Here's a devastating comparison between Christine Quinn and Ken Mehlman being made by Dan Fishback, via Queerty :
Queerty : One of the most interesting themes of the play is “proximity to power,” particularly how homosexuals in those positions – closeted or not – forsake the LGBT community, e.g. Ken Mehlman. Can you speak to that a bit?
Fishback : One of the worst culprits of this kind of betrayal is Christine Quinn. People support her because she’s a lesbian, but her actual policies are terrible for most queer people. She supported turning St. Vincent’s Hospital in the still-gay West Village into a luxury condo high rise, as if gay people need wealthy neighbors more than they need a hospital. She won’t pass paid sick leave, she’s supported our demonic Police Commissioner, the list goes on and on. But the thing is: queer people are everywhere. So when politicians like Quinn attack the poor, they attack the LGBT community. When they attack immigrants, they attack the LGBT community. When they attack people of color, they attack the LGBT community.
It happens over and over again – not just here, but in Western European countries too. When white homosexuals gain access to political power, they consolidate it by joining the white heterosexual elite in oppressing some “other” group – like immigrants, the poor, or people of color. This is being called “homonationalism,” which I think is a really helpful term, because it’s so widespread – the desperateness with which so many white homosexuals shit on whoever is beneath them in order to feel more secure in the power structure that, only a few years ago, would have eaten them alive.
After years of throwing the LGBTQ community under the bus, Ken Mehlman came out of the closet as having been a self-loathing gay man. What does Mr. Mehlman's episode of hate for his own community have to do with Christine Quinn ? For starters, watch how City Council Speaker Christine Quinn does nothing to help LGBTQ New Yorkers stand up to the Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, who in practise illegally profiles, uses stop-and-frisk against, harasses, and falsely arrests LGBTQ New Yorkers :
At a meeting last Thursday in Redhook, Brooklyn, New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn was "blasted" by voters for not having any plan to save Long Island College Hospital (LICH).
After Speaker Quinn delayed a vote on paid sick leave for three years, she finally stops stalling and reaches a watered-down compromise in order to avoid a revolt by City Councilmembers, who were ready to use the nuclear option to bring the paid sick leave bill up for a vote.
But after 10 hospital closings in New York City since 2006, what does providing paid sick leave for people, who may be gravely ill ? What does paid sick leave mean, if our healthcare system is collapsing ?
10 hospitals have closed in NYC since 2006, and now @chriscquinn passes #paidsickdays ? Are any hospitals left to treat the sick ? @nytimes
At Thursday's rally by LGBTQ groups outside the U.S. District Courthouse at 500 Pearl Street, where the Floyd v. City of New York class-action, stop-and-frisk trial was in progress, only one mayoral candidate showed up to express solidarity -- and to renew a call for an end to stop-and-frisk. And it wasn't Christine Quinn.
Thank you, John Liu, for showing leadership, courage, and solidarity with the LGBTQ community.
Maybe New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn has not been able to hear the pleas from the LGBTQ community, because her office is soundproofed ?
During Michael Bloomberg's three terms as mayor, over 5 million New Yorkers have been stopped and frisked. During the over-lapping time that Christine Quinn has been Speaker of the City Council, over 3.9 million New Yorkers have been stopped and frisked.
Many politicians act powerless in the face of the NYPD's use of brutality, discrimination, and excessive force, but the members of the City Council, which each year approve the NYPD budget, simply rubber stamp Mayor Michael Bloomberg's attack on due process, the Bill of Rights, other civil rights, and civil liberties. If the City Council actually stood up to the mayor in the budget process, then maybe the City Council could legislate change without having to use the court system, like what is happening right now in the Floyd trial, a lawsuit that is challenging the NYPD's unconstitutional stop-and-frisk practices.
The description at Thursday's rally by members of various LGBTQ groups of how the NYPD target, harass, and even falsely arrest LGBTQ New Yorkers was tragic, and the pleas for help were compelling. But one must wonder why Speaker Quinn was absent from the rally, why Speaker Quinn did not express solidarity with the LTGBQ community's efforts to end stop-and-frisk, and why the Floyd trial was being used as a backdrop for this demonstration ?
Because so many non-profits took part in Thursday's rally, one must wonder if an explanation of the lock-step could not be found in a demand for an election year political favour ? We know that how Mayor Bloomberg and Speaker Quinn manufacture political patronage support is by making private donations or distributing discretionary City Council funds, respectively. Were the members of the LGBTQ groups manipulated into showing up outside the Floyd trial in order to distract from the fact that Speaker Quinn supports stop-and-frisk and has expressed her desire to continue NYPD Commish Ray Kelly's policies of harassment, profiling, discrimination, and brutality ?
Indeed, last December, activists in Jackson Heights organised a demonstration to highlight Speaker Quinn's failure to end stop-and-frisk. Speaker Quinn is a high-profile LGBT leader, but she turns her back on LGBTQ New Yorkers, who are deliberately profiled and targeted for harassment and arrest by the NYPD, said activists during last December's demonstration.
One of City Council Speaker Christine Quinn's main campaign supporters, Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro wants to ban Welfare assistance for pregnant teen mothers. No word, yet, from Speaker Quinn as to whether she shares Boro Prez Molinaro's anti-woman policies.
City Council Speaker and Democratic mayoral candidate Christine Quinn opposes a plan presented today by the teachers union that would undo mayoral control, a spokesperson for her campaign said this afternoon.
The United Federation of Teachers announced it would like to change the structure of the Panel for Education Policy in order to reduce the number of appointees the mayor makes the board, and to protect those appointees with fixed terms, so they cannot be replaced at will.
Quinn, who leads the other Democrats in the polls by a wide margin, "opposes this proposal," according to her consultant and spokesman Josh Isay.
Because of Christine Quinn's angry shouting matches with her co-workers, Speaker Quinn's administration made her office soundproof, so that people outside could not hear her screams and uncontrolled temper tantrums.
Several people said that Ms. Quinn’s anger could extend beyond conversation: as speaker, she has used her control of the Council’s funding accounts to punish members who have defied her.
When Councilwoman Elizabeth Crowley issued a statement to community newspapers in her Queens district that took credit for saving local firehouses from the annual budget ax, she failed to praise Ms. Quinn. Within an hour, Ms. Crowley was called into a room at City Hall, where a livid Ms. Quinn began to shout at her, demanding to know who had authorized what she considered to be a premature and poorly worded release.
An aide to Ms. Quinn, Ramon Martinez, criticized Ms. Crowley’s abilities as a lawmaker, at one point telling her, “You don’t know when to shut up,” according to people familiar with the episode. (Mr. Martinez, in an interview, said he did not recall using those words at the time, but added, “I certainly could have said that to her” in a separate conversation.)
Shaken, Ms. Crowley left, thinking the worst was over. Days later, she learned that Ms. Quinn had cut the Council contributions to senior centers and youth sports programs in her district. The two now rarely speak.
Asked about the episode last week, Ms. Quinn said that Ms. Crowley had committed “a completely inappropriate, attention-grabbing act” and violated Council protocol. “She was told it was not acceptable, and I did not mince words in telling her that,” she said.
Did Ms. Crowley have her funding cut as a punishment? “It is what happened that year,” Ms. Quinn replied.
Pressed on whether the move was an act of retaliation, Ms. Quinn just smiled: “It is what happened that year,” she said again, signaling that the matter was closed.
Christine Quinn Betrays Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals, and Transgenders :
What measurable, real, and tangible actions have openly lesbian City Council Speaker Christine Quinn taken in respect of LGBT civil rights ?
Let's examine the following examples of LGBT civil rights violations, to which City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, a high-profile openly lesbian politician, has been spineless in her response :
When over 30 men where being entrapped and were the targets of sexual orientation profiling by the NYPD, what did Christine Quinn do ? That's right, she did nothing to hold the NYPD accountable for their systematic discrimination of LGBTQS men.
In the interest of public health, New York City hands out free condoms, and then NYPD arrests LGBT New Yorkers for carrying condoms. And Speaker Quinn looks the other way, of course. Read more : New York City's Condom Bait-and-Switch
Look at the case of Jabbar Campbell. If LGBT New Yorkers get beat up by haters, you can count on Speaker Quinn to elbow her way in for photo opportunities. But if the haters are NYPD officers, you can count on Speaker Quinn to look the other way.
Speaker Quinn has shown no leadership on HIV/AIDS. She has opposed comprehensive harm reduction and HASA for ALL and has slashed $6 million of funds directed towards HIV/AIDS programs from the 2009 budget. According to Housing Works, budget meetings were highly secretive and many councilmembers were cut out of the decision making process. (via Radical Homosexual Agenda)
In her YouTube video announcing her mayoral campaign, Speaker Quinn did not say that she was a lesbian, and she did not mention her wife. Is this another case of self-hate or internalised homophobia ?
On the evening when Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the historic marriage equality bill into law, the NYPD raided the Eagle Bar in yet another demonstration of sexual orientation profiling. What has Speaker Quinn done to hold the NYPD accountable for their systematic discrimination of the gay men patrons of the Eagle ? That's right, she's done nothing.
Before New York State enacted its historic marriage equality law, Speaker Quinn was already being non-committal about fighting all the way to win, which is her usual strategy on everything.
When former Mayor Ed Koch passed away, lesbian NYC mayoral candidate Christine Quinn released a statement calling Koch a 'great mayor' and a 'great man,' even though Mr. Koch was mayor during a period of time during which the AIDS epidemic broke out -- a crisis that many have said Koch essentially ignored during his time in office. Many AIDS activists found Speaker Quinn's statement tone deaf and dismissive of the tens of thousands of local AIDS deaths attributable to the former mayor.
Last Friday's Public Hearing on the NYC Paid Sick Time Act was a HUGE success. Following the hearing, Speaker Quinn reached out to lead cosponsor Councilmember Gale Brewer for negotiations on the bill. Right now, Speaker Quinn needs to know that New Yorkers want the bill as it stands right now: All businesses with more than 5 employees must provide their workers with 5 paid sick days per year. And businesses with fewer than 5 employees must allow workers to take 5 unpaid sick days per year.
We don't want the carve out to go any higher than 5 employees. So we need you to Call Speaker Quinn right now and tell her :
"Do not gut the NYC Paid Sick Time Act. I do not want the carve out for businesses to rise any higher than 5 employees, because I want the bill to cover as many hard-working New Yorkers as possible. This modest measure will not harm employers with 5 or more employees. Thank you for your time."
Call Speaker Quinn at her legislative office number: (212) 788-7210.
From our inbox, making the rounds around New York City :
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From:
Date: Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 4:07 PM
Subject: Political Adulthood
To:
This morning, The New York Times published a profile of
the New York City Council Speaker painting her as a person
of uncontrolled temper, vituperation and vengeance.
This does not make her unique.
Shouting, threatening, and laying waste to one's
opponents are nothing new in politics.
But in the current climate, where the country is paralyzed
by an excess of ideology and ego, "I am who I am" is not
an excuse.
It is not too much to ask that our politicians act like
grown-ups.
Civil grown-ups, that is.
Carol Ann Rinzler and Louise Dankberg
---------------------------------------
PS: If you also are tired of public and private political
boorishness, feel free to share this with your own lists.
PPS: If you got two copies of this, we apologize.
Really, we do.
We have multiple lists that may sometimes duplicate.
Before election to the council, her mentor Sen. Duane, engineered her hiring as executive director of the NYC Gay & Lesbian Anti-Violence Project. After she demonstrated bad judgment with several decisions, the staff asked to meet with her to discuss the situation. She stayed in the meeting for 5 minutes until she felt too challenged. She them burst into tears and ran out of. The room. The next day several long term professional staff were summarily fired. Many of them had literally pioneered programs for lgbt crime victims, same sex domestic violence,& police -community relations. She replaced then with recent graduates & boyfriends of board members & big donors.
The behavior described in this article is not new.
In strategy sessions, Ms. Quinn can speak colorfully of other lawmakers, often saying, “I’m going to cut his balls off.”
In a profile published today by The New York Times, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn is portrayed as a bully, who launches into tirades and vendetta's against elected officials in her own political party :
She has threatened, repeatedly, to slice off the private parts of those who cross her.
More than two dozen current and former city officials, lobbyists and political operatives recounted being berated by Ms. Quinn, but few would speak for the record, citing a fear of retaliation. They offered nearly identical accounts of their altercations, describing a rapid escalation of voice and vitriol, occasionally laced with vulgarity.
Ms. Quinn’s staff, concerned that angry tirades could be overheard by outsiders, added soundproofing to her City Hall office. Wary of her temper, they are known to ask one another: “Did she throw up on you today?”
“Her eyes get really wide, she points her fingers,” one official said. “She gets really close to you. It’s really in your face.”
A former campaign donor who had been called to Ms. Quinn’s office to discuss a legislative proposal said: “She screamed at me for 10 minutes, uninterrupted, and used the ‘F’-word at least 20 times. I was just so startled, I didn’t know what to do.”
After 10 NYC Hospital Closings Since 2006, Gov. 1% Wants To Close More Hospitals ! What ?
Long Island College Hospital supporters are sponsoring a Change.org petition to save LICH. The sponsored include these New York State legislators : Assemblywoman Joan Millman and State Senator Daniel Squadron.
In conjunction with State Senators Velmanette Montgomery, Kevin Parker, Martin Malave Dilan, Diane Savino, Martin Golden, John Sampson, and Eric Adams -- and State Assembly Members: Alan Maisel, Joseph R. Lentol, Peter J. Abbate Jr., James Brennan, Alec Brook-Krasny, and Felix Ortiz.
It is ironic that SCOTUS journalist Linda Greenhouse wrote her column about how marriage equality will, in part, depend on Griswold v. Connecticut, which, almost 50 years later, is being gutted by NYPD. New York City police profile and arrest LGBT New Yorkers if they carry condoms. And while the ruling in Griswold made it legal for people to use prophylactics, here in New York City you have cops arresting people for carrying condoms, because the police use condoms as evidence of criminality -- instead of respecting people's right to privacy under due process. How will marriage equality come about if NYPD are trying to undermine the integrity of the Griswold ruling ?
If marriage equality will, in part, depend on the ruling in Griswold, what are LGBT elected politicians doing to put a stop to the NYPD from gutting Griswold ?
Members of ACT UP and other affinity groups protested outside the Democratic Mayoral Candidate Forum on LGBT Issues on Wednesday, March 20. Activists were calling for passage of paid sick leave, the end of HIV criminalisation, and an end of NYPD arrests of LGBT New Yorkers for carrying condoms.
In this video, the blogger and artist Suzannah B. Troy and the activist and blogger Louis Flores addressed some of the many issues that activists have with the karmically-challenged mayoral campaign of New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn.
A controversial banner was prominently displayed at tonight's protest, depicting a condom that is handcuffed. One of tonight's activists said to the hundreds of people in the queue at the entrance to the mayoral forum, "If you get stopped-and-frisked, and you are carrying condoms, then you will be put in handcuffs," in reference to the NYPD's policy of profiling LGBT New Yorkers for arrest by using any condom possession as evidence of criminality.
Even though many mayoral candidates were set to appear at tonight's forum, Speaker Quinn's campaign leaned heavily on City Council staff, some activists said, because she had dozens of paid staff on-site to distribute stickers, hold up campaign signs to stack the queue in her favour.
The forum was held at Baruch College's Mason Hall, 17 Lexington Avenue at 23rd Street. The public was told to use the entrance on 23rd street, but there was a side entrance on Lexington Avenue, which Speaker Quinn used, so she could avoid protesters.
Christine Quinn is going to embed the new Inspector General for cops inside the impotent Department of Investigation -- the same DOI that did nothing about CityTime, ECTP 911 tech system, slush funds, the Haggerty investigation, etc. What has the DOI ever done about the countless instances of NYPD brutality or killings ? Does this give you an idea of the kind of integrity the DOI has, and the kind of integrity Christine Quinn has for parking the new Inspector General within the DOI ? She's not creating a new Inspector General -- she's going to bury him inside a meaningless, do-nothing, paper-pushing department. Welcome to Christine Quinn's political doctrine : bait-and-switch situational ethics.
Just take a look at what has been allowed to exist -- quotas for arrests, quotas for racial profiling, and quotas for false arrests -- meanwhile, what has the Department of Investigation done about this ?
The construction workers at the site of the former St. Vincent's Hospital are using a regular street-side dumpster to collect Asbestos and Asbestos-contaminated construction materials in the luxury condo conversion to benefit Rudin Management Company.
Photo credit : Anonymous (via Suzannah B. Troy)
For weeks, there have been concerns expressed amongst the residents of the West Village, around the former site of St. Vincent's Hospital, about the integrity of the asbestos abatement procedure being conducted by Rudin Management Company construction workers.
There have been other disturbing photographs being shared amongst community activists, showing construction workers wearing scary-looking Haz-Mat suits at the construction site.
Some activists have been trying to collecting official reports about the safety of the seemingly casual treatment of asbestos at the construction site, but, thus far, no official reports have been released.
The below report only contains one reference to Asbestos, namely, that there was a presence of the carcinogen on the construction site, and nothing else.
After seven years as City Council Speaker, Christine Quinn thinks that she finally needs to do something to connect with average New Yorkers, that is why she has announced a "walk and talk tour." But she is steering clear of the Rawhide, an infamous leather bar in Chelsea, which finds itself in the cross-hairs of Speaker Quinn's promotion of luxury condos, zone-busting office buildings, and boutique hotel construction all across Manhattan.
Quinn became more cautious when I asked, point-blank, what kind of city she wants New York to be under her mayoralty. “A network of neighborhoods,” she responded. “In Queens, you don’t send your mail to Queens. You send it to Bayside, to Flushing, to Sunnyside, because people’s neighborhood identities matter. We have lost a bit of our neighborhood identity in kind of the Duane Reade–ing of New York. I worry about that.” I mentioned Bloomberg’s notorious quote about the city being a luxury product. “One of the things I loved about Chelsea,” she said, “is that on Eighth Avenue, there is the Rawhide bar—not a luxury product. And for many years there were Latino guys from the neighborhood who had a folding card table every Friday and Saturday night and played dominoes. And they knew every guy who walked into the Rawhide, and every guy that walked in the Rawhide knew them. A leather bar may or may not be the best example, but it is the type of neighborhood experience we want to be able to have, what Jane Jacobs called ‘the eyes on the streets’ all watching out for each other.”
Even though Speaker Quinn talks up her fondness of the Rawhide, wouldn't you know it that the greedly landlord has jacked up the rent on the leather bar. Now, the Rawhide is going out of business, precisely because of Speaker Quinn's policies that are gentrifying all of New York, even the former domain of leather bars, of all places.
Opened in 1979, the Rawhide is one of the last of a handful of old-school, unpretentious gay bars left in New York City. It is a survivor. But it won't be for long. The building that houses it on 8th and 21st in Chelsea was sold a couple of years ago and, according to our tipster with inside connections, the new landlord has jacked up the rent, nearly doubling it from $15,000 to $27,000 a month. The Rawhide's last day will be March 30.
What kind of business can afford $27,000 a month? A sterile bank branch, a bubbly fro-yo joint, a dead-eyed 7-Eleven ?
Every day, our city dies by one more of these thousand cuts. Some of the cuts are bigger than others, and this is one of them.
Tell Christine Quinn to put her money where her mouth is--if you value the Rawhide, then stand up for it.
Affinity action with #strikedebt. Join us next Sunday, March 24, at 1 p.m. Protest the debts that drive hospitals to closure. It's a matter of life or debt. RSVP : https://www.facebook.com/events/223995181075326/
Despite protests from parents and community activists, the Panel for Educational Policy voted on March 11 to approve a plan that would phase-out or co-locate several schools in the City and many in Queens.
The decision means that two Queens schools – and many others throughout the City – will soon no longer exist, while other area schools will have new inhabitants come the new school year.
Two schools based in Cambria Heights - Law, Government and Community Service High School and Business, Computer Applications and Entrepreneurship High School – will be phased out beginning next year.
Other Queens schools that will see changes are Newtown High School in Elmhurst and Flushing High School. Those two will have new schools located in its facilities.
At Monday night’s meeting, parents and teachers shouted and jeered at Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott and anyone else representing the Board of Education whenever they spoke.
Explaining why he supports the plan, Walcott said that while it is not an easy decision to make regarding which schools are phased-out, he said that it is one that falls on his shoulders and it will benefit those institutions in the future.
“We understand the anger, the reaction on the part of the parents, teachers and community as far as phasing out an institution that they’re very close to,” Walcott said, as he was met with a loud chorus of boos from the audience.
Before the vote, many people commented on the proposals that urged the PEP to pass a moratorium that would freeze school closures and co-locations until each school that is on one of these lists gets more of an opportunity to comment on what could happen to them.
One of many opposed to the closures was United Federation of Teachers secretary Michael Mendel, who said that the DOE does not care about how the children feel when they want to make changes like the one proposed.
“When the history of education is written for this decade, it’s going to be the black hole of education,” Mendel said. “No administration has hurt children more than you.”
Ultimately, the moratorium was voted down by the panel by a 7-4 vote, which paved the way to approve the co-locations and phase-outs later that meeting.
Dymtro Fedkowskyj, the Queens representative on the panel and one of the co-sponsors of the moratorium, said that he was disappointed that it was voted down, because the schools that the DOE said are failing began to show signs of improvement this year. He added that more time was needed to fix whatever problems those schools had.
He also said that while he knew beforehand that it was an uphill battle to get the resolution passed, they felt that this issue needed attention.
“We needed to bring a spotlight to what our community desires,” Fedkowskyj said.
Reach Reporter Luis Gronda at (718) 357-7400, Ext. 127 or at lgronda@queenstribune.com.
New Yorkers for Parks is portrayed as fake front group that is caught trying to help the U.S. Tennis Association (USTA) at the expense of public land at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. In a massive report, the Queens Crap blogs traces back accountability to many people in government and media.
It should come as no surprise that media bias by Carolyn Ryan at The New York Times also comes into play.
Who are "New Yorkers for Parks" and should we trust them ?
... New Yorkers for Parks are a beard for the city. They have zero credibility. They are listed right on the Parks Department home page as a Partner ....
It has not gone unnoticed in the administration-friendly pages of New York Times that NYC Park Advocates, a true independent group, has all but disappeared from park coverage under Lisa Foderaro's beat. (Westchester resident Lisa Foderaro of the NY Times is married to the former official state photographer for Gov. Mario M. Cuomo.) This, while the Parks Department partner group, New Yorkers For Parks, has appeared almost exclusively. In fact, since May 2012, Holly Leicht has been quoted at least 17 times in the paper - the vast majority in Ms. Foderaro articles. Since taking over the parks beat, the coverage has resulted in park stories of noticeably lower quality, none of which Metro Editor Carolyn Ryan and Co, apparently have a problem with.
Because Ms. Ryan is responsible for the media bias in the Metro Section (at least) of The New York Times, astute readers are wise to read objective, investigative reporting in the Queens Crap blog.
Thirty New York City Council members have signed on to a scathing letter from good-government group Common Cause that slams Council Speaker Christine Quinn for blocking a vote for three years on paid sick leave, The New York Post writes. (via City and State)
At 11:28 a.m., an email from "Christine C. Quinn" was sent from an email address linked to QuinnforNewYork.org.
The email and that .org site are fakes. You can tell because both of them argue for passing the Paid Sick Leave bill, which the real-life Quinn is blocking from being voted on in the City Council, even though it has more than enough supporters to override a mayoral veto. (Capital New York) * Rival Campaign Capitalizes on Internet Prank Mocking Christine Quinn (NYO) * "It's not clear who was behind the fake site." [Dan Hirschhorn and Tina Moore]
Why do New York liberals support conservative Christine Quinn ?
The politics columnist for The Guardian, a newspaper based in the U.K., has published a report in which he questions the liberal and Progressive commitment by New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. No surprise.
"... I'm surprised that progressives support Quinn so much – I've never thought of her as much of a liberal," wrote
Harry J. Enten.
Mr. Enten's report refers to Speaker Quinn's close association with Mayor Michael Bloomberg, her involvement with the term limits scandal, her horrible human rights record, and her blockage of the paid sick days bill, among other issues.
Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965), is a landmark case in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the Constitution protected a right to privacy. The case involved a Connecticut law that prohibited the use of contraceptives. (Wikipedia) This case overturned the 1879, Victorian era law in Connecticut that banned the use of prophylactics by couples. Fast-forward to 2013, and we find the NYPD is arresting people for carrying prophylactics. What's going on here ?
Are Commish Kelly and NYPD trying to undo major advancements in civil liberties, women's rights, reproductive rights, and LGBT equality ? The critical Constituional right of due process, a woman's right to an abortion, and LGBT equality depend on the integrity of the Griswold case. What is motivating Commish Kelly and the NYPD to undermine Griswold ?
Discriminated Against and "Profiled" by NYPD, Transgenders in New York Fear Carrying Condoms. Would Heterosexual New Yorkers be Arrested for Carrying Birth Control ?
The harassment of innocent people carrying condoms has now reached absurd levels that some claim that the NYPD's discriminatory use of stop and frisk and arrests over the carrying of birth control may pose a risk to public health.
"Those who have been targeted by the police, or who know people who have, are so afraid of carrying condoms that they often don't," The Village Voice has reported.
"In a 2012 study by the Sex Workers Project and the PROS Network, a New York City coalition of sex workers, organizers, and service providers, close to half of the participants reported not carrying condoms at some point out of fear of police repercussions. Among participants who identified as either transgender female or another gender identity besides male or female, the rate was a staggering 75 percent," The Village Voice has reported.
"The New York City Department of Health has been giving away free condoms since 1971, and has made condom distribution a centerpiece of its public-health program over the past six years," added The Village Voice.
"The Department of Health is flooding the city with free condoms, and the police department is using those very condoms to make the quality-of-life arrests that are clogging the courts. It is difficult to avoid the impression that the NYPD is deliberately seeking to increase quality-of-life arrests—perhaps even meet quotas—with arrests that are blatantly at odds with the city’s own public-health policy," The Village Voice has reported.
New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn looks the other way, because she wants to stay in good standing with Police Commish Raymond Kelly. She puts political expediency over privacy and civil rights.
Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965), is a landmark case in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the Constitution protected a right to privacy. The case involved a Connecticut law that prohibited the use of contraceptives. (Wikipedia) This case overturned the 1879, Victorian era law in Connecticut that banned the use of prophylactics by couples. Fast-forward to 2013, and we find the NYPD is arresting people for carrying prophylactics. What's going on here ?
Discriminated Against and "Profiled" by NYPD, Transgenders in New York Fear Carrying Condoms. Would Heterosexual New Yorkers be Arrested for Carrying Birth Control ?
The harassment of innocent people carrying condoms has now reached absurd levels that some claim that the NYPD's discriminatory use of stop and frisk and arrests over the carrying of birth control may pose a risk to public health.
"Those who have been targeted by the police, or who know people who have, are so afraid of carrying condoms that they often don't," The Village Voice has reported.
"In a 2012 study by the Sex Workers Project and the PROS Network, a New York City coalition of sex workers, organizers, and service providers, close to half of the participants reported not carrying condoms at some point out of fear of police repercussions. Among participants who identified as either transgender female or another gender identity besides male or female, the rate was a staggering 75 percent," The Village Voice has reported.
"The New York City Department of Health has been giving away free condoms since 1971, and has made condom distribution a centerpiece of its public-health program over the past six years," added The Village Voice.
"The Department of Health is flooding the city with free condoms, and the police department is using those very condoms to make the quality-of-life arrests that are clogging the courts. It is difficult to avoid the impression that the NYPD is deliberately seeking to increase quality-of-life arrests—perhaps even meet quotas—with arrests that are blatantly at odds with the city’s own public-health policy," The Village Voice has reported.
But people's right to own and use condoms aren't the only rights at risk. Later Supreme Court cases, such as Roe v. Wade and Lawrence v. Texas, at least partially rest on the legal reasoning in Griswold.
Are Commish Kelly and NYPD trying to undo major advancements in civil liberties, women's rights, reproductive rights, and LGBT equality ? The critical Constituional right of due process, a woman's right to an abortion, and LGBT equality depend on the integrity of the Griswold case. What is motivating Commish Kelly and the NYPD to undermine Griswold ?
New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn looks the other way, because she wants to stay in good standing with Police Commish Raymond Kelly. She puts political expediency over our right to privacy, our equal rights, our reproductive rights, and our civil rights.
Man who claimed cops beat him during gay pride party says police made multiple return visits to his home and conducted illegal searches of his apartment.
Christine Quinn, the openly lesbian Speaker of the New York City Council, used to be the director of the Anti-Violence Project. Back when she was head of AVP, Ms. Quinn used to advocate on behalf of victims of violence.
But now that Speaker Quinn is running for mayor, she is afraid to aggravate her close relationship with Raymond Kelly, the commish of the NYPD.
If LGBT New Yorkers get beat up by haters, you can count on Speaker Quinn to elbow her way in for photo opportunities. But if the haters are NYPD officers, you can count on Speaker Quinn to look the other way.
Jabbar Campbell — a Crown Heights man who claimed cops disabled his apartment’s security camera before beating him during his gay pride party in January now says 77th Precinct cops have since made multiple return visits to his home.
Campbell, who had already filed a notice of intent to sue the city, said plainclothes cops illegally searched his place last week. Campbell said he turned over the footage to investigators.
The Internal Affairs Bureau is investigating both incidents, police said.
Join us for a protest to stop hospital closings : 1 p.m., Sunday, March 24, 2013, at the former site of St. John's Queens Hospital : 90-02 Queens Blvd.
St. John's Queens Hospital has been closed for about 4 years now ; it is an example of how our debt-ridden healthcare system drives hospitals to closure. At the time of its closing, St. John's and its sister hospital had debts and losses in excess of $110 million. The healthcare infrastructure at the former St. John's Queens Hospital was lost, and it was not replaced. Meanwhile, the Emergency Room of nearby Elmhurst Hospital is overwhelmed.
Our debt-ridden healthcare system drives hospitals into closure.
Join us on Sunday, March 24 at 1 p.m., to demand that healthcare, hospital, and medical debt be absolved, so that medical emergencies stop driving hospitals -- and people -- into bankruptcy.
Please support a single-payer healthcare system, which would be a stable way to fund hospitals and healthcare.
Follow these hashtags on Twitter : #lifeordebt #strikedebt
Hospitals can be counted on to fail and close in the vicious market-based financing model that depends on decreasing insurance company reimbursement rates. Hospitals can also be counted on to fail and close if Stephen Berger ever mentions the word, "merger."
In 2000, Saint Vincent's Catholic Medical Centers of New York (SVCMCNY) was then a "newly merged enterprise of seven acute care hospitals with services that include a wide spectrum of health care. The system includes 2,600 acute medical/surgical beds, 61 primary care, behavioral health and ambulatory care sites, 800 long-term care beds, 1 million home care visits, approximately 2,000 physicians, and 15,000 associates. SVCMCNY serves communities in Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, Staten Island, and Westchester." (Source 1 ; Source 2)
The hospitals in the network included St. Vincent's Hospital in Greenwich Village, St. Vincent's Hospital (Staten Island), Mary Immaculate Hospital in Queens, St. John's Queens Hospital, Saint Joseph's Hospital in Queens, St. Mary's Hospital of Brooklyn, and Bayley Seton Hospital in Staten Island.
The New York Times later reported that St. Vincent's began to immediately struggle from this large-scale merger
"The merger was seen as a way of consolidating costs and allowing the Catholic hospitals wrapped into the system to continue their mission of providing care for the poor and uninsured. But the landscape soon changed, and hospitals found themselves with too many beds, too few patients and less reimbursement from public and private insurers. At the same time, medical costs - from equipment to malpractice insurance - were skyrocketing." (Source 3)
By 2005, the combined losses and debts of the hospital chain were too much bear ; the hospital system filed for bankruptcy. The 2005 bankruptcy filing was described at the time as the largest hospital bankruptcy in New York. (Source 4)
What first began as a noble purpose to help the poor and uninsured, the hospital mega merger began to become unhinged due to losses and debts. Saint Vincent's Catholic Medical Centers of New York (SVCMCNY) began to unravel its huge mega merger, because the economics of the market-based hospital financing system was just too vicious to bear.
Two hospitals, in particular, had to be spun-off. After St. Vincent's incurred untold millions of dollars in debt to keep St. John's and Mary Immaculate operational, $25 million is debt had to be absolved when the two hospitals were packaged off to Wyckoff Heights in Brooklyn under a new umbrella company named Caritas Health Care. Combined, the two Queens hospitals lost $60 million in 2008, and the two hospitals began 2009 with another $27 million in debt. (Source 5a)
At each step, smaller community hospitals kept being shuffled between parent holding companies. Along with the hospital assets, each transaction also shoveled along all the hospitals' debts.
The investment banker Stephen Berger, who has been tasked with closing hospitals by a series of neo-con and neo-lib governors, learned that mergers or spin-offs turned out to be a sinister, backdoor way to destroy public hospitals or hospitals with charitable missions. Mr. Berger has a die-hard, profit-driven ethics, which is to say, he willingly subverts public health if there is a way to try to squeeze profits out of somebody else's medical suffering.
Hospitals set up as a public charity, with noble missions to serve the poor, like St. Vincent's, was an affront to Mr. Berger's mission to wage a scorched earth campaign against hospitals that served the uninsured : Mr. Berger has been wanting to set up more market-driven, profit driven hospital systems, so that profit-centered care could win over patient-centered care.
The sad tale of St. Vincent's turned from tragedy into insult in 2010, when it filed for bankruptcy a second time. "In a filing with the U.S. bankruptcy court in Manhattan, St. Vincent's said it has between $100 million and $500 million of assets, more than $1 billion of liabilities, and between 25,000 and 50,000 creditors. The hospital was founded in 1849 to serve the poor." (Source 5b) Its bankruptcy, this time, was partly caused by the Rudin family, who held mortgages on some of the hospital's real estate, as a backdoor way to take ownership of the hospital's valuable real estate in the trendy West Village section of Manhattan.
Because hospitals are treated as a business, they are left to fend for themselves in a vicious market-based financing model that keeps hospitals getting squeezed from all sides.
Dr. James Satterfield, president of the Medical Society for the County of Queens and vice chairperson of surgery for Caritas, began to see that there was a very fundamental financial challenge facing community hospitals. Dr. Satterfield suggested that state and federal officials help draft a "comprehensive plan" to assess how best to save hospitals from closing. "We must salvage these hospitals. We cannot continue to cripple the health care of Queens," Dr. Satterfield said, referring to the impending closing of St. John's Hospital Queens and Mary Immaculate Hospital -- the two hospitals that St. Vincent's had to cast off, after its first bankruptcy filing. "Physicians are losing their practices. Hospitals are dying essentially. We cannot let this start here and let the domino effect take place," Dr. Satterfield said. (Source 5c)
After having lost millions of dollars and incurred millions more in debts, and then bankruptcy spin-offs, St. John's Hospital Queens is now being prepared to be transformed into a mixed-use retail-apartment complex. (Source 5d) Meanwhile, St. Vincent's is being transformed into a billion-dollar luxury condominium and townhouse complex.
But the financial stretch that the 2000 St. Vincent's mega merger caused, the 2005 bankruptcy, and the 2007 reörganization that lead to the spin-off of St. John's Hospital Queens and Mary Immaculate Hospital never lead to a greater examination of Dr. Satterfield's concerns about the inadequacies in the market-based financing model for hospitals.
Instead, it would seem that the Department of Health, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and Stephen Berger seem to wield hospital mergers or spin-offs as a backdoor way to close down hospitals.
Weaker hospitals are enticed with the assets of struggling hospitals to agree to a merger, on the one hand, but, on the other, crushing debts and steep financial losses are always part of hospital mergers.
Thus, the newly combined parent holding company are saddled with larger financial stresses, just like the 2000 St. Vincent's mega merger and the 2007 Caritas spin-off to Wyckoff.
Knowing how the mergers amongst the hospital components in the former Saint Vincent's Catholic Medical Centers of New York (SVCMCNY) have fared, is it any wonder why Stephen Berger advocates mergers for the hospitals that he really wants to target for closure ?
When it filed for bankruptcy, Interfaith officials told The New York Times that turning over operational control to Brooklyn Hospital without the state’s first promising the financing needed to keep Interfaith going would be tantamount to a covert plan to close Interfaith in a year and a half or so.
Witness, too, the "buy-out" of Westchester Square Medical Center by Montefiore Medical Center. Westerchester Square is expected to be "downsized" into an urgent care center, which, in Stephen Berger's greedy little mind, is one step away from financial failure.
All these hospital closings are making it dangerous for patients in life-or-death medical emergencies. "Patients seeking care at New York hospitals spend nearly five hours in emergency rooms -- among the worst rates in the country. New York state hospitals rank 46th in the nation for the length of time in e.r.s, tied with Mississippi. (Source 6)
"The longer wait times may be due to recent closures of health facilities, such as St. Vincent's Hospital...." (Source 7)
Not only that, but all of the hospital closings compounded the damage to hospital infrastructure following the devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy.
“If the Times Square bomber had actually blown up his car, injured victims able to walk would have found the doors of nearby St. Vincent's closed and locked,” said Dr. Angela Gardner, president of the American College of Emergency Physicians. (Source 8)
And in all this time, has New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn or New York City Council Health Committee Chair Maria del Carmen Arroyo ever held a hearing to find a way to fundamentally alter the way that hospitals are funded, the way that Dr. Satterfield has been seeking ?
Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, seated next to Quinn during a lively forum in Harlem on poverty issues, also ripped into the Council Speaker for helping pass a “watered-down” living-wage bill.
Controller John Liu consistently drew the loudest cheers from the largely minority audience, as he went further on several issues than his Democratic rivals – Quinn, de Blasio, ex-City Controller William Thompson and former Councilman Sal Albanese.
For one, he called for the minimum wage to be raised to $11.50 — the current rate is $7.25 in New York — while his opponents said they favored President Obama’s preferred figure of $9.
Liu also repeated a previous demand to have the NYPD’s controversial stop-and-frisk policy halted. “It makes everybody less safe,” he said. The other candidates argued to keep the practice but reform the way it is applied.
Publisher Tom Allon was the only GOP candidate to attend ; three others, including former MTA boss Joe Lhota, declined invitations.
