Landlord Groups Protest City's Tenant Harrassment Bill

From the Gotham Gazette's "The Wonkster" Blog:

" Surprise — landlords don’t like the City Council’s tenant harassment bill that was approved five months ago and signed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Beyond dislike, they are now trying to throw it out entirely.

Prometheus Realty Corp. and the Rent Stabilization Association of New York City have filed a complaint with the state Supreme Court, arguing that the city unlawfully went out of its jurisdiction when it approved the legislation earlier this year. (Here is a copy of the complaint via the Daily Politics)

The bill allows tenants to pursue legal action against their landlords for harassment, which includes continual interruption in essential services (like hot water) to the damaging of locks. If found guilty, landlords could face fines as high as $5,000. "

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Politricks: New York's Power Structure

From the Gotham Gazette:

In New York, Those in Power, Stay in Power
With the presidential election the focus of so much attention, one could easily forget that all the members of the New York State Assembly and Senate also are up for election this fall. Most of the incumbents want their jobs back, and little seems to stand in their way. As in most years, few sitting members of the legislature face primary challenges, proving once again that, when it comes to elections in New York, nothing is left to chance.

Lack of Competition

As of now, only 23 out of 65 Assembly seats and 11 of 35 State Senate seats in New York City are set to have a primary on Sept 9. This is the number of districts where more than one candidate has filed petitions seeking his or her party's nomination. The number will almost certainly shrink as candidates challenge one another's petitions. The Board of Elections is holding hearings on challenges this week, and inevitably some candidates won't make it through the process.

Previous reports and articles have highlighted how uncompetitive New York's elections are, with nearly all of the incumbents running being reelected to their seats. In many cases this year, incumbents will not face a primary challenger. Most of those who do are expected to beat their opponents rather handily. [Photo Credit: Josh for the Gotham Gazette]

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Definition of 'Demolition' Affects Rent-Stabilized Tenants

From the New York Times:

" When is a demolished apartment building not demolished?

That is not a child’s riddle. It was the subject of hours of protest and impassioned oratory at a public hearing in Lower Manhattan on Tuesday about proposed changes to the rules on renovating rent-stabilized housing.

The State Division of Housing and Community Renewal has proposed to define what constitutes a demolition plan, which would allow the owner of a rent-stabilized building to evict its tenants.

For several years, tenants’ advocates have complained that the lack of a precise definition of demolition has allowed landlords to push out low-rent tenants and create luxury condominiums.
But now that the division has come up with a definition, those advocates do not like it. Neither, it seems, do building owners.

Representatives of both groups testified at a public hearing held by the division, and none of them had much positive to say about the proposed regulations, which would define demolition as the complete gutting of a building’s interior — but not necessarily the removal of its outside walls or support beams.

Councilwoman Rosie Mendez of Manhattan said that demolition should be defined as “to be razed down to the floor, so if you can see it, it’s not a demolition.”

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Mother Jones Finds Holes in McSame's "No Lobbyists" Promises

From Mother Jones' 'Mojo' Blog:

"John McCain's declared policy of not having lobbyists as part of his campaign team has always been full of holes and contradictions. But the fact that his top foreign policy advisor Randy Scheunemann arranged a phone call between his longtime lobbying client, the Georgian president, and the Republican presidential candidate on the same day that Scheunemann's lobbying company Orion Strategies signed a $200,000 lobbying renewal contract with the country really takes the cake for conflict of interest."

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Affordable for Who? Rangel & Co. Preserve Harlem Apartments

From the NYTimes:

"It took Congressman Charles B. Rangel three minutes to make his way across 20 feet of Harlem sidewalk on Tuesday morning, as elected officials and others stopped to greet him, hug him or shake his hand. His smile never faded. His gaze held steady. His raspy voice pierced the drone of passing cars as he bellowed repeatedly: “Good morning. Good morning.”

Mr. Rangel was outdoors on Lenox Avenue and West 115th Street to announce the preservation of almost 400 federally subsidized apartments in Harlem, including units in the building behind him, Canaan IV Towers. The congressman was a key figure in brokering the deal, and received many thanks. City Councilman Robert Jackson bowed to him. Another Council member, Inez E. Dickens, told him, “You have our back, and now we are here for you.” [Photo Credit: NYTimes]

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Analyzing the Fall of 'Hill-Camp'

From the Atlantic.com:

"Hillary Clinton’s campaign was undone by a clash of personalities more toxic than anyone imagined. E-mails and memos—published here for the first time—reveal the backstabbing and conflicting strategies that produced an epic meltdown.

For all that has been written and said about Hillary Clinton’s epic collapse in the Democratic primaries, one issue still nags. Everybody knows what happened. But we still don’t have a clear picture of how it happened, or why.
The after-battle assessments in the major newspapers and newsweeklies generally agreed on the big picture: the campaign was not prepared for a lengthy fight; it had an insufficient delegate operation; it squandered vast sums of money; and the candidate herself evinced a paralyzing schizophrenia—one day a shots-’n’-beers brawler, the next a Hallmark Channel mom. Through it all, her staff feuded and bickered, while her husband distracted. But as a journalistic exercise, the “campaign obit” is inherently flawed, reflecting the viewpoints of those closest to the press rather than empirical truth. "

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Bklyn Atlantic Yards: The Battle for Eminent Domain Escalates

From the NY Observer:

Landowners Bring Atlantic Yards Eminent Domain Battle to State Court [UPDATED]

Six weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear their federal lawsuit, landowners fighting the use of eminent domain for the Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn have filed another suit, this time in state court.

Opposition group Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn put out a release today announcing the lawsuit, filed Friday, which claims the development was approved to benefit a private developer (Bruce Ratner) as opposed to benefit the public (which would justify the use of eminent domain), among other charges.

"Far from emerging from a legitimate democratic process where the public interest is identified and articulated," the suit says, "the Project is the product of a developer's dream-and a conscious effort to bypass City procedures mandating meaningful local review, planning, democratic oversight and community input." (Photo Credit: The Municipal Art Socirty for the NY Observer)

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POLITRICKS: Rangel in the Crosshairs

From Politico:

Boehner publicly rebukes Rangel

Days after the Justice Department indicted a senior Republican senator from Alaska, House GOP Leader John A. Boehner called for a public reprimand of Ways and Means Chairman Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.).

The Republican leader raised these questions in a privileged resolution on the House floor Thursday afternoon, calling on his colleagues in both parties to censure the powerful New York Democrat who chairs the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee.

The resolution charges Rangel of "dishonor[ing] himself and [bringing] discredit to the House," according to a copy obtained by Politico.

The House tabled the resolution, 254-138, with 34 members voting present. At least 25 Republicans voted with the Democrats to kill the measure, siding with Rangel over their leader.

The Ways and Means chairman has come under fire in the press recently for renting four rent-stabilized apartments in a Harlem high-rise at below-market rates and using congressional stationery to set up meetings with potential donors for an educational center that bears his name.

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The Misadventures of John McSame: Celebrity Photo Op

From Time Magazine: At their most basic levels, presidential campaigns are storytelling wars. After John Kerry lost the 2004 election, the Democratic strategist James Carville summed up his candidate's problem this way: "There's a Republican narrative," he said on NBC's Meet the Press. "And there's a Democratic litany." Read the entire article here...

Absolute Power Corrupts, Absolutely- Alaska

From the NY Times:

Senator Charged in Scheme to Hide Oil Firm Gifts

Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, a legendary political figure closely tied to the rough-and-tumble history of his home state, and who wields outsize influence over federal spending, was indicted on Tuesday on seven felony counts of failing to disclose gifts that he received from an oil services company.

A federal grand jury in the District of Columbia charged Mr. Stevens, who is 84 and the longest-serving Republican in the Senate, with failing to report more than $250,000 in gifts, including extensive renovations to his house in Alaska, a Land Rover and home furnishings on financial disclosure forms that he filed from 1999 to 2006.

The indictment said that Mr. Stevens “knowingly and willfully engaged in a scheme to conceal” the gifts he received from the VECO Corporation, once one of Alaska’s largest oil field contractors, and its former chief executive, William J. Allen, who last year pleaded guilty in the case. And it comes nearly a year to the day after F.B.I. agents raided the senator’s home as part of a long-running and expansive public corruption investigation in Alaska. (Photo Credit: AP for NYTimes)

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Absolute Power Corrupts, Asbolutely- Michigan

'Family ties dog Kilpatrick's reelection'

From Politico:

In Washington, Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick (D-Mich.) is best known as the chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus. But back home in Detroit, she is increasingly targeted as the mother and steadfast defender of scandal-plagued Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick — and it’s jeopardizing her prospects for returning to Washington next year.Kilpatrick is facing two credible rivals in the Aug. 5 primary: state Sen. Martha Scott and former state Rep. Mary Waters — and Waters has made the congresswoman’s family ties a key theme of her campaign, potentially changing the narrative of the race. (Photo credit: Associated Press for Politico)

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Absolute Power Corrupts, Absolutely - Newark

Former Newark Mayor Gets 27 Months


From the NY Times:


NEWARK — A federal judge on Tuesday sentenced Sharpe James, Newark’s towering yet controversial former mayor, to prison for 27 months at a simmering five-hour hearing in which he rebuked the prosecution for “heartlessly” adhering to a bureaucratic form of justice.



The sentence was a fraction of the 20 years prosecutors had requested for Mr. James, who was convicted on fraud charges stemming from the sale of city properties to a former companion for a fraction of their cost.


In rendering the sentence, Judge William J. Martini of United States District Court blistered the prosecution, saying he was “shocked and disappointed” by the sentencing request and questioning the contention that the James administration had been corrupt for years.



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Affordable for Who??? -The Major Rangel Donors

From the NY Times:

In many ways, Vornado Realty Trust, the Kimco Realty Corporation and Apollo Real Estate Advisers represent the real estate vanguard of the new Harlem.

Vornado is building an office tower on 125th Street that some residents fear will accelerate gentrification. Kimco moved to push out longtime local store owners to demolish a building and put a new retail complex in its place. And Apollo is leading a contentious effort to turn the historically rent-stabilized Delano Village apartment complex — which has been renamed Savoy Park — into a more profitable property.

They have something else in common: Executives and people tied to the companies, along with other real estate concerns, have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Representative Charles B. Rangel’s fund-raising operation since the 2004 election cycle.

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