Lobenthal.com

Their power has just been eviscerated by the Adams/developers scam ratified yesterday by New Yorkers blitzed with billionaire-funded propaganda about these ballot issues. The old “affordable housing” nag was led once more around the track. These atrocious measures will, in fact, ensure that housing in NYC is more unaffordable than ever.

This is the City Council’s reward for its years of obsequious yea-saying to every up zoning scheme that has advanced the monstrous overdevelopment and the ever-rising cost-of-living in NYC.

Good-bye City Council, hello mayoral and developer fiat.

FROM VILLAGE PRESERVATION:
“NYC voters approved ballot measures 2,3, and 4, which permanently hand unilateral decision-making authority to the Mayor on an incredibly broad range of land use decisions, removing the City Council and by extension the public from having a real say in these decisions. The well-funded campaign to support these measures successfully convinced a majority of voters they would improve affordability in our city, when in fact they would open the door to more rapid gentrification, less affordability, fewer investments in infrastructure to support new development, fewer protections for tenants and small businesses, and more corrupt, closed-door decision-making.”

The developers’ take over of New York City is virtually complete. We will see if Mamdani can/will do anything to reverse it. Unless he can, this is a city on its way out.

At Common Dreams, Jon Queally salutes Mamdani’s victory as “a new kind of politics that puts the needs of working people at the center after decades of failed leadership that put corporate interests and the desires of the wealthiest first.”

They want a future. They know that current policies are denying that to them.

reviling them “stupid” if they vote for Mamdani.

This just goes on and on with him; remember how Trump told us a year ago that if he lost it would be the fault of Jews?

And let’s not forget that, as Robert Reich says today, Hitler is Trump’s “role model.”

Vote NO on ballot questions 2-3-4.

It was a pleasure to hear actual human voices articulate from the stage of the Studio 54 Theatre during Almeida Theatre’s Oedipus, a clever contemporary transposition of Sophocles’ 2,500 year old tragedy. Actors really knew how to project back then in the open-air Theatre of Dionysus. If today’s crew were miked, the miking was so subtle that you could have fooled me. Some of the sound effects, on the other hand, are little over loud. But you could hear every word the actors spoke, and the audience seemed extra attentive as they acclimated to the fact that they really needed to listen up.

you did warn us about what another term for Trump would mean.

But your decision to pardon the banisters in 1008 and then let the foreclosed hang out to dry ushered in the conditions that made Trump or a Trump inevitable.

And your decision not to fight Mitch McConnell as he assaulted the Constitution and refused to give Merrick Garland a hearing helped lead to the totalitarian, totally corrupt John Roberts majority.

I have yet to hear one corporate Democrat express any remorse over the neoliberal policies that helped bring us to this point, although Biden has expressed some regret over his total lack of messaging.

But Hillary Clinton says she lost only because she is a woman.

Kamala Harris says she lost only because her campaign didn’t. have enough time.

Isn’t interesting that this morning the Washington Post was reporting on the Center in freefalll, when this afternoon Trump LieSocial’d a post about how supposedly gorgeous his Marie Antoniette redecoration scheme there is. True to form, in the process of killing KC, Trump posts that before him it “was dead as a doornail.”

The classic Trump formula: lie and smear an institution as you illegitimately assume leadership. Destroy said institution, while you lie and claim that you’ve saved it.

She was a joy to interview about Diana Sands, Hal Ashby, and The Landlord back in 2016. Glad to finally now see her words in print. Steve and I can assure you that you’ve never read them before!

She’s very playful: she asked me questions about Diana, and at the end of our telephone conversation said, “It was lovely talking to you. I loved interviewing you.”

Needless to say, she’s had a fabulous career and was the most smashing actress. I haven’t seen any of the films she’s directed, but I mean to.