A Second Look at the Headlines: Two Council Speaker Candidates Declare Victory; Press Ignores Supreme Court Judge Conviction – NYC Depression

By Gary Tilzer

Adrienne Adams, Francisco Moya both declare victory in the council speaker’s race – which is impossible (City and State)

Confusion, lying smoke and spinning reigned in the Council Speaker’s race, as both candidates’ public relations war rooms sent out press releases Tuesday one-hour and twenty-two minutes apart claiming that they had the votes to win the Council Speaker’s race.

Council Member Adrienne Adams kicked it off Tuesday afternoon at 1:28PM with a press release announcing that four of the seven speaker candidates had dropped out of the race to endorse her bid to lead the council – and appeared to claim that this meant she would be next speaker. Then Council Member Francisco Moya responded with a tweet, at 2:50 p.m. “I am humbled to announce that our diverse coalition of Council Members and leaders from across New York City has collected a majority of votes to elect the next speaker of the Council.”

City and State wrote: “But a political consultant involved in the (council speaker race) race put some of Tuesday’s confusion at the foot of the incoming members. ‘Everyone’s lying to everyone,’” they said, “and everyone’s being caught saying they’re supporting both.”  Note: It is wrong for a reporter to quote an anonymous consultant in a story, they always have an agenda. The media needs to tell its readers the names of the power brokers involved for both sides, because some of them will be running the new council. In the next few days, the power brokers on both sides will be burning the phones promising everything to the councilmembers on the opposite side if they switch their vote. By next week or before, those power brokers will be making threats.

A story that comes to mind: In 1990 Peter Vallone, Sr. was elected when council members Bob Dreyfuss who was expected to vote with the rest of the Manhattan delegation for Ruth Messinger, voted for Vallone at the last minute, giving him the speaker’s chair by one vote.

 

City’s Newspapers Ignore A NYS Supreme Court Judge Obstructing of Justice Federal Court Conviction 

Local newspapers and news blogs ignored Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Sylvia Ash conviction of obstructing a federal investigation of a Credit Union embezzlement. A federal jury found Justice Sylvia Ash, who has served as a New York state judge since 2006, guilty of conspiracy, obstruction and making a false statement to a federal agent following a two-week trial in Manhattan.

The verdict was returned Monday in Manhattan Federal Court after jurors heard evidence supporting charges that she took steps over multiple months to obstruct the investigation into financial misconduct at the Municipal Credit Union while she chaired the organization’s board of directors. “Obstruction of justice, particularly by a sitting state court judge, is a serious crime, and Ash now faces punishment for her obstruction scheme,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a release. The Daily News did not report the conviction despite reporting on the start of the trial two weeks earlier. The NY Times has not covered the NYS courts or made endorsements of judicial candidates since Dorothy Samuels left the paper over a decade ago.

The NYS Courts have become unknown to most New Yorkers due to lack of media coverage. Most voters have no idea who they are voting for in the few contested Civil Court Judge races or political boss controlled judicial convention nominated NYS Supreme Court Judicial candidates, which are on the ballot in November’s general elections. The Brennan Center for Justice said the NYS system “entrusts the selection of judges neither to the voting public nor to elected officials. Instead, unaccountable political party leaders control every step of the Supreme Court Judicial Convention process. Justice Stevens on the U.S. Supreme Court called the law that NYS uses to elect its NYS Supreme Court Judges “A Stupid Law.”

 

The City has Plunged into Its Worse Financial Crisis Since the Great Depression. . . Welcome Mayor Adams

 The Times described the cause of the economic depression as the pandemic but left out what every New Yorker and potential tourist now fear about the city, the rise in crime. The repair of the city’s economy is now in the hands of Mayor-Elect Adams and his new Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell.

The NY Times article The ‘Double Whammy’ That Is Slowing New York City’s Job Growth describes how hard hit NYC’s economy is and that the city is not recovering as fast as the rest of the nation.  The Times described the cause of the economic depression as the pandemic but left out what every New Yorker and potential tourist now fear about the city, the rise in crime. The repair of the city’s economy is now in the hands of Mayor-Elect Adams and his new Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell.

The city regained fewer than 6 of every 10 jobs it lost since the pandemic began, while the nation as a whole regained more than 90 percent of lost jobs. The national unemployment rate is 4.2 but the city rate is 9.4, and its decline in recent months was largely caused by people dropping out of the labor force. From the start of the pandemic, no other large American city has been hit as hard as New York or has struggled as much to replenish its labor force and businesses. Nearly a million people lost their jobs in the early months of the pandemic, and thousands of businesses closed.

The pandemic and now crime has ravaged some of the city’s core economic engines like tourism, hospitality, and retail:

 

The protracted pandemic has shut out tourists and scared off the crush of suburbanites who filled office towers every weekday — a “double whammy.” Just 8 percent of office workers were back at work five days a week in early November. Their absence has contributed to the loss of more than 100,000 jobs in the city’s restaurants, bars, and hotels, plus nearly 60,000 additional jobs in retailing, performing arts, entertainment and recreation. Before the pandemic, the tourism industry in New York City employed 283,000 people, with the majority of those jobs in Manhattan. By the end of 2020, roughly a third of those positions had been eliminated.

 

Many of the New City Council Members Ran on A Platform of Raising Taxes on Wall Street, which is Single-Handley Saving the City Economy from Collapsing

 

In the two previous recessions — those that started in 2000 and 2008 — Wall Street shrank, and the city lost tens of thousands of high-paying finance jobs. This time, the job losses on Wall Street have been minimal, helping tax collections to hold up as the city has continued to collect income tax from high-paid professionals who are working remotely. The Citizens Budget Commission. “Wall Street has helped prop up the city’s income tax revenues and business tax revenues.”  If the city’s economy is not repaired before the COVID money is used up, Cuts in city jobs, services and programs are likely.