In act of desperation, Quinn camp goes digging for endorsement from Ed Koch beyond the grave.
Christine Quinn has become so desperate for campaign endorsements that she is going to get one out of a dead man. Let's hope she doesn't try to get some votes the same way, too. She's already trying to fake her popularity with sock puppet Twitter accounts, mind you. But seriously, Ed Koch, whose endorsement she is seeking, was the beginning of the neoliberalism bent in Democratic policies. One needs to look no further than to the cruel betrayal in Mayor Koch's non-response to the AIDS crisis. Mayor Koch refused to take any meaningful action on HIV/AIDS out of fear that he would be outed as a gay man. What kind of a message is Speaker Quinn trying to send by reaching for this grave endorsement ? Mayor Koch's endorsement in encumbered with betrayal and closet politics. This one issue alone should be a clarion call for every New York City LGBT voter to question Speaker Quinn's judgement. How do AIDS activists feel about being thrown under the bus in exchange for an endorsement from the late Mayor Koch ? (Ed Koch’s Sister to Amplify His Support for Christine Quinn * NYTimes)
Will insensitive and revisionist statements like this, from the Quinn campaign, drive LGBT activists to demonstrate against Christine Quinn during Pride Month ?
“Ed Koch was an incredible leader for the city,” said Josh Isay, Ms. Quinn’s chief strategist.
"In 1977, things got ugly when a large field of evenly matched Democrats went at it in a fierce primary. Remember 'Vote for Cuomo, not the homo?' Ed Koch ended up winning that contest with 19.8 percent of the vote, followed by Mario Cuomo at 18.7, Abe Beame at 18, Bella Abzug at 17, Percy Sutton at 14.4, and Herman Badillo at 11," wrote David Seifman in the NYPost. (Who’s screwed by Weiner’s entry * The New York Post) Is the Rev. Erick Salgado's role in this year's mayor's race meant to invoke a last-minute tirade of "homophobia" to benefit Christine Quinn's campaign ? What explains how or why the Rev. Salgado is even in this race ? (Anti-Gay Pastor And NOM Supporter Erick Salgado May Run For NYC Mayor * Joe My God)
"... the prospect of Quinn's active participation in the march provoked a sort of counter-protest by a small contingent of activists who are unimpressed with Quinn's record. As the main rally moved south on Greenwich Avenue, marchers passed a tiny contingent of activists holding up a sign on the island intersection at Seventh Avenue. 'We need a hospital, we don't need condos,' it read. The side-vigil raised the question of why Carson was taken to Beth Israel, on First Avenue, and whether he could have been saved if he was treated nearby. The handful of activists standing in the shadow of the building that used to be St. Vincent's Hospital, now being converted into 350 luxury condo units, criticized Quinn for signing off on the zoning change that made this development possible, even though the City Council speaker's brand had been stamped all over the larger march itself."
Did New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn cancel her planned political exploitation of Monday night's Mark Carson vigil, after The Village Voice and Michael Petrelis exposed these concerns ?
Speaker Quinn has a history of exploiting tragedy for political gain.
Earlier this year, after former mayor Ed Koch passed away, Speaker Quinn's campaign staff were trying to figure out how to exploit Mayor Koch's endorsement of Speaker Quinn's mayoral campaign, even after he had died -- and he was no longer around to approve of the campaign's messaging.
And in 1998, while she was in her first political campaign to be elected to the City Council, Ms. Quinn was using a spike in bias crimes against the LGBTQ community as an excuse to call for canceling that year's annual Greenwich Village Halloween Parade.
SIDEBAR : Please watch this video, which I just discovered this morning, which explains why it might be more accurate to describe the discrimination against the LGBTQ community as "heterosexual-supremacy" instead of using the term "homophobia."
Many City Council members are wary of endorsing candidates in the 2013 mayoral race until after budget season because they're afraid a vengeful Speaker Christine Quinn will cut their share of $50 million in discretionary funds, DNAinfo.com New York has learned.
The funds, which are controlled by the speaker, are dished out to members each summer to fund constituent-pleasing services, such as community centers and seniors programs. While Quinn’s office has long insisted that the money is allocated based on districts' needs, it’s no secret that members on Quinn’s good side tend to profit — while those who cross her get their budgets slashed.
And many Council members now worry that endorsing a rival in the mayor's race, where Quinn is widely perceived as the front-runner, will result in the same fate.
“I definitely think that discretionary funds will be wielded as a weapon in the fight for endorsements,” said one Democratic Council member, who, like nearly a dozen others who spoke to DNAinfo.com New York, asked for anonymity to avoid angering Quinn.
“Certainly, that is the elephant in the room,” another member said.
“It’s a legal form of blackmail," still another member said.
To avoid retribution, some Council members are weighing postponing their endorsements until July, after the budget is adopted and Quinn no longer has sway over the money.
Christopher London wrote on February 3, 2013, 3:21 PM [LINK]
As stated in Rolling Stone: “In an excellent new book, Twilight of the Elites, journalist Chris Hayes argues that what happened is this: Our ruling class failed us. Behind the seemingly haphazard pile-up of recent calamities he sees a pattern: In each case, a cadre of Very Important People succumbed to some combination of blinkered groupthink, deception, self-dealing, fraud, smugness, and self-delusion. And in virtually every case, they escaped accountability. Or, as Hayes puts it: "All the smart people f_cked up, and no one seems willing to take responsibility."
There is a mainstream citizen revolt against the attempt by societal elites and Mayor Bloomberg to install Quinn as the next Mayor of New York City. All levers of the media will be used in an effort to insure that reality against the prevailing and existing will of the people. In my estimation, Christine Quinn represents a doubling down by the elites in an effort to control the aftermath of what they have created for or imposed on the rest of us, through unchecked and uninvestigated government waste. 'Pontificating Poseur & Societal Elite Windbag' - Senator Tom Duane – an opportunistic and self professed LGBT hero and his protégé in identity politics, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn enabled her crony capitalist sponsor, Bill Rudin of Rudin Management and the Rudin Family to seize St. Vincent’s Hospital, the epicenter of the AIDS Crisis, for pennies on the dollar so the Rudin Family Luxury Blood Condos could be built in its place. Is this what Quinn’s sponsor believes will lead to “A Better New York” – that he trumpets through ABNY – the Association for a Better New York? The best AIDS Memorial is preservation of the hospital and treatment facility at the epicenter of the AIDS epidemic, for its humanity in treating patients not luxury condos in its place.
Quinn is now taking heat from the LGBT Community including her own Chelsea: District 3, because, her remarks (via mass email) praising Ed Koch upon his death, she didn't acknowledge his failure to address the AIDS Crisis as thousands of gay men were dying. The gay press has not yet mentioned the fact that Christine Quinn actually rewarded Koch for his endorsement, despite his preference for someone other than Quinn, by renaming the Queensboro Bridge after him in exchange for his unwavering support of her Mayoral candidacy. The Council and the public opposed the renaming of that bridge.
Christine Quinn has transformed into the worst about neoliberalism.
Speaker Quinn has embraced a culture that can only be described as "pay to play." She accepted $30,000 in campaign donations from the owners of Rudin Management Company before the City Council approved the zone-busting Rudin luxury condo conversion plan for St. Vincent's Hospital. Speaker Quinn supports hospital closings, so that billionaire real estate developers can capitalise and profit off of the assets of public charities. To that end, Speaker Quinn has curried favour with Brad Hoylman, Kathy Wilde, and the Partnership for New York, of which Rudin Management Company is a member. Speaker Quinn has supported all of Mayor Bloomberg's most controversial initiatives, from mayoral control of the school system, to the outsourcing of top education posts to business CEO's with no education credentials. Speaker Quinn also supports the racist NYPD commish Ray Kelly, which puts Speaker Quinn at odds with various minority communities in New York City.
This is a political parody slideshow that was composed with editorial criticism and satire.
If The NYPD Commish Runs For Mayor, Then Ed Koch, The Snooki Of New York City Politics, Would Dump New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn In Favour Of Commish Kelly.
Quinn must be humiliated by the unrelenting protests because, in order to avoid us, she has navigated through piles of garbage bags, entered buildings through basements and used her security detail and handlers to divert our attention so that she could scurry past us without being noticed.
On December 2nd, the Human Rights Project at the Urban Justice Center released its annual NYC Council Human Rights Report Card. Christine Quinn received a D+, the second to lowest score in the City Council. In addition to voting against human rights bills, Quinn used her power as Speaker to kill bills that had a veto-proof majority of supporters.
As the NY Times reported in October, "A year ago City Council members tried to push through a living wage in the Bronx and to mandate a few sick days for workers. Christine Quinn ensured each effort ended up baled, tied and set by the BQE for early sanitation pickup."
One of the most powerful weapons in Quinn's arsenal as Speaker is the discretionary funds -- tens of millions of dollars that Quinn 1) doles out to reward campaign donors and loyal Council Members or 2) withholds from Council members who challenge her political or legislative agenda.
In March, Christine Quinn strong-armed the City Council members to vote in favor of renaming the Queensboro bridge for former NYC Mayor Ed Koch. Several months later, Mayor Ed Koch endorsed her for Mayor -- two years before the election.
In the special election to fill former New York Congressman Anthony Weiner's seat, a strong anti-marriage Republican Bob Turner is leading. In good part he has gained credibility by the endorsement of former Democratic Mayor Ed Koch who wants to send a message to Israel. Really? Let's elect an anti-LGBT Republican on the back of our community for Israel? Wouldn't it be easier for Mayor Koch just to call the President instead of sacrificing our rights for another issue?
This is not the first time that Mayor Koch has betrayed the LGBT community. During his mayoral administrations, Mayor Koch refused to pull out all the stops to help AIDS patients during the 1980's. Many activists see the source of the betrayal in the fact that Mayor Koch is a gay man, himself.
On Facebook, several activists were outraged by the former mayor's latest example of treachery, but these activists were not surprised.
"Former Mayor Ed Koch, a closeted gay man and a paid consultant of Mayor Bloomberg, endorsed Tea Party candidate Bob Turner, George W. Bush and Christine Quinn," said Donny Moss. "Strange that Koch is a registered Democrat who supports very conservative candidates."
Meanwhile, for Mr. Mixner to attack Mayor Koch for endorsing Mr. Turner is kind of like the pot calling the kettle black, for Mr. Mixner has yet to take any steps to hold neither Mayor Michael Bloomberg nor City Council Speaker Christine Quinn accountable for failing to investigate the NYPD for its pattern of sexual orientation profiling against gay men.
It was noted in this space last week how well Brooklyn Democratic boss Vito Lopez fares in City Council Speaker Christine Quinn’s annual tax-dollar giveaway.
There have been developments.
Lopez, a state assemblyman and the subject of a federal corruption investigation, needed a front-end loader to haul away the so-called member-item cash lavished on him in the new city budget by Quinn — who used four pliant council members as cutouts.
But it turns out that Quinn took a fire ax to Queens Councilman Peter Vallone’s share of the boodle.
Vallone is a truly singular council member, in the sense that he has thus far managed to avoid attracting the attention of federal prosecutors, and it seems unlikely that he ever will.
But he irked Quinn by vocally opposing the renaming of the Queensboro Bridge in honor of former Mayor Ed Koch — so the speaker slashed his member-item take by 42%, or roughly $600,000.
Let’s be clear: Nobody should be getting member-item money.
These are lump-sum appropriations that corrupt the political process by giving incumbents cash to curry unfair favor with constituents; simultaneously, these cash goodies give bullying council bosses undue leverage over their underlings.
And Vallone — who apparently irritated Quinn and had his cash yanked as an example — proves the point.
Yet Quinn is cool with Lopez, who attracts the FBI like overripe pork attracts flies. Quinn channeled $4.4 million this year to his Brooklyn power base — the Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Council — through Brooklyn council members Domenic Recchia, Erik Dilan, Stephen Levin and Elizabeth Crowley.
While some $3.75 million is earmarked for alleged “capital construction,” the rest neatly covers salary and benefits for:
* Chris Fisher, Ridgewood executive director/Lopez campaign treasurer ($607,000).
(Quinn also managed to find $2 million for the United Federation of Teachers’ academically shaky charter school — but that’s a tale for another day.)
One final note: Quinn is many things — brash, personable, ambitious, maybe New York City’s next mayor.
But we’ve never thought her to be petty.
Until now.
Because she wasn’t content with punishing just Vallone for his temerity. She also took it out on the councilman’s father — former Council Speaker Peter Vallone Sr., arguably the last person to perform the office’s duties with decorum and dignity.
Cut from the budget was $6 million for a City University public-policy program named in his honor.
That’s the Vallones’ loss, to be sure.
But mostly it’s the city’s.
Christine Quinn should be ashamed.
Meanwhile, check out what other blogs are saying about this latest disgraceful turn about Speaker Quinn's slush fund scandal :
Op-Ed Bonus ! What a disgrace. How does Christine Quinn find hundreds of thousands of dollars for an indicted political slime ball, and millions in aggregate monies for member items, but she could not find $1 to save St. Vincent's Hospital in her very own city council district? This is sick and twisted. When are the over-taxed, over-fined, over-ticketed, over-tolled, over-run people of New York City going to wake up and vote Christine Quinn out of office? I realise that LGBTQ people want to rally around a leader, but damn, can't we pick one with a little bit of integrity? How about just a minimal standard of integrity? Is there a lowest common denominator of integrity we can demand out of LGBTQ leaders? How about a lowest expectations of integrity? If we scraped the bottom of Christine Quinn's diluted soup pan of weakened integrity broth, would we find any integrity sediment at all?
