Saturday, December 30, 2006

HELLO JOHN EDWARDS, GOOD-BYE HILLARY CLINTON. SUGGESTION TO RALPH NADER: HELP EDWARDS OR SIT THIS ONE OUT.

UP FRONT News December 30, 2006
Published by Tom Weiss
Editorial Advisor: Willard Whittingham

“The paper that can’t be bought and can’t be sold.” www.tomsupfrontnews.blogspot.com

It is clear that, at this point, the most progressive presidential candidate with a realsitc chance of winning is John Edwards. Mr. Edwards evidently made a much stronger im- pression on voters when he was the Democratic candidate for Vice-President than did his running mate John Kerry. While Kerry sought to mollify the Hillary Clinton Republican wing of the Democratic Party by assuring them that he was not a “redistributionist”, Ed- wards, with his “two Americas” message, was focusing on poverty and the de facto need for redistribution of the wealth. It is a measure of the threat to the right that Edwards is that he has already been attacked by Rupert Murdoch’s rag, the New York Post, Murdoch being a supporter both George W. Bush and Hillary Clinton.

John Edwards, who to be sure is not eligible for food stamps or for Section 8 housing, is however apparently ready to take on the multinational corporations with his hiring of “free trade” nemesis former Congressman David Bonior as campaign manager.

Mr. Edwards has already made it impossible for Hillary Clinton to try to recast herself as a peace candidate since, unlike the militaristic Clinton, he has openly acknowledged that his vote as a U.S. Senator for the Iraq War was a mistake. As I suggested during my recent Democratic write-in campaign for the U.S. Senate, the only way that Hillary Clin- ton will admit a mistake is if she is paid to do so.

Among the issues that John Edwards has not yet spoken on is the continuing Chinese Communist Genocide in Occupied Tibet and the very related matter of rising opposition among human rights activists to the 2008 Olympic Games scheduled to take place in Beijing. Hillary Clinton, like her husband and the Cheney/Bush Administration, is a major component of the cover-up of the Genocide in Tibet. The cover-up, which is of course backed by the corporate world, exists because China means money. And for sure the Olympic Games means money. The very important NYC John Edwards meet-up, chaired by the no nonsense progressive Touro College political science professor, Steven Gardman, recently voted to urge Sen. Edwards to openly denounce the Chinese regime for its occupation of Tibet and to call upon the International and U.S. Olympic Committees to rescind the decision to award the 2008 Games to Beijing and, if necessary, call for a U.S. boycott of any Games played in China.

I think that Edwards, except if he has Mrs. Clinton as a running mate, can be elected. The moribund Republicans, offering the autocratic Rudolph Giuliani, the military minded John McCain and the apparently somewhat homophobic Mitt Romney, should lose the White House. The Republicans, however, as they have in the past, are counting on the Green Party and the Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. infiltrators within to help them out. The Greens, very much under the influence of the LaRouche educated racist “Independent”, Lenora Fulani and her local lemmings such as Paul Zulkowitz, Howie Hawkins, and Gerald Kann, will try to encourage Ralph Nader or some other perhaps otherwise well-intentioned political dupe to run for president on their tattered ballot line. The idea, as always, would be to split the left by outlefting it. If Ralph Nader falls for that again, it would truly be Nader’s nadir.
* * * * * * *

Sunday, December 03, 2006

HYPER-SHOOTERS AND HYPOCRITES. GOOD COPS-BAD COPS. WHY ARE POLICE NOT MENTAL HEALTH SCREENED?

UP FRONT News December 2, 2006
Published by Tom Weiss
Editorial Advisor: Willard Whittingham

“The paper that can’t be bought and can’t be sold.” www.tomsupfrontnews.blogspot.com

HYPER-SHOOTERS AND HYPOCRITES. GOOD COPS-BAD COPS. WHY ARE POLICE NOT MENTAL HEALTH SCREENED? MICHAEL BLOOMBERG: TRYING TO LOOK GOOD RATHER THAN DO GOOD.

Over the years I have been acquainted with some very good cops. I have also been the victim on several occasions of police abuse, sometimes bordering on brutality. I have been falsely arrested on a number of occasions, once in the office of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on the day before Bill Clinton’s first inauguration when I came to testify before that Committee on the Chinese Communist Genocide in Tibet. (I was later acquitted at trial, although the Bill, Hillary Clinton, and Cheney/Bush cover-up of the Genocide in Occupied Tibet continues.) I was also arrested back in 1977 because of my efforts to blow the whistle on a cover-up of budget cut caused patient deaths at City-operated Queens Hospital Center.

Although police, particularly in places like New York City and Washington, D.C. have singularly stressful jobs, least suited for those with behavior problems, it is clear that little in the way of screening is done for a job that attracts both actual do-gooders and psycho- pathic power and violence freaks and well as perhaps a disproportionate (to the rest of the population) number of racists.

It is for this reason, among some others, that in particular black people will continue to be shot down by police who do not handle stress well - and, who, in white cases, don’t like blacks. Among the relatively under-reported realities of the Amadou Diallo killing was the fact that two of the cops involved unloaded far more bullets than the other two. And yet, all four cops were acquitted in what I regard as a miscarriage of justice, at least as regards the two hyper-shooters.

The legal outcome of the killing of Sean Bell is months and perhaps years off. In any case, it is significant that most of the bullets were fired by one cop.

Politically, I feel that, while the Revs. Al Sharpton and Herbert Daughtry have, without diluting their anger, been forthright and dignified through this entire matter, the same can certainly not be said for Michael Bloomberg, a Mayor who seems to be obsessed, as are so many politicians (Christine Quinn and Hillary Clinton being local cases in point), by the desire to look good rather than the need to do good.

Outgoing City Councilman (about to become State Senator) Bill Perkins recently said at a post-election analysis meeting in Harlem that in certain ways Bloomberg is “worse” than his predecessor, the oppressive Rudolph Giuliani. I agree. Michael Bloomberg, who needs to ingratiate himself with black politicians, has pursued a justice-ignoring, anti-poor agenda that shows him to be the Republicrat that he is. He consistently defended to NYPD’s Beijing-style approach to the anti-Republican National Convention protests ob- jecting to the presence of Cheney and Bush, whom Bloomberg invited to a city that pair consistently disrespect. Bloomberg’s pro-development policies are endangering working class communities from the Lower East Side of Manhattan to the South Bronx (theYan- kee Stadium ripoff) to Stapleton, S.I. These policies catalyze gentrification, causing eco- nomic displacement, homelessness, and ultimately crime. He ignores major human rights violations (such as those against me) and gives money to neo-fascists like Lenora Fulani and Fred Newman, (both ideological agents of the racist mega-nazi, Lyndon H. La- LaRouche, Jr.) who have helped him get elected over (relatively) liberal Democrats. And, in a blatant act of hypocrisy, he says there is nothing he can do about the fact that some City workers are so underpaid that they have to get food stamps, while signing legislation to award the City Council (a part-time job) and some of his already highly paid aides a whopping salary increase.

No matter what kind of smooth talk comes from Michael Bloomberg, his mayoralty has nothing to do with justice.

And, in any case, it is time for anyone seeking to become a policeperson to undergo a total mental health evaluation.
* * * * * * *

ST. MARK’S IN-THE-BOWERY CHURCH OUR LADY OF LYNDON AND LENORA? THE PROBLEM WITH “9/11 TRUTH”

UP FRONT News December 2, 2006
Published by Tom Weiss
Editorial Advisor: Willard Whittingham

“The paper that can’t be bought and can’t be sold.” www.tomsupfrontnews.blogspot.com

St. Mark’s in-the-Bowery Church in the East Village neighborhood in Manhattan, is
justifiable known as a center of cultural and political activity. The annual New Year’s Day Poetry Marathon, run by the St. Mark’s-based Poetry Project is always a great show.

I am a member of the church and services there tend to be human rights oriented. There is, however, a neo-fascist skeleton there that is not even in the closet.

The St. Mark’s-based so-called “9/11 Truth” group, led by Assistant Pastor Frank Morarales, has, under a non-elected, self appointed government including slick but oppressive operators like the mega-fascist/convicted felon Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr./“Green”-orient-ed Les Jamieson, become a dysfunctional dictatorship where dissenters, such as myself and “9/11 Truth” regular Mike Filippone, are harassed and threatened. St. Church has, particularly at its Sunday evening “9/11 Truth” meetings, become a sounding board for neo-fascists like the psychopathic terrorism-linked Geoffrey Blank, and LaRouche”intellectuals” like Webster Tarpley. On December 4, 2005, Blank was allowed to speak there, totally falsely claiming to be the president of the No Police State Coalition, a falsehood that Morales and Jamieson were fully aware of. Blank came accompanied by a bunch of his brownshirts such as the troll-like St. Mark’s frequenter known only as “Crazy Carl”, with clubs concealed in their pants, LaRouche-style - for use on me. Jamieson has personally threatened me on two occasions because of my objections to his withholding of the facts on Tarpley from the “9/11 Truth” membership. On November 26, 2006 an apparently Green Party associated thug, as yet unidentified, but well known to Morales, Jamieson and others in the self-appointed “9/11 Truth”government including Tom Foti and Luke Rudkowski, menacingly invited me to “step outside” because I had suggested that there be an elected government. Morales, as he usually does, handled the matter in classically “blame the victim” fashion by coming over to me, physically pushing me a bit, and warning me that I might be thrown out. My requests of Foti and Rudkowski for the name of the LaRouche-style thug who threatened me in front of them were met with what is known in the NYPD as a blue wall of silence. In any case, because of the political nature of the harassment, I have made a formal complaint to NYPD.

Formal complaints have also been submitted to Katharine Jefferts Schori, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church and to Bishop Thomas Sisk, who heads the New York Diocese. They need to know that there is a LaRouche encampment in their midst.
* * * * * * *

NO TO SECURITY DEPOSIT INCREASES. UNTIL THE LANDLORDS OPEN THEIR BOOKS REMEMBER “FLYNN-DEARIE”

UP FRONT News December 3, 2006
Published by Tom Weiss
Editorial Advisor: Willard Whittingham
“The paper that can’t be bought and can’t be sold.” www.tomsupfrontnews.blogspot.com

Any regulation that would allow landlords to charge more than one month security deposit will only worsen the already serious housing crisis facing poor and homeless people. It is a fact that there are millions of New Yorkers who scrape through on marginal and often fixed incomes who are in no position to generate the thousands of dollars mul- tiple months security deposits would require.

Indeed, in the absence of laws requiring landlords to open their books for any sort of rent or security deposit increase, no such increases should be awarded. Indeed, it is to be hoped the New York State legislature will consider an “open the books” requirement such as was contained in the oft-introduced in the past and (thanks to the landlord lobby in cahoots with so-called tenant “advocate” Mike McKee) defeated Flynn-Dearie Rent Protection Act. Under such a system a landlord in need of a rent (or security deposit) increase could justify such a demand by proving need.

Indeed, in a City with thousands of homeless people, with a hanging-by-a-threat and under-funded Section 8 program, with many neighborhoods experiencing widespread gentrification threats (the Lower East Side and Harlem being conspicuous cases in point), and with many tenants paying confiscatory portions of our income for rent, a multiple security deposit requirement constitutes an attack on the poor and middle class. It cannot be justified.

The idea that tenants should help pay for lead paint removal is also an attack on the poor. Landlords are responsible for the maintenance of their properties. For landlords who can prove need, tax abatements should be made available.

As regards a proposal that tenants overcharging roommates be evicted, considering what many landlords get away with (I know – the abusive Thomas Berger, President of the Association of Commercial Property Owners, king of the loftlords, was my landlord), such a proposal is overkill. Evictions cause homeless. A landlord that can prove over- charging by a tenant should be able to get a judge to order the offender to pay the money back.
* * * * * * *