How Many Members Of Bloomberg's Mayors Against Illegal Guns Group Have Arrest Records?

Check out the comments after this article that reports Bloomberg is holding a fundraiser for Cory Booker, one of the members of his Mayors Against Illegal Guns group, and see.

My personal favorite is the member of Bloomberg's Mayors Against Illegal Guns group who was arrested for illegally carrying a gun.

That's an amazing thing.

Collusion Between Murdoch, Thatcher And The London Police: Strikerbreaker Edition

How did Rupert Murdoch and his merry hacksters at News International (the British edition of News Corporation) get so close with the London police?

It goes back to the strikebreaking war Murdoch waged with the help of Margaret Thatcher and the cops back in the eighties:

The investigation of News Corp is not, as Murdoch claims, about "paying cops for news tips": it is about systemic corruption. The deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan police at the time, Sue Akers, explained early last year: "The cases we are investigating are not ones involving the odd drink, or meal, to police officers or other public officials. Instead, these are cases in which arrests have been made involving the delivery of regular, frequent and sometimes significant sums of money to small numbers of public officials by journalists."

One of the decisive moments consolidating Murdoch's relationship to the Metropolitan police was the use of police as armed strikebreakers in the 86-87 Wapping dispute. Margaret Thatcher herself had assured Murdoch that the police would be at his disposal, and their collusion in breaking the strike required an operation costing £14m.

As the Guardian journalist Nick Davies pointed out, this was never simply a matter of criminality. It was always about power. The networks of collusion, bribery and complicity that began to be established in the Thatcher era are beginning to be unravelled.

Murdoch has been pretty skilled at avoiding accountability for helping to set up and support these networks of collusion, bribery, and complicity.

I'm under no illusion that he won't find a way to skate accountability now.

Somebody in the comments wrote the following:

Murdoch is the classic 19th century tycoon. No ethics, no sense of responsibility, no concern for anyone outside of his family and very small circle of personal friends.

His mission has always been to become the richest and most powerful SOB possible. Part of that goal is to bring the world back to the 19th century, when government encouraged that behavior, rather than trying to control it.

That is an excellent description of Murdoch and indeed, a pretty apt description of the world he has helped to usher in.

Think the collusion between FOX and the GOP.

Think the collusion between the NY Post/Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg and Klein.

For Rupert Murdoch, it is all about collusion and systematic corruption mean to enrich and empower himself and his coterie.

NYSED Commissioner John King: Success Through Suspension And Attrition

Chris Cerrone posts about NYSED Commissioner John King's experience running a charter school:

King is a big charter supporter and earned his limited experience in that realm of education.  Looking at the Roxbury Prep Charter School that King helped to found might show why he steers clear of charters for his own children.  Recent data shows Roxbury’s suspension rate of 56%,  ten times that of other schools in Massachusetts.  Going back in time closer to King’s reign at Roxbury, the suspension rate was an appalling 70%.

70% suspension rate.

Roxbury Prep claims the following on its website:

The mission of Roxbury Preparatory Charter School is to prepare its students to enter, succeed in, and graduate from college.

Hard to do that when you're suspending at a 70% rate, as the school did when NYSED Commissioner John King was running it, or at a 56% rate (ten times other schools in the state) as they do now.

While we're talking about suspension rates, maybe we ought to take a look at the attrition rates at Roxbury Prep Charter School as well.

Statewide the attrition rate for students at Massachusetts schools is 2.6%. 

For male students statewide, the attrition rate is 2.7%

At Roxbury Prep Charter School, the overall attrition rate is 8.5% and for male students it's 11.3%

Statewide the attrition rate for students with disabilities is 2.4%.

For students with disabilities at Roxbury Prep Charter School, the attrition rate is 16.7%. 

Higher suspension rates, higher attrition rates - clearly NYSED Commissioner John King and his successors at Roxbury Prep Charter School understand how you get a school to succeed.

You juke your stats by throwing students out or encouraging them to leave after they've been suspended multiple times.

Remember that the next time you read about how NYSED Commissioner John King founded and once ran a "high quality" charter school.

Some Fourth Of July Fireworks For Rupert Murdoch

The hacking scandal appears to be a problem for Rupert Murdoch once again.

Not only is his "news" News Corporation having to deal with one and possibly more cases of hacking on U.S. soil that could cost hundreds of millions of dollars in court costs and fees, but now there's a tape out that suggests Rupert Murdoch called for internal management to begin covering up the scandal after they had started cooperating with police:

Labour MP Tom Watson has called on Rupert Murdoch to be questioned by police after a covert recording emerged of him appearing to regret the level of help News Corporation gave to the investigation into alleged wrongdoing at its newspapers.

The News Corporation boss describes payments to police and public officials as "the culture of Fleet Street" in a secret recording made during a meeting with staff from the Sun newspaper this March.

In a transcript of the recording, which was obtained by the investigative website ExaroNews and aired by Channel 4 news on Wednesday evening, he appears to regret the extent of News Corporation's internal management and standards committee's (MSC) co-operation with the police.

After a Sun journalist at the meeting appears in the recording to query the MSC handing over documents to the police, Murdoch is heard saying: "… it was a mistake, I think. But, in that atmosphere, at that time, we said, 'Look, we are an open book, we will show you everything'. And the lawyers just got rich going through millions of emails.

"All I can say is, for the last several months, we have told, the MSC has told, and [**** ****], who's a terrific lawyer, has told the police, has said, 'No, no, no – get a court order. Deal with that.'"

Journalists told Murdoch that they felt like scapegoats and he says: "We're talking about payments for news tips from cops: that's been going on a hundred years, absolutely. You didn't instigate it."

Watson told the Guardian: "I think we need to hear from [Metropolitan police comissioner] Bernard Hogan-Howe when the MSC stopped co-operating with the police inquiry."

In one particularly revealing part of the recording, Murdoch makes reference to those who might succeed him as the head of the media empire. A journalist asks what would happen if the 82-year-old Murdoch was no longer around to give them his support. "The decision would be – well, it will either be with my son, Lachlan, or with Robert Thomson [Murdoch's chief executive at News Corp]. And you don't have any worries about either of them," he tells the meeting.

During the tape, Murdoch accuses the Metropolitan police of incompetence and brands the criminal investigations into journalists as a "disgrace", saying: "The idea that the cops then started coming after you, kick you out of bed, and your families, at six in the morning, is unbelievable."

Watson told Channel 4 News: "What he seems to be saying there is that they stopped co-operating with the police before the Sun staff started to rebel. And what I would like to know is what are they sitting on that they've not given the police. And I'm sure that this transcript and this audiotape should be in the hands of the police tomorrow because I hope that they're going to be interviewing Rupert Murdoch about what he did know about criminality in his organisation."

Roy Greenslade says the tape was leaked by someone on the Sun staff because they're pissed at Murdoch for throwing them under the bus in the scandal:

As for Murdoch, he could be under no illusion about the underlying hostility from staff who felt they were paying the price for doing what was expected of them.

One told me: "We did as we were bid. No-one thought they were doing wrong. There was no training of any kind. No office lawyer raised any question." That genuine feeling of being hung out to dry is shared by almost every one of the arrested journalists.

In the tape Murdoch admits that the culture of bribery the staff engaged in at The Sun and the News of the World had been around at the papers for a long time:

He talks of the News of the World in personal terms: "We got caught with dirty hands, I guess" before launching into a further attack on the police: "The cops are totally incompetent … It's just disgraceful what they're doing … It's the biggest inquiry ever, over next-to-nothing."

A crucial section follows when one of the journalists, who had been with The Sun for under 10 years, points out that the paper's "working practices… were ones that I've inherited, rather than instigated."

Murdoch replies in what will surely be seen as a crucial statement about The Sun's culture and his acceptance of it:

"We're talking about payments for news tips from cops: that's been going on a hundred years, absolutely. You didn't instigate it."

In my opinion, this offers the journalists a crucial plank of mitigation for their actions. It is also a reminder of the occasion in 2003 when the former Sun editor, Rebekah Brooks, told a Commons select committee that the paper had paid the police for information.
Murdoch continues: "I would have thought 100% … at least 90% of payments were made at the instigation of cops saying, 'I've got a good story here. It's worth 500 quid' or something. And you would say, 'No, it's not' … And they'd say, 'Well, we'll ring the Mirror…' It was the culture of Fleet Street."

In the end, this tape confirms that Rupert Murdoch, the man at the top, was responsible for the culture of bribery and corruption at his newspapers:

But the real significance of the tape is that it reveals the true, unexpurgated Rupert Murdoch. As I have said often since the hacking scandal first broke, as the man at the top I believe he has been responsible for the journalistic culture at Wapping. This tape appears to prove my point.

It is time to bring Rupert Murdoch down to the police station and interview him over the tape contents.

We'll see if they actually do that.

A Warning Sign On Weiner

From Politicker:

When campaigns schedule voter meet-and-greets outside of subway stops, they typically entail candidates standing on sidewalks with handfuls of flyers, trying desperately to shake hands with frenzied commuters–often disinterested in being pestered on their way to or from work. But this wasn’t the usual candidate.

This was former Congressman Anthony Weiner, who held court this evening on the Upper West Side. For well over an hour, Mr. Weiner stood surrounded by a crowd of attentive voters, spectators and reporters, fielding one question after the next after the next.

“If I had a soap box I’d climb up on it,” mused Mr. Weiner early on in the conversation, which was reminiscent of the atmosphere at the famed Speaker’s Corner in London’s Hyde Park.

Aside from an early heckler, the reception was overwhelmingly positive, with various locals stopping to pose for photos, listen in and wish Mr. Weiner well. Others peppered him with questions on a host of topics, including education, bike lanes, the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk tactic, affordable housing and hospital closings.

If the other campaigns don't put him on the defensive soon, there will be more than just one poll showing him in the lead in the mayoral race.

The last couple of days some unions have been talking about attacking Weiner on two fronts: his ethics and his corporate-friendly retrogressive politics.

They need to be getting that message out there on the air waves soon.

I've gone from an Anybody But Quinn supporter to an Anybody But Weiner supporter.

Not that I want Quinn as mayor, but even she would not be as damaging to the city, to schools, to students, and to teachers as Anthony Weiner.

Somebody needs to expose this narcissistic corporate sell-out for what he is.

NYC Teacher Evaluation System: Still Rigged Against Teachers

Gotham Schools put a piece up this morning saying the teacher evaluation system imposed upon NYC teachers by NYSED Commissioner/rookie teacher John King is so good that it may be the model for renegotiated evaluation systems in other districts around the state.

Basically the King-imposed system "fixed" problems with the state and local testing components in APPR by increasing the "ineffective" ratings from 2 to 12 (out of a total 20 points per component) and "fixed" problems with the "objective" measures by decreasing the "ineffective" ratings from 49 to 38 (out of a total 60 points.)

But Carol Burris explained in the comments why the system "fixes" are still problematic:

Now here is the problem with the NYC bands....

Teacher gets a 12 and a 12 in the first two components and a 59 out of 60 in the last component. 83 points--a great score in the effective range. Not so fast... it is not. The teacher will be found ineffective overall because they were ineffective in the two student achievement components.

Here is scenario 2. Teacher gets 11 in the first and 13 in the second. They get 59 points in the third. 83 points. This time they are EFFECTIVE, because the score in the second band squeaked into the developing range. Opposite is of course also true. There are of course many permutations on this. The flaw is setting the score for ineffective up to 64 and insisting test scores trump all. This cannot be fixed. Massachusetts has a far more professional system.

John King's "fix" fixes nothing and the system remains rigged against teachers.

Let's see if it stands up to scrutiny in court when the first challenges are brought.

Bloomberg Administration Knows 1/4 To 1/3 Of All 911 Calls Are Getting Lost In The System, But Continues To Deny The Problem Exists

In case you missed this very important Juan Gonzalez investigation on Bloomberg's faulty 911 system upgrade, here it is in full:

Less than 24 hours after the death of little Ariel Russo in a car accident on the upper West Side, EMS supervisors began an exchange of bombshell emails about repeated “lost calls” from the city’s new 911 system.

The emails obtained by the Daily News show for the first time that high-ranking officials knew the extent of the problems with the $88 million system very early on — just days after the system was launched and before 4-year-old Ariel died.

Lt. Carl Nunziata, an overnight shift boss, sent the first email on June 5. It was at 5:51 a.m. and addressed to Carla Murphy, the head of computer programming for EMS.

“Last night we had a couple of jobs I would like for you to look at,” the email began.

Nunziata said a call came from the NYPD to EMS as a “lost call.” Another call came in for an emotionally disturbed person and inexplicably had no address attached to it.

“Why are these jobs coming in this way?” a perplexed Nunziata asked. “And what are we suppose(sic) to do with these type jobs?”

The startling reply from Murphy came just after 10 a.m. on June 6. Some of the brass already knew.

“[Deputy Fire] Chief Napoli reported the problem to me several days ago and I provided a list of incidents where this had occurred over 3 days for Intergraph to resolve,” Murphy wrote.

A flurry of “lost calls” were “happening to about 1/4 [to] 1/3 of incidents transmitted from NYPD ICAD,” she said.

ICAD is the acronym for the new computer system built by Intergraph Corp. It is used by 911 operators to assign police and to transmit details of emergency calls to EMS and FDNY dispatch centers in downtown Brooklyn.

Given that 911 operators process an average of 3,000 ambulance calls a day, the Murphy email raises the possibility that the number of lost calls may have been in the hundreds or thousands.

A “lost” message, according to fire officials and Intergraph’s own manual, occurs when transmissions from NYPD to EMS fail to reach the intended recipient, usually because of a break in a computer link, or because of a garbled transmission.

  

“We get several of these a day . . . which may not have sufficient information for responding units to find the incident,” Murphy wrote, copying several top brass.

Whatever the number, it certainly points to a bigger problem with the new system than the minor “bugs” Mayor Bloomberg conceded on May 31.
 

Ariel was struck on June 4 at W. 97th St. and Amsterdam Ave., as she walked to school with her grandmother around 8:15 a.m. She was clinging to life, as police on the scene repeatedly asked for an ambulance.

The News revealed a few days later that there was a delay of more than four minutes in dispatching an ambulance. She later died, but it’s not clear if the delay contributed to her death. The girl’s family has filed a $40 million lawsuit against the city.

Fire officials, who blamed that delay on human error, said Monday that everything was fine with the new system.

“There has not been a single lost call with the new system,” Deputy Fire Commissioner Frank Gribbon insisted Monday.
 

They say an EMS worker failed to see the 911 ambulance request on her screen before going on a break, and admitted so afterward. Since then, she has contradicted that account. She denied seeing any new call on her screen before her replacement took over.

And the union for EMS paramedics has claimed the call for help was somehow lost in the system.
The EMS log of that incident lists several “PD-LOST” messages in the first few seconds of the transmission from 911.

Fire officials say no calls have been missed and the new system is faster and more reliable than its predecessor.

“The new ICAD system is so fast that the moment the NYPD call taker starts keying in information, the transmission starts to EMS,” Gribbon said. “There are instances when we receive partial data from ICAD. But we always get the full data within seconds.”

So a “lost” call is not really lost, according to Gribbon, just temporarily garbled or unavailable.

“It may not be the perfect term to use,” he conceded.

“That’s nonsense,” a veteran EMS dispatcher said. “He’s obviously never worked a dispatch terminal.”

“Since this new system started, our people get on the phone to 911 every day and ask, ‘where’s the information on that ambulance job you were supposed to send me?’ ” the dispatcher said. “The operator may tells us, ‘I sent it to you 20 minutes or an hour ago,’ but it’s still not our screen. If that isn’t lost, what is?”

Fire officials later acknowledged that dozens of paramedics and supervisors working at the EMS dispatch center the day of the accident should have been able to see the ambulance request on their individual computer monitors. Officials say the request would also have been visible on a huge screen in the EMS center that highlights in white any calls that have been delayed more than three minutes.

A public outcry ensued and officials have promised a full investigation. As of last week, at least 15 people had been interviewed under oath, including an EMS captain and a lieutenant. None has reported seeing the Ariel Russo ambulance request on EMS computer screens, say union leaders with knowledge of the interviews.

“Nobody saw the call for the little girl because it wasn’t there,” said Israel Miranda, president of the paramedics and emergency technicians union. “It was a lost call, and city doesn’t want to admit there’s a big problem with this new system.”

This is horrific but not a surprise.

The Bloomberg people never take responsibility for mistakes or problems, they always look to balme it on others - especially city workers.

We had better hope there is not some major disaster, either weather-related or otherwise, that brings in a ton of 911 calls before Bloomberg finally flies off to Bermuda and the next mayor comes in and (I hope) fixes this system.

Bloomberg Wrong On Stop-And-Frisk Race Comments

Last week the Mayor of Money said the NYPD stops too many white people and not enough people of color.

Those comments were controversial, to say the least, but the mayor doubled down on them, saying any City Council member who doesn't vote with him on the stop-and-frisk issue may have to deal with the Bloomberg PAC using its money against them.

Today the NY Daily News looks at the Bloomberg comments on stop-and-frisk and finds them wanting:

The mayor made headlines last week with his assertion that white New Yorkers were stopped too often by officers patrolling the five boroughs, and minority-group members weren’t stopped often enough.

But it’s right there in black and white: The mayoral math on stop-and-frisk doesn’t add up.

A Daily News analysis of NYPD data contradicts Bloomberg’s claim, by looking at all crime suspects versus just violent crime suspects — particularly in neighborhoods where blacks and Hispanics are in the population minority, but make up the majority of stops.

 ...
 
City Hall released statistics to support Bloomberg’s controversial claim about stop-and-frisk and race.
The NYPD numbers showed 6.9% of the violent crime suspects were white — although whites made up 9.7% of the total number of people stopped.

But The News’ review of NYPD data found police listed a “violent” offense as the suspected crime on little more than one-quarter of the 532,911 stops made last year — mostly for “robbery.” The rest listed “nonviolent” offenses like weapons possession, larceny, pot possession and criminal trespass.

When the lesser offenses are included, whites comprise 13.8% all crime suspects in the city — meaning they were stopped too infrequently.

The 109th Precinct in Queens — where whites and Asians constitute more than 80% of the population — produced the biggest discrepancy: 48% of local crime suspects were black, while 65% of those stopped were black or Hispanic.

The 17-percentage point difference was the largest of any precinct, followed by the 6th Precinct (Greenwich and West Village, 15.6); Midtown North (Hell’s Kitchen, 15), Central Park (14) and the 104th Precinct (Ridgewood, Queens, 13).

Only four of the 22 precincts with a difference of more than 5 percentage points were home to a majority of black or Hispanic residents.

Bloomberg spokesman Marc La Vorgna defended the mayor’s numbers, sticking to the “violent” suspect standard.

Selective use of data to push their ill-begotten policies is a hallmark of this administration.

They're doing it with the stop-and-frisk and crime data.

Later today I'll take a look at how they're doing it with the 911 system too.

In the case of the stop-and-frisk policy, funking with the data to sell it is going to come back to haunt them in court:

The future of stop-and-frisk could hinge on Manhattan Federal Judge Shira Scheindlin’s ruling on a class-action lawsuit — a decision that could come as early as this week.

Legal experts predict Scheindlin will likely appoint an independent monitor to oversee the nation’s largest police force if she finds the police procedure is unconstitutional.

Scheindlin is widely expected to rule against the NYPD after taking the cops to task for the “high error rate.”

“You reasonably suspect something and you’re wrong 90% of the time,” the judge said. “That’s a lot of misjudgment of suspicion.”

Legal experts predicted she’s likely to order reforms, including a federal monitor who would report to her on problems solely related to stop-and-frisk. She could then compel the NYPD to make changes.

I highlighted part of the judge's statement because it is so emblematic of what is wrong with Bloomberg and Kelly.

 

They pursue an unjust, racist and unconstitutional policy that, at its core, is not about stopping crime but about intimidation and control.

 

Kelly is on record as saying they want every brown and black man in this city worried that they could be stopped at any moment by police and searched, that the city wanted to "instill" fear into them.

 

Kelly and Bloomberg don't care that 90% of the time, stop-and-frisk searches find nothing.

 

The point is to simply stop men of color and intimidate them.

 

At that, the policy is quite successful.

 

I still do not understand, given the racist polices this mayor has pursued, why he does not enjoy the same reputation of being a racist that his predecessor Rudy Giuliani enjoys.

Report Finds NYPD Crime Statistics Are Easily Manipulated

From the NY Times:

A long-awaited report ordered by the police commissioner in New York has found deficiencies in the Police Department’s efforts to detect whether its crime statistics are being manipulated.

 ...

The report was released on Tuesday, more than two years after Mr. Kelly empaneled a committee of former federal prosecutors to review the department’s internal crime-reporting system. 

The committee’s report did not directly address how often such manipulation occurred, but it identified vulnerabilities in the department’s system for auditing the integrity of its crime statistics.

Before each report of a crime is entered into the department’s computer system, relatively few controls exist to prevent officers on the street from refusing to fill out any paperwork or for supervisors to alter paperwork back in the station house, the review found. 

While praising the department on the considerable resources devoted to auditing crime statistics, the committee noted that most of those efforts were directed at identifying “human error” — that is, unintentional mistakes in a police officer’s paperwork. But for “an officer who wishes to manipulate crime reporting,” the report said there were “few other procedures in place that control the various avenues of potential manipulation.” 

...

The 60-page report describes several instances of manipulation in which felony crimes were marked down as misdemeanors. In one instance “a desk officer scratched out the item values in order to bring the total to below the $1,000 threshold for grand larceny,” which is a felony. 

In another instance, police paperwork for lost property “described a complainant who ‘lost property’ following an assault by multiple individuals,” according to the report, which added, “On its face the narrative appears to describe a robbery.” 

In the aggregate, the report found, the effect of such errors, intentional or otherwise, on crime statistics was not negligible. “A close review of the N.Y.P.D.’s statistics and analysis demonstrate that the misclassifications of reports may have an appreciable effect on certain reported crime rates,” the report said. 

The report noted, for instance, that Police Department auditors had already detected an error rate in 2009 suggesting that grand larcenies were undercounted that year by 2,312. The adjusted figures represent a 4.6 percent increase over the figures that the department issued that year. 

I've said this before, I'll say it again:

The NYPD crime statistics under Kelly are as phony as the test scores under Klein.

If there were an independent audit of the NYPD free from Kelly's or Bloomberg's manipulation and influence, they would find every crime category would go up - including homicides.

Alliance for Quality Education: Cuomo, Lawmakers Get Failing Grade For School Improvement Policies

From the Times-Union:

The labor-backed Alliance for Quality Education released a report today that gives a failing grade to Albany for the way lawmakers have improved New York’s public schools.

Here’s the report  and here is the press release:

The report card found that the state was moving in the right direction in the areas of “Providing Quality Pre-K” and “Creating Community Schools.” However, the report card found that the state is moving in the wrong direction in the areas of “Expanding Learning Time,” “Providing Challenging and Engaging Curriculum,” “Creating a Positive School Climate and Reducing Suspensions,” and “Investing in Equity.” The report card gave the state an “Incomplete” in “Providing Quality Teaching Initiatives,” stating that there is not enough evidence to show whether or not the new teacher evaluation is a step in the right or wrong direction yet. 

“We agree with the Governor, the state should be investing in full-day pre-K, high quality curriculum, teacher mentoring, more time for student learning, and improving low-performing schools by creating community schools,” said Billy Easton, Executive Director of the Alliance for Quality Education. “Now that the state is funding these successful educational strategies for less than two percent of New York students, the next step should be for the state to embrace the reality that we have a moral obligation to make these programs available to students throughout the state.”

The report card finds that, overall, New York State is moving in the wrong direction because it is failing to provide large portions of students with these successful educational opportunities.  New York has created small grant programs in several of these areas, but those programs each serve less than two percent of students in the state.  

“The way that this state is treating my child’s education is just plain wrong,” said Natasha Capers, parent from Brooklyn. “The bare bones of education is unacceptable, and I’m angry that my child has less opportunities to succeed than other children in this state. The state must do its job, so that schools can do their job to give students an equal opportunity to succeed.”

Cuomo, of course, has moved on from education issues and was busy today giving himself a pat on the back for creating yet another blue ribbon state commission - this time on political corruption.

He ought to combine the two initiatives and take a look at some of the corruption at the NYSED over the testing contracts.

For that matter, he might want to get to the bottom of the last NYSED Commissioner, David Steiner, who was treated to junkets via Pearson.

Or the contracts the NYCDOE signed off on.

There is plenty of corruption to take on in education too.

But you can bet neither Cuomo nor his blue ribbon corruption commission will look at that issue.

Will Bloomberg's Money Bludgeon Matter In City Council Races?

Kristen Meriwether in The Epoch Times says no:

NEW YORK—Mayor Michael Bloomberg has money to spend this election season, and he is taking notes as to who opposed him on the stop-and-frisk legislation, eyeing up which Council member he can get to rescind their vote. Controversial legislation, which would prohibit biased-based profiling, passed in the wee hours of June 27, with just enough votes to override the mayor’s veto.

Following a report in The New York Post that his super PAC, Independent USA, would try and influence local elections, the mayor beat around the bush on Monday as to what exactly he would do.

“We should all support candidates we agree with,” the mayor said at a press conference in the Bronx on July 1. “We will see what I am going to do.”

...

The mayor, a self-made billionaire, may have a seemingly-endless war chest, but considering the slate of local races this year, his attempt at changing the outcomes of local elections based on this issue may fall flat.

...

“There may be a handful of races he could influence. What he has going in his favor is, it does not take too many votes to turn a primary,” said Bruce Berg, associate professor of political science at Fordham University. “The question is, do you have two viable candidates, and do they disagree on this issue?”

It does not appear Bloomberg would find a viable candidate in the Council races that he could support. Of the 34 Council members who voted in favor of Intro 1080, 23 are up for reelection, according to DecideNYC.com, which keeps tabs on all the local races. Seven of those races are unopposed.

Of the opposed races, only three are deemed highly competitive: Council member Inez Dickens, who is facing Vince Morgan in Harlem; Council member Steve Levin in Brooklyn, who is facing attacks from Stephen Pierson who has tied Levin to disgraced Assemblyman Vito Lopez; Council member Melissa Mark-Viverito in District 8 (whose new district lines created quite the fury), who faces a tough primary with seven opponents.

Mark-Viverito, who is Latina, and Dickens, who is African American, spoke passionately in favor of the bills at the Council hearing on June 26, and are very unlikely to turn over their votes even with pressure.

Levin, who is white, is a highly popular council member. His alleged ties to Lopez may do some damage, but not nearly the amount of damage switching his vote would bring.

Five council members are running for other local positions. Council members Gale Brewer, Robert Jackson, and Jessica Lappin are all facing Julie Menin, Chair of Community Board 1, for Manhattan Borough President. It is highly unlikely Bloomberg would be able to leverage any of the candidates against each other, considering they all voted the same way.

Council member Latitia James is running a tight race for Public Advocate with Senator Daniel Squadron, who is leading in the fundraising, and Reshma Saujani, founder of Girls Who Code. James, who is African American, has been an outspoken critic of stop-and-frisk and a sponsor of Intro 1080. It would be unlikely she would change her vote at this point.

Bloomberg's PAC was successful nationally last election cycle, backing 19 winning candidates to 7 losing candidates.

Here's hoping that Meriweather is right and he is not very successful at turning any races here.

GOP Candidate Lhota Wants To Hear From Women "Disrespected" By Anthony Weiner

From The Jewish Daily Forward:

GOP mayoral candidate Joe Lhota says he wants women who have dated Weiner or have been “disrespected” by the disgraced Congressman-turned-wannabe mayor to come forward with their horror stories.

“I hope [women] will come to the right conclusion after enough women come out and talk about what it was like to be with him and date him and things like that,” Lhota said on “The Andrea Tantaros Show” on the Talk Radio Network, according to the New York Post.

“New York women have to decide for themselves if this is someone who has the character to be mayor,” he added.

Weiner’s spokeswoman said he wouldn’t respond to Lhota’s attack, the Post said.

“Anthony is too busy talking about the future of the middle class and those struggling to make it to respond to Mr. Lhota’s mud throwing,” campaign spokeswoman Barbara Morgan said.

Couple of things to say here:

First, it's interesting that the guy who last year challenged a 77 year old man to a fist fight at an MTA board meeting is concerned enough about Weiner's behavior that he wants to hear from women who have been "disrespected" by the former congressman.

Second, what exactly is the strategy here? 

Is the Lhota campaign launching a preemptive strike against Weiner now because theyy're worried Weiner would be the toughest candidate for him to face in the general election?

Are they worried that the conservative/middle of the road policies Weiner is pushing will take some of the juice out of Lhota's "pro-growth" campaign?

I dunno, if I were Lhota, I would lay low for now and let the Dem candidates beat up on Weiner during the summer (and via some surrogates, they're starting to do just that), wait to see who makes the runoff and then, if Weiner emerges in the general, start the "Weiner is a Sexting, Lying Sleaze" campaign in late September.

But for whatever reason, the Lhota campaign is going after Weiner now.

Anybody out there have any idea why?

NYC Parents Union/DC 37 Local 372 Take On Anthony Weiner

Daily Politics has posted two different stories in the last 24 hours detailing how the NYC Parents Union and DC Council Local 372 have launched two separate attack sites against mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner (here and here.)

Here's why:

District Council 37's Local 372 has launched a pre-primary broadside against the ex-congressman and mayoral hopeful, bannering two photos from his 2011 sexting scandal -- one showing Weiner gripping his privates -- on its PAC's homepage under the headline, "Disgraced Weiner Attacks Parent Coordinators."

Local 372 President Santos Crespo Jr. says with Weiner climbing in the polls -- and bent on cutting the 1,600 coordinators, who act as liaisons and advocates -- "We're going to do what we need to do to take him out."

Weiner has said parents should be involved in their kids' schooling, but believes it doesn't require paid intermediaries.

"I would not want to dismiss the possibility that [Weiner] may be the Democratic contender after the smoke clears," said Crespo, who's also a vice president of DC37, the city's biggest municipal worker union.

"Since [Weiner's] already indicated that he wants to come after our parent coordinators, I need to stop this before it gets worse down the road."

That means gearing up Local 372 for what Crespo says will be an anti-Weiner "full-court press. It's going to be press conferences. It's going to be rallies. It's going to be door-to-door [visits and] phone calls."

The point: "Aside from [his] lack of integrity and class, we’re reminding folks that this is a guy who outright lied when he asked if he had done that," Crespo said of Weiner's sketchy snapshots.

"A lot of people unfortunately do not remember that," said Crespo, who says his local will work with community and parent groups, as well as confer with other unions, to go after Weiner. "You've got to think, 'Gee, I wonder what else he would lie to the public about?'"

 ...

Local 372's decision to give Weiner's "junk mail" the Return To Sender treatment online came shortly before the launch of a separate website, stopweiner.com.

Both web pages, which focus on the school workers who act as liaisons between families and city teachers, are the work of Mona Davids, the new political director of Local 372.

Davids said stopweiner.com, which she registered only Sunday night, is a joint effort with Local 372. It's is also meant to highlight Weiner's lewd past and publicize his call for the elimination of the parent liaisons in his "Keys To The City" blueprint for the mayoralty.

32 BJ President Hector Figueroa spoke yesterday about the importance of going after Weiner on both his ethics and his "retrogressive" politics.

It's about time that the unions wake up to the danger Weiner poses for their members and start a widespread campaign to take down his poll numbers and support.

A similar effort against Quinn has really driven down her poll numbers.

I'm betting that a month of "Did Anthony Weiner Lie About Sexting With A 17 Year Old?" ads on NY1 and other local stations would do something similar to Weiner's numbers.

Joel Klein Diverts Attention From Disappointing News Corp Education Division Debut With Education Speech

According to Gotham Schools, former NYC Schools Chancellor and current News Corporation executive Joel Klein gave a speech defending Bloomberg's education policies and attacking mayoral candidates who aren't fully on board with that agenda.

Not mentioned in the Gotham Schools story is that yesterday was the debut of the "new" News Corporation, with Joel Klein at the helm of the for-profit education technology division that is now paired with the newspapers and the publishing house, Harper Collins.

The much more profitable entertainment business in the old News Corporation has been spun off into a company known as 21st Century Fox.

Here is how Reuters reported on that story:

(Reuters) - Wall Street rewarded Rupert Murdoch's move to create a separate entertainment company, giving 21st Century Fox one of the richest valuations in the media sector on its first day of trading.
 
Investors had waited for Murdoch to split News Corp, giving its cable, movie and equity stakes in pay-TV assets their own spotlight away from the publishing division.

The move is part of larger trend among media companies that are shedding print properties. Tribune announced on Monday it will acquire a stable of TV stations making it one of the largest local TV broadcasters while it seeks a possible sale of its newspapers.

21st Century Fox, which includes the Fox cable network, already has one of the highest valuations among its media peers based on 2013 price to earnings multiple. At 20.7 times, it is higher than Walt Disney, Viacom and Time Warner, and ranks second only to Discovery according to estimates from UBS analyst John Janedis.

Shares in the new 21st Century Fox entertainment operation gained over 2 percent on Monday, or $1.1 billion dollars in market value, from its opening price. Its market capitalization is about $68 billion, reflecting Monday's gain.

"By divesting its less attractive legacy business, Fox has become a pure-play entertainment company with fantastic assets in its cable channels," Gabelli & Co analyst Brett Harriss said.

In contrast, shares of the new News Corp, which includes publishing assets like The Wall Street Journal and HarperCollins, and an education division, lost 3 percent, or half a billion, from their opening price. News Corp has a current market value of about $8.5 billion.

"News Corp is largely seen as ink on paper, and the perception is that the good assets, so to speak, went to Fox," said Gabelli & Co analyst Barry Lucas.

In addition to being seen as the "less valuable" assets from the old News Corporation, the "new" News Corporation education/print division is facing potential lawsuits in the United States related to phone hacking.

Norman Siegel has already filed one for Eunice Huthart, a stunt double for Angelina Jolie, who says she was hacked by News Corporation journalists working for the now closed News of the World and The Sun while on U.S. soil.

According to The Guardian, Siegel said at a press conference that "There are a bunch of people, the majority from England but some from here, who want to bring claims."


The Guardian article goes on to say that:

This is the first time that News Corp, parent company of News International, which controls the UK newspapers, has been named as a defendant in a case. It comes as the Justice Department continues to investigate News Corp under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), used to pursue US companies accused of bribing foreign officials.

Siegel has also worked with the relatives of 9/11 victims who were also reportedly hacked by News Corp employees. Siegel said it was his understanding that a FBI investigation into those allegations was ongoing.

With News Corporation now split into two entities, court fees, fines and settlements related to both British and U.S. hacking claims will come of out Klein's education technology/newspaper division.

 The Associated Press reports that:

News Corp. has spent $388 million in settlements, legal fees and other costs associated with ongoing investigations in the U.K. since the hacking scandal came to light in 2011.

It's not a mistake that just as the "new" News Corporation is debuting on Wall Street by losing 3 percent (half a billion dollars in valuation from its opening price) and is facing a new American front in the hacking scandal that could cost the company hundreds of millions of dollars, Klein is giving a speech touting his education "legacy" when he was NYC chancellor and attacking mayoral candidates who aren't on board with that legacy 100%.

They're looking to divert attention from the poor reception Wall Street gave to the education technology/newspaper division yesterday and the problems they're facing over future hacking claims that put the company's health very much in doubt.

CUNY Pays David Petraeus $150,000 A Year To Teach One Course

Many CUNY adjuncts are paid less than $3,000 a course.

Retired General David Petraeus will make $2,250 an hour to teach one course.

So glad to see those CUNY fee and tuition hikes going for really important things.

Petraeus, btw, didn't think CUNY was "prestigious" enough for him and had to be persuaded by outgoing CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein to take the gig.

Hey, Dave, CUNY not prestigious enough for you?

Great, take your lying-ass act elsewhere.

I'm sure Harvard would like to have you.

Harvard's loss would be CUNY's gain.

Nanny Quinn Goes After Happy Meals

Sigh:

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn is following in Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s health-crusading footsteps, announcing a new crackdown today–on kiddie meals.

Ms. Quinn said that, if she wins the mayor’s race, she wants to force chain restaurants that already post their calorie counts to set new restrictions on kids’ menus and happy meals, more in line with the standards the USDA sets for school lunches.

According to her campaign, the grilled cheese kid’s meal with fries at Applebee’s packs a whopping 21 grams of saturated fat, 2,34o milligrams of sodium and 1,210 calories–dramatically higher than the 7.2 grams of fat, 740 mg of sodium and 650 calories school lunches are allowed.

“We’re not going to limit parents’ choices. You’ll still be able to order whatever you think is right for your children. But what we’re saying is that companies can’t spend millions of dollars on marketing or include items on children’s menus if those foods clearly are going to lead to obesity, which could lead to diabetes or other diet-related illnesses,” Ms. Quinn told reporters at a press conference at the Union Square green market.

The ideas was part of a package unveiled by Ms. Quinn that also included plans to double the number of school-based health centers and require all new schools to be built with gyms.

Ms. Quinn’s close ally, Mr. Bloomberg, has long been accused of taking his nanny-state paternalism too far, after barring trans-fats, forcing chain restaurants to post calorie counts and attempting–unsuccessfully–to regulate soda sizes.

Doubling the number of school health centers and requiring all newly built schools to have a gym is all well and good.

But would you leave the Happy Meals alone, please?

We cannot regulate our way out of bad behavior.

Prohibition of booze didn't work, the War on Drugs has been a dismal failure, and trying to over-regulate the food and restaurant industry isn't going to solve the health crisis.

Rather, educate people about their choices and let them know what eating a Happy Meal a day will do their kids and let it be.

Seriously.

I've had enough of the Nanny State.

In the end, it doesn't work.

32 BJ President: Weiner Talks Progressive, Has Policies That Are Retrogressive

Some of the Democratic candidates for mayor may be getting ready to attack Weiner on two fronts - how ethically challenged he is and what a corporate sell out he is:

Hector Figueroa, president of 32BJ SEIU, which just endorsed Quinn, told the Daily News he viewed Weiner as her top threat.

"We [are] incredibly worried, totally worried about Anthony Weiner ... People are giving [him] the benefit of the doubt. I believe he's just out there for himself," Figueroa said.

"We need to stop Anthony, and I believe if progressive Democrats start to look at the race that way, they are going to come to the same conclusion."

A Weiner campaign spokeswoman declined to comment on Figueroa, who launched into the Weiner attack when asked about Quinn's sinking poll numbers.

Something to watch: The intensity of Figueroa's comments raise the question of whether unions and other surrogates will increasingly be charging -- and spending money -- to assail Weiner's character over the sexting scandal that harpooned his political career in 2011.

 A few candidates, including Republicans Joe Lhota and George McDonald, Democrat Sal Albanese and the Green Party's Tony Gronowicz, have made issue of Weiner's lewd texting and subsequent lies. But most of the field has either mentioned it obliquely or tried to avoid talking about it at all. 

Now that Quinn is undoubtedly feeling the effects of Weiner's attempted comeback (on top of the PAC ads), voters could hear that message get louder through the speaker's supporters.

That lets the candidates themselves to skirt what might be seen as a tawdry subject, yet do damage to Weiner over the character question.

Weiner "is the worst candidate in the Democratic primary," Figueroa raged.

"He's confusing the electorate with a rhetoric that appears to be progressive, but a program that is aboslutely retrogressive," he said. "The scandal itself is going to diminish himself in the eyes of voters. You have to go after him. We certainly want to put that out there," he said.

When you look at Quinn’s falling numbers, “the beneficiary of that is [Weiner,] someone who doesn’t have any kind of accountability,” Figueroa said. “It’s none of the opponents that are attacking Chris [and] were hoping to occupy that space...  He’s going to prevent a decent candidate from emerging in the Democratic primary.”

I agree that Weiner could possibly prevent a decent candidate from emerging from the Democratic primary.

That's why I have been saying for weeks that it's time to attack him on his two most vulnerable fronts - his ethics and his sell-out policies.

He talks a good progressive game, but he's even more of a Bloomberg Mach IV candidate than Quinn is.

Someone needs to get that message out there.

The candidates may want to have union surrogates do the attacks.

That will work just fine.

Look at what those independent attacks did to Quinn.

The point is, it's time to take Anthony and his powder blue pants down a few pegs in the polls.

Alex Pareene: Bloomberg Plans To Use His Money On Council Members Who Vote Against Him On Stop-And-Frisk

Alex Pareene in Salon:

There is one important thing you have to remember about Michael Bloomberg: He is an asshole. It is easy to forget this if you don’t live in New York, or if you live in New York and you are a well-off white person who is never harassed by his NYPD, but it is a fact. Thus far, the billionaire mayor has been using his fortune for nice things that everyone likes like funding ads in support of gay marriage and gun control. But he has enough money to also spend some on capricious meddling in areas Good Liberals are less likely to approve of. According to the New York Post (and admittedly they are often wrong about all sorts of things but you can generally trust their City Hall reporting), Mayor Bloomberg is now planning to spend some money to defeat City Council opponents of stop-and-frisk. Or, if not defeat them, at least scare them into changing their minds.

Stop-and-frisk is an NYPD policy in which cops stop and question and frisk residents of, primarily, very poor neighborhoods, looking for drugs and guns. The people stopped and frisked are nearly always racial or ethnic minorities. No probable cause is required for stopping and frisking. (Cops are supposed to have a reason for the frisking but, as the invaluable stop and frisk Twitter account has shown us, those reasons are so elastic as to be meaningless. One reason is “other.”) Cops stop hundreds of thousands of people each year and arrest only a small fraction of those questioned. The arrests are questionable too: New York led the nation in pointless marijuana arrests throughout Bloomberg’s time in office.

The city is currently defending itself in a class-action lawsuit charging that stop-and-frisk is unconstitutional. Each Democrat currently running to replace Bloomberg, whose third and final term ends this year, has promised to reform or eliminate the program. The City Council got tired of waiting, and passed two bills last week aimed as restraining the cops. One created an inspector general to oversee the NYPD, the other allowed citizens to file racial profiling claims against the NYPD. Both bills passed with veto-proof majorities. Without the ability to veto, the mayor is looking for other avenues to getting his way, as he usually does.

With every seat in the council up for grabs this year, Bloomberg’s PAC will “cast a wide net” and try to persuade council members to flip their votes, said Deputy Mayor Howard Wolfson.

“I’ve got the time to talk to all members. Basically, we’re going to recanvass as many members as we can and see what we come up with,” Wolfson said.

When loathsome flack Wolfson says “recanvass,” he means threaten to unload a small fortune on small-time city council races until one council member is scared enough to flip his or her vote, because one vote is all the mayor needs to get his veto to stick.

...

Bloomberg, as he often does, is trying his very hardest to get his many liberal admirers to notice how illiberal he is. His money can be used to browbeat gun-loving redstate hicks, sure, but he is also more than happy to use it to get his way in a fight over whether or not the police are supposed to be a full-time minority-harassment squad.

I've said this before, I'll say it again:

If anybody thinks Bloomberg is going away on December 31, 2013, they are sorely mistaken.

He has put together a PAC, he has fed that PAC millions of his dollars, and he plans to use that PAC to promote issues dear to his heart.

As Pareene notes, many liberals were happy when the Bloomberg PAC money was used against red state Dems who voted against gun control or gay rights.

But he's using that cash to promote awful policies like stop-and-frisk too.

And as a teacher, I am certain he's going to use that PAC cash against teachers in coming years, whether it's on evaluation issues, mayoral control, contracts or test scores/grad rates.

This loathsome little man - this "asshole" as Pareene calls him - is going to be with us for a long time because he has a lot of money and he plans to use it as a bludgeon to bolster his reputation, his "legacy" as mayor and the policies he wants to see perpetrated in perpetuity.

Daily News: Thompson Let CityTime Crooks Steal With Impunity

It's about time Bill Thompson get a little scrutiny for the poor job he did as comptroller:

The effort to modernize the city’s payroll system — a project called CityTime — began with high hopes: a promise of huge savings by bringing the pen-and-paper timekeeping systems for city workers into the 21st century.

But from an initial price of $73 million, city spending ballooned to more than $700 million. Some $500 million of that money disappeared into a vast network of overseas bank accounts. Ten people would be indicted.

In his campaign for mayor, Democrat Bill Thompson touts his eight years as “the city’s top financial watchdog.” But a Daily News investigation has found that Thompson repeatedly failed to intervene as the CityTime scandal unfolded on his watch as controller.

His top lieutenants were told repeatedly about the soaring costs — and were warned that CityTime consultants had racked up tens of thousands of dollars in paychecks for work they didn’t perform.
Yet, of the 626 audits Thompson’s office conducted in his eight years as controller, none looked at CityTime.

“We just kept giving (CityTime) increases, and there was no limit to it. It was so obvious it was a runaway train,” the former auditor, who asked not to be identified, told The News.

“What needed to happen was that somebody needed to do an overall assessment to see where the money is going.”

Thompson spokesman John Collins acknowledged that Thompson could have done more — but Collins said that others, including the mayor, City Council and Budget Director Mark Page, bear responsibility, too.

Thompson's right, of course.  

Others do bear some responsibility for the CityTime mess.

But so does Thompson.

Do you think Liu would have ignored the warnings around CityTime?

That's one of the reasons the Daily News and the Post and the oligarchs hate Liu and worked to destroy him.

He doesn't turn a blind eye to corporate malfeasance and crookery.

 

He audits it.

Unlike, say, Bill Thompson.

 

Here's a timeline of the CityTime scandal, courtesy of the DN:

Jan. 1, 2002 William Thompson’s first day as controller. CityTime’s cost: $73 million.

December 2002 Thompson approves CityTime contract amendment, price rises to $100M.

February 2004 CityTime amendment approved by Thompson — now it’s $114M.

2006 Thompson approves CityTime amendment, hiking price to $244M.

2007 Thompson approves CityTime amendment, rising price to $349M.

July 1, 2009 Thompson approves another amendment. Price now $628M.

Dec. 31, 2009 Thompson’s last day as controller. No audit of CityTime completed during his tenure.

Sept. 28, 2010 Thompson’s successor, John Liu, audits CityTime, finds OPA’s “mismanagement” of oversight likely resulted in CityTime’s bloated costs.

The way Thompson handled the CityTime scandal is indicative of how he handled most things when he was comptroller.

 

He deferred to Big Daddy Bloomberg.

 

Gives you some insight into the kind of mayor he'll be if he's elected.

Two More Negative Christine Quinn Articles Today

From the Daily News:

It's been a rough three months for New York mayoral hopeful Christine Quinn, who has been pounded by a $1.5 million blitz of television ads, robocalls and mailings skewering her.

And it's not over yet.

Quinn, the City Council speaker, has lost a third of her support in the polls since the "New York City is Not for Sale" political action committee began its single-minded — and largely unanswered — spending spree to bring her down.

The PAC now says it plans to spend at another $1 million on attack ads through the Sept. 10 Democratic primary.

And while former congressman Anthony Weiner's entry into the race also has siphoned support from Quinn, the attack ads clearly have taken a toll.

"There is a direct correlation between the launch of our campaign and her numbers going down," crowed Scott Levenson, a spokesman for the PAC, which is financed by a coalition of Quinn opponents, including advocates who call horse-drawn carriages a form of animal abuse.

And the Wall Street Journal:

It has been almost five years since City Council Speaker Christine Quinn helped change a city law so Mayor Michael Bloomberg could run for a third term in office, but many voters are still holding it against her.

Now that Ms. Quinn is in the thick of her own campaign for mayor, the lingering anger over that move has been stoked by her opponents and has already put some Democratic primary voters out of her reach.

In more than two dozen interviews last week with registered Democrats who participated in a Wall Street Journal/NBC 4 New York/Marist College poll that showed Ms. Quinn dropping to second place in the primary field, many volunteered that her handling of the term-limits issue led them to rule her out.

"I'm not voting for Quinn because I voted for term limits and they repealed them," volunteered Robert Shells, a 65-year-old hospital chef who lives in upper Manhattan, when asked why he was considering voting for former Rep. Anthony Weiner and former city Comptroller Bill Thompson but not Ms. Quinn. "It's going to come back to haunt her."

Voters across boroughs and demographic divides said that even if they didn't have strong opinions about term limits themselves, they were upset that elected officials had undone the will of the public. New Yorkers approved a two-term limit in 1993 and rejected a proposal to extend the limit to three terms in 1996.

"The fact that the public had voted for them [twice] and then just go around them because they're not convenient—not so nice," said Laurie Ankersen, a 66-year-old retired special-education teacher from Flushing, Queens, who is leaning toward Mr. Thompson but hasn't made up her mind. 

 Not a good media day for the Quinn campaign.

But Thompson isn't having such a good day either.

More on that later.