Young woman from Williamsburg got vaccinated and got COVID anyway

  

NY Post

 A Brooklyn woman who managed to avoid catching COVID-19 throughout 2020 went down with the bug this month — three weeks after being vaccinated.

Ashley Allen, 31, spoke to The Post by phone while quarantined in her Williamsburg apartment and in between calls from city contact tracers.

The contact tracers “started asking me questions about what I was doing three weeks ago,” Allen said. “And I said I was getting vaccinated.”

Allen was thrilled when she was able to book an appointment for the one-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine at the Javits Center on March 10. 

 The sprawling convention space had just received new shipments of vaccine and was jabbing New Yorkers around the clock — Allen’s appointment was at 2 a.m. As a wine and spirits distributor, she was able to get a coveted early spot even while vaccines remained unavailable to most New Yorkers. Though she experienced a brief fever the next day, her side effects from the jab quickly resolved.

Even after Allen was vaccinated, she was careful to always mask up when outside and wash her hands frequently.

“On Wednesday, March 31, I started feeling like a scratch, a tickle in my throat of some sort. It was super dry,” she recalled. “Then I kept having this dry cough. It kinda felt like I had allergies.”

As her cough persisted, debilitating fatigue set in.

“It started getting really bad, to the point where I did go to City MD,” she said. “I thought I had Lyme disease. I spend a lot of time upstate.”

But a rapid coronavirus test on April 4, plus a second rapid test on April 5, showed COVID. A PCR test, which is more accurate, confirmed it.

The City MD staffer “asked when did you get your vaccine? And I said March 10, and she was like just shocked,” Allen said.

Allen’s case is rare, experts say, but not unheard of.

“The vaccine does not necessarily prevent you from getting COVID. It prevents you from being hospitalized or dying from it,” Dr. Kris Bungay, a Manhattan primary care physician, told The Post. “That is why we all still have to be careful.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Update: Here's another one. 

The best vaccine is not the one that you can get now.

NY Post

A Brooklyn man found out on Monday that he’d tested positive for the coronavirus — more than two weeks after getting the jab.

Matthew Sambolin, 39, told The Post that though he opted for the one-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine because it was “convenient,” he now wishes he’d gotten the Pfizer or Moderna shot instead.

“The risk was there, I was willing to take it. Now I’m wishing I made a different decision,” he said in a phone call from the spare bedroom of his Bath Beach home, where he’s currently quarantining.

Sambolin said he was experiencing minor symptoms, including a light cough and fatigue.

While a rapid test he took Saturday came back negative, a PCR test, which is more accurate, returned positive for COVID-19 on Sunday, according to documentation he provided.

“It was a shock,” Sambolin said of learning about his positive test on Monday.

An operations manager for two local radio stations, Sambolin said he had “no ambivalence” about the COVID vaccine and had been looking forward to getting his.

“I wanted to help get the herd immunity up,” he said.

Mayor de Blasio’s fear and loathing of the public record

 

Impunity City

Good day everyone on the call.

Not long ago, the NYC Council cronies ratified a bill into law that revoked the NYPD from issuing press credentials to journalists, a truly historically groundbreaking paradigm shift in city policy of what was a standard procedure for approving access to events, briefings and police crime scenes for decades. This came about after the NYPD basically sabotaged themselves last summer and in the following months when reporters became collateral damage as they got caught up in the throes of the NYPD’s overtly aggressive militaristic tactics battling and kettling protesters during last summer’s George Floyd protests and various BLM demonstrations and rallies that followed that have occurred in later months. Thanks to the menacing optics of a police state in NYC, it actually justified the necessity of this bill.

So now in a year’s time, the issuing of press passes will be approved by the officials inside the Mayor’s Office of Film And Television Movies And Entertainment. While it sounds progressive and better than having a law enforcement agency determining the qualifications of a news source and who they assign, in essence the determination of who is a journalist or not will be  mostly under the purview of the Mayor of New York City.

Why this is being brought up now is to illustrate what an actual danger this will be considering who is mayor as well as who the next mayor will be. And in the last week since this transfer of press duties was ratified, Mayor de Blasio is setting up a very dangerous precedent with his office’s recent actions regarding his daily briefings. Actually it even started days when the press cred bill was being written up.

Back in January, de Blasio put out a 25 minute b-roll video and passed it out as his State of the City address. Entitled “A Recovery For All Of Us”, the overarching theme of the video was about how the city will make a gloriously historic comeback from the pandemic, optically highlighting programs and policies that will be dispensed equitably that will return the city to normalcy (or at least a semblance of it). In the last 3 months since his office produced that feature, The Blaz has with persistent repetition brought up his “recovery for all of us” during his briefings, aligning his brand title with his self-proclaimed gold standard re-opening of schools and revival of city culture with the widening spread of vaccine distribution.

But The Blaz’s recovery, well the “recovery for all of us”, has hit some snags. The vaccine distribution has been not been as equitably distributed, as higher income neighborhoods have received the vaccine than lower income areas and the school re-openings have resembled more of a brown standard than gold according to frustrated parents and students. Then there was the sudden vanishing of the COVID case data map for three days after it revealed about 30 zip codes with over 15% of the population with positive cases, which revealed that even with hundreds of thousands of citizens inoculated, the contagion was still prevalent and persistent.

As for the contagion, COVID-19 as evolved to four different variants, including a New York strain for fuck’s sake. But it’s the UK strain that’s been the most stubborn as cases continue to plateau again in the five boroughs despite the prevalence of vaccines. What’s disturbing about these variants is how they mostly effect younger people.

About those vaccines, there’s been a little hitch there too, especially with Johnson and Johnson brands. If there wasn’t a problem with them being 30% less effective than the Moderna and Pfizer vacs, the Big Pharma corporation recently had to trash 15 million vaccines because they got mixed up with another brand at the warehouse building where both were being manufactured. It should be noted that the warehouse wasn’t even approved by the FDA.

The FUGAZIed vaccines presents a major quagmire for The Blaz, because he has been utterly dependent on these vacs for the recovery for all of us in New York City. And he was surely hedging his bets for them to correlate nicely with his recent decision to bring all his city employees working remotely from of their $2,500 studio apartments and back to the city offices in the merry month of May even though commercial office buildings still have to follow pandemic guidelines and keep staff levels low.

Somehow, having all city employees back in municipal buildings is tied to de Blasio’s recovery, along with his mission to revive NYC culture by having entertainment spring up on the streets and to open up Broadway by prioritizing vaccine access to theater workers and entertainers with mobile sites.

The Blaz has to explain how all this is going to work and because of his notorious proclivity for being secretive and unaccountable when it comes to his policies and decisions. When he does his weekday media availability (even that sounds Orwellian), it airs on the city’s station on Channel 25 and streams live on the Mayor’s Office youtube channel. Then the Mayor’s Office uploads the entire video to their channel not long after it’s done before noon. But on three recent uploads, de Blasio’s and even his crack quack health commission squad of Dr. Chokshi, Dr. Varma and Dr. Katz responses to questions regarding recovery and COVID cases were suddenly memory holed.

Fortunately, the Mayor’s Office website has the entire transcript of his daily briefings, which makes the butchering of these videos a fool’s errand (especially when the one giving the orders is a fool), but not necessarily moot because the video medium is still the one people go to and is easily available, so it makes sense from the standpoint of a scoundrel looking to cover his ass even though it won’t stop anyone from releasing his words in full. Like on this blog here.

 

City and state officials have had it with the Rockaway pipeline

  

Queens Eagle

Over two dozen New York City leaders have urged the federal government to kill a controversial pipeline project that would run underneath the waters off the Rockaway Peninsula. 

The proposed Williams Northeast Supply Enhance Pipeline, or Williams Pipeline, would deliver fracked gas from Pennsylvania to New York city via a tube underneath New York Harbor. The plan was rejected last year by New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation. 

In a letter Wednesday, Comptroller Scott Stringer, Queens Borough President Donovan Richards and State Sens. Joseph P. Addabbo, Jr., Jessica Ramos and James Sanders called on Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Richard Glick to also reject the Williams Pipeline once and for all. The pipeline would move the city and state further from achieving its climate goals, they said.
“We take climate change seriously, as we have already lost loved ones here in New York City to climate-fueled superstorms and heat waves that caused death, illness, debt, and scarcity,” the leaders wrote. “For our constituents and for the future generations who will live with the consequences of allowing the Williams Pipeline to be built, we urge you to deny Williams’ request.”

The letter cites Glick’s own condemnation of the initial FERC approval of the project in 2019, when he said that declaring the pipeline safe “fails to give climate change the serious consideration it deserves and that the law demands.”

On March 19, Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line Company requested a two year extension to kickstart the project. The 17.4-mile-long, 26-inch diameter connection would transport fracked gas under the Atlantic Ocean off the shores of Rockaway Beach.

The letter cites the emissions impact of the gas being brought into the city once burned, new FERC recommendations that take into account the effects of transporting the gas  — like methane leaks — and climate justice for the city’s most vulnerable communities.

“We will not allow the racist legacy of environmental and climate injustice to continue by building infrastructure that will increase the amount of polluting fracked gas in our city,” the letter continues

 

Silicon Valley tech firm that hired failed NYC schools chancellor profited from the pandemic

  

NY Post 

The California ed-tech firm that hired ex-schools Chancellor Richard Carranza cashed in on the COVID-19 pandemic in NYC, reaping millions of dollars from the Department of Education under his reign, records show.

IXL Learning, Inc. — which named Carranza its chief of strategy and global development — has been paid $3.3 million by the DOE in the past two years alone. 

The Silicon Valley outfit has collected $2.1 million in NYC taxpayer funds this school year. That nearly doubled the $1.2 million it made last school year as the DOE expanded remote instruction, according to records compiled by the city comptroller’s office.

Observers expect IXL’s windfall to grow with Carranza as its salesman.

He “brings to the table a wealth of contacts and people who owe him favors” in New York, Houston and San Francisco, where he has led school districts, said Alina Adams, a Manhattan mom and writer who runs the website “NYC School Secrets: Parents Helping Parents.”

“Some of the people in charge of deciding whether or not to buy IXL products will be the same people that Carranza hired.”   

Carranza’s new gig as a top executive for a DOE vendor raises serious conflict-of-interest questions.

 Under NYC laws, city employees may not seek jobs — including submit a resume, discuss opportunities, or interview — with a company they are dealing with as part of their city job, the Conflicts of Interest Board (COIB) states.

Carranza announced his resignation on Feb. 26, saying he needed time to grieve 11 loved ones lost to COVID-19.  IXL announced his hiring in a press release dated April 1, less than three weeks after his last day as chancellor.

 

Developer funded group proposes to build public plazas under Queensboro bridge underpasses

 

LIC Post

A plan to transform a gritty area under the Queensboro Bridge ramps into a vibrant public space is starting to take shape–with an architect considering designs that would include a basketball court, a dog run and a large seating area.

The plan, called the “Long Island City Ramps” project, would cost $5.5 million and involves revitalizing 50,000 square feet of underutilized space beneath the road ramps that lead to the Queensboro Bridge in Court Square.

The area that is set to be revamped includes a 17,000 square foot site along Dutch Kills Street which is currently being used by a DOT contractor for roadside parking.

The second area is a 33,000 square foot adjacent space that is being used by the NYPD School Safety division as a parking lot. Unlike the Dutch Kills Street space, much of this space is not covered by a ramp and will provide a large open area with plenty of sunlight.

The two ramps converge above Jackson Avenue.

Bad Bunny

 

AOC tied to Capitol Police investigation of a California resident criticizing her in a tweet

 

 The Grayzone

An anti-war activist was visited by California Highway Patrol officers after posting video of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s bumbling comments on Israel-Palestine. The action, which AOC denies triggering, was initiated by a call to US Capitol Police.

As he waited for a food delivery at his home in Los Angeles on April 8, Ryan Wentz, an anti-war activist and producer for the online viral program Soapbox, heard two men calling his name from over his front gate. When he approached, he realized they were not delivery drivers, but police officers flashing badges of the California Highway Patrol.

The cops informed Wentz that they had received a call from the Capitol Police, the federal law enforcement agency tasked with protecting the US Congress, about a tweet he had sent that allegedly threatened Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Wentz told The Grayzone, “The officers said, ‘We got a warning about a sitting member of Congress. And it was because of your tweet, which tagged them in it.’ And then they just wouldn’t back down from this accusation that I threatened to kill her.”

 The California Highway Patrol indicated on Twitter that it had acted on a call from Capitol Police.

Though AOC’s office has denied falsely informing Capitol Police of an online threat by Wentz, the Democratic congresswoman has in the past asked her supporters to report critics to social media censors.

Whoever called the police on Wentz furnished law enforcement with a patently false allegation, as he has never threatened violence against any member of Congress.

In the tweet that triggered the police action, Wentz merely posted video of AOC delivering a vapid and embarrassingly convoluted answer to a question about resolving the crisis in Israel-Palestine. Describing her answer as “incredibly underwhelming,” he let the congresswoman’s cringeworthy commentary speak for itself.

Impunity City

 Going by my recent difficulty with the Twitter, this incident confirms that the social media platform is no longer a "private company" and has become an arm of the government hell bent to induce and normalize censorship and will shut down any attempt to hold elected officials accountable for their bad policies and idiotic statements. And just like in my case, this person got clamped down for words belonging to another person.

AOC should be less concerned about what she perceives are threats to her brand and her political party and more with the persistent problems and crises that's affecting her district starting with the recent fire that left hundreds homeless in Jackson Heights.

Ridgewood residents feel the spectre of gentrification after "progressive" developers open expensive restaurant on a street corner

 

 

Grub Street

 Luisa’s family has lived in the same apartment building on Onderdonk Avenue in Ridgewood since she was 10 years old. Now, she worries that time will come to an end. Last year, when Luisa (who asked to only use her first name) found herself working out of the apartment, she started to notice how quickly changes in the neighborhood were happening. Local property values had skyrocketed, and she says her landlord has said, many times, she’s thinking about selling. “If she were to put it up for sale, we would be evicted in a matter of just closing your eyes,” Luisa fears. “We don’t have a lease,” she says, “so there are very real concerns that I do have.”

While she says there’s no immediate threat to her family, she’s worried that may change any day now. She spent the summer listening to the drilling and construction along Onderdonk Avenue, including for Rolo’s, a new restaurant from a trio of former Manhattan chefs. “It was just this nightmare for me,” Luisa says, “because I knew what was happening.”

Rolo’s is the kind of low-fuss, New American place you might expect from four veterans of Danny Meyer’s Gramercy Tavern who wanted to open a casual, outer-borough dining room. Rolo’s sells eight kinds of pickles, pineapple-rum Negronis, homemade focaccia, fresh pasta, and containers filled with slow-braised lamb ragù. A recent review in The New Yorker said it offered “a taste of New York.” Howard Kalachnikoff, one of the chef-partners, calls it, “Just a simple, neighborhood restaurant, focused on cooking over a wood-burning grill.” The goal of opening, he explains, is “to put down some roots and then see what happens after that.”

Pandemic dining restrictions meant Rolo’s opened first as a market with only takeout and delivery. A few weeks ago, the owners put out some tables, and they have a warm-weather streetery structure in the works (hmm, a sign NYC open streets are being weaponized for privatization?-JQ LLC). Eventually, Kalachnikoff imagines diners dropping in a couple of times each week, and he wants to stay in business for a long time. Ben Howell, another partner, adds, “nothing would make us happier than if some of the young adults that come here now come in in 15 years with their kids, when their kids are graduating.”

Due to the pandemic, Rolo’s opened in January as a grocery store, selling everything from single-origin spices to De Cecco pasta, and takeout business. 

Indeed, some neighbors don’t see any drawback to the arrival of Rolo’s or the building’s renovation. “I’m not aware of any negatives,” says Paul Kerzner, a 49-year member of Community Board 5. “I walked into that building about a month ago when that was finished,” he recalls. “I was tickled to death when I saw that the graffiti was coming down and the boards that were up were coming down, and we’re going to get glass back again.”

But for others, Rolo’s is something more than a destination for a quiet weeknight meal. “I’m so excited because I like this kind of food,” says Laura Duarte, who, with her siblings, opened her own restaurant, Las Chilangas, just before the pandemic hit. “But the way we think about this type of restaurant opening … I know the rent is going to increase so much.”

Going off the rails on a Crazy Train

It's Friday. What the world needs now is a little diversion. BDB took his staff on the vomit comet because thats what the public demanded. Now go ahead and caption this photo!

Queens is still burning and more housing insecure

 

Impunity City 

 When Mayor de Blasio gets done trying to produce the recovery of all of us by emceeing performance arts venues in Brooklyn and Lincoln Center, maybe some time can be dedicated for his Housing Preservation and Development and Human Resources Administration to make sure these 400 residents who have had their lives upended from getting disenfranchised from their homes and belongings and make sure the owners of this complex, KEDEX PROPERTIES LLC, renovates and restores these apartments as quickly as possible.

And since there is still not much known about how this inferno started, right at the start of the afternoon no less, let’s be positively certain that when this LLC decides to demolish these actual affordable housing buildings and build some garishly designed tower they better let these residents that got displaced be allowed to return without any conditions. Instead of letting more low income people become gentrification collateral damage.

 

Maya Wiley's "agents of the city" legal advisory memo encouraged de Blasio to let his aides take bribes for him

 

 

THE CITY

Last Friday, mayoral candidate Maya Wiley held a news conference to blast Gov. Andrew Cuomo for what she deemed were ethical lapses — including reports he’d improperly pressured staff to help on his book “American Crisis.”

She promised that as mayor, she’d run an honest, transparent administration. She did not mention — or eagerly discuss when reporters inquired — another ethics issue: her proximity to the conflict-of-interest scandals that tarnished Mayor Bill de Blasio’s tenure at City Hall.

As the mayor’s first general counsel, or in-house lawyer, Wiley drafted a memo advising him on how he could legally solicit donations for a nonprofit he’d formed called Campaign for One New York (CONY) without violating conflict-of-interest rules. De Blasio nevertheless wound up the target of federal, state and local ethics investigations.

Federal prosecutors declined to bring criminal charges, but determined that de Blasio had intervened on behalf of donors with business before the city.

The state Joint Commission on Public Ethics (JCOPE) cited several donors for providing illegal gifts to the mayor with their CONY contributions. And the city Department of Investigation (DOI) concluded that de Blasio had violated city ethics rules by soliciting individuals with pending matters at City Hall.

This week, in response to a long list of questions from THE CITY, Wiley’s campaign released a terse statement acknowledging that while she had provided the mayor with ethical boundaries for his CONY fundraising, her advice “was not always followed.”

“In her role as counsel to the mayor, Maya provided legal guidance regarding the mayor’s involvement in fundraising for non-profit organizations,” the campaign stated. “Maya has made clear she was not involved with Campaign for One New York nor its implementation of the guidance which she provided. It is clear from DOI’s conclusion the guidance was not always followed.”

On Wednesday, she declined to directly answer most of THE CITY’s questions during a brief interview as she campaigned in The Bronx. Asked how she felt about the mayor not following her guidance, she replied, “I stand by my advice and when I am mayor will always take the advice of my lawyers.”

Wiley also gave de Blasio a way to conceal from the public City Hall’s internal communications with outside political consultants who were paid big bucks from the money he’d raised. She dubbed these consultants “agents of the city” — a justification ultimately shot down by the courts.

Wiley’s advice on CONY and her use of the “agents of the city” argument raise questions about her good government promises, said Sal Albanese, a former City Council member from Brooklyn who first ran for mayor against de Blasio in the 2013 Democratic primary and has since been a consistent critic of his fundraising tactics.

“It was almost like an exercise in, ‘Let’s see how we can make this happen for the mayor,’” said Albanese, who is now seeking a Council seat on Staten Island. “Wiley should have shut that whole thing down immediately,” he added. “The whole thing is a conflict of interest.”

Rezoning for luxury public housing building will displace small businesses

 

LIC Post

About 10 stores on Roosevelt Avenue are in jeopardy of being bulldozed to make way for a 13-story, 213-unit complex.

A developer has filed an application with the Department of City Planning to rezone a series of parcels on Roosevelt Avenue–between 62nd and 63rd Streets–to put up a large mixed-use building. The plans were certified Monday and the public review process has begun.

The plans involve rezoning a series of lots—62-02 through 62-26 Roosevelt Avenue– from a R6 and R6/C1-4 district– to a C4-4 district.Depar

Woodside 63 Management LLC., which is led by the Astoria-based real estate firm EJ Stevens Group, is behind the application.

The development would require the demolition of approximately 10 storefronts, occupied by an eclectic array of businesses– including a carpet store, laundromat, furniture store, restaurant, barber shop and 99-cent store.

The 13-story building would consist of apartment units on floors three through 13. The ground floor would be dedicated to retail, with office space on the second floor.

A community facility would be located on the cellar level. The developer is working with Mare Nostrom Elements on an arts/dance facility in that space.

Reynoso's aide tries to silence fellow Democrat Socialist

I have struggled in deciding whether or not to share this story publicly, but ultimately decided to be open in the hopes that it might help someone. But also because fuck men who try everything to silence you.

On Feb 16 I was served a cease and desist letter by Boris Santos. 1/

— Cristina Gonzalez (@CristinaAimee) April 5, 2021

Shaun Donavan's campaign gets another million dollar allowance from his daddy

 

NY Post

 Daddy Ad-warbucks!

An independent group seeking to boost former Bloomberg and Obama insider Shaun Donovan’s flagging bid to become the next mayor of New York City has gotten $2 million so far from the candidate’s father, filings with the state Board of Elections show.

His father, Michael Donovan, made his most recent $1 million donation on March 30, according to the records. It comes roughly a month after he gave the independent group his first $1 million, on Feb. 23.

The committee, known as New Start NYC, has received just four contributions so far — and donations from Donovan’s father account for all but $30,000 of the money it has raised so far.

Donovan served as President Obama’s budget director and as a top official to then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg, working as the commissioner overseeing the Department of Housing and Preservation. 

 However, his campaign — centered on those technocratic credentials — has struggled to gain traction with polls repeatedly showing him stuck in the second tier of candidates and usually inside of the margin of error.

 Pathetic.

 

Scandal scarred Governor Cuomo finalizes state budget with more taxes for the wealthy, rent and mortgage relief,financial aid for undocumented immigrant workers and also ends immunity for nursing homes

 

THE CITY

State lawmakers and Gov. Andrew Cuomo reached a deal on the state’s $212 billion budget Tuesday, agreeing to tax increases on wealthy New Yorkers and to create a fund for undocumented workers shut out of financial assistance during the pandemic.

Buoyed by a $12.6 billion infusion from the stimulus package Congress passed in March, the budget is New York’s largest financial plan to date. New York’s second pandemic budget arrived nearly a week past the April 1 start of the state’s fiscal year, after an embattled Cuomo and Democratic lawmakers disagreed on a multitude of issues.

Among the most contentious: billions in aid for workers excluded from unemployment benefits and federal pandemic stimulus payments, billions more for financially distressed renters and homeowners, and another $1 billion-plus to jumpstart Cuomo’s Penn Station overhaul.

Bills detailing the intricacies of the proposals were introduced Tuesday evening.

“Thanks to the state’s strong fiscal management and relentless pursuit to secure the federal support that the pandemic demanded, we not only balanced our budget, we are also making historic investments to reimagine, rebuild and renew New York in the aftermath of the worst health and economic crisis in a century,” Cuomo said in a joint statement with Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins.

The massive spending plan will also raise taxes on the state’s million-dollar-plus earners — spurring concerns from fiscal watchdogs who say it risks driving high-earning taxpayers to leave New York. And the deal will legalize online sports betting, adding a projected $99 million in revenue this fiscal year and up to $500 million annually in years to come, lawmakers estimate.

Spending highlights outlined by Cuomo, Stewart-Cousins and Heastie include:

• $2.1 billion for the so-called Excluded Workers Fund
• $2.4 billion in assistance to renters
• $600 million in aid to homeowners
• $1.3 billion for the Empire Station project at Penn Station
• $29.5 billion in schools spending — a $3 billion increase

  Governor Cuomo repealed a controversial law that shielded nursing homes and other essential businesses from coronavirus related lawsuits Tuesday night. The measure rolled back the “Emergency or Disaster Treatment Protection Act,” which granted health care facilities and workers liability immunity from negligence suits, and comes as Cuomo’s administration is under federal investigation for covering up some 9,000 COVID-19 related nursing home deaths last year. The scandal — exclusively revealed by The Post — weakened Cuomo politically and led to calls for him to resign as sexual harassment accusations against him swirled in the wake of the report. “As we near the passage of this year’s momentous budget, I am relieved to see corporate immunity, which was slipped into last year’s budget, fully repealed,” Bronx State Senator Alessandra Biaggi, one of the bill’s sponsor said in a statement Tuesday night. “This blanket immunity prevented thousands of families who lost loved ones to COVID-19 from seeking legal recourse, and potentially incentivized nursing home executives to cut corners — endangering staff and residents.”

Predatory slumlord swindled city housing agencies for 8 years

QNS 

A Far Rockaway man was charged for defrauding government rental assistance programs by renting out dilapidated apartments he did not own to families in need, prosecutors announced Tuesday.

Paul Fishbein, 47, faces wire and mail fraud charges for allegedly falsely claiming to be the owner and landlord of 20 rental properties, mostly in the Bronx, while collecting government subsidies and evicting tenants over the course of eight years, according to the Southern District of New York.

“As alleged, Paul Fishbein not only took advantage of New Yorkers in need, he also defrauded city and federal government programs designed to help these very people,” U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss said. “Fishbein allegedly lied about ownership of residential properties, fraudulently took rent subsidies and other benefits from those government housing programs, and often evicted tenants without cause from housing that was substandard in any event. Now Paul Fishbein is in custody and facing serious federal charges for his alleged fraud and exploitation.”

According to a complaint unsealed in Manhattan federal court Tuesday, Fishbein allegedly lied about owning the properties beginning in 2013 based on forged deeds. He then allegedly rented the properties to homeless and low- to moderate-income families through rental assistance programs operated by three city agencies — NYCHA, the Human Resources Administration and Housing Preservation & Development — and collected money, including federal funds, as the purported owner and landlord of the properties.

The complaint estimates Fishbein defrauded the three city agencies out of about $1.5 million, including more than $270,000 in federal funds. In addition to taking payments, Fishbein allegedly faked using a broker to rent out the properties and kept certain broker’s fees for himself that the HRA issued as payment.

Fishbein is also accused of faking financial eligibility for Medicaid since at least 2014, the complaint says. He allegedly told the HRA he worked at a company where his total income was about $150 a week — or $600 a month — when he in actuality made hundreds of thousands of dollars every year. Prosecutors allege Fishbein received nearly $50,000 in Medicaid benefits to which he was not entitled to as part of his scheme.

Queens Is Burning: Castle goes on fire in Woodhaven and Long Island City luxury tower sales are blazing

QNS 

 A two-alarm fire in Woodhaven sent one firefighter to the hospital on Sunday.

Firefighters first got a call about the blaze inside a three-story home located at 84-11 86 Rd. around 7 p.m. on Sunday, April 4, according to the authorities.

QNS 

The Long Island City real estate market is showing signs of life after the COVID-19 pandemic froze the nation’s fastest growing neighborhood a year ago.

At the Skyline Tower at 3 Court Sq., monthly sales more than doubled in March with 20 units going into contract.

“The month of March was on fire and my team was killing it,” Modern Spaces Founder and CEO Eric Benaim said. “Not only the market is coming back but New York City is coming back.”

Modern Spaces is handling the marketing and sales of the Skyline Tower, the tallest condominium building in Queens, rising 67 stories with 802 units. The total value of the project is expected to be the first billion-dollar development in the borough when the condo units sell out.

“We’re at 44 percent sold and we should be at 50 percent by the end of spring,” Benaim said. “We’ve got 25 to 30 units occupied already with more units moving quickly.”

Closings began in February and people began moving in during March. The development features an array of luxury amenities including a state-of-the-art fitness center, a 75-foot indoor pool, a whirlpool spa, sauna and steam room, a children’s playroom, a business center and an outdoor terrace. There are private, outdoor terraces for 155 of the units.

If this monolith seems familiar, it's the building over the Court Square train station where a commuter almost drowned and nearly got hit by a train when the retaining wall collapsed during a storm as the building was still being developed.

 

Made Man makes big donations to Brooklyn Machine

 

 

NY Post

He really is “connected.”

The reputed wiseguy behind Brooklyn’s Plaza Auto Mall has been handing out campaign cash to local Democrats — including the borough’s district attorney and its party boss, The Post has learned.

John Rosatti’s Plaza Motors of Brooklyn donated $2,020 to DA Eric Gonzalez for his winning 2017 campaign and the next year gave $2,000 to Assemblywoman Rodneyse Bichotte, who in January 2020 succeeded longtime leader Frank Seddio as head of the Brooklyn Democratic Party.

The following month, Plaza donated another $10,000 to the party, records show.

John Kaehny of the good-government group “Reinvent Albany” said pols “should be vetting contributions in order to make sure that there’s no attempt to influence them.”

“What did this guy expect for his contribution — that’s the question the campaigns should ask themselves,” he added.

Before amassing a reported $400 million fortune, Rosatti, 77, was identified by the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement as an alleged soldier in the Colombo crime family, according to a 1993 decision by the state’s Casino Control Commission.

The ruling, which rejected a bid to bar Rosatti pal and reputed Colombo family member John Staluppi from the state’s casinos, cited testimony that confidential informants claimed Rosatti became a Colombo associate in 1980 and was sworn in as a “made member” in 1994.

The homeless survey says....the city's shelters suck

 

NY Post

Most New Yorkers living on the street and subways have been through the city’s shelter system — and don’t want to go back, according to a new survey of 200 “unsheltered” city residents.

More than three-quarters of respondents from all five boroughs — 77 percent — said they had stayed in the shelter system before and opted to return to the street, according to the report released Monday by the Coalition for the Homeless.

Of those who eschewed shelters, 38 percent cited concerns about their safety while another 44 percent blamed city social workers for being either inefficient, overly-controlling, inattentive or disrespectful, the report said.

“No discipline, security don’t do nothing, food sucks, feel like I’m in prison, no love,” one survey respondent said of the city-run system.

“I’m a human being,” said another. “I don’t want to be treated like an ASPCA mutt.”

City social workers, meanwhile, had approached 84 percent of the individuals surveyed. Yet three-fifths of those approached refused the services offered by the workers — usually a trip back into the shelter system.

Fifty-three percent of respondents said they need real housing to get off the streets, while 26 percent also cited jobs and income.

Survey respondents were approached while living anywhere from subways stations and sidewalks to parks and office building atriums.

Their answers suggest New York City’s street homeless “see the sacrifice of their safety, dignity, and agency as the unacceptable cost of entering the shelter system and so they are left with no choice but to bed down in public spaces,” the report argued.

Update: George The Atheist reporting from Woodside on the city's homeless policy failure 

de Blasio debuts ? case school closure rule

 NY Daily News

New York City will scrap the controversial “two-case” rule that temporarily shutters school buildings when two or more COVID-19 cases are reported within the same week — but haven’t yet decided what guidelines will come in its place, Mayor de Blasio announced Monday.

“We’ve come to the conclusion it’s time for a change,” Hizzoner said. “We will be replacing the two-case rule, and in the coming days we will be announcing a replacement rule.”

The two-case rule closes school buildings for an initial 24 hours if cases from different classrooms were reported and keeps them shut for 10 days if disease detectives can’t find a link between the cases.

The directive has come under increasing fire from parents, politicians and health experts in recent months as overly restrictive.

De Blasio promised Monday the new rule will result in shuttering fewer schools. But he offered no details on exactly how schools would make decisions about whether to temporarily shut down because of multiple COVID-19 cases.

“We’re going to work with the unions that represent all school employees on the new rule,” he said.

United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew has been staunchly opposed to changing the two-case rule, arguing that it is among the safety measures that has helped prevent outbreaks in schools.

 In a statement Monday, Mulgrew said “a proclamation is not a plan. The city can’t change the two-case rule without Albany’s approval.”

 

New Bad Days 83: The Ides Of March bring more violent hate towards Asians and gun, gang and subway violence to NYC

  

Impunity City

 Has de Blasio, Speaker Cojo and the NY Council fauxgressive cronies ever given the thought that the reason Rikers is making C.O.’s work triple shifts is because solitary confinement has been cancelled and the only way to tamp down violence and keep order is to keep C.O.’s on duty for every minute and second that way they can justify these new supposed progressive policies? Even though it’s clearly not working? Even Jeff Bezos lets his Amazon FFC employees go home.

And while this FUBAR management is going on at Rikers, where is the NYC Jails Commissioner? Whose conspicuous absence after de Blasio put her on medical leave following the release of a fugitive killer that’s still on the loose has made her virtually unobtainable for comment?

Bill to help the housing insecure could make industrial zones more manufacturing insecure

 

BRKLNR 

 State lawmakers are considering legislation to increase the city’s affordable housing stock, but groups who represent Brooklyn’s working waterfront say it could unintentionally cost the city industrial jobs.

The bill, called the “Housing Our Neighbors with Dignity Act,” looks to allow the state to purchase and acquire distressed commercial real estate, like office buildings and hotels, which it would then sell or transfer to entities that would “guarantee affordable, habitable, and environmentally sustainable housing to asset-limited, low-income individuals and families.”

The proposal was introduced in the State Senate earlier this month by Queens State Senator Michael Gianaris, and comes in the context of a coronavirus-driven shift to remote work that has left many office buildings half-empty as well as a historic drop in tourism that has devastated the hotel industry. 

The measure has support from both advocates like VOCAL-NY and the Legal Aid Society, and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie recently signaled support for the proposal. Governor Andrew Cuomo also put forward a similar idea during his State of the State address in January, though Gianaris has criticized the governor’s proposal as offering insufficient requirements for affordable housing.

But groups that represent the city’s Industrial Business Zones (IBZs) fear the legislation, along with another bill that would permit the conversion of class B hotels to permanent residencies, could prompt residential growth in areas primarily set aside for manufacturing, making them less hospitable for industrial businesses whose jobs they say the city desperately needs.

“We understand the pandemic has been awful for low-income communities and particularly for the homeless,” said Leah Archibald, executive director of the Evergreen Exchange, which supports industrial businesses in North Brooklyn. “We agree it’s necessary to engage in creative solutions to address this crisis. But we’re really concerned about the potential for unintended consequences.”

In the decade preceding the pandemic, hotel development expanded rapidly in the city’s light manufacturing zoning districts (M1 zones), driven in part by rapid growth in tourism and the relative permissiveness of the M1 zoning framework (some of those hotels have also been used as homeless shelters).

From 2005 to 2015, the city lost about 18% of its industrial space to residential and commercial uses, according to numbers cited by the Southwest Brooklyn Industrial Development Corporation (SBIDC). That loss prompted fears that hotels would crowd out manufacturing businesses, which some elected officials argued offer higher-paying jobs and upward mobility to workers without college degrees.

In late 2018, the City Council controversially approved legislation that required a special permit to build new hotels within M1 districts, which has essentially halted hotel growth in those areas. A similar restriction on self-storage units in Industrial Business Zones was approved earlier that year. 

But about 13% of the city’s existing hotel rooms are already in M1 districts, and representatives for manufacturing businesses worry those hotels, as well as commercial office spaces, are ripe for residential conversion.

Permitting the conversion of office and hotel space into permanent housing “would have a particularly harmful effect on industrial areas, where the bulk of class B and C office space and hotels of this relatively small size are located,” SBIDC wrote in a template letter that it is encouraging member businesses to send to elected officials.

Given the needs of the city to facilitate an equitable recovery, the letter reads, “any further loss would signal to the market that the city’s Industrial Business Zones are unprotected, open to speculators, and would represent a permanent loss to the stock of industrial real estate and jobs.”

 

 

Queens is burning: row of small businesses destroyed in Queens Village

 

NY Daily News

A massive fire tore through a row of Queens storefronts early Saturday, trapping two firefighters under a collapsed roof and decimating several shops in a matter of minutes.

One of the two FDNY firefighters was rushed to the hospital with severe burns after the 2:15 a.m. blaze in Queens Village that left shop owners stunned hours later.

“We lost everything in a matter of a ... minute. We were in bed and someone from the community called and told me what’s going on,” Ralph Torres, co-owner of Beatriz Dominican Salon, said as he looked over the gutted remains of his family shop on Springfield Blvd.

“This is something me and my wife built,” Torres, 56, said. “We devastated. We devastated man. You build something and you lose it overnight, it’s gone.”

Two other businesses near 112th Ave. were scorched along with the hair salon, including the Springfield Cutz Barbershop and Spring Pharmacy.

FDNY fire marshals were still trying to determine Saturday where and how the fire started. 911 calls directed firefighters to the barbershop, but officials noted that the fire was heaviest in the salon, whose roof also partially collapsed.

Firefighters were in the back of the barbershop when its burning ceiling gave way, trapping two smoke eaters inside, said FDNY Assistant Chief of Department Joseph Jardin.

“A portion of the roof collapsed trapping two of our members initially,” Jardin said at the scene. “They discovered the member under a 20 foot by 20 foot section of wood joisted roof, a heavy section of roof with fire in proximity where the member was trapped.”

High schools have seen a surge of weapons confiscations since de Blasio's reopening order

 

 

NY Post

Some New York kids returning to in-person high school this month appear to have packed a little more than their lunch, according to a top NYPD official.

Deputy Chief Olufunmilola Obe warned in a memo Tuesday that the NYPD has seen a surge in dangerous weapons recoveries at Department of Education buildings –accompanying the reopening of city high schools last week.

“The undersigned has observed an increase in the amount of weapons and dangerous instruments recovered on school grounds,” she wrote.

“The increase coincides with the commencement of in-person learning at NYC public high schools on Monday March 22 2021.”

According to the memo, 25 unspecified weapons were recovered over the course of five days.

Obe wrote that seven of the 25 weapons were discovered through school metal detectors while another 12 were found at the “perimeter” of DOE buildings.

Another 6 weapons were taken directly off of students, she wrote.

School Safety Agent union boss Greg Floyd, who wants to block the transfer of school-safety duties from the NYPD to the DOE, said the news should alarm city families.

“The group pushing for the NYPD to be taken out should take note of the job being done here to recover these weapons,” he said Wednesday. “I want to let parents know — you take the agents out of the schools and there will be no one to stop them from coming in.”

 

Rikers did it again, this time the fugitive is COVID positive

 

NY Daily News

 For the third time in less than a month, a Rikers Island inmate was mistakenly released — this one a deadbeat dad and golf pro who walked out of jail with coronavirus.

James Reino’s release was the subject of a jaw-dropping hearing Friday in Manhattan Supreme Court.

Reino, 55, was supposed to have attended the hearing via video from jail after avoiding for 13 months Justice Matthew Cooper’s contempt order for failure to pay $85,000 in child support.

 But Department of Correction staff — apparently amid confusion over Reino’s cases in matrimonial court, family court and criminal court — released him late Thursday.

“This was important to me — that he not be released from custody until money was forthcoming to Ms. Reino,” Judge Matthew Cooper said.

“For some reason Corrections says it’s unaware my arrest order is still in effect.”

Reino was also confused — especially since he hadn’t completed quarantine after testing positive for COVID-19 at Rikers.

“He rang me this morning and said he was out and that he didn’t know why,” said Reino’s attorney, Stephanie Conners. “He is actually supposed to be in quarantine. He has indicated to me he has seven days left on that quarantine.”

Nevertheless Reino was handed a MetroCard and released in the middle of the night.

“If there were other people on the subway, who was near him? How do you expose people to that? It’s a little bit insane,” said Gary Rosen, a lawyer for Reino’s second wife, with whom he shares four kids between the ages of 14 and 20.

Cooper said he understood that Reino was quarantining at his sister’s home on Long Island.

So this guy was on NYC Transit and the LIRR. Plus there are about 3 or 4 variants out there. This might make the city's recovery a little more problematic.

The depression and aggression on the ground in Flushing

  

Queens Chronicle 

Panhandling has plagued Flushing for years. Homeless individuals set up camp and ask passersby for loose change along the Main Street commercial corridor, especially in front of the Long Island Rail Road and 7-train stations. Handmade cardboard signs line the roads between street vendors, often positioned beside an empty Big Gulp cup and a sleeping body.

The Downtown Flushing homeless population has been steadily rising over the last year — tents have popped up on Prince Street directly across the road from the La Jornada food pantry, which draws hundreds of people each day in a line that often stretches for several blocks — but the small business owners who share the district with the beggars have noticed an increase in their hostility as well.

“Some of them get drunk and they just walk into the restaurant and they take the customer’s seat and sit there and start yelling and screaming,” said a 40th Road restaurant owner who asked to be identified as Vincent. The employees ask the intruders to leave, but they typically refuse and stay seated for up to half an hour. Their abrasive behavior and lack of face coverings drives customers away, the owner said.

Beggars had asked his customers for money in the past, but Vincent said the homeless population recently seems more interested in harassing them and damaging his property. Just the night before, he said, he caught one man using his outdoor seating venue as a toilet.

The incidents happen multiple times a week, and have been becoming more aggressive. Sometime in March, which Vincent said was the worst month yet, a man with liquor in hand walked to the second-floor office and hounded the women inside. The door now stays locked.

Vincent has only called the police twice. In both instances, the homeless persons had left the building before officers arrived, but he did not feel comfortable detaining the intruders himself. Threatening to call the police doesn’t affect their behavior either — Vincent said the homeless don’t seem intimidated by the idea of arrest.

“Before the pandemic, the safety environment was better. Every year was improving, but [during the] pandemic, it’s getting worse,” he said.

There is no perfectly reliable data on how many New Yorkers sleep on the streets each night because the number varies from day to day, but it was estimated at 3,500 to 4,000 before the pandemic. The number of individuals sleeping in shelters each night has been decreasing, but is not indicative of the homeless living outdoors or in the subways.

Costa quits City Council

  

Queens Chronicle

With his term officially ending this year and six people already vying to replace him, City Councilman Costa Constantinides (D-Astoria) announced Wednesday morning that he will step down effective April 9, citing family considerations.

He has accepted the position of chief executive officer of the Variety Boys and Girls Club, which is located in Long Island City.

“It’s not a decision I made quickly or lightly,” Constantinides told the Chronicle in a telephone interview on Wednesday. He said the Covid-19 outbreak has struck his family hard in the last year, and that his wife is in poor health.

“I want to be a husband; I want to be a dad,” he said. “There are many ways to perform public service.”

As to the timing and when he knew it was right, Constantinides said he has received a number of offers.

“This lined up with what I wanted to do,” he said, adding that his mother years ago worked at the club for about a year.

Constantinides was elected in 2013. Under the City Charter, as the vacancy will take place less than 90 days before the June 22 primary, the seat will remain vacant until after the general election in November, at which time his successor will be sworn in immediately rather than waiting until Jan. 1. The district covers Astoria and Rikers Island and parts of Jackson Heights, Woodside and East Elmhurst.

The councilman admitted there will be unfinished business upon his departure.

“This is New York City — there are always going to be some loose ends,” he said. “There’s always going to be more that I wanted to do. But I’m proud of what we have achieved.

Cuomo got paid 4 million dollars to write his COVID novel while using tax dollars to make his staff edit it as they were editing the nursing home data

 

New York Times

 As the coronavirus subsided in New York last year, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo had begun pitching a book proposal that would center on his image as a hero of the pandemic. But by early last summer, both his book and image had hit a critical juncture.

Mr. Cuomo leaned on his top aide, Melissa DeRosa, for assistance. She attended video meetings with publishers, and helped him edit early drafts of the book. But there was also another, more pressing edit underway at the same time.

An impending Health Department report threatened to disclose a far higher number of nursing home deaths related to the coronavirus than the Cuomo administration had previously made public. Ms. DeRosa and other top aides expressed concern about the higher death toll, and, after their intervention, the number — which had appeared in the second sentence of the report — was removed from the final version.

The revisions occurred as the governor was on the brink of a huge payoff: a book deal that ended with a high offer of more than $4 million, according to people with knowledge of the book’s bidding process.

A New York Times examination of the development of Mr. Cuomo’s lucrative book deal revealed how it overlapped with the move by his most senior aides to reshape a report about nursing home deaths in a way that insulated the governor from criticism and burnished his image.

Mr. Cuomo also utilized the resources of his office — from his inner circle to far more junior personnel — to help with the manuscript. In late June and early July, for example, a top aide to the governor, Stephanie Benton, twice asked assistants to print portions of the draft of the book, and deliver them to Mr. Cuomo at the Executive Mansion in Albany, where he lives.

One of Ms. Benton’s directives came on June 27, the same day that Ms. DeRosa convened an impromptu teleconference with several other top advisers to discuss the Health Department draft report.

On Wednesday, Richard Azzopardi, a senior adviser to the governor, rejected any link between Mr. Cuomo’s book and the Health Department report.

“There is no connection between the report and this outside project, period,” Mr. Azzopardi said. “And any suggestion otherwise is just wrong.”

NYPD commissioner condemns the city's policy for sheltering homeless people in hotels

 

NY Post

NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea on Wednesday blamed the city’s homeless shelter system for playing a part in the brutal beatdown of an Asian woman — saying parolees don’t get the help they need to not reoffend.

The city’s top cop would not say whether Brandon Elliot — the 38-year-old brute who was caught-on-camera allegedly assaulting the 65-year-old victim on Monday — should have been let out on parole.

Elliot had been sprung on lifetime parole in 2019 after serving about 17 years for murdering his mother in 2002.

“That’s a question more for the parole board,” Shea said on PIX 11. “But what I would say is, people pay their debt to society. They’ve got to be given second chances.

He added that he has a “different perspective” as police commissioner — as he blasted the lack of resources at the city’s homeless shelters, where Elliot had been staying when he was busted for the broad-daylight attack.

“When you’re releasing people from prison and you’re putting them in homeless shelters, you’re asking for trouble,” Shea said. “There’s got to be a safety net and there’s got to be resources for them.”

He added, “Releasing people and putting them in homeless shelters — I’ve been harping on this for years now — and I think you just shake your head and say, ‘What could possibly go wrong?’ And this is what goes wrong. It just never should happene

Andrew Yang's Underhanded Bribe Initiative

 

Impunity City 

Spring has thankfully arrived in the city of New York. And along with the blooming leaves and flowers along with an influx of (weaker) vaccines about to come to town while public spaces and streets are still barren public during this stubborn pandemic, the Democrat primary race for mayor to rid this town of de Blasio will truly commence until it’s final destination on the second day of summer. But one candidate has already taken over your city’s poltical zeitgeist, and according to corporate local news, that candidate is Andrew Yang.

It wasn’t that hard for Yang to conquer all the attention, he already ran for president of the United States and his unlimited basic income proposal from that campaign actually influenced national policy with the last three congressional budgets with checks of $1,200, $600 and most recently $1,400* given to every citizen during this pandemic (although incrementally, since Yang’s UBI was supposed to be for a check every month and the 1,400 payout was means tested and limited to an earned income cap, not to mention that Biden promised 2 grand and lied). And now with the celebrity and name recognition, jumping into New York City’s Democrat primary mayor’s race was an easy transition since the competition is pretty stale across the board with career city bureaucrats like current office holders Brooklyn BP Eric Adams and Comptroller Scott Stringer, Ex Sanitation Chief Kathryn Garcia, Big banker Ray McGuire and two ethically challenged candidates lawyer Maya Wiley and prodigal son bureaucrat Shaun Donavan. After Wang’s announcement on the Coney Island boardwalk, the first poll immediately put Wang at a commanding lead over his opponents at the time.

But after that auspicious start, reality and even logic has crept up to Yang in only a few months, revealing himself more as a dilletante huckster than the political outsider he’s being portrayed as.

As with his presidential campaign, there is nothing much or distinguishable from the other candidates about Yang’s mayoral platform to run this city except for his Basic Income proposal, which he marked down from a grand a month nationally to a one time payment for the city’s check to check working class. There is a lot to like about it because it does target residents who needs this money the most, even if it can barely pay the rent and utility bills but might be just enough to play lottery scratch tickets. The big hairy but to this is how as mayor is Yang going to come up with the city funding for this and his answer was quite startling but expectantly and obviously vague.

last week, Yang was talking to reporters about the movie he planned to see on the first day that New York City theaters reopened since the pandemic shut them down. He also fielded questions about he’d fund his basic income plan and gave an admittedly “vague” response, suggesting it’s still unclear if he’d rely primarily on existing city funds, hit up private investors, rely on a rollback of state tax breaks — or a combination of all three.

First, he said that even in its “diminished” state, the city has the “level of resources to commit to this, in part because it’s going to save us a lot of money on things like homelessness services and shelters that are very, very costly.”

“Keeping people in more secure and stable environments will actually, in large part, pay for itself,” he said.

But Yang did not say where in the ailing city budget he intends to draw the $1 billion it will take to pay for the plan.

He then added that he’s been in talks with “several New York-based philanthropists who are very excited about this program and so hopefully we’ll have some private sources of funding as well.”

When asked to name who those potential financial backers are, he replied: “Of course I’m not going to tell you right now after I just gave you, like, you know, like, this vague, like, several private sources because, you know, we have to have things to announce for later.”

NY Daily News

At least Yang’s fumbling and his campaign manager’s pathetic sop defense of the candidate’s ambitious program has a scintilla of honesty even if for the past 2 months they didn’t even have a solid budgetary plan to justify it, considering how it’s the main driver of the candidate’s platform.

Open letter to a twitter algorithm

Impunity City

Dear Twitter Algorhitm,

Why did you do it?

Why did you suspend my account? How can you determine that what I wrote was directed as a threat to a newspaper? How is it possible that you cannot distinguish between a sardonic joke and an actual threat?

Most of all, how can you determine that I made a direct threat at a corporate news website when they were the ones that printed the actual threat and have my only social media account repressed when they were the one’s who actually tweeted the inflammatory threat in whole first. Clearly to get clicks and RT’s.