By Gary Tilzer
After 95% of the City’s voters staged a voter boycott of NYC’s
failed government, politics, and democracy, during the recent City Council primary,
the public’s outcry that their local government was failing them, was either
ignored or not understood by the media. The NY Times reacted to New Yorkers’ stay-at-home
protest with an op-ed “Better Government in New York Depends on Higher Voter
Turnout.” The Times noted, “Preoccupied
by daily concerns like paying astronomical sums of rent and deluged by the
occasional barrage of apocalyptic wildfire smoke, the average New Yorker
clearly wasn’t closely focused on the local primary elections of 2023.”
In contrast, after the low vote election in 1993, The
Times wrote a strong editorial, “The School Board Sham.” The sham editorial concluded that “the low
turnout School Board election disconnects accountability, attracting
low-quality candidates less interested in education than in politics and
patronage.” The Times analyzed
that the low-voting School Board elections were a failure and demanded the
mayor’s office take control and be accountable for the performance of the
City’s schools. This time, however, the
paper offered no solutions on what to do about the City Council’s low vote,
except changing the date to combine elections.
In 1993, the paper informed its readers that they “could not
responsibly endorse in that year low voting School Board elections,” which they
called “anti-democracy.” None of the
City’s newspapers, including The Times endorsed candidates in this
year’s City Council races, but none including The Times offer a reason
why or what to do about the City Council. After both elections, the Times
admitted that low votes cause a lack of public accountability and empower special
interests, encouraging bad behaviors among both the School Board and City
Council members they elected.
The game changer between the two very different NY Times
reactions to low voting elections is that the candidates the special interests
are now putting into office are not political hacks looking to make money off
of the government for themselves and their friends. They are ideologically driven progressives,
mostly socialists looking to change society; a political movement that the
liberal narrative of The NY Times supports. The special interests that put their
ideologically driven progressive candidates in office are creating a generation
of NYC political leaders who ignore the public and only listen to ideological
beliefs, political bosses, and lobbyist campaign consultants who put candidates
into office for personal monetary gains.
In 2010, lobbyist Hank Sheinkopf told the late Village Voice reporter
Wayne Barrett, that “Lobbyists Elect Kings so They and Their Clients Can Eat
the King’s Meat.”
Both the School Boards and the City Council were supposed to
derive their political power from the electorate but were taken over because of
the low voter turnout by what the late Village Voice reporter Jack Newfield called
the “permanent government”--an interlocking group of power brokers controlling NYC’s
elections, government, and the media. Until
their elimination, the School Boards, their elections, and members were
controlled by the UFT and the local political clubs. Now, the City Council, its elections, and
council members are controlled by the City’s growing progressive political machines,
pay-to-play lobbyists, and their clients PACs, unions, and local political
clubs. In 1993, The Times needed
to step in to save the schools. In 2023,
the paper needs to break up a ruling junta between the special interests and
the progressive politicians to allow the 95% of the registered voters who did
not vote, to use their wit, intelligence, and power of their vote to restore
common sense, and financial reality to local government and save NYC and
democracy.
Sal Albanese Twitter @SalAlbaneseNYC Reviewing turnout, I noticed that I garnered
more votes while running for school board decades ago. . . the political system
is not aligned with the public interest.
Unfortunately, the people who benefit from it, the political class, with
rare exceptions will not change it.
de Blasio Lobbyists
Created a New Progressive Political Class: A Culture Change of Activists’ Ideological Rule, Replacing
Representative Governing
NY Times reporter Michael Powell warned in 2014 that the
new mayor was building a shadow government with his Working Families Party (WFP)
team of pay-to-play lobbyists, led by his campaign consultant Berlin Rosen to
take over NYC politics. Over the last
decade, de Blasio’s WFP lobbyists’ shadow government has metastasized into
progressive political machines led by WFP, Democrat Socialist America, Comptroller
Lander, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, and AOC, which now control a majority
of NY elections and politics. Jewish
Voice - AOC & the Progressives’ Interlocking Directorates are the New
Bosses of Brooklyn & the 2022 City Council.\
Jewish Voice 2022: “AOC’s
endorsement in Brooklyn turned out to be more than an endorsement. It can now officially be labeled a movement
that not only propelled Brad Lander in his race for City Comptroller and helped
candidate for Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso win. It also helped elect eight Brooklyn City Council
candidates. This growing progressive
machine also helped mayoral candidate Maya Wiley’s rise to a close third place.”
A decade after de Blasio’s shadow government lobbyists who
worked for progressive candidates took over the City Council, The Times’
Op-ed stated, “low turnout may help explain why the actions of elected
officials in the City Council are sometimes bizarrely out of step with the
needs of the majority of the constituents they serve.” Interestingly, The Times failed to extrapolate
whose interests the City Council elected officials represented or why 95% of
New Yorkers did not vote in the Council election this year.
The Times Ignoring Twitter Posters Documenting How the
Disconnect Between the New Progressives’ Rule & New Yorkers Needs, is Leading
to a Bankrupt City
Journalist and printer John Peter Zenger, a German
immigrant, set the standard of NYC journalism.
He was put in jail for informing the people of NYC what colonial Governor
William Cosby was doing to them in 1734.
Zenger put his life in danger by following the teachings of Founding
Father Thomas Jefferson: “A well-informed citizenry is the best defense against
tyranny.”Unlike The NY Times and the rest of the City’s media,
the new media Twitter Posters (TP) are the only journalists still following the
NYC journalistic mission of Zenger, informing New Yorkers what is really going
on in their City politics and government. TP, since de Blasio became mayor, detailed how
the progressive political machine in control of the City Council came to power
and how their ideological governing has disconnected an overwhelming majority
of NYC residents, causing over 500,000 to leave the City and 95% of the
registered voters who are still here, to boycott the council election.
Reza Chowdhury Twitter @RezaC1:
“92% think crime is a serious problem across the state. 80% of New York City residents think crime is
a serious problem in their community. . .
The data shows that 33,000+ crimes may have been prevented and 3400+
violent felonies may also have been prevented in the state of New York if not
for bail reform?” Victims’ Rights Twitter @victimsrightsNY: “Not one of these
“activists” have helped us call out the policies or politicians that prevented
Jordan Neely from getting the help he needed. We have been warning of the
detriments Bail Reform/Discovery Reform/laxing Kendra’s law/closing psych
centers and defunding the police would cause - especially to the Jordan Neely’s
of the world since 2017.
Unlike the newspapers, TP holds council members accountable
for inaccurate statements. Since
Councilwoman Tiffany Cabán called the subway assault on Elizabeth Gomes in
which she lost an eye, a one-in-a-million attack, TP repeated Cabán’s
inaccurate, uncaring, and hurtful statement after each and almost daily new
subway violent attack.
Gina Newman Twitter
@ginamnewman: “The gas lighting is so so so sickening! No one reports the microaggressions or intimidations
and threats Tiffany! 99% of women will tell you they are in a constant fight or
flight on the subway. Stop gaslighting women!”
Minority TP has shown how progressives came to power by
pushing black, Hispanic, and the poor out of their neighborhoods and then electing
their own fellow socialists to occupy the elected offices in those locals. TP has already reported on the next phase of
the progressive power grab, pushing the rich and middle class out of the City,
who disagree with their ideological governing, to allow ideologically
progressive leaders to remain in control of NYC for decades. The TP is the only media voice of the
non-voting majority that reached 95% of the City’s registered voters during the
last primary.
Candice Give @candicegiove: “The far-left NYC Council
is constantly concocting ways to weaken the NYPD. This time they want to bury the police in
meaningless paperwork for every single encounter they have. This is a waste of time when we have crime on
our streets. Let them do their jobs!”
Brian Robinson Twitter @votebrian: “A few weeks ago there was a man that entered
this same station and sliced the legs of 3 women. Today, a man sitting on a
bench in the station was stabbed in the neck. This will not stop until you vote
the current soft-on-crime “right-size the police budget” councilman out in Nov.”
TP explains daily how the council is hurting the City’s
economy by not reducing crime, making problems like the mentally ill homelessness
worse, and destroying the City’s economy.
The Twitter Posts warnings about the City Council are the canary in the
coal mine warning, a Save Our City message that the old media is not listening
to.
Sam E. Antar Twitter @SamAntar: Hey @tiffany_caban: Please cut the nonsense.
When a mentally ill person suffers a violent psychotic episode, but refuses
help, they have to be taken off the streets for their safety and the safety of
others. Unfortunately, in NYC, they have to be let go to roam the streets and
subways.
Broken Journalism
is Allowing the City Council to Push the NYC’s Economy Off the Financial Cliff,
Destroying a Great City
Sam E. Antar Twitter @SamAntar: “There are 460,000 LESS people
(minus 5.8%) living in NYC and 117,000 less children attending public school
(minus 12%) compared to 2020. but our city government spending increased by 16%
and the Board of Education spending increased by 9% during the same period with
no tangible results.
After the low vote of the School Boards in 1993, The
Times editorial analyzed the effectiveness of the School Boards and proposed
a mayoral takeover. After the recent
extremely low turnout at the polls, the lack of media analysis, outrage, or
editorials, looking for reasons of the low vote and attacking the redistricting
that favors the incumbents, has made the City Council progressives who follow
their ideological beliefs while ignoring public opinion or the needs of the
City’s economy, stronger. This means the
council will continue to overspend, instead of preparing the City’s budget for the
coming hard times in tax revenue collection that the State Comptroller DiNapoli
is warning about, citing a jaw-dropping new $36 billion projected
budget deficit caused by declining tax collections since the beginning of the
year.
As tax revenue continues to fall, NYC Comptroller Brad Lander is helping
the City Council to continue its overspending ways by putting his thumb on the scale,
pushing for billions for housing vouchers and dozens of other progressive
spending programs. Lander has abandoned
his most important City Charter-mandated role, the chief watchdog for the
City’s very troubled economy and budget.
His incompetent comptroller work already caused the City to lose $6
billion needed by the pension funds, when Lander lost $35 billion in poorly
chosen pension investments in 2022, while in the same year, the NYS pension investments
grew by 9.5%. As State Comptroller
DiNapoli warns of double-digit budget deficits, Lander monthly spins positive
economic news on NY1 Errol Louis show, such as alleging that NYC’s cash
balance is at an all-time high at $18 Billion, although later acknowledging
that the money will disappear when the city pays its accumulating liabilities.
NYC’s Future Will Depend
on Whether The NY Times Can Find Its Old Journalism Standards to Help Restore
Economic Reality to the City Council
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In 1993 when the School Board Sham editorial was published, the
NY Times was funded by NYC advertisers and newsstand sales. The NY Times was a different
kind of paper then, joined at the hip with the interest in keeping the City’s
economy healthy. Today, the very
progressive narrative NY Times, funded by and catering to its liberal worldwide
subscription base, is facing a dilemma of what to do with another low-vote
election that elected a broken although ideologically progressive City Council that
continues to ignore the needs of New Yorkers and the City’s economy. Susan Learner, Director of Common Cause NY
said after the low voting primary, “You have a government that is walled off from the concerns
of the people.” Both The Times and
liberal good government Learner have a hard time blaming the progressives,
despite the progressives being in charge in the City Council.
The Council behind the wall they built to cut off the public,
allowed half a million taxpayers to leave the city, caused businesses on almost
every block to close, and despite falling tax revenues fails to
understand how to or the need to repair NYC’s economy, that The Times’ former
real estate advertisers in the NYC Partnership still depend on. The Times’ brand of power and
leadership, “The Kingdom and the Power,” was helped over the years by NYC’s
economic strength and leadership in finance, business, and the arts. As the City Council causes NYC to become a
failed municipality like San Francisco, The Times’ image and brand will
suffer.
It is easy to see how the newspaper’s progressive political
narrative journalism makes a difference in Washington where Democrats and
Republicans battle for control. But who
wins or what is there to win by sticking to The Times’ progressive
narrative, in a City that is being destroyed because of the current generation
of leaders, who happen to be young progressives without an understanding of the
importance of keeping NYC economically strong? Regardless of the answer to that question, there
is one final warning from a former financial savior of the City, that the
future of NYC is in danger, that The NY Times can no longer wait to deal
with or keep silent by sweeping a well-informed call for action, under their
vast and clever progressive narrative new journalism rug.
Its High Noon for the NY
Times: Stick with Progressive Narrative Journalism or Listen to NYC’s
Economic Saviors’ Last Warning?
E.J. McMahon @EjmEj: “Dick
Ravitch, among the last of the generation that led NY out of the fiscal
crisis. Ravitch & his contemporaries
in both parties weren't perfect. But they were principled in their politics—not
mindless, inflexible ideologues. In short, grown-ups.”
It is not surprising that this generation of the media and City
Council are not following a financial wizard who saved the City from going
bankrupt in the 70s, final warning that the City is heading into a deep
financial crisis; most of the media and council members were not alive when he performed
his financial magic that saved NYC. Shockingly,
this generation of NY Times leadership is ignoring the final warning of
the late Richard Ravitch, that the City’s economy is being destroyed.
In his NY Times obituary, former
political reporter Sam Roberts described “Richard Ravitch, [as] a politically
savvy, civic-minded developer and public citizen who helped rescue NYC from the
brink of bankruptcy and its decaying subways from fiscal collapse.” The past
generation of NY’s leaders like Governor Hugh Carey and media leaders Arthur
Ochs "Punch" Sulzberger, understood that New Yorkers need to hear
from smart people like Ravitch to identify, build public support, and fix
problems that elected officials controlled by politics and special interests would
never address or understand, to maintain NYC as the economic capital of the
world.
Ravitch understood that as people continue to make Florida
the sixth borough of NYC and businesses close, the City’s economic engine and
tax revenue collections are going to weaken, requiring 70’s type layoff of city
employees, cuts in City services and social service programs, that this generation of progressive council
members take for granted. Mayor Adams, with
the structure of local government stacked against him, charged that the Council
does not understand basic accounting when he tried and failed to block the passage
of a new rent voucher program that Adams said was unworkable and will cost the
City up to 17 billion dollars in additional costs. In the last two years of his life, Ravitch
grew increasingly concerned that NYC politicians seemed unable or unwilling to
grasp the severity of the coming budget problems. NYC needs to
listen to Ravitch now as a financial storm bears down on the City’s commercial
real estate empty buildings, caused in part by workers working from home,
fearing the return to midtown Manhattan because of crime. Commercial property tax is a massive portion
of NYC revenue. Empty office buildings
lower their resale value, which is going to have a cascading negative effect on
the City’s budget.
To save NYC, The Times needs to start a discussion on
how to reconnect the public with their local government as they did after the
93 School Boards election. Changing the
date of the election to presidential election years as The Times and The
Daily News suggest is like putting a Band-Aid on a cancer. No matter what year the election is held in,
the lobbyists and their clients’ campaign donations, PACs, and political bosses
including the new progressive political machines will prevent the council which
they control and make money off of, from representing the interests of the
voters. The special interests will
continue to control the progressives in control of government regardless of
what the progressives do to the City and the people who live in it, until they
are stopped by the fourth estate (the media), which currently lacks the
knowledge and will to take on the progressives.
The reasons as to why 95% of New Yorkers did not vote is
being heard on the conservative or common sense WABC radio, the NY
Post, and the Twitter posts, which are cutting into The Times’
ability to control the message to New Yorkers.
However, they have yet to be able to expand and reach enough of NYC's
diverse registered voters to shift power from the progressives. Even Fox News is doing more NYC local
news coverage than The Times. The
New York Times’ current business model is focused on progressive readership
worldwide and was the result of the old Times’ NYC-centered business
model being destroyed by the Internet.
Both aspects had the effect of severely reducing the Times’ influence
on NYC voters. If DA Bragg runs
for reelection in two years, the paper will even lose its influence with
its remaining die-hard supporters on the Westside.
Progressives Forcedly Use
Ideological Governing to Push Out Long-Time New Yorkers Who They Call Leftovers
in Private, to Increase Their Power
The progressives in control of the City Council see
themselves as political disruptors of local government, not as a representative
body that takes care of the needs and desires of all the people in their
district. The newly arriving Greenpoint
progressive elected leaders from Brooklyn are pushing to redesign McGuinness
Boulevard with bike lanes and create traffic islands to replace car lanes,
which long-term residents of that neighborhood oppose. In just a few short years, progressives have
taken over all the elected offices in Greenpoint and initiated fights designed
to push their opponents out. Some even
say that the increase in crime from the bail law reforms is not a concern to
progressives because it pushes out moderate common sense New Yorkers from the
City, giving progressives permanent control of City Hall and politics. When it comes to elected office, progressives
run very clever and effective campaigns, and know how to bring out their
progressive supporters in low-turnout elections. McGuinness-type ideological battles heavily
covered by the City’s liberal narrative media, have erupted on issues all over
the City.
New Yorkers know their elected officials who write the
state’s election laws will not change NY’s suppressive public participation
laws regardless of how many people stop voting or leave the City. New Yorkers have not been granted voting
rights, such as recall elections and citizen referendums, available to
residents in nonprogressive states like Arizona, Idaho, and Kansas. The same special interests that control the
City Council elections along with the elected officials they elect, run
campaigns that cancel the holding of NYS-mandated Constitutional Conventions
that would give the public the ability to change NYC’s local government. The 1821 NYS Constitution, for example, gave
non-landowners in New York, including veterans from the Civil War, the right to
vote. NY’s progressive Democrats continue
to use the NY Election Law to suppress the vote. While Chicago designated an Open Primary, allowing
all of its registered voters to vote, NY’s election law still blocks over 2
million registered voters from voting in the Democratic Primary, which elects
90% of the City’s elected leaders.
Only a free press that covers the government and campaigns
will be able to change the voter-suppressive tyrannical election law to help
restore representative democracy in NYC.
Currently, 95% of New Yorkers who boycotted the primary believe the City
Council violates the US Constitution which states: “Governments deriving their just powers
from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government
becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to
abolish it, and to institute new Government.” U.S. Constitution
The Jewish Voice Warned the Media Months Ago that Incumbent Protection
City Council Redistricting Would Result in Few Competitive Races
In the June primaries over 80% of the council incumbents
did not face opponents. Last September
The Jewish Voice wrote, “City Council Redistricting Seems to be an Incumbent
Reelection Party That Forgot to Invite the Voters.”
Jewish Voice Incumbent
Protection Reelection: “While the elected City Council members have been
paid off by the City Council Redistricting Commission with the districts that
they already won in with minor adjustments to cut out areas where the incumbent
council members were weak. The public
gets more of the same of a failed broken City Council that ignores their need
to be safe, have affordable housing, and fix the schools where less than 24% of
8th grade students can read at grade level.”
The NY Times in June called the lack of a large
number of incumbents unchallenged during a redistricting year “a quirk,”
without any explanation of what caused the quirk. If The Times wanted to fully
investigate the reasons behind the incumbent protection quirk, they would have
investigated if there was a secret deal behind a non-aggression pact between
the council members, special interests, and the redistricting commission that
gave incumbents the district they wanted.
How else could you explain why AOC is not running progressive candidates
against council moderate incumbents after doubling the number of progressives
on the council in the 2021 primaries? Similarly,
progressive organizations like WFP, Democratic Socialists of America, and
leaders such as Brad Lander and Jumaane Williams did not make any effort to expand the
number of progressives on the council, after their endorsement and
contributions were very successful in the 2021 election. Even the real estate PAC “Future NYC” focused
on reflecting six moderate council members; not a heavy lift in a year where
95% of the incumbents won. The real
estate PAC did not help Christopher Banks defeat Charles Barron, the only
incumbent that lost his council seat. Jewish
Voice - Do Real Estate Barons Know How to Protect City Hall and Albany? Or
Will Left-Wing Team AOC Take Over?
Progressives Use
the Low Vote and the Media’s Incomplete Incompetent Coverage to Allow Campaign Promises
That Can Never Be Fulfilled
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Most of the candidates in the few competitive council races
promised more money for City services despite the double-digit budget deficits
expected in the coming years. The issue
of how much increasing additional costs stemming from the migrants, housing
vouchers, union contacts, NYCHA repair costs, state-mandated small class sizes
in the schools, and police overtime to compensate for recent NYPD retirements
avalanche, will further increase the City’s budget deficit, was never brought
up during the 2023 council campaigns. By
not covering NYC’s economic weakness or what it means to the City’s service and
maintaining its quality-of-life standards, the media is dumbing down campaigns
and voters who do not have the knowledge to understand that it is in their best
interest to vote for candidates who are economically responsible. In other words, the residents of the City who
feel that this is no longer the City they grew up in and can no longer
recognize, feel like they have fallen into Biff’s alternative reality in the “Back
to the Future” movie. If the economy
falls into a recession, the City’s financial crisis will require more cuts in
services than were needed in the 70s, hurting a lot of New Yorkers who count on
those programs. In the middle of this
economic uncertainty, Councilwoman Julie Won and her fellow council incumbents successfully
campaigned this year while promising more City services and ignoring the
economic budget deficits the City is facing.
On the campaign trail @CMJulieWon
Twitter @CMJulieWon: The Mayor must commit $15 million in funding and higher
pay for teachers for a system that is equitable and accessible to all New
Yorkers. . . . These nonprofit employees have seen us through the darkest days
of the pandemic to today, providing vital programs and wraparound services to
New Yorkers. I will continue fighting alongside our nonprofits until the Mayor
pays these workers what they deserve. . .
. I will continue fighting in the City Council to ensure that our libraries
are fully funded.
Progressives Use Woke
Attacks to Control the City Council While They Ignore the Public’s Needs and
Past Generation of Progressives Reformers
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Twitter Poster describes today’s City Council progressives as
young, incompetent, and inexperienced who believe in throwing money at untested
and unaudited programs that waste money and fail to solve the social problems
they were designed to address. Their
unwillingness to stop overspending and fix problems, such as violent crime,
that are keeping people off the subway and from returning to their midtown office
buildings, will bankrupt the City, as Ravitch warned us before he passed away. In the early 1900s, Teddy Roosevelt’s
generation of progressives fought to reform government by making it operate
better, cheaper, and make it more transparent by including the public in all its
decision-making. Progressive Frances
Perkins, before she became the first woman presidential cabinet member, started
her career as a social worker who fought for the poor in Hell’s Kitchen. Her work with Tammany Hall politicians in the
McManus family who ran the neighborhood led Perkins to collaborate with NYS
Governor Al Smith, reforming the fire and workers’ rights laws after the
Triangle Shirt Fire tragedy. Today’s
City Council progressives in their quest for power fight for member items and
nonprofit funding in secret
policy and city budget negotiating meetings held behind
closed doors. Andrea E @AAC0519 Crusading from one progressive cause to the
next. Perfectly captures NYC Democrats right now. NYC is governed by the
loudest activists. They have no concept of finances and remarkably ignore the
chaos they create. Just hop to the next big loud cause.
NYC is a one-party City, where Democrats
control all of the government’s decision-making. However, the progressive machine and their
supporters in the media who rule the City Council and Albany are bullying their
own party members. The bullying includes
threatening primaries and public shaming, with Eugene McCarthy-like name-calling,
including calling moderate Democrats right-wing Republicans, to politically neutralize
common-sense Democrats who disagree with their ideological programs, overspending
and police defunding.
Progressive
co-founder of the left-wing PAC “The Jewish Vote” Twitter user @rafaelshimunov
wrote, “Right-wing NYC budget defunding almost every facet of \ society in
order to give police more massive raises and submachine guns.” Independent with common sense Twitter user
@enforcelawsNYC, wrote: “Weird. @rafaelshimunov
calls the NYC budget right-wing (Republicans), but the @NYCCouncil is held
hostage by one-party democratic rule. These anti-cop radical progressives really
are confused.”
The City’s Republican Party
leaders are too busy fighting and running candidates against each other to take
on the progressives. Democrats work
together against Republicans, as a team, coordinating and constantly updating
their message to the public. Democrats
work together with the media, investigating and attacking their ideological
opponents, such as the U.S. Supreme Court Judge Clarence Thomas. Republican elected officials work alone, with
appearances on Fox News or WABC conservative radio, putting out their
individual personal messages, as opposed to forming jointly coordinated spins
of the day, as the Democrats do. The
lessons of the successful coordinated crime message during the Lee Zeldin
campaign for governor have been lost on the Grand Old Party leaders.
NY Times Helped Destroy Competitive Elections by Not Following
up on How Politicians Use Gov’t Funded Nonprofits as Their Personal Political
Machine
The NY Times understood back in
1993 that nonprofits were being used by incumbent politicians as their own personal
political machine when they investigated the late Brooklyn County Leader Vito
Lopez’s nonprofit, “Growth of a New-Age Political Machine.”
In 1993, The Times
investigation wrote, “Over 17 years of near obscurity, Mr. Lopez has built the
prototype of the modern inner-city political machine, one capable of generating
thousands of votes and armies of volunteers, largely by exploiting its links to
a social-service organization that Mr. Lopez founded and that is now the
largest employer and economic enterprise in his neighborhood.” Since then, from time to time The NY Times
uncovered political corruption at nonprofits, but failed to report how
widespread the practice was. The
Times quickly dropped covering de Blasio’s corrupt use of nonprofits like
“Campaign for One New York” after the federal government dropped its
investigation of the former mayor, although there was clear evidence the nonprofit
money was used for progressive politics, to put the Democrats in control of the
NYS Senate. The story about former Lt.
Governor Brian Benjamin stopped at the one pay-to-play campaign government check
he gave to developer Gerald Migdol’s nonprofit.
In the 2010s The NY Post briefly tied Bronx nonprofits to the
politicians and lobbyists that funded them, but quickly abandoned their boroughwide
investigation:
In 2012
The NY Post wrote: “The
dating life of Assemblywoman Naomi Rivera sheds light on a web of nonprofits in
The Bronx that benefits a close-knit network of political insiders. Rivera installed her boyfriend, as head of
the Bronx Council for Economic Development, a taxpayer-funded nonprofit he
admits to being unqualified to run. But
the council is only one nonprofit of many organized under the Hispanic
Federation nonprofit, which has taken in $24 million in taxpayer money since
1998. The federation had ties to almost
every Hispanic lawmaker in The Bronx, including Rivera, but primarily benefits
two men: political strategist Luis Miranda, who co-founded it and once served
as its president, and Roberto Ramirez, a former Bronx Democratic Party
boss. Both men ran a private political
consulting firm, the MirRam Group. MirRam is paid by the Hispanic Federation
and is hired to run political campaigns that steer taxpayer money to the
nonprofit.”
It is time for the Times to follow up their 1993
story on how Boss Lopez used his nonprofit Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens
Council, to get re-elected. Jewish
Voice: The City’s Non-Profit Political
Complex Has Recklessly Spent Billions of Dollars.
Sam E. Antar Twitter @SamAntar:
“New York has a disproportionate population of homeless people because
there is a lot of money to be made by “nonprofit” entities in cohorts with
their “progressive” political cronies in maintaining, rather than eliminating,
homelessness.” Reza Chowdhury Twitter
@RezaC1: “The nonprofit industrial complex has been plundering the city's
coffers for years without oversight while engaging in full-time advocacy. These
poverty and addiction pimps should be defunded.”
De Blasio, WFP, Brad Lander,
Jumaane Williams, and Other Progressives Activists Misused Nonprofits to Take
Over NYC’s Politics and Government
The media completely missed the story of how the nonprofit
group ACORN was used by de Blasio, the Working Families Party, Brad Lander, and
Jumaane Williams to win their elections to the City Council, which was the start
of the progressive takeover of NY politics.
Lobbyists and campaign consultant Berlin Rosen who managed de Blasio,
Landers, and Williams’ campaigns got their start representing and working for the
ACORN nonprofit. Berlin Rosen also
represented developer Forest City Ratner in his battle with community leaders
to build and develop the Atlantic Terminal and Barkley Stadium site. Ratner even loaned ACORN a million dollars
during a corruption investigation of the nonprofit that led to it going out of
business. The Ratner alliance with
Berlin Rosen was the start of the coalition between lobbyists who run progressive
campaigns and NYC developers. Berlin
Rosen, Red Horse, Hill Top, and the Advance Group all work for developers, nonprofits
and elected over half of the progressives on the City Council in 2013, 2017,
and 2021. The NY government and
taxpayers are even funding progressive nonprofits like Communities of Change,
which was created by WFP and their ACORN alumni to push their progressive
policies and fill the progressive activist void after the nonprofit ACORN was
shut down.
The media, which did not cover the start of how nonprofits are
widely misused to create progressive political machines and why the IRS has
failed to investigate these obvious abuses of the nonprofit status of 501(c)(3)s,
can still investigate how politicians like Brad Lander create and use their own
local nonprofit machines. Lander used
his executive director job at the 5th Avenue Committee nonprofit to
win a position on the City Council in the same neighborhood. As the 5th
Avenue Committee was expanded out of gentrified Park Slope into Sunset Park,
Lander used his control of the nonprofit to elect one of fellow progressive traveling
socialist community organizers for the 5th Avenue Committee to the
Assembly, Marcela
Mitaynes. Over a dozen of the progressive
City Council members trace their neighborhood roots to nonprofits, which made
them known to the voters, many of which Lander’s wife’s nonprofit works with. Jewish Voice –“How Comptroller Lander’s
Government Funded a Nonprofit Political Machine Elected, Assemblywoman Mitaynes
Helped by the Bankers and Developers building affordable housing with the nonprofit.”
Lander and his progressive army who are implementing
unworkable and expensive social programs are funding community-based nonprofit programs
to treat mental illness, while at the same time blocking public hearings on
what happened to the de Blasio and his wife’s $1.5 billion ThriveNY nonprofit slush
fund, which funded many of the same community-based nonprofits. ThriveNY was supposed to stop the mentally
ill from attacking the riders on the subway and the public on the street of the
City but accomplished nothing except successfully hiding where the money was
spent.
While the seriously mentally ill need institutional care and
monitoring to ensure they take psychiatric medication, Simon Martial was
allowed in and out of community-based mental health programs before he ended up
killing Michelle Go on the subway platform.
Only the courts and mental institutions can ensure that the mentally ill
take their medicine and don’t live on the streets and subway hooked on fentanyl,
which causes them to act more violently.
The progressives in control of Albany refuse to give judges the power to
institutionalize the mentally ill. They
have made New Yorkers who are attacked or threatened on the subways by the
untreated mentally ill, the victims.
Those New Yorkers injured like Gomes or murdered like Go are sadly the Guinea
Pigs of progressives’ mental health and social criminal justice theories.
Two NY Times
Editorial Board Members, Generations Apart, Indicate the City Council was a Bad
Choice to Replace the Board of Estimate in 1989
Two editorial board members of
The NY Times, 33 years
apart, expressed concern about how well the decentralized structure of the City
Council will work or is working in the largest, most complex, and economically
important city in the nation. After the
low vote in the City Council election this year,
NY Times Editorial
Board member Maya Gay, wrote, “New York is electing local and state candidates
who derive their political power from tiny slices of the electorate. It’s a recipe for bad government.” The voters who showed up to and reelected
incumbent council members on local issues including opposition to a development
in their district, apparently do not hold their local representatives
responsible for unsolved citywide issues such as lack of affordable housing,
mental illness, and bad schools. The
failure of the voters to hold the City Council accountable for these important
citywide problems unfairly shifts the burden of accountability from the City
Council to Mayor Adams, who is merely a partner to the local government. It is clearly a structural problem of the
City Council that their member re-election does not depend on their negotiating
with the Mayor to solve serious citywide issues such as homelessness and mental
health.
Thirty-three years ago, NY Times Editorial Board
member Roger Starr wrote, “City Council members are legislators in a large
body, not powerful executives who sat on the Board of Estimate. Most are hardly known outside their own
districts. The [abolishment] of the
Board of Estimate is a reminder that City government has become more complex,
more remote, and less comprehensible.”
Ravitch’s frustration that NYC leaders seemed unable or unwilling to
grasp the severity of the coming economic problem, is a strong indication that
Starr and Gay’s concerns about the decentralized structure of the City Council
was not appropriate for a complicated City like NYC.
Increase Public
Participation to Break Up Ideological Control: Reconstitute the Board of
Estimate & Connect Community Boards to the Council
In 1989, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously declared the NYC
Board of Estimate (BOE) unconstitutional on the grounds that Brooklyn, the
city's most populous borough, had no greater effective representation on the
board than Staten Island, the city's least populous borough, and that this
arrangement was a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection
Clause "one man, one vote." The
City Charter discontinued the Board in 1989 and gave it power to the City
Council, after a citywide vote that 54% of the city’s voters supported.
Reconstituting the Board of Estimate (BOE) through either weighted
voting or breaking the Board into equal population districts, is needed to
reconnect the public to their local government, creating a body where elected
officials’ reelection depends on their serving and responding to the public
needs and concerns. Using equal
population districts would make the BOE members more representative of the
districts they were elected in. Every
district would equal the size of SI’s population, a little less than half a
million. Right now, the current Brooklyn
Borough President who was elected with progressive votes in Northern Kings
County, has nothing in common with the residences in the southern half of the
borough. A new BOE would take over the passing of the budget from the City Council, the
offices of the Borough President and Public Advocate would be eliminated, and their
function would be transferred to the BOE members.
A
redesigned City Council would be interconnected with Community Planning Boards to
get the grassroots community involved, reducing the centralized control of the
council and local campaigns by unions, pay-to-play lobbyists and their clients,
new progressive and old boss-run political machines. In the 1960s, Mayor
John Lindsay had a plan to convert Community Boards into local Town Halls and
have its members directly elected by the public. Lindsay wanted to
connect the City Council with the City’s community boards to give the neighborhoods
and their residents a voice in their local government. Only by changing the structure of the local government
to encourage public participation, would reconnect the 95% of the registered
voters who did not vote, giving them the power to unlock their creative genius to
fix problems they want and need to be solved.
Members
who vote in the Community Boards/Town Halls would not be appointed like the
current Boards. They would be elected
like the political party’s County Committee members by election districts
contained inside each Town Hall/Community Board district. The elected board members in each district will
vote for a Board Speaker, who would run the Town Hall and function as the
councilman at City Hall. This Community
Board election system would elect Council members connected to the community,
unlike the low-turnout primary election system electing Council Members
today. Advancement in technology since
the Lindsay era allows the Town Hall meetings to be broadcasted live on the
internet, and the registered-to-vote residents in the district to vote and
comment on major citywide issues such as zoning and land use, and other issues
that the Town Hall would address.
Without connecting
our city government to the people and local neighborhoods, we have a succession
of well-organized political gangs controlling the city against the public’s
needs and interests. The progressive
gang, now in charge of the City Hall, came to power too fast to appreciate
Ravich’s lesson of the delicate balance needed to keep the City’s economy
healthy. The progressive gang is
endangering the tradition inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, which resulted in
generations of immigrants becoming part of the middle class in New York and New
York City being economically strong to allow the immigrants to achieve the
American Dream. Is anyone in the media
looking at where are we going as a City?
@GaryTilzerTips
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