Bill de Blasio and the politics of race suicide ...

[John from Canada]

I can't imagine how it's possible to love children who don't even look like you. And how he was even able to procreate with that gorilla look-alike negress?

[Fabrizio]

Not a trace of him except a lighter complexion. Intermixing with Negros wipes everything out/ like a black hole in space; not even light can escape.

[The Bobster]

http://nypost.com/2013/11/17/speaker...vara-likeness/

Speaker hopeful pleased by Che Guevara likeness
By Michael Gartland
November 17, 2013 | 6:19am



Viva la revolución!

City Council speaker hopeful Melissa Mark-Viverito posted this image of herself — modeled after the iconic portrait of Che Guevara — months before Bill de Blasio was likened to the Marxist guerrilla for his love of the Nicaraguan Sandinistas.

“I take this as a compliment,” she wrote in an Instagram post that accompanied the homage to Fidel Castro’s right-hand the revolutionary.

The image was mocked up as a lark by Jorge Bendersky, a celebrity dog groomer connected with the councilwoman through Instagram and charity work.

“That was a joke,” Bendersky said. “It didn’t have any political background.”

Mark-Viverito, who posted it about five months ago, is arguably the most liberal of the members up for the speaker’s job. She had refused to recite the Pledge of Allegiance at meetings and joined in only after becoming a speaker contender.

De Blasio is backing her for the council’s top job, but the mayor-elect tweaked her Saturday for her refusal to stand.

“Obviously, I think people should stand for the pledge, but that decision is up to council members,” he said.

Council members Mark Weprin, Annabel Palma and Dan Garodnick are also being eyed for speaker.

[Gordon Green]

Progressive NYC Mayor-Elect Bill DeBlasio Kisses Al Sharpton’s Ringhttp://weaselzippers.us/2013/11/16/p...harptons-ring/

You know, as much as I have thought that Nanny Bloomberg was frequently ridiculous, we’ve not even begun to plumb the depths to which NYC can fall, now that de Blasio will be Mayor. ACORN will now hold sway in the city.



Via NY Post:

[The Bobster]

http://nypost.com/2013/11/21/bill-de...gn-supporters/

Crazy YT-hating dyke Cynthia Nixon joins de Blasio’s adviser team
By Yoav Gonad and Beth DeFalco
November 21, 2013 | 7:37am


Cynthia Nixon speaks at a 'Get Out the Vote' rally with women for de Blasio November, 2013


Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio hasn’t named any key figures in his administration yet — but he’s got plenty of new advisers.

On Wednesday, de Blasio announced a transition committee that includes a staggering 60 members — a number of whom were prominent campaign donors and supporters.

The list includes “Sex and the City” actress Cynthia Nixon; former Clinton White House Deputy Chief of Staff Harold Ickes; Bertha Lewis of the old ACORN grass-roots organization; and Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, partner of American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten.

“It is a group of people who share a progressive vision for the future of the city, who are known in their fields of endeavor as being effective and strong leaders, and who share a clear commitment to diversity in leadership for the future of the city,” said de Blasio, who announced the committee at a transition-ideas center in lower Manhattan.

Leaders in the social-justice, nonprofit and activism sectors made up a disproportionate share of those appointed to help the mayor-elect choose top administrative officials, advise on policy ideas and even help guide his approach to the budget.

There are 20 committee members in those fields, compared with just two in real estate, four in education, three in health and one in environment.

Those in the cultural and arts fields outnumbered financial and business leaders eight to seven, while there were five religious leaders.

The head of Local 1199 SEIU, George Gresham — the only major union to back de Blasio early on — and the president of Forest City Ratner Companies, MaryAnne Gilmartin, both made the cut.

The company’s chairman, Bruce Ratner, raised at least $73,000 for de Blasio’s campaign.

Asked if committee members could themselves be appointed to top posts, de Blasio spokeswoman Lis Smith would not rule out that possibility.

“The members of the transition committee are not looking for or seeking jobs in the administration,” she said.

De Blasio also said he had met with at least three candidates vying for the police commissioner’s job: former NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton, Chief of Department Philip Banks III and First Deputy Police Commissioner Rafael Pineiro.

The mayor-elect said he has a preference — but not a requirement — for a New Yorker or someone with city experience.

Despite having just six weeks before he takes office on Jan. 1, de Blasio said he was comfortable with the pace of the transition and with the caliber of talent available for top spots.

“We feel great about where we stand and the time line,” he said. “We think that the committee we’ve announced today will, in fact, speed that process further.”

When Michael Bloomberg was making his transition in late 2001, he waited until Dec. 20 to name seven commissioners and until Dec. 28 to name a handful of other agency heads.

[The Bobster]

http://nypost.com/2013/11/26/dinkins...sios-tax-plan/

Dinkins questions de Blasio’s tax plan
By Yoav Gonen
November 26, 2013 | 4:30am


Former NYC Mayor David Dinkins shakes hands with Bill de Blasio.


Former Mayor David Dinkins is publicly questioning whether Bill de Blasio will be able to get Albany to pass a tax hike on the rich to fund universal pre-K — a signature initiative of the mayor-elect’s campaign.

The ex-mayor raised the issue Monday after de Blasio, who was a low-level aide in his administration, gave a half-hour speech at Columbia University on early-childhood education.

“So many people dislike the notion of taxing the rich for the nigger poor,” Dinkins said after the New York City Summit on Children. “I don’t, but many do.”

Dinkins recommended he consider restoring the city’s commuter tax instead.

“I would urge you to have your experts take a good, hard look at that, weigh where the votes are in the Legislature, and see whether or not this might be more easily done,” he told de Blasio in front of a crowd of top educators.

But de Blasio stuck by his plan to hike income tax on the city’s wealthy.

“I’m always an open person, but I think a leader leads. I’m convinced this is the best way to get this done,” he said afterward.

De Blasio also announced he was forming a team to weigh the logistics of expanding pre-K (baby-sitting for welfare mammies). The team would recommend curriculums, create a plan to train teachers and find new space.

He admitted he was closer to picking an NYPD commissioner than he was a schools chancellor.

“The conversations are just being arranged now,” he said.

[The Bobster]

http://politicker.com/2013/12/we-are...boldened-left/

‘We Are in a Progressive Moment Right Now’: Bill de Blasio Fund-Raises for Emboldened Left
By Ross Barkan 12/04 9:01am

Last night Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio was again the darling of the left.

Headlining a Brooklyn fund-raiser for the group New York Communities for Change, Mr. de Blasio was hailed as a progressive hero and the fruit of a more than decade-long battle by labor groups, grassroots organizations and the Working Families Party to crown one of their own.

“I am so appreciative of not just the support I received and my campaign received, I’m appreciative of all the people who were given hope by New York Communities for Change, who were shown their own power,” said Mr. de Blasio, speaking at the Transport Workers Union Local 100′s headquarters in Brooklyn.

The fund-raiser drew hundreds of attendees, including many of the city’s political elite, allowing for the awkward collision of the Democratic powers-that-be and the strident, anti-establishment rhetoric of some of the event’s speech-makers. Chris Shelton, a vice president with the Communication Workers of America, urged the attendees noshing on brie cheese to join a “revolution” against the “bankers, billionaire and brokers of Wall Street.”

In particular, the fund-raiser honored the late Jon Kest, a founder NYCC who also helped launch the WFP, and served as a coming-out party for the city’s many liberal activists feeling emboldened by Mr. de Blasio’s ascension. Staunch de Blasio allies like George Gresham, the president of the powerful healthcare workers’ union, and Sex and the City actress Cynthia Nixon were honored, too, as well as Mr. de Blasio himself.

“We are in a progressive moment right now,” declared East Harlem Councilwoman Melissa Mark-Viverito, an early endorser of Mr. de Blasio and a leading candidate for council speaker. “This honoree [Mr. de Blasio] represents the culmination of Jon’s tireless, brilliant and visionary work to build our city’s progressive infrastructure and to build coalitions across groups that made our movement stronger … It was this infrastructure that was built that just about a month ago enabled our city to elect its first progressive Democratic mayor in 20 years, our Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio.”

There were also political subtexts: Mr. de Blasio hugged Ms. Mark-Viverito as he took to the podium in the drab, sprawling conference room. Insiders have long speculated that Ms. Mark-Viverito, a liberal firebrand, is Mr. de Blasio’s favored candidate for the city’s second most powerful post–and Mr. de Blasio added fuel to the fire in his remarks

At one point, he heralded her as a “wonderful, progressive visionary” and noted that she was the first sitting council member to endorse him “and that was in the lean times before things got quite so interesting. I am deeply appreciative of her commitment to progressive causes and all she’s done for this city.”

Still, Mr. de Blasio reserved much of his praise for NYCC, a community organizing group once known as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN. ACORN, which fought for liberal causes like raising the minimum wage and ending predatory lending, disbanded several years ago after an embarrassing scandal dried up its funding streams.

NYCC lent Mr. de Blasio’s mayoral campaign organizing might and is now hoping to revolve in his new orbit of power.

Despite the assertion of NYCC’s clout, however, there were hints of the realities Mr. de Blasio must reckon with as he straddles the worlds of the left and Democratic establishment. Ms. Nixon, tongue-in-cheek, warned Mr. de Blasio that the city’s left-wing institutions would hold him accountable, even if he was their current darling.

“NYCC will never hesitate to speak truth to power,” she said, “and to check our new mayor if suddenly he goes rogue and starts spending his days having three-martini lunches with Wall Streeters at Cipriani’s and his nights riding around with Chirlane through moonlit Central Park in one of those horse carriages he was supposed to ban.”

Ms. Nixon failed to note, however, that Mr. de Blasio already breakfasted with a leading hedge fund manager and investment banker–part of a larger effort to entice the city’s business elite to accept his agenda.

[The Bobster]

http://nypost.com/2013/12/06/bratton...lasio-ignores/

Bratton’s return a ray of hope, despite truths de Blasio ignores
By Michael Goodwin
December 6, 2013 | 2:41am


Returning police commissioner Bill Bratton apeaks at a press conference Thursday after being picked by mayor-elect Bill de Blasio (left) to head the NYPD.


That settles it — those who put their money on wacky Judge Shira Scheindlin getting the police job should pay up. The rest of us can breathe a sigh of relief.

Bill Bratton’s second coming at the NYPD is rightly greeted with much praise and high hopes. Bill de Blasio picked a cop’s cop who has the gravitas to resist a tide of anti-police bile certain to flow from the leftist brigades occupying City Hall.

Moreover, the mayor-elect’s pledge to continue to combat terror threats gives reason to hope he will not dismantle the department’s expensive, specialized units. Let’s also hope he doesn’t handcuff the units with political correctness.

Despite its virtues, though, the announcement comes larded with contradictions and enough historical revisionism to make a Soviet propagandist blush.

To start with, de Blasio hailed Bratton’s previous tour in the job this way: “Under his leadership in the mid-1990s, felony crime in New York City fell by 39 percent.”

The name he refuses to mention, of course, is Rudy Giuliani, the mayor who appointed Bratton for two years and who continued to drive crime down after he booted Bratton. The air-brushing of inconvenient facts reflects the same spiteful spirit that led de Blasio to denounce Giuliani as “divisive” during the campaign. It shows moer chutzpah than integrity, to praise Bratton’s accomplishments now while ignoring the man who hired and directed him.

Then there’s de Blasio’s vow to “deepen New York City’s historic gains in public safety” without acknowledging the other people who fought for and won those gains. But that would mean praising Ray Kelly and his boss, Mayor Bloomberg, and that, too, is taboo for the new regime.

With Gotham the safest big city in America, and with murder and other major crimes at record lows thanks to the 20-year policing strategies of Giuliani and Bloomberg, truth required an acknowledgment of how we got here. A simple thank-you to those responsible isn’t too much to expect from the man who inherits their heroic work.

These are not linguistic lapses. It is tasteless behavior that reduces honest public service to clannish squabbles. The election is over.

As such, de Blasio missed a chance to speak broadly to all New Yorkers. Yes, he won a landslide, but with only 22.6 percent of voters showing up — the lowest on record — he needs to remember the 7.5 million people who didn’t vote for him. He’s got to earn their trust and be their mayor, too.

Bratton can be a big part of that effort. The new top cop comes with a battle-tested vision of success.

“The goal of the police must be to prevent crime,” Bratton said in a forceful speech to the Gatestone Institute three weeks ago.

He made several references to crime as a “cancer,” and believes that the bad guys grow more aggressive when police and politicians become “too risk averse.”

Putting himself squarely on the opposite side of his new boss, Bratton faulted Judge Scheindlin’s sweeping ruling on the racial implications of stop-and-frisk, which is stayed pending appeal.

“It basically indicts the entire NYPD,” Bratton said, adding that, despite differences with Kelly, “he doesn’t have a racist bone in his body.” He also credited Kelly with “extraordinary success” and Bloomberg for allowing Kelly to do his job.

The new commissioner also said he hopes the federal monitor Scheind*lin appointed will be withdrawn, and, noting a new law creating an inspector general for the department, Bratton said, “I hope it is not someone who is a zealot looking to make a name for himself.”

Most important, he defended stop-and-frisk, saying it is both constitutional and a key police tool, and said he used it even more often than New York did when he was commissioner in Los Angeles. One difference is that the LA stops usually involved people in cars who committed minor auto infractions, such as driving with a broken taillight, with cops often then conducting a search or frisk.

His main criticism of New York’s practice was that too many young cops were involved who had neither proper training nor sufficient supervision.

That perspective leads me to believe that Bratton could better serve de Blasio as a deputy mayor for public safety. He could stand by the untested mayor’s side to guide him through emergencies and the inevitable police shootings and controversies without also having to manage 35,000 officers.

That option remains available, but for now, Bratton climbs back onto the saddle at 1 Police Plaza. Godspeed to him and the brave men and women of the NYPD.

[Hunter Morrow]

This wasn't about de Blasio. This was about DUH JEW. How many more schnooks is he going to hook up with jobs?

I haven't read one article about this guy that didn't have 3 heebs in it, minimum.

The judge, Shira Scheindlin

The name is half the game. Bill Bratton. Is he half or did he marry into the tribe?
Bill Bratton, the new police chief, married into the tribe to Rikki Klieman, a "court t.v. personality"



The Inaugural Committee not only has jewish representation, but Orthodox Jewish rabbinical participation.

The committee named ‘Inauguration for All’ will be chaired by Gabrielle Fialkoff, a longtime ally and the Finance Chair for Bill de Blasio’s successful campaigns for Mayor of New York City and Public Advocate of New York City. Among the members selected by Mayor-Elect Bill de Blasio are at least three representatives from the Orthodox Jewish community: Rabbi Heshie Dembitzer of Bobover Yeshiva B’nai Zion in Borough Park; Sephardic community leader Morris Missry of Midwood and Yitzchok “Isaac” Leshinsky, CEO, Housing Bridge. -

See more at: http://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/....M7rcp4M3.dpuf

Just look at all the people he is surrounded by...

Bertha Lewis
Harold Ickes
Randi Weingarten
Cynthia Nixon...Married Into The Tribe and has children who she describes as "very Jewish" and has had them bar and bat mitzvahed.
Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum

Is there anybody allowed near NYC politics who isn't a jew or married to one, or at least a non-White? Anybody at all?

[The Bobster]

http://nypost.com/2013/12/09/schools...te-under-fire/

Schools chancellor candidate under fire
By Carl Campanile
December 9, 2013 | 5:56am


Joshua "Jew Mouth" Starr


One of the candidates being eyed by Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio to become the city’s next schools chancellor is under fire from Maryland parents for failing to aggressively crack down on teachers accused of molesting students.

Montgomery County Superintendent Joshua Starr faces questions over his school district’s handling of a music teacher who was charged in August with sexually abusing 14 female students in a kindergarten-to-second-grade elementary school over an eight year period.

Parents and teachers complained that it was known that veteran music teacher Lawrence Wesley Joynes was a suspected pedophile, but school administrators did not move fast enough to remove the teacher to protect their kids.

Parents at the New Hampshire Estates Elementary School in Silver Spring, near DC, also were unhappy with Starr’s response.

“I believe it was mishandled. My child was put at risk,” parent Rick Rick Bonazelli, whose daughter attended the school from 2009 through last year, told The Post.

“If a situation like this comes to my attention again I will not trust the Montgomery County school system to handle it. I will go directly to the police.”

Earlier in the year, music teacher Joynes was arrested for possessing child pornography. The principal at the time said, “We have no reason to believe” that any students’ images were included. But subsequent searches allegedly found that Joynes had videos and images of 14 of his students whom he directed to make sexually suggestive gestures, including inappropriate touching.

Starr’s office defended his handling of the matter.

“Dr. Starr is very concerned about the Joynes case and has ordered MCPS [Montgomery County Public Schools] to review its processes to ensure the district learns from this case and puts steps into place to make sure concerns about staff misconduct are reported and traced appropriately,” said Starr spokeswoman Dana Tofig.

Formerly the director of school performance and accountability for New York City public schools, Starr is considered a favored candidate of the teachers union for the chancellorship.

De Blasio’s transition office declined comment on Starr’s chances of being tapped.

“There are a lot of rumors out there, and we are not going to comment on any of them,” said his spokeswoman, Lis Smith.

[The Bobster]

http://nypost.com/2013/12/11/de-blas...racie-mansion/

There goes the neighborhood: The de Blasios moving to Gracie Mansion
By Andy Soltis and Beth DeFalco
December 11, 2013 | 11:36am


Gracie Mansion at East End Avenue and 88th St. Inset: The de Blasio's on Election Night


The de Blasios are moving to Manhattan.

After weeks of uncertainty about where they’ll live after Jan. 1, Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio and his mongrel family announced Wednesday that they are leaving their home in Park Slope for Gracie Mansion on the Upper East Side.

They cited “a variety of reasons, like logistical and security concerns” that made the shift the “practical choice.”

A message, signed “By Bill, Chirlane, Chiara and Dante” on de Blasio’s transition Web site, said:

“It’s a tough decision. Brooklyn is our home and Park Slope is our neighborhood. And we love these places. In many ways, they’ve come to define who we are.”

The mayor-elect has previously said that a concern for Dante was his commute to Brooklyn Tech HS in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn, which is just minutes from Park Slope.

The family said that they still plan to keep their house and promised to remain fixtures in their old neighborhood.

“Even while we move to Gracie Mansion for a spell, we’ll be keeping our home in Brooklyn and stopping by our favorite spots like The Purity Diner and Bar Toto as often as we can. And don’t bet against seeing us at the Park Slope YMCA occasionally,” the family said.

[N.B. Forrest]

A message, signed “By Bill, Chirlane, Chiara and Dante”

DiBlasio: "My baby boy! Coochie coochie-coo! Heh heh! Well now - what're we going to name him, hon? Bill Jr.? Bob? Jim?"

Heffa: "Hih name be Dante."

DiBlasio: "Oh. Dante was, um, next on my list. too. A fine name - nothing wrong with it...."

[The Bobster]

http://nypost.com/2013/12/13/de-blas...oss-bloomberg/

De Blasio spic pick disses old boss Bloomberg
By Beth DeFalco
December 13, 2013 | 5:36am


YOU'RE IN: Bill de Blasio greets Bloomberg-administration commissioner Lilliam Barrios-Paoli as human-services deputy mayor Thursday.
Photo: Paul Martinka


Bill de Blasio appointed one of Mayor Bloomberg’s commissioners as his new deputy mayor for health and human services Thursday, and she quickly distanced herself from the administration she’s served for five years.

“I would have done many things differently,” said Lilliam Barrios-Paoli, the commissioner for the aging, when asked about the city’s homeless policy at a press conference announcing her new post.

Specifically, she said she would never have cut funding for homeless prevention — and hinted her objections fell on deaf ears.

“You don’t stop prevention to save money because you end up paying to correct the problem afterwards,” said Barrios-Paoli, who has held numerous positions in city government back to 1980.

“I totally believe we live in a tale of two cities, and it is our job to make it a tale of one city,” she added in a reference to de Blasio’s campaign theme.

Bloomberg has steadfastly rejected the notion that New York is anything but one city.

Before Barrios-Paoli spoke, her boss, Deputy Mayor Linda Gibbs, praised her in a tweet as a “true warrior in the fight against inequality and justice.”

Stu Loeser, Bloomberg’s former press secretary, also weighed in via Twitter and called Barrios-Paoli a “phenomenal pick.”

“She was indefatigable in steering senior centers away from ’60s-era status quo,” Loeser wrote.

Homeless advocates criticized the administration in 2011 for ending a program known as Advantage that provided two years of rent subsidies to help people living in shelters find apartments.

The program was scrapped by the city after the state withdrew its share of the funding while grappling with a $10 billion budget deficit. The cut came at a time when homeless shelters were at record levels of occupancy.

Mayor-elect de Blasio said Thursday he would like to restore some type of apartment subsidy.

Barrios-Paoli is considered a safe choice for the new mayor.

She has wide government experience, having served in the Koch and Giuliani administrations before becoming the commissioner of aging in 2008 under Bloomberg.

She also adds diversity to de Blasio’s cabinet as a woman and former Catholic nun who grew up in Mexico.

The mayor-elect’s two earlier appointments, for first deputy mayor and police commissioner, were both white men.

Barrios-Paoli will oversee the city’s health and social-service agencies and has specifically been assigned to expand community health clinics.

“I’ve spent the bulk of my career trying to work on behalf of the poor,” she said at her appointment.

“It is incredibly exciting for me to be in an administration that really makes that a central tenet.”

Barrios-Paoli’s tenure in the Giuliani administration was cut short. She was booted as commissioner of the Human Resources Administration, the city’s sprawling social-services agency, after tangling too often with the former Republican mayor.

[The Bobster]

http://nypost.com/2013/12/14/de-blas...a-in-sit-down/

De Blasio repeats ‘tale of 2 cities’ to Obama in sit-down
By S.A. Miller
December 14, 2013 | 3:52am


FACE TO FACE: Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio gets the prime seat directly opposite President Obama at a "progressive" White House confab for big-city mayors.


WASHINGTON — Bill de Blasio took his leftist agenda to DC Friday and emerged from the White House proclaiming that his brand of socialist politics is sweeping the nation.

“There is a progressive movement in this country that is having a real effect,” de Blasio declared after he and 15 other new mayors huddled with President Obama for about 90 minutes.

“Something is going on here,” the mayor-elect said of the new era that he saw dawning at the lefty powwow with Obama. “If everyone is talking about inequality, if everyone is talking about fighting poverty, if everyone is talking about early childhood education — something is going on.”

He said the discussion was dominated by talk of the “crisis of inequality,” echoing his campaign battle cry that New York had become a “tale of two cities,” a theme Mayor Bloomberg has repeatedly rejected as divisive.

Many of the other newly elected mayors at the meeting, including Boston Mayor-elect Martin Walsh and Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop, also ran on progressive platforms.

Outside the White House, an emboldened de Blasio vowed that he and his fellow mayors would ferment the brewing grass-roots movement to fully realize the *“vision” they share with the president. He applauded Obama — who campaigned beside him during the mayoral race — for embracing the “tale of two cities” scenario and said he hoped to revive the type of national campaigns run by Bloomberg on climate change, gun control and immigration — except “with a different approach.”

In other words, the tilt would shift decisively to the left.

The national agenda would include Obama’s push to raise the federal minimum wage and extend long-term jobless benefits set to expire at the end of the year. The extra unemployment benefits, which would cost taxpayers $25 billion, didn’t make it into the budget deal passed Thursday by the House.

“You’ve got potentially 1.3 million people who, during Christmastime, are going to lose their unemployment benefits,” Obama said before the meeting.

Obama called more unemployment checks and a higher minimum wage “basic things that we can do just to create a better economic environment for these outstanding mayors.”

“It was extraordinarily gratifying to hear the passion with which the president and vice president spoke about this challenge that our country faces and their desire to be active partners with us in addressing income inequality and so many other challenges we face,” de Blasio said.

[The Bobster]

http://politicker.com/2013/12/bill-d...ational-hopes/

Bill de Blasio Walks Away From White House Meeting With Sweeping National Hopes
By Jill Colvin 12/13 5:56pm


Bill de Blasio and the other newly-elected mayors.


WASHINGTON — Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio went down to Washington, D.C. today to meet with President Barack Obama, emerging emboldened that a “progressive movement” was sweeping the nation.

Speaking to reporters after the meeting, which included 15 other newly-elected mayors, Mr. de Blasio said it was clear to him that the fight against inequality–which formed the centerpiece of his campaign–was gaining steam far beyond the five boroughs.

“You can’t have a room full of (socialist) mayors–literally every corner of the country–all spontaneously saying to the president of the United States the same exact things from their own experience: Something’s going on here … So what we have to do is organize it and amplify it,” he told Politicker.

“It was very interesting: a lot of them talked about pre-K welfare niglet-sitting, a lot of them talked about early childhood education as one of the breakthrough things we have to do to change the dynamics, a lot of them talked about their growing poverty levels and how it was undermining the future of their cities. So I think there was a really organic unity among all of us of the fact that this is the issue of our times. Fighting inequality is the mission of our times,” he said.

The meeting, organized by the White House, had been called “discuss the ways in which the Obama Administration can serve as an active partner on job creation and ensuring middle class families have a pathway to opportunity.” Speaking in the Roosevelt Room, Mr. Obama said he hoped to partner with the city leaders to help them achieve their goals.

“[M]y hope and goal out of this meeting is we immediate set up a strong partnership with all of the mayors that are here and all of the mayors that are not here where we get a clear sense of what their vision is of how they are trying to deliver services,” he said, according to a pool report.

Mr. de Blasio reportedly sat front and center in the room, directly across from the president as he discussed the recent budget deal, the importance of extending unemployment insurance and the potential benefits of raising the minimum wage.

Mr. de Blasio then led the group out of the West Wing, where he spoke to reporters on behalf of his colleagues, expressing excitement the president had echoed their vision.

“I think it was, to begin with, inspiring to hear our president, his concern for what we’re facing … He was quick to make clear how much he wanted to help us as we go through our transitions and help our cities as the leading edge of our national economy,” he said, surrounded by his fellow mayor-elects. “We talked a lot about the crisis of inequality. A lot of us ran in our elections on a message of addressing the inequality and it was extraordinarily gratifying to hear the passion with which the president and the vice president spoke about this challenge that our country faces and their desire to be active partners with us addressing income inequality and so many other challenges we face.”

The group also talked specifically about the value of universal pre-K–another central point of Mr. de Blasio’s mayoral campaign. “There was real passion in the president’s voice when he talked about how fundamental it is to move forward an early education agenda in this country and I think we all now know clearly that he will be a partner in all we need to do,” he said.

Later, Mr. de Blasio said that he hoped he and his fellow mayors would be able to come together to help push early education advances, just as current Mayor Michael Bloomberg joined with other city heads to advance issues including immigration reform, climate change and gun control–“but with a different approach.”

“What I think we have to do is something that reaches down more to the grassroots … a real effort to reach Americans in each and every part of this country to say this is a national imperative” he said. “I don’t have the game plan today, I can just tell you the vision to me is to take that same kind of approach that Mayor Bloomberg used I think meaningfully and add to it.”

[The Bobster]

http://nypost.com/2013/12/18/melissa...eaker-sources/

Melissa Mark-Viverito close to being next city council speaker: sources
By David Seifman
December 18, 2013 | 12:32pm



The most left-leaning member of the City Council — East Harlem’s Melissa Mark-Viverito — is on the verge of becoming the Council’s next speaker after a stunning deal between Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio and Brooklyn Democratic leader Frank Seddio, The Post has learned.

Sources said Seddio decided to break with his fellow county leaders to back Mark-Viverito, a longtime ally of the mayor-elect, after speaking with de Blasio. De Blasio began actively lobbying on her behalf last weekend.

“If Brooklyn goes with her, she’ll have the necessary votes,” said one source.

The speaker is one of the most powerful figures in the government, second only to the mayor.

The race will be decided next month in a vote of the 51 Council members.

Until today, it appeared the race was between Mark-Viverito and Dan Garodnick, a Manhattan moderate.

Before striking the deal with de Blasio, Seddio had been part of an alliance with his counterparts in Queens and the Bronx in supporting Garodnick.

[The Bobster]

http://nypost.com/2013/12/19/bloombe...nk-for-unions/

Bloomberg tells de Blasio not to break the bank for unions
By Beth DeFalco
December 19, 2013 | 3:18am



In a sobering parting speech, Mayor Bloomberg on Wednesday offered his own lesson in progressive politics to incoming Mayor Bill de Blasio: Protect taxpayers, not unions.

“Labor leaders are understandably determined to protect their members. But it’s the job of those in government to protect our children, to protect the social safety net and to protect future generations,” Bloomberg said in his final major address before the Economic Club of New York in Midtown.

“That’s a fundamental principle of progressive politics and we cannot afford to adhere to that principle on every issue except labor contracts.”

All of the city’s unionized employees are working under expired contracts — some of which ended as far back as 2009.

Bloomberg has refused to sign new deals without reforms, especially to health-care benefits, and has insisted taxpayers can’t afford retroactive pay.

“The costs of today’s benefits cannot be sustained for another generation — not without inflicting real harm on our citizens, and on our children and grandchildren,” he warned.

The unions decided months ago to wait out Bloomberg and deal with his successor, who turns out to be a liberal Democrat and longtime union ally.

De Blasio has said he’s determined to come up with labor agreements early in his term — without providing many details on how he’d accomplish that.

Union leaders dismissed Bloomberg’s speech as more of the same rhetoric.

“It is unfortunate that Mayor Bloomberg would use his last few days in office to blame unions yet again for the failure of his own administration,” said Harry Nespoli, chair of the Municipal Labor Committee.

The mayor-elect was skeptical.

“As much as I appreciate Mayor Bloomberg’s advice, I would caution that one should be careful about giving advice from that perspective,” de Blasio said.

[The Bobster]

http://nypost.com/2013/12/19/deblasi...dget-director/

DeBlasio picks ‘true progressive’ for budget director
By Yoav Gonen
December 19, 2013 | 3:16am


Mayor-elect Bill DeBlasio appoints budget director Dean Fuleihan to serve as New York City's next budget director.
Photo: Paul Martinka


Describing him as a “true progressive,” Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio appointed a former top fiscal aide to Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver as the city’s next budget director.

In naming Dean Fuleihan, de Blasio selected a 33-year Albany veteran who served as chief fiscal and policy adviser to the Assembly leadership before his retirement in 2011.

“There’s no question in my mind that Dean Fuleihan will be an extraordinary asset: literally no one more knowledgeable about how Albany works, no one more knowledgeable about how budgeting works,” de Blasio said Wednesday at CUNY’s City Tech in Downtown Brooklyn. “He is the gold standard.”

Both de Blasio and Fuleihan — who’s currently a VP at SUNY’s College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering in Albany — said Fuleihan’s ideological leanings played a role in the selection.

“I’m doing this because the budget for the city of New York is more than numbers: it’s my chance to deliver on the progressive value for millions of people,” said Fuleihan, 62.

[The Bobster]

De Blasio’s daughter reveals substance abuse battle
By Beth DeFalco, Yoav Gonen and Reuven Fenton
December 24, 2013 | 12:10pm

Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio’s teenage daughter Chiara is coming clean about her struggles with depression and substance abuse in a Christmas Eve video released by her father’s transition team.

“Getting sober is always a positive thing. And it’s not easy. … It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But it’s so worth it,” Charcoal, 19, says directly to the camera, as soothing piano music plays in the background.

Chiara said she has suffered from clinical depression her entire adolescence and also anxiety.


Mayor Elect Bill De Blasio with his daughter Chiara, left, and wife Chirlane McCray, right, and son Dante, far right, Monday after Chiara released a YouTube video detailing her battle with substance abuse.
Photo: Stephen Yang


“I kind of kept reasoning and using this really fake rationale that like was so justified to me that I could keep doing this stuff, and be like, ‘Oh, I won’t drink. And then I would just like smoke weed. And then I would be like, ‘Oh, I’m not going to smoke weed,’ and then I’d just drink. It was kind of just bartering for equally bad outcomes.”

Bill de Blasio praised his daughter for her candid disclosures.

“I just want to say that we are all incredibly proud of Chiara,” de Blasio said during a news conference outside his family’s Park Slope home.

“I think if you look at this video it speaks to a whole set of challenges that we face in our society, that families face all the time. And she speaks to it with incredible courage and clarity and with a voice that I think really suggests an incredible wisdom for someone who’s only 19 years old.”

De Blasio also noted that the holiday season was an ideal time for people to “be honest” about “grappling with these issues” because it’s “a time of year when these challenges are probably at their sharpest.”

“Families are getting together and…people are trying to figure out what to do to help each other,” he said.

“And one of the biggest things to do to help each other is to talk openly about the problem. And it doesn’t happen enough. And it’s time for it to happen.”

After being introduced by her dad, Chiara said: “I hope that everybody watches the video.”

“I think it speaks for itself, and I sincerely hope that everybody has a safe and happy holiday season,” she added.

Rumors about her substance abuse had been swirling since the summer and her father’s campaign had aggressively gone after reporters who disclosed that she was attending Santa Clara University in California, where she is an environmental studies major.

In the video, she talks about why she went to a college across the country: “I kind of just thought all my problems would go away if I just got on a plane and flew 3,000 miles.”

“Removing substances from my life, it’s opened so many doors for me. Like I was actually able to participate in my dad’s campaign. And that was, like, the greatest thing ever. And now I’m doing well in school and actually getting to explore things that aren’t just partying,” she says.

During the third general election debate, when the candidates were asked whether they allowed their underage children to drink alcohol, de Blasio hesitated before saying: “I will say this: the Italian tradition allows for a small amount of wine to be consumed with the meal – sometimes with water.”

[The Bobster]

http://nypost.com/2013/12/24/give-he...-ho-de-blasio/

Give her the heave-ho, de Blasio
By Andrea Peyser
December 24, 2013 | 4:59am


Lis Smith leaves her apartment with Eliot Spitzer.
Photo: New York Post/ William C. Lopez


If Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio has a lick of sense in his 6-foot-5 frame, he’ll cast out of his incoming administration Lis Smith — the randy Democratic operative who’s got a freaky fetish for the black knee socks and balding pate of married ex-Love Gov Eliot Spitzer.

If de Blasio continues to stand by Eliot’s unsavory love interest, his credibility as this city’s righteous voice for those without money, power and sexual corruption is shot to hell.

As one veteran public-relations expert said, “If I were de Blasio, I wouldn’t want someone close to me sleeping with Eliot Spitzer.”

This unappetizing duo makes me ashamed to call myself a New Yorker.

Spitzer is the whoremonger who lost his bed in New York’s governor’s mansion after he bargained for reduced-price female flesh like a millionaire john on a budget, shaming not just himself, his suffering wife, Silda, and his three daughters, but all good citizens who entrusted him with upholding the law.

He may have been cast out as governor, but Eliot was never punished criminally for patronizing hookers.

Now Eliot has been caught by The Post like a frat boy on a late-night booty call, twice creeping out of La Lis’ Soho apartment at dawn.

This is not just any ordinary bimbo.

Lis, who presumably does not charge Eliot for services rendered, was communications director for Bill de Blasio’s successful campaign for mayor, and is currently a member of the mayor-elect’s transition team — plus, she is considered the front-runner for the job of de Blasio’s official spokeswoman. On Monday, de Blasio praised her work and defended Lis’ right to privacy, but did not say what her future holds.

He also never mentioned the ticklish fact that Eliot, who lives in a separate apartment from his wife, is still married to the mother of his children.

Don’t underestimate Lis’ status as a hot and fit political insider. She was Eliot’s spokeswoman during his disastrous primary campaign for city comptroller this year. But she previously wielded Twitter to vanquish foes of President Obama as a “rapid response’’ operator during the prez’s 2012 re-election campaign.

The union of the ambitious, youngish cookie and the megarich heir to Daddy’s real-estate empire has cemented New York’s image as a sexual mosh pit in which male politicians (Spitzer, Anthony Weiner) forget their marriage vows, and women use married degenerates to advance their careers.

I hope Lis and Eliot enjoy a long, happy life living in sin.

Just do it somewhere else.