WFP some time back made a whole lot of noise about opposing Bloomberg's Putsch. Then they quickly shut up about it. Maybe they quickly realized they could make more money joining Bloomberg's trained surrender monkeys than standing up for working families.

Earlier when someone told me Bloomberg was trying to buy the WFP endorsement I said that although WFP loves to be bought, I think even they will be beyond Bloomberg's money. Seems I was wrong. WFP first kissed corrupt Party Boss Vito Lopez's ass and now are puckering up for Bloomberg's posterior. Got this forwarded to me from several sources, but it was picked up by No Power Grab before I saw it:  read more »

There is a new and expanding scandal in town. And I am realizing it reaches through many aspects of NYC government...and is a further illustration of what is wrong with NYC.

I recently had a dust up here on DG about developer money in City Council elections centering on a candidate named Brad Lander. In resulting discussions both on and off line, I realized how in people's blind focus on developers, either pro- or anti-, what is ignored is the massive conflict of interest that permeates NYC politics where corporate interests (developers and others) donate so much money to politicians that it often determines who wins, and those very same corporate interests get major favors from politicians.  read more »

"Developer" is an oft cited bogeyman in NYC politics. I cite it often myself. But recent discussions I have had make me realize that focusing on developers can miss some critical points as to why developer money is such a problem and why developers are often political donors not to be trusted.

Development per se is not bad. It can be bad or good depending on how it is done. I remember when I was living in San Diego there was a huge controversy over the revitalization of downtown. Ultimately what they did with the downtown seems excellent to me. Similarly, redevelopment of downtown Los Angeles seems ultimately to have been done well. There are always problems about gentrification, changing historic communities, balancing profit and community benefit. If done right, with a strong local government calling the shots, development can be good. But if developers call all the shots, as they do in NYC, the results are disastrous for the community.  read more »