Lobenthal.com

De Blasio’s “affordable” housing has always been closer to low-grade luxury rental than it has to actual accessibility by the people who need it most.

But his alleged pursuit of affordability as a rationale for upzoning has allowed him to turn the city over to the developers, no questions asked, thus precipitating widespread displacement and destruction of historic buildings and a new generation of behemoths that wreck the scale of the city, eliminate human scale and diversity of scale. And it gave him cover as he worked systematically and successfully to sabotage landmark preservation.

As Juan Rivero at Village Preservation notes, de Blasio used his affordable housing as “sword and shield,” deflecting any criticism of the initiative by insisting it was directed against affordability–rather than against de Blasio’s fraud. Rivero writes that “it has helped city officials label those who opposed the plan as anti-affordable-housing racists.”

I say that de Blasio, Chin, Johnson, Rivera and others need to be sued for conspiracy to defraud New York City.

They grow more intractable and arbitrary by the day, and in return they raise more and more money from Republican donors.

Manchin’s latest demands concerning Build Back Better are absolutely gonzo. He is an malevolent, stupid, selfish and greedy man.

I’m afraid that Pramilla Jayuapal may lose her position as chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus over her too-credulous acquiescence to Biden’s request for a separate vote on the BIF, which robbed the CPC of any leverage at all to pass Build Back Better in the Senate.

Biden assured her he would deliver 50 Senate votes for BBB. When will progressives learn: you never, ever take the word of an Establishment Democrat. Biden is unwilling to get tough with Manchin by telling him not to expect anything for West Virginia if he doesn’t cut the crap.

I have to wonder, too, what thoughts go through Biden’s head when he recalls all those statements he made on the campaign trail about how the Republicans would experience an epiphany once Trump was out of office?

Village Preservation has published an informtive debriefing on the Soho/Noho/Chinatown upzoning catastrophe. Instructive is the account’s rationale for the frantic, slovenly haste with which the city moved to get this lemon of a proposal over the finish line.

Christopher Marte had won the democratic primary for Margaret Chin’s NYC Council seat back in June. Marte was vociferously opposed to the upzoning scam, and as a Democrat he was a shoo-in to win the general election in November. It was essential to get councilmembers Chin, Johnson, and Rivera, each representing part of the area targeted, on board; had the vote come after Marte replaced Chin in January, in all likelihood the project would have been scuttled.

“The entire process was timed to ensure that Marte would not have a direct say in the outcome,” VP writes.

But five members demonstrated integrity yesterday, voting against de Blasios’s monstrous Soho/Noho/Chinatown upzoning, sherpad through the council by the inglorious sell outs Chin, Johnson & Rivera.

The five who stood up for New York: Members Kallos, Menchaca, Holden, Barron and Yeger.

Th rest should be sued for knowingly and willingly committing massive fraud against the people of New York City.

In the Boston Globe, Elizabeth Warren calls for the Court to be expanded:

“I don’t come to this conclusion lightly or because I disagree with a particular decision; I come to this conclusion because I believe the current court threatens the democratic foundations of our nation.”

Institutions that no longer fulfill their mandate to promote democracy and self-governance must be reformed.

Like Margaret Chin, Johnson’s City Council tenure ends in disgrace.

When Johnson announced that he would not accept real estate contributions for his since-ended mayoral bid, I made up my mind to support him then and there.

So I am gobsmacked that Speaker Johnson, who is also my district’s council member, has chosen, like Chin and Rivera, to say Fuck You to New York City by not only supporting de Blasio’s sham upzoning but directing the Council staff controlled by him to make it happen.

This is a terrible betrayal.

There is a regrettable precedent at the council wherein the individual council members whose districts are condemned to upzoning can expect the balance of the council to support whatever is their decision.

Therefore this disastrous upzoning–a massive fraud perpetuated on the people of New York– is headed for approval because of three individuals: Chin, Johnson, and Rivera. The proposal’s rejection by numerous politicos and the neighborhoods’ residents meant absolutely nothing.

This is a fateful week for NYC. The Soho/Noho/Chinatown upzonig is a blueprint for the extinction of this city. If New York is to survive, something must be done to wrest exclusive approval for land-use matters from the council.

The sad thing is, Johnson was done many good things and his staff has helped me on several occasions. But I can never vote for him again, should he ever return to politics.

Let’s make this very clear to New Yorkers: Council Members Chin, Johnson, and Rivera are voting for a proposal that they know will result in untold misery for their constituents, who will lose their neighborhoods to monster condos and who will be displaced from their rent-regulated apartments.

As Samuel Stein writes in his book Capital City, upzoning is a massive seizure of public assets, “turning everyone’s airspace into someone’s property.”

With Wallace gone, it stands exposed as exclusively a venue for hate speech, treasonous anti-America incitement, Fascist propaganda, and Tucker Carlson broadcasting his sexual anxieties.

Village Preservation tells us that one member of the City Council’s either zoning or land-use committees ignored the electioneering of Members Chin and Rivera and voted against this disastrous Soho/Noho/Chinatown upzoning.

Who was it?

De Blasio’s plan to ravage Soho/Noho/Chinatown with massive upzoning and displacement has been denounced by many preservation and tenant advocacyy groups, by US Congress Members Maloney and Nadler, by NY State Senator Hoylman, NY Assesmbly Member Glick, NYC Community Board 2, and on and on and on.

Yet it is moving to a final vote because of two NYC Council members: Margaret Chin and Carlina Rivera.

To save NYC, at a bare minimum the local community boards must be empowered. There is courage in numbers, and surely a community board is less likely to succumb to threats, intimidation, coersion by the mayor or private entities than individual members of the City Council.