Normally, I'd be overjoyed to have made the Times (which I did in this article), but it would have been nice in this case if they interviewed me before printing their article.
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Normally, I'd be overjoyed to have made the Times (which I did in this article), but it would have been nice in this case if they interviewed me before printing their article.
While The Times accurately calls State Senate candidate David Storobin "a rookie candidate with a sometimes extreme approach to world politics," it gets a few things wrong.
Orthodox Pundit: "Also, Room Eight dug up another possibly-incriminating Storobin article. In the last one he's defending Putin-Russia's agressive positions, and thereatens Jewish groups not to defend a Kosovo's goverment whom he describe as anti-semites, because if they do "Russia and its allies would be fully justified in aiding Hamas in Gaza as payback."
In the same article he also faults "major left-leaning Jewish organizations (who) chose to help the former Nazi SS volunteer who became the Bosnian President" - putting Jews and Nazis in one sentence." Orthodox Pundit: News & Political Analysis orthodoxpundit.blogspot.com
NYC Councilman Erik Martin Dilan: "Actively Considering" Congressional Challenge To Rep. Nydia Velas www.cityandstateny.com
Nearly everything I dislike about Kucinich's arch leftism, especially in foreign policy/defense (with the possible exception of his apologias for Assad), is duplicated in Marcy Kaptur, and on the one issue where I know for sure they differ, I prefer Dennis (Kaptur is not 100% pro-choice, while Kucinich renounced his extremist pro-liferism just about the time he set his eyes on the White House).
So, I can't say I'm losing any sleep over this race, but I'm still rooting for Kaptur. Workhorse vs. showhorse in Ohio's 9th? www.politico.com
Chait: "Romney, I have finally decided after cycling through various analogies, is Big Jim from the Bob Dylan ballad “Lili, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts”:
Big Jim was no one’s fool, he owned the town’s only diamond mine
He made his usual entrance lookin’ so dandy and so fine
With his bodyguards and silver cane and every hair in place
He took whatever he wanted to and he laid it all to waste
Romney owns the only diamond mine in the Republican race."
Nice, but Chait skips the next line:
“But his bodyguards and silver cane were no match for the Jack of Hearts.”
And let's remember:
"It was known all around that Lily had Jim's ring
And nothing would ever come between Lily and the king
No nothing ever would except maybe the Jack of Hearts."
Eventually, things did not work out as expected:
"The door to the dressing room burst open a Colt revolver clicked
And big Jim was standing there you couldn't say surprised
Rosemary right beside him studying her eyes
She was with big Jim but she was leaning to the Jack of Hearts."
The front runner's luck ran out:
"The next day was hanging day the sky was overcast and black
Big Jim lay covered up killed by a penknife in the back"
My only problem with this theory is the winner is supposed to be the “Jack of,” not the “Jack Off.” Santorum Escapes Mitt’s Moneybags, for Now nymag.com
Why Gary Johnson does not equal Ron Paul. The daylight between Paul and Johnson www.politico.com
Watch the video; she's a Republican, but I defy you not to cry. "I Don't Miss The Sex" andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com
Although I've always been a strong advocate of reasonable religious accommodation (which inevitably sometimes seems like an oxymoron), Frum has a great big point:
"As Republicans go to war over including contraception in health plans, they are repeating to themselves a reassuring mantra:
"This is not a contraception issue. This is not a social issue. This is a constitutional issue."
The idea is that they are not against contraception. They are only against requiring any employer or plan to provide contraception if that employer or plan conscientiously objects to contraception....
...Republicans are not proposing to allow employers and plans to refuse to cover blood transfusions if they conscientiously object to them...Or vaccinations...Or medicines derived from animal experimentation....
No, Marco Rubio's Religious Freedom Restoration bill provides for one conscientious exemption only: contraception and sterilization.
Which means it will be very hard if not impossible to persuade the target audience that this debate is not in fact about contraception." The Contraception Fight www.thedailybeast.com
The most devastating aspect of this devastating critique of the Republican critique of Obama on defense/foreign policy is the name of its author:
George Will. Republicans need more than rhetoric on defense. www.washingtonpost.com
Ben says even Bob Turner has stopped attacking Obama on Israel. Israel hawks warm to Obama - Ben Smith www.politico.com
Life imitates “Spaceballs” with Assad as President Skroob. Some Suggestions for New Assad E-Mail Passwords www.theatlantic.com
Assad is on track to kill more people in a year than have died on all sides in both Palestinian intifadas since 1987, or died on all sides in three decades of Irish troubles.
So how come so many lefties (and others) think Israel is the world's only human rights problem? Syria On Track to Kill More People Than Died in Both Intifadaswww.theatlantic.com
Kinsley opines about writing quality on the web being superfluous.
Oh why, oh why do I bother? On Web No One Cares If You Write Like a Dog: Michael Kinsley www.bloomberg.com
I’ll bet the Santorum is looking and feeling really frothy after that threesome last night.
I’ll bet the Santorum is looking and feeling really frothy after that threesome last night.
I'll admit it; I am utterly clueless about internal GOP politics. I know there are a lot of serious Christians out there, but how many times can there be a resurrection? And while I hesitate to use the words “Santorum” and “second coming” in the same sentence, I wonder if this is supposed to be a precursor to the end of times.
I do wish the righties would pick their guy and unite already. Maybe the fact this would please people like me is why they don't do it.
Same Sex Marriage as the Triumph of the Conservatives (part 97):
"Conservatives should want as many people as possible to live in institutions and social norms that promote stability, faithfulness and compassion. Marriage is an institution at the centre of society. It is because I value it so much that I want it to be extended. ... [It] is civilising, stabilising, a hugely important institution for bringing people together. But if marriage is fossilised and exclusive, that has only limited reach. [David Cameron's] attempt to enlarge and modernise the institution should not be seen as a threat to marriage but as its saviour," - Tim Montgomerie, Tory activist, editor and founder of the ConservativeHome blog and co-founder of the Conservative Christian Fellowship. Quote For The Day andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com
State Senate Republicans all want to take credit for the gravy, while disclaiming accountability for the mess they make; Andrew "Genug" Gounardes says "enough already!"
Kudos. Letter to Golden on Redistricting - 02072012 www.scribd.com
Ed Towns on Hakeem Jeffries spokesperson Lupe Todd: ""Ironically, his spokesperson not long ago defended me against some of the charges she is now leveling. I guess she has no objections to getting paid to play on that level."
He's absolutely right. I would definitely vote for Ed Towns against Lupe Todd Ed Towns gets a jumpstart from PACs, and Hakeem Jeffries' camp pounces | Capital New York www.capitalnewyork.com
Wow, rabid Brooklyn GOP blogger Russ Gallo has followed Gatemouth’s lead in noting that honoring Iraq war vets is more important than honoring the Giants (but why not do both?)
On Monday morning, I wrote: "Does the Meadowland have a canyon of heroes? Do outlet stores count? If we do a ticker tape parade for a Jersey team, can Iran War Veterans at least come and watch?"
On December 29, I wrote: "The War may have been a stupid idea, but Jimmy Oddo is right--why aren't we giving our Iraq veterans a parade?" A councilman wants to know why New York is not having a parade for Iraq veterans | Capital New York www.capitalnewyork.com
I’m Glad Russ is willing to join a cause championed by Rachel Maddow. Hope Russ doesn't get mad that I think the war was a stupid idea; (David Storobin has the same position as me--good luck finding his post though). Brooklyn GOP Radio: Canyon of Faux Heroes brooklyngopradio.blogspot.com
From the Annals of the Gatemouth Facebook Page:
Gate: Despite all his New York bashing, Newt must have taken solace from that last minute victory. On the other hand, the Giants had only been down by two points.
Sam Hudis: Of course the game winning touch down was made accidentally when Ahmad Bradshaw lost his balance and fell on his ass. I'm not sure what the analogy would be there.
Gate: What? You don't think Mitt is capable of losing his balance and falling on his ass ?
Domestic Partner: Can you tell me the name of any famous Giants or Patriots?
Gate: Gulliver and Nathan Hale
Domestic Partner: Can you tell me the name of any famous Giants or Patriots?
Gate: Gulliver and Nathan Hale
Does the Meadowland have a canyon of heroes? Do outlet stores count? If we do a ticker tape parade for a Jersey team, can Iran War Veterans at least come and watch?
Despite all his New York bashing, Newt must have taken solace from that last minute victory. On the other hand, the Giants had only been down by two points.
Ho hum---Romney wins a state full of Mormons.
Other pertinent observation: If Ron Paul can't even place in a state with legalized hookers, it's hard to see where he goes from here (excepting perhaps the Big Easy).
If this were a normal campaign instead of its opposite (a mission from Ayn Rand), Paul would be over.
The Smartest Man In America in America Serves as the GOP's GPS and outlines four alternative routes for the road ahead. Five Paths Forward for G.O.P. Nomination fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com
Chait: "Any attempt to explain why Romneycare is so vastly different than Obamacare really ought to explain why the economist who designed both plans thinks they’re the same fucking bill." Conservatives to Rescue Romney From His Past nymag.com
Frum Should Just Become A Democrat (Part 97): "Because of the Affordable Care Act, near-universal health coverage is coming at last to the United States. That's not a clock that can or should be turned back. The conservative task ahead is to reform that new social commitment so that it is affordable and sustainable, so that it is financed in ways that do not discourage work, saving and investment." For Coulter, Against Levin www.thedailybeast.com
Ron Paul wins Sheldon Adelson's private Havdalah caucus.
This reminds me of all those Jews in Boca who voted for Buchanan; as Bill Maher said:
"All eyes turned to Jewville to sort out the mess,
But Hyman and Hershel and dear old Aunt Bess,
Were too senile to vote for the one that they liked,
They poked the wrong hole and joined the Third Reich." Adelson Sits Helplessly Grim-Faced as Supporters of the Anti-Israel Ron Paul Over-run the NV Jewish. gestetnerupdates.com
As far as I can make out Ron Paul now favors emergency contraception, but only in the case of "Honest Rape," which I guess rules it out in cases of "Rape By Deception.” Is this another slap at Israel? Ron Paul: If It's an 'Honest Rape' a Woman Should Go to the Emergency Room, 'Get a Shot of Estrogen' videocafe.crooksandliars.com
Saletan: "If you want to drive Planned Parenthood out of the abortion business, don’t send them less money. Send them more. Help Planned Parenthood become what it has wanted to be all along: The organization that helps women avoid unwanted pregnancies, so they don’t have to abort them." The Komen fiasco: How to drive Planned Parenthood out of the abortion business. www.slate.com
Republicans are so intent on proving there's voter fraud that they're committing it themselves. Indiana Republican Secretary Of State Found Guilty Of Voter Fraud www.addictinginfo.org
Goldberg: "Boiling wraths! Filthy Zionist entities! Black and dirty microbes! Ahmadinejad is not just an average spewer of anti-Israel invective, he is the Robert Browning of hate. It is not clear why some people won't give him his due." What is At the Root of the Israel-Iran Confrontation? www.theatlantic.com
A guy who runs for office as a victim of religious persecution while simultaneously advocating that other religious minorities be denied the right to have a place to worship now runs a campaign entirely bereft of ideas, which, given his ideas, may actually be for the best. David Storobin’s Game Plan | City and State www.cityandstateny.com
Holocaust denier defends Storobin. To Lew Fidler: Is This The Best You Have To Offer? | Room Eight www.r8ny.com
Fidler likes anything on a rotisserie, even his sport equipment. Still, fantasy sports beats imagining the fantasy that Putin is a great man. Lew Fidler’s Fantasy Sports History www.politicker.com
· Is the resurrection imminent? Maybe we should set the primary for Easter Sunday. Jesus Gonzalez For City Council? | City and State www.cityandstateny.com
Jerry Lewis in "The Jazz Singer" AKA "The Day The Clown Cried Mammy." Jerry’s vids www.nypost.com
I woke up to find this posted on one of my threads.
I woke up to find this posted on one of my threads.
Storobin Responds to Gatemouth: http://gestetnerupdates.com/2012/02/03/video-gop-nys-senate-candidate-david-storobin-interview/. To save 15 minutes of your life, start at 15:00.
Actually, I’d start at 11:00 or 12:00.
First let’s talk about me:
STOROBIN: My articles are still very much available.
GATE: I guess that depends upon what your definition of “very much available” is. Many are very hard to find. I’m pretty sure a few I looked at in December, when I first took up this task (before the two data bases which contained a fully indexed list of what appeared to be most of Storobin’s articles were either wiped or closed), are gone entirely.
Of the articles which still do exist, many were extremely hard to locate. For instance, Storobin’s surprisingly sympathetic article about Russian collaborators with the Nazis, “Pro-Axis Russians: Terrorists ... and Democratic Capitalists,” is seemingly only available in English on the white supremacist hate site; the Vanguard News Network Forum, where I think it belongs.
And Storobin’s full throated defense of Vladimir Putin’s poaching players from the National Hockey League seems to appear only on what seems to be a very strange sports discussion board.
STOROBIN: The person who is doing the main attack dog for the Fidler campaign said he had a year to read them, he’s read all of them, and he found them to be quote “boring.”
STOROBIN: Their person has said, their person has said that he’s read everything and this is all they could find…
GATE: Well. Woof woof. This is a lie almost from whole clothe.
I am not “doing the main attack dog” for the Fidler campaign. As I’ve admitted, I wrote Fidler a couple of check. My family also attended a rally for him on MLK day (in between us buying Dybbuk a Mario game at J&R, and having a dim sum lunch at Jing Fong). I think I may have also emailed Fidler a link of the article where Storobin gives Putin a full “around the world”, including a rim job, but typical of Fidler, he could not open the link, and I had to paste it.
I will also note that I was the first writer to criticize Fidler for going too far when he attacked Storobin (at what he thought was a private party) by linking Storobin to white supremacists, and that I’d also criticized another blogger for doing the same thing a few days before.
As to Storobin’s other assertions.
I first head of Storobin in May, 2011, which is considerably less than a year ago, and noticed almost immediately that his articles attracted links from hate sites, but I did not read any more than one or two at the time. In fact, I probably never would have read Storobin again, had it not been for the fact that a couple of GOP bloggers called me out on a thread for mis-portraying Storobin’s views.
Stung, I went a searchin’ and found the motherload on a blog which Mr. Storobin had founded called Global Politician, where, using the site’s search function, I located dozens of pieces of Mr. Storobin’s writings. There was also an ad from Mr. Storobin’s law firm.
In answer to my critics, I promised to do a full parsing of Mr. Storobin's voluminous published writing.
As I then noted:
“Since I indicated my interest in exploring Storobin’s writings, the ad from his law firm seems to have been taken down. Moreover, a search today using the same search function I used before indicates that Mr. Storobin has published nothing in Global Politician, even though a Google search indicates otherwise. So, I cannot share with you the original postings of part one and part two of Mr. Storobin’s series spotlighting the leaders of The Afrikaner Independence Movement.
Sadly, I’ve done only the most glancing survey of these articles before Mr. Storobin’s articles (and seemingly nothing else on the site), were thoroughly scrubbed.
Luckily, many of Mr. Storobin’s pieces were reprinted elsewhere, including more than one on white supremacist hate sites.”
Then, as luck would have it, I again hit the motherload. About a week before the New Year, I found a site called “International Analyst Network” which contained over 40 pieces of Mr. Storobin’s work.
Not his entire legacy, but a good start. As I then noted.
“I promised myself I would start New Year’s weekend on what promised to be a long and painful slog in order to be able to deeply parse the mysteries which awaited me.
However, to my shock, when I returned to the same site on 12/30/11, this is what I found in their stead.”
Even worse, I tried using the links on the contents page I cached above, only to discover that only one of them worked, and that was the link to Storobin’s law firm.
According to the site, they’re “closing our doors for a little while to make some much needed improvements to our network.
We'll be back in 2012 with a new look, feel and focus.”
Perhaps this is just a coincidence; although it is now 2012 and they are still not back.
But I suspect that they won’t be. As I’ve noted the evidence indicates that Storobin founded this site as well.
At any rate, while I suspect that my rather comprehensive (in scope) but still glancing (when it comes to the matter of actually reading every word) review of Mr. Storobin’s writings means that I know more about Storobin’s writings than anyone but Storobin, it does not mean that I actually gave more than a glance to a small fraction of those pieces, in the very few days I had before those articles disappeared.
However, though I don’t believe I said this in any column (though I may have in a thread), Mr. Storobin is correct that I did find the majority of his work to be a snore.
STOROBIN: He said all I’m discussing is international stuff like the flat tax in Estonia and the tax policy in Hong Kong and some other stuff.
GATE: What I actually said is: “Before anyone says that Storobin’s views on international affairs should not matter, I have to note (1) it is clear that Storobin’s strange views on international affairs are practically the only thing Storobin really cares about (outside of ending progressive taxation), (2) and it is clear that he sees the State Senate only as a stepping stone for Congress, and (3) his views make him unfit for service in Congress; (4) his views on international affairs shed light on his entire political philosophy; and (5) a lot of his constituents care about Russia, and (6) many of them are militantly anti-Putin.”
Never read, or even mentioned the stuff about Estonia or Hong Kong. I’m sure this is my loss.
But it is not only with regard to me that Mr. Storobin obscures the truth.
STOROBIN: I didn’t even interview with them, with the people who are the real hateful people…
GATE: Storobin does not think the “Minuteman” and the white supremacist Afrikaner Independence Movement are hateful. This is the problem.
STOROBIN (answering why his articles have disappeared): That has nothing to do with me, I haven’t been the editor and I haven’t been the editor in years.
GATE: Right, it’s just a happy coincidence that he was entirely deleted from one website he founded, and that the other site he founded just closed down for repairs two minutes later.
Storobin also shamelessly exploits hatred by attacking Fidler for funding LGTB groups, without noting that the funding was to prevent homeless children from freezing to death on the streets.
And he shamelessly lies about what Fidler has said and implied about his articles and his family.
STOROBIN: This is an insult to the Jewish community and to every decent person out there. To abuse, to abuse the memory of murdered Jews including my relatives is really shameful. It does not belong in politics.
GATE: This is a recurring motif in Storobin’s campaign. In a Talking Points Memo Storobin circulated, it notes “If you can’t trust Lew Fidler’s word on David Storobin’s Jewish faith, you can’t trust anything he says.”
I don’t recall Fidler saying anything about Storobin’s Jewish faith. “If you can’t trust David Storobin’s word on Lew Fidler’s statements, you can’t trust anything he says.”
What Lew Fidler did, and should not have done, was what is known as a “Kinsley Gaffe” A Kinsley gaffe is when a politician tells the truth. Not the objective truth (which it surely was not), but the truth about how he sees the world, without regard to how it will play.
Fidler, an experienced immigration lawyer, and longtime supporter of immigrant causes, including Russian Jews, saw Storobin's 2007 interview with Jim Gilchrist of the “Minuteman Project on Immigration, Terror, and Elections, (a group which had been condemned by the Anti Defamation League), which began with Storobin saying “Today I spoke to Jim Gilchrist, the founder of the Minuteman Project. The most striking part of the interview was how mild his views on immigration truly were. The man has been vilified by most of the Left and even much of the Right, including the White House. He’s supposed to be an immigrant-hating vigilante who dreams of dead Mexicans at night. Instead, he’s an intelligent, mild-mannered person with very reasonable proposals..." and Fidler got justifiably repulsed.
Surely Fidler thought "If Lew Fidler had the bad taste and poor judgment to interview a white supremacist not once but twice, is there any question that when he was done it would be clear to all concerned that he found the views to be repugnant?” Surely Fidler thought that such an interview done by Lew Fidler would never be linked on a site like Stormfront.
Fidler was probably not going to emphasize such things in his campaign, because there’s really little to be gained by raising such issues in the heavily white 27th SD. A majority of voters there probably do abhor racism, but even among those who do, it’s not like racism is an issue which would drive them to the polls.
But here was Lew Fidler at a private party at a bar in front of a group of drunk young Democrats, speaking from his heart instead of his head, telling them the truth about what he really thought about David Storobin, and since he was speaking from the heart, he was not accurate with his words. He didn’t say “David Storobin is linked by hate sites because they love what he writes” which would have been factually accurate. Instead he said Storobin has ties to hate groups—something which one might reasonably suspect, but which cannot be proven.
Instead of being an intemperate assertion among friends, cell phone cameras turned the remark into a web-posting.
I should note that some respectable people think Fidler said nothing wrong. I quote from an email saying I was too harsh on Fidler
ERIK ENGQUIST (of Crain’s): A link is not a tie?... Yeah, I think what Lew said is OK. Certainly by the current standards of politics
Besides me, few noticed the video, but Storobin kept beating the drum, so that the remarks which had purportedly so offended him and had purportedly caused him so much anguish, but which no one had noticed, and which were not emerging as a Fidler campaign mantra, eventually became noticed by everyone.
The Fidler campaign’s biggest sin here was to initially refuse to back down from Fidler’s impromptu error, sending out a press release trying to prove their candidate’s error was true.
Stupid political machismo, but not “abus[ing] the memory of murdered Jews.”
Abusing the memory of murdered Jews is what Storobin is doing now. In fact, it the number one “issue” in the Talking Points Memo circulated by the Storobin campaign.
STOROBIN: If I had links to Nazis, they’d kill me. These are the people who wiped out all four of my grandparents’ families.
STOROBIN: It’s an assault on free speech, it’s an assault on media, it’s an assault on reason and it’s an assault on logic, and most of all it’s an assault on the Jewish community, and it’s an assault on all those people who died in concentration camps like my relatives.
GATE: I don’t want to overemphasize this, but Domestic Partner, most of whose family was wiped out in the Holocaust (her mother survived in an attic) insisted that I point out that Storobin’s family was not killed in the Holocaust because they were Jews; they were killed in a war because they were soldiers. As Storobin notes in the family album he released the other day, five of his grandfather’s brothers were killed as soldiers fighting the Nazis, a sadly common experience among Russians of that generation, though hardly a specifically Jewish one. However, this did not stop Storobin’s from writing sympathetically about Russian collaborators with the Nazis, “Russian collaborators with the Nazis.”
STOROBIN: He’s engaged in name-calling and he’s engaged in attacks against my family…
STOROBIN: And to attack my mother, my mother [he’s starting to sound like Montgomery Clift in “Judgment at Nuremberg.”] for giving me a perfectly legal donation and to say “why is your mother giving you money is low gutter politics.
GATE: The Fidler campaign had merely pointed out that 50% of the money Storobin had raised consisted of a personal loan made by Storobin to the campaign and a contribution from his mommy.
STOROBIN: We need to get beyond it; we need to get beyond it. Let’s discuss discuss issues.
GATE: Let us discuss discuss.
As City Hall News notes: “A strategist for Republican Senate candidate David Storobin’s campaign passed along a memo highlighting the four main lines of attack the Republican expects to pursue against Brooklyn Councilman Lew Fidler during the rest of their campaign.
These talking points are expected to show up in flyers, mailers and media messaging up until Election Day on Mar. 20…”
The four talking points are ““Spreading Lies About David Storobin,” “Campaign Finance Misdeeds,” “Parking Perk” and ““Extra Income Problem.”
Obviously Storobin does not want to “discuss discuss” issues. He wants to “attack attack.” Fidler personally.
Which I suppose would be step up from campaigning in favor of children being allowed to freeze to death.
Meanwhile, I suggest the press stop taking so seriously every word from this obviously deranged human being the Republicans have chosen to sneeze upon a voting machine.
DAVID STOROBIN: “Rather than the joke it was in the late 1990s, Putin’s Russia of 2008 is a country that matters. It matters in terms of global economy, oil and gas, United Nations, War on Terror and just about every other international issue.
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DAVID STOROBIN: “Rather than the joke it was in the late 1990s, Putin’s Russia of 2008 is a country that matters. It matters in terms of global economy, oil and gas, United Nations, War on Terror and just about every other international issue.
CNN and other Western media likes to portray the Russian people as fools who blindly support Putin and his semi-dictatorial tendencies. But they are not fools. They know that today they are wealthier than ever before in Russian history, and Putin has been their leader responsible for the economic rise…But more than economics, what truly makes Russians support Putin is a restored sense of pride, a sense that their country matters once again for the first time in a generation.”
You may already know State Senate candidate David Storobin is an outlier, a strange fringe type who feels compelled to whitewash_immigrant_bashers and give a forum to justifiably obscure white supremacists like the Afrikaner Independence Movement.
But I bet you didn’t know he was an apologist for the authoritarian regime of Vladimir Putin.
Before anyone says that Storobin’s views on international affairs should not matter, I have to note (1) it is clear that Storobin’s strange views on international affairs are practically the only thing Storobin really cares about (outside of ending progressive taxation), (2) and it is clear that he sees the State Senate only as a stepping stone for Congress, and (3) his views make him unfit for service in Congress; (4) his views on international affairs shed light on his entire political philosophy; and (5) a lot of his constituents care about Russia, and (6) many of them are militantly anti-Putin.
Storobin’s article,“ Russia’s Nuclear Declaration: A Defense, Not An Attack (first published on Storobin’s “Global Politician” on January 22, 2008) begins with a lovely quote from the Russian Army Chief of Staff, General Yuri Baluyevsky, in which the General articulates a doctrine of preventive nuclear warfare:
"We have no plans to attack anyone, but we consider it necessary for all our partners in the world community to clearly understand ... that to defend the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Russia and its allies, military forces will be used, including preventively, the use of nuclear weapons."
Now, a normal conventional conservative Republican like Congressman Bob Turner or Congressman Michael Grimm would probably react to such a statement angrily, promising a little pre-emption of our own and denouncing the Appeasement-ocrats for not saying the same.
Storobin does not do this. Instead, he defends Baluyevsky, and his boss, Vladimir Putin.
But not before first engaging in some totally gratuitous racism and sexism about the then-current Clinton/Obama race:
“This announcement was largely ignored by the American media as it debated what’s more important for the next President: the shape of the candidate’s genitals or the color.”
Then comes the defense of the indefensible:
“…Moscow is not trying to threaten the world despite the panic that the word "nuclear" usually provokes. The General's statement is also not particularly extraordinary. Russia’s new stance is not a threat to the West, much less the beginning of a new Cold War.”
Whew, and I was worried.
But not Storobin, who quotes with approval a young Russian’s defense of Putin.
“He restored our pride. Russia was an international joke. Nobody treated us as equals before, but now we matter.”
This sound eerily like defenses once heard about Hitler.
Storobin seems compelled to defend, or at least rationalize Putin's every move.
Let me be clear, I am not criticizing Storobin for merely expressing a disagreement with some aspect of US foreign or defense policy. There are some who would bait a candidate for doing that—although, in my experience, the people who would do so are overwhelmingly conservative Republicans.
Still, it can be a bit jarring to read everything he says.
Individually, some of the statements are defensible. Collectively, they amount to a love letter to a despot:
"But Putin’s Russia also became more assertive in promoting its interests, rather than just being America’s little lap dog.”
“During the Ukrainian elections in 2004, Americans tried not only to promote Viktor Yuschenko, but to turn him into a “candidate of the West” to the point where some have even traveled to Kiev. Unlike in Kosovo a half decade earlier, this time Russia fought back with all the vigor of a cornered bear, the same way Washington would fight an attempt to establish a pro-Russian, anti-American regime in Canada. The result was Moscow’s first major victory on the international scene in at least 20 years.”
“It was now Moscow’s time to branch out of the borders of the former USSR.
At times Russia is fighting just for the sake of fighting. Like a picked-on school boy who just took a self-defense course, Moscow felt the need to assert itself by poking the West in the eye as a show of strength.
Putin realized that no country will choose to ally with Russia over the United States if they have a choice. He thus made a decision to embrace the enemies of the West such as Iran, Syria and Venezuela. In the United Nations, Russia made things difficult for the United States in order to show that it is a country that must be paid attention to.”
Storobin not only rationalizes the indefensible, seems to enjoy every minute, while at the same time trying to make light of the threat.
“This Russian alliance with the enemies of the West is unlikely to hold for a long time, however. While some countries, such as Venezuela, are of no long-term importance to Moscow and could be either a friend or an enemy…”
He also minimizes Russia’s footsie with Iran, arguing the countries are natural enemies. Strangely, it seems to elude him that it is this very threat which motivates the alliance and makes it far more dangerous.
Storobin then goes on to greater rationalizations still:
“Kremlin pretends to help Tehran inside and outside the United Nations only to play Washington for a fool. Americans are paying Russians to do exactly what they want to do anyway, while at the same time making Moscow seem like a major player on the world scene.”
He then affirms Russia’s right to impose its will upon others, even with pre-emptive use of nukes:
“In declaring itself willing to defend its allies, with nuclear weapons if needed, Moscow did not intend to tell the world that it wants a new Cold War...[this ] is no difference an American defense of its allies in Western Europe, South Korea, Taiwan, Israel, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and many other countries.”
“Ten years ago, Bill Clinton unnecessarily provoked the Russian people by going back on his agreement with Moscow… George W. Bush must not make the same mistake…And liberal Jewish organizations must remember that should they support [Russia's enemies], Russia and its allies would be fully justified in aiding Hamas in Gaza as payback.”
And if that doesn’t bother you, perhaps Storobin’s full throated defense of Putin’s poaching players from the National Hockey League will.
In our system of law, one who asks the Court for an equitable remedy must come before it with “clean hands.”
In our system of law, one who asks the Court for an equitable remedy must come before it with “clean hands.”
David Storobin has asked the Court of Public Opinion for Equity because of words said by his opponent Councilman Lew Fidler.
I don’t think Fidler should used have the words he used, which slightly misconstrue things I’ve said in a series of articles about Storobin.
But, I strongly feel that Storobin has forfeited his right to Equity in the Court of Public Opinion.
Storobin does not have clean hands.
To recap, Fidler said the following at a Young Democrats meeting:
“a guy who can’t even fess up to what he writes on his web pages anymore and is busy scrubbing what little history he has because he’s embarrassed about his ties to skinheads and neo-Nazi groups and white supremacist groups because the Republicans had no idea who they were putting on the ballot.”
I suspect Fidler got caught in a bad game of telephone. Someone said Storobin’s pieces were repeatedly “linked by” websites of skinheads and neo-Nazi groups and white supremacist groups, which is true. They are “linked,” because, as I showed yesterday, what Storobin writes is greatly appealing to haters.
My guess is that somewhere along the line the assertion that Storobin was “linked by” such people was reported to Fidler in terms that Storobin was “linked to” them –a reasonable supposition, but one which has not been proven. From “linked to” it is only steps to having “ties with.”
At any rate, Storobin is linked to John Press, the former head of the Brooklyn Tea Party, whose first meeting Storobin hosted, and who has publicly aired views about “culturalism” which are arguably racialist. Further, Storobin not only whitewashes immigrant-bashing Minuteman Jim Gilchrist, but the recent controversy drew a strongly worded defense of Storobin by Gilchrist himself, in a thread on a local website. As the Anti Defamation League has noted, “the Minuteman Project has attracted a variety of extremists and anti-immigration activists of all types. A number of neo-Nazi National Alliance members showed up for the first weekend of events…”
So, maybe Fidler wasn’t all that wrong.
At any rate, the remarks were videotaped, and the video which so offended Storobin, apparently causing him great aguish, has been relentlessly distributed by his supporters ever since.
The deeply offended Storobin has now released a photo collage of family members who died fighting the Nazis in World War II or who were murdered by Soviet persecutors for being Jewish. The collage is accompanied by deeply mawkish prose.
As I said yesterday, by carrying the accusation slightly farther than the provable facts justify, Fidler has allowed a thoroughly despicable character who should never be allowed to hold public office to temporarily lay claim to the moral high ground to which he is not entitled.
That being said (and sad) I now must opine that Storobin is guilty of everything he accuses Fidler of and worse.
STOROBIN HAS NO RIGHT TO CLAIM TO IT IS OFFENSIVE TO IMLPY PEOPLE ARE LIKE NAZIS, BECAUSE HE DOES IT ALL THE TIME:
In a column I did examining Storobin’s Facebook posts, Storobin said:
David Storobin: Anti-Semitism tainting Occupy Wall Street protests www.ynetnews.com
David Storobin: Intersect Eps. 33: Marriage Equality - Intersect on blip.tv
“In the early 1990s, Yugoslavia fell apart along ethnic lines. The most contentious place was Bosnia where the Muslims clashed with Christian Serbs. Both sides committed atrocities…”
“It was thus hardly surprising that Bill Clinton chose to help Bosnian Muslims over the Serbs. What was unusual was the vilification of the Serbs as the only side that committed atrocities. While it is true that the Serbs committed crimes, it was always doubtless that Bosnians did as well.”
In the same article, Storobin descends into Charles Barron style race baiting.
STOROBIN: [The Russians’] power in Savino's district is so miniscule that she openly called the views of Russian-Americans "absurd" in a recent interview in the Staten Island Advance, knowing that her Russian constituents are too outnumbered to do anything about the insult during the next election….
… In other communities, such disregard and abuse would be unthinkable. Politicians, even the most corrupt ones, cannot harass local small businesses, nor ignore their legitimate concerns. At the very least, they have to pretend they are trying to help their constituents.
Not so for Russian-American voters. Russians are "absurd."…Russians are ... disenfranchised.”
Storobin does not link the article with Savino’s “offending” quote, but I will.
The article is called “Many Russians on Staten Island Aligning With Republicans.”
The article notes that the newly formed Citizens Magazine Business Club, a confederation of more than 50 Russian-owned businesses in Staten Island and Brooklyn, has aligned itself with the Molinari Republican Club in Staten Island in an effort to increase the Russian community's political and economic clout.
A businessman named Arkadiy Fridman is quoted:
"We decided we had to support this club…They are very close to our political and business vision."
The article then notes:
In the wake of the national GOP's big wins this year, when the party took back control of the House, Republicans everywhere are more confident that their bedrock message of smaller government and lower taxes will resonate with American voters.
Fridman said that the Democrats "are going in an absolutely different direction," focusing on "income redistribution" and rich-versus-poor "class war."
Fridman then makes the money quote (almost literally):
"It's too socialistic…It's very painful for us to see."
The article then goes on to note:
The Democrats' national losses were seen as a rejection of President Barack Obama's health care reform law and other initiatives that opponents say went too far in pushing government control on Americans.
The Big Brother approach reminds Fridman too much of what he left behind in the former Soviet Union.
Fridman then opines:
"It's the same rule like it was there."
Another businessman, Michael Petrov, is quoted to similar effect. He objects to "micro-managing of the economy…Government is affecting small business more and more…It's the same as what's happening in Russia."
At the end of the article a Democrat is finally allowed to respond.
State Sen. Diane Savino (D-North Shore/Brooklyn) said she understands the Russian aversion to anything that looks like big government, but thinks the criticism of the Democratic Party is off-base.
"You can't ignore the fact that the Russian population here came of age during the Soviet era," said Ms. Savino, who counts many Russians among her Brooklyn constituents.
"They have different thoughts on what communism and socialism mean. They are a little more sensitive to it.
"But, that being said," she added, "you can't compare the policies of the Democratic Party with communism. It's absurd."
There you have it.
Storobin’s description of what Senator Savino said about Russians, based on one single word in an article he refused to link, verges upon the definition of false light libel, and might even be actionable if the Senator were not a public figure.
Storobin ought to be ashamed himself.
Another primary not worth a full column.
Another primary not worth a full column.
It’s now functionally a two man race, but one has one eye and is toothless and profusely bleeding. Still, Gingrich is angrier than ever and capable of doing some damage—and places like Alabama are not known for any particular prejudice against toothlessness anyway. Ron Paul will drag on because he’s on a mission from G-d or Adam Sm-th; there are caucus states on the map might actually draw out a victory, but his votes don’t come from the hide of either of his opponents, so he’s not really a relevant factor. It’s hard to see what the rationale is for a continuation of the Santorum campaign outside of a desire to accumulate a favor Mitt Romney will owe him, but as the race goes on even the value of that will become less and less worthwhile.
Verdict: the race may be over, but there will be more mayhem until the fat lady sings.
Dybbuk's new favorite website. Dogs Against Romney: I Ride Inside. www.dogsagainstromney.com
Goldberg explains the art of the dog whistle.
Money quote: "If it takes more than two sentences for a critic to explain why a dog-whistle is a dog-whistle, the whistler wins.” How to Listen for Racism on the Campaign Trail: Jeffrey Goldberg www.bloomberg.com
From the brilliant Todd Breitbart:
"Gerrymanders: beware of decoys.
Several wildly convoluted districts are easily identified by a glance at the map. It requires a large-scale map, however, to follow the tangles and see where these districts actually go. They were obviously created in a spirit of contempt for the NYS constitutional rule that Senate districts “be in as compact form as practicable.” But in examining the map for these curiosities, it is important to beware of decoys. If it is impossible to imagine what partisan advantage the Senate Majority could gain from an obnoxious feature, it is probably designed as a target of criticism, to be taken out later in a display of listening to the people – while the obnoxious features they really want remain intact."
As I noted, while the Assembly redistricting plan is not as bad as the one for the Senate, it is also a partisan gerrymander. Most of Assembly Republican Leader Brian Kolb's criticisms are quite apt, and he actually misses some I would make. Redistricting analysis shows Assembly gerrymandering too, not surprising Kolb | The Empire empire.wnyc.org
HESH RABKIN: Gate, I suggest you comment on 3 more recent redistricting items
Denny, in a Kinsley gaffe, shows that LATFOR is lying when they claim they haven't done the Congressional lines yet. http://www.politickerny.com/2012/01/28/the-plan-to-keep-charlie-rangel-in-washington/
Shelly wanting to preserve Turner's District is proof that it won't be preserved. As he says, “I believe it’s a Democratic seat and would be won by a Democrat,” http://www.nydailynews.com/news/democrats-love-gop-rep-bob-turner-district-article-1.1013781
Not technically about redistricting but the above ignores the fact that Skelos gave both Carlucci & Velesky much more favorable districts. Just because the Rockland GOP Leader says they are seriously challenging Carlucci doesn't make it true. http://www.cityandstateny.com/idc-pac-problem/
Skelos: Better we should close a few schools than have less than three primaries.
There's fiscal conservatism, and there's the NYS GOP, and never the twain shall meet. Skelos Still Hoping For August Primary www.nydailynews.com
Memo to David Storobin: Candidate leaves race because of blog posts.
And this is a guy who never denied anyone's holocaust. Marc Cenedella Exits U.S. Senate Race www.politickerny.com
Frank Padavan takes to social media? A man whose cell phone has a rotary dial. Ex-State Sen. Frank Padavan Takes Senate Question To Facebook www.cityandstateny.com
Comic Book Guy: Worst. Campaign. Ever.
I bet this guy spends more dollars than he gets votes.
Nine nine nine indeed. Comic Book Store Owner To Run for City Council; Vows to Spend Only $999 www.politickerny.com
No one disputes that articles written by State Senate candidate David Storobin have frequently been linked by white supremacist hate sites.
No one disputes that articles written by State Senate candidate David Storobin have frequently been linked by white supremacist hate sites.
Today, at a press conference, Storobin defended himself against charges of racism by saying he could not help who linked the articles he has written.
This is only technically accurate.
If one strews the sidewalk in front of one’s house with stinking, rotting decaying offal and animal feces, one should really not claim surprise when one attracts rats, flies and maggots.
Mr. Storobin strew the filth, and is now crying about getting a summons, essentially complaining that the officer made a technical error in writing his address.
Technically, he may be correct.
I am on the record criticizing both blogger Mole333 and Councilman Lew Fidler for going somewhat too far in linking State Senate candidate David Storobin with white supremacists, which they did based upon
I will criticize them again for a very grave sin.
While, based upon his writings, there is every reason to suspect that Mr. Storobin would be comfortable in the company of white supremacists, there is little solid evidence that Mr. Storobin has partaken of such company. By carrying the accusation slightly farther than the provable facts justify, Mole and Fidler have allowed a thoroughly despicable character who should never be allowed to hold public office to temporarily lay claim to the moral high ground to which he is not entitled.
Beyond that, the slander is only a technical one. They have created a possibly false impression (or not) about Mr. Storobin’s associates, but have been perfectly accurate about Mr. Storobin’s views.
Mr. Storobin has published dozens of articles on two sites he founded, Global Politician and International Analyst Network; however, since becoming a candidate Storobin has scrubbed his contributions off Global Politician and closed down International Analyst for repairs
Stormfront is a white nationalist and supremacist neo-Nazi Internet forum that has been described as the Internet's first major hate site.
Stormfront began as an online bulletin board system in the early 1990s before being established as a website in 1995 by former Ku Klux Klan leader and white nationalist activist Don Black. It received national attention in the United States in 2000 after being featured as the subject of a documentary, Hate.com. Stormfront has been the subject of controversy after being removed from French and German Google indexes, for targeting an online FOX News poll on racial segregation, and for having political candidates as members. Its prominence has grown since the 1990s, attracting attention from watchdog organizations that oppose racism and antisemitism.
Highly publicized among right-wing extremists ranging from militia groups to white supremacist organizations, the Minuteman Project has attracted a variety of extremists and anti-immigration activists of all types. A number of neo-Nazi National Alliance members showed up for the first weekend of events…before the project began, National Alliance fliers, describing illegal immigration as an "invasion" that will cause white people to be "a minority within the next 50 years," were circulated…
The Minuteman Project has been advertised on various extremist Web sites. For example, an Aryan Nation Web site links to the Minuteman Project, proclaiming "a call for action on part of ALL ARYAN SOLDIERS."
The magazine and foundation were founded by Jared Taylor, and the first issue was published in November 1990.
American Renaissance states that it is a monthly magazine first published in 1991. A section called What We Believe on the organization's website states that "Race is an important aspect of individual and group identity. Of all the fault lines that divide society — language, religion, class, ideology — it is the most prominent and divisive. Race and racial conflict are at the heart of the most serious challenges the Western World faces in the 21st century. The problems of race cannot be solved without adequate understanding. Attempts to gloss over the significance of race or even to deny its reality only make problems worse. Progress requires the study of all aspects of race, whether historical, cultural, or biological. This approach is known as race realism."
In fairness I should note that this would appear to be at least a slight step up from Storefront:
The Anti-Defamation League writes that "Taylor eschews anti-Semitism. Seeing Jews as white, greatly influential and the “conscience of society,” Taylor rather seeks to partner with Jews who share his views on race and racial diversity" and "Jews have been speakers and/or participants at all eight American Renaissance conferences."
Nowhere, either in the interviews or commentary, or in any other article, does Storobin condemn the Afrikaner nationalists, even though he almost universally opposes the national claims of almost every ethnic minority (and sometimes majority) almost everywhere else in the world.
Contrast the softball treatment of the Afrikaners to the way Storobin treats countries, movements and religion he does not care for (Of course, you really can’t, because thanks to Storobin’s scrubbing, the task is nearly impossible).
A similar pattern infects all Storobin's writing about race.
Speaking of some international development during January 2008, when the Obama/Hillary contest was in full swing Storobin opines “This announcement was largely ignored by the American media as it debated what’s more important for the next President: the shape of the candidate’s genitals or the color. “
In Storobin’s work, it is always the white man and only the white man who is beleaguered, usually by the most horrifying form of discrimination, oppressive political correctness.
If there is one article in existence where Storobin empathizes with racial minorities, I cannot find it.
4) Another, somewhat more innocuous Storobin piece about the racial characteristics of Jews and Palestinians, which nonetheless betrays a rather anal obsession with racial origins, appears on the rather strange (even in this context) hate site called “Phora.” The website of Phora proclaims to "discuss racialism, eugenics, nationalism, holocaust revisionism, history, philosophy, science, politics." The Anti-Defamation League has characterized it as "an anti-Semitic Internet forum."
As Crain’s recently noted:
An article by a denier of the Armenian genocide gives a telling insight into Storobin’s editorial philosophy. He describes the process whereby S
It reminds me of what I read last week in the Atlantic about Ron Paul:
A person involved in Paul's businesses, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid criticizing a former employer, said Paul and his associates decided in the late 1980s to try to increase sales by making the newsletters more provocative. They discussed adding controversial material, including racial statements, to help the business, the person said.
"It was playing on a growing racial tension, economic tension, fear of government,'' said the person, who supports Paul's economic policies but is not backing him for president.”I'm not saying Ron believed this stuff. It was good copy. Ron Paul is a shrewd businessman.''…
….Ed Crane, the longtime president of the libertarian Cato Institute, said he met Paul for lunch during this period, and the two men discussed direct-mail solicitations, which Paul was sending out to interest people in his newsletters.
They agreed that "people who have extreme views" are more likely than others to respond. Crane said Paul reported getting his best response when he used a mailing list from the now-defunct newspaper Spotlight, which was widely considered anti-Semitic and racist….
…The tone of…Paul publications changed, becoming increasingly controversial. In 1992, for example, the Ron Paul Political Report defended chess champion Bobby Fischer, who became known as an anti-Semitic Holocaust denier, for his stance on "Jewish questions
Is Mr. Storobin’s provocative website a sin?
He is certainly within his rights to publish what he wants, and he certainly has a right to his views, however sick.
But we have a right to judge him by those views, and also for the lack of limits on the views he sponsors, as we would have the right to judge a grocery owner who sold bread full of rat feces and poison.
In a free society, social mores and peer disapproval are usually far more effective limits on speech than government regulation could ever be. "Free" speech is a misnomer; it always has a cost; in a "free" society, that cost is determined by the marketplace rather than the government.
That some choose to sometimes hold their tongues is not always necessarily a bad thing. In this case, I advocate an Adam Smith solution to David Storobin.
I say we slap him with our invisible hand and take our voting business elsewhere.
"First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out --
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out --
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out --
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me -- and there was no one left to speak for me." --Martin Niemoller
If I had to find an article, among the dozens David Storobin has attempted to hide, which sums up his world view, and why he is unfit for public office (if not for membership in the civilized world), I probably could not do better than Storobin’s, “ Russia’s Nuclear Declaration: A Defense, Not An Attack, first published on Storobin’s “Global Politician” on January 22, 2008.
It is nothing less than an attempt to whitewash and justify genocide. As the husband of an Eastern European Jewish refugee whose mother survived the Holocaust by living in an attic like Anne Frank, this article makes Storobin appear as nothing less than despicable.
I do not say this because I already oppose Storobin. I’ve been public about my obsession with genocide for years.
I’ve been demonized so much lately by GOP bloggers that it’s sometimes hard to remember how vilified I once was (and still am in some sectors) by left “progressives.” While I dissent from left orthodoxies of all sorts, this is primarily because of my views on international affairs. In the aftermath of 9/11, I strongly supported our Afghan incursion (and supported it for far longer than I probably should have) and the fight against Islamo-Fascism (I even call it by that name). I cheered the death of Bin Laden and then cheered some more. I also supported our entry into Libya and cheered the fall of Khadafy (anyway you wanna spell it).
In sum, I am a liberal internationalist (with a strong dose of realist), often allied with the neo-cons against the so-called “progressives.” As such, I found myself, in 2006, strongly opposing “progressive” favorites like congressional candidate Chris Owens:
Unfortunately, Owens’ vision is often unrealistic, and occasionally troubling. I see nothing that contradicts my suspicion that, as a Quaker, Owens may have a sincere aversion to ever using military force, under any circumstances, even to stop genocide. Chris, if this is not true, please correct me! Because, in the end, I’m inclined to regard genocide as the ultimate character issue. And please, don’t quote me Gandhi or A.J Muste; Slobodon Milosevic didn’t find non-violent civil disobedience a compelling persuader, and neither do the folks responsible for the deaths in Darfur. In the end, I want a member of Congress who’s wrestled with, and lost sleep over, the question of under which circumstances the deployment of American forces in battle is justified. “Just say no” is not an adequate answer, but it appears to be the only answer Chris Owens is capable of giving.
As I’ve recounted, it was precisely the fact that Barack Obama was supported by the "just say no" (to any use of American force, ever, for any reason, even to stop genocide) crowd that caused me to vote for Senator Clinton in the 2008 primary, and it was precisely when I learned of Obama advisor Samantha Power’s work in the area of genocide prevention, and that Obama had sought Power out precisely for that reason, that I felt I could finally support Obama.
In fact, it was precisely Joe Lieberman’s role in getting the US to intervene to stop the genocide in Bosnia and Kosovo (especially impressive, as the lives he is responsible for saving were Islamic lives), that motivated my endorsement of his re-nomination in 2006, infuriating much of the local “progressive” blogocracy (as well as getting me my first national link—thank you Mickey Kaus).
I've also excoriated Ed Towns for failing to take this issue seriously.
My point of all this being, if “genocide is the ultimate character issue,” then David Storobin must be pronounced the biggest scumbag in New York politics.
In “Russia's Nuclear Declaration: A Defense, Not An Attack,” Storobin states.
“In the early 1990s, Yugoslavia fell apart along ethnic lines. The most contentious place was Bosnia where the Muslims clashed with Christian Serbs. Both sides committed atrocities…”
“It was thus hardly surprising that Bill Clinton chose to help Bosnian Muslims over the Serbs. What was unusual was the vilification of the Serbs as the only side that committed atrocities. While it is true that the Serbs committed crimes, it was always doubtless that Bosnians did as well.”
“Bill Clinton's grotesque unofficial and indirect alliance with Osama bin Ladin and Iranian Ayatollahs against Orthodox Christians (Russians and Serbs) was presented as a fight for human rights.”
Whoa there!
It is amusing to point out that Storobin’s statements bear a striking resemblance to those of Michael Moore on the same topic:
“We know Clinton is lying to us. We know there is no "Holocaust" taking place”
"Now is the time for all of us to stop Clinton and his disgusting, hypocritical fellow democrats who support him in the war. It is amazing to watch all these "liberal" congress members line up behind the President.”
They are also reminiscent of the denials of genocide made by the despicable Noam Chomsky.
Is Storobin a closet “progressive?”
The Bosnian War was an international armed conflict that took place between 1992 and 1995. The main belligerents were the forces of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and those of the self-proclaimed Bosnian Serb and Bosnian Croat entities within Bosnia and Herzegovina — ‘Republika Srpska’ and ‘Herzeg-Bosnia’. Both para-states enjoyed substantial political and military backing (overall control) from Serbia and Croatia respectively. NATO was involved in air-strikes against the Serbs.
Serbs committed at least 90 per cent of all atrocities in the Bosnian war (most of the rest were also committed against the Bosnians, but by Croats) according to an extensively documented 1995 report from the Central Intelligence Agency, which came to light four months before the war’s worst atrocity, the Srebrenica genocide.
The International Criminal Tribunal at the Hague found that the Bosnian war was NOT a ‘civil war’ but an international armed conflict involving Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, and NATO.
When I speak of genocide, I am talking of the brutal Serbian campaign of ethnic cleansing. in which one million Bosnians were displaced from their ancestral land.
While it is true that casualties took place on both sides, it is a despicable lie to say that war crimes took place on both sides. Bosnians defended themselves. Most Bosnians casualties were innocent civilians killed by those who sought racial purity in the name of “Greater Serbia.”
In any war, some soldiers on all sides did unpeakable things. The difference was that unspeakable things done by the Serbs were the result of policy and strategy.
The Bosnian Genocide was characterized by the policy of systematic rapes of Bosnian women and girls, horrific and prolonged siege and shelling of Bosnian cities, starvation and terrorization of the Bosnian population in the besieged enclaves and targeted destruction of Bosnian culture and history.
During the war, not even one Serb city was under the siege by Bosnian forces; in fact, the majority of Serb civilian casualties were killed by the Serbian army in the process of sniping and shelling multiethnic Bosnian cities like Sarajevo and Tuzla.
To say, as Storobin does, that there were atrocities committed on both sides, would be like saying atrocities were committed by both sides during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
Storobin takes a similar line on Kosovo.
“In March 1999, after months of exaggeration of Serbian atrocities by the Western media… Washington-led NATO began the air campaign against Serbia”
According to the US State Department, the evidence is also now clear that Serbian forces conducted a systematic campaign to burn or destroy bodies, or to bury the bodies, then rebury them to conceal evidence of Serbian crimes in Kosovo. At least 6,000 Kosovar Albanians were victims of mass murder, with an unknown number of victims of individual killings, and an unknown number of bodies burned or destroyed by Serbian forces throughout the conflict.
ICTY Chief Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte told the U.N. Security Council that her office had received reports of more than 11,000 killed in 529 reported mass grave and killing sites in Kosovo. The Prosecutor said her office had exhumed 2,108 bodies from 195 of the 529 known mass graves.
To this total must be added three other categories of victims: those buried in mass graves whose locations are unknown; what the ICTY reports is a significant number of sites where the precise number of bodies cannot be counted; and victims whose bodies were burned or destroyed by Serbian forces. Press accounts and eyewitness accounts provide credible details of a program of destruction of evidence by Serbian forces throughout Kosovo and even in Serbia proper. The number of victims whose bodies have been burned or destroyed may never be known, but the State Department stated that there is enough evidence has emerged to conclude that probably around 10,000 Kosovar Albanians were killed by Serbian forces.
But death was only one aspect of the Serbian atrocities in Kosovo. Over 1.5 million Kosovar Albanians--at least 90 percent of the estimated 1998 Kosovar Albanian population of Kosovo--were forcibly expelled from their homes. Tens of thousands of homes in at least 1,200 cities, towns, and villages were been damaged or destroyed. During the conflict, Serbian forces and paramilitaries implemented a systematic campaign to ethnically cleanse Kosovo--aspects of this campaign included forcible displacement of Kosovar Albanian civilians, looting of homes and businesses, widespread burning of homes, the use of human shields, detentions, summary executions, exhumation of mass graves, systematically organized rape, violations of medical neutrality and identity cleansing.
Christopher Hitchens puts the US actions in the Kosovo in perspective:
“We lose something important if we forget Kosovo and the harrowing events that finally led to the self-determination of its nearly 2-million inhabitants. Long deprived of even vestigial national and human rights, then forced at gunpoint onto deportation trains and threatened with the believable threat of mass murder, these people were belatedly rescued by an intervention that said, fairly simply, there is a limit beyond which law cannot be further broken and conscience further outraged.
There is no oil in Kosovo. The state interests of Israel were not involved. There were no votes to be gained; rather to the contrary, in fact. A large proportion of the victim population was and is Muslim. The least embarrassing way of phrasing this is to say that American and European honor was rather hastily saved, and a horrible threat to the peace of the region removed. Many brave and principled Serbs have good reason to recognize that a menace and an insult to their country, too, was abolished in the process.
In fact, Storobin was so opposed to American action to stop the genocide committed that he practically roots against his adopted county:
Here Storobin describes the Serbian withdrawal from Kosovo in 1999, and the attempted arrival of the Russians, thwarted by the USA. What’s stunning is which side Storobin roots for:
“The Serbs left the province and NATO moved in. But when Russian soldiers arrived, Americans blocked them, and the media portrayed this as the new Prague Spring of 1968 (when the Soviets ruthlessly crushed the Czechoslovakian liberation movement). But this time it was not Kremlin abusing its power – it was the White House.
To the Russians, it was the ultimate slap in the face. Already reeling from helplessness, Russians correctly saw this incident as an insult.”
There seem to be several reasons for Storobin’s objections to US intervention. One is that Bosnian and Kosovar Muslims sided with the Nazis, while most Serbs sided with the Allies.
Of course, by that standard, perhaps we should let Stalin off the hook as well, and we should not have put American lives at risk with the Berlin Airlift.
I note Storobin’s anathema against collaboration with the Nazis is far less stringent when applied to Orthodox Christians. For instance, Storobin was notably sympathetic to Russian collaborators with the Nazis in his article “Pro-Axis Russians: Terrorists ... and Democratic Capitalists (unreachable on its Global Politician link, which Storobin has wiped from the web--luckily, like many Storobin articles, one can still find it on a white supremacist hate site; in this case, the Vanguard News Network Forum).
And, just to keep thing in perspective, there is at least some evidence that Serbs are not so crazy about Jews themselves.
Another objection seems to be that we might hurt Vladimir Putin’s feelings. Storobin loves Vladimir Putin (more on that in a future column).
And, after all, as Storobin told us, “both sides committed atrocities.”.
I think to put in perspective how out of touch David Storobin is with the Jewish position on genocide, we should examine the statements of the most indisputably right of center group on the list, the Orthodox Union (OU).
Here’s the earliest OU statement I found on the subject:
Orthodox Union Outraged by Murders in Kosovo
Posted on Friday, January 15th, 1999
The Orthodox Union, the largest mainstream Orthodox Jewish organization in the United States, expressed its horror at the continued acts of violence and brutality occurring in Yugoslavia.
The report of the recent mass murders in Kosovo and “ethnic cleansing,” an expression that evokes a dark period in our own history of fifty years ago, affects us profoundly and we cannot be silent in the face of this horror.
We appeal to the United Nations and to NATO to intervene decisively and urgently to end the aggression and to ensure the safety of the people in Kosovo. Thousands of lives have been lost in the former Yugoslavia and the killing must stop. The mass murder of innocents and the intractability of the Milosvic regime are unacceptable.
We cannot sit idly by as the cruelty and killings persist.
We request that our rabbis and synagogue leaders contact their representatives and write to the President and Secretary of State and to United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, imploring them to act immediately and decisively to help end human rights violations and save lives.
Letters and calls should go out to world leaders asking them to exercise a show of true leadership in helping to immediately end the devastation and to provide aid for the victims.
Our community and all the Jewish people, remembering the brutality suffered by our people during the Nazi era, will not be still in the face of these human rights violations.
We call for responsible leadership on the part of the world bodies to help cease these acts of terror and violence.
And here they are supporting military action by the US.
Orthodox Union Supports Military Action Against Yugoslavia
April 9, 1999 - The Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, the largest mainstream Orthodox Jewish organization in the United States, reiterates its horror at the continued acts of violence and brutality occurring in Yugoslavia. As reports continue of murder, expulsion, and genocide conducted by Milosevic and his allies, we can only emphasize our outrage at this horrific slaughter which evokes that dark period in our own history 50 years ago.
In the past, we have appealed to the United Nations and to NATO to intervene decisively and urgently to end the aggression. We strongly support the NATO airstrikes to increase the pressure on Milosevic and to call a halt to the murder and cruelty of the Milosevic regime. We stand in strong solidarity with and pray for the NATO forces and their allies whose lives are being risked in the defense of innocents and in the effort to end human rights violations and save lives.
We reiterate our call upon the prosecutor of the UN War Crimes Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia to warn Milosevic and his followers that they will be held responsible for genocide and any other crimes against humanity committed by their forces in Kosovo.
Our community remembers the brutality suffered by our people during the Nazi era and cannot sit idly by as this slaughter and genocide persist. We pray that US and allied forces engaged return safely and that all the people in the region will be able to live in peace and security.
Christopher Hitchens notes that support for US military action among politically conservative Jews was not restricted to the Orthodox Union:
“That's when I began to first find myself on the same side as the neocons. I was signing petitions in favour of action in Bosnia, and I would look down the list of names and I kept finding, there's Richard Perle. There's Paul Wolfowitz. That seemed interesting to me. These people were saying that we had to act. Before, I had avoided them like the plague,…But nobody could say they were interested in oil in the Balkans, or in strategic needs, and the people who tried to say that – like Chomsky – looked ridiculous. So now I was interested.” [Also noteworthy was the support for American intervention from non-Jewish conservatives like John McCain].
I should note that, neither the history nor the religion of the victims kept Israel from its moral mission of lending a helping hand to the victims of genocide, as it took in dozens of Islamic refugees from Bosnia. Of course, since no good deed goes unpunished, they were immediately criticized by Palestinian leaders for trying to improve their image.
As we speak, Israel is cooperating with Kosovo on the deportation of a Serb (married to an Israeli), who is accused of war crimes in Kosovo.
After all that, almost anything else Storobin says about the Balkans can probably be ignored as the nonsensical, totally bereft of humanity, pro-Putin cheerleading that it is. Still, it is also BS on its own merits—like this whopper:
“But Kosovo was different than Bosnia. It was not autonomous in the same way that Bosnia was. For Belgrade to lose Bosnia was an equivalent of Moscow losing Ukraine, or for Britain to lose Scotland. For Belgrade to lose Kosovo was an equivalent of Moscow losing Chechnya, or for Britain to lose Manchester.”
I’ll let Hitchens, a voice so strong against Islamic militancy so strong that his death was mourned by Pamela Geller, answer that:
To begin with, there is no actual or theoretical world in which Kosovo could possibly have continued to be ruled from Belgrade, let alone considered part of Serbia. In the first place, the international treaties that originally recognized Kosovo as a constituent of Yugoslavia did just that: It was a member of a wider post-1918 federation and not a segment of just one province of it… Even the old-style Yugoslav Communists granted Kosovo the status of an autonomous region in their 1974 constitution. It was the great crime — one of the many great crimes — of former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic to negate both these previous agreements. Almost as soon as he seized power in 1989, he repealed the autonomy of Kosovo. And he went on to destroy the entire Yugoslav federation in a mad and genocidal effort to put a conquering “Greater Serbia” in its place. The independence of Kosovo is the closing act in the defeat of that wicked and crazy scheme. The Albanian majority would no more agree to a restoration of Serbian sovereignty than Poland would seek to fuse itself with Russia or Germany.
And:
Someone with a good memory of the conversation once told me how Lord Carrington, then one of the "mediators" of the incipient post-Yugoslavia war, came to the conclusion that Slobodan Milosevic was a highly dangerous man. Well-disposed toward Serbia (as the British establishment has always been), Carrington told the late dictator that he understood Serb concerns about significant Serbian minorities in Bosnia and Croatia. But why did Milosevic also insist on exclusive control over Kosovo, where the Albanian population was approximately 90 percent? "That," replied Milosevic coldly, "is for historical reasons." It's a shame, in retrospect, that it took us so long to diagnose the pathology of Serbia's combination of arrogance and self-pity, in which what is theirs is theirs and what is anybody else's is negotiable.
We used to read this same atavistic proclamation by the hellish light of burning Sarajevo, and now we glimpse it again through the flames of the blazing U.S. Embassy in Belgrade, and by the glare of similar but less dramatic arsons set by Serbs in ski masks in northern Kosovo itself. But it needs to be understood that "Serbia" itself has lost nothing and has nothing to complain about. With the independence of Kosovo, the Yugoslav idea is finally and completely dead, but it was Serbian irredentism that killed the last vestige of that idea, and it is to that account that the whole cost ought to be charged.
Forget all the nonsense that you may have heard about Kosovo being "the Jerusalem" of Serbia. It may contain some beautiful and ancient Serbian and Serbian Orthodox cultural sites…Nobody who has spent any time in the territory, as I did during and after the eviction of the Serb militias, can believe for a single second that any Kosovar would ever again submit to rule from Belgrade. It's over.
Another comment from the Hitchens articles bears repeating:
There is no need to romanticize the Kosovo state. At least two aspects of it need real and critical attention: its policy toward the Serb-majority enclave around the city of Mitrovica, and its attitude toward the treasury of Serbian religious and national architecture that stays on its soil. But the international community is in a far better position to safeguard and negotiate these matters than any fantasy of restored Serbian “sovereignty.”
I think it is clear from all this that David Storobin is the moral equivalent of a holocaust denier, who seems to believe that, in these cases, the victims had it coming.
This man is perhaps the most repugnant candidate I’ve encountered in my 40 years in politics.
I hate to put it in religious terms, but no one who calls themselves a believing Jew, of whatever stream, can in good conscience cast a vote for such a person.
And neither can any person of conscience of any other faith (or no faith at all).
Things are looking very Grimm.
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Things are looking very Grimm. Rabbi’s Followers Say Money Given to Grimm’s House Race Broke the Law www.nytimes.com
From The Gatemouth Archives (7/30/10): "Perhaps there are some quasi-rational motivations why someone would prepare such a list. It might not be because of the number of Grimm’s Jewish donors, but the type. Grimm has recently attracted attention for attending a service led by Rabbi Yoshiyahu Yosef Pinto, a somewhat shadowy Kabbalahist, with a following of rich and famous millionaires who go to him for investment advice. Several of Pinto’s followers have donated to Grimm. Many in the Jewish community think Kabbalahists are weird and cultish, and portraying Grimm as hooked up with them might be seem to someone like a good hit..." McMahon Gets the Full Nelson | Room Eight www.r8ny.com
Maybe Turner should ask Michael Grimm to introduce him to Rabbi Pinto.
Alternatively, this may just mean Turner smells the handwriting on the wall, and doesn't particularly care. Turner Has Only $70K In The Bank www.politickerny.com
As I’ve noted, State Senate Republicans whine how so many of the egregious sins they committed were only in service to maintaining the number of minority seats, but most of that have been done in a neater manner, without displacing people from their home and creating testicular appendages.
However, this ignores the real issue, which is their refusal to acknowledge reality and have minority districts located in the places minorities have now moved--most specifically in Long Island. The Word Of The Day Is ‘Contorted’ www.capitaltonight.com
It's not surprising that this imbecile thinks Peralta and Gianaris will actually have to run in the same district (Gianaris can run anywhere in the County and there is a district resembling his old one with no incumbent). What is surprising is that reputable blogs like the Politicker actually link this sort of uninformed wanking. Marines Never Die: Could Hiram Monseratte Be Plotting His Revenge? queens-politics.com
Gotta love this title; "Erased" seems to be a constant motif of the Storobin campaign.
I've long suspected that GOP State Senate candidate David Storobin couldn't care less about New York State Government. In fact, foreign policy seems to be practically the only thing Storobin really cares about (outside of ending progressive taxation); so this quote did not catch me by surprise (except in that it was honest);
From The Brooklyn Paper:
"Storobin spokesman David Simpson wouldn’t comment on the GOP’s apparent plan to pull the district out from under the vice chairman of the Kings County Republican County Committee — upending earlier claims that it expected to spend upwards of $500,000 on Storobin’s campaign.
“THE LAST THING DAVID CARES ABOUT IS WHAT'S GOING ON IN ALBANY," Simpson said.” Erased! Kruger’s district yanked off new state senate map www.brooklynpaper.com
So, it turns out that the reason that no one could find the videos of the rallies David Storobin accuses Councilman Fidler of holding for the "Gay Community," is that no one was looking for a rally in favor of providing shelter to homeless children.
Mr. Storobin is perfectly within his rights to advocate that children should be allowed to freeze to death on our streets (after all, in the dead of winter, the dead bodies would create only minor sanitation issues), but if that is the way he feels, he should be frank enough to admit it before attacking his opponent for holding the opposite position. David Storobin Says Lew Fidler Sides With Gay Community, Not Jewish Community www.politickerny.com
Catholic tastes defined:
“Colin Campbell likes Charles Barron for Congress and Lew Fidler for State Senate."
Twitter for Twits. Twitter Is a Critical Tool in Republican Campaigns www.nytimes.com
Everyone once in a while, one reads something written on an issue and has to wonder out loud, who is paying this guy to be their shill?
Everyone once in a while, one reads something written on an issue and has to wonder out loud, who is paying this guy to be their shill?
Today’s Lying Sack of Shit Award goes to former Bronx Assemblyman Michael Benjamin for his almost shameless Op-Ed column about the State’s proposed redistricting plan, which appeared in the New York Post.
Benjamin, or whoever is paying to use his name and skin tone writes:
“ Of course, the state’s top politician, Gov. Cuomo, has a role here. He’s threatened to veto anything that comes out of LATFOR, but he also set out principles that any redistricting should follow. And these plans seem to meet three of his goals: They advance minority voting rights, unite communities of interest and aren’t overtly partisan.”
For example, the plans include the creation of two new Asian-majority Assembly districts, though they may not immediately elect Asian-American candidates to office. It’s worth noting that Asian-Americans are far from monolithic. Indeed, the South Asians in Queens are a disparate group with many coming from India, Pakistan and even the Caribbean (Asian ethnics whose families moved here from Trinidad, Guyana, Suriname).
Yes, the Senate plan pits incumbent Senate Democrats in Queens against each other — but while that surely outrages those incumbents, it’s not a partisan hit: Whoever gets elected will probably be a Democrat, not a Republican. The Assembly plan directs its pain Upstate, with two pairings that pit incumbent legislators against each other.
But Cuomo’s demand that districts be reasonably compact and contiguous wasn’t met; some of the plan’s creations are being compared to all sorts of exotic animals. (The tradition dates back to the “Gerrymander” from to the earliest US redistricting.)
In some cases, though, the ugly, sprawling districts are abetted by the need to comply with the federal Voting Rights Act. As I’ve noted before, New York should look to end the close federal supervision that requires these contortions
Most of this is pure unadulterated manure.
Both the Assembly and Senate plans are highly partisan, In fact, LATFOR’s Co-Chair, Assemblyman Jack McEneny straight-out admits it.
Anyway, to paraphrase Chico Marx, who are you gonna believe, Michael Benjamin or your own eyes?
Whatever one may say about putting together Evan Stavisky’s client Tony [Avella], with his mother Toby, one cannot use any explanation but spite for the heroic efforts to put a Eric Adams and Michael Gianaris just outside the districts they represent.
Actually, there is an alternative explanation—they did it so they could correct it in the rewrite, and sell something nearly as egregious as an improvement, when several versions of “new improved” lines are probably already drawn. [There are several versions, because they don’t know yet who they will entice to sell out for the small improvement they will offer in exchange for some “bi-partisan” cover.]
The Senate plan unites communities of interest?
Like Sheepshead Bay and Brownsville? The South Bronx and West End Avenue? Trump Village and Port Richmond?
Then there is the wild assertion that “the ugly, sprawling districts are abetted by the need to comply with the federal Voting Rights Act.”
I think this assertion can be disposed of comparing several minority districts in the LATFOR maps with the versions in the Unity Map drawn by several minority advocacy groups.
Compare LATFOR 30 to unity 30; LATFOR 29 to Unity 32; LATFOR 31 to Unity 31; LATFOR 19 to Unity 18; LATFOR 20 to Unity 22; LATFOR 32 to Unity 32; or LATFOR 16 to Unity 12.
The Unity Plan not only creates largely neat and inoffensive lines, but actually creates more minority districts which are often stronger (LATFOR 16 is 51% Asian while the far neater Unity 12 is 56%) and are always more in accord with standards for equal population than the LATFOR plan.
Michael Benjamin must be smoking crack.
But the real contempt must be reserved for his preposterous assertions that the LATFOR Plan “advance[s] minority voting rights..”
I append here verbatim excerpts from an analysis of the LATFOR plan for the Senate by Reapportionment Expert Todd Breitbart.
The systematic splitting of African-American and Latino communities in Long Island by Senate district boundaries is continued – for what will now be a full half-century. The nine Nassau and Suffolk districts have been drawn so that no district will have a non-Hispanic white voting-age population (VAP) percentage of less than 62.65%. None has a black VAP percentage exceeding 16.40%, or a Hispanic VAP percentage exceeding 16.73%.
The boundaries that split the Long Island black and Hispanic communities are nearly identical to the boundaries that did so in 1992 and 2002, continuing a pattern that began in 1972.
In Nassau County the communities with large black and Hispanic populations are split among four districts. As in1972, 1982, 1992, and 2002, Freeport and Roosevelt are in SD 8; and Hempstead Village, Uniondale, and Lakeview are in SD 6. Valley Stream, North Valley Stream and part of Elmont are in SD 9, and the balance of Elmont, South Floral Park, Westbury, and New Cassel are in SD 7. Baldwin and Baldwin Harbor are divided between SD’s 8 and 9. The minority populations are so carefully balanced between districts that the combined black and Hispanic voting-age population (VAP) percentage of SD 6 is 31.42%, and the figure for adjoining SD 8 is 31.23%. Both senators are spared the need to earn the support of minority-group voters.
In Suffolk County the communities with large black and Hispanic populations are split among three districts, a pattern that has been carefully maintained since 1982. The black and Hispanic communities in the Town of Babylon are divided once again between SD’s 4 and 8, along a line that differs little from the previous decades. In the Town of Islip, the Hispanic and black communities are again divided between SD’s 3 and 4. The line through Brentwood, splitting the Hispanic and black populations of the Town of Islip between SD’s 3 and 4, is precisely identical to the boundary that was drawn in 1982, 1992, and 2002. Apparently it has proven its effectiveness.
The plan deprives Latino citizens in the Bronx and upper Manhattan of their fair share of representation in the Senate. By denying New York City its fair apportionment of districts, and by creating a pair of Bronx/Westchester districts where one would do, the plan provides only four districts in the Bronx and upper Manhattan where Latino voters might arguably be able to elect the Senator of their choice. The Unity Plan Update and the Common Cause 63-district plan both demonstrate that if New York City were given its fair apportionment, and if only one pair of Bronx/Westchester districts were created, it would be possible to create five such districts in this area, while creating districts throughout the area that would be far more compact than those proposed by the Senate Majority.
The plan departs to an unnecessary degree from the NYS constitutional requirements that districts be compact and that the splitting of counties be minimized. The direct result is the failure to create an additional district in which Latino voters could elect the representative of their choice.
Moreover, one of the Hispanic-majority districts proposed by the Senate Majority may not actually give Latino voters the ability to elect the Senator of their choice in an election where voting is polarized by race and ethnicity. The large Hispanic population in Washington Heights is predominantly of Dominican origin, and still includes a large proportion of non-citizens. The appropriate measure of potential voting power here is citizen voting-age population (CVAP). The Senate Majority’s proposed SD 31 has a CVAP that is 44.02% Hispanic and 40.14% non-Hispanic white. The Unity Plan Update proposes a compact district including Washington Heights with a CVAP that is 47.52% Hispanic and 34.31% non-Hispanic white. And the Common Cause 63-district plan offers a similar district with a CVAP that is 48.74% Hispanic and 33.12% non-Hispanic white.
Contrary to the leaks to the press suggesting that there would be a new district empowering Asian-American voters in Queens, the plan would still divide the Asian-American communities in northeast Queens between SD’s 11 and 16, much as they are divided now. In contrast, the Unity Plan Update and the Common Cause 63-district plan both seek to unite these communities in a compact district. The demographic data for the northeast Queens districts are comparable in the three proposals, ignoring geography. But the Unity Plan Update and Common Cause proposals both seek to create highly compact districts where Asian-Americans could effectively work together, among themselves and with their neighbors of other ethnic backgrounds, while the Senate Majority proposal preserves the gerrymandered status quo.
Having Created a Buffalo / Niagara Falls District in 1992 that became the first district with a non-Hispanic white majority to elect a black candidate to the New York State Senate, the Senate Majority has now decided to make sure that doesn’t happen again. Existing SD 60, as redrawn in 2002, has a voting-age population (VAP) that is 36.78% black and 54.58% non-Hispanic white according to the 2010 census. It includes the African-American communities of the cities of Buffalo and Niagara Falls. The Senate Majority proposal would place the City of Niagara Falls in SD 62, with a VAP that is 6.26% black and 89.74% non-Hispanic white, and the black community in Buffalo in SD 63, with a VAP that is 30.97% black and 61.31% non-Hispanic white.
In 2000, former SD 57 became the first Senate district in the state where an electorate with a non-Hispanic white majority chose a black candidate for its State Senator. Byron Brown, since elected Mayor of Buffalo, was elected to the Senate that year with 60% of the vote. In order to win – and especially with such a large percentage – Senator Brown must have had the support of a broad interracial coalition of voters.
(So far, only one other Senate district with a non-Hispanic white majority has elected a black candidate: existing SD 35 in Westchester.)
During this decade, existing SD 60 has elected two black candidates – Sen. Byron Brown and Sen. Antoine Thompson – and two white candidates – Sen. Marc Coppola and Sen. Mark Grisanti. It is thus a district that requires – and rewards – the building of interracial coalitions. A black candidate cannot win without, at least, a large minority of the white voters. And a white candidate is unlikely to win who cannot appeal to black voters. This is healthy for the region and for the state.
Existing SD 60 has also proven to be, contrary to the expectations of those who designed it, a competitive district from a partisan standpoint. And for exactly that reason, it is now to be split up so that building interracial coalitions will no longer be either necessary or effective.
The plan enlarges the Senate, but does not create an additional district in which members of minority-groups would have an effective voting majority and could elect the Senator of their choice. Moreover, as the Unity Plan Update demonstrates, a larger number of such districts could be created, even in a constitutionally proper 62-district Senate, by better observing the NYS constitutional rules calling for compactness and limiting the division of counties. By enlarging the Senate through use of a novel and dubious constitutional theory, the plan thus dilutes the voting power and representation in the Senate of minority-group voters.
Michael, I hope they are paying you well.
Well, that explains it--the reason Eric Adams' house in Brooklyn was moved one block outside of his district and John Sampson's district in Brooklyn has an appendage which resembles Ed Koch's testicles, and minorities in Nassau and Suffol
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Well, that explains it--the reason Eric Adams' house in Brooklyn was moved one block outside of his district and John Sampson's district in Brooklyn has an appendage which resembles Ed Koch's testicles, and minorities in Nassau and Suffolk are each cracked four different ways is because all this was necessary in order to create an Asian district in Queens. The Word Of The Day Is ‘Contorted’ www.capitaltonight.com
A slideshow of perhaps the most outrageous gerrymander of all time.
The only thing to note in the map’s defense is that a few of these districts (like 22) are really little worse than their predecessors, while one (34), may actually be a bit of an improvement. The 20 Ugliest Gerrymandered Districts www.politickerny.com
This map shows, in red and blue, who gets screwed in the NYS Senate reapportionment, and by that I mean regions, not politicians. Proposed redistricting plan shortchanges New York City voters | The New York World www.thenewyorkworld.com
NYC screwed--by the numbers. More Data On How The Senate Lines Favor Upstate www.capitaltonight.com
Will the State Senate now go along with June primaries and save us all a ton of money? Judge Sharpe Orders Congressional Primaries Held in June www.nydailynews.com
David Storobin is either a pathological liar or suffers from psychotic delusions
From Politicker:
"“While I was doing that my opponent was organizing rallies not for the Jewish community but for the gay community,” he said.
He said that Mr. Fidler held rallies for gay groups that netted one $85 million in city funding, and another rally for a different group which netted them $3 million in funding per year.
Asked in an interview what he was referring to, Mr. Storobin said that he gleaned the information from YouTube and suggested The Politicker search the website for Mr. Fidler’s name. The rallies he is referring to could not be located."
Discount for a moment the fact that Fidler's been a key player in running or assisting Jewish groups, including "Brooklyn College Hillel" and "The Crown Heights Jewish Community Council" since before Storobin was born, and ignore all the funding he's delivered to Jewish agencies for the sort of social services programs Storobin considers wasteful.
Now, focus instead on David Storobin citing to something on the web that doesn't exist.
Hey David, I know where those videos are; right next to all the hate articles you deleted from your websites, " Global Politician" and " International Analyst Network." David Storobin Says Lew Fidler Sides With Gay Community, Not Jewish Community www.politickerny.com
Lying sack of shit award: Russell Gallo For his defense of Storobin's missing articles:
" In furtherance of Fidler’s hate-mongering, Campbell “demands” to know why the article that prompted Fidler’s contemptible comments was removed by the source website – like Storobin or anyone else is supposed to know! The Storobin campaign does not run the website. The website has an editorial board and accepts online submissions. Clearly, there can be any number of reasons!"
Perhaps--if the two website that were scrubbed weren't both founded by Storobin! Brooklyn GOP Radio: Rise Above Lew Fidler's Hate brooklyngopradio.blogspot.com
Facebook just suggested I friend David Storobin.
DeBlasio say Bloomberg has declared war on the UFT.
It should be clarified, however, that this is not necessarily the same as Bill de Blasio: Bloomberg Has “Re-Declared War on the UFT” www.politickerny.com
Newt isn't satisfied with just world domination; he wants colonies everywhere. I think he's just doing this to bait the Kenyan anti-colonialist. Gingrich promises to build a US moon colony video.msnbc.msn.com
Good assessment of Gingrich bête noire Saul Alinsky, in that it is similar to my own (and I'm a fan--used to have Saul’s “Rules of Ends and Means” posted on my office wall), but the killer is this tidbit:
Andrew Kaczynski dug up the above image:
In the wake of the devastating Detroit riots of the summer of 1967, Michigan Gov. George Romney — a liberal Republican — met the radical organizer Saul Alinsky to discuss the grievances of the urban black poor. ... "I think you ought to listen to Alinsky," Romney told his white allies, according to T. George Harris's 1968 book, "Romney's Way." Newt's Boogeyman andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com
Saul Alinsky did most of his best work subsidized by Newt's adopted church. Michael Kazin: Saul Alinsky Wasn’t Who Newt Gingrich Thinks He Was | The New Republic www.tnr.com
The real reason Ron Paul does not release his tax returns: He doesn't want everyone to know how profitable it is to be a hate pamphleteer. Report: Paul approved racist portions of newsletters www.politico.com
Ta-Nehisi Coates takes on the "He's not a hater, he only did it for the money" defense of Ron Paul:
"All parties agree that Ron Paul is not, personally, racist and that he didn't write the passages. This is comforting. I am not an anti-Semite. But give me a check to tell Harlem the Jews invented AIDS, and I'll do it.
As I've said before, we all must make our calculus in supporting a candidate or even claiming he is "good" for the debate. But it must be an honest calculus.
If you believe that a character who would conspire to profit off of white supremacy, anti-gay bigotry, and anti-Semitism is the best vehicle for convincing the country to end the drug war, to end our romance with interventionism, to encourage serious scrutiny of state violence, at every level, then you should be honest enough to defend that proposition." No One Left To Lie To www.theatlantic.com
Chait says the GOP race is "Casino," the GOP voters are Sharon Stone, Romney is DeNiro and Gingrich is James Wood.
Fine.
What I wanna know is, who's Joe Pesci? Romney Presses GOP Into Loveless Marriage nymag.com
A few quick thoughts on the proposed reapportionment.
A few quick thoughts on the proposed reapportionment.
1) Reporters are so gullible. A lot is being made of potential primaries between Velmanette Montgomery and Eric Adams, and Mike Gianaris and Jose Peralta.
This is just stupid.
It’s a reapportionment year. Any member can run in any district containing any part of their home County.
The lion’s share of Eric Adam’s old district is still in District 20, which now has no incumbent. Why would he run against Montgomery in a district overwhelmingly composed of her own turf?
The lion’s share of Mike Gianaris’ old district is in the white plurality 12th, which now has no incumbent. Why would he against Peralta in an overwhelmingly Latino district primarily composed of Peralta’s old turf?
The Stavisky/Avella matchup is a bit different. While the new 16th is weighted towards Stavisky’s old district, and the 11th Avella, the composition of the 16th is such that a Stavisky/Avella race could actually happen.
2) The lack of regard the GOP holds for its 27th SD State Senate candidate is demonstrated by a map which puts his home into one represented by Democrat Diane Savino—that district is majority/minority and heavily Democratic.
The Russian community, recently trending Republican, is scattered to the four winds even worse than they were worse in the 2002 plan, and are likely to be up in arms against the GOP, even at the expense of a Russian candidate. Non-Russian whites in Sheepshead Bay, attached to John Sampson’s district by a corridor the size and shape of a straw, are likely to want to send a nasty message to the GOP about the way their community has been divided.
3) The contempt for the public is such that the map of Savino’s district (23) on the LATFOR website does not even contain the Brooklyn portion. [UPDATE: this is no longer true--complaining sometimes works]
4) Joe Addabbo’s district (15) looks like it was drawn by Eric Ulrich.
5) In Brooklyn, Sunset Park is split four ways. The lack of regard in the Senate map for Southwest Brooklyn’s Latinos and Asians is fairly stunning. Elsewhere (e.g., Long Island), different minorities are victimized by outrageous packing and cracking.
6) The best feature of the Senate Map is that it force feeds Kevin Parker Park Slope and vice versa. Kevin is going to have a lot of fun selling trying to sell himself to that sort of white constituency. He would much prefer to continue to represent Hasidim who vote against him in November but for him in September, than Yuppies, who will likely do the opposite.
7) Marty Dilan loses most of the Northside and a lot of Greenpoint, and keep most of his Hasids, so serving on LATFOR obviously has its benefits even when your party is getting fucked. Wilfredo Larancuent was obviously given a peak at these lines before he started having second thoughts about a challenge.
8) Dan Squadron loses Gatemouth. Was this a contract delivered through Bloomberg?
9) Heroic efforts were obviously undertaken to make the Manhattan Senate lines as fucked up as possible, simply for the sport of it.
10) Jeff Klein is sitting very pretty.
11) Someone obviously showed Suzi Oppenheimer her district’s new lines, which lose Scarsdale, half of White Plains and great portions of New Rochelle, hastening her departure.
12) In essence, though it doesn't look like it, Mark Grisanti and Tim Kennedy have exchanged districts. Both now have bigger problems in their primaries than their generals.
13) The Assembly maps cosmetically address minority concerns, but not really. Matt Titone’s north shore seat (61) on The Rock dilutes its potential minority population by keeping Port Richmond in the 63rd, ensuring Mike Cusick will not face a serious GOP challenge. In the same way, the Marlborough Houses are split from Coney Island to boost the endangered Steve Cymbrowitz. Two districts represented by whites in south eastern Brooklyn (41 &59) retain a heavy black minority or a small black majority, while VRA seats either held by whites (42) or in danger of being so (57—now 51% black) are kept with lower black populations than could be possible if the Assembly quit artificially maintaining the two southeastern white seats instead of just one.
14) Nearly as much of Bay Ridge as could possibly be in one AD, given other factors, now is. However, it is still yoked to Coney Island via one lane of the Belt.
15) Looks like no one from Bay Ridge Democrats will be challenging Dov Hikind.
16) Some good news for Debra Scotto in her pitifully uphill races for District Leader of the 52nd AD. Felix Ortiz is not, as rumored, picking up Wyckoff Gardens and Gowanus Houses. Scotto patron Vito Lopez (the Assembly Housing Chair) and Vito’s lapdog, Erik Dilan (the Council Housing Chair) hold a lot of sway in NYCHA projects. (This also means Ortiz's district is less Latino than it could be).
17) Vito himself lost some Yuppies and picks up the part of Lindsay Park he didn’t have. This is good for him.
18) Latinos might not be picking up much in Queens from Assembly lines changes, but they will eventually pick it up from attrition.
19) The much ballyhooed new Asian seat in Brooklyn will be so eventually, but between non-citizens not being able to vote, and organized labor support, Peter Abate is probably safe in the short run.
20) The much ballyhooed new Asian seat in Queens is only so if you think East Asians and South Asians (never mind the divisions among each of those groups) have some sort of cultural affinity for each other.
21) South Asians in Queens got screwed, possibly because creating a district for them might have have had to come at the cost of a black district, and possibly because the mapmakers tried to save both David Weprin and Rory Lancman in the short run, rather than creatng one solid south Asain district.
22) The Central Harlem based 70th AD is drawn to be barely over 51% black (Bill Perkins Senate district is at 46%). Discuss.
23) Shelly Silver’s district barely changes an iota, if at all. He obviously thinks his current mix works better for him than putting all of the Lower East Side’s minorities into one district. I think he is making a mistake.
24) These are not the final lines. There is Department of Justice pre-clearance and lawsuits to overcome. If history is a precedent, there will be dozens of side deals, some of them resulting in major alternations. There is the threat of a veto, which even if it does not change any lies, will surely be used be used as a legislative hammer by the Governor to accomplish the seemingly impossible.
25) Bottom Line:
The Assembly lines, which give Brooklyn and Queens each one more seat than they areentitled to by their populaton, and don’t go a long way to address the concerns of minorities, are politics as usual and mildly repugnant. The Senate lines, which come up with a new formula to create an extra seat, and rob the City and minorities blind while trying to enact Rosarch tests into law, are simply an outrage, even if they are found to be within the parameters of the applicable law. .
“Soon it will be the Renaissance, and we'll all be painting” –Woody Alle
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“Soon it will be the Renaissance, and we'll all be painting” –Woody Allen
Normally, I’d take a look at a bunch of posts this weak and sparse, and wait at least another day before posting a Gateway, but with reapportionment imminent, it seems best to purge before binging again.
That being said, could there be any better sign that LATFOR is not a real Commission than the fact that the Assembly and Senate lines are not being released together at the same time?
They're digging up Frank Padavan?
Who's next, John Calandra? Marty Knorr? John Marchi? Frank Padavan Mulling A Comeback | City and State www.cityandstateny.com
John Sampson takes the moral high ground in an argument, which would impressive, if he were arguing with anyone but Ruby Diaz. Diaz, Sr. Called For Sampson’s Ouster After Heated Exchange On Member Items | City and State www.cityandstateny.com
She's Leaving Home; bye bye. Paul McCartney's wife Nancy Shevell resigns from MTA board www.nypost.com
You know the GOP's gone insane when their Presidential candidates get burned for endorsing the Republican candidate in an election for Congress. Mitt Romney's Dede Scozzafava www.buzzfeed.com
Haberman gets it right: though Alinsky was a man of the left (though hardly a rigid adherent of any ideology), his tactics were adaptable across the political spectrum, and Gingrich has obviously read "Rules for Radicals" and taken them to heart.
All things being equal (admittedly a dubious assumption), the Tea Partiers seem to have read Saul far more carefully than the Occupiers. A Saul Alinsky Republican? www.politico.com
J.J Goldberg whacks right-Zionist delusion: "it’s a fact that those “inner circles” in the Mossad and the rest of the Israeli intelligence community don’t believe Obama is their enemy. They know, and will tell you frankly, that Obama has done more to upgrade U.S. military cooperation with Israel than any president in years. The Israeli leadership, from the top on down, acknowledges it publicly." 'Taking Out' Obama, and Our Slide Into Madness – Forward Thinking – Forward.com blogs.forward.com
I know this may distress some of my friends on the left, but I couldn't give a flying fuck what Fidel Castro has to say about our elections. What does he know about contested elections anyway? Castro lambasts US Republican primary as idiotic www.sfgate.com
(Please note, this comment is without further policy implications. If we engage with Cuba like we did with the Warsaw Pact, the Castros would probably be gone already).
I know some expect me to talk about the State of the Union this morning, but as much as I enjoyed the speech (and agreed with almost all of it), I would rather talk about things which might actually impact public policy.
I know some expect me to talk about the State of the Union this morning, but as much as I enjoyed the speech (and agreed with almost all of it), I would rather talk about things which might actually impact public policy.
At any rate, by the afternoon, I suspect it will be a distant memory in NYS and we’ll all be talking exclusively about reapportionment.
I vote to increase Romney's taxes. The Election Will Determine Romney's Tax Rate andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com
Chait is funnier here than Bill Maher:
"Rick Santorum finally failed to complain about his lack of camera time, perhaps in the understanding that it doesn’t matter if you get camera time when your plan is to be the cockroach who crawls out into the light after everybody else has destroyed each other. He also invoked “theocracy,” but meant it pejoratively, because the context was Iran"
"Ron Paul seems to have graduated from merely too-big sport coats to the comically oversize suits favored by David Byrne in “Stop Making Sense.”
"[Romney] again cited having forced Ted Kennedy to take out a mortgage on his home as the metric of success for his failed 1994 Senate campaign. Was this ever an important conservative goal?"
"When asked what he had done to advance conservatism, Romney cited three things. The first two were start a family and work in the private sector. My God, I’m advancing conservatism, too! Can I have the nomination?" Newt Evades and Mitt Quits Making Sense nymag.com
Saint Jermaine Endeley changes his mind about running (Part 96)
It's deja vu all over again. After Vacillating, Candidate [Again?] Drops Primary Bid Against Diane Savino www.politickerny.com
GOP State Senate candidate Storobin files for an independent line in an attempt to add to the two lines he already has, confusing the right to ballot access with the right to free advertising space on the ballot itself.
The petition requires 2,387 valid signatures. Rumor is that one need not check a single signature on this petition for validity, because there are only about 1,700 of them.
That’s what happens when one trusts a fringoid wachadoodle like former Park Slope School Board member Gary “Rupert” Popkin.
Not that Storobin would ever have anything to do with wackadoodle fringoid elements.
Says Kalman Yeger: "How sad that Mr. Storobin is so uncomfortable with being associated with Albany Republicans that he would try to fraudulently manipulate the ballot with a manufactured ballot line. Brooklyn voters know that Councilman Fidler stands with them, and are again wondering exactly who David Storobin is. Will Mr. Storobin’s next move be to scrub . his Republican enrollment as he has done with his erratic internet rants?” David Storobin’s Independent Line Bid Likely to Fail www.politickerny.com
Another story today calls to mind another former school board member from the Sunset Park/Park Slope area, Bea DeSapio.
A niece of the old Manhattan Democratic boss, Carmine, she was practically the only real Regular among the inner circle of the old 51st AD Regular Democratic Club.
At the time, CBID’s rivals, the reform oriented Central Brooklyn Independent Democrats (CBID) were emblematic of the old Irish Labor Left of Mike Quill and Paul O’Dwyer. There were angry and spirited debates between those who wanted to remake the US as a social democracy (too British for some), and those who preferred the model of the People’s Democratic Republic. Social issues generally took a back seat to economics and foreign policy (the preferred blend was Berrigan Brothers lite).
In 1975, State Senators Carol Bellamy and Karen Burstein got the bright idea to amend the State Constitution to include a gender based Equal Rights Amendment. The Federal Amendment was two states away from ratification, and this was to symbolically help push it over the top. Instead the New York Amendment, and one in New Jersey, failed at the ballot box. Federal Ratification stopped dead, and actually went into reverse. Guess they reckoned that if cosmopolitan New Yorkers couldn't handle such new fangled notions, how were they going to do it down on the farm?
Back in Brooklyn, CBID voted in favor of urging a “No’ vote on the ERA. Feminism was a bourgeoise conceit designed to divert the true revolutionary spirit from the struggle of the workers. Coincidentally, this was also the position of the Communist Party USA. Meanwhile, the old regulars in the same AD, having been infiltrated by a bunch of pragmatic, socially liberal non-Irish CBID exiles tired of singing “The Internationale”, endorsed Equal Rights.
The young liberals included such bright lights as District Leader Louise Finney, future State Senator (and Rye Playland Czar) Joe Montalto and reapportionment guru Todd Breitbart.
CBID’s Assemblyman, Joe Ferris, was a courageous and fiery presence, voting against re-electing Stanley Steingut as Speaker. Yet, on the matter of a woman’s right to chose, the flame barely burned, as courage turned to cowardice. When it came time to vote on funding for Medicaid abortions, Ferris regularly absented himself from the floor.
In 1980, “regular” Louise Finney (despite her name, Jewish), an ardent feminist, ran against Ferris from the left (at least on social issues) and came close to beating him. DeSapio also came close to beating him once, and Finney actually won the primary to succeed Ferris in 1984, but only by four votes, and lost it in the Court ordered rerun.
Finney probably would have won the initial primary outright had she not been forced by Borough President Howie Golden, then engaged in a fight for the County Democratic Leadership with Tony Genovesi, to stand for District Leader as well. Finney won the District Leadership outright, delivering the County to Golden, and then watched as Tony got his revenge, sending in Carl Kruger and Joni Yoswein to guide Brennan to victory (Yoswein later went to the Assembly for 15 minutes, only to be reapportioned into the same seat as Brennan, who beat her).
The local struggles were as much about culture as politics. CBID was the Irish club, the "regulars" were Italian, (Jews were split between the clubs).
For years, as Sunset Park turned more and more Latino and Asian, DeSapio, the area’s Community Board Chair, insisted on serving Italian food at the Board’s Christmas party; many of the Board’s Latinos took offense, until I told them told them not to take it personally, Bea was still trying to show the Irish who was in charge.
The old regular club died in 1988, but through the miracle of Bea DeSapio and Louise Finney’s iron wills, managed to stay in control of the School Board and two Community Boards for years thereafter.
Bea eventually managed to outsmart herself right off the School Board she
Chaired, by knocking a popular Monsignor off the ballot (for blatant petition fraud personally committed by the candidate), who then got elected as a write-in, and running a rabbit (a sure loser who would, under the proportional system, transfer their votes to you) who won, when she was not supposed to.
But Bea kept on controlling Community Board Seven until around the turn of the century.
By that time, the only politician she really cared about was Billy Thompson, and she was really only concerned with ensuring the Community Board was run competently.
There was the matter of the District Managership. After Montalto became an Assistant Commissioner in the late 70s, Nick Sciarra became the DM. He was one tough mother.
Assigned by the Dinkins administration to tell the Board it would be evicted from its building and put into trailers while the old Sunset Park Courthouse was renovated to mostly house various Police units, I arrived at the Board meeting with a platoon of Police brass.
Nick looked at me, and said “this will happen over my dad dead body.” He then took a bite of his Italian hero sandwich, had a heart attack and dropped dead.
Nick’s assistant took over, but lasted little over a year.
Eschewing politics, Bea installed an outstanding, totally non-political public servant named Gene Moore as the Board’s DM.
She then asked me to give Gene, who was a Cobble Hill neighbor of mine, a primer in local politics. I introduced him to the Waterfront Alehouse and we soon became drinking buddies.
Gene Moore was a perfectly competent DM until Councilman Angel Rodriguez (later a convicted felon) finally took control of the Board, and using the Board Members he controlled, installed his own Chair (Sara Gonzalez).
It is one thing for a Councilmember to take out a Board Chair, which is an unpaid position, It is quite another to take out a District Manager; major political changes had not necessarily yield such a result elsewhere, and Gene hoped to stay in his position.
But Gene was perhaps too non-political to grok the bullshit.
Gonzalez, instructed him to send back all mail if it was addressed to DeSapio as Board Chair instead of her. Like any non-psychotic, he refused (I know the story is true, because I eventually had mail returned to my office when the secretary accidentally used some old mailing labels). Gonzalez took this as a personal affront to her dignity.
Soon, Angel Rodriguez went after Gene. As the Feds have shown, Angel was not averse to twisting a few arms, legs and other body parts to achieve his goals.
I tried to help, at the request of both Bea and Gene, but a staffer I’d hired as an underling at Bea’s request (his sister worked at the Board), only to have him promoted over me, told me “hands off.”
Gene, seeing he was beat, eventually agreed to resign, to be replaced (surprise, surprise) by Angel's Chief of Staff, Jeremy Laufer.
I am reminded of this today because of the calls for Councilman Lew Fidler to intervene and force the removal of Carl Kruger housemate Dorothy Turano as DM of CB #18.
Although I think Dot Turano would be doing everyone a favor if she retired, I have to say that having watched Councilmembers try to dictate the hiring and firing of District Managers, I find it to be a thugly practice, and the definition of “undue influence.”
So, while I would be glad to see Dotty go, I would be very unhappy to see witness another Councilmember trying to impose his views on the internal workings of a Community Board.
So I'm glad Lew Fidler is taking a hands-off attitude on Board 18’s decision. Those who advocate otherwise should remember that hard cases make for bad precedents. Fidler Staying Out Of Fight Over Kruger Companion [UPDATED] | City and State www.cityandstateny.com