The Media Ignores Who Really Picks NYC Judges

Jewish Voice - The NYU Brennan Center for Justice has done numerous studies that political parties and court insiders choose most of NY’s Judges. Most judicial elections are non-competitive and when there is more than one judicial candidate on the ballot, voters know little about the judicial candidates running. Judges should not be an arm of the political machines, court insiders, or chosen by the mayor and government selection committees full of the same party and court insiders. We need elected judges who reflect the values of all New Yorkers, not just the special interests. To make judicial elections easier to understand, Civil Court Judges should be elected by Assembly Districts. Supreme Court Judges should be elected by State Senate Districts. Judicial elections need public funding, and the state should mail every vote a bio of every judicial candidate, as the city does of every City Council candidate.  NY needs an elected third branch of government, an independent judiciary, to speak out against bad laws made by the other two branches of government, not one controlled by political insiders by regulations. Some in Albany and within the state’s court system want to take the control of electing judges away from the voters.  With NY Chief Judge Janet DiFiore stepping down from a position that was once elected, now appointed, it is time for the media and all New Yorkers to investigate who picks the judges.

Judicial Convention Sausage Factory Continues, 

Almost Nobody Noticed “For a glimpse into the odious nature of how the political bosses make judges in New York, we direct your attention to a letter in Friday's Voice of the People by veteran court watcher Alan Flacks. On Tuesday, Flacks dropped in on the Brooklyn Democratic Party's ceremony for elevating faithful lawyers to the bench. The party calls it a convention. It's not. It's a charade, currently directed by boss Vito Lopez.” – September 19, 2008.Manhattan: I attended the Kings County Democratic judicial nominating convention Tuesday. It was orchestrated "Soviet-style." Short, sweet, lady- and gentleman-like, the script called for the eight candidates to be designated or redesignated without opposition, even for supposed "open" seats. Before adjournment, each judge candidate got up and gave a short thank-you speech. Every one of them expressed gratitude to the party district leaders for their support, and they also expressed effusive thanks to and praise of County Leader Vito Lopez (photo). One "re-up," John Leventhal of the Appellate Division, Second Department (after inquiring if the press was present) thanked now-imprisoned county leader Clarence Norman as well, and another called Lopez "the greatest county leader ever." After adjournment, I spoke with a number of delegates who voted "automatically" and didn't seem to know for whom they were voting. They didn't know, and were just told for whom to vote.  - Alan Flacks

“For a glimpse into the odious nature of how the political bosses make judges in New York, we direct your attention to a letter in Friday's Voice of the People by veteran court watcher Alan Flacks. On Tuesday, Flacks dropped in on the Brooklyn Democratic Party's ceremony for elevating faithful lawyers to the bench. The party calls it a convention. It's not. It's a charade, currently directed by boss Vito Lopez.” – September 19, 2008 Daily News

Daily News Call the City Bar Association Screening Panel Seddio's Puppet
 "The city bar association also rates would-be judges. But Seddio, a honcho in the Brooklyn bar, influences that panel. Why even have a supposedly straight-arrow screening commission when it's tainted by bosses? You know the answer." - Daily News, Sep 06, 2017

Party Puppets Rubber Stamp The Political Bosses Pick for Supreme Court Judges

"A dozen delegates, in recent interviews, said they could not even remember the handful of candidates they had nominated for the State Supreme Court last year. They said the convention, as always, had been a carefully scripted event lasting less than an hour.  Whether the candidates were potentially outstanding judges, the delegates said they never knew. Before the convention, the party never makes an effort to inform them about which candidates are going to be nominated. In fact, the names are often secret." NY Times 2003

Surrogate Court is A Political Toll Booth Exacting Tribute From Widows and Orphans" 

                      - Robert Kennedy, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia 

In the 1930s, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia called Surrogate's Court "the most expensive undertaking establishment in the world." He believed it was control of the Surrogate's Court of New York County, more than any other factor, that kept the Tammany Hall political machine alive through the lean years when he deprived it of city jobs and President Franklin Roosevelt denied it federal jobs. All wills are probated in this court and all estates of people who die without a will are handled in this court. The Judge of this court handles the unclaimed property of the deceased without wills. It also handles adoptions. There is a Surrogate's Court in each county in the state.

Queens  A Court, Not Votes, Sustains a Political Machine in Queens (NYT, 11/28/11)

 True News Corruption and the Surrogate Court *Stealing From the Dead Court  DA Vance announced the trial conviction of Richard Paul, the former bookkeeper for the Kings County Public Administrator’s Office, for stealing more than $2.6 million from the estates of individuals who died without a will by manipulating the agency’s check writing system. Paul was found guilty by a jury in New York State Supreme Court of Grand Larceny in the First Degree and Defrauding the Government. Taryn Miller was convicted by the same jury of Grand Larceny in the First Degree for helping facilitate the scheme, and receiving stolen funds. Both defendants are expected to be sentenced on December 5, 2013. *Corruption and the Surrogate Court (True News) * Surrogate's Court And Why It Should Go (True News)

Estate's official resigns after office mishandles $2.2M in assets(NYP)The official who oversees estates of people who die without wills in Brooklyn — and whose office was cited for sloppy work by the city comptroller last year — has resigned, The Post has learned. Kings County Public Administrator Bruce Stein stepped down earlier this month, in part because of questions about his ability to perform the job, a source said. Stein’s office was slammed by former Comptroller John Liu in 2013 for mishandling more than $2.2 million in assets, including misplacing a fur coat and allowing $50,000 in cash to sit unclaimed in a safe deposit box for five years. The money was claimed only after the auditors pointed it out. The auditors found shoddy work in more than half of the 50 cases that were examined. Stein was appointed to the role in January 2009 and was earning more than $123,000. He did not respond to a request for comment.

Brooklyn lawyers deciding Democratic ballot line for judicial seats get guardian, referee jobs from judges they review, records show

City Council Redistricting Seems to be an Incumbent Reelection Party That Forgot to Invite the Voters

Denis Walcott, the Redistricting Commission’s Chair, said those drawing the new City Council lines did not pay attention to any elected official while creating the proposed first-round new Council district maps. The Committee did not have to discuss their plans with any incumbent Council members, since they were drawing almost the same lines protecting the incumbents, with one exception that combined two council incumbent members into one Brooklyn district to make room for that borough’s first Asian district.    

While the elected City Council Members have been paid off by the Council Redistricting Commission with the districts that they already won and will easily win again, the public gets more of the same of a failed broken City Council that ignores their needs to be safe, have affordable housing, and fix the bad schools not with more money or smaller class sizes but with better teachers to improve the math and reading abilities of the City’s students. The Council that voted to cut over a billion dollars from the NYPD budget has done nothing to stop the crime wave that is causing harm and fear to every New Yorker and is destroying the City’s economy. The City’s economy is not recovering as fast as in other cities, its unemployment rate is more than double the national average. New Yorkers continue to move out because of crime and the feeling that nobody is in control. Businesses like Right Aid on the Upper East side closed because of continued looting, and the mentally ill homeless continue to prey on the innocent on the city streets and subways.

Andrew Fine Twitter @AFineBlogger “I can't recall a @NYCCouncil ever that has been this pro-criminal and this out of touch with your everyday New Yorkers.”

Continued low voting causes NYC elections to be controlled by incumbency, lobbyists, and big money from both the clients of lobbyists and the emerging progressive interlocking PACs and nonprofits pouring money into left-wing campaigns. The five Republican members of the City Council make deals with the Mayor and the Council Speaker, then act as a political party with a platform that opposes the democratic policies of City Hall.  The Republican Council Members are so good at this role that unlike the Democrats in Albany, GOP council members’ districts were protected by the Mayor and Council Speaker who control redistricting. The reform movement that used to fight the big money in campaigns and pay-to-play lobbyists who doubled as political consultants is long gone.  With single-digit turnouts, New Yorkers are disgusted with high crime and failed governmental services. It is clear that when 90% of the voters stay home, they have given up on the election system which exists to represent and protect their interests.

The victory of the four State Senators: Brisport, Rivera, Gonzalez, and Jackson in the August primary, who blocked any changes to the bail law despite polls showing that over 75% of New Yorkers want to change the bail law to reduce crime, is strong evidence that the voters who want safe streets and subways, have disconnected themselves from NYC’s election system. All Walcott’s Redistricting Committee did was assure that incumbents get reelected and the same special interests robber barons that run the Council now will continue to be the pay-to-play political bosses after redistricting. Walcott poured oil on a city already burning down.

It is time for Walcott and other city leaders to adopt Mayor Wagner’s and Lindsay’s strategy to decentralize the city’s government and to empower the public’s ability to make government function better. Only by decentralization, restoring power to the city’s neighborhoods and its residents, can New Yorkers regain their ability to pressure their elected officials to fix the broken government.  Until we decentralize NY’s political system, the UFT political machine has more influence over elected officials than the parents. Developers and city contractors, with their pay-to-play lobbyists who double as campaign consultants, will continue owning the elected officials. Nonprofits who wasted billions of the taxpayers’ money, while their highly paid board members fund elected officials’ reelection campaigns, are not going to give up their power and control over elected officials without a fight. The lobbyists, unions, and special interests who control the Council and the election system, even blocked the Constitutional Convention in 2017, when changes to the structure of the city government, including decentralization could have been made.

If you believe that the City Council defunding the police caused the current crime wave, then Walcott did a terrible job. If you believe the Council caused an increase in homelessness by not building enough affordable housing, then Walcott did a terrible job.  If you believe that the Council’s high spending and taxing are driving the city into a recession, then Walcott did a terrible job. Walcott’s incumbent protection redistricting plan hurt you. If these failures of the City Council do not make you believe that those Council incumbents protected by Walcott don’t belong in office, the fact that Council members who voted for school budget cuts because of lower enrollment are now against them after a call from the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) or those groups that speak for them should arouse your concern. The UFT puppets on the City Council have joined in, demanding that Adams “immediately restores” some $415 million for the school budget. Those who want more money have not said one word about the quality of education. Albany has never connected the school’s budget of 32 billion, the largest budget in the nation, to math or reading results; if they did, there would be more Charter Schools. The NYC Department of Education spends $30,469 per student. In comparison, Charter Schools’ per-student funding for FY 2019-20 comes in at $16,343 per student. According to numerous studies on Charter Schools, Charter students get a better education than those attending public schools.

With the End of the Federal Stimulus Money and IncreasedPension Costs, The Days of Wine and Roses are Over

Next year, when federal stimulus money runs out and the city’s tax collections begin to shrink because of Wall Street and other business losses, inflation and a recession will begin to reduce the city’s budget. The school budgets will then have to be cut like in the 1970s, with teacher layoffs.

With returns on the pension funds way down, the city will have to kick in more from its operating budget to cover benefits for current and future retired workers — $4 billion more than planned from next year through 2026. Adams by asking for 3% budget cuts for City agencies to see the coming recession, the ideological clueless City Council has no idea that their ability to throw money everywhere is about to end. Many economists believe that the city’s near bankruptcy in the ’70s was caused by the elected officials not understanding that the money supply was endless. This year Mailer and Breslin believed that decentralizing city government into self-ruling neighborhood municipalities would offer creative solutions to long-term problems and enable the public, by making local government and elections simpler, enabling the public to choose politicians who would listen to them and serve their needs.  NYC’s budget is 101 billion, and Bloomberg’s 2014 budget was 68 billion.

The failure of the newspaper business, the dumbing down of TV journalism into press release news readers, and the rise of public relations consultants have also been big factors in disconnecting the voters from their government and the political system. The same TV news stations that make millions off of the political ads have nothing to improve their political coverage. Most of the news readers who cover politics get most of their information from consultants who have political agendas.  Jewish Press In the Scripted News Era, Journalists & Elected Officials Become Actors, NY Special Interests Pull the Strings. 

Paul Starr, the distinguished Princeton media scholar, maintains that “the failure of the newspaper business has fragmented the public’s understanding of politics and government.” Starr believes that “strong newspapers of the past, provided the public a powerful means of leverage over politicians and the state - that this leverage is now gone. If the newspapers are considered as the fourth branch of government, the end of the age of newspapers implies a change in our political system itself, where pay-to-play insiders and left-wing activists have gained more control.”

Two Attempts to Decentralize NYC Government Were Defeated by New York’s Political Class Insiders

Mailer and Breslin believed that decentralizing city government into self-ruling neighborhood municipalities would offer creative solutions to long-term problems and enable the public, by making local government and elections simpler, enabling the public to choose politicians who would listen to them and serve their needs.

One has to go all the way back to the 1970s to review the last attempt to transfer power back to the neighborhoods, the people. During his administration, Mayor John Lindsay created a plan for a network of Little City Halls to give the voters a smaller decentralized government that gave the average New Yorker a voice in making sure city services are properly delivered and problems that affect the neighborhoods are properly addressed. Lindsay wanted to transfer power to the City’s 62 Community Boards and run them like Town Halls. The Democratic majority of the City Council blocked Republican Lindsay’s Little City Halls plan because they said it would function as a political clubhouse for the mayor. The City Council did not want the Community Boards to have power over them and decades later, in one-party NYC, they still control appointments to the Community Boards today along with the Borough Presidents. In one-party NY, the voices of those opposed to the government voices have been silenced, and that is why 90% of the registered voters in the last election stayed home.

NYC’s economy in the 1969s was eerily in the same bad shape as it is today. The City was suffering from sinking finances, rising crime rates, and an expanding government on borrowed funds.  With a dysfunctional and insider-controlled City Hall, millions of middle-class residents fled to the suburbs. The award-winning author Norman Mailer ran for mayor, along with journalist Jimmy Breslin on his ticket, for the discontinued office of the Council President. Both men ran on the platform seeking to transfer the City Hall and Albany’s power into the hands of the neighborhood’s leaders and the people. Mailer and Breslin believed that power centralized with insiders in government, party bosses, and other special interests blocked the “energies of the people of New York” whose only interest was to make the city a better place to live, work and enjoy.

Mailer and Breslin believed that decentralizing city government into self-ruling neighborhood municipalities would offer creative solutions to long-term problems and enable the public, by making local government and elections simpler, enabling the public to choose politicians who would listen to them and serve their needs. They wanted neighborhoods to put pressure on City Hall and Albany to act more responsibly to solve problems and elect more community leaders to elective office, who were already serving the public and solving the neighborhood’s problems.

The late journalist-novelist Pete Hamill once wrote that New York’s neighborhoods are a series of interconnected hamlets, one block and it was a different world, but all connecting its residents to the beautiful city fabric. Hamill said developers were sucking the life out of NYC’s neighborhood ecosystem, causing New Yorkers to lose a sense of themselves, as people in control of their own lives. Hamill said the richness of character of growing up in the City’s neighborhoods was determined by some other standard but not the standard that had shaped him and the generations that made New York City a special place. Most of the Council members in City Hall have no idea about the New York City that Journalists Hamill was talking about. 

The same elected officials today who are telling us they are saving the democracy, fail to understand that in order for the government to work they have to serve the needs of the voters, not just 9% who elected them.

Adams is being Forced By NY’s Dysfunctionally Structured Government to Take the Fall for Increasing Crime and Looming Budget Cuts

Today, similar to the 1970s, New Yorkers have no other choice than to watch with certain gallows humor and hopelessness, the deterioration of the City they loved or join the hundreds of thousands leaving it. The special interests have used low voting to control the elections. NYC’s one-party political control, with no recall option, is not democracy. Low voting favoring incumbents has only weakened the public’s ability to influence their government. The progressive socialists have used low voting to elect their radical members. The public not only believes that the City’s government fails to represent them, they think nobody is in control. Charter Changes to empower the public and the neighborhoods, like Mayor Wagner, accomplished with the creation of local Community Boards, have not been attempted by today’s city leaders.  Decentralizing New York City’s government has not even been thought about in decades.

If the crime wave continues, it will block further recovery from COVID, putting the city’s economy into a real danger of falling into a recession. If NYC falls into a recession like during the financial crisis, the shrinking tax base will trigger deep cuts in city programs and the workforce.

NY Times 3/27/22 Federal Covid Cash Kept New York State Afloat. That Could End Soon.  “All I know is that when the federal money runs out, it is highly likely that the state and the city are going to face budget crises of significant proportion,” said Richard Ravitch, the former state official who helped mastermind the rescue of New York City’s finances in the 1970s.

Decentralize City Govt: Replace Community Board with Town Halls and Make the Council Members into District Managers

Council districts should be made identical to Community Board districts and should be renamed into Town Hall districts. The district on the Eastside of Manhattan should be called the Eastside Townhall. Members who vote in the Town Halls would not be appointed like the Community Boards. They would be elected like the political party’s County Committee members, by election districts contained inside each Town Hall. Council members should be required to answer questions every week from members of the Town Hall, similar to way the British Prime minister is cross-examined by the members of Parliament. Town Hall will force Council members to address issues that the community is concerned about, knocking aside ideology and pay-to-play governing that controls the government today. All of the Town Hall meetings should be broadcast live on the internet, allowing every registered voter to vote and comment on major issues facing their neighborhood.

 

City Council Members functioning as Town Hall City Managers would be allowed to hire some staff for the Town Hall, with the advice and consent of its members. The council district offices would be located inside the Town Hall building. Council members’ terms in office would be two years, not four. The mayor would hire the Town Hall technical staff from the different city agencies. Council Members would be given the power to audit city services in their districts. They would be required to issue monthly reports on the state of the Town Hall’s city services, local economy, and the problems facing the district. The City needs a second set of eyes doing audits on city agencies and nonprofit-funded programs and government services, including the schools. NYC Comptrollers always seem to run for higher office, never doing any oversight over the special interests, including the nonprofits that waste millions, while contributing to candidates for public office.  Lobbyists’ clients, city contractors, and developers fund mayoral campaigns, which are also never properly audited. 

DSA Avilés vs All Sides Justin Brannan. If the Current Redistricting Lines Stand, One of Them Will Be Voted Off the Council Island

Under the first draft, only two Council Members will see changes to their districts that can defeat them if their district lines are not changed after public hearings and behind-the-scenes lobbying by candidates and their supporters. Incumbent Council Member Alexa Avilés has the City’s growing progressive socialist political machine on her side. Justin Brannan, who was put into a combined Bay Ridge, Sunset Park District with Avilés to make room for the new Asian district, knows the lobbying game better than most.  According to his friends, Brannan thinks he will get a district he can easily win, once the Commission redraws the lines.

The Commission slightly modified the lines, though there were a handful of notable changes — including the neighborhoods of Brooklyn’s Dyker Heights and a portion of Sunset Park, which are now included in a proposed 43rd Council District, which favors an Asian candidate.  While most incumbents will not lose their seats in the 2023 election because of the redistricting, there is a lot of talk about progressive socialists challenging the party machine candidates and county organizations going after the progressives.  The other candidate facing extinction could be Ari Kagan, who beat the Republican candidate by less than a thousand votes in 2021.  The first draft of the new lines adds thousands of Republicans in the Dyker Heights and the Bay Ridge area, which is now in Kagan’s district. The proposed maps also drew recriminations from the New York Immigration Coalition, which claimed the Commission “failed” in keeping immigrant communities intact. Last year, the NY Court of Appeals threw out the redistricting done by Albany and redrew the Congressional and the State Senate lines, and will soon redraw the Assembly Districts, also declared unconstitutional.

Since the last City Council redistricting, New York City’s population grew from 8.2 million people in 2010 to 8.8 million in 2020. Brooklyn was the most populous borough, with 31% of New York City’s population. There has been a significant increase in the Asian American Pacific Islander population, which now makes up 14.3% of New York City, according to the 2020 Census. The NYC Council Districting Commission is a 15-member panel appointed by Mayor Eric Adams and the City Council majority and minority caucuses. It must draw new lines with roughly 173,000 residents per district. The second round of public hearings was completed this August. Soon the commission will vote on its final plan. As the State and Federal redistricting demonstrated, big changes in the final council lines are possible. So is a court challenge that could throw out the lines, similar to what happened earlier in the state and federal redistricting.

@GaryTilzerTips

 

 

Bail Reform Dead: Developer’s Attack Flyers, Party Bosses, Adams Plan to Empower Judges to Reduce Crime, Blocked by a Few Voters

By Gary Tilzer

The four progressive incumbent candidates beat back heavily funded challengers from the mayor, developers, special interests funding, and political party bosses, receiving just 40,577 votes, in a very low turnout election (less than 9%).  In a city of nine million people, Jabari Brisport won with 11,894 votes, Robert Jackson won with 9,868 votes, Gustavo Rivera won with 5,700 votes, and Kristen S. Gonzalez won with 13,115 votes, empowering those blocking changes to the bail law well into the future. If anyone says NY Democracy is not broken, just tell them that 40,115 voters are making nine million unsafe, making New Yorkers’ crime stats, and killing the city’s economy as crime keeps offices and subways empty.

The polls have been showing for months that seventy-five percent of New Yorkers want to change the bail law to reduce crime. Yet the progressive lawmakers and those Albany elected moderates they threatened with primaries, refuse to change the bail law to allow NYS Judges to lock up repeat career criminals and send the mentally ill to hospitals. It is time to examine how those that pumped money and political power to defeat progressive candidates who support the current bail law, failed with outdated strategy, and poorly run campaigns. The political class’s inability to beat left-wing State Senators in the August primary has empowered Albany progressives to keep the current bail law. Those insiders who went after progressive candidates should remember the old adage:  if you try to kill the king, make sure you kill him. Trying and failing to defeat progressive candidates strengthens their commitment to their ideological policies, which means the bail law will stay the same and the city’s crime wave will continue. At the victory party for victorious Democratic Socialist of America State Senate candidate Kirsten Gonzalez, 58.14% to 31.51% victory over heavily developer-funded PAC-supported former City Councilwoman Elizabeth Crowley, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) said, “we proved that socialism wins.”

Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, State Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, and incumbents’ non-progressive lawmakers understand that if they push for changes in the bail law they will be challenged in their district or for their leadership positions, by progressives. It looks like to one observer that lawmakers rather not be hassled with a progressive challenge, they would probably win after a strong challenge, then make sure New Yorkers are safe and end the damage crime is doing to the NYC economy.               

In the June edition of this year’s court-ordered split primaries caused by Albany’s unconstitutional redistricting, most incumbent Assembly members were re-elected.  Nine out of seven Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) backed progressive challengers lost to incumbent Assembly members. Political consultants, insiders, and the moderate media trying to defeat the progressives used the Assembly incumbent June’s victories to spin that their attack flyers style campaigns worked. Jeff Leb, who runs two super PACs funded by developers, said after the incumbent Assembly member’s victories in the June primaries: “When we expose anti-police candidates by informing voters of their extremist positions, progressives consistently lose.” The success of incumbent progressive State Senators in the August primaries proves it was not the attack flyers that won campaigns in both primaries, it was incumbency in low turnout primaries (June primary turnout 13% August primary turnout 9% turnout) that won elections. The low voter turnout is the canary in the coal mine, warning that New Yorkers’ city and state democracies are broken, yet not one newspaper, media organization, or elected official has written or spoken up about the causes and effects of low voting.

Jeff Leb has two Political Action Committees (PACs) funded by developers like Larry Silverstein, Will Zeckendorf, and Gary Barnett, say the city is better off with PAC-funded attack campaigns. How is the city better off when after the 2022 primaries, progressives, who received just 40,115 voters, who defeated the attack flyers and well-funded PACs and political bosses against them, continue to endanger the safety of every New Yorker, pushing the city’s economy into a recession, caused by workers afraid of crime refusing to return to their office building in Manhattan and former subway riders afraid to go back on the trains?

NYC’s Developer’s Money and Hired Guns Empower Progressives to  Continue Blocking Changes to the Bail Law

Kristen Gonzalez Twitter @Gonzalez4NY This isn’t from @NomikiKonst—she dropped out to endorse us. It’s actually from “Common Sense,” a right-wing super PAC funded by billionaires & real estate.

Those political insiders, who want to use their money to defeat progressive lawmakers blocking bail reform have made matters worse by failing in their mission. The Jewish Voice pointed out in 2021, after major gains in Brooklyn by AOC and interlocking progressive PACs and non-profit groups, that the methods of those trying to defeat them don’t work. The Jewish Voice investigation of the 2021 results pointed out that the political insiders going after progressive candidates with outdated weak messaging, attack flyers, and relying on consultants who lack the ability and vision to influence NYC’s changing electorate to even show up at the polls. Instead of changing their messaging in 2022, they ran the same attack-flier failed campaign strategy they used in 2021 and lost again in the 2022 August primary.

Jewish Voice, 2021: 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 progressive candidate for Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso win.  It also helped at least eight progressive Brooklyn city council candidates win office. This growing progressive machine also helped progressive mayoral candidate Maya Wiley rise to second place in the first round of the mayor’s race.  Of course, it was not only AOC that affected these Brooklyn races.  It was a combination of a directorate of interlocking progressives, liberal groups, and PACs, including AOC’s Courage to Change, that work remarkably well together.  They help in acquiring extra money and resources for the chosen progressive candidates, beyond public funding.

The late journalist Jimmy Breslin would have called the permanent government efforts to defeat the progressives and change the bail law “The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight.” The city’s Party Bosses, establishment Democrats, and business allies dumped hundreds of thousands of dollars to defeat Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) progressives who all won:

Miguelina Camilo 47% defeated by progressive State Senators Gustavo Rivera 52%

Angel Vasquez 32% defeated by progressive State Senator Robert Jackson 55%

Conrad Tillard  15%   defeated by progressive State Senator Jabari Brisport 70%

Elizabeth Crowley 31% defeated by progressive State Senator Kristen Gonzalez 58%

Even incumbent State Senator Kevin Parker might have lost if the votes against him were not split between a DSA candidate David Alexis and another candidate Kaegan Marie Mays-Williams supported by gay rights groups. Parker 45.8%, Alexis 37.6%, Mays-Williams 16.2%. 

Permanent Government Captain Catsimatidis Stuck in His Echo Chamber Full of Misinformation, Needs to See How Voters View the Candidates he Supports.

Catsimatidis to break out of his bubble should interview his radio host Rudy Giuliani who in 1986, while planning his run for mayor, got a lot of press when he disguised himself as a Hell’s Angel to purchase undercover two vials of crack cocaine along with the then U.S. Senator Alfonse D’Amato, who was dressed as a trucker. Both Republicans pulled off the stunt to build their images in the voter’s minds that they were doing something to win the war on drugs.

After incumbent Assembly member Dilan (52%), Dickens, Benedetto (56%) Lucas (75%) won against progressive challengers supported and funded by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) in the June primaries, David Paterson, the former governor, said in an interview on WABC radio’s “The Cats Roundtable-- “AOC is just a ‘phantom of the media’ without real influence.” John Catsimatidis’s daily radio show is an insider’s cabal of who is who in moderate politics and what remains of NY’s weak Republican Party. The show and station also serve as a railing center and echo chamber for fighting the bail law and those looking for a more moderate government in NY. The problem of not only the Cats show but the entire political class opposing the progressives is that there is too much wishful thinking and political consultants who no longer understand what is going on, looking for cash, offering self-serving spins to the host and their clients. There is no examination of strategy methods and vision on how to reach the voters to defeat progressives, beyond the insider’s political establishment bubble. Both Paterson and the NY Post seem to think going after AOC is the way to defeat the progressives. The Working Families, Democratic Socialists of America, Brad Lander, Jumaane Williams, and others have their own progressive machines that operate on their own and interlock with each other. Five days after the August 23^rd primary, the NY Post added to AOC misinformation when they wrote: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her progressive comrades lost big in the congressional primaries. The day after the primary The NY Post wrote: Socialist left swamps, Democratic centrist challengers, in NY state Senate primaries.

Governor Paterson, a frequent guest, was interviewed by host John Catsimatidis after the June primary results in which the majority of left-wing State Assembly progressive challengers were unsuccessful in their efforts to expand their presence in Albany by ousting incumbent moderate Democrats. Asked if the June primary losses represented “the rise and fall of AOC,” the Democratic former governor replied, “I don’t know if there ever was a rise, John. There’s no evidence that AOC has any coattails.” Paterson added. The former Governor who now works as a lobbyist for developers in Northern Brooklyn, must have forgotten that the AOC machine almost elected  DSA leader Tiffany Cabán as the Queens District Attorney 2020. AOC elected Cabán as a Councilwoman and helped win all of the eight progressive northern Brooklyn Council members, the Kings County Borough President Antonio Reynoso, and the NYC Controller Brad Lander.  From the Jewish Voice, 2021 AOC & the Progressives’ Interlocking Directorates are the New Bosses of Brooklyn & the 2022 City Council Catsimatidis is a serious man with an important mission to the survival of NYC is trapped in a children’s game of telephone, where misinformation, daydream thinking and relying on connected consultants limit the ability of his team to win elections.

Catsimatidis constantly says, if Republican Lee Zeldin does not win his race for governor, NYC is done.  Catsimatidis has no one in his vast echo chamber asking where are the pictures of Zeldin riding the subways? Spending a night in a NYCHA project? Visiting the crime scene in a Chinatown flooded with shelters, where Christina Yuna Lee was stabbed to death by a homeless man? Republicans think meeting with community leaders delivers votes, not his candidate’s public image. Catsimatidis to break out of his bubble should interview his radio host Rudy Giuliani who in 1986, while planning his run for mayor, got a lot of press when he disguised himself as a Hell’s Angel to purchase undercover two vials of crack cocaine along with the then U.S. Senator Alfonse D’Amato, who was dressed as a trucker. Both Republicans pulled off the stunt to build their images in the voter’s minds that they were doing something to win the war on drugs. The failure of the attack flyers against the progressives supporting the bail law, is evidence that the public is looking for more than position papers and campaign pledges.

The voters of today are very visual.  They vote based on images of candidates, hopefully not with blood-red backgrounds with two marines. Tammany Halls’ Boss Tweed said “I don’t care what the newspaper writes about me, my people can’t read. But Thomas Nast’s cartoon pictures that attack me hurt my political machine.” Very few New Yorkers read newspapers nowadays. Voters receive incomplete glimpses of the news and campaigns from TV, Twitter, and Facebook very visual media.  Catsimatidis is a serious man with an important mission to the survival of NYC is trapped in a children’s game of telephone, where misinformation, daydreaming, and reliance on connected clueless consultants, performing for money, limit the ability of his team to win elections.

Brooklyn Gadfly Geoffrey Davis Explains Why All the King Developer’s Attack Flyers Could Not Pull Out Brooklyn’s Black Vote 

When the late Tim Russert was working for the re-election of a president, before he became a journalist, he would travel all over the country and visit campaign headquarters.  Russert would patiently listen to the local leaders who ran up to him in front of the campaign office.  After the local leaders finished informing him what was going on in their state, Russert would move to the back of the office to find out what was really going on from the people who were on the streets. The greatest journalists in our lifetime knew how to find out what mattered to the voters, yet today’s reporters listen to the self-serving spins of lobbyists like Paterson, Sheinkopf, Red Horse, and Berlin Rosen. 

When Former Crown Heights District Leader Geoffrey Davis, one of the last political operatives left, who knows what is happening on the streets of Central Brooklyn was asked to comment on how the mayor’s candidate Conrad Tillard lost by over 50%, the answer was unexpected.  Davis, a neighborhood gadfly who started the “Love Yourself--Stop the Violence” Movement in the 1990s, said the attack on the Biggie Smalls Mural has to be used as a wake-up message to Brooklyn’s disconnected black voters who stayed home during the August 23^rd primary, that we are losing control of our communities.                                     

The destruction of the Biggie Smalls mural by graffiti on the border of gentrifying Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, and Prospect Heights is the perfect symbol of what is needed to motivate black Brooklyn voters to show up at the polls, Davis said. The graffiti attack on the street painting of Biggie, the man who empowered the East Coast Hip-Hop movement, is the perfect image of what happened to Brooklyn’s black community since the era when black leaders like my late brother Councilman James Davis, Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, Assemblyman Al Vann, and Congressman Major Owens empowered the black community. Today, blacks in Central Brooklyn feel powerless, as they watch their long-time neighbors pushed out by gentrification. Replaced by young out-of-towners, who elect ideological activists, who passed the no-bail law that created a crime wave that further targets what is left of the minority communities and its people, mostly young people. “Blacks are not voting in local elections because we feel that we have become disconnected from local and state government, occupied by power-hungry ideological socialists who have not only pushed us out by raising the rents, ignoring our safety, and who see us as leftovers from the past,” Davis said. 

The money from developers and other special interest PACs for attack flyers did not motivate the voters to show up and vote. Davis believes flyers from unfamiliar sources do not work in convincing voters to vote against progressives blocking the bail law, no matter how many times my neighbor’s mailboxes were filled with attack campaign flyers. The message was all wrong for Tillard to lose by over 50% to DSA Socialist State Sen. Jabari Brisport. 

When Davis was organizing the “Stop the Violence” marches in the 1990s, he began having the parents of crime victims lead the march. When Davis had the parents of Tiarah Poyau, who was shot and killed by a gun, he noticed that interest, knowledge, and effectiveness of the march increased. Davis believes that instead of wasting money on attack flyers and paying consultants, developers need to use their money to organize parents, widows, and friends of crime victims to carry the change of the bail law message to Albany and the streets where progressives are in charge. Only victims of crime can motivate the voters to show up at the polls, said the long-time political operative, Davis. 

The saturations media coverage of Bodega clerk Jose Alba who was at first outrageously and unfairly charged with murder for defending his life by DA Bragg.  The unusually heavy coverage created enough public pressure to force the ideological Manhattan DA to drop the charges against Alba. Those fighting the bail laws do not need to defeat progressives with attack mailing, they need to encourage parents and other family members of crime victims to lobby Albany lawmakers to change the bail law, not just before an election, but every day. 

The Media Offers More Follow-Up Coverage of A Sick Horse Than the Effects of Crime on Victims’ Families

The media jumps to the next shooting instead of telling us what happens to the families who lost a loved one to crime. NYC reporters do more follow-up coverage on a sick horse that collapsed in midtown than what happened to crime victims’ families after they buried their daughter, son, or spouse. The press, by not continuing to cover the horror the victim’s families suffer, has desensitized the public and voters on the effects of these crimes and given a free pass to lawmakers who pass laws causing the increase in crime. 

It might save NY1’s Errol Louis from Jumping the CNN journalism shark to interview crime victims instead of communicating his political spin on the day’s events. The parents and friends of Michelle Go, who was pushed to her death in January on the R-train platform by a homeless man with a criminal background and a history of mental illness, would be a good place to start an NY1 crime victim follow-up interview. Additionally, NY1 Louis can interview the mother of Kristal Bayron-Nieves who was murdered while working at Wendy’s to help pay her family’s bills.  Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and State Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart Cousins’ excuse for not changing the bail law is they don’t have enough data that it is causing the crime wave. No data will be needed if journalist Louis put together a debate on NY1 between Heastie, Cousins, and the victims’ families about the bail law. I am sure that political director Hardt will cancel one of the reporter Gross reports on the bad conditions at Rikers to make room for such a debate.

Criminal Court Judges Must Be Given More Independence and Reflect the Communities Values

The NYU Brennan Center for Justice has done numerous studies that political parties and court insiders choose most of NY’s Judges and their Administrative Supervisors. Most judicial elections are non-competitive and when there is more than one judicial candidate on the ballot, voters know little about the judicial candidates running. Judges should not be chosen by political machines or court insiders; judges should also not be picked by the mayoral or governors’ selection committees, full of special interests connected to politics. Judge Paul McDonnell, appointed by liberal Mayor de Blasio to the Criminal Court bench, cut a career criminal Nathaniel Turner loose.  Despite being on lifetime parole after punching one cop and trying to bite another, Turner waltzed out of his court without bail.

Our City needs elected judges, who reflect the values of New Yorkers and local neighborhoods, and who are not afraid to speak out about the injustices they see in the system. We need Judges who interpret the law themselves, as opposed to being made to rely on the cheat sheets provided to them by politically appointed court administrators.  Currently, both Albany and the politically controlled court administrators micromanage judges, treating them as bureaucrats as opposed to the elected officials representing a separate and independent third branch of our government, which is supposed to check the power and the abuses of the executive and the legislative branches of government.  Unlike every other state and the federal court system, where judges can consider the risk posed by putting defendants back on the streets, New York Albany lawmakers only allow bail to be used as a way to ensure they return to court. 

The NY Post just broke a story that the unelected Office of Court Administration (OCA) gives judges “cheat sheets” on how to rule on criminal arraignment bail hearings. The OCA also gave judges a memo — obtained by The Post — that boils down the law into seven pages of charts, listing the various offenses still eligible for cash bail, which was eliminated for most misdemeanors and non-violent felonies.  Due to various loopholes and other complexities, the charts are supplemented with 25 footnotes that say when defendants should be released despite being charged with “qualifying offenses.”  Even the New York branch of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is suing the OCA for its practice of issuing directives to judges on how to interpret the law.  The ACLU case alleges that OCA is impermissibly directing Judges on how to rule on cases.      

A judge who spoke to The NY Post on condition of anonymity said that “by and large” the bail-reform law was “insane. Our hands are tied,” the judge said. And judicial discretion will ensure there’s a true evaluation that the person is a risk of flight and perhaps an assessment of the risk they pose to the community. “The state Legislature needs to get their act together and call a special session” just to address bail reform, the judge added.” Why doesn’t the Post Editorial Board ask why not a single NYS Judge will speak out on the record about how they are forced to let violent criminals out of jail? Why hasn’t one judge resigned on the issue of bail reform? Judges have a duty to protect the community they were elected in.

To make judicial elections easier to understand for the voters and reflect the values of the community, Criminal Court Judges should be elected by Assembly Districts. While Assembly Districts contain around 128,000 people, judicial districts, from which judges are currently elected, contain between one million and three million people. Judicial elections need public funding, and the state should mail every voter a bio of every judicial candidate, just as the city does for every City Council candidate.  NY needs the elected, judicial branch of government, to be truly independent, and to speak out against bad laws made by the other two branches of government.  NY needs a judicial branch that is not controlled by political party machines or special interests, including politically connected attorneys, who currently sit on the appointment selection committees of judges whom these politically connected attorneys appear before and receive fiduciary appointments from. Some in Albany and within the state’s court system want to take the control of electing judges even further away from the voters.  With NY Chief Judge Janet DiFiore stepping down from a position that was once elected, and now appointed, it is time for the media, elected officials, and all New Yorkers to investigate who picks and controls NYS judges.

To Restore NYC’s Democracy and Empowering the Public Change the Political System

With only 13% turning out in the June primary and 9% in the August Primary the only people elected were the special interests candidates, who in this case were incumbents. If an election were held in Russia or any other socialist county with a single district turnout, we would ridicule it as a sign of a dictatorship or fascism. What is most disturbing is that the media, Good Government Groups, and elected officials have ignored the dangers connected with low voters. The unions that in the 1970s helped save NYC from bankruptcy still worked to defeat the 2017 NYS Constitutional Convention where reforms to NY’s political system could have been accomplished. Now that unions and NY’s political insiders are being challenged by progressives for control of low turnout elections, it will be interesting to watch if they become part of a coalition to change NY’s government. If the recession that is predicted for NYC a lot of interest groups will start pushing for government reform that makes the cost of governing twice as expensive for the large state of Florida and disconnects voters for the convenience of the special interests, including progressives who reap the spoils of low turnout elections. 

If a recession causes an opportunity to reform NY’s voting system New York should move to adopt nonpartisan, multi-round elections, where candidates of all stripes have the chance to compete against one another on their records and ideas, instead of trying to outdo each other by winning over a small slice of the base. NYC should change its campaign finance system which failed lobbyists have used to make a living on. Adopt Democracy Voucher that provides city residents with four vouchers, each worth $25, that can be pledged to eligible candidates running for each municipal office, like the mayor, council, and borough president. Another reform to reconnect New Yorkers is to use the same district lines for Community Board and Council District and allow every registered voter to vote on important issues facing their community. The Jewish Voice wrote how Jimmy Breslin and Norman Mailer had the right idea about how to reconnect NYC’s residents to participate in elections when they ran for office in 1969, decentralizing local government: To Fix NYC We Need to Reinvent the City’s Strong Neighborhoods of the Past.

@GaryTilzerTips