AZ Racial Profiling Law's Beginnings Exposed

Proponents of the controversial Arizona law SB1070 (PDF file) mention that lawmakers are trying to battle crime and that there's nothing really that bad in what they passed. However, as the public outcry increases in both private and public venues, the ugly, but not surprising truth is coming out about where this monstrosity came from. Rachel has the details:



Crooks and Liars has more on the connection between State Senator Russell Pearce and his neo-nazi friends. And Greg Palast wonders if this might just be a good old-fashioned GOP voter suppression technique. It's kinda like AZ's Prop 200 2.0.

Bike Lanes Are To Cycles As Roads Are To Cars

A wise man (who also happens to be a former State Assemblyman) once told me that as far as transit in New York City goes, bikes are insignificant and that we should not dedicate as many resources as we do for them. To put the comment into context, we were discussing the newest bike lines that have a curb separating them from the avenue, such as the one on 9th Ave above 14th Street. I remembered that conversation this morning when I read the about the latest study showing that more than 200,000 New Yorkers now cycle for their commute.

From The NY Times:

Build it and they will ride. That’s the message conveyed in the latest annual estimate of the number of bicyclists in New York City by Transportation Alternatives, which found roughly 236,000 New Yorkers riding each day in 2009, up 28 percent from 185,000 daily riders the year before.
.....

Total miles traveled by bike in the city also rose by about the same amount, to 1.8 million miles from 1.4 million miles, according to the estimate, with the vast majority of those miles traveled by commuters or recreational cyclists.

While the count also includes commercial riders such as bike messengers and food-delivery cyclists, Transportation Alternatives calculates that such riders travel only about 5 percent of the total miles, with non-commercial riders making up 95 percent of bike traffic on city streets.

Simple math will also tell you that 236,000 cyclists equals out to roughly 2.86 percent of all New Yorkers. The wise man seems to be proven correct. However, when you take out the elderly, young children and those that work from home, that percentage is bound to rise considerably. Furthermore, the increase in ridership correlates to the ever-expanding bike lanes and general accessibility to get around the city via bicycle.

Besides the reluctance for many to physically exert themselves more than necessary in order to get from Point A to Point B, the fear of being hit by a car is considerable, especially when one passes a ghost bike. Therefore as our streets are continually designed more in favor of those that pedal, the more people will be inclined to get on that bike.

At one time Manhattan was full of horses pulling people to and fro. The bumpy streets were not conducive to cars as they became popular a century ago. Yet city planners figured out that smooth roads helped the automobile and usage increased (as anyone can tell that tries to transverse a tunnel during rush hour can attest to). The very same thing can be said about bicycling in the 21st century. Not that we should only focus on bikes, mass transit is crucial as well, but promoting bicycles as a viable transportation alternative is definitely a good thing for us all.

Massey Energy Shows Us Just How Cold Coal Can Be

If you follow the news about clean energy, chances are you have read about the atrocities committed at the coal mines controlled by Don Blankenship at Massey Energy. Earlier this month disaster struck at one mine in particular, leading to the deaths of twenty-nine miners. Since then word has gotten out that the safety record of that mine and others owned by Massey is particularly abhorrent. Blankenship has bought judges and intimidated safety regulators into looking the other way so that profits (and his salary) could be maximized as much as possible. Of course, regard for his employees was thrown to the wayside in the process.

Even after this terrible tragedy, the Washington Independent shows that Blankenship's cruelty knows no bounds:

Massey Energy, the Virginia-based coal giant that runs the Upper Big Branch Mine, has denied time off for miners to attend their friends’ funerals; has rejected makeshift memorials outside the mine site; and, in at least one case, required a worker to go on shift even though the fate of a relative — one of the victims of the April 5 disaster — remained unknown at the time, according to some family members and other sources familiar with those episodes. In short, the company might be taking heat for putting profits and efficiency above its workers, but it doesn’t appear to have changed its tune in the wake of the worst mining tragedy in 40 years.

“They told my husband, ‘You’ve got a job to do and you’re gonna do it,’” said the wife of one Massey miner, referring to the funerals he’s missed this month for friends who died in the blast. “What else are we gonna do?”

The threat of losing their jobs has been effective in keeping mouths shut and leaked information to a minimum. The problem is that Massey is king in West Virginia and the state has few economic opportunities other than mining that dirty black fuel out of the Earth. Since Massey's objective is to exploit their (mostly non-union) workforce beyond the limit, it is up to the government to put Massey in line. In a just world, those responsible for the dead should be in jail and the company itself should be dealt with accordingly. Whether or not Massey should be broken up is not a question I have the answer to at the moment, but those that are better acquainted with the company should have a say in the matter.

What is most important in the short-term is that Blankenship and his culpable managers must be held liable for the deaths of their workers.

Obama's Comment on AZ's Racial Profiling Bill Could Give A Glimpse For Immigration Reform Fight

Health care reform has been checked off Obama's list, and once financial reform is taken care of the agenda will turn to immigration reform. Seeing this on TV today gives immigration reform advocates hope that he will make sure that immigrants are protected from the more bigoted and nativist sections of our society. What the Arizona Legislature passed earlier this month was an atrocity and I am thankful that Obama is looking into helping Latinos from being discriminated against.

I Could Never Forget You Pedro

Even though I was on a nine month blog hiatus, I never lost track of Senator Espada's dishonorable mentions in the press. I've written about him in the past and will continue to do so until he is placed where he belongs...in jail. Pedro's rap sheet is lengthy to say the least, and many things he does that aren't illegal are still quite shady. While the disgraceful excuse for a Senator lashes out at the Attorney General like a petulant five year old, the people of his district and the whole of New York state is sick and tired of his criminal behavior.

Pedro Espada started out well enough as a tenant rights' advocate and founder of a medical clinic that serves countless Bronx residents. However in the end he will be remembered for the $20,000 in sushi deliveries to his home in Mamaroneck (which happens to be outside the district he supposedly lives in).

The details of his $14 million looting spree of Soundview is what makes for the best headlines this week. That does not mean though that we should forget Pedro Espada has a sordid history that stretches back for at least a decade. He has been fingered for multiple failures to submit accurate campaign finance documents in his failed race for Bronx Borough President in 2001 and his latest campaign that successfully reintroduced him for the third time to the State Senate in 2008.

Yes that's correct, he's been booted by the people of the 32nd Senate District twice. The only reason he won a third time (in the 33rd District this time) is because Senator Efrain Gonzalez, his predecessor, was more corrupt than himself, at least at the time.

And now Mr. Espada is in the middle of a scandal that deals with crimes concerning a non-profit just as Mr. Gonzalez was ultimately convicted for last year.

Mr. Espada is the epitome of corruption and abuse of power in Albany. Sure, there are plenty of other miscreants that supposedly serve at the behest of the people of New York, but Mr. Espada is the worst of them all.

So what needs to be done? I would love nothing more than to see him beaten in November. No one knows better than his constituents that this man needs to be thrown out of office and having it done by ballot is always an exhilarating process. Yet what really needs to happen is for the justice system to deal Mr. Espada the punishment he deserves. Once these alleged crimes become legal fact, he must be stripped of any and all power and then thrown in jail for as long as the judge possibly can.

An example must be set here in New York so that politicians realize there are consequences for using the people they elect for their own contemptible plots. Trying and convicting the kingpin of the L.O.B.'s crooks is a great place to start.

"Yes We Can!" Is Harder Than Obama Realizes

Welcome back to the Big Apple Mr. President. I hope your flight up the coast was a quick and uneventful one, for the reason you came might just be as unnoticed at the end of this fiscal reform we are being promised. Heaven knows this country needs help in saving ourselves from the vicious corporatists that currently run things on Wall Street and it's appendage within the Beltway.

Now in the moment, on this day, many people are making a big deal about the President's speech at the storied Cooper Union. However, if the President actually believes that Wall Street is going to work with him and Congress to reform the system, then this speech will amount to nothing for the great majority of us that want to take back power from the titans of the financial services industry.

Here's a few snippets from the speech via Huff Post:

"Ultimately, there is no dividing line between Main Street and Wall Street. We rise or we fall together as one nation. So I urge you to join me -- to join those who are seeking to pass these commonsense reforms," according to Obama's prepared remarks for a speech in New York City. "And I urge you to do so not only because it is in the interests of your industry, but because it is in the interests of our country."

See Mr. President, the people you are trying to address do not care about their country, nor do they care about their industry. The only concern the majority of elites on Wall Street is to get as rich as possible at all costs. Perhaps you forgot about what happened at Lehman Brothers? Or maybe you didn't learn your lesson on bipartisanship and conciliation during the prolonged battle over health care reform?

The Huffington Post article linked above draws the perfect contrast in this situation. Looking at what F.D.R. did in the 1930s is above and beyond Obama's shtick in 2010. Franklin Delano Roosevelt by and large did what it took to rein in the financial abuses that brought about the Great Depression. Obama's effectiveness at cleaning up the abuses seen in the last thirty years starting with Reagan is yet to be seen.

Now I agreed with Obama in 2008 that we needed change, and that "Yes We Can" make it happen. Yet, no matter how good your slogans are, it takes political will, strength and fortitude to make things happen in Washington and on Wall Street. The best reforms possible are going to be pushed back upon with the greatest ferocity by those that it seeks to place limits on. However, if Obama seeks to work with Citibanks, Wells Fargos and Bank of Americas then not only will the President look foolish when he either passes a tempered and weak reform bill or fails to pass a bill entirely.

So Mr. President, I hope you enjoy the great media hoopla surrounding you here in the city today. Just remember that it won't amount to a hill of beans if the big bankers running things now continue their pillaging of our country, even after a cooperative "reform" bill is passed.

Paladino's "My Best Friend Is Black" Excuse Will Not Work

Carl Paladino and his campaign's PR firm had the gall to put this message out today:



I'm sorry, but by not even bothering to apologize or explain the fact that he likes to spread bigoted and racist emails around the Internet, he shows his callousness for those he offended and for the office that he wishes to run for. These emails are disgusting to say the least. He is certainly free to express his opinions of course. Yet when Paladino trashes the "liberal media" for his transgressions and his opponents on the left he shows New York that he would just be another problem in Albany.

Furthermore, the filth he claims to be running to clean up is considerably dubious since he has shown he likes to play in the mud himself.

Finally, Accountability Is On The Horizon For Goldman Sachs

For the last two years especially, and for a decade or two generally, how Goldman Sachs gets away with how they practice business has bewildered me. Now that isn't to say that I don't get how Washington elites abuse their power to enrich themselves and Wall Street at the expense of the people they are supposed to represent. What gets me is that it has taken this long for public outrage to hit a level where someone with an ounce of authority is willing to take these financial felons to task for their heinous crimes.

From The New York Times:

The Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil fraud suit on Friday that essentially says that Goldman built the financial equivalent of a time bomb and then sold it to unwitting investors. Mr. Egol, 40, was not named in the S.E.C.’s suit.

Goldman has vowed to fight the S.E.C. But the allegations have left many on Wall Street wondering how far the investigation might spread inside Goldman and perhaps beyond.

Pressure on Goldman mounted on Sunday as two members of Congress and Gordon Brown, Britain’s prime minister, called for investigations into the bank’s role in the mortgage market. Germany also said it was considering legal action against the bank.

Nothing short of a worldwide effort to punish these crooks will do. The pockets of Goldman Sachs make the Mariana Trench look shallow and their ruthlessness would make Al Capone blush. This is serious business and the S.E.C., despite taking action now was fast asleep at their regulatory wheel when this crisis was building.

As the story of the mortgage market manipulation becomes more widely known and specific details are unearthed, a large pool of resources must be utilized so that no one who deserves blame escapes it. Not only must this be done for the guilty to receive justice, more importantly, an example must be set so that those that work in the financial industry realize that screwing hard working Americans over does not fly.

Sheltered Homeless Should Be Working To Get Out, Not To Be Stuck In The System

Homelessness and New York City have a precarious relationship to say the least. The city has always had a large population of the financially dispossessed, but the way we treat them has changed considerably. The affluent had Giuliani and Bloomberg make them disappear from public spaces to a large degree (sometimes it's easier to not see the disparity in society when you are on the good end of the economic spectrum, eh?). Unfortunately for the eyes of the upper crust, individuals and families on the brink frequently fall into homelessness and must rely on public assistance to help get them back on their feet.

A state law passed in 1997 mandating the homeless pay rent for their shelter was widely ignored by the city, but now supposedly due to an audit, Bloomberg's Administration is about to comply:

"Open-ended handouts, we know, don't work," Deputy Mayor Linda Gibbs said. "This is not a moneymaker. We're not doing this to close budget gaps. It's really the principles ... involved."

A 1997 state law requires New York to charge rent to the homeless who can afford it. The city never did, but has been pressed to do it since a state audit last year.

Shelter residents would have to pay as much as 44% of their income in their first year in the program.

It may not be a "moneymaker," but for the homeless it is ruinous when nearly half your income is taken away to pay for temporary housing. Advocates for the homeless are naturally protesting this policy action yet the city is going ahead and complying with the law. What the city should be doing instead is to demand that the state repeal the law, and help those who are homeless that are actually taking the initiative to obtain jobs and get their lives in order. We as a society should be benevolent towards the less fortunate, not to be forcing them to stay in the poor house indefinitely.

Bloomberg "Forgets" He Wanted To Abolish The Public Advocate

Today at a press conference:



And last year before narrowly winning re-election, he told this to the Staten Island Advance:

"You should get rid of the public advocate," he said. "It's a total waste of everybody's money. Nobody needs another gadfly and we have an aggressive enough press," he said.

Bloomberg's claim today about his stance on the Public Advocate's office may not be a complete 180 from last October, but he certainly changed his feelings since then. Furthermore, his recollection of what he said back then is at best the sign of a fading memory....though I must venture that it probably has something to do with truthiness.

To Burn Or Not To Burn?

An article in the New York Times yesterday poses this interesting environmental question. Europe is rapidly embracing waste-to-energy technology and simultaneously reducing demand on landfills and adding (mostly) clean energy to their power grids. Countries like Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands are building them in rural, suburban and even urban areas. NIMBYism be damned in these densely populated lands...but could this be feasible here across the pond, where ample amounts of land are yearning to stink like garbage and pollute the surrounding area and its water supply?

From The NY Times:

By contrast, no new waste-to-energy plants are being planned or built in the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency says — even though the federal government and 24 states now classify waste that is burned this way for energy as a renewable fuel, in many cases eligible for subsidies. There are only 87 trash-burning power plants in the United States, a country of more than 300 million people, and almost all were built at least 15 years ago.

Instead, distant landfills remain the end point for most of the nation’s trash. New York City alone sends 10,500 tons of residential waste each day to landfills in places like Ohio and South Carolina.

Yes that's right, the piece of paper or plastic you are about to toss could end up down south, a thousand miles from that Brownstone you live in or high-rise office you work at. Logically, it takes a considerable cost to make that waste transfer happen. What New York legislators (and their constituents who could possibly be living near these facilities) must see, is that this technology looks nothing like the incinerators of old and that the benefits are more than impressive.

Now of course, conservation, recycling and renewable energy like wind and solar are still a crucial part of the 21st century energy equation. Yet we still have a lot of waste to deal with and not everyone is as green with their trash as they might admit to. Additionally, studies are beginning to show that these facilities are cheaper than hauling our garbage hundreds of miles away. The Mayor's Office commented in the story that it would be near impossible to achieve but realistically speaking, adding this to PlaNYC could be feasible if we can only stop relying so much on landfills.

Gates Stay Down At Gorilla Coffee In Brooklyn

Riding the 2 train this morning, I couldn't help but think about the freshly roasted coffee I was about to consume, along with a Blue Sky Bakery muffin at Gorilla Coffee on my way to work. Needless to say I was shocked to see the usually bustling shop closed, with boxes of delivered goods sitting unattended on the empty tables inside. A couple other passer-bys were perplexed by the inactivity and then I turned back to get a standard bodega coffee a couple blocks away. By the time I got to my desk fifteen minutes later, I had heard that the staff walked out on Friday night.

Of course there are those who support the workers and others that think they are 'barista snobs' who should have valued having a job. My opinion isn't set in stone as of yet, but from what I've read thus far (and seen for my own eyes while waiting online or sitting at the tables) it seems that the workers had every right to shutter the mighty Gorilla.

Here's the staff's letter to the public:

We the workers would have preferred to keep this between the people involved, thus our silence towards the press. However, we do feel it is important to clarify the situation for the friends and patrons of Gorilla Coffee. The issues brought up with the owners of Gorilla Coffee yesterday are issues that they have been aware of for some time. These issues which have repeatedly been brushed aside and ignored have created a perpetually malicious, hostile, and demeaning work environment that was not only unhealthy, but also, as our actions have clearly shown, unworkable.

Several staff left not only recently, but also in the past few years due to these issues. The staff was recently told that the business partner to whom these issues have been repeatedly attributed was no longer affiliated with the business, and the environment was going to change. For 6 weeks nothing was seen nor heard of this business partner. This separation changed the dynamic of the business so drastically one of the departed staff quit their other job to return with the understanding these changes were permanent, and those who had tendered their resignation, or were drafting it, decided to stay. When the business partner returned without explanation, staff approached the owner hoping to find out the reason for this sudden and unannounced return. Work environment and workplace issues aside, the workers collectively felt deceived and that they had been shown a lack of mutual respect. This only served to highlight and reemphasize the previously expressed concerns. As the staff was well aware, both through experience and through conversation with past employees, Gorilla Coffee has a history of this pattern repeating itself.

It should be emphasized that the intent of the meeting was above all to find a solution to this unhealthy situation, a solution which involved the maintenance of these improvements to the work environment, and that would prevent any future returns to the previous unhealthy dynamic. Above all the attitude of the staff involved in the meeting (who were representing the rest of the staff) was one of respect and positivity. A collective instant resignation was an agreed upon last resort and not a bargaining chip. It was simply that without change, we all felt unwilling to undergo another day in that environment. Hence, out of a collective feeling of self respect and job insecurity, the staff decided it would be in their best interest to find employment elsewhere.

This isn’t political and it isn’t a strike. The staff quit and the matter will not be resolved. It’s a matter of business, and a personal matter for each of the staff. Everyone at Gorilla Coffee, including the owners and the staff, are skilled, passionate, and hard working. It is unfortunate for everyone involved. The workers are grateful to the many wonderful patrons over the years, and we apologize that it was necessary to inconvenience them in this way. All we can say is “thank you for the support and all the best.”

Sincerely, The workers of Gorilla Coffee

There's the owner's side of the story as well, and is reported at Sprudge among others. Perhaps the truth lies somewhere in the middle, but my intuition says that if an entire contingent of workers are willing to walk out on the job, responsible consumers might want to find their caffeine elsewhere until the owners make good on the workers' claims.