~ “I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: as government expands, liberty contracts.” Ronald Reagan.
New Yorkers should be outraged, if only they were, paying attention as Alan Schulkin, Democratic Commissioner of the NYC Board of Elections breaks down the extent of voter fraud in New York City.
New York is run by a cesspool of bureaucrats on the state and local level who benefit from and are supportive of voter fraud, at the top of chain in Albany is Governor, Andrew Cuomo and on the local level Cuomo’s nemesis, Bill de Blasio.
In this new video released by Project Veritas, James O’Keefe exposes what everyone except Democrats have known to be true. There is a lot of voter fraud.
New York City’s Communist mayor Bill de Blasio’s latest appointment shuffling throughout the departments will serve only to further exacerbate the quality of life in NYC.
de Blasio’s latest announcement is the appointment of Maya Wiley to head the Civilian Complaints Review Board (CCRB).
The ultimate SJW, Wiley is also Henry Cohen Professor for Management and Urban Policy and Senior Vice President for Social Justice at The New School. The latter position commencing mid-July.
The appointment, purely ideological will prove a nightmare in the making.
Wiley replaces Richard Emory, who left the panel earlier this year under an ethics cloud. She brings a cloud of her own, having just stepped down as chief counsel to de Blasio’s scandal-wracked regime.
Wiley’s ascension comes hard on the heels of a report by de Blasio’s handpicked inspector general for police matters, Philip Eure, that ripped the Broken Windows theory of policing—a spectacularly successful, two-decade approach to public safety in New York, and Bratton’s signature approach to keeping cities safe. Eure’s report was greeted with the ridicule that it deserved; only hacks and activists deny the efficacy of Broken Windows. Even the mayor—a man with barely concealed animosity toward police and policing—felt compelled to repudiate the document.
But Eure is a critical cog in de Blasio’s public-safety machinery, and so the report ultimately is mayoral handiwork, just as Wiley’s appointment will be on the administration’s record. Everything de Blasio does in the personnel department seems designed to send a message to Bratton: “I’m stuck with you, Mr. Commissioner, but I don’t really trust you. Nor do I trust the 30,000-plus police officers under your command…”
In 2014, Commie Bill de Blasio who back in the day supported the Nicaraguan Sandinistas and is proud of it ran for mayor of New York City on the platform of “a tale of two cities.” de Blasio’s goal (to hear him tell it) was to bring the City together as one.
Enter 2016 and New York is about as divided as the rest of the nation has become since Barack Obama walked into the White House several years ago. Adding to that, the City as a result of Commie Bill’s social engineering policies and war on law enforcement has reverted to being as back asswards, dangerous, chaotic and miserable as it was twenty-six years ago when David Dinkins was mayor.
Giving credit where credit is due, New Yorkers have come together as “one City;” but solely on account of our revulsion for Commie Bill, his wife, comrades in the New City Council and cronies.
These Marxist ideologues have set in motion policies whose endgame is the fleecing every New Yorker, taking no prisoners leaving all from the hardest working to the poorest bone dry.
Because no one escapes the fleecing, NYC’s treasury should be bursting at the seams, as deduced by New Yorkers on along with the certainty that de Blasio and Klan are illegally siphoning the funds from city coffers.
Commie Bill has taken ownership of the two cities for which he once despised. In fact, de Blasio’s imaginary two cities have become a nightmare festered by a useless ideologue. Ditto that for his wife, Chirlane McCray who most New Yorkers believe is the real mayor of New York.
The central message of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s re-election pitch appeared clear, even early in his administration: After a winning 2013 campaign that deplored the “tale of two cities,” the mayor’s bid for a second term would be founded on his mission to create “one city” for all New Yorkers.
Words of unity adorned banners placed behind Mr. de Blasio at public events and the official names on his agenda: a plan for the city’s future titled OneNYC; a policing strategy named One City, Safe and Fair Everywhere; and a nonprofit formed to buttress the mayoral agenda, the Campaign for One New York.
But in recent months, as overlapping investigations have swamped City Hall, the notion that Mayor de Blasio has brought about a single unified city — a theme that mayoral advisers believed could lure New Yorkers into the fold who voted against him last time — appears to have all but vanished as an argument for his re-election in 2017….
Like hell, it is no secret that Bill de Blasio’s 2017 re-election platform of “one city” is a fallacy and a pipe dream.
Just because they espouse it do not make it so. De Blasio and his policies are so despised that New Yorkers who did not vote for de Blasio the first time around will for damn sure not vote for the thug in 2017.
As for those who failed to vote in the 2014 NYC Mayoral election, most have every intention in November 2017 of righting that wrong. EVERYONE wants de Blasio gone and de Blasio knows it. (H/t Rifleman III Journal.)
“…While the ‘one city’ banners remain, the inquiries into Mr. de Blasio and his aides have sapped much of the mayor’s ability to court new voters at the moment, some of his advisers believe, especially skeptical whites who have mostly shunned the mayor’s agenda.
They also have given new hope to potential challengers in 2017: Bradley Tusk, a former close adviser to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and the architect of Uber’s successful bid to oppose Mr. de Blasio’s regulatory efforts, is vowing to organize aggressively in support of the mayor’s defeat in a Democratic primary….
Bradley Tusk? A Michael Bloomberg flunky? Now that’s a tough one. Bloomberg approved permits for all of his real estate buddies when in office which resulted in an endless stream of high-rise commercial and non-commercial properties throughout the city. As a result, many New Yorkers lost their businesses, jobs and homes (eminent domain).
Compounding the nightmare, de Blasio who ran on walking back permits and the development of commercial and non-commercial properties once in office has instead doubled down on Bloomberg’s efforts making Nanny Bloomberg’s agenda look like a cakewalk.
De Blasio is no better as new properties are sprouting up in neighborhoods undergoing gentrification, a little too fast for comfort or safety.
About that “tale of two cities,” de Blasio OWNS IT.
The shifting political landscape has forced Mr. de Blasio to retool his strategy: His aides said the new game plan was to highlight the mayor’s accomplishments, portray him as a capable manager of its day-to-day and long-term needs, and shore up support among the core constituencies that have long backed him, including labor unions and liberal activists.
Surrogates have blasted out a litany of mayoral achievements in email, on Twitter and in op-eds. Aides have pointed to supportive words from a small number of voices rising to defend the mayor….”
Returning to the “two cities” theme, the mayor has fashioned an array of boogeymen to rail against, from “billionaire media owners” and hedge fund managers to state investigatory agencies and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who has been increasingly willing to punch back publicly. It is a refrain that the mayor has underscored since a recent strategy discussion in which he embraced the idea, one adviser said.
‘We said we would take on the tale of two cities,’ Mr. de Blasio told the crowd at his birthday fund-raiser last month. ‘But those who believe the tale of two cities is somehow ordained, they will fight to preserve it….’”
De Blasio with his newfound platform, i.e., “tale of one city” is a fallacy, one of which is not lost on New Yorkers.
People living in communities undergoing gentrification, many of whom are middle class or living near or beneath the poverty level will be forced from their homes due to high rents and the increased cost of living in those neighborhoods which are now being transformed into tourist and business areas.
Case in point, commercial and non-commercial properties sprouting up in communities surrounding the Barclays Center (mentioned) above. Many of the properties office buildings and hotels such as the Holiday Inn, Marriott, Nevins etc. intended during tourists and the business community. Speaking of which, therein lies the reason that tickets for performances at the Barclays Center are practically off-limits to the average New Yorker but available to “first responders”, businesses and tourists traveling to the City courtesy of, their hotel and vacation packages.
Accomplishments?
Another of which de Blasio and comrades are most proud of is the war on charter schools and the Black and Hispanic children who attend the charters.
Just last week, Success Academy founder, Eva Moskowitz, announced that the cancellation of its pre-K program for the 2016-17 school year.
Besides his long-standing vendetta against Moskowitz, Commie Bill doing the bidding of the United Federation of Teacher’s is withholding state funding from Success Academy Charters (SA) unless SA signs a 241-page contract “granting the city detailed control of its pre-K programs, right down to the curriculum and rules for recess.”
Moskowitz who refused to allow de Blasio unfeter control over Success Academy will most likely pursue the matter in court especially since de Blasio’s mandate is an overreach.
Mona Davids, president of the New York Charter Parents Association and the New York City Parents Union who has been known to stand with the UFT stated that “Success is right to reject micromanagement from a school system with a proven track record of failure: ‘It is a shame to lose a high quality pre-K program because de Blasio has a vendetta….’”
Disclosure: Since my grandson attends SA, I can attest that much is demanded of their teachers who work as hard as the students, something which does not bode well with the teachers’ union.
In April, as Success headed to court to make the mayor pay, more than 36,000 parents signed a petition to save the pre-K program. Now, in an open letter, parents of children accepted into Success pre-K for the fall accuse him of playing politics at the expense of their kids’ education: “You say you care about all kids but then discriminate against public charter kids and families.”
De Blasio’s power play and latest act of vengeance against Moskowitz will deprive hundreds of Black and Hispanic children the education they so richly deserve.
More de Blasio accomplishments: Diminished Quality of Life, Useless contractors and blowing up NYC’s infrastructure.
Vision Zero, implemented in several states program is a power and money grab and while I have no idea how it’s working out in other states, de Blasio’s implemented of another social engineering policy that we could do without has transformed New York City into one massive traffic jam.
Red-light cameras on every street corner, pointed in every direction and making it illegal for New Yorkers to drive more than 25 mph.
Throw all of the ridiculous bike, bus lanes and service roads into the mix and it now takes New Yorkers twice as long to drive from Brooklyn to midtown Manhattan as it does to travel by subway and bus.
The Vision Zero initiative was implemented under the guise of reducing traffic injuries and deaths which I strongly doubt judging from the now chaotic roadways and sounds of traffic passing by my apartment window. That and fact that the de Blasio administration has as of this past February suddenly stopped releasing any public crash data.
Talking points: The City is “transitioning to a new electronic crash data reporting system,” after which the data will be updated.
We asked de Blasio’s office when City Hall expects the new Vision Zero View system to come online, and why the city can’t continue publishing data on the current platform while the new one is in development.
‘We expect the feed to be restored this summer at which point any old data will be posted retroactively,’ de Blasio spokesperson Austin Finan replied via email….
Moving on —
As for the infrastructure which today is worse than it has been in years, every winter the de Blasio administration’s makes a public announcement that the City has work crews out filling the pot holes that came about due to snow and the salt spreaders.
Mind you they are the same damn potholes that was supposedly filled the year before last and the year before that yet no one in the media or the administration would dare to hold the feet of contractors or city workers (whoever) filling the potholes to the fire for substandard work.
It should be noted that many of the streets that are being ripped apart every winter by the same contractors or city workers show no visible signs of damage. Just saying.
Legalization of urinating and drinking publicly on the streets of New York and other offenses that diminish the quality of life? If caught the culprit will not be detained. Instead the culprit will receive a $ummon$.
Oh yes and the transgender bathrooms. Most New Yorkers are not as politically correct as the rest of the nation believes. De Blasio’s overreach in this area is another nail in the Commie petard’s coffin of the ground hog killer despised by everyone except his fellow Communist crooks in the New York City Council who voted themselves a 32% salary increase and the likes of Bertha Lewis and her Working Families Party whose pockets are bulging courtesy of their comrades in City Hall and all of whom are the bain of New York City’s existence….LITERALLY!
Bill de Blasio, one-term mayor should be sent packing with his tail between his legs. New Yorkers owe it to ourselves to send this ideologue packing. If only we could find someone worthy enough to audit City Hall.
NYPD Police Academy Graduation Ceremony at Madison Square Garden on Monday, June 30, 2014. Credit: Diana Robinson, Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
The morale of New York’s Finest could not be lower and the crime stats couldn’t be higher and to prove my point nearly 90% of New York’s police officers believe that since Bill de Blasio took charge of City Hall two years ago the city is less safe.
According to an online membership poll by the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, a whopping 96% of the officers who took the poll felt that the relationship between officers and the public has worsened under de Blasio.
In spite of the hiring of an additional 1,300 officers, new bulletproof vests, 41,000 smartphones, 6,000 touchpad tablets, i.e., one for every squad car oh yes and slash-resistant gloves due to the increase in slashings that have been taking place throughout the City the past few months the de Blasio administration insists that crime has decreased by 5.8% over the last two years.
“These findings are highly suspect and fly in the face of the facts,’ said de Blasio spokeswoman Monica Klein…”We are experiencing historic lows in criminal activity. Murders and shootings are at their lowest in modern history. NYPD is the most effective police force in the country thanks to our officers’ dedication and commitment to their job….”
Balderdash. Slashings and stabbings alone have increased by 20 percent this year. The facts simply do not support de Blasio’s fuzzy math and lies.
Commie Bill is out of touch with NYC police officers and the people of New York, none of whom are buying the lies.
De Blasio and comrades in the NYC Council have fermented an anti-police environment throughout NYC to such a degree that for the first time in the history of NYPD, parents and family members on the force would rather their children and /or loved ones not follow in their footsteps.
Must Progressives destroy the family honored/time-honored tradition of everything they come across?
Photo: NYPD Police Academy Graduation Ceremony at Madison Square Garden on Monday, June 30, 2014. Credit: Diana Robinson, Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Photo courtesy of hey tiffany!, Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
One day before the vote Bill de Blasio’s horse carriage legislation in the New York City Council, the bottom fell out from under de Blasio’s long fought agenda to eradicate the carriage horse industry in New York City.
Hours before Commie Bill’s State of the City address, Teamsters Joint Council 16, the union representing the horse carriage drivers, walked back its support of Intro. 573-B.
George Miranda, President of Teamsters Joint Council 16 released the following statement:
“The Teamsters’ first priority is always our members and their livelihoods. With the legislation now finalized, our members are not confident that it provides a viable future for their industry. We cannot support the horse carriage bill currently before the City Council.”
Intro. 573-B, de Blasio’s legacy legislation would not only restrict the horse-drawn carriage industry to Central Park, it would decrease the number of carriage drivers from 200 to 95 by 2018 permitting only 75 horse to work in the park at a time.
The restrictions would obliterate the industry and destroy the livelihoods of countless carriage drivers who would find themselves on the unemployment line.
Members of the NYC Council who just last week were on par to passing the legislation after being urged by Melissa Mark-Viverito, the Council’s speaker to do so immediately walked back their support.
Without the union’s support of the legislation, Intro. 573-B is dead in the water. Council members would defy de Blasio before they defy the unions.
“…There were many members, including myself, who had always said that the only way I could ever support a compromise was if the Teamsters were a party to and supported the deal,” said Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer of Queens.
But once the Teamsters pulled out, “they knew they didn’t have the votes and they had to pull the bill,” he said.
Because the Council rarely votes on measures that are not assured of passage, the bill’s removal from the calendar for a vote on Friday is tantamount to its defeat. The mayor’s office said before the Teamsters’ decision to pull out on Thursday that the legislation still had the votes needed to pass….
“negotiated in good faith with the City Council and the Teamsters to reach this agreement. The terms of that agreement have not changed during these past weeks, but today the Teamsters decided to back away from the fair compromise they had previously endorsed. While we are disappointed this bill will no longer be considered Friday, the people of this city know what I believe, and we will work toward a new path on this issue.”
De Blasio acted in such good faith that he attempted to force the horse carriage bill through the New York City Council tomorrow in spite of heavy opposition to the legislation.
Speaker, Melissa Mark Viverito stated that the horse carriage bill contingent upon an agreement between all parties, the de Blasio Administration, the union and the City Council “was negotiated in good faith and…The Council will not vote on any horse carriage related legislation on Friday since the Teamsters no longer support the deal.”
SIDEBAR
In spite of its unpopularity amongst many in the NYC Council, the legislation was coincidentally placed on the docket last week for a vote at the same time that Council Members prepared legislation in the dark of night for a 32% salary increase retroactive January 1.
Both pieces of legislation were scheduled a vote tomorrow.
Mark-Viverito received a directive from de Blasio reference passage of the horse carriage legislation, which she relayed to Council members. Legislation for the massive salary increase was written the following day.
De Blasio must be feeling like a sucker about now meaning that the legislation involving the salary increase will be voted on tomorrow as scheduled.
As reported earlier this week by the New York Times, the bottom began to fall out while de Blasio and his wife were campaigning in Iowa in spite of doors slamming in their faces [my emphasis] for Hillary Clinton. Something of which New York’s groundhog, Staten Island Chuck should be thankful. Commie Bill killed his predecessor.
Back to the bottom falling out…
Photo courtesy of David Goehring, Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
… An influential labor group, the Central Labor Council, made calls to elected leaders urging them to oppose the legislation… Pedicab drivers, who would be banished from the lucrative lower section of the park as part of the deal, began organizing under the banner of another labor organization.
The Central Park Conservancy has raised “significant concerns” about the impact of the proposal, including the increased traffic from horses on park drives, the bridle path and transverse roads….
De Blasio’s pedicabs ban included in the horse carriage bill would restrict pedicabs, not exactly a favorite of Manhattanites from operating in Central Park below 85th Street in Manhattan.
A ban on pedicabs would prove financially beneficial to yellow taxicabs whose union are major de Blasio donors.
THE FIX: On the same day that New York City Council votes “Yea” for de Blasio’s Horse Carriage bill, Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, NYC Council (above) will lead the Council in vote for 32% pay hike retro Jan. 1.
The Quadrennial Advisory Commission convened late last year to assess the salaries of members of the New York City Council.
Because the council had not received a salary increase since 2006, the Commission recommended a 23% pay increaseraising annual salaries of council members from $112,500 to $138,315 in addition, to the reclassifying their jobs as full-time positions, the attempt of which is to dissuade council member from seeking outside employment that would create conflicts of interests.
For the ever after supposedly taking the Commission’s recommendation under advisement, Progressive Melissa Mark-Viverito, Speaker of NYC Council and her comrades will not heed the recommendations of the Quadrennial Advisory Commission and have under the cover of darkness put together a legislation granting the NYC Council thugs a 32% increase, raising annual salaries of council members from $112,500 to $148,500.
As stated by Viverito, “The City Council is embarking on unprecedented, substantial reforms that will strengthen New York City’s legislative body…and help Council members serve the districts they proudly represent.”
The Communist NYC Council while clearly under fire for their proposal of the sizeable wage increase will vote on the legislation February 5, the date of which coincides with the vote on Bill de Blasio’s Central Park horse carriage deal, the timing of which is raising outrage.
PAY TO PLAY:
In other words, de Blasio bought his Commie comrades at the NYC Council with raises funded by New Yorkers being fleeced down to the last speck of lint in their pockets by our Communist mayor.
Asked about the timing of the two bills being voted on together, Councilman David Greenfield, a Brooklyn Democrat, said, ‘I don’t think it reflects well on us.’
About the horse-carriage bill, Mr. Greenfield said: ‘Last Friday’s hearing made clear that we should not be voting on horse carriages until important questions, like workers’ compensation, job loss, the pedicab industry and the appropriation of public parkland, are resolved.’
The timing also attracted the skepticism of good government groups who expressed worry that it could be a quid pro quo, with a priority of the mayor’s facing a vote at the same time as raises for the Council.
‘There is no rationale for the Council to introduce a bill that raises their salary beyond what the commission recommended, without a public hearing that makes the case for why they need to do so,’ said Dick Dadey, the executive director of the watchdog group Citizens Union.
‘I hope very much that there has been no horse trading between the two bills, given that they are both going to be voted on at the same meeting,’ he added.
A spokesman for the City Council declined to comment on any relationship between the legislation on horse carriages in Central Park and pay for Council members. Wiley Norvell, a spokesman for the mayor’s office, said they were ‘separate and distinct issues….’
“Separate and distinct issues”? Is that why the NYC Council is holding a “one-day” hearing in which New Yorkers will be able to sound off just 48 hours before the council votes on their pay increases next Friday? Unprecedented and downright corrupt!
In every previous pay raise round — in 1979, 1983, 1987, 1991, 1995, 1999 and 2006 — the Council voted into law the salary recommendations of special temporary commissions set up to provide the public with an independent judgment of how much pay levels should be increased.
Never has a Council passed raises greater than a commission thought warranted. De Blasio got his money, the animal rights activists got their stables, and Council members are sealing the deal with big money in their pockets….
Unable to answer basic questions about his plan to limit horses and carriages to Central Park by building a stable in the park, mayoral aides took a beatdown at a Council hearing last week.
Now, the mayor’s office has sent a document to Council members that was described as “fact sheet” but is really a writ of execution.
At any one time, roughly 180 licensed horses reside in four privately owned stables on Manhattan’s West Side. Their masters pay monthly boarding fees that enable the stable owners to meet their bills, including considerable real estate taxes in an area booming with development.
De Blasio’s plan calls for cutting the number of horse licenses to 110 on Dec. 1. As the suddenly unlicensed and unemployed steeds are sent to meet their fates, the number of stabled horses will plummet, taking with them their boarding fees….
Suddenly this past Wednesday in light of de Blasio’s agenda to starve out and bankrupt owners of Central Park horse carriage stables[i] Viverito met with Council members informing them to vote in favor of the Horse Carriage bill.
Then by the close of business one day later, the NYC Council suddenly in favor of the horse carriage bill had finished writing legislation for their 32% pay increase.
The vote would come less than two weeks after city officials received low marks from Council members for their inability to answer questions about the legislation at a hearing. The de Blasio administration has subsequently circulated a fact sheet to members with answers to some of their questions.
The legislation is a priority for de Blasio, who promised during his campaign to banish the industry as one of his first acts as mayor — a pledge that helped secure the backing of an animal-rights group that later targeted his primary opponent in the race.
But the Council has evinced little enthusiasm for such a ban, with some members criticizing the potential for lost jobs…..
Under the deal, the city will forbid pedicabs from operating in Central Park south of the 85th St. Transverse starting June 1.
Unfortunately for the pedicabs, that’s where the best business is.
‘He promised to ban horse carriages, and instead he gave them a monopoly,’ fumed Laramie Flick of the New York City Pedicab Owners Association….
“Monopoly,” of course, would depend upon whom one asks. Nevertheless, de Blasio is killing two birds with one stone, i.e., the Central Park horse carriages and the pedicabs.
Real estate moguls and political donors, Steve Nislick and Wendy Neu whose fingerprints are all over de Blasio’s horse carriage bill for decades have had their sights set on the properties on which Central Park horse carriage stables are located.
Nislick, a former chief executive of Edison Properties has had designs on the Manhattan properties dating back to the era of Rudolph Giuliani as mayor yet parties both dispute “claims among opponents that Nislick, sees the horse stables as a potential real estate opportunity” in spite of their political donations to de Blasio and funding the push for the horse carriage ban.
