With St. Vincent's Hospital Closed, Where Do Emergency Patients Go ?
With St. Vincent's closed, the West Side still has no hospital beds below 57th Street. How is this responsible city planning ?
How can we bring a hospital back to our community ? How can we get true universal healthcare ? Come Join the Discussion ! RSVP at the Facebook page for the St. Vincent's Community Assembly.
Speaker Quinn doles out loot to cooperative Council members : ‘Lulus’ on top of salaries are vote-buying tools
Criticism is growing over New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn's practise of rewarding her political allies with extra pay twice a year, reported The New York Daily News.
Last Friday, New York City Council Speaker handed out her ''lulus'' to City Council members, who vote her way on important legislation. The reason that the payments are called "lulus" is because the stipends were previously deemed “payments in lieu of expenses,” but now they are blatantly described as money that Speaker Quinn corruptly gives to councilmembers, who adhere to Speaker Quinn's political agenda.
The smallest amount of "lulu" can total about $4,000 for unloved councilmembers, while the largest annualised "lulu" totals $28,500, which is the amount that Speaker Quinn pays herself.
The Daily News has published a list of lulu-crazed councilmembers, who cashed their lulu checks, even though they campaigned against the scandalous payments. Other councilmembers are classified whether they cashed their lulu checks, but then turn around and donate the money to charity, and still yet others, who never cashed their checks.
The Zone-Busting and Safety Net-Shredding Rudin Family, aided by Political Enablers
The Rudin Luxury Condo Conversion Plan for St. Vincent's Hospital was approved on Monday, Jan. 23, 2012, by Amanda Burden, the Park Avenue socialite, who volunteers to be City Planner for New York City. Other political enablers have joined Ms. Burden in aiding the Rudin Family's scheme to convert what used to be the only full-service hospital and Level 1 Trauma Center into luxury condominiums and deluxe townhouses.
With St. Vincent's closed, the West Side still has no hospital beds below 57th Street. How can we bring a hospital back to our community ? How can we get true universal healthcare ? Come Join the Discussion ! RSVP at the Facebook page for the Luxury Condos Can't Do CPR ! St. Vincent's Community Assembly.
Richard J. Sheirer, the former director of New York City's Office of Emergency Management during the September 11th attacks, fell ill a few blocks away from St. Vincent's.
From The New York Times :
Richard J. Sheirer, who as director of New York City’s Office of Emergency Management was thrown into the limelight on Sept. 11, 2001, after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, died on Thursday in Manhattan. He was 65.
The immediate cause was fluid in his lungs, former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani said in an interview. Mr. Sheirer was a senior vice president at Giuliani Partners, a consulting firm.
Mr. Sheirer was driving to work from his home on Staten Island when he began having chest pains, pulled over at 14th Street and 10th Avenue and called 911. He was taken to Beth Israel Hospital, where he died. ...
What role did the closing of St. Vincent's play in Mr. Sheirer's death ?
The NYTimes article doesn't mention if Mr. Scheirer's death could have been prevented if St. Vincent's Hospital was still open. Neither does the article indicate how much time the ambulances took to respond to 14th Street and 10th Avenue, or how much time it took for the ambulances to transport Mr. Sheirer to Beth Israel Hospital.
Join us on Tuesday, Jan. 31, at 6 p.m. at the LGBT Community Center at 208 West 13th Street in the West Village.
With St. Vincent’s closed, the West Side still has no hospital beds below 57th Street. How can we bring a hospital back to our community ? How can we get true universal healthcare ? Come Join the Discussion ! RSVP at the Facebook page for the St. Vincent's Community Assembly.
This "town hall" is a consensus-based conversation facilitated by HEALTHCARE FOR THE 99%, an OCCUPY WALL STREET working group.
2012-01-31 St Vincents Community Assembly - Luxury Condos Cant Do CPRMartin Luther King, Jr., Day Protest outside St. Vincent's Hospital.
Stop closing hospitals ! In 1966, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said, "Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and most inhuman."
Rudin Construction Staff Are Working On MLK Day
News Flash : Suzannah B. Troy reported that Rudin Management Company is making their construction workers are putting up blue walls and scaffolding on Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Day on the Seventh Avenue side of St. Vincent's Hospital.
Monday, January 16, 2012 at 7 p.m., at
130 West 12th Street in the West Village
Stop Closing Hospitals ! In 1966, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said, "Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and most inhuman."
Activists will participate in a candlelight vigil outside the Rudin Management Company’s sales office at 130 West 12th Street in the West Village. We will celebrate the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s holiday by highlighting the loss of St. Vincent’s Hospital and of our community’s need for a full-service hospital.
''Stage Seven begins when the movement, after a long process of growing bigger and deeper, reaches a new plateau in which the societal consensus turns the tide of power against the powerholders, launching an endgame process that eventually leads to the movement succeeding in reaching its goal.'' -- from Doing Democracy: The MAP Model for Organizing Social Movements
Even though City Council Speaker Christine Quinn has backpedaled and temporarily betrayed her "corporate loyalties" by seeming to support a living wage that may benefit perhaps only 1,000 employees, the reality is that Mayor Michael Bloomberg is triangulating his way out of having to sign the compromise living wage into law.
For her part, Speaker Quinn stopped opposing the living wage bill only after the community exerted too much pressure on her from the left. As in with all politics, once the system becomes afraid that the voters will take something away from the corrupt political machine, that is only when the corrupt political machine will ever answer to the community's demands.
Even though Mayor Bloomberg has never committed to sign the living wage bill into law, let's review how Speaker Quinn "evolved already" :
''A quiet showdown happens when powerholders realize that they can no longer continue their present policies and they launch a face-saving endgame process of “victorious retreat.” Rather than admit defeat and praise the movement for its correct views and its principled stand, the powerholders adopt and carry out many of the goals and policies that were demanded by the movement. The powerholders claim credit for victory, even though they have been forced to reverse their previously held hard-line policies. The mainstream media complies by reporting this as a success of the powerholders.'' -- From Doing Democracy: The MAP Model for Organizing Social Movements
Once more citizens realise that the corrupt political system won't answer to the community's demands until after immense pressure is put on politicians, then, and only then, will more citizens learn to organise to put immense pressure on politicians on every issue. My prediction : the next issue that Speaker Quinn will have to answer to is the shady closing of St. Vincent's Hospital and the related Rudin luxury condo conversion of the hospital's real estate properties.
Christine Quinn Visits Lenox Hill First Aid Clinic
by: maslowsneeds
OP-ED :
Will the Lenox Hill Urgent Care Clinic In The O'Toole Building Treat "Less Worthy" Hospital Patients ?
Heard On The Street : when the urgent care clinic that is coming to the West Village opens up, someday, it is being said that Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan's exclusive Upper East Side will use the urgent care clinic to receive average hospital patients whenever Lenox Hill Hospital needs to close one of its wings to accommodate the 1%, like Beyoncé Knowles' celebrity birth. It is a total outrage that Lenox Hill Hospital would stop a father from seeing his premature twin babies in the maternity ward.
In Exchange of Tweets Last Night, Talking Points Memo editor casts New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn in dark light.
Josh Marshall, the editor and publisher of Talking Points Memo, called Christine Quinn "standard political flimflam," describing his experience with her as "very negative."
The exchange of Tweets was in regards to 2013 mayoral candidate Tom Allon's full-page newspaper advertisement criticising Speaker Quinn over the closing of St. Vincent's Hospital.
Christine Quinn Stands Behind Decision on Larry Seabrook Slush Funds
New York City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn continued to dole out taxpayer money from her discretionary slush fund to Councilman Larry Seabrook, giving him over $350,000 in slush funds in the city's 2012 fiscal year budget, which begins on July 1, The New York Times reported.
What bloggers immediately found shocking was that Speaker Quinn would still dole out taxpayer money to Mr. Seabrook, even though his federal investigation corruption trial ended in a mistrial ; prosecutors are expected to mount a second trial against Mr. Seabrook on corruption charges related to his misuse of Speaker Quinn's slush funds.
Today, the top political bloggers in New York City posted scathing indictments of Speaker Quinn. Gary Tilzer from True News From Change NYC lambasted Speaker Quinn thusly : Showing No Moral Leadership, Quinn Continues to Fund Seabrook.
And Suzannah B. Troy from Christine Quinn Mini Me, reminded her readers that Speaker Quinn left vacant the position of Chief Compliance Officer for an impossible 11 months, even though this job was specifically created to oversee Speaker Quinn's annual multi-million slush fund.
Separately, the editorial boards (not individual columnists, but the entire body of the editorial editors) of The New York Daily News, The New York Times, and The New York Post, which can never agree on ANYTHING, have all denounced Speaker Quinn over the political corruption that is forever tainted with her annual backroom slush fund bonanza.
City Council Speaker Christine Quinn will return $26,471 in "morally bankrupt" campaign contributions from Steve Nislick, the President and co-Founder of the animal rights lobbying group NYCLASS, but Speaker Quinn will not return in "morally bankrupt" campaign contributions from the Rudin family.
In a secret iPhone audio recording, a top real-estate executive was caught talking about the dirty little secrets behind being a campaign bundler for City Council Speaker Christine Quinn.
“Even if it’s a morally corrupt investment, you know what, you’ve got to do it, I think,” Mr. Nislick is heard saying.
The New York Post published a critical look at Speaker Quinn's campaign bundlers, only because activists secretly infiltrated NYCLASS to expose the truth about NYCLASS's double-dealing with animal rights on the one hand, and with Speaker Quinn, an infamous champion for the horse-drawn carriage industry in Central Park, which, at times, has been described as a form of animal exploitation tourism, on the other. It is unknown if The New York Times' own politically-motivated hit job on one of mayoral candidate John Liu's campaign donation bundlers prompted The NYPost to publish it's own critical look at Speaker Quinn's campaign donation bundlers. The NYPost article was written by the reporter David Seifman.
Other activists do not believe that all animal rights activists would bundle money with such a reckless disregard for ethics ; look at how Speaker Quinn readily and so eagerly accepted more donations from the Rudin family in exchange for going along with Rudin luxury condo upzoning project for St. Vincent's Hospital :
As an aside, no wonder Speaker Quinn won't support the Living Wage bill, because it takes funneled campaign donations money and protests, perhaps organised by #OccupyWallStreet, before Speaker Quinn would support a Living Wage.
OP-ED : The Rudin Condo Conversion Of St. Vincent's Hospital : Silent Heart Attacks Waiting To Happen, Which North Shore-LIJ-Lenox Hill Urgent Care Center Cannot Treat.
According to an article in USA Today, ambulances and Fire Rescue crews cannot be counted on transporting the most critically ill patients to stand-alone "emergency departments" such as the one that Bill Rudin is building for the West Village. Mr. Rudin is building a flim-flam urgent care center that has all of 2 "hospital beds" as political cover, so that he can get approved to convert St. Vincent's Hospital into luxury condos. In the rest of the country, in most smaller cities and even in rural communities, trauma patients and those having strokes or heart attacks cannot be transported to urgent care clinics or even to stand-alone "emergency departments," because those facilities cannot save people's lives when every minute matters. In Miami, for example, ambulances are forbidden from bringing patients to stand-alone "emergency departments."
Seeing as how there are acute healthcare emergencies, such as strokes and heart attacks that happen all the time, what is to become of those patients ? How can the Rudin family live with themselves by selling the lie that an urgent care clinic can treat silent heart attacks ? The very definition of a silent heart attack is one that the patient begins to suffer from indications that the patient does not believe are serious, and then the patient waits too long to get help. One must wonder if the entire Rudin Family Luxury Condo Conversion Plan isn't a metaphorical "silent heart attack" all unto itself : the luxury condo plan is a warning sign that the healthcare for the 99% is being eliminated, much like the social safety net is being shredded, and yet there are no alarm bells going off.
City Council Speaker Christine Quinn gave Astorial Councilman Peter Vallone, Jr., a $600,000 Koch-$lap he'll never forget.
After Astoria City Council Democrat Peter Vallone, Jr., criticised City Council Speaker Christine Quinn's decision to rename the Queensboro Bridge after Former Mayor Ed Koch, Speaker Quinn took an ax to the amount of slush funds she gave to Councilman Vallone.
"Vallone saw a 42 percent drop in district earmarks -- from more than $1.4 million last year to $838,321 in the budget that took effect last week. By comparison, the overall discretionary budget dipped by only 2.3 percent --from $395 million to $386 million," reported The New York Post.
Former mayor Koch now works as a paid spokesman for the Rudin luxury condo conversion of St. Vincent's Hospital. He is the vanity figurehead of an astroturfing group that is publishing propaganda to confuse West Village residents, who are protesting Bill Rudin's planned luxury condo conversion of St. Vincent's Hospital.
City Hall insiders claim that Speaker Quinn has control issues, and she will lash out in a vindictive streak by cutting her slush fund allocations to councilmembers, who do not follow the instructions issued by Boss Quinn.
