Bloomberg exposed in new film

The
Film
You
Must
See
This
Election
Year !

The Promise of New York is an award-winning documentary that follows the entertaining antics of three underdogs who try to unseat billionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg during the 2005 mayoral election. Featuring: Michael Bloomberg, Ed Koch, Christopher Brodeur, Jessica Delfino, Seth Blum, Andy Horwitz, and Chris Riggs.

Upcoming Screening Dates:

* Tuesday Sept. 8, 8PM; Monkey Town; $10/$10 Minimum
58 N 3rd ST, Brooklyn, NY ; 718.384.1369
Reservations highly recommended. Click here for Tickets or Information.

* Friday Sept. 11 & Saturday Sept. 12, 9PM; Dixon Place; $10
161 Chrystie ST, New York, NY
(212) 219-0736; www.dixonplace.org
Click here for Sept. 11 Tickets.
Click here for Sept. 12 Tickets.

From the publicity materials :

"A blogger turned stand-up comic, an obsessive political gadfly and a high-school math teacher compete against each other and arch rival incumbent Michael Bloomberg for the post of New York City mayor. As these ordinary citizens take politics into their own hands, The Promise of New York explores the meaning of democracy and the identity of a city with hilarious irreverence and thought-provoking sensitivity."

Bloomberg wanted to ban cameras in NYC

Mayor Bloomberg and his Unconstitutional Camera Law, according to wearechange.org

"First interaction between We Are Change, who are members of the independent press, and billionaire New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is trying to pass a fascist and unconstitutional Camera ban in NYC."

Bloomberg's secret political campaign contributions

Thompson Challenges Mayor’s Financial Disclosures

The New York Times reported that City Comptroller William C. Thompson Jr.'s mayoral campaign has filed a complaint with the city’s Campaign Finance Board arguing that Mayor Michael Bloomberg had failed to disclose more than $3.3 million in political contributions for the 2009 election, much of it to Republican organizations. An anonymous expert reported that these contributions were most likely made from Mr. Bloomberg’s own personal funds.

For the record, I did not post the following reader-reaction to the article in the NYTimes :

August 20, 2009 6:57 pm

"Bloomberg is like Nixon, if the mayor does it, it’s not against the law.

"In that thicket of haywire within his head, they mayor is a law unto himself. This was reflected recently when the mayor had distributed money to community groups purportedly at the request of city council members, but in fact solely on the mayor’s initiative. Then the mayor says, well, recollections may differ.

"If there is any taped recording of the mayoral conversations regarding the unreported contributions, you can be sure there are gaps on it, and probably more than 18 minutes worth."

— Nat

Remember Term Limits NYC 2009

We need a new Mayor in NYC, a new Councilman in Queens, and a whole new State Senate in Albany

Revolution in New York City Government

Bloomberg kept no records of city's own audit

NYT: City Hall Broke Rules Funneling Money to Groups

After The New York Times reported that the Bloomberg administration had violated city contracting rules by directing substantial amounts of taxpayer funds (possibly in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to The Times ) to two politically connected groups, Comptroller William C. Thompson Jr. and Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum asked the mayor on Thursday for all documents relating to his office’s use of discretionary funds to finance nonprofit groups.

In a blog post by Ray Rivera, the The Times reported that, "...the mayor’s office has said that there is little paperwork supporting the review and that it relied on interviews with staff members to reconstruct the financing. When The Times asked this week for a copy of the audit, a spokesman for the mayor said the report was really little more than a, 'spreadsheet that detailed what was funded and by whom.' "

Mayor Michael Bloomberg will spy on 2004 G.O.P. convention protesters and secretly audio-tape his political rival's campaign events, but neither he nor his office has any substantial record of City Hall's own audit of the slush fund scandal ?

If there's nothing to hide, then why suppress where the money went ?

I encourage everybody to follow the courageous and inspiring vlog postings by Suzannah B. Troy, who doesn't let us forget about the misuse of discretionary funds by City Hall and the New York City Council.

This is what a police state looks like

Spying For Bush: Bloomberg Used NYPD To Surveil Protesters

A word-for-word reprint of a reader response by orionATL on the TalkLeft.com site :

this is a really important issue,
a central constitutional issue
vis-a-vis the bush administration.
it may seem like a peripheral issue, compared to the iraq invasion, the u.s. a's problem, or the libby trial,
but it is not.
the bush administration has, for the entire 6 years of its existence, suppressed individual, citizen dissent against itself.
the administration has employed local police across the nation, not just in nyc, to harass demonstrators and objectors.
furthermore,
white house personnel have impersonated secret service agents to suppress dissent.
and i would be surprised if the secret service itself had not "co-operated" in the suppression.
at the president's command, protesters who voiced opposition, have been ejected from meetings or speeches for simply
wearing t-shirts with an anti-bush policy message.
this small, quiet scandal is deeply unconstitutional
these are presidential abuses of the CENTRAL free speech the our "founders" had in mind -
need i remind
that that central free speech those founders were focused on and determined to protect was
POLITICAL free speech,
not advertising
not movies
not gossip columns.
specifically,
the central protected speech was speech criticizing elected officials or existing policies.
in short,
the right to publicly disagree with the mayor, the sheriff, the governor, the senator, the president, or, historically, the king.
and NOT be imprisoned for having done so.
like other aspects of its insensitivity to proper public policy in a democracy,
the bush administration has trampled on this core right of american citizens for the entire six years of its term in office - six long years.
these bastards have not a clue about what a democracy is or how it operates.

NYCLU archives of 2004 G.O.P.-NYPD intelligence documents

The NYPD's 2004 Republican National Convention Documents

In 2007, after a federal magistrate judge order the declassification and release of hundreds of pages of surveillance documents relating to the NYPD's security preparations for the 2004 Republican National Convention, the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) has posted its archives of the intelligence gathering conducted by the NYPD.

Information that can be found among the NYCLU's archives include the basic, mass-arrest process that would take place during the Convention and the agreement between the NYPD and the Hudson River Park Trust about the use of Pier 57 as a mass-arrest holding facility during the Convention.

According to a blog post on The New York Times, the NYCLU was critical of the extent of the city's monitoring of protesters' activities.

"Donna Lieberman, executive director of the civil liberties union, called the surveillance program “broad, clumsy, and often unlawful,” but Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has vigorously defended the program, saying the intelligence-gathering was essential for the convention to proceed peacefully. ""

Bloomberg continues to 'track' Thompson's every move

The Daily News reports that Mayor Bloomberg is following his rival, City Comptroller William Thompson, in mayoral race.

In his power-mad campaign to win a previously-prohibited third term, Mayor Bloomberg's re-election campaign staff are tailing Bill Thompson at his election rallies.

The pressure of being followed and taped by Mayor Bloomberg's re-election staff is weighing down on Mr. Thompson. For example, Mr. Thompson is being baited by hecklers or activists into having to respond to criticisms of Mayor Bloomberg and his deputy mayor, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. Having to respond to the deep resentment and disappointment that voters feel towards Mayor Bloomberg is becoming a challenge, because Mayor Bloomberg's re-election campaign staff is using Mr. Thompson's response (or non-response) as fodder for campaign attacks.

At a campaign event last week, [Mr. Thompson] said nothing as a cafe owner called City Council Speaker Christine Quinn a whore, instead of calling him out.

A month ago, he seemed helpless when a disheveled man started screaming obscenities about Bloomberg in the background of a Chinatown press conference.

"We're on camera?" Thompson asked. "Why does this always happen to me?"

Thompson now knows that Bloomberg's team is tracking him at every public event.

Let's hope that somebody is following and taping Mayor Bloomberg, to see how Mayor Bloomberg likes it.

Read more at: Controller needs to figure out which William Thompson is running for Mayor

.

Bloomberg's Campaign peddles tapes to The New York Post

Mayor Bloomberg has a history of spying on protest groups during the 2004 Republican National Convention. Now, his third term re-election staff have started spying on Bill Thompson's campaign events.

Remember when, back in 2004, Mayor Michael Bloomberg admitted that he had ordered the NYPD to collect surveillance on groups protesting the Republican National Convention ?

Well, now comes the blogger Roy Edroso of The Village Voice, and he has reported that Mayor Bloomberg's campaign operatives are shopping around secretly-recorded audio tapes to humiliate NYC Mayoral candidate Bill Thompson. It is known that at least one media outlet, The New York Post, has been taken this bait.

"The Post says his operatives sent them a tape of Bill Thompson not reacting when the co-owner of the delightful West Village Brit boite Tea and Sympathy called Christine Quinn a "whore." "

The prefabricated outrage that is being intentionally generated by this scandal is ludicrous. Restauranteur Sean Kavanagh-Dowsett's only wrong-doing was that he had no thesaurus within easy reach; his poor choice of an adjective to describe a sell-out is understandable. When I can't think of a word to describe my disappointment in someone, I usually do turn to profanity as a literary clutch.

Meanwhile, it seems Nixon-esque for Mayor Bloomberg's political campaign to go around audio-taping his rival's campaign events. Should that be cause for more concern than the wrong use of the word, "whore?"

Flashback to 2004 G.O.P. domestic spying by NYPD

Mayor Defends Spying by Police Before G.O.P. Convention

By DIANE CARDWELL; JIM DWYER CONTRIBUTED REPORTING.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
Published: March 28, 2007

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg yesterday defended police spying on potential protesters in advance of the 2004 Republican National Convention, saying that it was necessary for security during an uneasy time.

''We had a fundamental responsibility to learn whether groups might include any potential terrorists or anarchists planning to cause or take advantage of any disruptions,'' Mr. Bloomberg told reporters at a news conference. Toward that end, he said, the Police Department monitored those who said they intended vandalism or disruptions and, he added, ''in a few instances, we did keep track of groups or individuals who did plan to come to New York for the R.N.C. convention and who might have been planning violent acts.''

The administration has come under sharp criticism for its tactics with protesters before and during the convention, which included denying permission to rally in much of Central Park, sending undercover officers to infiltrate protests, making mass arrests of demonstrators and detaining many of them for days at a Hudson River pier.

But the scope of the preconvention operations, in which officers traveled widely, is just emerging from records in federal lawsuits brought as a result of the mass arrests as well as from still secret reports reviewed by The New York Times.

In defending the program, Mr. Bloomberg said that everything had been in accordance with court guidelines and was aimed at protecting the city and showing its recovery at a time when the presence of President Bush and members of Congress made it an even more inviting terror target.

''We were not keeping track of political activities,'' he said. ''We have no interest in doing that.''

But the records show that the police did covertly monitor political activity. Virtually every intelligence report, even those about expressly peaceful groups, described the political viewpoints of the organizations.

For example, a Feb. 6, 2004, police report said that Leslie Cagan, the national coordinator of United for Peace and Justice, an antiwar organization, would speak at a conference later that month at City University Graduate Center. Her presence, a headline in the report said, ''indicates a reinforcement of ties between organizers and expanding activist youth movement.''

Stu Loeser, Mr. Bloomberg's chief spokesman said: ''We weren't seeking political information. We were seeking security information. It wasn't because of the political views expressed. The only concern was what security ramifications came from the activities of those groups.''