bloomberg to have give salary increases to the City Council and a handful of already excessively "compensated" Bloomberg aides. I found out about the required public hearing via a small article in an inside page of the Daily News by then reporter Frank Lombardi (no connection to "Frank Lombardi" of the motorcycle shop on Bay Street in Stapleton, Staten Island).
 I decided to testify in opposition to what was of course a done deal under the "Quinnberg Dictatorship."
 It was at that hearing that I first met then NYC Council member Tony Avella (D.-Queens), who has since been elected to the New York State Senate.
 Mr. Avella, who was not a member of the Quinn-controlled Council Committee holding the hearing, came to testify as to his opposition to a resolution that correctly depicted as a greedy maneuver grossly inappropriate in the City of the Homeless and the Marginal. The Council, which under Queen Quinn operated not unlike the Spanish Cortes under fascist dictator Francisco Franco in Spain or the Soviet Duma under Stalin, of course passed the bill. As far as I am aware, Mr. Avella refused to accept  the salary increase, which may have reduced his budget for Christmas presents.
   The Daily News and other media recently reported that, as reporter Jennifer Fermino of the News put it, some members of the City Council "have been quietly plotting to raise their salaries from the current $112,500 base to $192,500." And we wonder why anarchism is so appealing to some New Yorkers?
 To her credit unlike Queen Quinn, current NYC Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito (D.-East Harlem) has expressed her opposition to such a ripoff of the public.
  Speaker Viverito is also now in a position of dealing with the Council member who may be among the most dishonest and ethically compromised in an already corruption-tainted New York City Council. Debi Rose (D.-S.I.), whom I made the mistake of supporting when she ran for the Council in 2009, is under the entirely mistaken impression that her job is to help her political friends and to deny services to those, such as me, who are politically independent and actually politically challenge Machine Democrats such as Hillary Clinton, the actually Mob (Chief of Staff Robert Cataldo)-linked New York State Senator Diane Savino and the lamentable Machine puppet Assembly member Matthew ("No Saint") Titone, all of whom are corrupt to the core and, their often populist rhetoric notwithstanding, are directly involved in the "legal" and political coverup of the police lynching of Eric Garner and other human rights matters.
   Some Jews have sometimes accused ex-NYC Council member and now NYS Assembly member Charles Barron (D.-Bklyn.) of being "anti-Semitic." Those Jews, some of whom are much too quiet about anti-Semitism in Staten Island, are wrong. I have disagreed with some if Mr, Barron's statements about Israel and I believe that Mr. Barron is not as strong on international issues as he is on domestic matters. He understands the noxious power of the real estate/banker lobby. Her understands that Hillary Clinton represents that lobby. And when Mr. Barron warned me some years ago that Debi Rose as not as "independent" as she sounds, he showed me that he understands Debi Rose!!!
 When it comes to anti-Semitism in the New York City Council the person to look at is Debi Rose.
 For years Ms. Rose's closest political advisor has been the now indicted ("grand larceny") David Jones, who in his capacity with the grouplet somewhat euphemistically calling itself Peace Action of Staten Island, has become notorious for demonizing Israel and and defending such beacons of peace and democracy as the Holocaust-denying Israel-bashing theocracy in Iran and the sadistic regime in charge in the slave state of North Korea. David Jones is known in the Jewish community in Staten Island as "the Israel basher." He is also known as "Hitler Eyes." Here's why.
   Despite the continued news suppression by New York City's most politically corrupt newspaper, the multibillionaire Donald Newhouse-owned Staten Island Advance, which as been protecting the politically corrupt of both parties in S.I. for decades, a great many readers of UP FRONT News now know that David Jones is a also an attempted Tom Weiss basher, having perpetrated a number of "Hitler Eyes"-blazing explicit threats of violence against me over the years, including one frightening attempted assault on me at a candidates forum several years ago in the parking lot at Rev. Dr. Demetrius S, Carolina's First Central Baptist Church in Stapleton, S.I.
   For years Debi Rose has responded to my requests for constituent assistance with machinations. In 2012 it took a strong letter from Ed Josey, the President of the S.I. branch of the NAACP, sent to her at my request, before she agreed to meet. There were two meetings. The first was taken up by Debi's filibuster, perhaps one of the longest such action since of the the days of U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond. The second meeting, again with Mr. Josey present, wound up with Ms. Rose rudely walking out of the meeting room as I offered her documentation of misconducts against me at several NYC-contracted senior citizens centers and at the NYC Department for the Aging, as she went to her office to call the Chief of New York Council security to threaten me with arrest (which he did), she left me with her staffer, Antonio Whitaker, who used the opportunity to advance menacingly to within a centimeter of my face and, in a Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier pre-Round One face-off, whispered a threat and made non-accidental physical contact with me. Under the law that kind of behavior is known as "criminal harassment." The perps in my complaint to the NYPD are New York City Council member Debi Rose and Antonio Whitaker. I've reported everything to the NYC Department of Investigation.
  Ms. Rose also later collaborated with her pal Queen Quinn to have me "banned" from Council offices at 250 Broadway, as I learned on September 22, 2012 when I arrived there with my invitation from then NYC Council member James Gennaro (D.-Queens) to testify against fracking at a public hearing of his Council Committee on Environmental Protection.
  A few months ago Ms. Rose resumed sending me her emails, including inviting me to attend her "Community Fair" on October 24 in Tappen Park in  Stapleton. I replied with an acceptance of her invitation and in my reply email requested an appointment with her, which would include Rabbi Gerald Sussman of Temple Emanu-el in Port Richmond, S.I. I saw her at the event and told her about my email and that Rabbi Sussman would be present at an appointment. Ms. Rose gave me a Cheshire Cat smile and told me to send an appointment request email to her scheduler Stephanie Layne.
 Ms .Rose and her scheduler, the sometimes polite and sometimes rude Stephanie Layne, have for several weeks had two emails from me and one from Rabbi Sussman. No reply.
   Some years ago during one of my face to face conversations with one of Staten Island's most important African-American religious and civil rights leaders he diplomatically acknowledged that, to use his words, "Debi Rose does not hire the best people." He got that right, a reality substantiated by complaints I've received from others about constituent service refusal and inadequate assistance.
  I've sent all the information - including the evidence of anti-Semitic sentiment on her part - to Speaker Viverito.
 A couple of years ago when then Republican U.S. Congressman started getting into serious trouble, Ms. Rose contacted her pal Tom Wrobleski, arguably one of the worst political reporters in America, and at the time the Political Editor of at the Staten Island Advance, to let him know that she was interested in becoming a member of Congress. That resulted in Wrobleski's banner headline, reporting that Ms. Rose was "mulling" a run for Congress. that trial balloon wound up like the German Hindenburg dirigible in New Jersey. In a recent conversation with me about the 2016 congressional election Rabbi Sussman said without hesitation that Debi Rose has "no chance.": He got that right! 
  In any event a raise for Debi Rose?  Maybe it's time to consider merit-based pay for (s)elected officials in the New York City Council. That could save a lot of money!
  Debi's Rose's term ends - at the latest - on December 31, 2017. "Praise the Lord" for term limits.
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