The Queens Machine three kahunas suddenly gets all transparent.

Beginning next month, the Eagle will devote even more coverage to the
court officers, law clerks and other workers who make our courts run.

Why? -QC

 

Queens prosecutors got promoted despite repeated trial misconduct

 

Gothamist asks in their headline if Katz will keep them in charge. On the Queens D.A. website under divisions and bureaus you get this:

 When you click press releases you get this:

When you click photos, you get this:

  So who the hell knows who's there. Transparency, the Queens Machine way

Civic punishes anti-Machine candidate

From the Times Ledger:

Oster Bryan, the former candidate who ran for an Assembly seat in southeast Queens against incumbent Clyde Vanel (D-Queens Village) in the Sept. 13 Democratic primary was asked to resign from his post as the president of the St. Albans Improvement Association.

Bryan believes that an $8,000 grant sent to the civic association before the Sept. 13 primary by Vanel was at the heart of the decision of him getting booted from organization.

“They are trying to remove as president, and they are saying it’s because I ran for public office, but that makes no sense to me,” said Bryan. “There is no such rule on our books that says I can’t.”

The eight-page bylaws from the civic association did not indicate a member or leader of the organization could not run for office; however, a letter sent to the former candidate said that he knew of the funds that were sent to the civic association before he decided to run and put the needs of the nonprofit at risk.

“It appears that you had no interest nor respect for the welfare of this organization and its members. Instead you choose to join the race for the Assembly seat after already knowing Assemblyman Clyde Vanel gave the Civic a grant,” said the letter that was sent out by the organization’s Vice President Martha Oliver.

Vanel implied he had nothing to do with Bryan being asked to resign and that funds were sent to the civic association long before the primary race; however, he did not have records on hand as to when exactly he offered the grant as of Wednesday night.

"For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil." - 1 Timothy 6:10

Does Joe Crowley really believe his own bullshit? (part 2)

Above is a link to the debate between Joe Crowley, 20 year incumbent, and newcomer Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

During this debate, a stuttering Crowley was so nervous that he used the term "meat & butter" instead of "meat & potatoes" or "bread & butter", which is what it appeared he was trying to say.

He repeatedly lied about living in Woodside, and said his family lives in Virginia because raising a family was "hard". (Her comeback on this was priceless.)

He's head and shoulders above anyone else because he grew up in Woodside, because it's so diverse! (Yet when he grew up there, it was like 85% Irish.)

He also claims that the controversial Jackson Heights project that he and his puppets Katz & Moya supported against the wishes of the community was approved by the community board, when it actually went down in flames there.

He also has convinced himself that he has a history of electing "progressive" candidates although he supported the likes of Christine Quinn and Paul Vallone and had several non-compete agreements with Republicans.

I'll tell you right now that the lady came out looking like a champ in this one, with well thought out responses and revealing a distinct platform.

The Queens Machine boss then doubled down on his BS by skipping out on a debate in the Bronx. From City & State:

At a congressional primary debate between Rep. Joseph Crowley and his Democratic challenger Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, there was a notable absence: Crowley.

The debate, hosted by The Parkchester Times in the Bronx and moderated by reporter Robert Press, instead featured a surrogate on the part of Crowley. Debating Ocasio-Cortez in his place was former New York City Councilwoman Annabel Palma.

Palma, who was term-limited out of office at the end of 2017, now serves as the deputy commissioner of strategic initiatives at the city Department of Social Services. She was ranked by City & State as one of the five worst city councilmembers in 2016.

According to journalist Robert Press, who moderated the debate, Palma began discussing her record as a New York City councilwoman. Press said he had to remind her that she was there to represent Crowley and discuss congressional issues. Palma told City & State that she focused on her joint work with Crowley while she was in the City Council and what she witnessed him doing for her community.

Was his cousin Elizabeth too busy for this? Or did he just want one of his Hispanic minions to represent him in a debate against another Hispanic person? Whatever the case is, it speaks volumes about the type of elected this guy is if nothing else we have brought you does.

Inside the Queens Machine

Very interesting series on WNYC! Worth a listen with your Sunday muffin & coffee.

Moya to publicly pledge his allegiance to the Queens Machine today

CORONA, N.Y. - On the heels of an appellate court rejection of a prior development project, Assemblymember and Council candidate Francisco Moya has issued a community-minded high bar for negotiations on the future of the redevelopment of Willets Point. These essential guidelines come in the face of a failed attempt to bring affordable housing to the area by scandal-tarred Hiram Monserrate, the former Councilmember whose deals with Mayor Bloomberg led to a decade of inaction and stagnation.

Moya's proposal comes shortly after a decision last month by the New York State Court of Appeals striking down the Willets West phase of the proposed redevelopment. The plan, which would have brought a shopping center and movie theater to the 30-acre site immediately west of Citi Field, was intended to be the first phase in the two-part redevelopment of the Willets Point Site. However, the Court of Appeals struck the plan down on the grounds that the land, which is technically parkland pertaining to the adjacent Flushing-Meadows Park, would first require state lawmakers' approval. Moya has pledged to work with colleagues in the legislature to secure the required parkland alienation provisions if his proposal moves forward.

...the leading City Council candidate will join Make the Road Action, Jackson Heights Green Alliance, Fairness Coalition of Queens, and local community leaders to rally in support of Moya's plan, and urge Mayor Bill de Blasio to join in support. The press conference and rally will coincide with the Mayor's week-long stint in Queens, working out of Queens Borough Hall.

Who: New York State Assemblymember Francisco Moya (D - Corona), Make the Road Action, members of Jackson Heights Green Alliance and the Fairness Coalition of Queens, as well as local community leaders.

What: Rally and press conference in support of Moya's Willets Point proposal

Where: Willets Point, 126th Street and Willets Point Blvd., Corona, N.Y. 11368.

When: Tomorrow, Thursday, July 20, 2017 at 2:30 p.m.

Nice collection of tweeder groups, Francisco! He also wants a soccer stadium in the park.

I'm kind of hoping Hiram shows up...

Joe Crowley has a Dem challenger

From the Village Voice:

Before Crowley can get on with his ladder climbing, he needs to do something somewhat unfamiliar: run a campaign. For the first time since at least 2004, he will be forced to compete in a primary in the overwhelmingly Democratic district spanning northern Queens and a chunk of the eastern Bronx. Since Republican victories are all but impossible, the primary is where the action is — and where Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a 27-year-old former organizer for the Bernie Sanders campaign, hopes to pull off her historic upset.

“What Joe Crowley represents is the floodgate between Wall Street and the United States government. He’s the clearing house, he takes millions and millions of dollars in funding from them,” Ocasio-Cortez told the Voice. “We see how he’s come to power locally — it’s totally undemocratic, machine-run, dynastic. He’s trying to spread this same model on the federal level.”

Ocasio-Cortez, attacking Crowley from the left, is just one of about a dozen candidates running on the slate of Brand New Congress, a political action committee founded by former Sanders staffers to elect more progressive members of Congress. She is the only member of Brand New Congress running from New York. A resident of the Bronx neighborhood of Parkchester, Ocasio-Cortez organized Sanders’s campaign in the South Bronx — Hillary Clinton, heavily favored in New York City, won the Bronx handily — and started thinking seriously about running for Congress after Donald Trump’s election. She learned quickly that people usually didn’t even contemplate running against Crowley, let alone start an actual campaign.

“A lot of progressive groups are coming out of the woodwork. They’ve been trying to find a challenger to Crowley for years,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “It’s literally political suicide for anyone with a semblance of a political career.”

Vallone really proud of Machine endorsement

From the Times Ledger:

The Queens County Democratic Party has endorsed Councilman Paul Vallone (D-Bayside) for the upcoming municipal elections. As the incumbent, Vallone represents northeast Queens, from Flushing to Douglaston, and faces community activist and land use expert Paul Graziano in the Democratic primary.

Vallone received unanimous support from the party and expressed gratitude to the Queens Democratic chairman, U.S. Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-Jackson Heights), for the standing by him.

“To stand side-by-side with our fellow Queens Democrats and our leader, Congressman Joe Crowley, and receive their unanimous endorsement will always be one of the proudest moments for me and my whole family,” Vallone said. “Representing my district has been the best four years of my life. We have put northeast Queens not only back on the map, but on top of it!”

Getting the nod from the corrupt Queens Machine is one of your proudest moments? That sure tells us a lot about you.

Joe Crowley: "In every way, de Blasio shares Queens values"

Honored to work with Queens County Dem. Committee to ensure NY remains a place that welcomes everybody. Happy to receive their endorsement. pic.twitter.com/j0e4K6GhfP

— Bill de Blasio (@BilldeBlasio) May 28, 2017

And this is the asinine shit show that Queens politics has become.

Send in the clowns.

Don't bother, they're here.

Crowley, the hypocritical liberal

From the Village Voice:

Crowley, the Queens congressman and county leader, has styled himself as an advocate for homeowners, praising former president Obama’s efforts to expand federal housing programs to make it easier to refinance mortgages at current interest rates, even if more is owed than the value on the home. “We need to find ways to both help people stay in their homes and save more of their income,” he said in 2012.

But Crowley’s words have not matched his actions. He empowers Sweeney’s law firm, maintaining close ties despite its work on behalf of banks. And his brother Sean Crowley is a lobbyist at one of New York’s most influential firms, Davidoff, Hutcher and Citron, where he has lobbied the state government on behalf of the New York Creditors Bar Association, the trade association representing creditors and attorneys engaged in debt collection.

Crowley, however, defended his record.

“Congressman Crowley has been a staunch supporter of middle-class families and will continue to support policies that help keep New Yorkers in their homes,” said Alex Florez, a spokesman for Crowley. “The work the lawyers do on behalf of their clients is independent from the work they put in as volunteers in our effort to help elect good Democrats in Queens.”

When have they ever helped elect a "good Democrat" and not a Tweeder?

Post calls for cleanup of the Queens Machine

From the NY Post:

The anti-nepotism reforms followed on years of Post reporting by Haberman, Allen Salkin and the late Jack Newfield.

Back in 1998, they found that the vast majority of lawyers receiving repeat Queens Surrogate Court assignments had direct ties to the county Democratic Party and its then-leader, Rep. Thomas Manton.

Newfield later noted that Manton’s own firm had received more than $400,000 in court patronage from 1997 to 2000. The Crowley clan had similar success.

Those exposés (Brooklyn had its own outrages) helped force a 2002 review by the state’s then-Chief Judge Judith Kaye that found rampant cronyism in the Supreme and Civil Court systems. The “cure” included the rules that the Crowley clan got caught violating in 2011.

But those reforms plainly didn’t go far enough. Newfield’s charge that the “patronage courtrooms in Brooklyn and Queens” might as well be “rigged casinos in Las Vegas” still rings true.

At a minimum, it’s surely time for current Chief Judge Janet DiFiore to lead a new review. The rising odor is a sign the stables need cleaning again.

Prosecutors mum on Queens Machine

From Progress Queens:

Nearly one week after a special report was published by The New York Daily News, raising questions about the political influence wielded by a Queens law firm, Sweeney, Reich & Bolz, LLP, the top prosecutors with jurisdiction over Queens remained mum about whether the report will trigger any investigations. According to the report, three attorneys at the firm earn enormous profits from, or wield considerable influence as a result of, their connections to the Queens County Democratic Committee.

Last week, the press offices for each of Acting U.S. Attorney Bridget Rohde, who is the top Federal prosecutor for New York's eastern district, and District Attorney Richard Brown (D-Queens) declined to answer advance questions submitted for this report.

The special investigation published by The New York Daily News raised questions about how the attorneys, Gerard Sweeney, Michael Reich, and Frank Bolz, are referred cases before the Surrogate's Court, are able to gate-keep political primary races, or are able to exercise discretion over which judicial candidates receive support from the county committee.

Avella calls on US Atty to investigate Queens Machine

Daily News exposes the Queens Machine

From the Daily News:

For 30 years, the same three men have effectively controlled one of the largest Democratic organizations in America.

They are Gerard Sweeney, Michael Reich and Frank Bolz, the powerful attorneys who serve Rep. Joe Crowley, the chairman of the Queens County Democratic Party. Reich is the executive secretary of the party, a spokesperson and wrangler of district leaders. Bolz is the law chairman, entrusted with keeping county-approved candidates on the ballot and knocking their rivals off.

Sweeney wears no official hat within the party infrastructure. But Queens insiders say he is arguably its most important strategist, helping guide the party’s political machinations on the homefront as it jousts for influence in City Hall and Albany.

He is also the one who gets to be very rich.

As the appointed counsel to the Queens public administrator, a job he has held without interruption since 1992, the 63-year-old Sweeney raked in just over $2 million last year administering in Surrogate’s Court the estates of people who died without leaving wills. Over the past decade, his haul is even more stunning: $30 million since 2006, according to an analysis of court records.

It’s impossible to know how many millions Sweeney received in his first 14 years on the job because the state’s Office of Court Administration, which oversees Surrogate’s Court, says it doesn't keep those figures.

The three men, with Crowley’s blessing, still determine what type of justice is served in Queens County. No Queens judge rises through the ranks without the party’s blessing and regular donations to its housekeeping account.

Sanders wins again despite Machine opposition

From DNA Info:

Incumbent State Sen. James Sanders Jr. won the Democratic primary in Southeast Queens' 10th Senate District Tuesday.

Sanders, a former city councilman who has been in office since 2013, received nearly 57 percent of the vote, according to state results. He has wide name recognition in the district and secured a number of labor endorsements.

His challenger, Adrienne Adams, chairwoman of Community Board 12, picked up more than 41 percent of the vote.

Sanders won even though the Queens County Democratic Party backed Adams after he declared last year that he was planning to challenge Queens Rep. Gregory Meeks this fall.

Where are Brown's challengers?

From the NY Times:

The challenger, a former state legislator threatening the party favorite, was kicked off the primary ballot in a district attorney race in Queens after a judge ruled that the signatures he had gathered were not valid. The man, seeking to beat Richard A. Brown, lost an appeal, paving the way for Mr. Brown to easily defeat a Republican in the heavily Democratic borough.

That was in 1991, and it was the last time Mr. Brown faced an opponent for the office.

Now 83, Mr. Brown has been re-elected six times, most recently in November, a victory so routine there was no public celebration. Concerns about his health — Mr. Brown has been open about his struggles with Parkinson’s disease — and rumors that his office is increasingly managed by his top associates have done little to churn up opposition.

However, in an era when criminal justice reform is an increasing part of the conversation in New York City, and district attorney seats in Brooklyn and Manhattan have turned over in recent years — or, in the case of Staten Island and the Bronx, will on Jan. 1 — some people have begun asking where Mr. Brown’s challengers are.

“He’s run a good office,” said Arnold N. Kriss, a defense lawyer and political adviser to Mr. Brown. “It’s very hard to be a candidate against a sitting district attorney when there’s nothing to run against.”

Others said his long tenure was a reminder that the city’s antiquated political machines were still a force in Queens.

“It undermines democracy when there is no real challenger to step up to run against incumbents,” said Dick Dadey, the executive director of Citizens Union, a government watchdog.

Grodenchik wins primary

Surprising absolutely no one, Democratic voters in the 23rd Council District, when given a choice between 6 candidates, chose the Queens County Democratic Machine hack. Bob Friedrich ran a close second.

Mark Weprin to resign from City Council

From the Daily News:

Queens City Councilman Mark Weprin is resigning the seat he’s held since 2010 to take a job with Gov. Cuomo, the Daily News has learned.

Weprin will be paid about $150,000 a year to serve as Cuomo’s deputy secretary of legislative affairs, which will make him the administration’s conduit to the Legislature, City Council and possibly federal officials.

Weprin was well liked during his 15 years serving as a Democrat in the state Assembly, and his hiring is a signal that Cuomo is looking to improve his frayed relationship with the state Legislature.

The ink isn't even dry on the resignation letter, and the pigs have already lined up at the trough. Odds are county will go with Grodenchik.

Cathy Nolan, Madame Speaker?

From the NY Observer:

Top officials with the Queens Democratic Party are calling Assembly members in Queens, Manhattan and Nassau County about the possibility of supporting Assemblywoman Catherine Nolan, a Queens Democrat, for speaker if Mr. Silver resigns or is forced out of office after his arrest on federal corruption charges, sources say.

Ms. Nolan, first elected in 1984, chairs the powerful Committee on Education.

“Queens is calling around, taking the temperature. They’re pushing Nolan,” said an Albany Democratic source. “They are floating her in case Shelly is no longer speaker so there’s a quick transfer of power and the body can move on.”

Sources say the Queens machine’s three top deputies–Michael Reich, Frank Bolz and Gerard Sweeney–are calling legislators to figure out what kind of support exists for a potential Nolan candidacy. Ms. Nolan, who did not immediately return a request for comment, defended Mr. Silver in the Daily News.

“They feel he’s taken a lot of criticisms for reflecting the views of a hundred very disparate people,” Ms. Nolan said. “It’s not an easy thing to do and he has done it very well.”

Liu finally admits he lost

From the NY Observer:

John Liu’s comeback bid is over.

The former city comptroller and mayoral candidate formerly conceded to State Senator Tony Avella this morning, acknowledging that a gap of 568 votes was too great to overcome with paper ballots.

“Public service, to me, is a calling, not a career, and this race was always about the opportunity to continue to serve our community,” Mr. Liu said in a statement. “While we may have fallen just short in the voting booth, our message resonated loud and clear – the people of this district want a true Democrat who will stand up for our progressive values and we will hold our elected officials accountable by their actions, not just their words.”

The Queens Democratic Party, led by Congressman Joseph Crowley, coaxed Mr. Liu into running in a Democratic primary against Mr. Avella earlier this year. Drawing on the support of local elected officials, a bevy of unions and a significant fund-raising advantage, Mr. Liu came last week within 5 percentages points of knocking off Mr. Avella, according to unofficial Board of Election returns.

But it was always an uphill slog for Mr. Liu in an oddly-shaped eastern Queens district where Mr. Avella, despite his alienation from the political establishment, remains popular. Mr. Avella’s win came as he crushed Mr. Liu in the heart of the district–the 26th Assembly District, including the neighborhoods of Whitestone, Bayside, Bay Terrace, Little Neck and Douglaston–by nearly 1,000 votes. Assemblyman Ed Braunstein, one of many Queens Democrats to back Mr. Liu, represents the district.