Showing posts with label Brian Lehrer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Brian Lehrer. Show all posts

Thursday, June 26, 2014

No transparency on Democratic backroom deals in new State Senate coalition pact

A new alliance between New York State Senate Democrats and an obstructionist breakaway faction was negotiated behind closed doors.

RELATED


New York State Senate Coalition Ends ; Independent Democrats Shun GOP as Threats of Primary Elections Loom Large (The Wall Street Journal)

Feds Won't Rule Out Cuomo-Moreland Probe (WNYC)

Real estate interests continue to open checkbooks for Bill de Blasio (Bill de Blasio Sold Out)

Democrats make a priority of taking back control of the State Senate over enacting long-overdue reforms to address Albany corruption and ethics scandals

Backroom deals negotiated by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo will keep the same corrupt Albany politicians in office, although the mainstream media is spinning this sad state of affairs as a political win for state Democrats.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara, highlighted the broken political system up in Albany that does nothing to fully address how a spree of political scandals can be traced back to a lack of government ethics reforms.

Indeed, Mr. Bharara criticized Gov. Cuomo for going soft on ethics reforms, and the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan refused to rule out a probe, if necessary, to determine whether Gov. Cuomo improperly interfered with, and later negotiated away the disbanding of, the Moreland Commission.

"We're going to look at the documents, we're going to see what the facts are, and if there are questions that are appropriate to ask...there are strong-willed and aggressive — but fair — people in my office who will ask those questions," Mr. Bharara said on WNYC’s The Brian Lehrer Show.

During Mr. Bharara's appearance on WNYC last April, he made the observation that it appeared that Gov. Cuomo may have bargained away the opportunity to bring about corruption and ethics reforms for short term political gain.

Fast-forward to this month, and it appears that Mayor de Blasio formed a pact with Gov. Cuomo for short-term political gain to form a new Democratic Party alliance in the State Senate that also overlooks the long-over due overhaul to the state's corrupt political system. Already, some reporters are printing observations that Mayor de Blasio is taking political credit for the new State Senate alliance, but the press refuses to acknowledge that the same corrupt politicians are staying in power.

Moreover, the new State Senate accord reached by Mayor de Blasio and Gov. Cuomo speaks nothing to the long string of political, campaign, and public corruption scandals playing out right now from City Hall all the way up to Albany.

One wonders whether now that Mayor de Blasio has gotten the same dirty Albany grime under his fingernails, if that means that by continuing to put reforms on the back burner in exchange for short-term political gains, then Mayor de Blasio is going to be fully seen as keeping the corrupt Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver in power in one legislative house, even though Speaker Silver is second only to Gov. Cuomo to obstructing corruption and ethics reforms up in Albany.

Already, Mayor de Blasio is being seen by more and more reform activists as looking for opportunities to prioritize the scoring of cheap political points over reforms. Many mainstream reporters mock the mayor for describing routine City Hall announcements as "historic" and "transformative" that have no basis in reality. Furthermore, many independent political bloggers note how Mayor de Blasio's rhetoric about being a "progressive" neglects to address the need to enact underlying structural reforms to overhaul the broken political system here in New York City. Tellingly, one of the mayor's outstanding campaign promises that has never been mentioned since his inauguration is the mayor's promise made last summer to bring further reforms to the city's corruptible campaign finance system.

Sunday, February 2, 2014

NYC Political Reporters Admit They Didn't Scrutinize Bill de Blasio, Still Give Themselves High Journalistic Marks

You believe that there's nothing wrong, because that's what the media tells you in the newspapers. But watch them in this frank panel discussion, to hear some backchannel realness.

CUNY journalism director Greg David moderated a panel discussion on Nov. 19, 2013, amongst several reporters about the quality of the journalism coverage during the 2013 New York City mayoral campaign. The reporters, who took part on the panel, were Brian Lehrer of WNYC, Errol Louis of NY1, Joel Siegel of The New York Daily News, Kate Taylor of The New York Times, and Maggie Haberman of Politico. They were joined by two political insiders : Stu Loesser, the former spokesman for outgoing Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and Scott Levenson, a lobbyist who administered a controversial $1 million Super PAC.

The self-congratulatory media panel, embedded with two political operatives to keep reporters in check, tell you that the media did a good job of reporting the truth during the mayoral campaign, even though the consensus that night was that the media failed at scrutinising Bill de Blasio's candidacy.

These major political reporters were asked to grade their own coverage of the 2013 NYC mayoral election, and their shocking answers will give you an idea about why voters are kept in the dark about serious problems with the corruptive influence of money and lobbyists in politics, as well as the growing problem of public corruption in city government. The reality is that voters are kept in the dark about these issues, and the media admits it doesn't scrutinize politicians. They even hate the word "vet."

Watch as Mr. Siegel says, "I think, collectively, the media saw 20 years of Republican and Republican/Independent rule and thought that was the norm -- where the norm really is this is a city that voted 80% for Barack Obama. It's a very liberal city, and we all sort of -- I believe -- misread how serious a contender Bill de Blasio really was from the very beginning. I don't think he got the scrutiny from the beginning that Chris Quinn got or Bill Thompson got."

Here are now the reporters scored their own political journalism :

REPORTER (OR POLITICAL OPERATIVE) SCORE OF JOURNALISM PERFORMANCE
(10 BEING THE HIGHEST)
Brian Lehrer, WNYC 7.0
Errol Louis, NY1 8.0
Joel Siegel, The New York Daily News 5.5
Kate Taylor, The New York Times 8.0
Maggie Haberman, Politico 7.0
Sue Loesser, former spokesman to
     Mayor Michael Bloomberg
9.0
Scott Levenson, political operative 9.0

Monday, October 3, 2011

Bloomberg Tech Deal Waste Continues

The New York Times exposes another failed tech deal under the Bloomberg administration's mismanagement of large taxpayer-financed tech deals.

The New York Times reporter David Halbfinger spoke with Brian Lehrer from WNYC about Mr. Halbfinger's recent article about the New York City Automated Personnel System (NYCAPS) and the problems with the Bloomberg administration's wildly over-budget personnel tracking system. Nine years after work began, the Bloomberg administration has spent $363 million on the NYCAPS tech deal — and the work is far from done.