Mike Bloomberg "Off-Shore Mayor" Brooklyn Bridge Park & Govs Island to Cayman post by Suzannah B. Troy

http://noticingnewyork.blogspot.com/2010/05/looking-gift-horse-in-mouth-examination_24.html Above link, part 1, Looking a Gift Horse in the Mouth?


An Examination of Brooklyn Bridge Park in Terms of the Politics of Development Monday, May 24, 2010 Looking a Gift Horse in the Mouth? An Examination of Brooklyn Bridge Park in Terms of the Politics of Development, Part II http://noticingnewyork.blogspot.com/2010/05/looking-gift-horse-in-mouth-examination.html Monday, May 24, 2010 Looking a Gift Horse in the Mouth? An Examination of Brooklyn Bridge Park in Terms of the Politics of Development, Part III http://noticingnewyork.blogspot.com/2010/05/looking-gift-horse-in-mouth-examination_21.html by Michael D. D. White. You will learn why Michael calls Bloomberg the off-shore mayor from Governors Island to the Cayman Island and his links in his blog are extremely revealing or as much as they can be when it gets to the mayor's finances and other tidbits.




Please take the time to read Michael's expose, watch my YouTube interview. For me the way Mike Bloomberg has handled real estate and this ruthless tsunami of community crushing development as reckless and stupid as what brought the implosion of Wall Street is about the mayor wanting to do what he wants unchecked. Steve Rattner thought he could do what he wanted to do unchecked and he has been busted.  


Here is an excerpt from Noticing New York and it takes patience and time to get to the really, really juicy bits including the Cayman Islands.


"This three-part article, which is principally about the new Brooklyn Bridge Park currently under development, wends a long, more serpentine path through the politics of New York City development than perhaps any other we have written. As you would expect, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's appearance is much more than a cameo. We don’t offer him praise. Inevitably the metaphor of looking a gift horse in the mouth comes to mind when we contemplate the spectacular change to the city’s waterfront that will one day be Brooklyn Bridge Park. Whatever our government agencies ultimately do, the park will provide desirable benefits that will be extremely hard to complain about. But not conscientiously examining “gifts” that government officials deliver just doesn’t work in the political environment of New York. Besides Brooklyn Bridge Park is not truly a gift; it is something that community activists worked for years to obtain. Our elected representatives are, after all, supposed to be working for us. It is their job to properly administer our available public resources. Whether they are doing so requires a conscientious examination. We hope you will find that conscientious examination takes us on an interesting and worthwhile trip. Now, let our wending look at the politics of development begin. The Shuffling of Dates for the Opening of Brooklyn Bridge Park  On March 22, an initial part of Brooklyn Bridge Park opened, the Pier One portion in the north near Fulton Ferry. An actual opening is imbued with a faintly amazing aspect given that dates announced for opening the park have been shuffled around by innumerable postponements. The shuffling has occurred in truly big picture terms and it also occurred recently on a more micro level. In big picture terms; the park, which involved decades of planning (funding for which was approved in 2000) was originally supposed to start construction in 2003/2004 and be fully open and complete in 2011 (an eight year construction period). By the end of 2004 the public was being told 2008 would be shovel-in-the-ground year and that the construction would take three or four years to complete (i.e. completion would be pushed out one more year to 2012). Such big picture delay is something that press coverage of the opening necessarily alluded to. The rest of the media did not, however point out the shuffling of the opening date that has been transpiring recently on a more micro level,but we did. In late August, just around back-to-school time, the public was told that two sections of the park would open just four months later in December. (We were quite skeptical.) Then, in November, with three of those four months elapsed, the public was told that it would still be waiting another four months for an opening of just one section of park rather than the two promised in August. Let us restate this in terms of what prompted our own skepticism: At the tail end of the two four year terms served by the Bloomberg administration, just as Bloomberg was running for an unprecedented third term by having overturned the city charter to repel term limits,it was being announced that part of a project funded and approved evenbefore Bloomberg took office, the whole of which was supposed to have been largely completed within those two terms, was finally, finally being started! Not only that; the public was being told that it was going to be opened just a mere days after the election. What do you think happened? A scant 22 days after Bloomberg squeaked by (spending more than a hundred million dollars) to win re-election, it was revealed that the schedule of a four month countdown to completion announced before the election was, as we initially hypothesized, quite fanciful." You will have to go to the blog links above to read all the installments and also don't forget my piece on Mike Bloomberg's techno-dream is the tax payer's Titanic as in CityTime.

Dennis Hopper - Rest in Peace by: Nikky Raney

Dennis Hopper died today (Saturday, May 29, 2010) from complications with prostate cancer.

Hopper was 74 years old.

In March, TMZ reported that he was very ill from cancer and that he would not recover from this.

Hopper was very talented. He is best known for starring in and producing the 1969 film "Easy Rider." He also acted alongside James Dean in "Rebel Without a Cause" and "Giant."

"We'd gone through the whole '60s and nobody had made a film about anybody smoking grass without going out and killing a bunch of nurses," Hopper told Entertainment Weekly in 2005. "I wanted 'Easy Rider' to be a time capsule for people about that period."

Hopper's life has always been one that interested the public. From his friendship with Peter Fonda to his bitter divorce battle.

This is really sad. Yesterday Gary Coleman died, and today Dennis Hopper. They say "everything comes in threes," but I truly hope that there will not be another celebrity death anytime soon.

Rest in Peace Dennis Hopper

(1936 - 2010)

My heart goes out to his four children, and those that was fortunate enough to have him as apart of their lives.

(photo taken from nydailynews)

EDIT: When I said everything comes in 3, I forgot that Art Linkletter died the day before Coleman. I wish the best to everyone who has been affected.

Posted by Nikky Raney

The Future of Journalism

Gary Coleman Dead of intercranial hemorrage - sad life ends

"Gary Coleman Dead of intercranial hemorrage - child actor dies" happened Friday after the famous child star passed away after a severe head injury he sustained at his home in Utah caused bleeding in his brain and described as an intercranial hemorrage and a epidural hematoma.

Gary Coleman

Gary Coleman, who was so funny in the TV show sitcom Diff'rent Strokes (1978–1986), became something of a sideshow later in life. In part, his small stature, his parents, and his anger issues, and Coleman's celebrity mixed together to produce what from a distance looked like a terrible life. The Lord called Gary Coleman away from that mess on Friday.

Gary Coleman has openly said his parents did not treat him correctly. Edmonia Sue and W.G. Coleman adopted Coleman and from all accounts they did not care about him at all. Gary sued them for "misappropriation of funds" and they counter-sued for defamation and breach of contract. Consider that there's no record that Coleman knew who his real parents were and the people who took him in as his adopted parents, took his money from his work.

Coleman sued them, won, and was awarded $1.3 million. But nothing could recover the emotional damage Coleman sustained from four years of battling with his parents. The reason why Gary Coleman had the problems the public has been exposed to was because he had no solid family base around him. No real parents, brothers or sisters, cousins, or aunts and uncles. No one who cared.

Gary's marriage to Shannon Price was probably the best thing that could have happened to Coleman, but his anger problems threatened to destroy it too. In an effort to save their marriage Coleman and Price went on the show Divorce Court, where Coleman said this:

"I don't have any friends and don't have any intention of making any. People will stab you in the back, mistreat you, talk about me behind your back, steal from you. And they're not really your friends. (They're) only there because you're a celebrity or because they want to get something from you."

And this statement from the NY Daily News explains why the Lord took him on Friday:

"It's not her fault," he says. "I always feel like I have the weight of the world on my shoulders every day I get up. ... There are days I don't even want to get up."

On Friday, Gary Coleman got his wish.