Bloomberg Faces Money Troubles While Gillibrand Protects Haitian Immigrants

Mayor Bloomberg's generous spending of our tax dollars to reward his campaign advisors with City jobs has coupled with his personal spending to create a scandal dynamic, while Senator Kirsten Gillibrand is shining in the midst of the Haitian tragedy as she leads the effort to get the United States to allow Haitian immigrants to remain in the US for a minimum of eighteen months while the Haitian recovery and rebuilding process begins.

Mayor Bloomberg's "Money Troubles"

The latest pieces of the Bloomberg Money Scandal are 1) his hiring of participants in his campaign for City jobs, and 2) his mysterious and still unexplained $750,000 payment to the Independence Party that ended up in the hands of an advisor.

The Mayor has decided that our tax dollars should be used to reward his campaign workers, despite his "doomsday" budget cuts that slash the jobs of so many hard working City workers. He has also been caught in the most obvious case of "pay to play" politics we have ever witnessed. These latest pieces follow the growing scandal of Bloomberg's enormous bonuses paid to his campaign staff (many of whom had worked for the City and were taking a leave of absence to support the Bloomberg campaign) out of his personal fortune.

The hiring of Bloomberg's campaign advisors to City jobs is somewhat shocking during this period of cost cutting. The advisors, fifteen of them, are not inexpensive additions to the labor pool at City Hall. Many of them are earning six-figure salaries, and they include some of the highest paid City Hall workers. To add insult to injury, Bloomberg has hired seven advisors who left their City Hall jobs to work on the campaign. That brings us to 22 workers and more than $2 million of annual expense that is now the responsibility of the tax payers and is entirely devoted to compensating Bloomberg's campaign staff while City workers face cuts.

As Bloomberg demands reduced services for all of us who live in New York City, and as he proposes 18,000 lay offs of City workers, he generously rewards his campaign staff with high-paying positions in City Hall. Some of the positions were created specifically to allow his campaign staff to shift to taxpayer funding.

This latest scandal is part of a pattern. Bloomberg provided retroactive raises to his City Hall staff last summer despite the harsh economic times and his calls for cuts nearly everywhere else in the city government. The pattern has its roots in Bloomberg's three electoral victories and the large bonuses he paid out of his personal fortune to his campaign staff. Some on the campaign earned more than $400,000 for two months of work.

The retroactive raises and the creation of City Hall jobs for campaign staff are clear evidence of Bloomberg's arrogance and unwillingness to apply the same "belt tightening" requirements to himself that he demands of others. The lavish bonuses are a potentially corrupting influence on our politics, particularly because so many of the campaign workers had been working in the City government until late in the campaign.

Now, we see an additional scandal in a mysterious $750,000 payment Bloomberg made to the Independence Party during the campaign. Bloomberg should explain the payment and why there has been no explanation of it for many months.

Gillibrand Protects Haitian Immigrants

Earlier this month, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand demonstrated her leadership once again by guiding the United States to provide temporary protected status to Haitian immigrants living in the United States. The President followed her lead, and as a result, Haitians living in the United States cannot be forced to return to Haiti for at least eighteen months.

France and other nations worked very hard to bankrupt and undermine Haiti over two centuries. The emergence of a free Black nation in the Western Hemisphere was unacceptable to many part of the Western World. The forced end of slavery in Haiti was a great victory for the concept of freedom, but it was the reason that Haiti was forced to be a poor country. The Western World was determined to punish Haiti for being the first country to end slavery on a timetable set by the slaves rather than by the slave owners. Now, we hope that the tragedy that began in January 2010 in Haiti will help the world address the tragedy that has been occurring in Haiti for centuries. The world is responding to the earthquake.

As the world works to help the people of Haiti to build a stronger and better country, we could not be more proud of our Senator for leading our country as our country leads the world.

Rangel Takes the Lead with Haiti Tax Bill

Last Week Was an Amazing Week

On Tuesday, the Democratic Party suffered a major set-back in the race for the Massachusetts seat in the US Senate held for decades by Ted Kennedy.

Harold Ford and Andrew Cuomo continue to move toward challenging fellow Democrats for the US Senate and for Governor against our friend Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (the US Senate's youngest member and perhaps the member with the brightest future) and Governor David Paterson, Respectively.

Errol Louis summed up the state of the Harold Ford for Senate effort in yesterday's New York Daily News.

Harold Ford's problems in trying to unseat Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand go way beyond his amusing, near-total ignorance of New York's geography, culture and politics. The doors shutting in the face of the newcomer from Tennessee are being slammed by activists who have every right to wonder where Ford has been the last few years, as ferocious battles over serious issues were taking place.

Cuomo is much better positioned to challenge our Governor than Ford is positioned to challenge our Senator, and Cuomo is expected to announce his intention to seek the Governor's Mansion at the end of March. The poll numbers and campaign war-chest figures make Cuomo the favorite at this time, but the primary is eight months away.

In the latest polls, Cuomo has a 64% job approval rating compared with Paterson's 31%. Cuomo also has $16 million in his war chest, while the governor has just $3 million.

Last week, Haitian relief efforts continued, and despite the passage of more than a week since the devastating earthquake hit Haiti, survivors were rescued as late as yesterday.

As New York's rescue team in Haiti returned to us, House Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel made the most of his persuasive position as the leader of the tax-writing committee in the US House to bring additional support to the Haitian relief efforts.

Rangel to the Rescue

Last week, the US House of Representatives passed unanimously a bill proposed by Charlie Rangel to accelerate the deduction, for tax purposes, of charitable contributions made to support Haiti. While charitable contributions made in 2010 would typically be available to taxpayers to reduce taxable income only when filing taxes in 2011 (April 15, 2011 would be the filing deadline), Chairman Rangel convinced the US House to allow taxpayers to deduct 2010 charitable contributions from their 2009 taxes if the contributions are made before March 1, 2010. The impact is obvious. By allowing taxpayers to take advantage of tax deductions twelve months earlier than would typically be permitted, Chairman Rangel is making financial support of the Haitian relief efforts more economically attractive and, thereby, driving increased giving to the Haitian people during this difficult time in the their country's history.

The US Senate followed Chairman Rangel's lead and passed his bill last week by a voice vote. It now heads to the White House for the President's signature before becoming law.

We can add the people of Haiti in 2010 to the long list of individuals and groups that have benefited from the extraordinary leadership of Chairman Rangel. Let us hope that our fellow Americans, who have been quite generous with regard to Haiti, are inspired by the accelerated tax benefits to be even more generous during this time of need.

Correcting NYC Corrections

NYC is now investigating why it hired a convicted criminal who led a robbing and shooting spree (that resulted in a death) as a teenager to be the firearms instructor for the NYC Department of Corrections. The same firearms instructor is now being investigated for buying illegal weapons. We should keep a careful eye on this process to see if the Bloomberg Administration has a double standard.

When Plaxico Burress shot himself in the leg accidentally, the Mayor demanded that he be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. He was sentenced to jail time, despite so many New Yorkers' views of his crime as victim-less. In the case of the NYC Department of Corrections, a violent gun incident in the life of a city employee seems not to have prevented him from being the firearms instructor. We'd like to imagine that we'll find that we have uncovered an honest mistake, but the record suggests that we're just finding new evidence of the injustice of the Bloomberg approach.

Obama Attacks NYC as NYC Extends a Hand to Haiti

Last week, the President declared that he is seeking a new tax on the financial services sector, and the tragedy unfolding in Haiti captured the attention of the people of our city.

Obama's War on NYC Continues

We have come to expect the Obama Administration to attack NYC, but we are having difficulty understanding why the President's dislike of New York City would cause him to undertake policies that threaten to undermine the overall US economy.

During the early part of 2009, we focused on the counterproductive attacks on NYC that were originating in Washington, DC. We were alarmed when the Congress and the President sought to outlaw bonuses of more than 1/3rd of salary at each of the institutions that took TARP money (even at the institutions that took TARP money because they were ordered to do so by the Treasury Department), and we were stunned when the House of Representatives voted to tax Wall Street bonuses at a 90% rate.

We were frustrated when the President attempted to order our Governor (the first African American Governor in the history of our state) to step aside and leave the Governor's mansion to another Democrat, and we were disappointed that the President was unwilling to support Bill Thompson's campaign to become the second African American Mayor in the history of New York City.

But, we had started to look at 2010 as a new beginning - the start of an era of cooperation between New York City and the federal government. We were wrong.

Last week, the President declared his intention to proposed a 0.15% tax on the liabilities of large financial institutions. The President's advisors estimate that 60% of the anticipated $117 billion in government revenue achieved by this new tax over 12 years would come from the 10 largest financial institutions. He made this declaration despite the fact that credit availability in our country is still inadequate, and despite the fact that the financial services sector's largest institutions have paid back their TARP money with interest. The federal government has already made a 14% return on the TARP money that was provided to the financial sector, and the federal government ownership of many of the financial sector's institutions will lead to even greater returns.

Someone has convinced the President that the banks will start lending more money to more credit-worthy individuals and institutions if the federal government requires more of the assets of the banks to be sent to the federal government as tax payments. The logic is very difficult to understand unless we see this latest maneuver as part of a pattern of anti-NYC policies coming from Washington, DC.

We applauded when Governor Paterson addressed the need for all New Yorkers to work to defend the financial services sector from these types of attacks with his remarks in December 2009.

He addressed the issues by stating, "You don't hear anybody in New England complaining about clam chowder. If you say anything about oil in Texas, they'll string you up from the nearest tree. We need to stand by the engine of our economy in New York State, and that engine is Wall Street."

He also used his Twitter account to reinforce his views. "Iowa, corn. Michigan, autos. Texas, oil. NY, Wall Street . . . We must stand behind the engine of our state's economy & strengthen it.""If we support Wall St, and make the tough choices necessary to stabilize our state, Wall St will help NY as we build a New Economy."

Ironically, the latest attack by President Obama is targeted specifically to New York City. The Detroit auto industry (Chrysler and General Motors) was a major recipient of TARP money, and the Washington DC based Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were bailed out by the federal government. Yet, none of those private companies' shareholders are being asked to pay additional taxes to the federal government. The financial services sector, headquartered and concentrated in New York City, will pay the tax on behalf of all of the sectors that benefited from TARP. Paterson was correct to assert that we need to speak more aggressively in favor of our city and our state. Clearly, the Michigan politicians have been successful in convincing the President that New York should pay the bill for the disastrous state of the Detroit auto industry.

We need to fix this problem quickly in order to promote a healthy economy for our country as well as to promote fairness for New York.

Haitian Relief Efforts

New York City is home to the largest number of Haitians in the world outside of Florida and Haiti itself.

We have a special connection with the Caribbean national that led the way toward the emancipation of slaves. Because the Haitians freed themselves from slavery in the early nineteenth century, freedom of Black people throughout in North America became a goal for many. Haiti paid dearly for its leadership with regard to notion that human beings should not be owned as property - Western nations abused Haiti and demanded enormous payments from Haiti in order to allow goods to flow to the nation. Western nations were determine to discourage others from seeking freedom by making life in Haiti as horrible as possible, but the Haitian nation persevered and has remained free for two centuries while still suffering from the legacy of abuse from the outside.

You can help the recovery effort in Haiti with your gifts. The number of organizations poised to turn your gifts into a brighter future for Haiti is seemingly endless, but the need is equally daunting. If you have already provided aid to Haiti, we thank you.

If you are planning to offer support but have not had the time to do so, we hope that you will choose an organization and make a contribution today.