Saturday, July 25, 2020

Mayor Bill de Blasio and His Wife Chirlane McCray Need To Be Investigated For Fiscal Mismanagement


At the same time that homeless encampments, violence and looting, defunding police and no bail laws, graffiti and destruction of public property multiply throughout New York City, Mayor de Blasio's wife, Chirlane McCray and her $1.25 billion program to help people who need mental health services, ThriveNY, continues as usual and is hiring.
Lovely. (Luiz C. Ribeiro/for New York Daily News)
My question is, Ms. McCray, are you hiring homeless people hurt by the pandemic? Not all homeless are mentally ill, and people who have been left homeless by COVID-19 certainly could use a pay check.
Or, are you simply hiring people based upon what they can give to your future political campaign for Brooklyn borough president.
It is time to investigate the Mayor and his wife for financial fraud and other actions that do not benefit the City and only themselves.
 Betsy Combier
betsy.combier@gmail.com
The makeshift homeless encampment in the East Village.Stephen Yang


July 20, 2020, Julia Marsh

The hiring freeze clearly doesn’t apply to the unelected, anointed bureaucrat named Chirlane McCray . . . This gross abuse of power needs to end.
— Councilman Robert Holden
While other city agencies are tightening their belts under budget cuts and a hiring freeze, the city first lady’s embattled mental health program is thriving.
McCray’s $1.25 billion ThriveNYC program is recruiting new staff — despite Mayor de Blasio’s hiring freeze on municipal employees and warnings of layoffs for 22,000 city workers because of the $9 billion budget hole left by the coronavirus pandemic.

“The Mental Health Service Corps is hiring! Spread the word!” McCray tweeted Thursday.

The Corps’ workforce development program — which was rebooted last year after initial mismanagement — is holding a virtual job fair for social workers on Thursday. It is one of several programs under the ThriveNYC plan, which was expected to cost the city $1.25 billion since its inception.

De Blasio has said that only COVID-19 jobs are exempt from the hiring freeze, but the ThriveNYC flyer makes no mention of the pandemic.

“Corps members are offered a three-year fellowship to deliver mental health services in highneed locations within the H+H system,” said Christopher Miller, a spokesman for the city’s public hospital system, NYC Health + Hospitals.

“ThriveNYC provides programmatic oversight,” he said.

“H+H is not subject to the City’s hiring freeze because it is not a city agency, it’s a public benefit corporation. H+H considers Mental Health Service Corps members to be essential health care workers and is working to fill vacancies in this program.”

There are currently 54 Corps members. H+H is offering $60,000 salaries plus a “competitive benefits package” to six new staffers.

Councilman Robert Holden (D-Queens) slammed the carveout for the mental-health plan.

“The hiring freeze clearly doesn’t apply to the unelected, anointed bureaucrat named Chirlane McCray,” he said. “The amount of conflicts of interest and nepotism by this mayor and his wife is disturbing, and allowing this gross abuse of power needs to end.”

McCray is mulling a run for Brooklyn borough president. Critics have accused the mayor and his wife of using city resources to boost her political future.

De Blasio has said he’ll have to put 22,000 public employees out of work, including frontline workers like cops and doctors, if the federal or state governments don’t provide a bailout by this fall.

In May, Holden and his colleagues ripped de Blasio’s willingness to sacrifice the jobs of city cops, doctors and teachers before slashing funding from ThriveNYC.

“I understand it’s a pet project, but there needs to be equity across the system,” Councilwoman Adrienne Adams (D-Queens) said at the time.

ThriveNYC ultimately survived the budget process with just $12 million in cuts.
First Lady Chirlane McCray’s embattled ThriveNYC mental-health program is recruiting new staff– despite Mayor Bill de Blasio’s hiring freeze on municipal employees — and warnings of layoffs for 22,000 city workers because of the $9 billion budget hole left by the coronavirus pandemic.
“The Mental Health Service Corps is hiring! Spread the word!” McCray tweeted Thursday.
The workforce development program — which was rebooted last year after initial mismanagement — is holding a virtual job fair for social workers on July 23. It is one of several programs under the ThriveNYC plan, which was expected to cost the city $1.25 billion since its inception.
De Blasio claims only COVID-19 jobs are exempt from the hiring freeze, but the ThriveNYC flyer makes no mention of the pandemic.
“Corps members are offered a three-year fellowship to deliver mental health services in high-need locations within the H+H system,” said Christopher Miller, a spokesman for the city’s public hospital system, NYC Health + Hospitals.
“ThriveNYC provides programmatic oversight,” he said. “H+H is not subject to the City’s hiring freeze because it is not a city agency, it’s a public benefit corporation. H+H considers Mental Health Service Corps members to be essential health care workers and is working to fill vacancies in this program.”
There are currently 54 Corps members. H+H is offering $60,000 salaries plus a “competitive benefits package” to six new staffers.

Jason Curtis, a resident of the encampment.
Stephan Yang
Homeless encampment in NYC getting ‘bigger’ despite de Blasio’s ‘crackdown’
Lorena Mongelli and Bruce Golding, NY POST, July 24, 2020

An entrenched group of homeless people is making life miserable for residents and merchants in Manhattan’s East Village — despite Mayor Bill de Blasio’s vow to “do whatever it takes” to break up such encampments.
The vagrants are living under a stretch of scaffolding along Second Avenue between East Seventh and East Eighth streets, where they’ve arranged cast-off furniture and set up a tarp under which two men were sleeping Friday afternoon.
“It makes me feel uncomfortable. It makes our city dirty and noisy,” said neighborhood resident Olga, 78, who’s lived in the East Village for 33 years.
“There was one woman who was making pee-pee and caca by the bus stop. It was very dirty and disgusting. Nobody wanted to use the bus stop.”
The owner of an eatery across the street also said the situation appeared to be spiraling out of control.
“They started camping out there when the weather got warmer and recently it got bigger,” the restaurateur said.
“Some of them have mental issues. They drink a lot and fight with each other. They throw bottles.”
On Thursday, de Blasio was questioned during his daily news conference about a series of other encampments across Manhattan, following a NYPD raid that broke up the “Occupy City Hall” site early Wednesday morning, about month after it was established.
“Anyone who tells us about an encampment, we’re going to have it addressed right away by Homeless Services, Sanitation, [NY]PD,” de Blasio said.
“Whatever it takes.”
One homeless resident of the East Village encampment, who identified herself as Solaura, 43, said she wound up there after losing a taxpayer-funded bed at the DoubleTree hotel in Chelsea.
Solaura, whose face and limbs are covered with tattoos, said she was a transsexual sex worker and was unable to abide by rules that required her to be inside by 10 p.m.
“I am a highly marginalized individual and I just don’t have the same opportunity as a lot of cisgender people as far as employment goes, so the work I do is at night or I would have no income,” she said.
Another resident, who gave his name as Macswel Hasanoeddin, said he was registered to stay at a nearby shelter but had been living at the encampment on and off for the past two or three weeks.
“In homeless shelters, people feel like it’s like a jail,” said Hasanoeddin, 52.
“There are a lot of concerns about things getting stolen so a lot of people don’t want to go. Curfew isn’t bad but there are other factors that people don’t wanna deal with, so they’d rather stay on the street.”
City Hall didn’t return a request for comment.
Additional reporting by Julia Marsh
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Thursday, July 23, 2020

New York City Free Furniture Items Are Fun Finds

Justin Lucero scored a blue loveseat off the street in Greenpoint (left) while working from 
home in nearby Williamsburg. Pup Tenley likes the new perch, too 
 @stoopingnyc/Instagram; Brian Zak/NY Post

One of the most wonderful things about New York City is the fantastic stuff you can get for free on the Street. I was walking my dog about a year ago and heard a piano. I walked down the block and saw a beautiful new piano with a man in a suit playing beautiful music. I stood in awe of this event until the man got up from the piano bench and started walking away.

I said, wait - are you just leaving the piano?


He said, "yes, it was there when I walked by, so I decided to play it, but I'm a lawyer and I don't have any space for it."

I walked quickly back to my building, got my telephone, took pictures and went back to put the pictures on my Facebook page, with a plea to have someone snag this beautiful item before the sanitation trucks came in the morning and it became firewood.

About 1 hour later I went to where the piano and bench had been, and saw that someone had moved it across the street, covered it with a huge comforter, and taped a message to the side: "Please do not touch. This is not garbage!!!!!!!!!"

The next morning I went back downstairs just as the sanitation men were dumping garbage bags in the back of the trucks, and they never touched the piano. By early afternoon the piano was gone, upstairs across the street in its' new home.

I looked up the model on the internet. $4000.00.

I hope someone enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed my free concert. I have my mom's Steinway, so I did not take the piano home with me.

This is New York City!!!

Betsy

Upper East Sider Daina Gigliotti-Dozzi has salvaged many items in her apartment -- from the antique writing desk to her MacBook computer -- from area streets. High-quality curbside freebies have become more common than ever during the coronavirus.
Picture: Annie Wermiel, NYPOST
New Yorkers revel in virus-fueled gold mine of free street furniture
by Zoe Rosenberg, NY POST, July 23, 2020
One man’s trash is another man’s treasure: This spring and summer, the adage rings especially true.
The hotter months were always peak times for Big Apple move-ins and -outs. But standard relocations coupled with apartment purges by those fleeing the city’s COVID-19 outbreak have created a gold mine of curbside gems put out for the taking.
From midcentury furniture to one-off antiques, home decor of the highest caliber has been plentiful — and free — for anyone lucky and quick enough to pluck them off the concrete. (Not to mention strong and canny enough to lug their loot home.)
From March on, as thrift shops and secondhand sellers remained shuttered due to the coronavirus, many New Yorkers came to rely on the informal give-and-take economy known as stooping.
The practice of sharing and snagging discarded freebies has gotten a boost from Instagram accounts dedicated to promoting pieces out on the sidewalk and ripe for the picking, like StoopingNYC and CurbAlertNYC.
The anonymous Brooklyn duo who run StoopingNYC say the pandemic has led to a ballooning following (now at 46,000 and counting) as well as an uptick in submissions for full-apartment furniture dumps as opposed to one-off finds.
Over the past few months, the couple has also seen emails and direct messages shift from followers who send in photos of items they stumble across in the street to followers who are hauling their own goods to the curb.
Angelique Ray, a 27-year-old public school teacher, and her roommate Paige Brigham, a 23-year-old speech language pathology student, nabbed a leather armchair from Riverside Drive after seeing its photo and cross streets on StoopingNYC.
The duo chronicled the chair’s 30-block journey to their Upper West Side walkup using a janky bed frame on wheels as a makeshift cart.
Their video was then shared by the account as a “stooping success.”
The lure of the piece outweighed the perils of bringing an item of unknown provenance into their apartment during COVID-19. “This chair was a risk, but it’s worth it,” Brigham says.
The roommates, who thoroughly cleaned their new armchair, feel good about diverting it from a landfill. “Growing up, my mom used to stoop a lot,” adds Ray, an East Village native. “I didn’t understand why you would stoop furniture if you could just buy furniture. And then, in the last couple years, I realized there are so many great pieces of furniture put out on the street that are still usable.”
Furniture is not a disposable good for many stoopers, including the anonymous Manhattanite who runs CurbAlertNYC, with almost 16,000 followers. “My whole life I’ve been conscious about waste and sustainability,” he says. “There’s really no reason to purchase furniture when you live in the city.”
Some areas produce more gems than others. “I like living on the East Side because it’s quiet, but it’s also a weird treasure trove. When people move out they just throw things away,” says Daina Gigliotti-Dozzi, 34. “I stooped a MacBook Air on my street two weeks ago.”
Gigliotti-Dozzi, who works for an environmentally friendly waste management company, carefully wipes down any pieces before they enter her two-bedroom apartment — including her antique writing desk, which she uses every day.
Gigliotti-Dozzi’s desk score is another “stooping success” shared by the same Instagram account that led to its rehoming. StoopingNYC posts before-and-after photos with the hashtag #stoopingsuccess to show how street-snagged items gain new life.
“The gamification of seeing an item on the page, the in-person scavenger hunt, and then getting it back and having the instant gratification of being able to see their success reposted on the page is something that our followers get really excited about,” the pair behind StoopingNYC say. “It’s so uniquely New York, and people just love being part of New York.”
Mel Lopez, 28, and Sarabeth Blum, 31, estimate about 60 percent of the furnishings in their Bed-Stuy one-bedroom are street finds, while the remainder is purchased secondhand.
Minimizing their carbon footprint is a big reason why Lopez, a senior creative strategist at The Atlantic, and Blum, a senior content manager at Spotify, gravitate towards stooping.
Plus, many of the items that they save from the landfill are better quality than their contemporary counterparts.
“There’s no need for me to buy a brand new side table from West Elm when I can stoop one that’s probably better made,” says Blum. Lopez calls their style “midcentury street chic.” One of their favorite recent finds is a bespoke solid wood bookshelf they use to store records. The piece, which they trekked to Chelsea to pick up after seeing it on Instagram, is signed and dated November 1974.
“Everything that we stoop is really different and unique because we found it, and there’s always a story behind it,” Blum says. “So stooping gives us the opportunity to add our own story to those pieces.”
Even before the coronavirus, the pair always painstakingly cleaned finds before bringing them inside and also avoided any fabrics that could conceal pests like bedbugs.
Advertising strategist Justin Lucero says that the coronavirus stay-at-home order introduced him to the wonders of stooping for the first time.
“Stuff would always be posted while I was at work, so I never had the opportunity to go get anything,” adds Lucero, 33.
Then, while working from his Williamsburg apartment, Lucero spotted a midcentury loveseat upholstered in royal blue leather on StoopingNYC.
The post said it was sitting on the curb in Greenpoint, just one neighborhood over.
Despite a virtual meeting looming on the calendar, Lucero grabbed a Citi Bike and arrived at the corner to claim the couch just before two other groups of stoopers arrived.
An Uber brought him and the loveseat home just in time for the video conference.
“There’s lots of great stuff that gets posted on Instagram,” Lucero says, “but you have to be pretty quick.”
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Saturday, July 18, 2020

NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea Blasts NYC Leaders For Failing to Keep New York City Safe

NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea

SEE IT: NYPD commissioner bashes city leaders as ‘cowards’ in police brass meeting: ‘They are failing at every possible measure to be leaders’

By ROCCO PARASCANDOLA and 
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS 
JUL 18, 2020  12:37 PM




NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea unleashed his anger at city leaders during a meeting with police brass earlier this week, calling them “cowards” who “don’t have a goddamn clue what they’re talking about” with new NYPD reforms, video obtained by the Daily News shows.

In a stunning seven-minute video taken during a CompStat meeting Thursday at NYPD headquarters, Shea poured out his frustration with the lack of support for the city’s police.

“I don’t know if there’s ever been a period like this where so many systems of government are literally cowards and won’t stand up for what’s right,” Shea said while standing at a podium. “They’re failing at every possible measure to be leaders and throw it on the back of the police department.

“They curse them with one hand and blame them with the other,” he continued. “How dare they.”

Shea already publicly shot down a series of police reform bills signed by Mayor Bill de Blasio Wednesday, claiming they would adversely impact public safety as the city has suffered a massive uptick in shootings over the last month.

The new reforms make it criminal for NYPD cops to put suspects in a chokehold, which is already banned in the department. It is now also illegal for cops to sit, kneel, or stand on someone’s chest or back in a way that could obstruct their breathing. If police are caught doing so, they could face misdemeanor charges.

On Friday, the Suffolk County Police Department joined a growing number of law enforcement agencies that directed its officers not to take enforcement action in the five boroughs, fearing they could get into legal trouble.

Westchester County and Yonkers police made similar moves earlier this week.

“People that don’t have a clue about how to keep New Yorkers safe suddenly think they know about policing. I have another thing to tell them, they don’t have a god damn clue what they talking about,” Shea said.

“But we are not going to let them destroy this city,” he said.

Bail reform and efforts to reduce the city’s jail population is also putting the city at risk, Shea told leaders from Patrol Borough Brooklyn North, which has seen a nearly 73% jump in shootings over the past year.

“You have political pressures pushing everyone out of jail and putting systems in place to keep people from going into jail,” Shea said.

“(Then they say) cops, fix it. (That’s) impossible until people get their heads out of their you know what and get their heads out of the sand and come out and make hard decisions and tell that 1% of fringe lunatics that this is our city,” he said.

Councilman Rory Lancman (D-Queens), who drafted the chokehold bill, fought back against Shea’s comments Saturday, saying he should look in the mirror before calling anyone out.
“It’s frightening that Commissioner Shea is part of the lunatic fringe who thinks it’s acceptable to choke or stand on a suspect, and it’s dangerous that the mayor still has his back,” Lancman said in a statement.

Lancman last week demanded that Mayor de Blasio fire Shea over the skyrocketing shootings. But de Blasio has continued to support his police commissioner, and on Tuesday called him “one of the people who made this the safest big city in America.”

During his speech at the CompStat meeting, Shea said his position in the department was secure.

“No, I’m not going anywhere short term,” he told his officers. “You’re stuck with me for a while.”

Shea also made a pitch to start holding grand jury procedures again, claiming that just 20 people — which he considered “high-value targets” — are responsible for at least 100 shootings in the city in recent weeks.

“Sixteen of them have open cases right now. These 20 people touch 100 shootings,” Shea said.

“These god damn 20 people need to go to jail,” he said.
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Saturday, July 4, 2020

Mayor Bill de Blasio Buries His Anti-Poor Agenda in The NYC Budget.




NYC (as well as the rest of the United States) is being burned, mobs are creating anarchy, and the ruins are buried so that historical documents, monuments, ideas, and people are obliterated. The goal? To make sure that future generations of children of any color, race or creed will never know, hear, or read about our history of challenges in obtaining "Equality For All".

The Civil War will be in the history books, of course, but the Declaration of Independence will be changed so that the word "men" will be changed to "People", and excuses will be made for leaders such as Thomas Jefferson, who was a slave owner. Evidently, according to the Cancel Culture mob he wasn't a great guy after all.

I abhor the public shaming of people for little or no reason. If someone is spreading hate and defaming a person because of their speech, race, religion, or whatever, call them out on it, give details, and say why you think this person should apologize and stop what they are doing. Put your name on it. The internet is very powerful. The person who wants to stop someone's speech should say so, with their name and reasons. This is before the alleged "bad" person's house has been burned down, killed, his/her family destroyed, etc.

And NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio is going along with this, or so he wants the cancel culture mob to believe. But de Blasio's budget shows another side.

NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio
I am no fan of Bill De Blasio, as seen by all who read this blog or any of my other blogs and websites. If you disagree, send in a comment and I will publish it, with your name. I do not publish any comments without a name attached unless asked to do so by the sender with reasons for concern. I never publish a person's name who asks that I not do so. Your opinion matters. But so does mine.

Below are posts with more of the hypocrisy of the Mayor who has now defunded the Fair Fares program to the tune of $65 million in favor of the predominantly white commuters who use the ferries to get to work.

 See some of Bill's other decisions:
Our politicians are slow learners: School approaches, and parents are left on their own



What do you think?

Betsy Combier
betsy.combier@gmail.com
Editor, ADVOCATZ.com
Editor, ADVOCATZ Blog
Editor, NYC Rubber Room Reporter
Editor, Parentadvocates.org
Editor, New York Court Corruption
Editor, National Public Voice
Editor, NYC Public Voice
Editor, Inside 3020-a Teacher Trials

Bill de Blasio just protected transit for NYC’s well-off — at the poor’s expense
By Post Editorial Board

, July 2, 2020 


A pair of small choices in Mayor Bill de Blasio’s new budget tells a lot about his true priorities — or, at least, his refusal to let facts stand in his way.

The mayor managed to cut $65 million in funding for the Fair Fares program, which lets low-income New Yorkers get 50 percent discounts on MetroCards. That helped him protect his beloved East River ferry system — which serves mainly higher-income folks.
A survey of over 5,000 ferry riders, done last year by the city’s Economic Development Corp., found that they’re mostly white, wealthy and come from waterfront neighborhoods. Just 36 percent are people of color, while 65 percent make over $75,000 per year, the survey found. It showed that most use the service for leisure trips, not to commute.
Over the objections of city Comptroller Scott Stringer, de Blasio this year dumped $62 million on eight new ferry boats — that is, just about what he’s now cut from Fair Fares. In all, the waterborne white elephant gets $637 million in the new budget.
The mayor insists the ferry system is all about “equity” and “access” — but that’s entirely in his imagination, even more so than the rest of his “progressive” agenda.
See some of Bill's other decisions:

School Safety Officers Will Stay at the NYPD, Says Mayor Bill


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