The Radicalism of Bill de Blasio

ACORN, for example, represents an interesting point of connection between Obama’s radical past and de Blasio. ACORN exercised substantial de facto control over the leftist New Party. Former ACORN head Bertha Lewis has close ties to de Blasio and has predicted a comeback for ACORN’s successor group under a de Blasio administration. Patrick Gaspard, a former New Party staffer with close ties to ACORN is not only a former Obama White House Political Director, but is one of de Blasio’s closest friends, and played a central role in shaping de Blasio’s campaign for the Democratic mayoral nomination. ("The Radicalism of Bill de Blasio" By Stanley Kurtz, National Review)

How committed is Bill de Blasio to adopting progressive reforms ?

Bill de Blasio and Land Use : Liberal Mayoral Candidate Would Continue Many of Bloomberg's -- and Quinn's -- Policies

In the weeks leading up to Christine Quinn's defeat in the Democratic primary election, it came to be known that one of the slimy Rudin lobbyists responsible for influencing the City Council to approve the controversial St. Vincent's luxury condo conversion plan had already found a way to get access to Bill de Blasio, the presumptive leading mayoral candidate. Hosted on Scribd is an e-mail about the controversial lobbyist, James Capalino, that was exchanged between Donny Moss and I.

After a couple of weeks of careful consideration, I have produced a new YouTube video about this e-mail exchange.

One major reason that activists organised to vote Quinn out of office was because of how she sold out the community in favor of her campaign contributors and powerful big business interests. Real estate developers have enjoyed great influence over city government, so much so that voters have had almost no way of participating in important community decisions. For example, voters desired saving the zoning on the St. Vincent's campus for a replacement hospital, but big business interests were able to ride roughshod over voters because of their use of lobbyists and the outsized influence of campaign donations.

After the primary election, Bill de Blasio announced that he would not appear at fundraisers unless contributors could package together donations of at least $75,000. In addition to embracing lobbyists that helped Rudin privatise the former real estate of St. Vincent's, de Blasio was now embracing the out-sized influence of money in politics.

How could it be that activists, who carried the reform banner to organize and defeat Quinn in the mayoral primary, now turn the other way after de Blasio has now begun to adopt some the same tools of the broken political system as did Quinn ?

The concerns over who gets access to political candidates are serious. As some of you may know, when Andrew Cuomo was running for governor, some St. Vincent's activists approached his campaign people over the need for a hospital to replace St. Vincent's. Cuomo's campaign people told the St. Vincent's activists, "We'll see you after the election." After the election, what did Gov. Cuomo do ? Within days, he formed the Medicaid Redesign Team to continue the work of closing hospitals, and he appointed Stephen Berger to head the Brooklyn Working Group in an attempt to specifically close hospitals in Brooklyn. Similarly, some AIDS activists tried to reach out to the de Blasio campaign this year to determine if his campaign platform would include more ambitious goals to confront HIV/AIDS, but the AIDS activists were told by de Blasio's campaign people, "We'll see you after the election."

After all the community organizing, town halls, and protests in which activists have engaged to fight for a hospital to save St. Vincent's, just hearing the phrase, "We'll see you after the election," should activate a powerful recognition : that de Blasio means to make no public commitment to champion for the reforms that that many communities say they want to see brought about in the next mayoral administration.

Some activists, who participated in the movement to vote Quinn out of office, have been doing this work for over 22 years -- from the time when Quinn first arrived in the political scene in New York. It becomes too late to try to hold a politician accountable once the politician gets elected into office. Using Quinn as an example, she will have spent about 15 years in City Council spread out over 5 terms in office. During this time, in what direction has this city headed ? There was no way to hold her accountable during these 15 years, except to finally vote her out of office. That's the only way.

As challenging as it was to vote Quinn out of office, what lesson should we be drawing from this experience ? What wisdom is there to be had ? The reality is that Quinn was just a symptom of a broken political system. The root causes of the political system being broken still exist. In the last two years, our activism was influenced by important principles from the Occupy movement, and that is that inequality, corruption, and the undue influence of big business interests is what keeps our government broken and non-responsive to voters' needs. Knowing all that we know, do we wait for politicians to max out on term limits before they should be held accountable to voters, or should politicians be held accountable even before they win an election and are sworn into office ?

It all comes down to what you think, because it was you, who was made voiceless under the Bloomberg-Quinn administration. Our immediate contribution to push back against the broken political system was to vote Quinn out of office, but based on the messages that de Blasio is telegraphing to the community, voting Quinn out is not enough to bring about reforms. Now that she will soon be gone, what else do you need to do to reclaim your government ?

Please think about this, because the movement to bring about reforms is not over, yet. The movement needs you to step forward, because not everybody is fighting for reforms, and compromises are being made that may not serve your best interests. The only way for you to make sure that your best interests are being served is for you to step up and speak out. Your voice and opinion counts. Make it be heard.

Bill de Blasio Violates PFAW's Emphasis On Right To Cast A Vote That Gets Counted

Last month, mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio, center, appeared with Kathleen Turner, a director of People For the American Way Foundation, at a campaign stop in the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

Robert Adler, a Staten Island special prosecutor, has been issuing subpoenas to investigate improper campaign financing to candidates the Working Families Party aided in 2009, which include Bill de Blasio and his race for public advocate. Meanwhile, the ''progressive'' group People For The American Way is rallying to support de Blasio's mayoral campaign, even though he has violated important PFAW principles, such as the right to cast a vote that counts.

Since it's not politically expedient, Bill de Blasio won't emphasize the need to count all the votes. @BOENYC

— Stop Bill de Blasio (@StopdeBlasio) September 17, 2013

Earlier this week, mayoral candidate Bill Thompson conceded his loss in the Democratic primary election, even though the New York City Board of Elections had not yet completed its count of 80,000 paper ballots. Consequently, Mr. Thompson conceded even though the Board of Elections had yet to certify the primary election outcome. On NY1 The Call, many callers complained that Mr. Thompson was bowing to pressure from the de Blasio campaign in order to shore up Mr. de Blasio's standing with fundraisers. Callers felt that voters were being betrayed, because Mr. de Blasio was forcing an election outcome out of political expediency at the cost of allowing the 80,000 paper ballots to be counted.

At Mr. Thompson's concession speech, he groused that it was unfair that the Board of Elections had failed to timely count the votes cast in the Democratic primary election. Previously, Mr. Thompson had urged the Board of Elections to make sure that every voice would be heard, that every vote would be counted. But on the occasion of Mr. Thompson's concession, Mr. de Blasio never once address the issue of the uncounted votes, which citizens had cast, and which would not be counted toward the Democratic primary election results.

Donate Your Twitter Account to Bill de Blasio Sold Out

Click on "Donate Your Account" (below) to donate tweets from your Twitter account to our campaign to put pressure on Bill de Blasio to move to the left and to adopt a truly reform, progressive agenda.

How can Bill de Blasio stand up to Gov. Andrew Cuomo on the hospital closing crisis ?

Healthcare activists question how Bill de Blasio will pressure #Gov1% to save hospitals if both stand at City Hall, holding hands in unity ?

— Stop Bill de Blasio (@StopdeBlasio) September 18, 2013

Only two months ago, mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio blasted Gov. Andrew Cuomo for not doing squat to save the community hospital closing crisis being brought about by Gov. Cuomo's political appointee, the Wall Street investment banker Stephen Berger. But now, Mr. de Blasio is holding hands with Gov. Cuomo in a show of "unity." Healthcare activists question how Mr. de Blasio will be able to pressure Gov. Cuomo to reverse course on hospital closings, if they how appear to have brokered political backroom deals to support each other in the election and reelection cycle ?

Partnership For New York City Went From Vilifying BDB To Endorsing Him. WTF ?

The 2 faces of Kathy Wylde only show up after a backroom deal has been made : this https://t.co/yR9PBwIFoc became : https://t.co/rcCJxi3u0O

— Stop Bill de Blasio (@StopdeBlasio) September 13, 2013

How did Bill de Blasio manage to sell out so fast ? Maybe it has to do with how within the course of about a week's worth of time Kathy Wylde, the corrupt CEO of the Partnership For New York City CABAL, managed to go from vilifying Bill de Blasio to endorsing him ?

Kathryn Wylde really is America's worst person. http://t.co/I2IU1DFy8l

— David Dayen (@ddayen) September 4, 2013

“@deBlasioNYC is a smart, practical leader” - business leader Kathy Wylde, president and CEO of @Partnership4NYC

— Justin Brannan (@JustinBrannan) September 13, 2013

Bill de Blasio Triangulation To Power Clintonista Way

"The deeper you look, the stronger the evidence that de Blasio’s victory is an omen of what may become the defining story of America’s next political era: the challenge, to both parties, from the left," writes Peter Beinart in an article, "The Rise Of The New New Left" for The Daily Beast, noting that, "It’s a challenge Hillary Clinton should start worrying about now," adding, "If history is any guide, the sentiments behind Occupy will find their way into the political process, just as the anti-Vietnam movement helped create Eugene McCarthy’s presidential bid in 1968, and the civil-rights movement bred politicians like Andrew Young, Tom Bradley, and Jesse Jackson." Although Bill de Blasio is a definite Democratic Party insider and Clintonista -- he served in the Bill Clinton administration and was Hillary Clinton's senatorial campaign manager -- he was shrewd and politically calculating to position himself to the left of the other mayoral candidates, but Beinart seems to take de Blasio's move at face value. "Bill de Blasio’s mayoral campaign offers a glimpse into what an Occupy-inspired challenge to Clintonism might look like," he adds. But what if de Blasio was just triangulating his way into power by telegraphing signals to outside pressure groups, and nothing more than that ? De Blasio can hardly challenge Clintonism if he is using the same unprincipled machinations from the Clinton playbook.

Moreover, the article seems to minimize that voters made a wholesale reject of Christine Quinn's boss-style politics. It cannot be denied that Occupy sensibilities played a role among some of the anti-Quinn activists. But, Occupy sensibilities could not have entirely backed de Blasio's campaign, especially given his apparent use of an independent expenditure group to help his campaign circumvent public campaign finance limits and his close working relationship with real estate lobbyists, who have been responsible for the loss of hospital infrastructure to the Bloomberg-Quinn's administration's emphasis on gentrification.