Hizzonerless, Mayor Adams

This should be the immediate end of NYC Mayor Eric Adams's career.

 

In a sharp escalation over the migrant crisis, Mayor Eric Adams claimed in stark terms that New York City was being destroyed by an influx of 110,000 asylum seekers from the southern border and said that he did not see a way to fix the issue.

“Let me tell you something New Yorkers, never in my life have I had a problem that I did not see an ending to — I don’t see an ending to this,” the mayor said on Wednesday night in his opening remarks at a town hall-style gathering in Manhattan. “This issue will destroy New York City.”

Mr. Adams, a Democrat in his second year in office, has clashed with leading members of his party as New York City has struggled to provide housing and services to the migrants. For months, Mr. Adams has criticized President Biden and Gov. Kathy Hochul for failing to help the city handle the asylum seekers and pleaded for additional funding and expedited work permits.

But the mayor’s comments on Wednesday were his most ominous yet. He pointed to new projections that the city’s budget gap could grow to nearly $12 billion — the same amount that city officials estimate that the migrants could cost the city over three years.

“Every community in this city is going to be impacted,” Mr. Adams said at the meeting. “We have a $12 billion deficit that we’re going to have to cut — every service in this city is going to be impacted. All of us.”

The surge of migrants crossing the southern border has overwhelmed the city, with nearly 60,000 occupying beds in traditional city shelters and in more than 200 emergency sites. As New York City students returned to school on Thursday, city officials said that about 20,000 migrant children were expected to join them.

The financial and logistical burden has caused the mayor to repeatedly press Mr. Biden for help this summer, saying last week that the city’s requests were still mostly “unaddressed” and calling for a federal emergency and a national “decompression strategy at the border.”

 

To recap, the Democratic mayor of the largest, most populous, most diverse city in America sounds precisely like a Republican politician and blames President Biden for having too many migrants coming to the Big Apple, and blames him for yet another round of social services cuts that will "have to happen."

As much of a bonehead that de Blasio was, as much as a corrupt asshole that Bloomberg was, Eric Adams is the most anti-New Yorker that ever got into Gracie Mansion in my lifetime (yes, even Rudy didn't go this far) and NYC cannot get rid of this guy quickly enough.

The Vax Of Life, Con't

The violence by anti-vax cultists continues against the rest of America, and it will continue for some time, unfortunately.

Three people were arrested for allegedly assaulting a New York City restaurant hostess on Thursday after she asked a group of diners visiting from Texas to show proof they had been vaccinated before seating them.

Cellphone footage obtained by NBC New York shows a brawl involving several people outside Carmine's Italian restaurant on the Upper West Side. Staff and bystanders intervened to break up the melee after it broke out around 5 p.m. ET, the station added.

The hostess, who has not been identified, was repeatedly punched and her necklace broken, police said.

One unspecified patient was taken to the Mount Sinai Hospital, the New York City Fire Department said, without stating their condition.

The three suspects, whose ages are 21, 44 and 49, were taken to NYPD's nearby 24th precinct station house, police said.

The attack comes as New York City this week became to first major U.S. city to require hospitality, entertainment and fitness businesses to ask customers for proof of vaccination to gain access to indoor venues. Any business that fails to comply could face a $1,000 fine.

Carmine's said in a statement to NBC New York that it was "shocking and tragic situation when one of our valued employees is assaulted for doing their job — as required by city policies — and trying to make a living."

Gale Brewer, the Manhattan borough president, said on Twitter the incident was "completely unacceptable."

In a separate tweet she added: "There’s no place for this kind of violence to be perpetrated against our essential workers."

 

I know the right is going to scream "Discrimination!" and make idiotic and repulsive yellow star of David comparisons blaming Mayor de Blasio as a "bigot" but nothing excuses the assault of a restaurant employee or anyone over this.

I honestly expect people to be killed over this, and soon. The next time there's violence against a restaurant worker or another person enforcing mandates like this I'm afraid it will lead to someone getting badly hurt or killed, especially if that worker is Black or brown. 

It's only a matter of time.

Last Call For Cuomo's Mary Jane Moment, Con't

Regardless of whether you believe Andrew Cuomo cut the most progressive marijuana legalization deal with NY Dems in order to stave off repercussions of his twin massive sexual harassment and COVID-19 nursing home scandals (and I absolutely do believe that), it is a major victory for criminal justice in the state, and the NYPD is already howling, promising that they maybe just won't stop any other "crimes" either in order to own the libs or something.

New York’s move to legalize marijuana will create a “significant shift” in policing and everyday quality of life, NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea said Wednesday as he voiced concerns over people being allowed to smoke marijuana in public.

“I hope I’m missing something but it appears (the bill) is legalizing the smoking of marijuana outside,” Shea said on PIX11. “That’s not something that most other states did. They legalized marijuana but it was still illegal to smoke outside and in public.”

On Wednesday, Gov. Cuomo signed the legislation legalizing adult use of marijuana.

The bill, passed by both the Democratic-led Senate and Assembly on Tuesday, removes cannabis from the list of controlled substances and will eventually legalize, tax and regulate recreational pot for adults over 21. It also expunges past pot convictions.

A large percentage of tax revenue will be set aside for community reinvestment grants and social equity for minorities who have faced harsh penalties for marijuana possession.

The NYPD fields “10s of 10s of 10s of thousands” of complaints from the public about people smoking marijuana in public, Shea said.

Now it’s not going to be a police matter and that’s troubling,” Shea said. “I don’t know what we’re going to be telling New Yorkers when they call up and say there’s people smoking in front of my house or apartment building or I take my kids to a parade, whether its on Eastern Parkway or on Fifth Ave., and there are people smoking marijuana next to me as I try to enjoy the parade.”

“It’s a significant shift,” Shea added. “You pass new laws and you always worry about what the unintended consequences are. I have no doubt that they think they are doing the right thing but these are some of the things I worry about and New Yorkers are worried about.”

This is prety much "Would sure be a shame if anything happened to your nice city" territory, and Cumo and Mayor Bill de Blasio should tell Commissioner Shea that if he can't get his cops to do the job, he'll be replaced by somebody who goddamn well can. 

And guess what? their job is not to harass weed smokers anymore.

Going Viral In A New York Minute

Hizzoner Bill de Blasio is ending remote work for NYC employees and sending tens of thousands back to to offices, desk, and cubicles in May.

 

For the last year, New York City has been running in the shadow of a deadly pandemic, with many city and private sector employees forced to work from home, stripping New York of its lifeblood and devastating its economy.

But with virus cases seeming to stabilize and vaccinations becoming more widespread, city officials intend to send a message that New York is close to returning to normal: On May 3, the city will compel its municipal office employees to begin to report to work in person.

Mayor Bill de Blasio’s decision to bring the nation’s largest municipal work force back to the office represents a significant turnabout for a city that served as the national epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic, coming to symbolize the perils of living in densely packed global capitals.

The move is meant to broadcast that New York City will soon be open for business, and to encourage private companies to follow suit — lifting the hopes of landlords whose skyscrapers have largely sat empty as office workers stayed home.

“We’re going to make it safe, but we need our city workers back in their offices where they can do the most to help their fellow New Yorkers,” Mr. de Blasio said Tuesday. “And it’s also going to send a powerful message about this city moving forward.”

Yet the move by the city has sparked concern among some workers and union leaders who fear the return to the office is premature. New York City has among the highest coronavirus case rates in the nation. Many workers will have to commute an hour or more on mass transit. Others will have to juggle their children’s episodic in-person school schedules with their new in-person work requirements.

Across the globe, government and business leaders have grappled with the question of how and when to safely reopen, as the worst of the pandemic seems to have passed.

In the private sector, commercial real estate landlords like SL Green and RXR Realty have made a point of bringing their own employees to the office during the pandemic. In London, JPMorgan Chase is planning to bring back some workers starting March 29, and it is hoping to bring interns back in June.

In Texas, municipal workers in the city of Houston are working both in person and remotely at the discretion of their department director, though the mayor has encouraged the remote option. Masks are strongly advised, even though the state has lifted its overall mask mandate.

In Philadelphia, city office employees are still working from home when possible.

The new policy in New York, which will be rolled out in phases over several weeks, will affect about 80,000 employees who have been working remotely, including caseworkers, computer specialists and clerical associates. The rest of the city’s roughly 300,000-person work force, many of them uniformed personnel including police officers, firefighters and sanitation workers, have already been reporting to work sites.

 

It's a bad idea, as I've said before.

We'll see what happens, but all indications are we're going to see a spring COVID-19 spike and it's going to be pretty bad. Hopefully not as bad as December/January, but it's going to be bad, and tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, will die.

I sincerely hope I'm wrong.

Waiting In The Wings

As usual, Donald Trump just couldn't help himself yesterday afternoon.

 

President Donald Trump said Friday that the U.S. government would not deliver a coronavirus vaccine to New York if and when one is available.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo “will have to let us know when he’s ready for it because otherwise, we can’t be delivering it to a state that won’t be giving it to its people immediately,” Trump said during a press conference from the White House Rose Garden.

“He doesn’t trust where the vaccine is coming from,” Trump added. “These are coming from the greatest companies anywhere in the world, greatest labs in the world, but he doesn’t trust the fact that it’s this White House, this administration, so we won’t be delivering it to New York until we have authorization to do so, and that pains me to say that.”

On MSNBC shortly after Trump’s comments, Cuomo said, “None of what [Trump] said is true. Surprise, surprise.”

“I have been an outspoken opponent to many of Trump’s policies over the last four years,” he said, adding that Trump lost in New York in the presidential election by “huge margin” and state prosecutors are also investigating the president for tax fraud.

“So, he has issues with New York and he likes to point to New York,” Cuomo said. “But this is his issue. It’s his credibility issue. It’s the fear that he politicized the health process of this nation, which is a well-founded fear.” 

 

Knowing full well why New York state was singled out (as opposed to say, California or Illinois), NY AG Letitia James made it very clear she will not be blackmailed into dropping her ongoing investigation into the Trump crime family. 

Attorney General Letitia James released a response Friday evening, saying:

“This is nothing more than vindictive behavior by a lame-duck president trying to extract vengeance on those who oppose his politics. Once there is a fully-developed COVID-19 vaccine, we are confident that a Biden-Harris Administration will provide New York with the proper number of doses so that our state’s residents can achieve immunity. If dissemination of the vaccine takes place in the twilight of a Trump Administration and the president wants to play games with people’s lives, we will sue and we will win.”

 

Steve M. does bring up a good point though. Where could Trump be tried in New York that won't immediately devolve into chaos or deadly violence by his terrorist cultists? New York City hasn't exactly shined when it comes to the "Trials of the Century".

It all has me thinking back to a moment in early 2010: 

The Obama administration on Friday gave up on its plan to try the Sept. 11 plotters in Lower Manhattan, bowing to almost unanimous pressure from New York officials and business leaders to move the terrorism trial elsewhere....

... resistance had been gathering steam.

After a dinner in New York on Dec. 14, Steven Spinola, president of the Real Estate Board of New York, pulled aside David Axelrod, President Obama’s closest adviser, to convey an urgent plea: move the 9/11 trial out of Manhattan.

More recently, in a series of presentations to business leaders, local elected officials and community representatives of Chinatown, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly laid out his plan for securing the trial: blanketing a swath of Lower Manhattan with police checkpoints, vehicle searches, rooftop snipers and canine patrols.

“They were not received well,” said one city official.

And on Tuesday, in a meeting [Mayor Mike] Bloomberg had with at least two dozen federal judges on the eighth floor of their Manhattan courthouse, one judge raised the question of security. The mayor, according to several people present, said he was sure the courthouse could be made safe, but that it would be costly and difficult.

I thought this was outrageous at the time -- we should have been able to show that we could try these people in U.S. courts, as a demonstration that the Bush's administration's approach to them was preposterous -- but I acknowledge that securing the area would have been difficult.

I think a trial of Donald Trump in Manhattan -- or anywhere in America -- could pose similar security risks. I'm not sure there's as much reason to fear MAGA Nation if Trump is put on trial as there was to fear Al Qaeda sympathizers a decade ago, but I couldn't really guess at the relative risk.

I think opponents of stateside 9/11 trials overestimated the possibility of violence. But I think we underestimate the risk of a Trump trial. There'll certainly be Trumpers in the streets. And there might be worse trouble than that.

So try him -- and convict him -- but be vigilant.

 

Sure hope Biden's willing to provide US Marshals for security, because the NYPD hates Mayor DeBlasio, hates Cuomo, hates James, and loooooooves them some Donald Trump.  If anything, they'll be working with the Trump cultists when Tisha James's hammer falls.

Last Call For De Blasio Goes Viral

Garbage leadership in the COVID-19 era is unfortunately not limited to Donald Trump, or to the Republican party.

“For the vast majority of New Yorkers, life is going on pretty normally right now,” Bill de Blasio said on Morning Joe March 10, as the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the U.S. topped 1,000. “We want to encourage that.” He added that there was a “misperception” that the disease “hangs in the air waiting to catch you. No, it takes direct person-to-person contact.”

He pledged to keep schools open, even if someone at any given school was found to have contracted the disease, saying that they would take a day to isolate the sick and clean the school before getting it back up and running. “If you’re under 50 and you’re healthy, which is most New Yorkers, there’s very little threat here.”

Three days later, facing (to use a favorite de Blasio-ism) “a very different reality,” including a growing outcry from parents and from his own public-health officials, some of whom threatened to quit if he didn’t shutter schools and start taking the outbreak more seriously, New York City public schools were officially closed, probably for the rest of the school year.

Shortly thereafter, he declined to cancel St. Patrick’s Day parade and then did. He resisted calls to cancel regular street sweeping and then did. He had a photo op at a 311 call center, where he told a caller who had just returned from Italy that she did not need to self-quarantine, advice that forced 311 to actually call the woman back and tell her to stay inside for 14 days. The mayor touted the city’s new, wide-scale testing capacity, only to have his Health Department announce that only hospitalized patients should be tested. He tweeted at Elon Musk to supply the city with ventilators. When a New York Times reporter wrote of his own gut-wrenching story about contracting COVID-19 and being unable to get help, a top mayoral aide chastised him online for seeking help at all rather than just getting better at home. And the mayor himself told a radio host that people who don’t display symptoms can’t transmit the disease, an assertion that contradicts information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

It has added up to perhaps the worst stretch of the mayor’s six-year tenure, just at the moment when the city has needed him most. Aides conceded that the mayor was more focused on managing the crisis, on having life in New York go on as normal for as long as possible, while keeping an eye on his national ambitions — something that made him slow to recognize the growing threat.

Lucky for NYC, Andrew Cuomo stepped in to take care of the Big Apple when Bill de Blasio dropped the ball, and frankly it's been best for everyone in the city.

Remember when de Blasio was, you know, not completely effing useless?

Hizzoner Hits The Showers

NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio is out of the 2020 presidential race, and with his poll numbers somewhere within the margin of error of zero, it's no wonder.  But it turns out he's probably going to have political problems long after his quixotic quest, as the Trump regime doesn't forgive or forget a foe.

Mayor Bill de Blasio's presidential campaign is over, but concerns over his fundraising practices linger on. 

An official with the Federal Election Commission sent a letter to the mayor's presidential campaign, which ended Friday, highlighting a problem that has been the subject of multiple POLITICO reports and two formal complaints from watchdog groups.

In a July public filing, the de Blasio camp noted a $52,852 debt owed to the NY Fairness PAC, a state political action committee controlled by the mayor. The campaign had argued that this was a permissible loan from one organization to another. But the FEC's senior campaign finance analyst, Robin Kelly, wrote this week that the practice is not allowed by campaign finance rules. 

Such transfers are capped at $5,000 per election cycle, Kelly's letter said, meaning the campaign took more than ten times the permissible amount from the state PAC and spent it on travel and advertising. Kelly mandated that the campaign refile an amended report by late October that corrects the transfer, and noted that an audit of the campaign may follow. 

The campaign repaid the loan Thursday, the day it received the FEC’s letter, spokesperson Jaclyn Rothenberg said. 

Last year, de Blasio created a federal political action committee called Fairness PAC — ostensibly to fund his trips around the country advocating for progressive causes and to offer financial support to other left-leaning Democrats. However, the mayor also quietly created a state committee called NY Fairness PAC and used both to fund exploratory efforts for his own presidential campaign. 

Last month, the Campaign Legal Center filed a complaint with the FEC illustrating why it found this practice problematic. Essentially, donors who had already given the max to de Blasio's presidential campaign were also donating to both of his PACs. And PAC money was being shifted back into the presidential warchest. 

“[The campaign] appears to have concocted a shell game to arrange for a small number of wealthy donors to support de Blasio’s presidential run above and beyond legal contribution limits,” the group's complaint said. 

Mayor de Blasio's semi-shady shell game aside, did anyone not expect the Trump regime to make ongoing trouble for somebody Trump has had an ongoing feud with for years?  FEC harassment is only the beginning, I suspect.  Trump's enemies' list is as long as his ridiculous ties, after all.

Still, de Blasio's cavalier attitude and pointless presidential run brought this retribution upon himself.  It doesn't look like he's going to pull a Bloomberg and try to get a third term or anything, there's no way City Council would play ball.  As to who will replace him, well he still has another two years to go on that, but the primary fights aren't that far off.

Time To Whittle Down The Field

ABC News has announced the ten Democrats who have qualified for September's presidential primary debate.

Only 10 Democrats have qualified for the next presidential debate. They are:

🗣 Biden
🗣 Booker
🗣 Buttigieg
🗣 Castro
🗣 Harris
🗣 Klobuchar
🗣 O'Rourke
🗣 Sanders
🗣 Warren
🗣 Yang pic.twitter.com/ujvFlmhP5e

— NPR (@NPR) August 29, 2019

Anyone still in the race not on this list?

Time to drop out.  Jay Inslee and Kirsten Gillibrand have already done the right thing.  I don't expect Tulsi Gabbard or Marianne Williamson to do so anytime soon, because neither of them are actually in the race to do anything other than to directly help Donald Trump.

But Bill de Blasio?  Tim Ryan?  Steve Bullock?  Michael Bennet?

Door's that way.  Hit the showers.  You're done.

Thanks.

Another Hat Lands In The Ring, Con't

Despite absolutely nobody believing he can win or even that he should be in the race, NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio is making his 2020 bid for the White House.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio will declare his bid for the presidency on Thursday, a campaign spokesperson said Wednesday, joining the almost two dozen other candidates already competing for the Democratic nomination.

De Blasio will make the formal announcement Thursday morning and then travel to Iowa and South Carolina for multiple stops over four days. His wife, Chirlane McCray, who has been a highly visible presence and close adviser during his six years at City Hall, will join him for part of the trip.

A Facebook post from the Woodbury County Democratic Party in Iowa announcing that de Blasio would appear at an event Thursday as the first stop on his presidential tour let the cat out of the bag early before his formal declaration. The post was later deleted.

The mayor plans to highlight his record of liberal accomplishments in the nation’s largest city, including enacting universal pre-kindergarten, raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, and overseeing a drop in crime to an all-time low.

De Blasio is not particularly popular back home, nor in early surveys of Iowa and New Hampshire, which vote first in the primary process. His popular predecessor, Michael Bloomberg, opted out of a 2020 run.

But allies of de Blasio, who was easily re-elected in 2017 despite a testy relationship with the local press corps and an FBI investigationthat eventually cleared him, argue he has as much or more executive experience as any candidate in the 2020 field and a record of actually doing things other candidates have only talked about.

"Because he has such a present press corps in a tabloid city, we've seen him up close and in an aggressive and unflattering light, but if you look at his actual record of achievement, it's quite lengthy,” said Rebecca Katz, a Democratic strategist and former top de Blasio aide. "Yes, there's an argument to be made about whether he should be running for president or not, but he is certainly qualified."

With an estimated 8.6 million residents, New York City has a bigger population than 38 states, including Washington, Colorado and Montana, whose governors or former governors are also running for president.

De Blasio isn't a bad guy, there's just no reason why he should be president.  He doesn't bring anything new or useful to the table.  Yes, the Big Apple press certainly tries to make him look like a buffoon every chance they get, but a lot of that is de Blasio himself constantly giving them the opportunity to dunk on him.

Besides, I don't think he can handle the pressure.  He's notoriously thin-skinned and we have enough of that in the current jackass in the Oval Office.

Hard Pass, Bill.  Get your public transportation and schools in order first, then get back to me.

Last Call For Stock Home Syndrome

A new Siena College poll finds New Yorkers really, really wanted Amazon's garbage deal for taxpayers, even if it meant the ludicrous promise of 25,000 jobs (the reality would have been a small fraction of that number at best) that would have cost the state billions in lost tax revenue.

By a 67-21 percent margin, New Yorkers say that Amazon cancelling its planned second headquarters in Queens was bad for New York. By as nearly as large a margin, 61-30 percent, they support the deal in which Amazon would receive up to $3 billion in state and city incentives and create up to 25,000 jobs if Amazon reconsiders, according to a new Siena College poll of New York State registered voters released today.

An overwhelming 79 percent of voters say parents should be required to have their children vaccinated before attending school, regardless of the parents’ religious beliefs. Voters continue to support making the two-percent property tax cap permanent, legalizing recreational use of marijuana, and eliminating monetary bail for misdemeanors and non-violent felonies. They are split on congestion pricing, and by a nearly two-to-one margin, they oppose allowing undocumented immigrants to get a New York driver’s license.

“At least 63 percent of Democrats, Republicans and independents, upstaters and downstaters, men and women, young and old, black and white New Yorkers agree: Amazon pulling out of Queens was bad for New York. Even 56 percent of self-described liberals think it was bad for New York,” said Siena College pollster Steven Greenberg. “While some may have celebrated Amazon’s announcement to pull the plug, the vast majority of New Yorkers of every stripe thought it was bad for the Empire State.

“Who do New Yorkers blame? Well, there’s certainly blame enough to go around. More people think that Amazon, Governor Cuomo, Mayor de Blasio, the State Senate, and local Queens activists were villains in this saga than they were heroes. However, voters say the biggest villain was Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Only 12 percent call her hero, while 38 percent label her a villain,” Greenberg said. “Amazon itself was seen as the biggest villain among Democrats, but Republicans and independents had Ocasio-Cortez as far and away the largest villain, followed by the local Queens activists.”

“By a wide margin, New Yorkers would support the deal coming back together if Cuomo and others can convince Amazon to reconsider,” Greenberg said. “The Amazon deal was seen as very contentious, however, there was strong support for it last month, before it got cancelled. There is an overwhelming feeling that its cancellation was bad for the state. And there is strong support – among all demographic groups – for Amazon to reconsider and move forward. Clearly, jobs outweigh the cost of government incentives in the minds of most voters.”

Blaming Ocasio-Cortez over Cuomo is ridiculous as well, but Cuomo will gladly push her under the bus like he does with most Democrats in the state, and if he doesn't, Bill de Blasio certainly will.

You can do better, New York.  Amazon was never going to deliver on its promises and everyone knows it.  Ocasio-Cortez just had the courage to say it out loud and because she's a woman of color, she gets destroyed for it.

It's exactly what Republicans want, and NY Dems are more than happy to play along.

Ball Picked Up And Shipped Home In Two Days

Amazon is bailing on its NYC "HQ2" project as a growing number of local officials were lining up to block, slow down, or even kill the expansion because of its $3 billion in subsidies cost to NYC taxpayers for a trillion-dollar corporation that could actually afford to build there if it wanted to.  The Atlantic's Derek Thompson:

Amazon said on Thursday that it will cancel its plans to add a second corporate headquarters in New York City. The company had pledged to build a campus in Queen’s Long Island City in exchange for $3 billion in subsidies.
In a statement, Amazon blamed local politicians for the reversal. “For Amazon, the commitment to build a new headquarters requires positive, collaborative relationships with state and local elected officials who will be supportive over the long-term,” the statement read. “A number of state and local politicians have made it clear that they oppose our presence and will not work with us to build the type of relationships that are required to go forward with the project.”

In a period of growing antipathy toward billionaires, Amazon’s corporate welfare haul struck many—including me—as a gratuitous gift to a trillion-dollar company that was probably going to keep adding thousands of jobs to the New York region, anyway. The company has more 5,000 employees in the five boroughs, including 2,500 at a Staten Island fulfillment center and at least one thousand more in the Manhattan West office building.

At first, Amazon seemed to withstand the backlash, comforted by polls showing that the deal enjoyed broad support. A recent poll from Siena College Research Institute found 56 percent of voters statewide support the Amazon deal, including a majority of union households and people between the age of 18 and 34.

But over time, Amazon’s patience wore thin. Executives were reportedly livid at the nomination of Queens state Senator Michael N. Gianaris, an outspoken opponent of the deal, to a Public Authorities Control Board that would give him power to “effectively kill the project.” Amazon leaders were grilled at a February City Council meeting about the company’s resistance toward unions and the working conditions of its fulfillment centers. (By contrast, Virginia—the other winner of the HQ2 sweepstakes—has embraced Amazon with open arms, and the state has already authorized $750 million in state subsidies for its Crystal City headquarters.) Last week, The Washington Post (which is owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos) reported that the retailer was having second thoughts about its New York campus, given the level of opposition from local politicians, advocacy groups, and the media.

Within a week, the company officially canceled the project.

The company said it does not plan to reopen the HQ2 search. “We will proceed as planned in Northern Virginia and Nashville,” the statement said.

The most obvious losers in Amazon’s reversal are real-estate speculators. In November, The Wall Street Journal reported that brokers embarked on a “condo gold rush” in anticipation of the Queens campus construction. “This is like a gift from the gods for the Long Island City condo market,” one realtor told the Journal. Alas, the gods, like the billionaires, giveth and taketh away.

But it is not clear that either New York City or Amazon will suffer with this announcement. In fact, it is more likely that neither the city’s nor the company’s economic trajectories will be materially altered. New York City doesn’t need an Amazon headquarters to be the global capital of advertising and retail, and Amazon doesn’t need New York subsidies to expand its footprint in the city.

It was always going to be a mess.  The real issue is affordable housing, which Amazon only would have made worse and did.  NYC was happy to screw over its taxpayers and citizens, and Amazon was happy enough to do the same if NYC didn't play ball.

Both are at fault here, and I sure hope other cities around the country pay attention.

Last Call For Prisoners Of Our Own Past

America's infrastructure is collapsing on a daily basis, and it will never be repaired as long as the GOP is in charge of the country in any meaningful way, but let's not forget that the state that Wall Street built isn't exactly covering itself with laurels these days when it comes to anything more than promises.  NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo like to talk about how New York can finally become a more liberal society, but the Empire State still has a long way to go.

The inmates were held in cramped cells that had no electricity and were frigid cold. Vents in the ceiling were stuffed with clothing or cardboard to keep out icy air. At 2 p.m., the jail population had not yet been fed.

Those were the conditions described on Saturday by elected officials in New York City who had visited a federal jail on the Brooklyn waterfront, Metropolitan Detention Center, where more than 1,600 inmates have been largely confined to their freezing, dark cells for nearly a week, since an electrical fire partially cut off power to the jail, prompting management to cancel visits and place inmates on lockdown.
“The situation is really, really a nightmare,” said Representative Nydia M. Velázquez, a Democrat whose district includes the jail. “It is like living in a closet without lights.”

Officials, including Ms. Velázquez, who was initially denied a full tour of the facility on Friday night, stood on the stairs of the jail after their visit and spoke to a crowd of a few hundred that had gathered for a rally to demand that the inmates get heat, hot meals and be allowed to contact their families and lawyers.

Representative Jerrold Nadler, whose district includes parts of Brooklyn and Manhattan, denounced what he called a “total lack of urgency and concern” by the warden, Herman Quay, and jail management. Inmates who needed electrical power for sleep apnea machines were at risk of a stroke, Mr. Nadler noted.

When Mr. Nadler announced that contracted electricians had already left, and that power was unlikely to be restored over the weekend, the crowd grew angry.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons released a statement on Saturday night on behalf of the jail’s management, saying that a new electrical panel had been installed by an outside contractor that day and that the “facility is working to restore power as expeditiously as possible.” It expected work to be completed by Monday.

The statement continued: “Inmates have hot water for showers and hot water in the sinks in the cell. Essential personal hygiene items and medical services continue to be provided.”

Here's the best part though:

Many family members said they had not heard from relatives since last weekend and were not given any information when they called the jail. They learned about what was happening through Twitter and news reports.

That included both de Blasio and Cuomo, who had no idea what was going on until this story gained traction over the weekend, several days after the electrical fire.  Without criminal justice reform activists spreading the word, the Metro Detention Center's inmates would still be kept in the dark, and America along with it.

De Blasio De Criminal?

NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio is now facing serious corruption allegations that came faster than, well, a New York minute.

A Long Island restaurateur testified under oath on Thursday that he steered tens of thousands of dollars to Mayor Bill de Blasio’s political campaigns in return for favorable treatment by the city. 

It was the first time that the restaurateur, Harendra Singh, has publicly detailed his efforts to use campaign contributions — as much as $80,000 raised from others, and much more personally by using “straw donors” to skirt contribution limits — to gain better terms during lease negotiations for one of his restaurants. 

Mr. Singh also suggested for the first time that Mr. de Blasio not only knew of the illegal arrangement, but that the mayor encouraged it and actively helped the restaurateur. 

“He made many phone calls,” Mr. Singh said of the mayor. “His office was working very hard, from his deputy mayor to his assistant to his intergovernmental affairs person. Everyone was working.”

Mr. Singh was testifying as a cooperating witness in the corruption trial of Edward Mangano, the former Nassau County executive, and John Venditto, the former Town of Oyster Bay supervisor, both of whom Mr. Singh has pleaded guilty to bribing.

Mr. Singh said that he and the mayor often discussed the lease and the donations in the same conversations. 

And on two occasions, the restaurateur testified, Mr. de Blasio requested contributions for himself or political allies and, when told that Mr. Singh had already met the limit, said: “Listen, I don’t want to know. Just do what you have to do.”

The Mangano/Venditto case has been a thorn in de Blasio's side for a while now.  But Singh's testimony makes things much harder for the mayor.  The issue now is that de Blasio may now be called to testify in the case, and if that happens, all bets are off.

We'll see, but if I were you I'd cross the guy off any 2020 short lists.

The Petty Punitive Prez

Donald Trump has always been one of those people who has demanded respect, not commanded it. As I've pointed out numerous times over the last 14 months, Trump never forgets or forgives a slight, real or perceived, in the end he will always exact some kind of revenge.

He's always wanted respect in the Big Apple especially, but he's been an asshole to everyone in the city for decades and everyone knows it.  But now that he has the power of the White House, the kind of revenge he can wreak on millions of Americans for failing to recognize his "greatness" is potentially deadly.

President Trump is pushing congressional Republicans not to fund a crucial infrastructure project — a long-delayed plan to build a new rail tunnel between Manhattan and New Jersey — setting up a confrontation that could complicate passage of a massive government spending bill this month. 

Trump personally appealed to House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) this week to target federal funding for the $30 billion Gateway project, which would construct a tunnel into New York’s Penn Station to supplement two aging tubes that are at risk of failing in the coming years. 

The project is widely considered to be among the most pressing and most expensive infrastructure needs in the country, and state and local leaders have long sought federal funding to jump-start work on it. But the Trump administration threw the project into doubt late last year by casting aside an agreement reached during the Obama administration that would have the federal government pick up half the project’s cost. 

And now, according to four officials familiar with the discussions, Trump has taken a personal interest in making sure no federal dollars flow to a project that is considered critical to his hometown’s long-term economic prosperity. 

Trump delivered his message to Ryan on Wednesday during a meeting at the Capitol, three people familiar with the conversation said. Trump was on the Hill for a ceremony for the late Rev. Billy Graham, who lay in honor in the Rotunda. Ryan seemed surprised that Trump brought up the project in their conversation, according to a person familiar with the conversation.

A spokesman for Ryan declined to comment. A White House representative did not respond to a request for comment.

This is how Trump operates.  Millions here voted against him, thousands protest his tower, Senators Schumer and Gillibrand, Gov. Cuomo, Mayor de Blasio, and state AG Schniederman regularly attack him.

Trump wants to destroy the place now.  He's going to make NYC bleed.

But the Gateway project also has had powerful Republican backers, including former New Jersey governor Chris Christie and House Appropriations Committee Chairman Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.), who represents thousands of suburban constituents who rely on the Hudson River rail tunnels for their daily commutes to and from Manhattan. 

Congressional appropriators, with Frelinghuysen’s backing, are looking to spend at least $950 million in federal funds on the Gateway project in the coming omnibus spending bill. Lawmakers are expected to pass the legislation ahead of a March 23 government shutdown deadline.

A spokeswoman for Frelinghuysen did not respond to a request for comment.

I'd feel bad for New Jersey Republicans, who are going to get wiped off the face of the map in November, except they chose to enable the party of Trump every step of the way.

At this point, Trump no longer cares who knows about his plans for petty tyranny.

Sunday Long Read: Abate Is Enough

At the intersection of police brutality, a corrupt justice system, institutionalized racism and government seizure is the NYPD's practice of using nuisance abatement ordinances to evict people, and the vast, overwhelming majority of the victims are people of color.

The nuisance abatement law was created in the 1970’s to combat the sex industry in Times Square. Since then, its use has been vastly expanded, commonly targeting apartments and mom-and-pop bodegas even as the city’s crime rate has reached historic lows. The NYPD files upward of 1,000 such cases a year, nearly half of them against residences.

The process has remarkably few protections for people facing the loss of their homes. 

Three-quarters of the cases begin with secret court orders that lock residents out until the case is resolved. The police need a judge’s signoff, but residents aren’t notified and thus have no chance to tell their side of the story until they’ve already been locked out for days. And because these are civil actions, residents also have no right to an attorney. 

Perhaps most fundamentally, residents can be permanently barred from their homes without being convicted or even charged with a crime. 

A man was prohibited from living in his family home and separated from his young daughter over gambling allegations that were dismissed in criminal court. A diabetic man said he was forced to sleep on subways and stoops for a month after being served with a nuisance abatement action over low-level drug charges that also never led to a conviction. Meanwhile, his elderly mother was left with no one to care for her. 

In partnership with ProPublica, the Daily News reviewed 516 residential nuisance abatement actions filed in the Supreme Courts from Jan. 1, 2013 through June 30, 2014. Our analysis also reviewed the outcomes of the underlying criminal cases against hundreds of people who were banned from homes as a result of these actions. 

• 173 of the people who gave up their leases or were banned from homes were not convicted of a crime, including 44 people who appear to have faced no criminal prosecution whatsoever.
• Overall, tenants and homeowners lost or had already left homes in three-quarters of the 337 cases for which the Daily News and ProPublica were able to determine the outcome. The other cases were either withdrawn without explanation, were missing settlements, or are still active.
• In at least 74 cases, residents agreed to warrantless searches of their homes, sometimes in perpetuity, as one of the conditions of being allowed back in. Others agreed to automatically forfeit their leases if they were merely accused of wrongdoing in the future.
• The toll of nuisance abatement actions falls almost exclusively on minorities, our analysis showed. Over 18 months, nine of 10 homes subjected to such actions were in minority communities. We identified the race of 215 of the 297 people who were barred from homes in nuisance abatement battles. Only five are white.

Runa Rajagopal of the Bronx Defenders, who leads a division that represents people in the civil courts, called the practice a “collective punishment” on the entire family of those accused of a crime, “used by the NYPD to exert power and control largely over communities of color.” 

The NYPD declined to answer any questions about specific cases.

It's nothing we haven't seen before, but it's overtly egregious even by Gotham cop standards.  Just another example of how even in large blue states, people of color are treated like they are less than human.

And yes, collective punishment is a good description of the practice.

Your move, Mayor de Blasio.

Last Call For Debasing De Blasio

NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio has done some pretty good things for the Big Apple, but he's made a lot of political enemies on the way.  Less than two years since he took office, the long knives are definitely out for him.

Mayor Bill de Blasio was already having a bad week. Then Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo called. 

Mr. Cuomo had cast the city as slow-footed in responding to a recent outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease in the Bronx. Fed up, Mr. de Blasio’s press secretary, Karen Hinton, issued a sharp retort. “What about the state’s performance?” she said to a reporter. “What has the state been doing to prevent this disease?” 

Taken aback, the governor quickly called Mr. de Blasio. Aides at City Hall, themselves startled by the remark, issued an unusual clarification: The mayor’s chief spokeswoman, the public face of the administration, had not been speaking for the mayor. 

The episode, recounted by several people familiar with the discussion, was an extraordinary public moment of discord, laying bare a host of challenges confronting the de Blasio administration in a messy second year: tension among aides; a perilous, often powerless relationship with Mr. Cuomo, a fellow Democrat; and the struggles of Mr. de Blasio, a political operative by training, to control the perception of his stewardship. 

When the mayor’s top political aide raised concerns about battling the car-service app Uber, saying it could be a tough fight, Mr. de Blasio pushed forward, prompting a public relations fiasco that ended with City Hall’s abruptly dropping a proposal to limit the company’s growth. 

Warned that rising complaints about homelessness could hurt him politically, Mr. de Blasio announced action on the issue this month, appearing reactive to negative headlines. 

And while federal authorities praised the mayor’s handling of the Legionnaires’ outbreak as “swift” and “robust,” the response was still questioned by some city Democrats. Frustrated, the mayor led a marathon weekend meeting with agency leaders, demanding details on their progress. 

In interviews, allies of the mayor said they deeply supported Mr. de Blasio and his efforts to combat inequality. But they expressed worry that his administration had not done enough to ensure New Yorkers recognize his accomplishments. 

“There are a lot of positive programs going in the right direction, and yet, it’s not being perceived because of so many other floundering situations,” Gale A. Brewer, the Manhattan borough president and a Democrat, said. “It’s not being presented in a way that people can see it.”

Now, de Blasio has taken his shots at Gov. Cuomo...oh yeah, and President Obama, too.  He definitely has issues making friends higher up, and yes, he's made some bad calls.  But the complaints leveled against him here by the NY Times tells me that he's making the right kind of enemies, too (namely Uber and, well, not to put too fine a point on it, Cuomo.)

We'll see how he can hold up.  I think he can turn this to his advantage if he can show that what he's doing is working.  The problem is there's a lot of New Yorkers invested in making sure that doesn't happen.

Fifteen An Hour In The Five Boroughs

NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio continues his populist campaign to help the Big Apple's working class, and he's openly calling for a $15 minimum wage for the city.

While de Blasio took office promising to push for a change in state law that would allow the city to set its own minimum wage, he laid out concrete steps for how he would like to see the wage raised. In his address, he called to raise it to $13 an hour in 2016 and then increase automatically with inflation after that, eventually bringing the minimum wage to the $15 level. He said such indexing is important because “it means that hardworking New Yorkers won’t have to wait on new action from Albany just to keep pace with inflation.”

Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) has proposed a different plan. In January, he put forth a proposal that would raise the city’s minimum wage to $11.50 an hour by the end of 2016 and the rest of the state to $10.50. De Blasio pushed back at that plan in his speech, saying, “The current wage proposal simply doesn’t do enough to help New York City.” State lawmakers increased the minimum wage last year so that it will rise to $9 an hour by 2016.

De Blasio’s call for a $15 wage comes after city lawmakers introduced legislation last yearthat would increase the minimum wage at chain stores with sales of $50 million or more to that level. It also comes after the city has been home a number of strikes by fast food workers demanding at least $15 an hour, including the original one-day strike two years ago. Those workers and their Fight for 15 campaign have put that wage level on the agenda, and since then Seattle has adopted a $15 wage and it’s been proposed in other cities such as Los Angeles and Chicago.

A $15 minimum wage is so far the highest proposal being considered by a city or state, but plenty of places have raised their wages to other levels. After increases on January 1 either due to changes in law or automatic adjustments, a majority of states have higher minimums than the federal floor of $7.25 an hour. Action to raise the national wage has stalled multiple times, however.

Right now NY state law prohibits any local government from raising the minimum wage, but de Blasio wants to change that.  Considering Gov. Cuomo is at least open to raising the minimum wage, the issue then become Republicans that control the NY state Senate and what they will do.  We'll see how far this proposal gets.

The larger issue is that Republicans in Congress have blocked raising the minimum wage several times, and they say they have no plans to bring it up now that they are in charge.  In fact, if anything Republicans want to abolish a minimum wage completely and "leave it to the states".

I'm sure that will improve the lives of people.

Backs To The Wall

New York's Finest continue to show their asses.

Hundreds of officers outside the church where a funeral was held for a policeman killed along with his partner in an ambush shooting turned their backs on the mayor as he spoke during Saturday's service.

The reaction from officers watching Officer Rafael Ramos' funeral on giant TV screens followed comments from police union officials who had said Mayor Bill de Blasio contributed to a climate of mistrust that contributed to the killings of the two New York Police Department officers.

Inside Christ Tabernacle Church in Queens, however, mourners gave de Blasio polite applause before and after his speech.

The mayor said hearts citywide were aching after the Dec. 20 shootings that left Ramos and his partner, Wenjian Liu, dead.

"All of this city is grieving and grieving for so many reasons," de Blasio said. "But the most personal is that we've lost such a good man, and the family is in such pain."

Police union officials have blamed de Blasio for fostering anti-police sentiment for his support of protesters angry that no charges will be filed in the police deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner on Staten Island. At a hospital after the officers' slayings, the police union's president, Patrick Lynch, and others turned their backs on de Blasio in a sign of disrespect. Lynch said the mayor had "blood on his hands."

Why, you'd almost think there was a new police union contract coming up for negotiations or something, and that the police union has hated de Blasio since he was elected last year.

If You Can Make It Here...

...you can make it anywhere, "here" apparently being "a burn notice by the New York Times when running for NYC mayor."  Congrats, Bill de Blasio.  You're under the spotlight, and Wall Street is terrified of you.

The scruffy young man who arrived in Nicaragua in 1988 stood out. 

He was tall and sometimes goofy, known for his ability to mimic a goose’s honk. He spoke in long, meandering paragraphs, musing on Franklin D. Roosevelt, Karl Marx and Bob Marley. 

He took painstaking notes on encounters with farmers, doctors and revolutionary fighters.
Bill de Blasio, then 26, went to Nicaragua to help distribute food and medicine in the middle of a war between left and right. But he returned with something else entirely: a vision of the possibilities of an unfettered leftist government. 

As he seeks to become the next mayor of New York City, Mr. de Blasio, the city’s public advocate, has spoken only occasionally about his time as a fresh-faced idealist who opposed foreign wars, missile defense systems and apartheid in the late 1980s and early 1990s. References to his early activism have been omitted from his campaign Web site. 

But a review of hundreds of pages of records and more than two dozen interviews suggest his time as a young activist was more influential in shaping his ideology than previously known, and far more political than typical humanitarian work.

And this is supposed to make Brooklyn hipsters not vote for the guy?

By the way, if this undertone sounds familiar, it's the same "Obama is a leftist commie pinko socialist America hater" crap from 2007.  Somehow, I don't think it's going to hurt de Blasio's chances in November.