Jessica Lappin, Gale Brewer, Robert Jackson (L-R). Photo by Catherine A. Fitzpatrick
Tomorrow brings the New York City Democratic Party primaries, and it's time to look at the candidates for borough president and mayor.
I've been busy covering Moscow's very interesting mayoral elections as for the first time in the Putin era in some 15 years, an authentic opposition candidate came close to forcing a second round -- anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny got 27% of the vote by contrast with Putin protogee Sergei Sobyanin's 51% -- although it looks like a second round will be dodged by the powers-that-be.
The New York elections should be interesting after the long over-stay of Mayor Bloomberg, and a number of women running for the slot of both borough president and mayor, but somehow, they have more of a farcical feeling than often crazy Russian elections because of the presence of Anthony Weiner, if nothing else.
We've been lobbied heavily here at Waterside Plaza because it's a bloc of 4,000 people in a captive audience or sorts. All of the candidates for borough president were invited to speak due to intense campaigning here on a local issue involving city plans for tearing down a perfectly good medical school and dormitory for med students next to a half dozen hospitals, and replacing it with a garbage truck depo that will increase noise and rats and hazards as they convert a one-way street to a two-way street. The mind boggles at how decisions like this get made...
In one sense, seeing all the candidates and hearing all their spiels you think they're all perfectly fine people, and it's too bad they can't simply work as a team on some of the city's many problems, whether in the abominable schools or with controveries like stop 'n frisk.
In the weeks since, we've been literally papered with palm cards and hand bills from these candidates on the street or in our mailboxes, and of course received numerous door-to-door knocks from campaigners and the robo-calls. I've even gotten live calls from people "thanking me for my support for Julie Menin" ( but I don't support her) merely because she spoke at Waterside, and evidently she wrote a letter about the garage -- although as one of the candidates admitted, it wasn't really a decision they could directly effect.
But frankly, I don't care if Julie Menin solves the garage problem -- I'm not voting for her. And it's very easy to explain why: because she took the hard-left socialist position of letting Occupy Wall Street remain in Zucotti Square -- and that was wrong.
I was originally interested to follow Occupy and thought it was sincere if misguided, but after months of covering it, I came to see it was hardcore and at times thuggish cadres bent on destroying free market societies they don't like for ideological reasons.
It was especially wrong because the people in the neighbourhood were fed up with noise and garbage rats and drugs and craziness -- and even when they negotiated in good faith with the radicals running the urban camp and made an agreement that they would stop their crazy obsessive drumming by 11:00 pm every day, the radicals immediately broke the agreement because they had hard-core anarchists in their midst who simply didn't believe they should make things comfortable even for low-income or middle-income back-office workers of Wall Street who lived nearby -- the homes of the real rich who were the target of the Occupiers were nowhere near that neighbourhood and even have offices up town.
Precisely because they couldn't moderate themselves and suppress the radicals that undo every society in the end -- and couldn't govern -- the police finally broke up their camp. Good! The right to petition and assemble and have free speech doesn't include overnight urban camping violating the rights of others. Restrictions as to time, place, and manner are legitimate and recognized as constraints even on the very liberal First Amendment. There's no reason why they couldn't have the stalls by day and go home and night to let people sleep and the city sweepers clean up. But no.
Whatever Julie did for health care for firemen and others who suffered from the contaminated air after 9/11 -- and she was hardly the only one advocating this -- it's undone by her deliberate and unnecessary flirtation with radicals like this and her embracing of this radical line. You just don't make common cause with people trying to overthrow the mainstay business of this town, I'm sorry.
And it gets worse -- her fliers are filled with heavy hate-the-rich campaign messages in which she votes *against* these developments:
o Turning St. Vincent's Hospital into Luxury Condos - as if the hospital wasn't already doomed
o The Chelsea Market - calling it a "giveaway"
o NYU's Expansion -- calling it a "land grab"
I liked St. Vincent's as much as the next person and had quite a few emergency visits and a long family health care saga there as it happens, but the reality is, this Catholic hospital could not pay its bills and the city could not justify keeping it open with its own subsidies. The city had to consolidate with other hospitals. Hospitals are EXPENSIVE to run, especially when the poor use them as clinics (that's why the solution of the Patients' First type of commercial but low-cost neighbourhood clinics are a good replacement).
Walking into an ER in Manhattan will cost you $1000 before you even open your mouth to have your temperature taken. That's the punishing fee tacked on to anyone who can show an address to be billed, with or without health insurance, to cover for the homeless or vagrant. People with health insurance never feel this; people like me who have gone without insurance are paying it off for years and years.
So sorry, but luxury condos is what it is. That's the business that can afford to pay for the land and run business even in this poor housing climate; that's what goes in that space and what pays *taxes* which is then used to cover the health care of the poor (including my family members). That's how life works.
It's not like St. Vincent's wasn't slated for remodeling anyway, and bitching about luxury condos is just hate-the-rich bullshit.
As for Chelsea -- anything they get as a giveaway is fine by me -- they are out of the way and don't get as much foot traffic as other venues and they are a roof over the heads of numerous small businesses, particularly with fresh food for the localvores and local crafts. I'm not getting a thing wrong with this -- it's just anti-business spleen. Unless it's a giveaway program run by city cadres, it can't be allowed to thrive in this town?
As for NYU, again, sorry, but I can't be nostalgic about blocks of shabby 5-floor coldwater walkups on the bad sides of Little Ukraine that house drug addicts currently and instead, could house student dorms for corn-fed Iowans who want to be medical students and pay first NYU then all the local businesses a lot of money. Again, do you want a tax base? Do you want business to flourish and prevent further flight of business? Do you want people to LIVE here and thrive? Or do you just want an ideological core of Upper West Side yuppies to live in a virtual world while the world collapses around them? (Of which WBAI's demise is emblematic).
I know from 35 years of reading the Village Voice that I am supposed to hate on New York University. I don't. Two of my childrens' friends' parents have jobs there; another friend does as well. My childrens' friends go to college there. It has a right to live. It does live, and pay taxes. There are other scenic places in the city to go to and sit in the cafes, and actually, it's not as if there aren't plenty of little restaurants and shops remaining all over the East Village anyway. That dead area around the Puck building and the K-Mart could all be torn down and filled with dorms and nobody would really care. It's not like quaint little cobblestone streets are being torn up and greengrocers being thrown out on their ears.
Then there's Jessica Lapin, who is also favoured by some of my neighbours who are part of the local Dems "machine" -- a judge, some lawyers, some tenant leaders who rallied around her.
I will not give her my vote precisely because she deliberately went in our faces with the pro-abortion line which is so UNNECESSARY in a city and state where abortion is legal, safe, accessible, and free or affordable. There's an abortion clinic literally a few blocks away, and there is absolutely no trouble accessing it -- there are no picketers or crazies blocking it.
Yet so entrenched is the meme-making and dog-whistling of the hard left that passes for politics in New York City that she has to publish flyer after flyer about her valiant fight against what she describes as fake clinics run by abortion foes.
I've never seen one of these, in a 50 block radius or anywhere in fact. They must exist, but I've never heard or seen one, and I go to a Catholic Church, where you'd think
And that's just it. This is a Catholic area. There are many Catholics who live near the several big Catholic Churches and Catholic schools in this area. There are lots of Irish, Italian and Hispanic immigrants, old and new. And they tend to oppose abortion, and there is absolutely no need to get in their face in a city and state where -- as I keep telling you -- it's legal and accessible and you do not need to fight for it.
Women's "reproductive rights" aren't under attack here, but the right to freedom of expression of the other side.
It's such a non-issue, because these clinics that Lappin finds "misleading" are a tiny handful of entities that in fact are easily seen as what they are --- and haven't misled any actual people that these politicking posturers can point to. Everybody gets it.
This is not Missouri or Texas. This is New York City. And there are only 12 of these crisis centers and they are hardly able to shout over the din of the pro-abortion lobby, which has been for some mysterious reason -- because it's part of bonding for the left and gives interns something to do -- out in full force with flyers haranguing every passerby telling us to help them close down Komen (a despicable act on their part), support Planned Parenthood (our tax dollars already go to it whether we like it or not) and stop these "lies" from crisis centers. My word, it's as phony as a three-dollar bill.
Regardless of where you come down on the abortion issues, you'd have to concede that this just isn't the number one issue for New York City. Instead, far, far more serious issues are:
o appalling state of the schools
o stop 'n frisk
o terrorism threat versus intrusion on Muslim community
o bicycle paths and Citibike
and so on.
That's where another candidate, Robert Jackson looked better -- all of his speeches and flyers have focused on education -- he even walked literally to Albany to campaign for more funding. He explained in pragmatic terms how the garage issue was really most to be affected by local council member Dan Gorodnick in our neighbourhood, and the rest would go by what he did. He also explained the various stages and paperwork filing requirements in this process which was helpful.
NONE of these candidates mentioned stop and frisk from the podium
But now I'll tell you who I *am* voting for -- Gale Brewer -- and why.
o Although no doubt she's as lefty as they come representing the Upper West Side, she does not have a single bit of hate-the-rich rhetoric in her speeches nor does she flog the politically-bonding leftist memes.
o She focuses on very, very practical and mainly doable issues like getting rid of bed bugs in schools and hotels (!) and getting paid sick-leave for city workers -- and achieves goals with them.
o She doesn't get in your face with the anti-abortion rhetoric although certainly she supports abortion rights -- it's just that it's not necessary
o Although a non-tech middle-aged woman, she was the only candidate to have a tech plan and to be consolidating communications on her website, creating portals for services, etc.
o All of her cards have been on point and without negative ads against the others.
So she has done things for working women (paid sick leave is often for mothers having to stay home with sick kids ) and for women's rights, but there doesn't have to be this endless abortion jam (even though I have no doubt she is for abortion, it's just that it's not necessary to flog it).
I spoke to her briefly after the meeting and mentioned the hospital issue. It is a problem because they are crowded and there are day-long waits in the clinics, sometimes two-day waits, it is very debilitating. I certainly wouldn't want any more of them closed - and she has worked to prevent another hospital uptown from being merged.But the reality is, something else has to be created other than large, impersonal, overstressed city hospitals with ERs filled with gunshot victims mixed with babies with ear-aches. And in my view, that has to be the paid patients' walk-in solution (and that's what they should turn the med school dorm into, if for some burning reason they really have to move it uptown). Why paid, even $50, even $100 (which is all you pay in ours -- instead of $1,000!). Because doctors have to live. Immigrants who come here to med school and are willing to work in poor people's practices still have to earn a living.
Meanwhile, I had already decided I'd support Christine Quinn due to two big factors:
o a Jesuit father at reception telling me they were for Quinn, and couldn't understand why people were beating up on her
o the hard-core gay radicals dumping on Quinn, even though she is lesbian and has done a lot for gay rights just because she's a sort of Hillary to their wish for an Obama -- it's that awful ugly "progressive" gang that uses dirty tricks, negativity and hatred to put in the harder left agenda --- and I just won't support it. In this case, it's the transgenders claiming she hasn't done enough for health care for them. I find this sectarian and excessive. Transgenders need safety above all -- with police protection from bullies and thugs - and have health care special needs as well which should be met. But so do we all. And the special pleading in the anti-Quinn articles on this issue as a reason to sink her was whack.
And...Sure enough, right on cue, we have a "racism" scandal right on the eve of the elections -- completely contrived.
It seems Bill de Blasio is married to a black woman and has a son whom he featured in a campaign ad about building a better New York for everyone. I didn't see the ad but it sounds perfectly fine to me -- all candidates are always featuring their families and kids and making it seem like they spend every moment thinking about the children. It's all the norm.
Bloomberg made a crack about this in a lengthy interview in New York magazine to the effect that he thought it was "racist" that de Blasio showed this ad. What he meant to say was "divisive" or "race-baiting" -- but naturally everyone was quick to point out that showing his own family wasn't racist, duh. The scandal broke before New York walked back this cat and edited the piece to reflect what Bloomberg meant to say better -- which still wasn't good enough, of course.
But...the entire incident had that feel of manipulation by the left that always and everywhere plays gotcha and screams "racist" when the real issue is about socialism. The socialists and "progressives" hate Bloomberg as a rich guy and a businessman who they feel caters to Wall Street. He explains very practically in his interview that you need the rich to pay taxes to sustain the poor, and it has to be in a balance, otherwise they flee.
I've been critical of stop 'n frisk because my own son and his friends -- even though they are white -- have been stopped, and worse, handed nuisance desk appearance tickets which are the real bane of the system because even if you are innocent, you must show up or be thought guilty.
I asked Robert Jackson about stop 'n frisk and tried to get him to see that it was a problem for ALL of us -- of all races. He just wanted to campaign on the black aspect of it, understandably, because he himself is black and representing the woes of areas disproportionately affected by this. It has been argued over endlessly because the "disproportion" first happens in the crime statistics, and the police argue back from that.
While blacks feel they are disproportionately stopped, in fact Hispanic, white, Asian, everyone are stopped in many areas and ANYONE who is stopped who is innocent is going to feel resentful. If you tackled three things about this:o getting rid of the DATs where totally unnecessary
o not stopping inside residential complexes and leaving it to internal security to handle and call police only as needed
o making bail more accessible and workable
you would get rid of a lot of people who don't need to be in jail over this intrusive program.
What I liked about Jackson -- again on this issue as with education and the garage depot -- he was helpful and informative and pragmatic -- he explained that the program was aimed specifically at taking guns away -- somehow you never hear that - and that's what it's focus should be.
I would be close to voting for Robert Jackson -- my son said he would -- if it weren't for the fact that in the end, I opted for a woman instead. That's how politics is.
Now that a judge has declared stop 'n frisk unlawful, maybe some progress will be made. But what I appreciated about Quinn is that she didn't tackle it head on to be removed, but wished to reform it and had a good working relationship with Kelly, the Police Commissioner. I'd rather have that kind of seasoned and reasonable politician in power than an ideologue as di Blasio seems to be, touting an idea to tax everyone who makes more than $500,000 and force them to pay for pre-school.
I'm sorry, but I'd rather do it another way -- encourage business, have more jobs, have women make wages, and then pay for day care of their choice, including providing a job to another woman to work in their home as a nanny rather than place their kid in large day care centers were they get neglected and get sick. Maybe there is a role for some subsidized day care but why shake down the people helping the recovery from 9/11 and recession?
It's gotten so that the Democratic Party doesn't represent any sort of normal business any more -- not even small business, not even corporations with consciences. They are hell-bent on ideologically blazing solutions to kill off development and collectivize the shrinking tax base for socialist solutions.
There is no normal party that appreciates normal capitalism -- which of course requires legal restraints, the rule of law, and social justice programs to ensure everyone is treated fairly and the poor and vulnerable are cared for in society. The extremes of the "progressives" and Ron Paul libertarians have become so marked and prominent that you feel there is no normal politics anymore.
I don't think this is normal politics for the city or the country, and I wish more people would show up to vote.
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