Governing with their dicks

  

Medium

"Let's play strip poker"

I should have been shocked by the Governor’s crude comment, but I wasn’t.

We were flying home from an October 2017 event in Western New York on his taxpayer-funded jet. He was seated facing me, so close our knees almost touched. His press aide was to my right and a state trooper behind us.

“That’s exactly what I was thinking,” I responded sarcastically and awkwardly. I tried to play it cool. But in that moment, I realized just how acquiescent I had become.

Governor Andrew Cuomo has created a culture within his administration where sexual harassment and bullying is so pervasive that it is not only condoned but expected. His inappropriate behavior toward women was an affirmation that he liked you, that you must be doing something right. He used intimidation to silence his critics. And if you dared to speak up, you would face consequences.

That’s why I panicked on the morning of December 13.

While enjoying a weekend with my husband and six-year-old daughter, I spontaneously decided to share a small part of the truth I had hidden for so long in shame and never planned to disclose. The night before, a former Cuomo staffer confided to me that she, too, had been the subject of the Governor’s workplace harassment. Her story mirrored my own. Seeing his name floated as a potential candidate for U.S. Attorney General — the highest law enforcement official in the land — set me off.

In a few tweets, I told the world what a few close friends, family members and my therapist had known for years: Andrew Cuomo abused his power as Governor to sexually harass me, just as he had done with so many other women.

As messages from journalists buzzed on my phone, I laid in bed unable to move. I finally had decided to speak up, but at what cost?

Parts of a supposed confidential personnel file (which I’ve never seen) were leaked to the media in an effort to smear me. The Governor’s loyalists called around town, asking about me.

Last week, Assemblymember Ron Kim spoke out publicly about the intimidation and abuse he has faced from Governor Cuomo and his aides. As Mayor de Blasio remarked, “the bullying is nothing new.” There are many more of us, but most are too afraid to speak up.

I’m compelled to tell my story because no woman should feel forced to hide their experiences of workplace intimidation, harassment and humiliation — not by the Governor or anyone else.

I expect the Governor and his top aides will attempt to further disparage me, just as they’ve done with Assemblymember Kim. They’d lose their jobs if they didn’t protect him. That’s how his administration works. I know because I was a part of it.

I joined state government in 2015 as a Vice President at Empire State Development. I was quickly promoted to Chief of Staff at the state economic development agency. The news of my appointment prompted a warning from a friend who served as an executive with an influential civic engagement organization: “Be careful around the Governor.”

My first encounter with the Governor came at a January 6, 2016, event at Madison Square Garden to promote the new Pennsylvania Station-Farley Complex project. After his speech, he stopped to talk to me. I was new on the job and surprised by how much attention he paid me.

My boss soon informed me that the Governor had a “crush” on me. It was an uncomfortable but all-too-familiar feeling: the struggle to be taken seriously by a powerful man who tied my worth to my body and my appearance.

Stephanie Benton, Director of the Governor’s Offices, told me in an email on December 14, 2016 that the Governor suggested I look up images of Lisa Shields — his rumored former girlfriend — because “we could be sisters” and I was “the better looking sister.” The Governor began calling me “Lisa” in front of colleagues. It was degrading.

The Governor’s staff was directed to tell me I looked like his rumored former girlfriend.

I had complained to friends that the Governor would go out of his way to touch me on my lower back, arms and legs. His senior staff began keeping tabs on my whereabouts. “He is a sexist pig and you should avoid being alone with him!” my mother texted me on November 4, 2016.

The Governor’s senior staff member emailed my supervisor about my whereabouts.

I shared my concern with my mother at the time.

The Governor’s behavior made me nervous, but I didn’t truly fear him until December 2016. Senior State employees gathered at the Empire State Plaza Convention Center in Albany to celebrate the holidays and our year’s work. After his remarks, the Governor spotted me in a room filled with hundreds of people waiting to shake his hand. As he began to approach me, I excused myself from coworkers and moved upstairs to a more distant area of the party.

Minutes later, I received a call from an unlisted number. It was the Governor’s body person. He told me to come to the Capitol because the Governor wanted to see me.

I made my way through the underground connection that linked the Plaza to the Capitol. As the black wrought-iron elevator took me to the second floor, I called my husband. I told him I was afraid of what might happen. That was unlike me. I was never afraid.

I exited the elevator to see the body person waiting for me. He walked me down the Hall of Governors. “Are there cameras here?” I asked him. I remembered my mother’s text warning the month before. I worried that I would be left alone with the Governor. I didn’t know why I was there. Or how it would end.

I was escorted into the Governor’s office, past the desks of administrative assistants and into a room with a large table and historical artifacts. The door closed behind me. It was my first time in his Albany office. The Governor entered the room from another door. We were alone.

As he showed me around, I tried to maintain my distance. He paused at one point and smirked as he showed off a cigar box. He told me that President Clinton had given it to him while he served as the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. The two-decade old reference to President Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky was not lost on me.

The Governor must have sensed my fear because he finally let me out of the office. I tried to rationalize this incident in my head. At least he didn’t touch me. That made me feel safer.

His inappropriate gestures became more frequent. He gave roses to female staffers on Valentine’s Day and arranged to have one delivered to me, the only one on my floor. A signed photograph of the Governor appeared in my closed-door office while I was out. These were not-so-subtle reminders of the Governor exploiting the power dynamic with the women around him.

In 2018, I was promoted to Deputy Secretary for Economic Development and Special Advisor to the Governor. I initially turned the job down — not because I didn’t want the responsibility or work but because I didn’t want to be near him. I finally accepted the position at the Governor’s insistence with one requirement — I would keep my old agency office and remain on a separate floor from him and his inner circle.

The Governor’s pervasive harassment extended beyond just me. He made unflattering comments about the weight of female colleagues. He ridiculed them about their romantic relationships and significant others. He said the reasons that men get women were “money and power.”

I tried to excuse his behavior. I told myself “it’s only words.” But that changed after a one-on-one briefing with the Governor to update him on economic and infrastructure projects. We were in his New York City office on Third Avenue. As I got up to leave and walk toward an open door, he stepped in front of me and kissed me on the lips. I was in shock, but I kept walking.

I left past the desk of Stephanie Benton. I was scared she had seen the kiss. The idea that someone might think I held my high-ranking position because of the Governor’s “crush” on me was more demeaning than the kiss itself.

After that, my fears worsened. I came to work nauseous every day. My relationship with his senior team — mostly women — grew hostile after I started speaking up for myself. I was reprimanded and told to get in line by his top aides, but I could no longer ignore it.

On September 26, 2018, I sent a mass email informing staff members of my resignation.

NY Daily News 

 Mayor de Blasio, for whom I also worked and knew for 25 years, both at HUD and as New York City mayor, practices a different brand of penis politics. His charming, easygoing personality he had when we worked together in the federal government gave way to a hectoring, inflexible approach that bordered on sanctimony when I was his press secretary at City Hall.

His signature move as mayor was to dig in on an untenable position against the advice of staff, raising the cost of an inevitable defeat. Discussions with staff were marked by condescension, leaving the female staffers feeling especially marginalized. It made for an uncomfortable work environment.

Although the mayor preached a philosophy of egalitarianism, the workplace was pretty much like any other male-dominated environment I’ve been in: Women were interrupted more often and listened to less, whether they were a commissioner or a scheduler. By the end of his first term, the mayor had lost twice as many senior officials who were women than men.

While they had different styles, both Cuomo and de Blasio had one thing in common. Like many powerful men in politics, they create a public image as champions of women’s rights and equality. Behind closed doors, they use gender domination as one means to assert their power over women.

My experience with penis politics wasn’t only in the political arena. I saw it on the basketball court in my Mississippi high school, when I got benched for running better plays than the ones my coach, a man, wanted. I’d seen it as a young journalist, when my male editor refused to run a controversial story that I had well-sourced after the Jackson, Miss., mayor called to complain. I’d seen it in working in Congress, where men tended to get the chief of staff title and women often played receptionist, taking the incoming phone calls placed by angry constituents.

Silence and penis politics often go hand in hand. In 1998 at HUD, I spoke up about a clumsy pick-up attempt Bill Clinton made on me when I was a 26-year-old campaign operative and he was governor of Arkansas. It cost me a Senate-confirmed appointment when Cuomo quietly had the White House pull my nomination. It was penis politics again in 2015, when Cuomo and his “sources” threw bombs at me (and for a while, I threw them back) and then again when de Blasio made it impossible for me to do my job by invalidating what I said to the press on his behalf.

The men who often rule the roost in politics routinely go out of their way to assert their dominance over other men. Over women, doing so is second nature.

Impunity City 

When The Blaz was queried about this article that detailed his duplicitous manner towards and passive aggressive undermining of most of his top female staffers, he reverted to his proclivity for identity politricks by validating his recognition and support of women in his administration and their impact on the city’s policies by citing his tax-boondoggle wife:

“I have not seen the piece, I’ll only talk about the history of this administration, um, from the beginning, literally from the very beginning, the leadership of this administration has been majority, woman and continues to be. My number one advisor, confidante, partner in everything everyone knows is Chirlane. My longest serving aide and person I have depended on and worked so closely with now for over a decade or more, Emma Wolfe. And four out of six deputy mayors are women and throughout this history of this administration, it’s been a female led administration in so many ways and I have tremendous respect for the folks who have been a part of this team”

For the Blaz, the women he appointed to work with and under him in the high echelons in his cabinet are just woke window dressing,  while women working for Cuomo have to develop a tolerance for misogynistic put-downs, creepy flirtations and sneaky kisses. Both of which prove that these two ghouls are truly equals not only in incompetent and unaccountable leadership but also continuing the historic and cultural establishment undermining and objectifying of women in the workplace and should be abolished from running any executive position in government or the private sector.

 

Cuomo keeps moving the COVID goalposts

 

The Daily Poster 

 With cases surging in New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced this week that he was canceling all further in-person press conferences. 

“Since the beginning, we’ve talked about the important role the media has played in educating the public about this pandemic,” said senior Cuomo advisor Rich Azzopardi in a statement. “But given the new stricter [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] guidelines released Friday and the reality of rising cases in New York, going remote is now the most prudent action.”

While the press pool may be breathing a collective sigh of relief, workers across the state are still being compelled to head into offices, schools, and restaurants. 

New York has continued to allow indoor dining as cases increased — though on Friday, Cuomo announced that he will be suspending indoor dining in New York City starting on Monday. 

At the same time, the state has not been providing up-to-date information on the spread — instead, its maps tracking the coronavirus are often not updated or even showing decreases as the pandemic worsens. And as the virus surges, Cuomo suddenly changed the method for evaluating whether areas should be locked down — and the shift would allow more businesses to continue forcing employees back to their workplaces.

New York is experiencing a surge of COVID-19 cases similar to the wave it recorded in the spring when Cuomo’s late shutdown saw hospitals and morgues overwhelmed. Unsurprisingly, much of that surge is represented in New York City where less than 20 percent of hospital beds are vacant compared to 23 percent statewide.

Despite the surge, employers across the state have been calling workers back into offices, schools, and restaurants. Some remote-capable employees have also been compelled back. These workers face a difficult choice between their health and their financial security at a time when more than 19 million Americans are receiving unemployment aid.

NYPD fraternity group parks their cars on the sidewalk adjacent to bike lane.

George The Atheist


Who:  The Columbia Association of the NYPD.
Where:  In Elmhurst on the Queens Boulevard south service road between the new Georgia Diner and Grand Avenue.
When:  Tuesday evening, November 26, 2019.
What:  Columbia Association police membership needs convenient and difficult to find on-street parking.
Why:  It seems that this membership has parking privileges that the rest of the citizenry does not.  

If the Queens Boulevard bike lanes are kept clear, as seen in these photos, why can't all drivers then park on the sidewalk like these off-duty cops?



No standing, unless you're privileged

Cuomoleaks

Times Union

  Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo was allegedly briefed on the details of a closed-door vote by the state Joint Commission on Public Ethics last January, around the time the panel voted on whether to investigate Joseph Percoco, a former top aide to the governor.

The allegation — that someone in JCOPE may have illegally informed the governor or his staff about the voting breakdown of the panel’s non-public decision — was secretly investigated by the state inspector general’s office between January and Oct. 4, when the inspector general sent a letter to JCOPE stating its investigation had been unable to substantiate the complaint.

The apparent breach of JCOPE’s bylaws was revealed when Cuomo allegedly contacted Assembly Speaker Carl E. Heastie almost immediately following the commission’s January meeting and expressed concerns about the votes of the speaker’s appointees to JCOPE.

Julie A. Garcia, a Warren County attorney who had been appointed to JCOPE by Heastie in August 2018, said she cannot discuss any matters related to the commission’s discussions or votes in executive sessions.

But without disclosing what the vote related to, Garcia confirmed that she complained to former JCOPE Executive Director Seth Agata last January that someone from Heastie’s staff had contacted her shortly after a commission meeting in January and informed her about Cuomo’s alleged conversation with the legislative leader.


NY Post


The state’s embattled ethics agency refused Tuesday to release the whistleblower complaint that prompted the state’s Inspector General to open a probe into leaks involving Gov. Andrew Cuomo and state Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie.

The Joint Commission on Public Ethics met behind closed doors for almost four hours in Albany and then suddenly adjourned, refusing to cast a vote on releasing the complaint or to answer questions from reporters about it.

The complaint alleges that Gov. Cuomo and Assembly Speaker Heastie spoke in Jan. 2019 about JCOPE’s confidential deliberations around a possible probe of Joe Percoco, Cuomo’s former top aide and fixer — who now sits in federal prison following a 2016 corruption conviction.

State Inspector General Letizia Tagliafierro — a Cuomo appointee, who said she recused herself from the leak probe — sent a letter on Oct. 4 saying her office couldn’t substantiate the claim.
The entire affair is cloaked in mystery.

JCOPE refuses to comment on Percoco or any possible investigation. And Tagliafierro’s office refuses to say whether or not Cuomo or Heastie were interviewed as part of the probe.
“Consistent with other investigative bodies, this agency cannot discuss the particulars of investigative methods or procedures – particularly in matters that are unsubstantiated,” Tagliafierro’s spokesman Lee Park told The Post, adding the letter is subject state freedom of information laws.

Acacia Network's poverty profiteering off the city's homeless population

Sludge


Annie was already retired when she lost her apartment. With no source of income save for her Social Security work benefits, it wasn’t long before she ended up in the New York City shelter system. That’s where she would learn the name Acacia Network. 

Acacia is the largest provider of homeless housing in New York’s metropolitan area, but it is not just a shelter operator. Over the decades, Acacia has built a small empire with connections running up the ladder of city government. It has amassed a web of interconnected nonprofits and for-profits that offer shelter, affordable housing, addiction and medical services, and security. According to the city’s Department of Homeless Services website, Acacia manages “750 individual family units and four buildings for approximately 550 homeless adults.”

Annie, whose name has been changed for this article, has been living in one of these for the last several years. But right away, she knew things were askew—and it wasn’t just that another resident had threatened to murder her. She would soon come to realize that the problem was multi-tiered: a pattern of mismanagement that left the shelter understaffed, undersupplied, and dangerous for its residents. 

“No nurse practitioner is ever there to give out the medication. The staff has to give out the medication,” Annie tells Sludge, noting that this leaves residents frequently out of sync with their individual treatment regimens with some dire consequences. Every other day, she sighs, “the ambulance seems to be there for one reason or another.” 

Compounding the issue, she says, is a lack of adequate security—something online reviews of the establishment have touched on. One reviewer says they never “felt safe” while living there.

“They’re supposed to have a guard on every floor,” Annie explains. “That rarely happens because people are always calling out. So one guard usually has to do two floors or sometimes three.”

On one occasion, Annie tells us someone at the shelter was hit over the head with a lead pipe smuggled in from a nearby construction site. Another time, she says, someone got hot water thrown on them in the dining room. 

There are other issues caused by Acacia not sufficiently treating residents, Annie says. This past summer, she explains, there was a string of toilet backups due to people flushing entire rolls and other objects.

Frustrated, Annie notes that the shelter tends to respond to these incidents in ways that hurt residents. After the hot water attack, for example, management removed hot water for tea and coffee from the dining room altogether. To address the toilet problems, the shelter’s cleaning staff stopped stocking rooms with toilet paper as soon as the facility’s annual “Callahan” inspection—named for the 1981 court case that established the “right to shelter” in New York City—had completed. 

“When you need toilet paper you have to go down to the front desk and they give you a wad…and you have to ration,” she laments.

What Annie describes is a complete culture of neglect, which doesn’t square with the large amount of money Acacia rakes in from the city. In the 2019 fiscal year alone (July 2018 through June 2019), it received $259 million in contracts from the Department of Homeless Services (DHS), which accounted for 18.5% of the department’s contracts that year. Acacia gets additional funding from the Department of Social Services and the Department of Housing Preservation and Development. Since the 2011 fiscal year, it has received over $1.1 billion worth of city contracts. 

 Acacia has seen its funding increase since Mayor Bill de Blasio took office. As luxury condominium developments rose and more of the city’s available housing stock was left empty, de Blasio found himself facing a simultaneous rise in homelessness. In response, he set out to increase the number of homeless shelters in the city. In 2017, he announced a plan, called “Turning the Tide on 
Homelessness in New York City,” to close unsafe and expensive cluster-site and hotel shelters and build 90 new shelters over five years.

Acacia and its multiple linked entities have been the biggest beneficiaries. In total, 10 Acacia entities have received roughly $1.17 billion in city funding since 2010.

de Blasio ordered NYPD to drive his son to school

NY Daily News

Mayor de Blasio ordered his NYPD security detail to repeatedly take his son back and forth from Yale University during his first years at school, the Daily News has learned.

Executive Protection Unit detectives drove Dante de Blasio to or from New Haven, Conn., at least seven or eight times, the sources with direct knowledge said. Members of the detail also took Dante to visit his uncle, who lives nearby, sources said. Dante faced no security risks at the time, the sources said.

“If the commanding officer of the 75 (precinct) said, ‘move my kid to college,’ do you really think that wouldn’t kill his career? But because it’s the mayor, everyone just does it,” a former member of the detail said.

The revelation comes four months after The News exclusively reported that members of the unit moved de Blasio’s daughter, Chiara, out of an apartment in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.

 Sources said Dante — who the mayor hired as a paid policy analyst for his failed presidential campaign — only made the 75-mile trip to Yale with cops during his first year at the Ivy League university.

 At some point during his sophomore year, Dante decided he preferred traveling on his own by train, sources said. Members of the detail often picked him up from Penn Station when he returned to town.

Another former member of the unit described the trips as “a courtesy” that were not questioned.

“There was no justification,” the former member said. “If you were told to bring him home from Yale, that’s what we did.”

Commissioner O'Neill orders NYPD to tow thirty cars while brazenly violating new placard rules for silly private football game

NY Daily News

Angry upper Manhattan residents accused the NYPD of unsportsmanlike conduct for towing their cars to free up parking for the department’s flag football championship.

The alleged offensive interference with the local motor vehicles came in the hours before Sunday’s NYPD flag football championship contest at Columbia University’s Baker Field.

Police, citing traffic concerns and accessibility for the disabled, towed 30 cars on W. 218th St. between Broadway and Indian Road prior to the law enforcement Super Bowl pitting the 40th Precinct against Midtown South.

But one Inwood resident said most of the newly-created spaces on the west side of Broadway were instead filled by cops going to the game.

“There were mostly civilian cars with placards on their dashboards or notes about the flag football game,” said local man David Thom, 44. “This was removal of cars for personal vehicle parking for officers.”

While the cars were relocated rather than ticketed or taken to a tow pound, it still outraged some locals who emerged to find the police had called an audible on their parking spaces.

“How can they do that?” said Anna Dominguez, 52, who lives in the area but was not towed. “You think you’re gonna leave your car here Sunday and everything is gonna be fine — and then you come back and it’s gone. Just because the NYPD wanted space for a game? They’re taking advantage of their power.”

 Some cops left the notes in the cars to explain why they were illegally parked in crosswalks, in front of hydrants or in no parking zones.

Mayor de Blasio recently vowed a crackdown on placard abuse. But NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill said Tuesday there was no abuse in this case.

“This was a special event,” O’Neill said. “This was the flag football championship. The cars were relocated. Nobody was towed and nobody got a ticket.”

O’Neill did suggest the 34th Precinct could have done a better job getting word out about the towing.

“But there are special events all throughout the city, every day,” O’Neill added.

What a dick. Although he does reveal that the city permits too much privatization of the streets.

Look how many people showed up for this "championship game"



So this is strike one according to the Mayor's new placard violation laws. Right?

Parking placard abusers to feel the heat

From AM-NY:

As civil servants continue to illegally park personal vehicles on city streets unticketed, Mayor Bill de Blasio renewed a vow Thursday that he made last May: “We’re going to crack down.”

Safe-streets and good-government activists have long objected to how the vehicles park daily and dangerously around the five boroughs — on sidewalks, in front of hydrants, at curbs, in restricted zones — a practice especially acute near courts, firehouses and police precincts.

“The message is very clear: we’re coming for anyone who violates the rules relating to a placard, or anyone who has an inappropriate placard,” he said Thursday at an unrelated news conference.

Across the city, department-themed hats, vests, union calendars, union-issued placards — which confer no legal status — and handwritten notes are placed on dashboards and amount to impunity to traffic agents and cops, who refuse to ticket brethren.

De Blasio said Thursday that the NYPD’s top transportation cop, Thomas M. Chan, would soon be providing an update of the department’s enforcement efforts.

After de Blasio spoke, his spokesman Austin Finan reissued a statement he gave amNewYork for a story published earlier in the week: that there were 41,931 placard summonses issued last year, compared to 28,269 in 2016.

Ulrich alleges that Crowley put the squeeze on Broad Channel restaurant owner

From the Queens Chronicle:

Councilman Eric Ulrich (R-Ozone Park) dropped a bombshell on one of his colleagues this week, an allegation that could shake up her bitter race less than three weeks before Election Day.

In a Monday interview with the Chronicle, Ulrich accused Councilwoman Elizabeth Crowley (D-Glendale) of abusing her power as a lawmaker — claiming she sent a “SWAT team” of city agencies after a popular Broad Channel restaurant last year, not long after one of her sons, then an employee of the eatery, was injured in a fight nearby.

The establishment is in his district.

According to Ulrich and Bayview co-owner Anthony Martelli, Crowley’s two sons Dennis, 20, and Owen O’Hara, 19, were involved in a physical altercation about a block away from the restaurant on July 1, 2016.

Two sources with knowledge of the situation told the Chronicle that a criminal investigation into the incident is still ongoing.

However, Martelli said he believed Dennis O’Hara, who worked at Bayview at the time, to be the aggressor, while Ulrich said those who witnessed the incident “all know who kicked the kid’s ass and thinks he deserved it.”

“The irony here is that the kid and his brother are known for making trouble,” Ulrich said. “I don’t want to attack Crowley’s kids or anything, but her son got smart with his mouth and they followed him outside and kicked his ass down the street from the place.”

In response, the Republican lawmaker said his “idiot” colleague prompted a multiagency task force — including officials from the FDNY, the State Liquor Authority, the MTA, the Board of Standards and Appeals and the departments of Buildings and Health and Mental Hygiene — to be deployed to the restaurant on or around Sept. 2, 2016.

“There was never any underage drinking there,” Ulrich said. “But this is what she did. She did everything she could to shut this guy down. It’s like someone went in there with instructions to bang [Bayview] over the head until it got shut down.”
____________________________________________________

Well, the one thing we can all agree with Ulrich on is that Crowley is an idiot. How refreshing for a fellow tweeder to come out and say it, though!

In all seriousness, though, this is a lot to digest, and there are several more allegations at the original link, but let's stick with this for now. We already know that one of the Crowley boys likes to be verbally abusive and this fits in with that pattern. There was no press for some reason about this alleged incident at the time it happened. An assault this violent most certainly was a 911 call and the city's NYPD mapping tool confirms 2 felonious assaults at the location on that day. But if what Ulrich said - "all know who kicked the kid’s ass" - is true, then why have there been no arrests? And why would the mother of these 2 launch her own assault against the restaurant instead of the perp?

What's missing from this story is when Dennis O'Hara was let go from the restaurant. Was it that night? Was it because of this incident which was apparently witnessed by many and with an identifiable suspect? Who exactly did he piss off? It seems to be someone untouchable. A mother's natural inclination, one would think, would be to make sure justice was served to the punk that beat up her kid and not go after a business owner. She's hooked up real good with the PBA and other NYPD unions, so why haven't they arrested the perp?

Why were the MTA and BSA called in? What in tarnation do they have to do with any of this?