By ISAAC MONTEROSE
A Manhattan City Council member and supporters held a rally at City Hall Thursday to introduce a campaign finance reform law designed significantly to raise the cap on public funding in local races.
Democrat Ben Kallos, advocated that the spending limit for public funds be raised from $638, 825 to $995,571.
The proposal was portrayed at a later hearing of the Council Committee on Governmental Operations as a way to help candidates who aren’t connected to wealthy donors.
“No matter what your cause,” said Kallos, “the road to victory starts with campaign finance reform that amplifies the voices of residents over special interests.”
Citing a quote from then-business mogul (now President) Donald Trump in which he described how he used large donations to have control over “very important people” , Kallos said it was statements like these and other cases that “create an appearance of impropriety that leaves residents to wonder about corruption in government.”
He also criticized the state government in Albany by calling it “broken” and called Albany politics “beyond dysfunctional”.
Elvin Garcia, a Bronx native running for the City Council said at the rally that the bill would make “ten small donors feel like a hundred”.
When asked if the bill would impact Mayor de Blasio’s fundraising for his re-election campaign, Kallos said that the bill would go into effect next year if it was passed. “This legislation would mean that the next mayor of the City of New York could run on small dollars only,” he added.
Kallos’ fellow City Council Member, Carlos Menchaca, praised the bill, calling it something that “really kind of shows the real impact of staying and maintaining the conversations, the connections and the relationships with our small dollar donors.”
Representatives of various advocacy groups also showed their support. “I like having dinner in Gracie Mansion as well as the next guy, better than some, but it doesn’t have to be that way,” said Morris Pearl, the chairman of Patriotic Millionaires, a group of “high-net worth” people who see economic inequality as a detriment to society. “We need a democracy where everybody can participate and the council people and the mayor represent everybody in the city, not just the big donors.”
Moira McDermott, the Executive Director of the 21 in ’21 Initiative, described it as “an important step to getting more women elected into office” while others praised the bill for furthering political inclusiveness.
According to Kallos, chairman of the committee, the bill has a good chance of passing and moving to the full Council.
The mayor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Photo of Councilman Ben Kallos by Isaac Monterose
By RAYCHELLE L. BALENTIEN
Councilman Daniel Garodnick and others urged Mayor de Blasio to help small businesses grow by supporting a bill that would increase the ceiling for imposing the commercial rent tax on businesses below 96th St., in a press conference Thursday in the Flatiron area.
“Mr. Mayor, you cannot forget our small businesses!” Garodnick yelled to the crowd.
The tax is levied on businesses situated between Chambers and 96th streets who pay at least $250,000 annually in rent. Garodnick’s plan would double that to $500,000, to “throw a lifeline” to small businesses currently subjected to the tax, which is 15 percent of their annual rent, he said. He claims the legislation would “bring relief to over 3,400 businesses that pay the tax, while only impacting six percent of the revenue it brings in.”
The tax that was originally imposed in 1963 hasn’t been adjusted since 2001, and with rents steadily rising, Manhattan Borough President, Gale Brewer said she wanted “to do away with the Commercial Rent Tax altogether…”, and portrayed the levy as the double tax on small businesses that exists only in New York City and Florida.
Natasha Amott, owner of Whisk, a culinary store on Broadway and 23rd St., where the press conference was held, called the tax “antiquated and discriminatory,” and claimed the supporters of the bill “need to educate the mayor”, as he wasn’t fully aware of its “chokehold” on small businesses when asked about them at his budget hearing. She requested that the change be included in the final budget.
Other small business owners from the neighborhood attended, as well as several of the 35 council members who support the bill, including Margaret Chin, and co-sponsor of the bill, Helen Rosenthal, who added that the “majority of the money that comes from the CRT is not that of Small Business Owners,” and is a “serious burden” for businesses who employ New Yorkers from all boroughs with quality jobs.
“New Yorkers are losing jobs when these businesses are forced to close down,” said Chin, who said she knows of owners who closed their business directly due to the tax.
“New York City is stepping on the neck of our small businesses,” and Manhattan is now “overwhelmed by banks, chain drug stores, and vacant store fronts because small businesses can’t keep up with the financial burden.”, said Garodnick. With reform 40 percent of businesses “will have more money to expand, hire, and keep their doors open.”
Representatives of the mayor could not be reached for comment.
Photo of Councilman Garodnick at podium by Raychelle L. Balentien
By STEVEN FERRARO & JON REMACHE
A Brooklyn man was sentenced to a minimum of three years and a maximum of six years in prison for holding two women, 16 and 23, and forcing them to prostitute themselves for three months before he was caught in an online sting conducted by police officers.
Kadeem Moore received a reduced sentence after he pleaded guilty to two counts of sex trafficking. He originally faced 25 years to life. Moore was arrested in March 2015 with his accomplice, Francois Cousins, for using verbal and physical violence to force the two captives into sex acts for money – money that Moore pocketed.
According to many reports, the 16-year-old girl met the 23-year-old woman via Facebook in January 2015 and arranged to meet at the Days Inn Hotel in Long Island City. When she arrived, the 16-year-old was introduced to Moore and both were forced into prostitution.
Both victims tried to escape captivity and failed many times. The 16-year-old tried to escape and was hit and choked by Moore, court records showed. This did not deter the victims as the older woman called 911 during one date with a man and told the dispatcher that she and the teen were being forced into sex acts, but when police responded, the two were nowhere to be found.
The call prompted local police to explore the darker corners of the internet. After finding advertisements for the victims, an undercover sting operation was arranged. When an undercover officer arrived at a designated room in a hotel in Jamaica, Queens, the two agreed on a deal where the officer would pay the victim $120 in exchange for sex, leading to the arrest.
Moore, 20, was handed his sentence, along with the requirement to register as a sex offender, at the Queens Boulevard courthouse. He appeared in the court in front of his family, who were delighted to find out from his lawyer that Moore was reading a book – “Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang.” Moore nodded and blew a kiss to them as he walked into the courtroom. After he was sentenced, he mouthed “I love you,” to his mother.
By ALAIN GAILLARD
Standing in front of the stove in her kitchen, Marie Melodin, 85, her face wrinkled from age, was putting the last touches on a soup that would be her first meal of the day at around 3 p.m. With her hands shaking due to Parkinson’s disease, she said that her home care aide does not visit on weekends, so she has to fix herself something to eat.
Melodin lives in a two-bedroom apartment building in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, and has been retired for more than 20 years. She explained that the $200 she receives monthly from the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, does not last the whole month.
“Every time friends come here and see that I need something, they buy it for me,” she said.
She added that she stopped taking food donations from the community health center she used to visit once a week. “They gave me food, such as cereals, I don’t like,” she said. “I don’t like the fact that they are giving me what they want. I am not a kid; I should be able to ask for what I want.”
She has never received help from any of the organizations fighting hunger in New York, such as Citymeals on Wheels, which delivers food to elderly people. She does not even know how to contact them. “No one told me where to go,” she said. “I will ask the nurse when she comes to visit next time.”
According to the New York City Center for Economic Opportunity, Melodin is among the 20 percent of the city’s elderly who are facing hunger at a time when President Donald Trump wants to slash funding for many government agencies, which could impact anti-hunger programs.
Margarette Purvis, president and chief executive officer of Food Bank for New York City, echoed this concern in a statement released on the organization’s website.
“This ‘America First’ budget will deepen and intensify the everyday struggles of poor and vulnerable Americans. We can anticipate that need for emergency food—already insufficient to meet existing demand at local food pantries and soup kitchens—will only increase,” she said. “This budget blueprint . . . also eliminates key resources that help many charities on the front lines operate efficiently and effectively, such as AmeriCorps and the VISTA program.”
After Trump released his budget proposal, many people feared that programs such as Citymeals on Wheels would be crippled. But Beth Shapiro, executive director of Citymeals on Wheels, scrambled to reassure recipients that their meals on supported through the city’s Department for the Aging as part of a public-private partnership. They are not provided by the federal government, and “thus are not currently at risk of being defunded,” she said.
With the proposed Trump budget, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which finances many charities fighting hunger in New York, would experience a 13 percent budget cut that would be slightly more than $6 billion.
Shapiro explained that since the budget outline needs congressional approval and lacks many details about individual agencies, it is still unclear how this overall cut would affect most Older American Act programs.
She also said that Citymeals on Wheels relies on the generosity of its board of directors, the City of New York, sponsors, and other designated donations to cover administrative costs.
Helping to fight hunger among older people since 1981 in New York City, Citymeals on Wheels helps feed 18,000 homebound seniors by delivering meals to their doorsteps all year round.
When Melodin was told that Citymeals of Wheels would deliver food to her doorstep, she was surprised and said, “Having food delivered to my doorstep is very good. It is getting harder and harder for me to walk.”
By ISAAC MONTEROSE
New York State Senator Brad Hoylman and fellow Democratic legislators recently unveiled legislation to require any presidential and vice presidential candidate to publicly release the last five years of their tax returns no later than 50 days before the general election in order to appear on the state ballot.
They called the bill Tax Returns Uniformly Made Public Act (also known as the T.R.U.M.P. Act) at a press conference on the steps of City Hall.
Hoylman said that the name was not coincidental.
“It did take a very long time to come up with that acronym,” he said wryly.
If a candidate fails to produce the returns to the New York State Board of Elections in time then they’re disqualified from the ballot, a press release said. The board would also have 10 days to publicly make the returns available on its website after receiving them. The bill was first introduced by the senator in December.
A resolution for the bill has been co-signed by 28 City Council Members and similar laws have been introduced in 23 other states. Several of those states, such as Tennessee and Arizona, are deeply Republican. It also calls on the state legislature and the governor to sign the bill into law. Hoylman mentioned that he filed a motion for committee consideration on the T.R.U.M.P. Act in order to allow an “up or down vote” on the bill in the New York State Senate Election Committee.
“We live in a deliberative democracy,” Hoylman said. “In order for our democracy to function, voters need to be both educated and informed. Well, they can’t be informed if a candidate hides information from them and that’s exactly what happened in last year’s election.”
Hoylman also criticized President Trump’s refusal, both throughout the campaign and after his victory, to release his tax returns and called it “egregious” because Trump is subject to conflict of interest laws unlike the “elected officials standing here or those [in] the building behind me or those in Washington.” He added that Trump was breaking a 40-year tradition by not being forthcoming with his tax returns.
Hoylman alleged that the president owed money to Russian oligarchs, to the Mercer family (who were Republican donors who supported Trump’s campaign) and even to the Chinese.
“Bottom line is that voters need to have that information to end these conspiracy theories and to be able to vote intelligently for their candidate,” he argued. Using a poll from Public Policy Polling, Hoylman also argued that 61 percent of voters wanted Trump to release his tax returns and that 61 percent of voters also supported his specific type of legislation.
“As a famous saying goes by a Republican president: ‘Trust but verify,’” said Hoylman, referring to the famous quote from former president Ronald Reagan.
Hoylman’s fellow Democrats expressed supported for the bill with City Council Member Andrew Cohen describing it as “a tremendous opportunity to impact not only New York State but really the national debate about this issue that has obviously gotten a lot of press.” Cohen said that New Yorkers felt “so strongly about this issue” and were “offended by the lack of transparency” in last year’s presidential election. Similarly, City Council Member Mark Levine said he was pleased to lend his support to the bill and described the issue of Trump not disclosing his tax returns as a “dangerous obfuscation and a compromise of the public trust.”
“I’m so proud that the work of Senator Hoylman has ignited a national movement,” Levine said.
Photo depicting (left to right) Cohen, Holyman & Levine by Isaac Monterose
By DEREK NORMAN
Professional gambler Billy Walters has yet to fold as closing arguments of the insider trading case finished in Manhattan Federal court Thursday, sending the jury to deliberate.
Looking for a flush, the defense spent the better portion of two and a half hours relentlessly smearing the credibility of the government’s star witness, Tom Davis, the former chairman of Dean Foods, one of the largest dairy distributors in the nation. Davis, who is facing lesser-charges after agreeing to provide testimony against Walters, has admitted to tipping Walters with insider information, as well as instances of cheating on his wife, lying to authorities and stealing from his own charities.
“You know blinders for horse racing… the kind they use so the horse can stay on track?” asked defense attorney Barry Berke to the jurors. “Well the prosecution kept these blinders on so that you would not see some things.”
Berke resurfaced many government exhibits and times throughout the trial where cracks appeared in the government’s argument. The “bat phone,” or burner cell which according to Davis, was given by Walters to discuss incriminating information, was brought back into question and stressed that it was actually used for extramarital affairs. And again, the phone records were displayed, highlighting all calls made between Walters and his brokers, which according to the defense were “cherry picked.” All the purportedly questionable evidence provided by prosecution, was referred to by Berke as “like putty, the kind you use to patch holes in the wall.”
Phil Mickelson, the champion golfer who made over $48 million in 2012 alone, was brought back into conversation as the defense presented his credentials and net worth, asking the jury why a man who has that much money would go into risky trades to pay a debt? “It makes no sense. This I would call putty,” said Berke.
“Mr. Walter’s may not be as educated as some of the Wall Street guys, but he learned a few things,” said Berke of Walter’s ability to play the stock market. “This was a gambler’s play. He goes all in. A lot of times, you don’t know what the deal is. But if it goes through, it’s good and if not, it’s bad. That’s always the gamble that Walters plays.”
The prosecution was given half an hour of rebuttal before the long trial was finally left to be shouldered by the jury alone. Stepping up to the lectern, Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Goldman, hastily tried to sway the jury one last time, as he resurrected government exhibits and attempted to rebut the defense.
“Ladies and gentlemen, you’re not gonna like Mr. Davis,” said Goldman. “He’s morally corrupt, he’s a womanizer and he stole money from a charity he ran. But how do you know that? Tom Davis told you that because he could not hold on to his lies anymore.”
“Billy Walters found his cash cow in Tom Davis,” continued Goldman. “And he milked it for all it’s worth.”
After the prosecutors called, throwing their last chips into the pot, the judge formally charged the jury. They went were sent into deliberation just before the end of the day, as both teams and the defendant must now await the verdict. There is an old gambling saying that goes, “eat your betting money, but don’t bet your eating money.” Soon the Las Vegas professional gambler will find out if he’s hit the jackpot or ate his last bet.
“The stakes are high, but there’s only one verdict to be reached,” preached Berke to the jury. “It’s all or nothing.”
By JESSICA MARQUEZ
The New York City Council Committee on Parks and Recreation on Thursday called upon state agencies to support completion of the Hudson River Greenway, a pedestrian walkway connecting Lower Manhattan to the border of Westchester County,
The project remains half done, now extending from Battery Park in Lower Manhattan to the George Washington Bridge in Upper Manhattan.
“The Hudson River Greenway and the wonderful riverfront access afforded to all Manhattanites is non-existent to the residents of the Bronx,” said Bronx Councilman Cohen. “I am proud to support this resolution at the New York City Council and strongly support a continuous Hudson River Greenway.”
He added: “On a personal note, my colleagues do know how often I use the Manhattan portion of the Greenway with my bike, so it would be great I could actually go from Riverdale straight down to City Hall.”
Also in attendance at the hearing were Cliff Stanton, Greenway Director of the Kingsbridge-Riverdale-Van Cortlandt Development Corporation (KRVC) and Rosemary Ginty, Vice Chair Community Board Aide of the Bronx. Both were in favor and expressed their support of the Greenway extension.
“Community Board 8 wholeheartedly supports an all river Hudson River Greenway,” said Rosemary Ginty, vice-chairwoman of the board. “We even established a special Greenway community as part of the community board to work through the many issues so that we can get to an all River Greenway.”
Cliff Stanton of the Kingsbridge-Riverdale-Van Cortlandt Development Corp. echoed the sentiments.
“KRVC has collected over 2,000 individual signatures and over 50 local businesses and instructions supporting the Greenway,” Stanton said.
Stanton added his group promotes the Greenway by staging the Riverdale Riverfest, which gives “thousands of local residents and visitors each year a rare opportunity to recreate along the banks of the majestic Hudson River waterfront”, something that the residents of Riverdale and the Bronx are denied access to.
Proposals to extend the gap to the Westchester border have been stymied because the train tracks used by Metro-North and Amtrak in Riverdale run close to the water, making pedestrian access perilous.
By DEIDRA BRISCO
Rockefeller Center is best known for its holiday musical featuring the 80 high-kicking Rockettes but on Thursday the theater was filled with 4,000 high-achieving students celebrating “youth empowerment”.
Dubbed WE Day, the first-time New York City event was an international charity celebrating volunteer efforts of students from 200 tristate area schools. To attend students must earn tickets not buy them. Ways in which students can earn tickets is through fundraising causes and charities they choose.
“WE Day requires students to be agents of change.We want the youth to know their place in the world and how to better it,” said co-founder Craig Kielburger
Students like Suswana Chowdhury, now 20, has been in the program since 2010. She said she learned of it when the group sponsored her school’s talent show. Through WE Villages Chowdury worked on clean water projects in Haiti and Ecuador and now plans to work in India.
“Clean water is important because the people have to walk long distances to get fresh water, she said, “so making clean water available to them is making them more healthy. Because of issues with Clean water, the kids there can’t go to school. When we provide clean water, the kids can then go to school because they won’t have worry about going to get water for their families.”
Kielburger added that 80 percent of the alumni continue to do charity work after finishing the program. Suswana fit the pattern, citing that she would continue charity work within social justice, as she already writes opinion pieces, educates others and wants to continue on a global level with WE Villages.
“I want to increase diversity of South Asian women in the media,” she said. “If casted, they are casted as stereotypes or if they are casted as role models they are given white names. Like my name is Suswana why cant a character be named by an authentic name?”
Dr. Martin Luther King III, founder of Realizing the Dream, said that his agenda was to combat poverty, racism, and violence. King, a speaker at WE Day expressed awe in WE schools “empowering children to better America and literally roll up their sleeves.”
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By ANDRES RODRIGUEZ
After spending the night camped out at the Wells Fargo branch between Grand and Broome streets in SoHo, protesters marched down Broadway on Thursday and made their way to the steps of City Hall. The disheveled group of indigenous people and their supporters found cover from the rain under the portico, their high spirits seemingly undamped by the gloomy weather.
A unified chant of Mni Wiconi, “Water is life” in Lakota, resounded on the neo-classical columns of the stately building as a coalition of indigenous organizations and allies once again called for Mayor Bill de Blasio and City Controller Scott Stringer to divest millions of dollars from Wells Fargo in response to its funding of the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Rick Chavallo, of the American Indian Community House, made a speech about the history of corporate greed.
“They’re extracting again.,” he said. “They’re coming to our land, violating our treaties, violating our sovereignty, assaulting Mother Earth. For what ? For profit, for greed, for money. It’s always about that.”
Robert Barrero of the International Indian Treaty Council criticized de Blasio and Stringer. “Are you [de Blasio and Stringer] a Trump supporter?” he said, likening de Blasio’s and Stinger’s alleged inaction to the president’s rollback on environmental legislation and destruction of environmental protections and policies.
Both de Blasio and Stringer have denounced the construction of the pipeline. De Blasio released a letter on Feb 17 to Wells Fargo CEO Timothy Sloan expressing concern over the banks involvement in the pipeline. Stringer organized a March briefing for global investors with tribe chairmen to apply pressure on the institutions that have involvement in the pipelines, according to press reports.
But these don’t seem to be enough for the activists, who demand divesting from Wells Fargo and the other 17 financial institutions known to be invested in the pipelines; such as TD Bank, Citi, Chase and Bank of America.
New York City currently has more than $700 million pension fund investments and other business ties with Wells Fargo.
Jessica Roff of the Catskill Mountainkeepers focused on the pipeline project happening on the East Coast, spanning between New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts. The project, Algonquin Incremental Market, is run by Spectre Energy, a Houston-based company, and calls for replacing the 26-inch pipeline to one measuring 42 inches. The proposed plan, which crosses nearly 200 waterways in its path, has caused concern among many environmentalists and activists.
Roff summed up the situation, involving the recent merger of Spectre Energy and Canadian-based company, Enbridge, which she said holds a minority stake in the pipeline worth $1.5 billion. She touched on the dangers of the expansion project, which routes the 42-inch high pressure pipeline across Indian Point power plant land, which is controversial in itself.
Roff concludes that this is all happening for one reason: “The thing is, obviously, all of this expansion happens, why? Because of money.”
By BRIAN BONILLA
At the Anti-Defamation League’s annual Passover Seder, students showed that the best way to fight religious intolerance is with unity.
On Thursday, more than 75 Catholic, Muslim and Jewish middle school students from four New York City schools came together to experience a traditional Passover Seder and learn about each other’s holiday traditions. The annual event is a way for young minds to learn about other faiths and how to be tolerant of other religions.
“We’re all Human first,” said Aminata Camara a sixth grade teacher for the Islamic Cultural Center. “This shows that we can all come together as one. We can all put our differences aside, especially these times with a lot of stigma and misunderstandings in the media about certain faith groups.”
The voices and laughter of students filled the room as they interacted with each other. They sat at tables with students from other faiths and worked on drawings that expressed the similarities between each religion represented. After some of the drawings were presented everyone broke matzo bread and shared a traditional Passover Seder meal which included fish, vegetables, and bitter herbs.
“So many students live in a bubble they live in their own world around their family, religion. their friends,” said Evan Bernstein, the director of the ADL in New York City. “This is one of those opportunities for them to break out of their bubble.”
One student who understands this is Ben, an eighth grade student at the Solomon Schechter School of Manhattan.
“I go to a Jewish school and it’s not every day I get to meet people from other religions,” he said. “Now if I meet someone who isn’t Jewish I’ll have more of a background behind them instead of being completely oblivious to other religions.”
This event comes at a time where cases against Trump’s travel ban, which targeted people of Islamic faith, are ongoing and interfaith tensions are high. Maybe something can be learned from these kids.
Photo by Brian Bonilla.
