How do you get to Tammany Hall? Tweeding, tweeding, tweeding.

From Capital:

Few buildings can claim to serve as global metaphors, but New York’s Tammany Hall surely is one of them. Mention Tammany Hall to reasonably educated Americans—or even British journalists—and the image that comes to mind is not of an old colonial revival building just off Manhattan’s Union Square, but a certain method of ethically slippery, brass-knuckle politics far removed from the ideals of the nation’s founders.

That image, desperately in need of revision, might explain why Tammany Hall—the building, not the metaphor—is one of the city’s best-known landmarks that is not, in fact, a landmark, at least not in the formal sense. But a decades-long campaign to recognize the Tammany building’s history may be on the verge of victory. On June 25, the city Landmarks Preservation Commission heard from a handful of speakers united in support of designating Tammany Hall as a city landmark. The proposed designation has the backing of the local community board as well as other preservation organizations.

If the commission approves, Tammany Hall, the onetime home of the New York County Democratic Party, will achieve a level of respectability it was denied even in its prime, when political legends like Alfred E. Smith, Robert F. Wagner, and Herbert Lehman were members of the Tammany political organization. Many of those who support the landmark designation have cited the Tammany building’s impressive architecture as well as its role as the onetime home of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, a historically significant trade union. They have tip-toed around Tammany Hall’s role in American political history, perhaps fearful of the organization’s much-chronicled scandals.

Meet the new Boss...same as the old Boss

From the NY Times:

...when Mr. Lopez’s reign as the most powerful political force in the borough ended last week amid allegations of sexual harassment, reformers and progressives in Brooklyn used the situation to call for a clean break from a legacy of patronage politics harking back to the era of Tammany Hall. Almost immediately, a leading candidate for the position emerged: Frank R. Seddio, a friend and protégé of Mr. Lopez.

The pasta-loving patriarch of the Thomas Jefferson Club in southern Brooklyn, Mr. Seddio, 65, was the machine’s pick to become a state assemblyman and later a Surrogate’s Court judge, through a much criticized process that sidestepped the usual electoral vetting. He resigned from the bench in 2007, just 17 months into a 14-year term, amid an ethics inquiry into the tens of thousands of dollars he donated to Democratic leaders and organizations before he assumed the post with the party’s backing.

Though the position of party chairman might seem obscure to many voters, it would give Mr. Seddio significant control over judicial nominations, vacant legislative positions and hundreds of lucrative jobs that have historically been doled out to party insiders and their relatives. And if recent experience is any indication, the post could allow him to influence the next mayoral election, in a borough that is 71 percent Democratic.

Queens Machine still stinks

From the Times Newsweekly:

Ranking members of the Juniper Park Civic Association (JPCA) publicly slammed "clubhouse" politicians who allegedly put their own self-interests before the people they represent during the civic group's meeting last Thursday night, Mar. 8, at Our Lady of Hope School in Middle Village.

Robert Holden, JPCA president, specifically railed against Rep. Joseph Crowley, who is also the head of the Queens County Democratic Party, for overseeing a "corrupt system" that has led to the gerrymandering of the borough in order to ensure the re-election of established incumbents with little or no opposition.

Toward the end of the session, things turned testy when a member of the civic group spoke out against the ranking members' opinions about local lawmakers, past and present, in an editorial published in the JPCA's magazine, The Juniper Berry, which criticized Crowley. Holden and others defended its position, saying that the organization maintains its right to criticize anyone it believes is misrepresenting or harming the neighborhood.

Holden criticized the proposed realignment of Assembly and State Senate districts as proposed earlier this year by the Legislative Task Force on Redistricting and Reapportionment (LATFOR), claiming that the lines give an unfair advantage to incumbents and political parties.

"We've had that in Queens County for far too long," he said, charging that Representative Crowley and his cousin, City Council Member Elizabeth Crowley, "are an example of this clubhouse atmosphere in Queens."

Holden claimed that Representative Crowley was "handed the Congressional seat" from the late-Rep. Thomas Manton, who declined to seek re-election in 1998. The civic president claimed that after Manton — the former head of the Queens County Democratic Party — secured the petitions to get on the ballot, he announced his retirement, which allowed him to pick Crowley to take his place on the ballot.

Since winning the Congressional seat in 1998, Holden stated that Representative Crowley has run unopposed in many elections since. He went further to claim that the legislator keeps his primary residence in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. rather than in his own Congressional district.

"This is the kind of corrupt system that we have," Holden told residents.

City needs to kick its spending habit

From the NY Post:

...the alarmist talk of "doomsday" budgets and "crippling" service cuts makes truth a casualty. The Big Lie is that City Hall and Albany don't have any money.

By any historic measure, they are filthy rich. The windfall they take in would make Tammany Hall blush and was inconceivable just a few years ago.

New York City will spend over $63 billion this year. In Mayor Bloomberg's first year, 2002, it spent $41 billion.

That's an increase of 57 percent in unadjusted dollars. Thanks to unrelenting tax and fee hikes and the economic boom, revenues, including state and federal aid, grew by as much as $5 billion a year.

The city spent it all, and then some. Only once, last year, did it spend less than the year before. That decrease was under 3 percent, though it seemed draconian to hear the wailing over minor cutbacks.

Even now, $63 billion is apparently not enough to maintain essential services. On this broken model, nothing can be.

Like parents who lost their kids because they self-destructed, the city is perpetually broke because it is addicted to binge spending. And too much of what it spends is a handout to well-connected interests and advocates that doesn't benefit the public.

Face-to-face with an original tweeder

From the Newtown Pentacle:

While wandering through Calvary Cemetery recently, I came upon a curious monument whose sculptural elements included a life sized portrait, and whose dedication was meant to honor a man named Florence Scannell. The stone additionally bore a curious screed- “The Abbot”. “Dedicated to the memory of Florence Scannell by his brother John J.” is displayed prominently on its face. This stirred a sleeping memory, and I tried to remember why the name Scanell is so important. I said it out loud- John J. Scannell?

Wait a minute… John J. Scannell was the first chief of the NYFD, grand sachem of Tammany Hall, and a notorious turn of the century raconteur who became “king of the hill” in the often violent political world of 19th century New York City politics.

Is the WFP the 21st Century's Tammany Hall?

From True News from ChangeNYC.org:

WFP: Return to Tammany Hall Power
Liu over David Yassky, 55.68-44.32; De Blasio over Mark Green, 62.5-37.5

Nobody Asked Me ... But

The City's divided Democratic Party leaders can't elect citywide candidates. It was the power of the paid operation of the WFP and voters turn off by the entire election system that won the day. It is shocking that in a Democrat runoff Liu received 127,173 or just 4% of the registered Democrats in the city (3,177,740). De Blasio did a little better wtih 138, 736, he got 4.4% of the city's democratic voters. Just 2.7% of all the city's registered voters (4,657,516) . . . Liu political consultant and lobbyist Bill Lynch has more power over Liu than consultant lobbyist Hank Morris ever had over former city and state comptroller Alan Hevesi. How will Lynch's complete victories effect the state and city's lobby consultant business. Wayne Barrett of the Village Voice on NY1 questioned last night how Liu elected by the unions will be able to audit and offer the transparency needed of the union pension funds and millions in health care programs they run with city funds.

WFP Could Now Be the Most Power Party Since Tammany Hall
Earlier this month, the WFP the 11,800 member party backed four of the five challengers who ousted incumbents in the City Council. The WFP's ability to pull out the vote for its selected candidates increases that clout considerably, raising the question of how many elected officials are going to be willing to take on. At a meeting of the partnership and Citizen Budget Commission Steven Berger said The only people legislators listen to is the Working Families Party. Both Tammany Hall and WFP gained their power by organizing and providing for the poor.

Groups want Tammany Hall landmarked

From The Villager:

Preservation advocates are renewing their 25-year campaign to get Tammany Hall, the Colonial revival-style building on E. 17th St. at Union Square East, built in 1928 for the New York City Democratic Party, designated as a city landmark.

During the past three months, advocates including the Union Square Community Coalition, Gramercy Neighborhood Associates, Municipal Art Society, the Historic Districts Council and the New York Landmarks Conservancy, have written letters to the Landmarks Preservation Commission renewing their support for landmarking the building now serving as the home of the New York Film Academy and the Union Square Theater.

“We’ve been at it, off and on, since 1985,” said Jack Taylor, a member of the U.S.C.C. board of directors and chairperson of the coalition’s historic preservation committee. “In the past few months we’ve also received political support for landmarking the building from Councilmember Rosie Mendez, state Senator Tom Duane and Assemblymember Brian Kavanagh,” Taylor said.

There are also 12 individually landmarked buildings around Union Square, Taylor said, adding, “We want Tammany Hall to be the 13th.”

Hey readers, how many individually landmarked buildings are in your communities?

When Wagner beat Tammany Hall

Mayor Wagner started his political career as a protege of Tammany Hall, the Democratic Party machine that had controlled city affairs for most of 150 years. By 1961, he had broken with Tammany and its chief, Carmine G. De Sapio, and defeated that organization. Today NYC is not controlled by a party machine, but by a permanent gang of real estate developers, lobbyists and incumbents who have become the machine designed to keep everyone else out. They have designed election laws that encourage low voter turnout and discourages independent participation in the political process. They have designed a media to act as cheerleaders for their special interests and incumbent elected officials, rather than as objective reporters.

Read more at True News from ChangeNYC.org.