Mayor (Tsar) Bloomberg and his Trained Surrender Monkeys

(Bloomberg photo from WCBSTV; Quinn photo from The Chief-Leader; Yassky photo from Streetsblog; Dom Recchia photo from Daily News)

Thirty-five active members of the Brooklyn Democratic County Committee have, under the leadership of Morgan Pehme of the Brooklyn Optimist, signed an open letter to the City Council opposing the Bloomberg Putsch to reverse behind the scenes the term limits that were put in place by two referendums approved by the voters. Let me make two comments: first, my wife and I are among these 35 County Committee members who have signed on. Second, not everyone who has signed this letter believes in term limits. We all simply oppose an arbitrary mayoral and legislative reversal of the clear will of the voters of NYC. Here is the open letter we have signed:

An Open Letter from 35 Members of the Brooklyn Democratic County Committee to the New York City Council Opposing the Extension of Term Limits

cc: Mayor Mike Bloomberg
Council Speaker Christine Quinn
Ronald Lauder

Dear Council Members.

At 2:00p.m today (Sunday, 7th September, 2008), there will be a rally by those who support term limits, at City Hall in Manhattan. One of the organizers is Kevin Wardally of Bill Lynch Associates. Kevin is a well known political consultant and political operative/technician. He is also a Vice-President at Bill Lynch Associates -on of the top political consulting firms in New York. This firm counts Senator Hillary Clinton as one of their major clients.

Recently, word has been received by media sources that the mayor, the speaker and other city council members, were conspiring to overturn term limits by fiat. Many political activists have already filed their protests, with both Mayor Bloomberg and also with many council members -including the Speaker. This issue has been broiling for years; despite the fact that the people of New York City have twice voted for term limits through referendum; we the people need to settle this once and for all.

I am going to place myself firmly in the camp of those who support term limits; I will be at that rally today. I urge many of you who read my column (and support me on this issue) to show up at City Hall today. We need to tell these electeds that we will not stand for this affront to democracy.

Stay tuned-in folks. This fight has just begun anew.

Metro newspaper just published Voices: Spitzer floated on air, but lack of roots did him in, my Op/Ed on the Spitzer debacle.

Here's the money quote :

For netroots activists like me, who have had the chance to take a peek at the mechanical beast, the New York State Democratic Party, Eliot Spitzer was nothing but a political insider’s rock star that only needed “The (little) People” to vote so the “politics as usual” could rock New York and roll into Albany. Yet there’s a reason why “politics as usual” is losing the fight in the Democratic Party’s presidential primary.

Eliot Spitzer’s weakness has been the lack of a true grassroots base. He never had his feet held to the fire by his own party base, by The People who ended up voting for him. The Republicans have known this all along, and it’s not a coincidence that they tried to scare him last year by astroturfing the Internet with fake attack blogs.

[Ed. Note: Welcome, Councilman]

In 1964, Fannie Lou Hamer, "sick and tired of being sick and tired", led a fight at the Democratic National Convention that shook up the nation. Her fight was to seat black delegates from the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. In 2008, our fight may be to stop the DNC from using superdelegates to deny Senator Barack Obama from becoming the democratic nominee for President.

Senator Barack Obama is shaking up the political establishment and causing Democratic Party leadership to scurry, scheme, and prepare to take the nomination away from him with their superdelegates.

At the beginning of the Democratic National Committee Primary/Caucus process, the leadership of the party was preparing for (so they thought) the inevitable victory of Senator Hillary Clinton. As a matter of fact they were preparing to coronate her after the results came in from the February 5th Super Tuesday Primary/Caucus vote. Barack rocked their world! Who would have thought that as of this writing Senator Barack Obama would be winning the majority of the states, the majority of the elected delegates, and the majority of the popular vote. He is now the leading candidate!

The only count that Senator Clinton leads Senator Obama in is the super delegates. There are a total of 4,049 delegates. There are two kinds of delegates: pledged delegates and superdelegates. Pledged delegates represent the preferences of the voters and are awarded through the primary/caucus voting process. Superdelegates are selected by the party. Of the 4,049 delegates, 3,253 are pledged and 796 are super.