Lobenthal.com

She knows she has to do it. But even so, it hurts. At TalkPoverty, she explains.

Andrew Berman says that Councilwoman Rivera told him over the phone last weekend that she would not vote for Tech Hub without zoning and landmark protections.

Assuming that he’s telling the truth, which I do assume, we must ask what happened between a week ago and last Wednesday, when Rivera went ahead and tanked her credibility as well as future career in NYC politics by reneging on her promise and betraying her constituency.

Btw, Speaker Johnson who is my local Council member, faces a crucial turning point this week, when the full Council votes on whether it will allow the Tech Hub rezoning to obliterate the North East Village.

Speaker Johnson simply cannot maintain his progressive bona fides and go ahead with the neighborhood-wrecking scam.

Sarah Kendzior, journalist with an authoritarianism portfolio, speaking on AM Joy recognizes that in the upcoming election, “the GOP may simply not concede. We need to remember Roy Moore, for example, never conceded. This is a party that is not interested at this point in democracy. They want a one-party state to protect the president whose loyalty is not to this country. And I think they will go through any means necessary to do that.”

“We all know that once her vote has been cast, she loses all her leverage and it’s wishful thinking that anything more will be granted by the administration,” Andrew Berman, executive director of Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, tells The Villager.

“Carlina did pledge when she was running [for City Council last year], in writing, that she would not vote for the Tech Hub without the neighborhood protections,” Berman said. “And she told me verbally over the weekend that she wouldn’t vote for it without them. Disappointingly, that’s exactly what she did. . .

“We have a lame-duck mayor who doesn’t care about these issues and is even hostile to them. It was not as important to Carlina as we would have hoped.”

Incredibly, Councilwoman Rivera dares to claim on her website that preservation is one of her major concerns.

Sen. McConnell and the GOP simply make up the roles as they go along. And always, of course, to benefit themselves.

Now, the National Archives have become co-opted by the GOP and will work only for them.

Dems: Shut the Senate down!

It’s not good enough to realize retroactively that you should have done it over Merrick Garland, as Sen. Schatz belatedly admits.

And please, after the abuses of power we’ve seen from the GOP, not a word, if the Dems somehow manage to ever win another majority, not a word, I repeat, about bipartisanship. That is something that Mitch McConnell destroyed for the foreseeable future.

She just threw away any leverage she had to ensure zoning and landmark protections for the Tech Hub environs, and yet she thinks we are so dumb that we would swallow her claim that she signed on the dotted line only in order somehow to win more of those protections from the Mayor.

Sheer double talk from an office holder who reneged on her campaign promises–less than one year after taking office.

The Kochs led America to ruin, and now they are being targeted by the ever-more maniacal hoardes of ill-informed graduate students in Tea Party Trumpery.

At Daily Kos, Mark Sumner describes step-by-step how the Kochs “turned the GOP into a crazy train, then left the keys where any idiot could find them.”

Deputy Mayor Glen? De Blasio himself?

The ululations comeong from the De Blasio administration let you know that the fix was in and they’re crowing about it.

Rivera had a potentially distinguished career in front of her, which she has now trashed.

The outright corruption and cynicism is sad and disturbing.

After saying on the campaign trail that she wouldn’t vote for Tech Hub without neighborhood protections, she goes ahead and votes for Tech Hub without neighborhood protections.

This is one more reminder that we don’t have anything approaching representative government in New York City (there we are, of course, a microcosm of the national scene).

Even for me, a lifelong resident of this corrupt metropolis, Rivera’s hypocrisy is staggering. It took her but a few months to defecate on her own campaign platform.

Thus Tech Hub passes out of committee and goes to the full City Council for a vote.

Heads up, Councilwoman Rivera’s primary challenger: this is one important issue on which to defeat her.

Another GOP hack ends his long career in disgrace:

Sen. Hatch has the temerity to kvetch that Democrats are insisting on examining Brett Kavanaugh’s paper trail.

This is the same Orrin Hatch who conspired with Mitch McConnell to deny Merrick Garland a confirmation hearing.