RUDY VERITAS

Stealing Third

I don't believe in futile gestures.  I am not a Don Quixote and I try not to tilt at windmills.  Most lost causes are just that, lost. Sometimes, however, either because of heart or head - a battle must be joined.  The best example I can give right now is on display across the river in New Jersey.  A few months ago only Chris Dagget and his family could have explained the formula and rationale for a successful candidacy.  Now, whatever happens this Tuesday - whoever wins and by however much - Chris Dagget will have caused that outcome; simply no question about it any longer.  What started as a pointless third-party candidacy has become a real game changer.

I fully accept the outcome of this Tuesday's Mayoral election.  Michael Bloomberg will be elected Mayor.  Notice I did not say re-elected.  I refuse to accept the legality of the coup that permits him to run in this race.  Since it cannot be legal for him to run for a third term, this is just an election to me, not a re-election.  Even if he gets 65% of the vote, he will have stolen this election as surely as any third-world junta at the point of a bayonet; through bribery, chicanery and illegality.

But however pointless it may be at this time to outline the case for not electing him, I feel the need to make it since it seems no one else will.  I was sickened by the endorsement that appeared this past weekend in The New York Times.  There was a time that the NYT took a very principled approach: If you do not participate in NYC's Campaign Finance program they would not endorse you.  It was simple and they were not kidding.  While I could not agree with them less on the issue of campaign finance reform, and NYC's in particular, it was a principled stand that had to be respected.  What happened to that ironclad policy?  They mentioned briefly and only tepidly the $150 Million dollars he will spend in this race.  Instead of mocking and shaming this obscene expenditure, they blithely commented on it.

Sadly, Bill Thompson seems incapable of making the case against the conventional wisdom that Mike Bloomberg has been a great Mayor with a significant record of accomplishment (In fact, Bill Thompson could not have run a more lifeless campaign if his name were Mel Carnahan).  I will try therefore to lay out the case against another 4 years.

I worked for a great Mayor, Rudy Giuliani.  When you know one and see one up close it helps to spot a pretender or someone who merely aspires to greatness.  Just consider what Rudy Giuliani accomplished in slightly more than his first term in office:

1.    Merged three police departments: NYPD, Housing and Transit.

2.    Instituted COMPSTAT at NYPD which, among many other police innovations,  lead to a 50% reduction in crime.

3.    Launched WEP (Work Experience Program), NYC's workfare program that resulted in a 2/3 drop in welfare recipients.

4.    Merged the City's two information and telecommunications agencies and created DOITT (Dept of Information, Telecommunications & Technology).

5.    Sold the City owned WNYC and made it self-sustaining.

6.    Merged the City's administrative functions into one agency, DCAS (Dept of Citywide Admin. Services).

7.    Merged the many design and construction functions of the various agencies into a streamlined single agency, DDC (Dept of Design and Construction).

8.    Removed mob influence from the waste carting industry and cut costs to businesses by an average 40%.

9.     Forced the MTA to unify zones and fares for all residents under the banner, "One City, One Fare."

10.    Rejected increased education aid from Albany and forced 110 Livingston Street to reduce its bureaucracy and account for its spending.

11.    Eliminated the fare on the Staten Island Ferry.

12.    Negotiated employee buy-outs which reduced City headcount without the need for lay-offs, an innovation for NYC government.

13.    Managed an inherited three billion dollar deficit without raising taxes.

14.    Reduced the Hotel Occupancy Tax which began the record setting return of tourists and business conventions to NYC.

15.    Worked to bring Visy Paper to Staten Island.  The first new major manufacturing plant in NYC in decades.

16.    Reopened the Howland Hook Marine Terminal.

17.     Declared war on the CUNY bureaucracy (City University of NY), demanding higher standards and more accountability.  Result: One of the lowest rated public university systems has become one of the best.  CUNY schools now compare and compete favorably with distinguished private colleges, laughably unthinkable a decade ago.

18.    Negotiated the toughest union contacts in City history, including: givebacks, privatization initiatives and the famous (infamous) double zero pay package.

19.    Developed and implemented a new waste removal plan & system for the city's trash that resulted in the long promised closing of the Fresh Kills dump before the end of his second term.

20. Produced the first year to year budget with an actual decrease in expenditures, FY 95.

21.    And perhaps most impressive, the decades long decline in population turned around with a one million person increase in NYC's population.  As is often said, people vote with their feet.

I created that list in 5 minutes without any reference material.  There's a lot more to list, both small and large.  But it does no one, except Michael Bloomberg, any good to forget that remarkable and singular record of achievement.  It's probably unparalleled by any Mayor in any city, anywhere.  And yet how soon we forget.  I challenge Bloomberg's Deputy Mayors, a decade from now, to put together a list of three Bloomberg accomplishments from memory that matches any one of the above.  I guarantee you now, they will not be able to then.

Only Rudy Giuliani's deplorable behavior since 2002 could make us think the Bloomberg years could compare with the Giuliani years.  But many, mainly lead by The New York Times, are so happy that Rudy Giuliani is out of office that anyone compares favorably.  The NYT, in its glowing embrace of Bloomberg, seemed to reflect on the recent inflammatory comments by Giuliani and just sigh loudly - once again - how relieved they are that he's no longer our Mayor.

And the incumbent's record of achievement over two full terms?  Let's take a look.

If you're thinking school governance, I assure you you're mistaken.  I was there in the final years of the Giuliani Administration.  Any informed observer will remind you that the legislature and Gov. Pataki were fully prepared to hand over the schools to the Mayor of NYC.  They were prepared philosophically to do it in 2000 and 2001.  The votes were there in the Senate and the Assembly.   But Speaker Sheldon Silver was resolutely opposed to giving Rudy Giuliani this final feather in his cap.  He would not not do it while Rudy was in office.  The next Mayor, whether he be Green, Ferrer, Bloomberg or a corpse, was going to get school governance for the asking.  Any success Bloomberg wishes to claim on this front can only be that he was not Rudy Giuliani in 2002, because that is the sum and substance achievement in getting mayoral control of the schools for him.

But put that aside for the moment.  So he got the schools, what did he do with them?  Unlike Giuliani, who made it clear that what was wrong with public school education was not a lack of funding but structural/core issues, Bloomberg increased the annual schools budget 65% from over 12 billion dollars to a mind blowing 19 billion dollars.  He claims serious success in testing scores.  All analysts of those increases either dismiss them, see them as part of a general statewide pattern or credit any bounce to the teach-to-test curriculum that has been adopted by Chancellor Klein.  Certainly no parent with a child in a city school believes their kid's education is anywhere near 65% improved over the last eight years.  The vast majority would aver that they have seen no positive change.  Their children are no smarter, more well spoken, better behaved or any other metric you might wish to use.

Of the great middle class, whom the Mayor claims to champion, how have they fared over his two terms?  Compared to the Giuliani years, they have been sucker punched again and again. Where Rudy Giuliani decreased taxes and fees, Bloomberg has increased any and every tax, fee, toll or revenue enhancer he could find.  The last eight years have seen double digit increases in property taxes, subway fares, tolls on bridges and tunnels, water rates and the sales tax.  And this does not include the divisive Congestion Toll he hoped to impose on those of us who do not consider traveling within the city a luxury.  Even the sports stadia he gave hundreds of millions of dollars to, turned right around after gouging on all this public money and raped the public with massive increases in ticket and concession prices.  On what credible basis can anyone claim that Michael Bloomberg looks out for the little guy, let alone relates to him?

Housing?  This is a subject I know a little bit about.  While our friends at The New York Times write fawning news stories to the Bloomberg housing initiatives, the truth lay elsewhere.  Two significant facts that have been overlooked in all the analysis of these housing stats.  First, the numbers don't add up.  Many of the 100,000+ units that are claimed to have been created or rehabbed do not exist.  They are included in the development plans for large scale economic development projects that may or may not get approval and funding years from now.  Second, as a keen observer of the ads placed by developers for HPD & HDC projects, I have seen an alarming trend toward high-cost City sponsored co-ops over the last eight years.  Prior to the Bloomberg Administration there were literally only a handful of City subsidized co-op projects, all extremely affordable.  Now there are dozens and none can be deemed affordable. 

Bad enough that they are diverting needed funding for affordable rental housing on co-ops, the price of these co-ops are eye popping.  Eighteen months ago I saw an ad for an HPD sponsored co-op selling for over $700,000.  Why in God's name would City tax dollars or even the time needed to work on these projects be expended to create and sell apts. for $700K?   What you see when you examine the ads are City sponsored co-op apartments regularly selling for $300K, $400K, $500K.  Only in a Mike Bloomberg world could this type of housing be deemed "affordable" and worthy of the City's interest, time and money.  In short, on housing, his numbers don't add up and his priorities are not ours.  His housing record can be summed up simply by the extraordinary number of luxury apartment buildings that have been erected, many with little mentioned City subsidies.

And of the Mayor's 'signature' initiatives?  Well, first let me say that it's embarrassing that anyone would want to claim these things as representative of one's best efforts over eight years in office.  But he does, so let's look at them:

1.    Smoking -  I smoke and feel that most of these measures are simply the frustrations of a former smoker against those who can and do continue to enjoy smoking.  As any smoker will tell you, the worst people are former smokers.  They hate that you can do what they cannot or will not partake in any longer.  As for the results, no sensible person believes the statistics coming out of the NYC Dept of Health (DOH).  Smoking has not decreased 20%-30% over the last eight years. Be assured of that.   All this has done is imposed another tax chiefly on the poor and middle class and made NYC an even more financially undesirable place to live.  These never ending attempts to target out-of-state tobacco retailers is a God awful waste of the overtaxed resources of the City's Law Department.  Which, by the way, recent independent analysis has shown settles more and more litigation because they do not have the resources to take these cases to full trial and fear the outcome given their limited resources.  The lesson - unlike the federal government, which has unlimited resources - on the city level a cost paid somewhere will result in a loss somewhere else.  These are the trade-offs Bloomberg is making with our money and they are not worth it.  And while we're on the subject of smoking, it is another act of Bloomberg cowardice that the promised grotesque advertisements that will be going up in drugstores, food marts, candy stores and bodegas have not appeared before the election.  DOH has promised rules that will require any establishment that sells cigarettes to post large depictions of sick lungs and such.  The outrage will be swift and hard when it comes.  Store owners will win this one in court for sure.  Notice these rules - and the resulting signage - were not promulgated before the election.  As to the effect of these doctored DOH stats, I'll get to that in a minute. 

2.    Guns - No one believes that this on-going attack on out-of-state gun dealers is anything other than an extremely anti-gun, anti 2nd Amendment Bloomberg trying to impose his views on the red states.  Not a single killing or crime of any kind has been prevented in NYC from these actions.  It's Bloomberg lashing out at a guaranteed right that he personally hates.  More work for the Law Department when they're not writing huge checks to career felons for frivolous lawsuits, as reported recently.

3.    Calories - I suppose a case can be made that sometimes the benefits of an intrusive government policy might outweigh the costs.  This was never the case with mandatory calorie information, however.  The recent comprehensive Yale University  study of NYC's law told us what we all already knew; they don't work and never would.  When you go into a McDonald's - unless you walked in with the intention of ordering a salad - discovering that a Big Mac is fattening is not going to get you to change your order.  But the larger question here always was less about government intrusion and more "why bother?'  How is it the government's business this I should order skim milk as opposed to whole and why would they want to?  It's really outrageous when you stop to think about it.  It is also not surprising that DOH has this week announced that old Yale Univ was wrong.  DOH's own in-house stats supposedly show the law is working and people's behavior has changed.  You know that's not true.  Can you imagine a Bloomberg Health Department, or any City agency under Bloomberg, stating that a major mayoral initiative was a bust?  Of course not.   The net effect of these policies is that a once highly respected municipal health department has become a biased, propaganda arm of City Hall.  When DOH speaks on any subject; smoking, calories, the flu, who would believe them?  Their track record is filled with consistent misdirection and outright prevarication.  The latest example is a million dollar campaign against sweetened beverages.  This campaign not only demonstrates that you cannot trust anything DOH says anymore, it also shows what a weasel Mayor Mike has become.  Remember during his first term when he inked a landmark deal with Snapple to provide beverages exclusively to schools and government buildings?  Remember the joint press conference where DOH, among others, told us how Snapple was going to help solve the obesity problem in our schools?  Not to mention how this deal was going to fill City coffers (it turned out to be a colossal bust).  Well low and behold not a term later and the ad in the subway depicting a sugary drink dissolving into fat is none other than Snapple.  Look at the ad.  The shape of the bottle, the color of the label and the tea-like color of the beverage being poured.  In one term DOH has deemed Snapple scourge from savior.  Honestly, in a Bloomberg Administration, who would trust anything DOH says anymore? 

4.    Stop & Frisk - It would be unfair to rap Bloomberg with this one since it was initially a Giuliani policy, but he's embraced this as his own so the criticism sticks.  If by stop and frisk we mean that when a police officer sees a man stroking what appears to be a gun under his jacket and stops to pat him down, then no I don't oppose that and nor would most people.  More to the point, you never needed any special legislation or court ruling for a cop to do that.  It's reasonable suspicion.  But that is not what mean in NYC in 2009 by stop and frisk.  And that is where everyone is getting confused. 

The thing about this policy, and I accept my share of the blame, is that if you're a middle to upper middle class white person, living in Manhattan, this all seems perfectly reasonable.  It appears that way because for all the years I lived on the Upper West and East Sides, I never saw a single person stopped and frisked, white or black.  Not one.  It's all an abstraction to you when you live in those neighborhoods.  Now when I lived in a halfway house off of Fordham Road in the Bronx, I saw young black and Hispanic men stopped routinely.  On a number of occasions as I walked back to the house with a black or Hispanic resident they were stopped and put up against a wall while no one gave me a second look.  If they were acting suspiciously, I was equally suspicious.  Yet as a middle-class looking white guy, I was never going to be stopped.  Never once could I say objectively that I witnessed someone stopped for anything that appeared suspicious.  I have no knowledge of this, but my guess is the cops operate on a quota.   They would just stop any black or Hispanic guy, put them up against a wall, frisk them and let them go.  I witnessed this hundreds of times in the six months I lived there.  Try and imagine for one moment the white editorial page editor of the Daily News - who vociferously supports this policy - being stopped in his Manhattan neighborhood routinely and put up against a wall.  Do you really think the Daily News would be for this if, let's say,  Mort Zuckerman was frisked every few days for no reason?  Of course not.  The Supreme Court has never accepted the rationale of stop & frisk the way it is being practiced in NYC.  It is sad, as a Democrat and a black man, that Bill Thompson is generally OK with all this.  It's sadder still that in a city filled with black and Hispanic elected officials virtually no one says a word about this policy.  I've never been personally effected by this policy and never will be, yet as a lover of the Constitution, it's sickening.

5.    Terror - I give the NYPD all the requisite plaudits for their Joint Terrorism Task Task work.  It's been around for years now and continues to be far more effective than the FBI or the CIA in finding domestic terrorist activity.  To the extent Bloomberg hasn't monkeyed this up or Rudy/Bratton policing, kudos to him.  His 'signature' initiative in this regard, I do not applaud. More and more of the Island of Manhattan is being ringed with outdoor spy cameras - CCTV.  Bloomberg believes it is important to get as much of Manhattan on CCTV as possible.  It costs millions in city and federal dollars to install and maintain the operations necessary for this program.  And the results?  Well we don't know anything practically but we do know that the largest such system tried in the world is a total bust.  Bloomberg - who is a lover of all things British - is either unaware or disdainful of a recent nationwide study done in Great Britain as to the effectiveness of their CCTV system which covers nearly every outdoor inch of that country.  It found that the hundreds of millions of pounds spent were a waste.  It deterred no crime and actually thwarted the capture of criminal suspects.  Why?  You'll never guess.  Criminals started to wear low slung hats, hoodies and shades in the commission of their crimes.  No pictures proved useful.  The value in Britain has been that after suicide bombings the police are quickly able to identify the attackers and their movements leading up to the attacks.  That has an investigative, after the fact value, I suppose.

But given no deterrent effect, is ringing Britain visually like a prison yard - weighed against the civil liberties cost - worth the price?  I would argue it is not.  I oppose these cameras here because I believe them to be an unwarranted intrusion into our daily lives.  Couple that with the fact that it has no practical benefit, and you have to ask yourself why.  The answer in Bloomberg's case is the same as smoking, calories, stop & frisk, all of it.  He hates people, individual rights and liberties and loves big government.  Ironic isn't it.  The perfect standard bearer apparently for NYC's Republican Party. 

6.    311 - Oh, please. 

7.    The Economy - Remember how we've heard nothing for nearly two decades in state politics except how badly the upstate economy is doing?  Pataki ran on it, Hillary ran on it, Spitzer ran on it.  Now wouldn't it be astounding to discover that in the midst of this nightmarish recession our billionaire chief executive has mismanaged our financial affairs to such an extent that NYS now has a lower unemployment rate than does NYC.  I cannot remember when that was the case.  The whole reason for a Bloomberg mayoralty was that this financial genius would lead us through the tough times and we'd come out the other end unscathed.  Try and get your head around this fact: NYC now has a higher unemployment rate than Buffalo.  It's unthinkable and yet true.  For those of us who are New Yorkers we cannot remember when such a thing existed.  This is the heralded stewardship that we were promised?  That we would actually make Buffalo's economy look good by comparison to ours.  And this is just the beginning.  On the one hand Bloomberg has increased spending at an alarming rate.  On the other he has raised taxes sky high on everyone but the wealthy.  When the time comes that the budget outlays are unsustainable we're all going to discover that the economy of the city requires a giant kick start.  That's going to mean budget cuts or tax cuts.  The budget will not be able to be cut because the increases Bloomberg has imposed are, in the main, permanent and ever growing.   Tax cuts will be deemed too risky since, in the short term,  they would require more budget cuts.  He has left his successor(s) with a budgetary time bomb only rivaled by - and maybe far worse - than that of the Financial Crisis of the 1970's. 

8.    The Olympics - True this an unattained achievement, but Bloomberg set so much of his prestige and time during his first term towards this unsuccessful bid that it's only fair to judge the effort, even ignoring the outcome.  This more than anything else I have or will write should tell you why you do not want Mike Bloomberg to be your Mayor.

Who vies for the Olympics?  As we all know, cities that need to prove something.  Even great cities find they need the Olympics for the affirmation they think it bestows (i.e. Beijing, Moscow, Berlin, London).  They believe it shows the world, "we've arrived" or "we're back" or "you approve!"  Guess which city singularly of all world cities needs none of these things and never has.  Yup, New York City.  Yea, we'll throw the occasional World's Fair but it's not the same thing and not done for the same reasons.  Only a Bostonian, complete with a second city complex, would think NYC "needs" the Olympics.  We need to demonstrate nothing to anyone, that is our greatness.   Bin Laden could have blown up the Sears Tower in Chicago (taller than WTC) or the Bank of America Building in SF (better design).  But he choose the WTC because it was here, the heart of the great city; center of the world's attention.  Mayor Mike doesn't get that, he never will.  I have no problem voting for an immigrant from China, Mexico or Korea to serve as our Mayor.  I have a very serious problem about electing someone from Boston, however.  The only Boston resident who ever transformed into a real New Yorker, as we all know, was Babe Ruth.  Every time Mayor Mike speaks in that grating New England accent it's like he's spitting on us all.  His quest to bring us the Olympics showed better than any policy or program pronouncement that he is not one of us, just doesn't get who we are, and what we're about.  Moreover, he never will. 

Mike Bloomberg's great selling point back in 2001 was that he was the Great Manager. The trains would run on time finally and he would do more with less.  If that were the promise then he as failed miserably.  Any of the twenty Giuliani achievements I have listed is more impressive, more meaningful to the life, future and history of NYC, than is the cumulative record of the last eight years.

He hates smoking, the automobile and obese people.  His vision is comprised not of ideals but of pet peeves.  He brags that he's an independent.  Anyone who can travel in eight years from being a liberal Democrat to a Bush Republican to a Nader independent is not free thinking, he is totally devoid of convictions or an ideology.  We don't elect people like that to lead us, we assign them to the category of schizophrenic.

I fully acknowledge the unfairness in contrasting a great leaders record with every other officeholder who follows.  We would never re-elect any president if we judged them simply by how their record compared to Washington's, Lincoln's, FDR's or Reagan's.   So it is inherently unfair to judge Bloomberg (mediocre) by Giuliani (great).  But conversely, looking back after eight years in office and summing it up essentially by saying, "I didn't make things worse," - which is probably the most charitable thing I could say - is also no reason for another term, let alone a stolen third.

Do the right thing on Tuesday on behalf of all of us who can't.  Don't reward arrogance and mediocrity with four more years.  Vote for a competent, quiet man to helm the ship.  Elect Bill Thompson, Mayor.

Kerik, Valhalla and Me

Never let it be said I can't take a joke.  In today's paper, Ellis Henican writes a satirical 24 hours in the life of Bernie Kerik behind bars in Westchester County jail.  On this fictional to-do list at 5:30PM it says, "Contact Russell Harding, Jr. about starting a Westchester County jail chapter of Giuliani Alumni Behind Bars."  Funny.  Timely, topical, relevant - not especially mean, I laughed.  I didn't quite get the 'Jr.' reference.  He must not read this blog and isn't aware I am Jewish.  Jews don't name children after the living, hence the sparseness of names like Shlomo Rabinowitz IV.

It surprised me however that Mr. Henican would mention me in connection with Bernie Kerik and Westchester County.  While it is true I live there now, I certainly had no connection to Westchester prior to my case and very few people are aware of the fact that I was in the jail where Bernie Kerik is being housed for about 5 weeks in the Summer of 2005.

In April of '05' I was at FMC Butner in North Carolina (next door to the prison where Bernie Madoff is held).  It had been agreed between all parties in my case that, as I very much did not want to return to NYC and the Metropolitan Correction Center (MCC) for my plea, I would do it by video conference from Butner.  Video conferencing (VC) was very common at FMC Butner since so many of its inmates were from far and wide as Butner was the BOP's 'premier' medical facility.  VC was used for pleas, sentencings and motions of all kinds.  They had a special room set up for this purpose.  Interestingly, I was told that my court had never used VC for any appearance by a defendant and mine would be the first.  My judge fancied himself a techie and liked the idea of his courtroom being the first. 

The plea went off without a hitch from a technical and legal standpoint.  It was agreed that my sentencing would also be done that way three months hence.  Well, Debbie Landis, my prosecutor, did what she always did, she lied.  After the plea she discovered that no press had covered it because I wasn't physically there.  She was not going to be deprived of her crowning moment after 3 1/2 years and millions of dollars spent by Justice.  She told my lawyers she was withdrawing her consent and was insisting I be brought back to appear in person. 

I told my lawyers I would not go back and be housed at the MCC.  Everyone understood that returning to the MCC was what had caused me to attempt suicide while I was at a prison in Minnesota.  So Debbie agreed to house me at a Westchester County medical facility while I was in NY for my sentencing.  Knowing Debbie to be the lying cur that she is, I expected her not to keep her word and instead send me to the MCC. 

Only my then lawyer, Henry Mazurek, knows what I am about to tell you now.  I have never spoken of this before.  The day before I was supposed to begin the trip back to NY, I tried for a third time to commit suicide.  I mailed Henry a letter from Butner saying goodbye.  The first time was carbon monoxide, the second time a ton of pills, this time I would try a plastic bag as I had no access to the other two methods.  I ended up passing out, but did not asphyxiate myself.  Three time loser, I guess.  The next day I called Henry and told him I mailed him a letter and asked that he not open it until he saw me again.

When I get off the con air plane in Westchester - what a shock - Debbie lied.  I was not going to a medical facility but to Valhalla County Jail.  When my lawyer complained later that she went back on her word, Debbie's response was, "I said I would try, I never promised to make it happen."  Henry, my lawyer, told me flatly she had lied to him.  But nothing was to be done, I was going to be at Valhalla for the next few weeks.

Valhalla would end up being the only non-BOP owned facility I would be housed at.  I was at eight prisons within two years.  In the end, it was an interesting experience because I was able to contrast county/state facilities with federal.  Valhalla at that time - and may still - had two jails, an old and a new one.  The old jail, where I was initially housed, was a horrible place.  It must have been 70 years old.  The cell was filthy, tiny and hot.  The old jail lacked any A/C.  It was now July and that particular summer NY was broiling.  The old jail also represented the only time that I felt in constant physical danger from other inmates.  In the MCC everyone is terrified of the physical and mental brutality of the guards, not the other inmates.  In prison you're always 2 steps away from a fight or physical harm from your fellow inmates.  But if you knew how to conduct yourself you can seriously minimize the danger.  Valhalla I realized, was different.  Whether because it was a county facility and the inmates were there for more common physical crimes like murder and assault than in federal prison, I don't know.  But these guys in the old jail were looking for a fight all the time.

I got lucky.  After two days - I think because of the heat - they closed down one wing of the old jail and moved a bunch of us to the new jail.  The new jail and the old jail are connected by a central building so it was not as though you had to be transported.  Compared to the old jail, the new jail was really nice.  Elis Henican in his piece today kept making reference to a prison like setting; mess hall, outdoor recreation, things like that.  Valhalla isn't that type of place. 

You never see the outside except for a caged recreation area attached to your unit.  The unit itself it two-tiered.  All your meals are eaten in your unit at collapsible tables in a small dining/rec nook.  The meals are brought up in large warmers on individual trays.  Valhalla is a very boring place to do time.  The unit Bernie Kerik is in most likely is the same one I was in, unless, God forbid, he's in the old jail.  It's also likely he's being segregated. Not because he's famous but due to his police and corrections background.  But if I had to guess I believe he's probably in that same unit I had been in.  It's just like every other unit at the new jail but they kept the federal prisoners there.  Since there weren't enough fed inmates to fill a whole unit, you were housed with state inmates awaiting trial. 

For me the one nice thing about Valhalla was smoking.  Smoking was prohibited, and if you were caught, punishable by some pretty severe sanctions.  But the open-air, caged rec area made a perfect spot to smoke and usually not get caught.  The other nice thing was how cheap cigarettes were compared to federal prison.  At Butner we had been paying $15 a cigarette.  Here they were $5.  How do you get contraband in prison?  Just like you think, the guards. 

Within a day of being in any new federal prison you quickly knew from other inmates which were the guards on the take and who brought in contraband.  I never got involved at that level, I was just a customer, but I knew all the inmates who were running the contraband operations.  I've said it before, there is no more corrupt institution than the Federal Bureau of Prisons.  No other correctional agency in the country - local, county or state - is completely immune from oversight the way the Federal Bureau of Prisons is.  No FBI, no Justice, no US Attorney ever examines complaints about federal prisons - that's why you never hear of any.  Local and state authorities have no jurisdiction.  And because of that, the staff acts with an arrogant immunity that you will see nowhere else.

Staff all over the BOP have PO Boxes and bank accounts in family members' names in order to receive money from inmates' families to pay for cigarettes and drugs.  It's as common as 4:00PM count time.

Valhalla had some weird policies compared to federal prison.  In the BOP you order commissary once a week.  In Valhalla you could order it 3 times a week.  You chose from an order slip and it was delivered to your unit.  There were six different soda choices but the jail prohibited ice machines.  There were four different types of instant coffee you could buy but the commissary did not sell mugs or cups, as opposed to every federal institution.  To drink coffee you had to beg the guards to give you their used Dunkin Donuts styrofoam cup that they brought to work with them and then reuse it until it wore out.  Why would anyone sell coffee and yet nothing to make it in? 

Besides the smoking, the big treat for me was a silly thing.  It's hard to anticipate what things from your former life you will miss in prison.  You always think you know, but it's never what you actually miss.  One of the big things I missed was a nice towel after a shower.  BOP towels are small and very thin.  They don't absorb water, they're always damp and unless you have a 30" waist, you can't wrap them around yourself.  But Westchester County was, like many counties, not willing to pay for things the federal government did.  The federal mentality  - and from a correctional standpoint, I can't really argue with it - is that if you create a closed system where no outside products whatsoever can be introduced then you can control the introduction of contraband and limit other safety issues.  You've heard in some state prisons you can receive care packages from your family.  In the federal system your family can only send you money in order to buy things from the BOP; no outside food, clothing or sundries.  The exception is books and they must be ordered from someplace like Amazon not sent in by individuals.

Valhalla was perfectly happy to let your friends and family send you radios, books, clothing and music.  There was a lot of basic clothing that they wouldn't provide or sell in order to encourage you to have your family pay for it.  I don't think you were allowed to receive food, however, like in state prison. 

Anyway, a friend at the time dropped off some books, a radio and a huge, fluffy, white towel.  That towel was awesome.  

The other big difference was visitation.  I had never had a visitor before I went to Valhalla.  Friends offered to visit me in Minnesota and North Carolina but I said no.  When I got to NY, a personal friend and a family friend wanted to visit and I acquiesced.  Visiting policies differ from prison to prison in the BOP, but only because some prisons don't have facilities large enough to house visitors at-will.  While there is no outside oversight of the large scale corruption within the BOP, federal courts take very seriously things like visitation, so the BOP generally doesn't screw around with that. 

Some prisons work on a points system.  You get so many points a month.  Weekday visits use up X points.  Weekend visits use up more since more people want to visit on weekends.  One prison I was at also awarded preferences to people depending upon where they were coming from.  Long distance visits were given priority over local.  The last federal prison I was in, FMC Devens, had a large visiting area and visitation was at-will.  Come as often as you liked.    

Valhalla had by far the worst visitation policies and facilities.  In the federal system, when you showed up to visit, the inmate was sent for.  Whenever you came that's when he was called.  If you came early in the morning you could spend the whole day with your loved one in the visiting room.  At Valhalla there were two visiting shifts, each lasting only an hour.  Your family or friends had to wait on a line outside, for hours sometimes, in order to get inside.  And even when you waited there was no assurance you would get inside.  As I said, that summer was very hot and my two visitors were drenched in sweat when I finally saw them for 30 minutes.

One of them, a fancy upper east side lady, decided she wanted to visit again but was not standing on that line in the sun.  I explained to her there was nothing to be done about it.  She told me she would call the warden.  I laughed.  Jails don't work like that.  No warden is going to care that she's been inconvenienced.  Well, I guess you just have to know that lady because she got the associate warden on the phone and he arranged it so that she would not have to wait on line anytime she visited.

Enough about me.  The real question here is what should Bernie Kerik do and try to avoid doing.  My guess is that there is almost no chance an appeals court is going to reverse the judge's order revoking his bond.  I also think there's a chance the prosecutors will try and move him to the MCC, to further punish him.  However much the Feds pretend that they have no knowledge of conditions at the MCC, they know perfectly well what a depraved hellhole it is.  My advice to him is that if you can be fine with limited visits then stay at Valhalla.  

I think Bernie Kerik probably brought this on himself.  It appears that he violated a cardinal rule of the accused.  It's OK to thumb your nose at your prosecutor.  There may also be some rare times when it's OK to behave defiantly towards your judge.  But you must never attempt to get at one by defying the other.  That appears to be the case here.  Kerik was trying to lash out at the prosecutors and unfortunately didn't mind violating a judge's order to do it.  That's not good.

I wish him the best in Valhalla and hope that the caffeine withdrawal that we all go through upon unexpectedly entering prison has subsided by now. He's getting a really raw deal all the way around.  It's particularly unfortunate in his case because he was probably the finest Department of Corrections commissioner NYC ever had.  He reformed Rikers and made it a much safer and more tolerable place for both inmates and staff.  I am glad he's fighting the charges and wish him the best.

The Worst of the Worst

By the dramatic increase in hits to this site over the last 24 hours I have to assume readers were looking for my reaction to yesterday's decision in Westchester County Court to assign me Level 3 sex offender status.  The bottom line reaction can be summed up in two words, "as expected." 

For possessing 11 illegal images, I am now assigned to the most dangerous, predatory category of criminals in all of NYS.  Without a finding that I had done more than that, planned to do more than that, or have attempted to do even that since my release from prison 20 months ago, I am now the most dangerous man in NYS. 

I have written numerous times that no justice can be expected in Judge Jeffrey C. Cohen's courtroom.  Unless of course either the prosecution or his law secretary chooses to offer some.  I have said that Judge Cohen is a smart man.  I admit when I am wrong.  Not because he assigned me a Level 3 status.  I expected nothing less from him, it was what the prosecution wanted.  I am just constantly amazed at how openly inept he has become.  Maybe I just never noticed the full extent.

Yesterday began as it always does in Judge Cohen's court, jokes.  There was a group of visiting Canadians who want to establish sex courts in Canada.  Judge Cohen welcomed them by saying "We have here today visitors from our neighbors (sic) to the North."  He then went on to warn them that they wouldn't find his court or the process illuminating and then mocked the process in-whole.  Nice, when people's liberties are at stake, make jokes.  I was first up.  He announced his decision. 

Now step back here one moment.  He's saying - by assigning me a Level 3 - that I am the most out-of-control, predatory, type of individual out there walking around.  If that's the case, why did he wait eight months to announce that?  My hearing was eight months ago.  In the interim - according to the law - I have to be considered a Level 1.  You would think that immediately after the hearing, having seen the evidence and reached the determination that I am this menace, that to protect the community from me - something he said yesterday he clearly wants to do - that he would announce his decision, rather than letting me walk around posing this extraordinary threat to the public.  Eight months to announce this; putting the public at risk the entire time?  Hard to comprehend how I pose this serious threat to the community when it took him eight months to announce it.  You'd think with the public's safety in jeopardy that he'd want people to know right away.  God only knows what I might do in the interim.

At the moment after he announced his decision my lawyer asked for a stay.  At this point, at this serious moment in my life, I almost started laughing.  Why?  Because Judge Cohen couldn't articulate his stay order.  He started, then stopped, then tried again.  But that wasn't the funny part.  Like most judges he has a law secretary.  In his case a very, skinny middle-aged woman.  What you realize is that even more than with most judges, he is completely lost without her.  It is she who rules that courtroom, not him.  He is constantly looking to her for her approval to his rulings and she revels in it.  What was so funny to me was that I was facing her head-on and while he's stumbling around to announce the stay order she is rolling her eyes and making the most exasperated expression.  If there were a cartoon bubble over her head it would have said, "what an idiot!"  Moreover, while waiting for my lawyer after the decision, I found out from someone who had been there a few weeks ago that he had issued the exact same stay order then and simply couldn't explain it.  Further, all that was required was for him to check a box on a form that said 1, 2 or 3 and he simply could not do it without his law secretary's assistance.  This guy told me that Cohen was pathetic. 

Now what was his reasoning for giving me this extraordinary classification?  What did his decision say?  It said two astounding things. 

The controlling case in these matters is a NYS Court of Appeals case, People v. Johnson.   First, Judge Cohen acknowledged that Johnson applied to my case (it could not be more directly on-point).  The Johnson case recognizes that the state law creating a sex offender registry and process is flawed in matters of child pornography.  The law was written poorly and in a hurry back in 2007.  The court said in Johnson that there were anomalies between the law, the levels, and the crime of possessing child porn.  But rather than throw the law out, the court counted on the common sense and good judgment of judges to address these obvious anomalies.  What are these anomalies?  The most glaring of them is this: You are assigned extra points if the victim is a stranger.  Had I somehow had pictures of children I knew that would have been OK, and I would not have been assigned extra points.  The law is clearly intended to relate to the crime of molestation and not child porn.  The legislature mad a total mishmash of the statute in writing it. 

Judge Cohen clearly acknowledges this in his decision but goes on to say, "Johnson permits, indeed may even suggest, that a court consider a downward departure in such cases, but it does not mandate the court to so depart because it is a child pornography case."  He thumbed his nose at the NYS Court of Appeals.  It was the clear intent of the Johnson decision, as it related to child porn, for lower courts to realize and take into consideration the anomalies between the system created to determine levels and the crime of child porn possession.  They did not mandate it because to do so would have, in all likelihood, invalidated the law or at least made it open to much greater challenge.  They did not want to invalidate the law and further, did not want judges putting them in the necessary position to do so.  So they stated rather clearly that the drafter's legislative intent and their final product may not be consistent with the crime for which I was charged.  What the court was saying was, "use your good judgment to fix these cases and don't force us to throw out the whole thing."

But Judge Cohen yesterday flipped off the NYS Court of Appeals.  He told them, "not gonna do it and you can't make me."  But that was not the truly outlandish part of his decision.  Nope.  He determined I was a Level 2.  He then disposed of our motion for a downward departure to a Level 1 - for the reasons stated above.  He then accepted the prosecution's motion for an upward departure to a Level 3.  Why?  Because I had defrauded HDC.  That act made me more of a danger to the children of Westchester County and New York State.  See the correlation?  No?  Neither do I.  Neither would anyone.  But that wasn't what blew me away regarding the HDC statement.  Right after my appearance Judge Cohen accepted a plea bargain in which he agreed to sentence a priest - who stole over $400,000 from his church - not to the prescribed four years in state prison - nope - but to six months in county jail.  I am excoriated by him in his decision for HDC, but this priest gets maximum leniency.

Now Judge Cohen could have said no - he could have rejected the plea, like Judge Rakoff did in Federal Court in the BOA case.  It is every judge's prerogative.  No, he accepted it because his law secretary and the prosecutor were for it.   There is no evidence that in a serious matter of sentencing Judge Cohen ever departs from the prosecutor's "request."  It's hard to see what neutral, buffering point he serves in all this.

The evil, perniciousness inherent in depriving people of their civil liberties is the ease with which people can become accustomed to doing it.  What HDC has to do with the safety of child is beyond anyone's ken.  But once you start labeling, registering and tagging people it's a very slippery slope to throwing out wild add-ons like the HDC example. 

The worst of the worst make up a very small percentage of those who ever get registered.  Prosecutors view these hearings as easy ways to up their win-loss stats.  Most judges - Cohen in particular - are deathly afraid of taking the criticism that comes with making a tough call.  As I have said before the one's who suffer - besides those being registered - are the police and the community who think this registration business makes them safer.  The police now have to treat me like a Level 3 Offender.  No one but the prosecutor and Judge Cohen believes I am a Level 3 offender.  But all the police know is that's my designation.  I guarantee you that there is some guy out there with a Level 1 or 2 who poses a far, far greater risk but the police - whose resources are naturally limited, not limitless - will focus less attention on him because the Westchester D.A's office and Judge Jeffrey Cohen thought it would be fun to tag me with a Level 3 designation. 

There are consequences to society for this reckless behavior.  When you lose sight - as they clearly have done in my case and so many others - of the extreme seriousness of what's taking place here, then you demean the very position of trust you hold.  The public is not better informed.  They are barraged with meaningless and useless information that can only confuse and frighten them.  And in case you're missing it, that's the point.  The Sex Offender industry, whether special courts, prosecutors, treatment clinics, graduate courses, books and videotapes, reference material, prisons, expert witnesses is now huge money.  federal money, state money, private money.  This is major business being plied all at the expense - in most cases - of people who may have committed a crime, did their time and simply want to get on with their life.  I have told you before that contrary to talk radio, 'sex offenses' have the lowest recidivism rate of any major crime. 

I was in prison with numerous members of the notorious gang, MS-13.  They originated in El Salvador and are now considered one of the largest and most dangerous gangs in the United States.  One of the features of gang life - and life in MS-13 most especially - is recruitment.  They are always seeking out young, poor, disaffected Hispanic kids.  Regardless of their sentence, they all told me that as soon as they were released they were going right back to MS-13.  Now imagine for a moment you're a poor, single, Hispanic mother, raising your son in the bad part of town.  Now, would you rather know that an MS-13 gang member recently released from prison has moved in next door to you or that some guy who looked at illegal pictures on the internet moved in?  The white middle class amongst you are all answering wrong.  The answer, I assure you, that she'd much prefer to know that this kid, intent on recruiting her son, just moved in.  But we don't register that kid just leaving prison.  His recidivism rate - gang membership - is nearly 100%.  But no one is doing anything to inform that mother that her son is in real danger of his life spiraling out of control.  Now I am not endorsing registration for that kid just released from prison because I don't believe in registration.  But if the goal here, as espoused by its advocates, is to keep parents informed of threatening dangers to their children, then I can guarantee you that Pedro or Raul next door poses a far greater risk than do I.  And yet the mother is ignorant of her surroundings.  How do we explain this?

What saddens me most about Judge Cohen - and I do not expect most of you reading this to understand my point - is that he's Jewish.  I try not to throw around the Holocaust card too much, but I am in fact a first-generation American; both my parents are Holocaust survivors.  I've studied that period intently, read all the books, been to Yad Vashem and the U.S. Holocaust Museum.  No one can make a case to me that we were willing participants in the destruction of six million of our own, but it also cannot be denied that all Jews bear some shame for acts of complicity in aiding the Nazis. 

The Jewish Councils in most ghettos compiled the lists which the Nazis used to determine transport.  It is our way to follow the rules, keep calm and try and maintain a semblance of order even if the final outcome is our destruction.  The diaspora made us keenly aware not to rock any boats and to 'go along to get along' in a foreign land, even one we may have lived in for a century.  Part of, 'Never Again' is that sense that we won't go quietly into any good night.  Israel's existence and the constant struggle against its neighbors; it's willingness to fight first, if necessary, is all a testament to that.

Accordingly, there are certain things Jews simply don't do - or shouldn't.  This business of sex offender registration is a modern day tattoo, like those put on the forearms of Jews in camps.  It's an electronic tattoo so it seems less personal, but it's a tattoo all the same.  Jews don't help in registering people.  I've seen my grandmother's papers with a Star of David and the word, Juif (Jew) on them.  Once you've seen that you don't forget and could never partake in doing it to someone else. 

Before you get all outraged about me comparing the victims of the Final Solution with child molesters, let me finish.  If this business of registering sex offenders were a perfect system I would still oppose it.  I just do not accept in this country the idea of registering our citizens.  It is dangerous and "unamerican."  But if it were a perfect system where only the worst of the worst were registered; people who were completely incorrigible, where every protection was afforded them before they were registered to make sure no mistakes were made, then maybe it could be justified.  But the system we have in place is the exact opposite; Judge Cohen is all the proof you need to see that. 

Under the law, Sex Offender Registration hearings do not guard defendants rights stringently, to make sure they are protected in order to ensure a scrupulously fair and just outcome before their greatest liberties are removed.  It is the exact opposite.  In those hearings every piece of evidence is admissible: hearsay, feelings, uncorroborated statements and written evidence.  Practically anything you can think of to say or submit is admissible.  In death penalty cases every possible protection is afforded to make sure this grave sentence is being handed down correctly.  With Sex Offender hearings no protections are afforded before we label and tattoo for life.  

For a Jew to make it his living to register people is a travesty.  I think if Judge Cohen's mother - who I am sure is proud of her son - knew the full and reckless extent of what it is that he does, she'd be ashamed.  Jews in the ghettos used to rationalize their participation in Jewish Councils by saying, "Someone has to do it."  But most Jews said, "Maybe so, but not me."  For a Jew to do this as a living - to earn income from electronically tattooing people, it is a shandeh un a charpeh - A shame and a disgrace.  Judge Cohen tried to make me into the worst of the worst - I reject the label totally. 

When asked to do this job - and for all I know he volunterred, believing it would advance his career - what Judge Jeffrey Cohen should have said was, "Maybe somebody has to do this, but not me."  That he does this job willingly, and so recklessly, makes him judicially and as a Jew, the worst of the worst.

On My Mind

I Don't Get it

I like to think I am a fairly intelligent person.  No genius, but I try and stay informed.  I read 2-3 newspapers each day.  Each week I read Newsweek, Time and The Economist.  In addition, I listen to hours of NPR every day.  Now I mention this as background to make the point that our President has been on a tear lately, appearing everywhere.  I would not be surprised at this point if we turn on the TV and there he is turning letters while explaining to Pat and Vanna what his thinking is on climate change in Copenhagen.

And yet for all these appearances, I never come away having learned anything.  I feel so stupid that I am never any more enlightened after he's finished.  At first, I blamed myself.  But it's not me.   He's a smart guy and should be an excellent communicator, but he's not.  He's charming, funny and seemingly sincere. Yet I don't understand the first thing about health care.  Sixty percent of Americans don't understand what's in any of the proposals.  I don't blame them, I don't either.  More frightening is that our representatives don't and have no plans to learn before they vote.  Health care, climate change, Afghanistan, the economy, Iraq, I haven't the faintest idea where he stands or where he's concretely going on these issues.  But he's out there all the time talking about them.

I think the White House thinks it's trite but what I'd really like to see is an Oval Office address on health care with charts and graphs.  People mock Reagan as simplistic but the tax cuts sold because the people watched him, understood what he was saying and what he wanted.  They then phoned Congress in droves.  The problem with Obama is that he can't make his case.  There is all this cheering today in Democratic circles because 40% of Americans now support health care reform.  That number is only great if you ignore the fact that we are weeks away from this vote and yet not even a plurality - 40% oppose it - supports even the notion behind the legislation.

Yes, we all agree their needs to be a fix to the rising costs and the lack of care for the uninsured.  But is his proposal - whatever that may be - going to result in a better system overall then the one it's replacing?  That is the question that millions of Americans can't answer because he can't give them the comfort level and understanding to answer in the affirmative.  And the fact that they don't understand what's happening, while at the same time the process is speeding forward, scares the hell out of them.  There's such a thing in business as 'buy-in.'  Getting stakeholders, whomever they may be, to understand and buy-in to what you're proposing.  Without that you can't move forward.  But Congress clearly does not care that the vast majority of Americans have no idea what it is they're doing on health care.  That, I believe, is where the anger comes from.  Are the radio yahoo nutjobs exploiting that anger to turn the argument into socialized medicine?  Yes, they are.  The White House doesn't get that. 

Maybe there's a growing arrogance at play here.  Obama thinks a speech before Congress will make the poll numbers turn around, just like a few hours in Copenhagen will bring Chicago the Olympics.  Both calculations turned out to be gravely mistaken.  I don't know how to make him turn this around.  Clearly a Nobel Prize is not going to be the answer.  All I know is that if I haven't the faintest idea what's going on then I can guarantee you that 97% of Americans don't either.  That is not the right atmosphere to remake 1/5 of our economy in a few months.  Nor is it democratic.

Wrong Lessons Learned & The Keystone Cops

Usually when a scandal erupts involving law enforcement the analysis on how to fix the problem is invariably wrong.  Two recent examples - one local and one national.  The national one involves this man in California who kidnapped this then young girl ten years ago.  He kept her imprisoned, raped her and sired two children by her.  Now all you're hearing as a result of this matter is tougher restrictions on sex offenders.  The problem of course is that all of this was eminently preventable had the system then and now done its job properly.  He was sentenced to serve 50 years for a previous sex crime and got out in 11.  Why?  When he left prison the parole board gave him a letter of commendation.  Huh?  He was visited regularly by the local police, who never bothered to check the outlying buildings on his property.  His probation officer described him as a model probationer.  Now be clear on this, he had this young kidnapped girl - and eventually two children by her - on his property and no one discovered them.  They were not - like the Austrian case - locked in a cellar for 20 years.  And no one thought this odd. 

One of the main lessons to be learned from this, which no one has yet mentioned, is how much of a mockery this case makes of the whole burgeoning sex offender registry industry.  This man would clearly have been of the highest level.  Certain resources would be devoted to monitoring him as opposed to someone who was a much lower level offender.  But I can tell you from first hand experience that the drive to classify everyone convicted of any 'sex crime' no matter how non-violent or minor at the highest level, draws resources away from someone like this California guy who might have needed them.

It is the burden of local police to live with the classifications made by zealous prosecutors and cowardly judges.  Label everyone the highest level, looks good at election time.  But it's the local cops who have to deal day-in and day-out with the ramifications of that, not the judge or the prosecutors.  If cops were smart they would be as outraged as I am by this 'level inflation.'  The classifications are meaningless if everyone, regardless of severity of crime, is considered the same.  The lessons from this California case is that the system needs reform and people need to do their jobs.  It is not an expansion of the sex offender registry industry in all its manifestations.

The local example of law enforcement incompetence is right here in New York City.  Once again the public and newspapers are taking away the wrong lessons.  The story is this.  It turns out, astonishingly, that numerous employees of the NYC Buildings Department (DOB) were active members of organized crime.  They worked in the Department for years while maintaining their links to their crime family.  All of this went undetected.  Now it would be one thing if all these men joined the DOB and then went into a life of crime.  But no, they entered City service as active mafia members.  Some newspapers are blaming Mayor-for-Life Mike (I'll explain in a minute why I don't really blame him).  I have seen no account that pins the blame squarely where it ought to lie.  And that is with the Keystone Cops at the NYC Department of Investigation (DOI). 

You may not know this, but every single City employee is fingerprinted and a background check is performed through the FBI database before you can be considered a full-time employee.  It has been that way for at least 25 years. All of those checks are handled by DOI.  How is it even conceivable that all these members of organized crime went undetected?  Further, how is it that there has been no assigning of blame or call for reform at DOI.  The only comment has been that DOI will now expand its use of federal databases. 

After I left HDC, the City forced HDC to sign an agreement with DOI allowing them to check their employees as well as review annually low income tenants living in HDC subsidized projects.  DOI has and does bill HDC millions for their staff assigned to the corporation as well as the work performed.  I can tell you with some knowledge what an extraordinary waste of money this is from HDC's perspective.  From DOI's it is a nice income stream since they rip off the corporation outrageously.  But forget all that for a minute.  In the 6 years that DOI has been doing this their big accomplishment was discovering that a cop lied about her income to receive Section 8 housing and that the wife of a band member from the Monkees had been falsely claiming residency to stay in subsidized housing.  Those two things cost HDC millions in payments to DOI.  Millions that could have gone towards housing.  Does anyone besides DOI think this has been a good financial bargain for HDC, the City or those needing affordable housing?  I can assure you it is not. 

And of the mob infiltration of DOB?  Well, the larger point I am making - having worked in and around government for decades - is this: when you try and do everything well, you're usually going to do nothing well.  DOI used to have a limited function.  It checked the background of city employees, investigated incidences of wrongdoing in city agencies and ran the Vendex system to monitor contracts and contractors who do business with the City.  It also oversaw the City Marshalls.  Now it has its hands in everything.  It has completely run amok.  So much so that at the end of the day it's primary mission, verifying that the City is not employing gangsters, never gets done.  The culprit is not DOB, they relied on DOI.  But you will never see DOI being pilloried either in the press or at City Hall.  It is an agency completely out of control that has no sense of its core missions.  They constantly want to glom onto every state and federal investigation.  They are known by everyone as a joke for their investigative abilities.  Not to mention their total lack of professionalism.  If there's a leak in an investigation run jointly by DOI and the Feds or the State, everyone knows it came from DOI.

As to why I don't blame Mayor-for-Life Mike, you can't blame him.  Even though he sold himself as a manager par excellence he is probably the worst manager we have had since Jimmy Walker.  I always want to qualify sentences like that by saying, "except of course for David Dinkins," but in this case I can't.  The reason Bloomberg is so much worse than Dinkins as a manager is that Dinkins had Norman Steisel.  Dinkins' Harlem gang knew he was inept.  They forced him to bring on a deputy mayor who would run the city, which Steisel did.  It was Dinkins' policies that made him such a disaster. That coupled with his total hands-off approach to the job. 

Bloomberg believes that commissioners should be left alone to do their jobs not encumbered by strong deputy mayors.  And so you have agencies that have become completely unaccountable.  No one oversees them so no one at City Hall knows whats going on or seems much to care.  And this is his preferred method of managing the city.  The exception of course was Dan Doctoroff, but he didn't oversee line agencies.  It is amazing to me that no newspaper has called-out DOI for their massive bungling of this.  As an agency it remains immune from criticism, for which we all suffer in a hundred different ways.

Jerry Shargel to the Rescue

I usually don't comment on celebrity news stories.  But I will on this one.  Is Robert Halderman guilty of blackmailing Dave Letterman?  I don't know.  He is presumed innocent before the jury that will hear his case. And that is as it should be.  But I do know two things.  First, he and I were both represented by Gerald Shargel.  Jerry was my lawyer for 3 1/2 years.  Jerry has a pattern.  He takes high profile cases with big fees.  Mostly he has a bad track record of winning acquittals for his clients.  The press focuses on Gotti and the gangsta rap producers so the impression is that he is very successful.  The hallmark of a Shargel case is that the press will be all about him and not his client.  Sure enough, as I expected, the day after Mr. Halderman was arraigned there was a profile story on Jerry.  He gets these case, he bombasts, gets profiled and his clients point of view is rarely expressed.  Jerry has used this refrain "there's much you don't' know," as entree to the morning talk shows to promote himself in this case.  This is all a tactic to intimidate Dave Letterman, but it won't work.  Jerry is hoping to frighten off Letterman by the prospect of the grilling of a lifetime in the witness box.  It won't happen.

The second thing I know is of the public's unfettered affection for David Letterman.  It used to be, when I was growing up, that Walter Cronkite was the most trusted man in America.  A good case can be made today that that person is David Letterman.  No jury is going to accept the mud thrown at Dave.  Further, the Manhattan DA's Office under Morgenthau doesn't prosecute outright bad cases.  They are not the US Attorney's Office.  They are not contriving evidence to get Mr. Halderman for no reason.  Do I believe there's more we don't know about David Letterman's sex life?  Probably.  Do I believe it will have any material bearing on whether this guy extorted him for $2M?  Not a bit. 

Letterman is a smart guy.  He is, in a very timely fashion, getting out all the sordid stuff about himself.  By the time Jerry gets him on the stand there will be nothing there.  Do I think Jerry Shargel knows some bombshell secret?  Some Perry Mason moment waiting to be sprung at trial?  Nope.  This is classic Shargel.  It will ensure that the next potential defendant thinks of him first when needing a criminal defense lawyer.  It will do nothing to help the defendant's case or his chances of retaining his freedom.

Polls show that 30% of Letterman's audience would abandon him because of the scandal.  Don't believe it for a second.  Dave is beloved in a way that Leno can only dream of.  He is cranky, obstinate and opinionated.  But he is always a straight shooter and a seemingly very decent guy.  It is that reputation, built up over thirty years, that will see him through this and any mud that Jerry Shargel tries to throw will rebound causing him to look like Crispin Glover.

Hate Crimes Legislation - Always Wrong

I am opposed to hate crime legislation regardless of which group is receiving the protection.  Murder me or beat me up and all the law should care about is the act.  Motive only plays a role in determining your level of guilt and occasionally severity of punishment.  I don't have a lot of issue with a judge sentencing someone on the upper end of a range because the defendant killed X because he hates blacks or Jews or Mormons.  But a separate crime with more severe penalties?  It's really outrageous.  I am a gay man.  Love me or hate me because of that fact.  I am indifferent.  Crack my head open because of that fact and all I care about is that you are caught and sentenced for busting my skull.  I don't want you penalized because you're a homophobe - that's between you and your god.  Is it unfair that gays do not have federal protection while a whole host of other minorities do?  Sure.  But I don't want to compound the original mistake of hate crimes legislation by adding my group or anyone elses.  Furthermore, as you all know I am huge proponent of the 10th Amendment.  These federal hate crimes statues are just an excuse for the federal government to intrude in state crimes when it doesn't like the result.

I am covered by this statute at the moment because I am Jewish.  I reject that protection.  No Presbyterian's or Baptist's murder is less serious than mine because he believes in Jesus Christ and I do not.  If I am attacked by a white Evangelical do we get to choose whether he accosted me because I am gay or because I'm a Jew?  Does it matter to me, all bruised and beaten up, which part of me he dislikes more?  No, it does not.  If Pres. Obama wants to do something productive he should focus on expanding rights, not reducing them to a few protected classes.   Rather than continuing to vaguely promise to end Don't Ask, Don't Tell, If he were a man of his word, he would just do it.  That would be a worthy accomplishment

This added hate crimes protection for gays and lesbians will pass Congress and be signed into law.  It is unfortunate that so many gay men and women can't understand that this is one club we should not be standing in line to get into.

Abasing the Judiciary - Let's All Go to the Lobby

As you know I am currently undergoing sex offender registration in Westchester County and have been for the last 16 months.  The judge overseeing my case is the Hon. Jeffrey Cohen, judge of the county court.  Judge Cohen was selected - as I told you he would be many months ago - three weeks ago by the county Democratic Party to run for State Supreme Court.  I've listed Judge Cohen's numerous deficiencies in the past and will again before election day.  Westchester County is comprised mostly of suburbs.  As such, like much of America,  campaigns are waged by lawn signs sprouting up everywhere.  They're an eyesore but there's something very democratic about the whole thing.  Being raised in the city we never saw many lawn signs.  It was all palm cards and posters in store windows.  And even that isn't done much anymore.

But again it's grass roots and always gave me a good feeling.  But we live in an electronic age.  One in which even are most revered and cherished institutions and offices have been made low.  Clinton on Arsenio, McCain on Twitter and everyone on The Daily Show & SNL.  New York is held out as a very progressive state because we no longer elect the judges to our highest court.  We do, however, for most other judicial positions.   But judges are still expected to display some decorum in how they wage their campaigns.  This is not Texas after all.

Now imagine my shock when reviewing Judge Cohen's campaign expenditures (available on- line) the other day to discover that he paid almost $6,000 to Val Morgan/Screenvision.  Do you know what that company does?  They place ads in movie theaters prior to the  film starting.  You know, usually it's Coke or Mountain Dew.  Sometimes it's for a tanning salon or the local Italian restaurant.  Occasionally it's for a Tony Hawk X-Box game.  But State Supreme Court is not some county judge hearing speeding tickets and variance requests.  It's a serious office that requires some gravitas.  It doesn't always happen, as I have written.   We expect better of candidates for the office than selling themselves like so much popcorn, nachos or pretzel bites.  I know the data doesn't concur, but I tend to be totally turned off by products that advertise in movie theaters.  I think it's a horrible trend and I try to punish advertisers by not buying their products.  I hope and believe the citizens of Westchester County will feel the same with anyone wasting their time and delaying their show. 

Every day this election season candidates routinely appear at my Metro North station to shake hands and hand out palm cards to commuters.  Recently I've seen a County Executive, District Attorney candidate and a few Supreme Court candidates. That is the proper and respectful way to run for that office.  I have not seen a lawn sign for Jeffery Cohen anywhere, although his opponents have them everywhere.  Perhaps movie theatre ads will be his sole communication with the voters.  Or maybe he views everyone through the prism of seeing us all only as potential perps, to be held at arms length.  In this case, however, they're called voters.  In short, catering to an oversized ego by displaying yourself fifty feet across a movie screen, while hiding from the voters, does nothing but abase an otherwise honorable position.

Copped a Plea - Follow Up

I have received a number of e-mails today in response to my post regarding Ray Harding's guilty plea.  To a one they have focused on my contention that I am not the motive for whatever may have transpired as alleged by the Attorney General.  I think I need to be clearer about this because there is an important piece I have as yet not mentioned and might help you understand why I truly believe what has been alleged regarding payments to my lawyers is untrue.

Gerald Shargel was my attorney is this whole criminal matter with the exception of the first eight weeks in 2002.  Shargel and I arrived eventually at a fixed fee retainer agreement that provided he would represent me in this matter for a fixed fee.  That meant whether the case was plead or went to trial.  Whether it lasted two more months from when we signed it or two more years.  I ended up personally paying Shargel and his associates nearly $600,000 for this case.  Most of that came from the sale of my home which was  sold specifically in order to pay my lawyers. Furthermore, as I have said many times on here, the timeline of my case and Alan Hevesi's term in office don't jibe.  Ray is accused of accepting these payments long after I was already in prison.  The case was over.  Shargel stopped returning my phone calls and responding to my letters.

Now here's the point.  It is a very, very serious thing for an attorney to sign a fixed rate retainer agreement and then solicit funds without the knowledge and consent of his client.  It is an extremely serious breach of attorney ethics that can get you disbarred.  In fact, it's criminal.

What has been missing in all the coverage of this is that when the Attorney General alleges that Ray Harding did whatever he did motivated solely by the need to pay my lawyers he is alleging criminal activity by Gerald Shargel.  For the record, I do not believe Ray paid Shargel or that Jerry Shargel solicited or accepted funds behind my back.  I do not believe it.  But Andrew Cuomo keeps saying it and the New York Times prints it repeatedly; most recently above the fold, on the front page yesterday.

I used to have a boss who would frequently say, "The laziest people in the world are reporters."  Ironically, he was a former reporter himself.  It has not been my personal experience that his belief is true.  I have found reporters to be needy - especially during my tenure at EDC having to explain complex financing deals - but generally not lazy.   Lately though, the New York Times is making me reconsider.

The galling thing in all this is not the the NYT owes me the courtesy of a phone call to verify the AG's claim and never places said call.  No, because I am felonious scum different rules apply and the NYT doesn't check facts with felonious scum.  The galling thing is that when they keep printing the AG's assertion they are unknowingly accusing someone of a crime.  A crime that can get them disbarred.

What I do not get is why the New York Times is so lacking in inquisitiveness as to ask the AG to substantiate this claim.  Since Cuomo keeps saying this I am assuming he must have canceled checks or wire transfer confirmations into a Shargel account from Ray.  The money certainly never came to or through me.  Isn't the fact that the AG is alleging this serious charge at Gerald Shargel worthy of checking up on?  Is Danny Hakim so busy that he can't ask the AG's press office for the evidence?  Is Danny Hakim so clueless that he can't see that if this were true it might be another story or a good paragraph in the one he was writing?  I guess so.

Gerald Shargel is everywhere on TV these days promoting himself under the guise of advocating for his client, Robert Halderman (the alleged Letterman blackmailer).  Am I wrong or wouldn't the serious accusation made against very high profile Gerald Shargel by Andrew Cuomo be newsworthy? 

I have a pretty good idea I know where that $800,000 went and I do not believe it went to Gerald Shargel.  But on the off chance I am wrong I would sure like to know because I would immediately file charges with the NYS Bar Association and the Manhattan D.A. against Mr. Shargel.  All I can say is that if Ray Harding is using me falsely as an excuse for whatever he did, it's contemptable.  If he's not, then Gerald Shargel's conduct needs to be brought to light so his current and future clients can be made aware to beware.

Copped A Plea

One of the great brass rings in politics is getting your name mentioned favorably in a page one article above the fold in The New York Times.  My father, Ray Harding was no exception.  Happiest were the days he could go down the night before the story appeared to get the paper from the Times building.  Well today he got the biggest story ever about himself, above the fold.  From my point of view it's a sad and shameful day.  But not for the reasons you might think.

In Agatha Christie's wonderful work, Witness For the Prosecution, Sir Wilfred, a criminal defense attorney, says to his client who will soon be indicted for murder, "There is no shame to sitting in the dock.  Kings, prime ministers, even lawyers have stood in the dock."  When my father was first charged in this criminal complaint I made it very clear that I thought the charges were baseless. I was happy to say that I believed him innocent and that he should fight for his name.   It was the criminalization of routine political life.  Change the law, fine.  But do not decide post facto that we don't like how politics is conducted in this state.  I've said before if rewarding political favors by officeholders is now a crime, then every Surrogate Judge in the state - and especially in Manhattan - is guilty of far more serious criminal activity than has been alleged and plead to here.  Every conservatorship or guardian ad litem awarded to friends and political backers is now criminal.

But now he has copped a plea.  OK, that's fine.  We do what we need to do to put things right and move on.  I have no problem with that.  I copped a plea, but for different reasons and damaging only myself in the process.  I deeply regret that I plead to the charges against me but, as I will explain another time, I had no choice.  My father on the other hand did have a choice.  He could have chosen to fight the charges or, if the prosecutors agreed, plead to something lesser to expedite this and save the need for a trial.  There would  have been a felony conviction, probably prison time and a loss of his ability to practice law. But he would have only hurt himself, no one else.   Now faced with similar circumstances what would I do?  In fact, what did I do when I was faced with exactly the same situation?

In 2002 and 2003 the US Attorney's Office approached my lawyers several times seeking my cooperation in what they hoped would be a far ranging inquiry into the Giuliani Administration.  You see its completely misunderstood by the public and most of the press that Rudy Giuliani is not liked by his former colleagues.  In fact, they hate him.  I was shocked to come to that realization.  They desperately wanted an indictment of high Giuliani officials, and I don't mean me.  I can say with 100% certainty that had I agreed to cooperate and given them nothing more than what I have written in these posts over the past months, Tony Carbonetti would have been indicted and in all likelihood convicted by the Federal Government.  There is simply no question about it.  Further, on the Bear Stearns deal alone, Randy Levine would have undergone a major investigation.  I knew all this then and I know it now.  A deal to cooperate would have helped my situation immeasurably.  I doubt I would have avoided all prison time, but it sure would have reduced it significantly. 

When presented with these requests I said no.  I said it once, then twice, and on the third time I told Henry Mazurek, my attorney, to tell them to fuck off.  It would never even have dawned on me to "give up" Tony Carbonetti in order to save my hide.  Even if I had known of some extremely serious crime like he killed someone or ran a drug ring out of his apartment (neither is true) I would NEVER have told the US Attorney's Office.  It would have been unthinkable.  And that is especially true if I were involved in something fishy with him.  Throw him over to save myself on something we were both involved in?  I simply could not have done it then and I for sure absolutely could not do it now.  That doesn't make me a hero.  It just made me a good friend.

Now I get it's scary at the age of 74, almost 75, to think about prison and penury.  It was scary for me at the age of 40.  But you have two choices in life: fight for your rights and freedom or concede and accept your fate. There is no third way.  Hurting someone else where the only rationale for doing so is to lessen your pain is never acceptable.  Under any circumstances.  If Ray Harding and Hank Morris conspired to defraud or commit some crime and Ray Harding now feels that what he did was wrong, fine cop a plea, take your punishment.  But from everything I have read Hank Morris didn't mislead Ray; he didn't deceive him into doing something illegal that he thought was something else.  They are both savvy adult men who did whatever it is they did, legal or illegal, with full knowledge of their actions.  I see no 'out,' no escape clause from the two choices I have described above.  

Is Hank Morris's fear of prison any less real or distressing than is Ray Harding's?  When presented with a choice back in Nov. 2003 of letting me kill myself or working with my shrink to have me put under observation at a NY hospital, Ray Harding chose the third unthinkable option.  He, on his own accord, gladly sent me to prison.  More precisely, the hell that is the MCC in Lower Manhattan.  Now he is sending Hank Morris to years in prison.  It's an easy thing to do, send people to be incarcerated, when you've never experienced it firsthand.  Much harder - in fact unthinkable - when you've been there yourself.  Thanks to the deal he cut yesterday, only Hank Morris will have to know what it's like to lose his freedom.  Ray Harding saved himself from that nightmare at Hank Morris's expense.

You learn in prison that there is nothing, and I mean nothing, worse than ratting.  Rapist, child molester, Islamic terrorist, all pale as labels compared to being tagged a snitch.  Especially, boy I can't stress this enough, especially when you are doing it only for self gain.  I never held to the 100% absolutist view of this rule - I could see a few exceptions.  But the street view prevails in prison - nothing worse you can do than snitch.  So here we are.  Knowing what I know now - that Tony Carbonetti and other RWG administration friends would disown me after prison - would I have done anything differently?  As far as that goes, not a thing.  My disappointment in them is far, far outweighed by my hatred for the US Attorney's Office and the corrupt way it administers justice.  I wouldn't have dropped a dime then and I wouldn't do it now.

Making this worse for me is that the NYT insists on printing again this scurrilous statement that Ray's now admitted crimes were motivated by his need to pay my legal bills. I don't know how many different ways to say this but there isn't a single word of truth in it.  I believe Cuomo's office continues to say it because it provides a motive and I believe Ray Harding doesn't publicly deny it because it provides him with some excuse other than venality. It also perpetuates Ray's view of himself as the loving, long suffering father of me.  He never paid for my legal defense.  I don't know how many other ways to say it.  I said at the beginning that it is a sad and shameful day. It is indeed.  It's shameful what my father did and the sadness I feel is entirely for Hank Morris and his family.