Simply have deep pockets...New York-based corporations and philanthropists are paying more attention to the fund than ever. And while Mr. Bloomberg often says he is not beholden to special interests because he does need campaign contributions, the fund is one way for those with business before government to attempt to get on the mayor's good side. JPMorgan Chase, for example, is seeking tax breaks for a new headquarters. The Starr Foundation is controlled by Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, who, along with the foundation, was the target of a probe by Eliot Spitzer when Mr. Spitzer was attorney general.
Mayor's Fund Attracting Big Money From Business
Donors who have interests in the city are not hard to find. Filings going back to October 2004 show that the lobbying firm Greenberg Traurig donated between $5,000 and $20,000 to the fund. Forest City Ratner, the developer on the Atlantic Yards project, gave between $250,000 and $499,999. And, the Indy Racing League, which is hoping to open a track on Governors Island, made a donated between $5,000 and $20,000. A spokesman for the league, John Griffin, said the league was asked to make a donation after it was granted permission from the city to stage a publicity event in Times Square.
Photo from LA Times Blog
12 comments:
Gee...wasn't Traurig the same group that gave money to C.M. Melinda Katz (chair of th City Council's Land Use Committee)...among many others? !!!
What a small world!
We're always keeping an eye on you Melinda.... as we know you're keeping a close watch on this blog site!
Developers should contribute funds to a community nonprofit trust which distributes support to local grassroots groups.
If they make money off a community and inconvenience everyone in the process with overcrowding, and displace local leadership with a tradition of giving to their own communities, these new developers should be forced to give something back.
Seriously QC, the chronic Bloomberg-bashing is getting tired and dull. He's the best mayor this city's had in my lifetime and I'm honestly worried who'll replace him.
Give it a rest... or if he frustrates you so much. Move to Nassau. I hear it's a lot like Queens.
How has Queens flourished under Mayor Bloomberg? We have had 2 transit strikes, a blackout, obliteration of neighborhood landmarks, overdevelopment, crumbling parks, worsening transit service, more burglaries, more graffiti, etc. for 6+ years with 2 1/2 more to go! So please explain all the positive impact this mayor has had on Queens because I must be missing out on it. Also explain how you are supposed to have a blog about overdevelopment without holding responsible the elected officials who shamelessly promote it.
Listen...... you phallic/skyscraper worshiping hipster/yuppie.....why don't YOU move to Hong Kong, or some other overbuilt congested city of your choice!
We like Queens' (which is not at all like Nassau) humanly scaled homes, trees, parks and general breathing room left alone! That's precisely why we chose to live here!
And while we're at it........is this the best that one of you puny Bloomberg ass kissing PR staffers can do for a retort agaisnt the "Queens Crap" blog site?
Very weak....indeed!
Okay, to respond to QC specifically, by all means, hold elected officials responsible for whatever you think they shouldn't be doing. This is your blog. Your puppy. But I'm not going to believe for 3 seconds that the mayor of a city with twice the population of CT and four other boroughs to worry about is individually responsible for everything. If I thought that Queens was getting worse, I'd say it. I don't. Unless I missed the blackout you're talking about, the blackout affected a a half dozen states at least and I'm not willing to say the virtue of being in office at the time made him responsible. And the transit strike was on the unions. I make way less than they do, and for me that's all I have to say about that.
With regards to how you should write your blog, I'm not going to offer advice, but I am going to say that there's a difference between overdevelopment and bad development. You SHOULD be about bad development. Paved-over lawns and cheaply made cookie cutter soulless condos that will look like something out of the soviet-bloc in a few years. But instead there's a feeling you just target every development that comes along. I'm not critical of you targeting the problems. I'm critical of you targeting the wrong solution. Good development, better budgetting and better borough organization to target things and focus their energies on landmarking and restoration and so on is the solution I think would work. But we disagree.
As for anonymous... Tsk tsk anonymous. Your rage saddens me. It also makes me wonder if you're being serious or are joking around. Phallic-worshipping? Calling me a yuppie is just you being honest and calling me a hipster is a compliment. I've never really been "hip".
Even though I don't want to respond to your paranoid, big-brother suggestion that I'm a Bloomberg insider spying on the blog, I have no choice but to say "I don't work work Bloomberg." I've never even seen him. Though I did almost bump into him at the Marathon last year at Tavern on the Green because I wasn't looking where I was going. I saw his back. Does that count? Not everyone who thinks Bloomberg's doing a good job is on his payroll. They actually make up a vast majority of the city. He's the most popular mayor in who knows how long. So the fact that you hate him puts you in a small and growing smaller cadre of people who are AFRAID OF THINGS CHANGING. And to you the change is always for the worse. It's any change at all. You can't imagine good change, unless it's change back to the way it was. I've seen people like you in other cities. You suck everyone down with you. You're no different than those people who cringe when a new ethnicity rears its ugly head in your neighborhood only here you're couching it in more socially acceptable anti-upwardly-mobile, anti-young, anti-intellectually-urban lingo. But at the end YOU'RE JUST ANTI DIFFERENT THAN YOU.
But Queens is so diverse, you say. How could I be against people different than me? Well I don't know where you live (and don't care), but clearly you hate those evil "yuppies hipsters" and their damn coffee shops and microbrew beer and their home-made jewelry stores. And their damn low-crime rates. And their low bankruptcy rates. And how they'll pay their rent when you lease to them.
I live in Queens. And apparently like you, I like parks. Unlike you, I guess I've actually been to them in Queens. It would be nice if Queens had a park that could remotely compare with Prospect Park. But it doesn't. Look at the QC pictures of Flushing Meadows Corona. I hope it will shame Queens politicos into cleaning it and some of the others, like that disgrace by Elmhurst Hospital, up.
Sorry pal, you helped to change neighborhoods on someone else in your day. Don't be so appalled when the cycle continues.
You like THAT retort, Jerk?
Well the last poster lost credibility by not remembering that there was a looong blackout last summer confined to Queens and affecting Woodside, Sunnyside, Long Island City and Astoria. It was caused primarily by too much strain on the power grid brought on by overdevelopment of that area on Bloomberg's watch.
Queens Crapper said...
Well the last poster lost credibility by not remembering that there was a looong blackout last summer confined to Queens and affecting Woodside, Sunnyside, Long Island City and Astoria. It was caused primarily by too much strain on the power grid brought on by overdevelopment of that area on Bloomberg's watch.
And, the strain on this Bloomberg lover to protect Bloomberg from criticism must be affecting his brain also.
In fact, Bloomberg IS, indeed, completely responsible for every bad thing that occurs in the city.
Who else would be responsible? Some appointed commissioner? Bloomberg appointed every commissioner! It's Bloomberg's job to manage every commissioner.
Look at the ticket blitz (for failing to move cars on alternate days after the ice storm, and, after Bloombergs Sanitation blocked the cars). Bloomberg, who never shoveled any car out of an ice storm, ridiculed the car owners for not moving their cars.
Look at how Bloomberg dropped school bus service for tiny kids in the middle of winter, on dark mornings, expecting tiny youngsters to travel for more than an hours on sometimes more than two or three busses/trains. Then, this impudent, arrogant (but, extremely popular) mayor said that the parents were whiners.
Look at what Bloomberg has done to New Yorkers by cutting Firehouses, and reducing the pay for cops. Oh, his security detail remained intact, so, we're all safe.
Bloomberg's in the bag for developers. Apparently his billion$ are insufficient. So, to keep piling up the money, he's pushing for the most massive, ugly development this city has ever seen. Even ediface-crazed Rockefeller was never this brazen or arrogant.
Wake up, Anonymous. You're lips are stuck on stupid ass.
No, I lost credibility for not realizing that Keyspan's corner-cutting and Bloomberg's great big conspiracy of greed were cooked up together in the same board room with Mike at the head of the table. How silly of me.
And Taxpayer, I'm not "protecting" Bloomberg from legitimate complaints like the school bus thing, or the issues at the Republican convention and the issues with the cyclists, and the firehouse closings (the cop problem goes back to the unions... and I like unions). I'm talking about fanaticism.
The thing is, you and some others here, are fanatically opposed to the administration. It really doesn't matter what it does, you'll squirm about how it should have been done better or different or your way or you'll talk up some small issue until it's big enough to be something that crushes the act.
And the constant pumping up of small issues (please don't respond with a laundry list of woes to prove how big they are or to argue that the small issues add up. I'll just bring up crime and race relations and gun control lawsuits and other biggies) gets... ready? Boring. Hence my original comment somewhere up there.
The only thing affecting my brain is that I have some compulsion to debate this trite shit.
I see. So if we notice something that we don't think is right, we should just keep our mouths shut, in your opinion. Well, I for one am happy that so many people want to express their first amendment right to speak out even though our mayor (and most politicians, for that matter) would prefer that we didn't and just nodded our heads in agreement with everything he says. Debate is healthy. When the mayor or another elected official does something which, in my opinion, is good for quality of life in the city, I have made and will make mention of it. The fact is that this mayor has a tendency to be extremely pro-development to the point where he supports and encourages OVERdevelopment through his policies. In fact, I would call his obsession with paving over every square inch of the city and building luxury condos on it "fanaticism." He caters to a certain class of people, and that is not the working class citizens who currently live and would like to stay in Queens. The man is severely out of touch with the common man.
"The only thing affecting my brain is that I have some compulsion to debate this trite shit."
Here's a suggestion: don't visit the site and it won't bother you.
QC, stop. Please. I never said to not say anything. So give that a rest. And maybe you're right. Maybe he's a total fanatic when it comes to construction. I don't actually think he is. But I do think that you go overboard too.
As for anonymous. The site doesn't bother me... uh THAT much. Besides. If I can't take a little pain here and there, I can't offer a different perspective to balance things out a bit. See?
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