New York City Started Re-Opening Yesterday-- Cautiously

America 2020 by Nancy Ohanian

Yesterday, as states and cities rush to re-open, some carefully, others not, the Washington Post ran a piece by Joel Achenbach, Shutdowns prevented 60 million coronavirus infections in the U.S., study finds. "Shutdown orders," he wrote, "prevented about 60 million novel coronavirus infections in the United States and 285 million in China, according to a research study published Monday that examined how stay-at-home orders and other restrictions limited the spread of the contagion. A separate study from epidemiologists at Imperial College London estimated the shutdowns saved about 3.1 million lives in 11 European countries, including 500,000 in the United Kingdom, and dropped infection rates by an average of 82 percent, sufficient to drive the contagion well below epidemic levels."

The two reports, published Monday in the journal Nature, provide fresh evidence that aggressive and unprecedented shutdowns, which caused massive economic disruptions and job losses, were necessary to halt the exponential spread of the novel coronavirus.

But the overwhelming majority of people remain susceptible to the virus. Only about 3 percent to 4 percent of people in the countries being studied have been infected to date, said Samir Bhatt, senior author of the Imperial College London study.

“This is just the beginning of the epidemic: we’re very far from herd immunity,” Bhatt said Monday in an email. “The risk of a second wave happening if all interventions and precautions are abandoned is very real.”

The first study, from researchers at the University of California at Berkeley, examined six countries-- China, the United States, France, Italy, Iran and South Korea-- and estimated how 1,717 interventions, such as stay-at-home orders, business closings and travel bans, altered the spread of the virus. The report concluded that those six countries collectively managed to avert 62 million test-confirmed infections. Because most people who are infected never get tested, the actual number of infections that were averted is much higher-- about 530 million in the six countries, the Berkeley researchers estimated.

Timing is crucial, the study found. Small delays in implementing shutdowns can lead to “dramatically different health outcomes.” The report, while reviewing what worked and what made little difference, is clearly aimed at the many countries around the planet that are still early in their battle against the coronavirus.

“Societies around the world are weighing whether the health benefits of anti-contagion policies are worth their social and economic costs,” the Berkeley team wrote. The economic costs of shutdowns are highly visible-- closed stores, huge job losses, empty streets, food lines. The health benefits of the shutdowns, however, are invisible, because they involve people not sickened.

That spurred the researchers to come up with their estimates of infections prevented. The Berkeley team did not produce an estimate of lives saved.

Achenbach is a health-and-politics reporter but J. David Goodman covers lobbying, fund-raising and the influence of money in politics. Interesting that the NY Times assigned him the job of covering the reopening of New York City. But with Cuomo in charge, it was a sensible approach. "Exactly 100 days since its first case of coronavirus was confirmed, New York City, which weathered extensive hardship as an epicenter of the worldwide outbreak, is set to take the first tentative steps toward reopening its doors on Monday," he wrote on Sunday. "Getting here took the sacrifice of millions of New Yorkers who learned to live radically different lives. More than 205,000 have been infected, and nearly 22,000 have died."

As many as 400,000 workers could begin returning to construction jobs, manufacturing sites and retail stores in the city’s first phase of reopening-- a surge of normalcy that seemed almost inconceivable several weeks ago, when the city’s hospitals were at a breaking point and as many as 800 people were dying from Covid-19 on a single day.

Many retail stores, battered by months of closure, are readying to do business again on Monday, starting with curbside and in-store pickup. Construction companies are adding safety features and stockpiling masks and gloves. Manufacturers, whose shop floors have idled since March, are testing machines.

State and city officials said they were optimistic that the city would begin to spring back to life. Testing is robust, reaching 33,000 people on a recent day. And new infections are now down to around 500 a day-- half as many as there were just a few weeks ago.

That is low enough for New York City’s corps of contract tracers, who began work last week, to try to track every close interaction and, officials hope, stop a resurgence of the virus.

New confirmed cases on Sunday and Monday for New York state was 1,018 and 1,064. NYC was 460 and 389:

Brooklyn- 168 and 129
Queens- 114 and 134
Bronx- 98 and 74
Manhattan- 54 and 42
Staten Island- 26 and 10

Suffolk County, a big suburb on Long Island, filled with crackpot Republicans who refused to wear masks or social distance, had 291 new cases on Sunday and 364 on Monday, each day the worst of any county in New York state. Commuters from Suffolk County could well spread the contagion in the city. Cuomo, who is always trying to take credit for NYC's progress, even though thousands became sick because he was so slow to recognize and act on the pandemic early on, said "You want to talk about a turnaround-- this one, my friends, is going to go in the history books."

New York City, like nine other regions in the state, was required to meet seven health-related metrics before beginning reopening. New York City was the last part of the state to do so; much of upstate has already moved on to Phase 2, which allows most stores, offices and hair salons to open, with restrictions on capacity and social distance.

The road back will undoubtedly be challenging. More than 885,000 jobs vanished during the outbreak, and strong gains are not expected for the city until 2022. The city budget hemorrhaged tax revenue and now faces a $9 billion shortfall over the next year.

And the reopening has been complicated by the vast protests for racial justice that have swept the city for more than a week and have forced government officials and business owners to unexpectedly adjust their plans.

Hundreds of stores were burglarized by looters who took advantage of the protests to prey on commercial districts, from Midtown to the Bronx. Shop owners scrambled to cover windows in plywood rather than reaching for welcome banners. Police officers enforced a nightly curfew.

...Even before the protests, some public health officials were privately fretting that the timeline set by Governor Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio was too ambitious. They worried that infections could increase as people returned to work and commuters began to take the subway again.

But the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said it did not believe that rush hour would meaningfully return on Monday-- or anytime soon. Even when schools and Broadway are allowed to open in the fourth and final phase of the reopening, the authority is projecting ridership will be under 70 percent.

One person briefed on the authority’s planning said officials there expected the trains to be at well below 50 percent capacity at least through Labor Day-- a calculation based on the idea that many office workers would continue to work remotely into the fall.

Many business leaders, particularly those in office-based jobs like technology and finance, are watching the transit system for signs that it is safe. The authority has embarked on large-scale cleanings and required riders to wear masks, but said social distancing may not be possible if subways and buses carry anywhere close to their normal loads.

...Some businesses are taking it slowly and carefully.

Only about a third of textile workers in the city are expected to be back at work on Monday, said Edgar Romney, the secretary-treasurer of their union, Workers United/SEIU. Businesses that are operating have altered their shifts to reduce crowding and installed plastic shields to separate tightly packed sewing machines.

But many, particularly in Midtown Manhattan, have remained closed, he said.

For retailers, the picture is even more complex. Just opening the doors does not guarantee that customers will return. Curbside pickup does not make a lot of sense for many retailers either, particularly in Manhattan.

Business groups said many retailers were waiting for the next phase to venture out, when outdoor dining is allowed, office workers are permitted to return and shoppers are able to enter and browse around all types of stores, local business groups said.

The earliest that could begin would be late June, based on state mandates that each phase last at least two weeks. But Mayor de Blasio said on Thursday that he did not anticipate the city moving into the next phase until early July.

“Businesses can be ready, but are the consumers ready?” asked Thomas J. Grech, president of the Queens Chamber of Commerce. “I want to demonstrate to the buying public, to the consumers out there, that the businesses are making it safe.”

When more than 100 workers return next week to Newlab, a technology hub in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, they will have the option of wearing a device that buzzes every time two colleagues get too close to each other-- a high-tech way to enforce social distancing.

The devices, made by StrongArm Technologies, a company based in the hub, were already being worn by most of the 80 or so workers deemed essential.

“In the first week, people were getting buzzed all the time,” said Shaun Stewart, the chief executive of Newlab. “It flashes and it vibrates. That alone, that immediately changes your behavior and your perspective on distancing.”

The city’s contact tracing efforts are far less high tech. But for the past week, newly infected New Yorkers have been receiving calls from the new corps of tracers. City Hall did not provide figures for how many people they were able to reach.

“The beginning of any program is challenging,” said Jay Varma, an adviser to Mr. de Blasio on public health. But so far, he said, “people are willing to participate, they’re willing to give information about their health conditions and about their close contacts.”

Still, a jump in cases could overwhelm the system, as happened at the start of the pandemic in New York in March.

Officials are watching barometers of the virus’s spread closely, from new positive tests to emergency room data, for any sign that the newly flattened curve of infection might be arcing upward again.

The work of contact tracing has taken on new urgency because of the public outpouring of anger at the death of George Floyd, a black man killed in Minneapolis on May 25 in a confrontation with four police officers... [which] raised questions about how mass gatherings might spread the virus, with some participants not observing social distancing.

“On the public health side, this has been a really long, arduous nearly 100 days of something none of us had never dealt with before, and then you see that activity, of course you’re concerned,” said Jim Malatras, a close adviser to Mr. Cuomo. “The top blew off. The top blew off across this country.”

Mr. Malatras said he envisioned several possible results of the demonstrations.

People who are asymptomatic could transmit the disease far beyond the ranks of the protesters. Or, if there is no immediate surge of infections, some New Yorkers may begin to doubt strict adherence to social distancing.

The impact of having crowds of at least 20,000 protesters on the streets would not be apparent for as long as two weeks, officials cautioned.

“The mayor is appropriately concerned about the risk of a resurgence due to the mass gatherings that have occurred,” said Mr. Varma, adding that “there is a lot that we don’t know about how people’s behavior will change after June 8.”

He said, however, that because the protests took place outdoors and many demonstrators wore masks, the risks may have been lessened.

The state and the city will not make a decision about moving to the second phase of reopening for at least two weeks, at which point the public health effects of the protests should be more clear, officials said.

There Are Worse Governors Than Andrew Cuomo, But None Who Are Personally Responsible For As Many Coronavirus Deaths

"Better Than Trump" is just not good enough

The media has created a very positive image for New York neo-liberal governor Andrew Cuomo. No one can deny Cuomo looks relatively good compared to Trump in his pandemic response. But no one should deny that with Trump out of the equation, Cuomo was a disaster for New York where there were 180,458 confirmed cases as of yesterday-- more than China, Italy or Spain-- and close to 8,627 deaths (an out-sized 4.7% totality rate). When Mayor Bill DeBlasio tried to shut New York City down-- the way San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose had shut down-- Cuomo went nuts and overrode him. And he just did it again!

While salivating and empty-headed TV talking heads like Rachel Maddow were working to turn Cuomo into a saint, the New York Post reported that the governor again couldn't control his own ego in a battle with de Blasio over school closures. After the mayor declared the schools will remain closed until the fall term, Cuomo dismissed de Blasio's remarks as only "an opinion" and said he himself hasn't made a decision yet. There's blood on Cuomo's hands and there is no doubt far fewer New Yorkers would have been infected had he not prevented de Blasio from shutting down New York City when he wanted to.

“He didn’t close them, and he can’t open them,” Cuomo said.

A few hours earlier in City Hall, de Blasio said he made the decision after speaking the night before with Dr. Anthony Fauci, the infectious-disease expert on the White House’s coronavirus task force.

“He was so clear about how important keeping the schools closed would be in our overall strategy,” the mayor said. “It will help us to save lives.”

By Saturday evening, de Blasio was digging in his heels.

“My responsibility is not to another elected official,” he said on MSNBC’s PoliticsNation. “My responsibility is to those kids, those parents, those educators.”

“I have to do what I think is right to stop the coronavirus from holding the city in its grip. I have to make sure we get out of this horrible moment in our city’s history and move forward.”

But Cuomo, whose emergency powers trump those of city officials, said it was simply not de Blasio’s call to make.

“It is my legal authority in this situation” via executive order, Cuomo said, quipping that if the mayor wants to close schools, he should do so during a blizzard.

“This is not a snow day,” the governor sniped.

Cuomo first ordered all schools in the state closed on March 18 for two weeks to stem the virus.

He later expanded that executive order to continue through April 29, at which point the shutdown would be re-evaluated.

“It’s not going to be decided in the next few days, because we don’t know,” Cuomo said at his daily briefing in Albany.

“I can’t tell you what June is going to look like. I can’t tell you what May is going to look like. But I can tell you it will be a metropolitan-wide decision.”

City Hall spun the brouhaha as another case in which de Blasio would be proven right, with press secretary Freddi Goldstein noting that Cuomo had dismissed the mayor’s call for a shelter-in-place order in mid-March, but ordered a lockdown three days later.

“We were right then and we’re right now,” Goldstein tweeted.

“Schools will remain closed, just like how we eventually-- days later-- moved to a shelter in place model.”

Cuomo staffers said they got wind of the mayor’s decision only at around 9:25 a.m. in a phone call from de Blasio aides.

They talked about schools staying closed through June, but “they didn’t say they were going to publicly announce this using powers that they don’t have,” said Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi.

Five minutes later, de Blasio publicly declared schools closed for the rest of the academic year.

Meanwhile CNN looked into why the pandemic is so much more catastrophic in New York-- especially New York City and its suburbs-- than anywhere else in the country or, for that matter, the word. They didn't blame Trump or Cuomo, who should share the blame. But they did note that "Sadly, the likeliest explanation for the high death rate, though, is the chronically inadequate health care given to minorities and the poor throughout New York City, as in the rest of the country. New York City and New York state have only now released the race distribution of cases and deaths, as well as by zip code, a surrogate for poverty rates. It is clear that severe disease has not been distributed equally by race and ethnicity. Black and Hispanic New Yorkers represent 51% of the city's population, yet account for 62% of Covid-19 deaths. They have twice the rate of death compared with whites, when adjusted for age. This likely is due to both a higher proportion of black and Hispanic New Yorkers being diagnosed with severe disease and a higher rate of death among those who are known to be infected."

This disparity likely is the result of several factors. Co-morbid conditions, such as hypertension and diabetes, are strongly associated with death from Covid-19 and are more common in black and Hispanic communities. But what causes high rates of poorly controlled hypertension and diabetes? Lack of appropriate health care. People who cannot easily find good health care for reasons of money, time, location, or trust may be more likely to stay at home undiagnosed and spread the virus-- as well as experience potentially fatal delays in diagnosis and treatment.

The explanation is the same for New York City as for Italy, New Orleans and probably Iran: the virus exploits weaknesses in health and health care, be it advanced age or co-morbidity or access to care.

Hopefully, the Covid-19 pandemic will force us to reckon honestly with the many shortfalls that have been exposed and build a fair, forward-thinking approach that allows doctors and nurses to care for people in need. Failure to do this will only further darken the memory of those who have died and the hearts of those who remain.

Odd that CNN chose not to mention how-- in the midst of the pandemic response he botched so badly-- Cuomo just forced through a budget that drastically cuts healthcare funds to the exact people they're referring to. The media is protecting, even celebrating, New York's corrupt, thuggish Governor Cuomo. I wonder why. (I don't really wonder why; I'm certain he's being set up for a bigger job.)





How big a scumbag is Cuomo inside Democratic politics? We know he hates the Congressional Progressive Caucus and everything they stand for. Now, Maggie Moran, Cuomo's top political operative-- the one not currently serving a prison term-- is surreptitiously fund-raising against AOC and soliciting campaign operatives to work against her reelection.

One more thing-- this odd map of states that require, encourage and discourage vote by mail. New York (as well as Connecticut, Delaware and New Hampshire) are in pretty strange company-- the 11 beet-red Trump states that make it difficult to vote by mail. Maybe Cuomo should put some energy behind getting New York off this list instead of working so hard to cut Medicaid funding. Conservatives-- and not just Republican conservatives-- hate expanding the franchise.

Finger To The Wind-- Wet Index or Dry Middle?

Axios reported on Engagious focus group findings of Obama voters who flipped to Trump in Sioux City Iowa. There are not voters who like any of the Democrats running for president-- but do love the progressive policies being espoused by Bernie and by Elizabeth Warren. As you can imagine, they were a typical basket of deplorables, against the idea of a woman in the presidency, unaware of Medicare-For-All or the Green New Deal, unaware of the names of any of the Democrats running other than Bernie, Biden and Elizabeth Warren-- and willing to re-elect Trump. Only one was willing to come out of the Darkness and back to American values.

Also out yesterday was a new poll from Politico by Morning Consult. The general stuff:

• Country's on the wrong track- 62%
• Trump's disapproval- 56%
• Trump's reelection number- 37%
• Generic congressional election- 43% Democrat, 37% Republican

When he came to testing matters of fact, though, the respondents were so ignorant that it has to make someone question whether democracy is a even viable form of government. Some examples:

Q- Generally speaking, do you think President Donald Trump has been successful or unsuccessful in business?

• Very successful- 31%
• Somewhat successful- 23%
• Somewhat unsuccessful- 11%
• Very unsuccessful- 25%
• Don’t know / No opinion- 10%

A followup question: As you may know, a review of Internal Revenue Service tax transcripts found that President Trump reported a total of $1.17 billion in losses between 1985 and 1994. Based on what you know now, do you think President Trump has been successful or unsuccessful in business?

• Very successful- 24%
• Somewhat successful- 19%
• Somewhat unsuccessful- 13%
• Very unsuccessful- 29%
• Don’t know / No opinion- 16%

Another followup: Thinking about how President Trump has handled his responsibilities as president, would you say the following helped him, hurt him, or did it make no difference either way? His business experiences

• Helped a lot- 28%
• Helped some- 20%
• Hurt some- 12%
• Hurt a lot- 21%
• No difference either way- 11%
• Don’t know / No opinion- 9%

A question for you now: Should these people lose their right to vote?

• 2% think North Korea is an ally
• 2% think Iran is an ally
• 4% think Russia is an ally
• 1% think France is an enemy
• 2% think Germany is an enemy
• 1% think the U.K. is an enemy
• 1% think Canada is an enemy
• 4% think Mexico is an enemy
• 5% think Israel is an enemy
• 12% never heard of Mitch McConnell
• 6% never heard of Nancy Pelosi
• 15% never heard of Chuck Schumer
• 31% never heard iff Kevin McCarthy
• 5% never heard of Mike Pence
• 1% never heard of Donald J. Trump

Democratic primary voters may be as dumb as Trump supporters:

• 21% say they are more likely to vote for Biden because of how he handled Anita Hill
• 21% say they are more likely to vote for Biden because of his vote in favor of invading Iraq in 2002
• 45% say they are more likely to vote for Biden because of "his role in passing sweeping crime legislation during the 1990s."
• 51% say they are more likely to vote for Biden because of "his advocacy for free-trade deals including the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Trans-Paci􏰀c Partnership (TPP)"

As I've been saying Change Research is doing the best polls this cycle and they're the firm whose work I'm most interested in following. They have a new one out this week of New Hampshire Democratic primary voters. Findings include-- ZERO percent of these voters have a "very favorable" view of Trump (90% very unfavorable) or Pence (83% very unfavorable) and 30% have a very favorable view of Pelosi (9% very unfavorable). 92% think the country is on the wrong track. The two top issues, overwhelmingly so, are healthcare (23%) and Environment/Climate (15%). No other issues above 4%.

Now the favorability of the Democratic candidates-- this is a combination of "very favorable" and "somewhat favorable"

• Bernie- 73%
• Biden- 66%
• Elizabeth Warren- 65%
• Kamala- 58%
• McKinsey Pete- 56%
• Beto- 48%
• Cory Booker- 45%
• Stacee Abrams- 33%
• Amy Klobuchar- 28%
• Kirsten Gillibrand- 28%
• Julian Castro- 25%
• Tulsi- 21%
• Frackenlooper- 21%
• Eric Swalwell- 15%
• Andrew Yang- 15%
• Jay Inslee- 12%
• Seth Moulton- 11%
• John Delaney- 9%
• Tim Ryan- 8%
• Michael Bennet- 8%
• Marianne Williamson- 6%
• Mike Gravel- 5%
• Steve Bullock- 2%
• Wayne Messam- 2%

And who will they vote for in the nation's very primary?

• Bernie- 30%
• Biden- 26%
• McKinsey Pete- 12%
• Elizabeth Warren- 9%
• Kamala- 8%
• Beto- 3%

Everybody else is at 1%, 2% or zero percent. Kirsten Gillibrand is still at zero percent-- and still insisting it's because voters are against women. The candidate who was picked most frequently for second choice was Elizabeth Warren (19%), followed by Biden (15%), Bernie (14%), Kamala (13%) and McKinsey Pete (13%). No one else into the double digits. And this morning we get a new contestant, the mayor of New York City. I'm sure Trump will have fun with him. Why the hell is de Blasio doing this? Will he get out of the 1% Club? Nice video enough video though.





Now, where were we? Oh, yeah...which candidates do they think are smart? (Spoiler: not Biden, the front-runner.)

• Elizabeth Warren- 65%
• Bernie- 62%
• McKinsey Pete- 50%

Who do they think is tough?

• Elizabeth Warren- 62%
• Bernie- 56%
• Biden- 51%

Who do they think is likable?

• Biden- 64%
• Bernie- 56%
• McKinsey Pete- 52%

Who do they think is honest and ethical?

• Bernie- 62%
• Elizabeth Warren- 48%
• Biden- 47%

Who do they think is most likely to defeat Trump in 2020?

• Biden- 68%
• Bernie- 58%
• Elizabeth Warren- 35%

Yesterday Judd Legum did a Q&A with Bernie at Popular Information and Bernie made it clear he has a vision that goes beyond just beating Trump:

Our campaign is not designed to just defeat Donald Trump, but to also create a government that works for all people, not just the top one percent. What that means is that election day is not the end, it is the beginning. Our slogan is “not me, us”-- and by that I mean that no president can transform America alone. We need a mobilized movement of millions of people across America to defeat Trump, the most dangerous president in modern history, but to also then demand that their lawmakers in Washington start representing the 99 percent.

When we introduce a Medicare for All bill, our $15 minimum wage bill, serious gun reform, criminal justice reform to end private prisons, and legislation to repeal tax breaks for corporations and billionaires -- we are not going to be doing that in a vacuum. We are going to have millions of Americans demanding that their representatives reject the pressure from corporate lobbyists and pass this agenda.

American history tells us that this is not some pipe dream. Our country managed to pass the New Deal, Medicare, Medicaid and civil rights legislation. Despite powerful opposition and difficult congressional rules, those initiatives were ultimately able to pass because they had mobilized mass movements behind them. That’s what this political revolution is about.

Judd: One critical issue for a lot of Democrats is nominating someone with the best chance of beating Trump. The party itself is younger, female, and diverse. Some people think Democrats would be better off nominating someone who better reflects the composition of the party. Why are you the best person to take on Trump?

The Democratic Party must have a nominee who can take on Donald Trump, and I will support whoever we nominate out of the great group of people who are running.

I believe we need a nominee who is not afraid to directly challenge Trump and his billionaire backers. We also need a nominee with a proven record fighting for working people and also repeatedly winning elections when they go up against powerful Republican opponents. That is why I believe I am the best positioned to defeat Trump.

I have spent my entire life as a champion for working people, and I believe voters understand that our campaign is truly about challenging the establishment at a moment when that establishment has created so many of the crises we now face. This is why we already have an unprecedented grassroots movement behind our campaign: 1 million people have signed up to volunteer for the campaign, we have more than 525,000 individual donors, and we just had more than 4,700 organizing events across the country.

Now, let me be clear: this isn’t going to be easy. We’re going to have to take on the insurance industry, the pharmaceutical companies, fossil fuel CEOs, corporate agribusiness, the prison-industrial complex and so many other opponents. I am more confident than ever that by doing this, we are going to defeat Trump and transform this country.

One last poll for today: Survey Monkey did one for Business Insider that shows support for the Bernie/AOC plan to cap credit card interest rates-- the anti-loan shark bill.

The vast majority of both Republicans and Democrats who said they plan to vote in the 2020 presidential primary support legislation rolled out by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders last week that would cap credit-card interest rates at 15%.

Nearly 70% of Republican primary voters and 73% of Democratic primary voters said they either support or strongly support the proposal to cap rates at 15%, according to a new Insider poll. Just over 60% of respondents who don't plan to vote in the 2020 presidential primaries also said they support the bill, known as the Loan Shark Prevention Act.

Just 13% of GOP primary voters were opposed to the idea, while 7% of Democratic primary voters were opposed.

...[T]he bill would impose the cap on credit-card interest rates at the federal level and allow states to establish even lower interest rates. The bill would also give the Federal Reserve flexibility to allow lenders to charge higher rates if it's determined the federal cap "would threaten the safety and soundness of financial institutions."

The median credit-card interest rate was 21.36% as of last week, compared with 12.62% a decade ago, according to Creditcards.com. Meanwhile, Americans collectively hold more than $1 trillion in credit-card debt, according to the Federal Reserve.

The law would implement a 15% interest-rate cap on all federal loans and also institute postal banking-- allowing the US postal service to offer banking services as an alternative to payday lenders and commercial banks.

Always Count On Politico To Smear Bill De Blasio At Every Opportunity

Earlier we looked at the Washington Post’s silly list of potential 2020 presidential nominees. It’s not in the comedy section but it included Beltway nonsense non-candidates like The Rock (a wrestler who may be a Democrat… or not), Andrew Cuomo, Oprah Winfrey, Kamala Harris and Howard Schultz (the Starbucks guy) and Jerry Brown. Removed from The List: Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Kaine, Sheryl Sandberg and Trump hater Mark Cuban. Nowhere on any list: NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio. That’s sensible… but The Post list isn’t remotely sensible so… why not de Blasio. The Beltway, according to Politico, hates de Blasio. Too progressive for the Beltway and Politico’s most dependably ridiculous excuse for a journalist is here to reinforce that. “Friends and allies,” he wrote, “literally roll their eyes when they hear the New York City mayor is trying to go national again, and his own aides have become experts in stalling when he asks to do more, or at throwing distractions or making up excuses for why they weren’t able to pull something together. They hate it. They wish he would stop.” Do they? Friends and allies, no less. And impartial faux-journalists.

Here’s the paradox of Bill de Blasio: He’s the mayor of the biggest city in America, with now four years of a progressive record and just reelected with 66 percent of the vote, without any significant challenger, despite all the griping New Yorkers have been doing about him since Day One. He’s had major successes on universal pre-kindergarten and expanding affordable housing, while crime has continued to go down— stop-and-frisk, his predecessor’s hated police tactic, is all but gone— and development in New York has continued full swing. He was talking about progressive policy ideas literally decades before they became the Democratic Party mainstream. Between Eric Garcetti, Mitch Landrieu and Pete Buttigieg, it’s become normal to talk seriously about mayors making 2020 runs.

Yet among Democratic insiders, the reaction to putting de Blasio on that list tends to be, at best, an exhausted chuckle. Is he running for president? “No,” he said, simply and quickly. But because he’s Bill de Blasio, he takes pleasure in insisting that asking that question— even as he’s sitting at the Marriott Downtown in Iowa, recording one of several long interviews he did that day— is small-minded to the point of being ridiculous.

No, no. He’s up to something bigger, he says. Obviously.

“There’s a lot of people in the political media and the political class who can only think through the prism of elections and only the very next elections, rather than understanding that social change is made in a variety of fashions. It’s the electoral process. It’s what happens at the local level as well as the national level. It is through issue-organizing,” de Blasio argued on Politico’s Off Message podcast, describing his trip as the natural outgrowth of being “a progressive who wants to change things”— and therefore “needs to work with people who are trying to create that change all over the country.”

That was his official explanation for accepting an invitation to headline the recent Progress Iowa holiday party, where he talked about President Donald Trump sparking “the beginning of a progressive era,” but also about “my own personal grass-roots connection to Iowa”— his grandmother, born in Blanchard, Iowa in 1888— and all the “skeptics” and “doubting Thomases” who didn’t think a progressive could run a city.

That he could pull it off in New York City in this moment when progressive politics has been chased out of Washington and most state capitals is proof to de Blasio that he has earned the right to help set the direction of the Democratic Party going forward. He proudly bashes the Clintons, the post-2016 obsession with the loss of white working-class voters and the people who see the Ralph Northam and Doug Jones wins as proof that the party needs moderates to win. [In Politico-speak “conservative Democrats are always, always, always referred to as “moderates,” the most highly favored political description among American voters.]

“Part of why we’re in the mess we’re in is because we fell into a trap of triangulation and moderation, lost a lot of our identity and became unappealing to the very people who had been our support base,” he said in the interview.

The problem for de Blasio is that many progressives, Democrats and other mayors say they also don’t want him in this role— which adds up to a sort of national version of the public advocate job he held for four years in New York before becoming mayor. They’re already fed up with his pledge, now that he’s won a second and final term in City Hall, to make Iowa the first of many stops traveling the country to talk about progressive politics and progressive candidates.

“It’s laughable to think that the response to Trump is going to come from a progressive mayor whom progressives don’t rally around and mayors don’t respect,” said one high-placed Democratic operative.

They also don’t believe de Blasio will follow through. Remember that bold, but low-on-answers, “progressive agenda” he put out with a big news conference at the Capitol in Washington in May 2014? Remember the forum he was going to host in Iowa for presidential candidates to prove their progressive credentials? Remember the threats he made against other politicians— most prominently, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, his Tom & Jerry partner in the local media— to exact punishment against people whom he’d judge to have not followed through?

Nothing came of any of them.

…As long as they’re talking off the record, many Democratic leaders and operatives will trash de Blasio. They think he’s smug. Annoying. In it for himself without any follow-through. The rap on de Blasio is that he likes to make a lot of noise but doesn’t like to do a lot of work, that he has an oversize sense of his own importance.

It’s often visceral. One mayor, pondering why so many national Democrats don’t like de Blasio, took a long pause and could only summon, “I don’t know.”

Maybe it’s because they spend too much time reading Politico phony journalists who write “A number of them quietly pointed out that de Blasio spent much of that Saturday off to the side of the convention center hall by himself, checking emails on his phone.”

New York Had Elections This Week Too-- They Went Badly For Trump... And Badly For The Conservative Culture Of Corruption

Bannon & Mercer dumped $1 million in a futile attempt to save Trump buddy in Westchester

With all the commotion about the elections in Virginia and New Jersey Tuesday, don't be embarrassed if you didn't know that New York State had some important races too. Let's start with NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio's landslide victory over Staten Island Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis, a shady character who, several years ago, traveled to Cyprus with Mafia then-Congressman Michael "Mikey Suits" Grimm. De Blasio won better than two-to-one, 726,361 (66.5%) to 303,742 (27.8%). He won every borough but Staten Island where Malliotakis beat him 67,129 to 24,122.

The race that interested me the most was a New York City Council seat in Queens (Glendale, Maspeth, Middle Village, Ridgewood, Woodhaven and Woodside). There are 51 members of the Council and that was the only one where the incumbent lost. Who cares? Here's why I do: the incumbent is Elizabeth Crowley, a cousin and protégée of one of the most corrupt characters in New York politics, Congressman Joe Crowley, the Queens county machine boss and the heir apparent to Pelosi and Hoyer when they finally leave Congress, which will guarantee that the congressional Democrats will soon be even worse as a body than it is currently. Better yet, she was beaten by a registered Democrat, Robert Holden. Holden, a City University professor, ran on the Republican, Conservative and Reform Party lines after losing the primary. He noted that "We went toe-to-toe with the Democratic Party machine. We started the campaign in my garage." He beat her 10,221 to 10,088, so close that many who know how Crowley runs his machine, think he will deliver enough fake votes to deny Holden the win. Of the 51 members of the Council, only 3 are actual Republicans-- incumbents Eric Ulrich (Hamilton Beach, Howard Beach, Lindenwood, Ozone Park, Rockaway Beach, South Ozone Park and Woodhaven in Queens), Steven Matteo (Staten Island) and Joe Borelli (Staten Island's south shore).

There were 2 very important County Executive races in the NYC suburbs. Democrats beat two major GOP players. In Westchester County, George Latimer beat incumbent Rob Astorino, last year's GOP gubernatorial nominee, a longtime friend of Señor Trumpanzee. Mercer and Bannon put a million dollars into the race to prop up Astorino, who lost 116,767 (57%) to 89,463 (43%). Nassau is an even bigger county and anti-corruption Democrat Laura Curran beat state Senator Jack Martins, the Republican nominated to replace Steve Israel last year. Curran beat him 147,102 (51%) to 139,208 (48%).

There were 3 special elections for state legislative seats, one for the state Senate and 2 for the Assembly. Democrats won all 3 races. Brian Kavanagh moves from the Assembly to the state Senate, a seat including parts of his district in Lower Manhattan plus much of Downtown Brooklyn, Williamsburg, DUMBO and Brooklyn Heights. He won 32308 (85%) to Analicia Alexander's 5,587 votes (15.0%). Daniel Rosenthal and Alfred Taylor won races the Republicans didn't bother to even contest.

And then there was Question 1 statewide, a right-wing attempt to call a Constitutional Convention. Did that ever lose! The score was 2,773,852 (83.2%) to 558,314 (16.8%) and the NO votes won every single county, even the most Trumpy ones. It wasn't close anywhere.

"People familiar with the matter" say that somebody, possibly the new Chinese owners, plans to turn NYC Mayor de Blasio into condos

by Ken

'Cause you know what they say -- when you're in love, the whole world's turned into condos. Actually, I'm not entirely sure about the "in love" part. I just threw that in to make the thing sound user-friendlier, as I'm pretty darned sure about the "turned into condos" part. In present-day urban planning, if it isn't a candidate for being torn down to make way for a giant high-rise, then what's to be done with it except turn it into condos?

Take the case of the Waldorf=Astoria, one of NYC's most storied hotels and more historic institutions, which people have been murmuring increasingly is getting so tatty and un-cash-cowy as a hotel that there's nothing for it except to turn most of it into condos and the rest into super-deluxe hotel suites that if you have to ask how much they are you can't afford them.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Classic Waldorf Hotel to Be Gutted, Up to 1,100 Rooms Turned Into Condos



By CRAIG KARMIN

China’s Anbang, acquirer of the New York landmark, is finalizing plans to shut the hotel for up to three years and convert as many as three-quarters of its rooms into private apartments.

The Chinese acquirer of the Waldorf Astoria is finalizing plans for an extensive overhaul that would shut the landmark New York hotel for up to three years and convert as many as three-quarters of its rooms into private apartments, people familiar with the matter said.

Anbang Insurance Group Co.’s restoration plan calls for closing down the 1,413-room property in the spring, removing as many as 1,100 hotel rooms and eliminating hundreds of hotel jobs, the people said.

When the Waldorf reopens, the hotel will feature between 300 and 500 guest rooms upgraded to luxury standards, the people said. The remaining units will be sold as condominiums.

The vast reduction in Waldorf hotel rooms will lead to the elimination of many room-service, housekeeping and other hospitality jobs. The Waldorf has about 1,500 hotel employees. The new owners and Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc., which will continue to manage the property when it reopens, have reached severance agreements with hundreds of these workers at a cost of $100 million or more, some of the people familiar with the matter said.

The insurer plans to meet with Waldorf representatives during the next couple of weeks to finalize its proposal for the property, some of the people said. “We continue to explore all options,” an Anbang spokesman said. “We have no definitive plans at this time.”

The redevelopment costs are expected to run to more than $1 billion, said people familiar with the plan. Anbang already spent $1.95 billion to acquire the property last year, the steepest price tag ever for a U.S. hotel.

The changes will radically transform an 85-year-old institution that has played a storied role in American political and cultural life. Occupying a full city block on Park Avenue, the Waldorf gained world-wide attention for its luxury suites, lavish parties and famous guests. Every president since Herbert Hoover has stayed there, and it has been a New York home to celebrities such as Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Frank Sinatra, and the Duke of Windsor after he abdicated his throne to marry American socialite Wallis Simpson.

Hotelier Conrad Hilton, who acquired control of the property in 1949, once scribbled on a photo of the hotel that it was “the Greatest Of Them All.”

More recently, the hotel has struggled to live up to its history, and some guests and hoteliers say an upgrade is long overdue. The suites in the Waldorf’s tower building have their fans, but complaints about the hotel’s standard rooms are common. . . .

I'm guessing that by the time the Waldorf reopens there won't be anything about it that can sniggered at as "common." The irony here is that the last renovation of the Park Avenue lobby, largely aiming at restoring it to its once-fabled beauty and grandeur, has been generally accounted a considerable success. Thank goodness that can be expected to be wiped away.

The idea of converting NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio to condos apparently has its origins in the conviction that he has advanced so far in his plans to turn the city lock, stock, and barrel over to the League of Greedy NYC Developers (LGNYCD) LLP, building on the efforts of his immediate predecessors, Rudy "Toody" Giuliani and Emperor-Mayor Mike Bloomberg, that his full-time attention to the task will no longer be required. The LGNYCD membership is said to be especially pleased now with completion of the plan to reduce the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) to roughly the status and clout of a summer camp's Campers' Council on Academic Activities, previously reported in this space several weeks ago ("A series of NYC mayors have collaborated on taking the 'preservation' out of the Landmarks Preservation Commission").

This account was sent out by the hard-working Historic Districts Council (HDC):

Mayor Bill de Blasio Signs City Council Bill Intro. 775-A Into Law



Mayor Bill de Blasio has signed the City Council bill Intro. 775-A. Despite a unified front on the part of preservation groups and community advocates who called on the Mayor to veto the bill, it was signed into law on Tuesday, June 28, at City Hall. The law will impose timelines on the process for designating properties; something that has not been a part of the Landmarks Law in its 50-year history.

This is the most sweeping change to the Landmarks Law since the 1973 amendments that permitted the designation of interior and scenic landmarks, and allowed the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) to act at its own discretion and set its own schedule. 43 years later, the Mayor has approved a City Council action to remove that discretion and place firm deadlines on the agency’s ability to protect historic buildings. This law effectively makes the designation powers of the LPC much more limited, while providing the agency with no additional resources to perform its complex work.

The City Council voted in favor of the bill 38-10 on June 7, 2016.

HDC wishes to thank the preservation community for its vigilance in opposing this legislation, and for reaching out to your City Council representatives. It is important to remember that it is only through the efforts of the hundreds of individuals and organizations who raised their voices that the worst part of this bill, the 5-year moratorium on designation (included in the original Intro. 775 bill in 2015), was removed when this bill resurfaced.

The mayor's office, asked for comment, responded with the usual blather about quaintly so-called "affordable housing," its stock code-phrase for small numbers of units incorporated into LGNYCD high-rise "luxury housing" projects, units that if you have to ask how much they are you can't afford them -- sort of the way the Brits refer to their private schools as "public schools."

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A series of NYC mayors have collaborated on taking the "preservation" out of the Landmarks Preservation Commission

Already lost to the deadly combination of neglect and redevelopment greed is the beautiful, onetime neighborhood-anchoring East New York Savings Bank at the corner of Pennsylvania and Atlantic Avenues. The site lies within the now-mostly-low-rise section of Brooklyn's East New York designated for redevelopment at the urging of the de Blasio administration -- with, apparently, no protection to be hoped for anytime soon from the increasingly toothless NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission.

by Ken

Last year New Yorkers celebrated the 50th anniversary of the creation of our Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC), and the irony was widely noted: As we celebrated, everybody knew that the LPC is at a toothless low point, offering increasingly token opposition to the developers who see the very idea of "preservation" as an affront to their God-given right to squeeze every squeezable dollar out of every snatch of property they can get their hands on.

Like so much that's evil, the neutering of the LPC can be said to have started with Rudy Giuliani, the patron NYC mayor of greedy and crooked developers, but the job of neutering the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission was continued in much more systematic and encompassing fashion by Mayor Mike Bloomberg, and has continued with little let-up under Bill de Blasio. Rudy seems to have functioned like flypaper to swarming scuzballs. On their behalf he turned the LPC over to a monumentally unquallified developers' stooge, and moreover made it clear that he was perfectly prepared to flout laws to turn any available scrap of land over to lowlifes standing ready to disfigure it with crappy construction that both blighted neighborhoods while walking roughshod over the legitimate interests of the community.

Now it's important that we not think of "development" itself as evil, because obviously the prosperity of a community is tied to use of its land resources. But land is a nonrenewable resource, and communities have not only a right but an obligation to factor in common interests where they may conflict with simply allowing developers to maximize their short-term financial interests. "Mayor Mike" clearly had a more sophisticated understanding of this than did Rudy, but his sophistication mostly took the form of enabling developers as engineers of prosperity. By the time he left office, I'm told, his adminstration had overseen the rewriting of a huge swath of the city's zoning regulations, with many of the changes kicking in over a period of decades, like time-release drug capsules, ensuring wide-scale transformation with a minimum of public scrutiny.

Minimizing the scourge of "public scrutiny" has turned out to be a priority of the de Blasio administration. Last year the administrative string-pullers were taken aback by the uproar provoked by the attempt to deep-six those hundreds of in-the-pipeline landmark applications. The firestorm caused by an announced change in the law that would have permanently decalendared hundreds of proposed landmark sites that had been caught up in years' worth of delays. The response was so intense that the city had to back down, and devise a system for giving proper hearings to all those applications.

Ironically (our masters do have a flair for irony, don't they?), the administrative load added to the LPC's already massive work backlog provided a partial pretext for the latest, far more open assault on its work. City budgeters have already made sure that the LPC has nowhere near the resources it needs to do the job it's suppposed to. Now, without even a hint of increasing those resources, the string-pullers have by might and by stealth shoved through the City Council a law called Intro 775, which essentially sets a one-year limit for LPC consideration of applications it accepts.


LAST WEEK I ENJOYED A LOVELY WALKING
TOUR IN BROOKLYN'S EAST NEW YORK AREA

East New York, a large area in Brooklyn, is so large that it can't be talked about monolithically. In the decades since it was first mapped out, it has popped up periodically as a target for developers' bulldozers; now it's officially in the crosshairs. In the present state of NYC development, the area's distance from the city centers matters less than it once did, and portions of the are have reasonable subway access. So the area has become a target for wholesale high-rise redevelopment, with the enthusiastic support of our "progressive" Mayor Bill de B. During the primary process in which he emerged as both the front-runner and the Great Progressive Hope, there were people familiar with his political career who warned about his historic coziness with developers, and he seems to have come into office with a ready-to-go rezoning plan for East New York, which now been approved by the City Council.

Last week's walk, organized by the invaluable Historic District Council, was in the rezoned-for-development portion of East New York, as part of HDC's wonderful "Six to Celebrate" program. Each year six under-protected, potentially endangered areas of NYC are chosen for attention including walking tours. The East New York one was led by a pair of energetic activists from the local group Preserving East New York (PENY), Farrah Lafontant and Zulmilena Then, who gave us a feel for the neighborhood and introduced us to a number of beautiful buildings now put at risk by the impending arrival of high-rise development.


In this three-minute News12 Brooklyn clip, budding architect Zulmilena Then talks about the response of the grass-roots group Preserving East New York (PENY) to the threat posed by rezoning of part of East New York. On last week's Historic Districts Council-sponsored walk, Zulmilena told us that the LPC has indicated that, in view of its massive existing work backlog, East New York can't hope for near-future consideration.

PENY's cause is eminently worthy and reasonable, and one wishes them the best. What remains to be seen is whether they can have much impact if developers see Big Bucks in the East New York rezoning. Could the area benefit from economic revitalization? Of course. But if development takes hold, it's not going to stop there, and if the Big Bucks people get dollar signs in their eyes, well, it's going to be tough going, all the more so without help from the LPC.


WHICH BRINGS US BACK TO INTRO 775

Gone but not forgotten: one of NYC's truly
epic buildings, the original Penn Station

Even with LPC involvement, the chances of withstanding pressure from greedy developers wouldn't have been good. By now even many non-New Yorkers are familiar with the history: how New Yorkers were rudely awakened by the seemingly sudden, unexpected demolition of McKim, Mead and White's original, monumental Pennsylvania Station, and how the shock of that loss energized a public response that led to the creation of the Landmarks Preservation Commission, which teamed with a coterie of activists including Jackie Onassis when the same fate seemed poised to overtake Grand Central Terminal, whose salvation then hinged on legal proceedings that went all the way to the Supreme Court.

The LPC has certainly changed the face of NYC -- or at least preserved many important pieces of its historic faces. Over the years, however, it has not surprisingly shown itself to be increasingly disinclined to stand in open opposition to what we might call the forces of Big Bucks. So while a naive onlooker might think the application time limit proposed by Intro 775 represents an attempt to increase the commission's efficiency, its real intent is hardly even disguised. It's clearly designed to ensure that the commission will rarely have the time or resources to properly evaluate applications. And this time around, the Big Bucks string-pullers seemed better prepared for possible public outcry.

Here's how the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation's tireless crusader Andrew Berman described the action in a GVSHP e-mail yesterday headed "Two Big Blows to Preservation, and Some Hope":

Today the City Council voted 38 to 10 to approve the amended Intro. 775, an unnecessary and harmful bill which would make landmark designation harder and demolition of historic properties easier.  It would for the first time impose “drop dead” deadlines for the designation of individual landmarks and historic districts by the Landmarks Preservation Commission.  If the LPC fails to act within the prescribed timeframes, the buildings or districts would be removed from consideration as potential landmarks and demolition permits could be immediately issued.  No testimony was allowed at the Council’s Land Use Committee meeting and vote on the legislation yesterday, though GVSHP and allied community groups were there with signs urging the committee members to vote no, and the prior day held a press conference on the steps of City Hall urging rejection of the measure.

Clearly the public hoopla cut two ways in the struggle. While it threatened to impede the passage of Intro 775, it also alerted the people pushing for it to the need to do whatever they had to to promote passage, like barring testimony at the Land Use Committee and pushing the full council vote up a day.

In keeping with the "two big blows"-"some hope" theme of Andrew Berman's e-mail, here's his reckoning of the "bad news" about the Intro 775 actions:

By automatically deeming a building or district not landmarked if the LPC does not vote within one year on proposed individual landmarks and two years on proposed districts, the bill encourages powerful developers to delay and try to run out the clock, and discourages the Commission from considering or moving quickly to calendar (and provide preliminary protections for) complicated, controversial, or larger designation proposals.  More than half the buildings designated by the LPC over the fifty one years of its existence took longer to designate than Intro. 775 would allow.  Once the deadline for designation passes, the proposed historic building or site is automatically removed from the calendar, or consideration for landmark designation.  While the LPC can reconsider the building or site for designation, the process of adding a building or district to the “calendar” must, under the law, take several days; during that time a developer can file for demolition permits which would pre-empt any subsequent attempt to landmark the site, thus ending the possibility of designation.

So what's the "good news"?

Following our turning out hundreds to the City Council public hearing on the measure last September and generating thousands of letters to City Councilmembers in opposition, the bill was amended to remove one of its most odious provisions – a five year ban on reconsidering any building or district for potential landmark designation if the deadline is not met.  And eloquent and impassioned critiques of the bill were given by City Councilmember Corey Johnson, Rosie Mendez and Ben Kallos.  Councilmembers Johnson, Mendez and Kallos have been working tirelessly with us to try to address preservationists’ concerns about the bill, and joined us for and helped organize Monday’s press conference about the bill. We owe them a great debt of gratitude.

What's more, Andrew wrote, "there is some very important additional good news."

Conversations between preservation organizations and the LPC indicate that the LPC believes that it can, if necessary, get around the “drop dead” provisions of Intro. 775’s deadlines and keep buildings or districts under consideration for designation without any gap in coverage which would allow demolition permits to be issued.  The LPC has indicated that they believe they have the option to de-calendar and re-calendar a proposed individual landmark or district contemporaneously before the deadline is hit. This way there would be no gap in coverage (as opposed to passing the deadline, having the site automatically de-calendared, and then beginning the process of re-calendaring), and the clock on the one-to-two year deadlines would be re-started.  The LPC indicated that they believe that if necessary they can repeat this process.

Andrew added: "It would require vigilance and extraordinary action on the part of advocates and the Landmarks Preservation Commission to ensure that this happens."

But it would be an important and in some cases necessary way to circumvent the pro-demolition provisions of Intro. 775 and prevent historic properties worthy of consideration for landmark designation from being lost.  

Of course the City Council should have scrapped Intro. 775 altogether, or amended it as proposed by preservation organizations including GVSHP to require the LPC to vote within a prescribed timeframe on all proposed designations, but allow the Commission to vote yes, no, or to continue to consider when more time is needed.  The sponsors of the legislation refused to consider this reasonable option.

YES, I'M TRYING TO WRITE REGULARLY AGAIN

As I explained Wednesday (in a post devoted to two great New Yorker cartoonists, the late William Hamilton and the still-very-much-with-us Roz Chast), Howie persuaded me to try a Wednesday-Friday-Sunday schedule. We'll see how it goes.

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