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NYT: City Room

2012-01-30T11:02:00.001-05:00

January 30, 2012

Off-Duty Detective Fatally Shoots Robber, Police Say

By ANDY NEWMAN

The detective was approached from behind by two young men, one of whom hit him with a cane while the other simulated a gun and demanded money, the police said.

January 30, 2012 9:41 AM ET

We’re Not So Bad. Really.

By CLYDE HABERMAN

The Day: A magazine survey says out-of-towners don't have the nicest things to say about New Yorkers, and New Yorkers don't, either. But that's not the full story.

January 30, 2012 2:26 AM ET

12 Arrested at Manhattan March for Oakland Protesters

By COLIN MOYNIHAN

A winding march through Lower Manhattan to show solidarity for Occupy Oakland protesters led to scuffles with the police on Sunday night.

January 29, 2012 2:30 PM ET

A Rescued Organ Gets a New Life in Manhattan

By JAMES BARRON

An organ that has long been the musical jewel of a New Jersey church is finding a new home at St. Malachy's in the theater district.

Go to City Room »

With Focus on Income Inequality, Albany Bill Will Seek $8.50 Minimum Wage

By JOHN ELIGON

Following similar steps across the country, the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, plans to introduce a bill to raise the state’s minimum wage, and for it to be adjusted each year for inflation.

Expanding Reach, Cuomo Creates Second Cop on Financial Beat

By DANNY HAKIM

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s superintendent of the new office has taken on high-profile issues, and some see it as infringing on Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman’s territory.

Imagine His Shock. His Leg Had Vanished.

By PATRICK McGEEHAN

An actor who posed for some stock photos was surprised to see his image, years later, doctored to make it look as if he had only one leg.

For Family of Burned Woman, an Offer, but No Help

By TIM STELLOH

Darren Weingrow has not made good on his commitment to help the family of Deloris Gillespie, who was burned to death in an elevator in Brooklyn.

Bridge’s Partial Fencing Points to a Bigger Divide

By LIZ ROBBINS

The fence was built after a cyclist was hit by a thrown brick in a changing neighborhood of projects and wealthier newcomers.

Proposal to Cut Some Felonies From Records

By RUSS BUETTNER

A proposal from the New York State Bar Association would remove some convictions from an offender’s public record, but whether Albany would take it up was uncertain.

Today in History

2012-01-30T10:49:00.003-05:00

Greg Kelly and rape accuser drank at East Side bar draped in bras

2012-01-29T11:53:00.008-05:00

Woman claims ‘Good Day New York’ co-host raped her while she was drunk after drinking at Jeremy’s

By Melissa Grace, Kerry Burke AND Larry Mcshane / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Sunday, January 29, 2012, 7:48 AM

Anthony DelMundo for New York Daily News

Jeremy’s Ale House is where Greg Kelly, son of NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly and co-host of Fox 5’s ‘Good Day New York,’ and the woman who accuses him of rape had drinks the night of the alleged incident.

The South Street Seaport bar where television host Greg Kelly wooed the woman who accused him of rape is hardly the place for a romantic rendezvous.

Jeremy’s Ale House, a fixture on the East Side waterfront, is a place where cops, construction workers and Wall Street wizards wander in off the cobblestone streets to knock back some brews.

The Front St. tavern — where sources told the Daily News Kelly and his accuser hung out before heading to her lower Manhattan law office on Oct. 8 — offers 21 beers on tap and blares classic rock. It’s a hard-drinking crowd: Beers are served in 32-ounce styrofoam cups, and the empties are stacked on the tables.

On weekends, there’s more of a singles vibe in the bar that once catered to Fulton Fish Market workers with an 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. Happy Hour.

During the week, the bar attracts a fair amount of retired firefighters and cops — including some who stop by from 1 Police Plaza, where Kelly’s father sits as commissioner of the NYPD.

One wall is covered with police and fire memorabilia, including a tribute to the heroes of 9/11, while an assortment of signed bras dangle from the ceiling.

On Saturday afternoon, a manager said all the recent NYPD visitors weren’t looking for a cold beer. Detectives stopped by each of the previous three days to inquire about the October meeting between Kelly, 43, and his 30-year-old date.

Jeremy’s Ale House is a popular hangout for a hard-drinking crowd. (Anthony DelMundo/for New York Daily News)

The investigators asked for any video footage and for a list of workers on duty the night of the alleged attack, he said.

“They wanted to know if anyone had seen them together,” said the manager of the bar, in its fifth location since opening in 1973. “They wanted to know if they were drunk.”

The woman, after appearing last Tuesday inside the 13th Precinct stationhouse, told cops that the typically chipper “Good Day New York” co-host raped her while she was in a boozy stupor after a few drinks at Jeremy’s.

“Why’d you do that?” she asked Kelly in a phone call, sources said.

One wall inside Jeremy's Ale House is adorned with FDNY and NYPD memorabilia, including tribute to 9/11 heroes. (Anthony DelMundo/for New York Daily News)

The woman — a Long Island native whose identity is being withheld by the Daily News — was impregnated and had an abortion after the late-night sexual encounter, sources told the News.

The paralegal was a philosophy major, according to her Facebook page. In addition to her day job, she waitressed at renowned Red Sox hangout the Hairy Monk on Third Ave. — where her boyfriend was a bartender.

“She would just fill in shifts over the summer when the other girls needed time off,” said a former co-worker, describing her as “just a normal person.”

Her online entries for October, when the incident with Kelly occurred, showed nothing out of the ordinary.

There was a picture of her boyfriend, a distance runner, walking to his first day of student-teaching tucked among the otherwise mundane information.

Bras hang from the ceiling at Jeremy’s Ale House. (Anthony DelMundo/for New York Daily News)

Her brother is a former NYPD Internal Affairs investigator who now works for the crime scene unit.

Kelly, a former Marine fighter jet pilot, has denied the allegation and is cooperating with the Manhattan district attorney’s probe of the case, according to his lawyer.

His father refused to comment at all on the ongoing investigation. Raymond Kelly learned about the charges when the woman’s boyfriend snapped at him during a public event, “Your son ruined my girlfriend’s life.”

With Rocco Parascandola and Christina Boyle

rparascandola@nydailynews.com

Cuomo, who promised to end gerrymandering, prepares reformers (and Democrats) for a non-victory

2012-01-28T17:05:00.005-05:00

Andrew Cuomo and legislative leaders. Governor Andrew Cuomo, via flickr

By Jimmy Vielkind

12:10 pm Jan. 27, 2012

View this article on one page

ALBANY—Even as Gov. Andrew Cuomo leveled a threat to veto new legislative district lines that legislators have drawn for themselves, he left himself open to a negotiated solution that would preserve their control over maps that will be in place for the next ten years.

It’s either the best or worst of both worlds for Cuomo, a Democrat who during his 2010 campaign denounced the current process, run by a legislative task force called LATFOR, and vowed to put in place an independent commission to give New Yorkers districts that would suit the needs of voters, not incumbent members of the majority parties in the Assembly and State Senate.

“I’m going to let the process play out,” Cuomo said in a brief question-and-answer session with reporters during a cabinet meeting Thursday. “A lot of people have a lot of ideas. Some of the good-government groups have ideas. Let’s see how it plays out. My point all along has been, I want a better product and a better process. I don’t know where it ends.”

Not once, in 12 minutes of questions, did Cuomo say the word “veto.” This is notable, because Cuomo had previously drawn such a clear line on this issue. In campaign materials he pledged to veto any lines that were unfair, and last summer he told me he would veto “lines that are not drawn by an independent commission that are partisan.”

LATFOR's lines clearly fail that test.

But Cuomo has always been reluctant to say explicitly that he would veto anything churned up by LATFOR, which is jointly controlled by Democrats who dominate the Assembly and Republicans who are working feverishly to maintain their bare 32-seat majority in the 62-seat Senate.

It is the Senate Republicans, led by Majority Leader Dean Skelos of Long Island and fronted on redistricting matters by upstate lawyer and Finger Lakes-area senator Mike Nozzolio, who treat this process like mother’s milk. New York’s government was structured in the days of Tammany Hall for upstate Republicans to control the Senate, and over the last century, as New York has turned an ever deeper shade of blue, the G.O.P. has fought to hold onto the chamber, which gives it one of the three legs (the other are the Assembly and governor’s office) on which budgets and policy are built.

The Republicans' efforts to game this current round of the once-a-decade redistricting process have not been subtle. The maps the task force released yesterday group Republican voters into districts that, rather than pulling together similar towns or neighborhoods, contort themselves into shapes that, with only a little imagination, look like “well-endowed camels,” among other things.

They’ve divided pockets of Democratic voters (sometimes this amounts to breaking up pockets of racial minorities, as on Long Island) among different districts, diluting their power.

Their defense of the process has been equally blunt: "The new district lines are the result of the most open and transparent reapportionment process in decades," said Nozzolio, the LATFOR chair.

The Republicans briefly lost their Senate majority in the 2008 elections when Barack Obama brought out a surge of young and urban voters, but they rebounded in the Obama-backlash election of 2010, just in time for redistricting, and a chance to build a floodwall against New York's rising Democratic tide.

So Cuomo’s saber-rattling on redistricting was an existential threat to them.

For the governor, the consequences are considerably smaller, notwithstanding whatever opprobrium he'll get from the Times editorial board if he fails to live up to his promise here. The fact that he proposed the independent redistricting process allowed him to put himself on the side of the reformers, which is a valuable thing—a poll by Quinnipiac University found about half of New Yorkers say line-drawing should be completely independent, and another quarter say legislators should have some say, but less than now.

But even as polls show “independent” to be a fantastically useful adjective with voters, they also show most people don’t understand redistricting and, as with most "process" issues, really don’t much care. While it’s critical in determining the balance of power in Albany and, arguably, to improving the quality of New York's elected officials by making incumbents easier to challenge and therefore more accountable to voters, just 20 percent of voters surveyed last June by Siena said changing the process was a top priority.

This makes things difficult for the governor, he explained Monday.

“If you think I should try to go convince the legislators that it is not in their best interest to draw their own lines, uh, maybe you could convince them of that," said Cuomo, who normally prides himself on his ability to compel lawmakers to do things. "I don’t possess those skills. So you’re right: I haven’t spent a lot of time trying to explain to them why this isn’t in their interest,” he said Thursday.

At the same time, Cuomo said, the impenetrable nature of the topic makes it impossible to mobilize people on the stump. This isn’t a meat-and-potatoes personal-finance issue like the property-tax cap. This isn’t a civil-rights fight like same-sex marriage. This is … legislative redistricting.

It poses a similar political challenge to a law forcing legislators to disclose outside income and re-jiggering Albany’s ethics watchdogs. Cuomo was able to ram that piece of legislation through by wielding a giant stick: If lawmakers didn’t agree to permanent change, he threatened to convene a special prosecutorial panel that could rake them over the coals of roasted subpoenas to say all kinds of unsavory things under oath. Eventually, an "understanding" was reached.

The redistricting-veto threat was supposed to function similarly. Except legislators realized they could basically run out the governor’s clock. (Cuomo denies this.) To comply with a new federal law, a judge is considering moving New York’s congressional primary to June, which means would-be candidates would have to start circulating petitions at the end of February.

That leaves no time to set up an independent panel, as outlined in legislation put forward by Cuomo that went nowhere in the State Senate. Good-government groups began to realize this in September, and negotiations over some other solution began in earnest.

Possibly as a signal to legislators that his threat wasn’t so unequivocal, Cuomo in October began to openly worry that a veto would create “chaos” in the courts.

This idea about chaos was not a mere cop-out, though it may turn out to be that, too: Since the State Constitution leaves redistricting to legislators, a judge might ultimately defer to their ideas, however self-interested and anti-democratic those ideas happen to be. This month, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected district lines drawn by a Texas court because they gave no weight to a (roundly criticized, obviously gerrymandered) plan passed by legislators.

Cuomo stopped publicly talking about redistricting reform and kept negotiating. He did not mention redistricting during his State of the State address (“The silence was deafening,” one Republican senator told me, with a smile) and declined to take a position for or against the current process.

The Senate Republicans continued to prostrate themselves before the extremely popular (he’s still over 70 percent in the polls) governor on other issues, agreeing to renew most of an income-tax surcharge they had vowed to let expire, a backflip that allowed Cuomo to get a pack of progressive groups to stop nipping at his left flank. Senate Republicans even argue they should be returned to power because they’re working so well with the Democratic governor.

So the lines came out, and they were rotten. In their draft electoral landscape, Republicans create a 63rd Senate seat, using some creative legal-mathemagical analysis, and drew it so a specific, wealthy Republican assemblyman could make a run for it. They re-drew the district of their most vulnerable incumbent, Buffalo’s Mark Grisanti, so his fluke election in 2010 might be repeated in 2012 as a non-fluke. They once again broke up clusters of minority voters, and they pitted three pairs of incumbent Democrats against each other, including Michael Gianaris of Queens, who happens to be the head of the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee.

Good-government groups pounced. Bill Mahoney of NYPIRG called LATFOR's product “clearly the most gerrymandered lines in recent New York history.”

NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly likely to face reporters in wake of rape allegation against his son

2012-01-27T09:56:00.003-05:00

Top cop to appear at promotion ceremony at headquarters

By Rocco Parascandola / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Friday, January 27, 2012, 9:35 AM

Kevin Hagen for New York Daily News

Police Commisioner Raymond Kelly, whose son has been accused of rape.

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly is expected to face a barrage of questions about the rape allegation involving his son when he meets with reporters Friday.

Kelly will appear at a promotion ceremony at Police Headquarters at 11 a.m. and typically fields inquiries from the media on the hot stories of the day afterward.

The top cop did not have any public appearances Thursday, when headlines blared that his son, television personality Greg Kelly, has been accused by a paralegal of raping her during an encounter in her downtown office.

The commissioner has said through a spokesman that a man believed to be the accuser’s boyfriend recently confronted the top cop at a public event and accused his son of “ruining my girlfriend's life."

Kelly asked the man to explain what he meant, said the spokesman, Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne.

But the man refused, saying he didn't want to discuss the matter with so many people around. Kelly then suggested the man send him a letter, but Browne said it appears no such letter was ever sent.

The woman went to the 13th Precinct stationhouse Tuesday night and told cops that Greg Kelly had raped her in October.

The NYPD, citing a potential conflict of interest, quickly recused itself from the investigation and turned the matter over to the Manhattan district attorney's office.

The DA's office has its own investigators with arrest powers, but they are considered by some to be less seasoned than their NYPD counterparts.

It was unclear if NYPD investigators assigned to the DA's office have been told not to get involved in the case.

rparascandola@nydailynews.com

Fox morning show co-anchor - son of NYPD Police Commissioner - Greg Kelly, has been accused of raping woman

2012-01-26T12:51:00.003-05:00

Charles Eshelman/FilmMagic

Greg Kelly, right, with co-host Rosanna Scotto and actor Chazz Palminteri on set of ‘Good Day New York.’

Richard Corkery/New York Daily News

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, his wife, Veronica, and their son Greg.

“Good Day New York” co-host Greg Kelly — son of Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly — was a no-show on the program Thursday morning after reports that a Manhattan woman had accused him of rape.

The woman told cops she had drinks with Kelly, 43, at the South Street Seaport Oct. 8 before he sexually assaulted her in the law office where she worked, sources said.

The accuser, who is around 30, did not report the alleged assault until Tuesday night, when she walked into the 13th Precinct stationhouse and gave her account, sources said.

Cops interviewed the woman, but because of the conflict created by probing the commissioner’s son, they quickly turned the case over to the office of Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Jr.

Greg Kelly’s co-host, Rosanna Scotto, expressed her support for him as she walked into the FOX studios about 5:30 a.m.

"I love Greg. That's all I can say," Scotto said.

“Good Day New York” ran reports on the rape allegation and noted Greg Kelly’s denial but did not disclose his status with the program or explain why he wasn’t on the air.

Steve Lacey, the anchor of the early newscast, filled in for Kelly during the broadcast.

Scotto appeared more somber than usual, at one point remarking, "We need a distraction."

In an awkward moment, reporter Tai Hernandez said during a report from the field, "Thank you, Greg," and then, realizing her mistake, said "Steve."

A source said Greg Kelly was “not going anywhere today.”

He has not been criminally charged.

The police commissioner became aware of the accusation against his son when a man, claiming to be her boyfriend — apparently enraged over the alleged attack — recently approached the commissioner at a public event.

“He said, ‘Your son ruined my girlfriend’s life,” said NYPD spokesman Paul Browne. “The commissioner said ‘Well, what do you mean?’ He said he didn’t want to talk about it here so the commissioner told him to send a letter.”

Browne said he was unsure if the man ever sent a letter.

The woman told cops she met Greg Kelly on the street and decided to go for drinks, sources said.

It was unclear why she waited more than three months to make a report.

Greg Kelly, 43, denied the accusation in a statement by his lawyer, Andrew M. Lankler, Wednesday evening.

“Mr. Kelly is aware that the New York County district attorney’s office is conducting an investigation,” the statement said. “Mr. Kelly strenuously denies any wrongdoing of any kind, and is cooperating fully with the district attorney’s investigation. We know the district attorney’s investigation will prove Mr. Kelly’s innocence.”

The New York Times

2012-01-26T12:34:00.001-05:00

Michael Grynbaum looks at Mayor Bloomberg’s reading habits: “…Most of the mayor’s reading material is news and nonfiction, according to aides, colleagues and friends who spoke about his habits. One former colleague, informed that the mayor had admitted to reading a novel, responded in shock: ‘That’s not the Mike Bloomberg I know.’

Willie Rashbaum writes: “The Manhattan district attorney’s office is investigating an accusation that Greg Kelly, a local television anchor who is a son of Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, raped a young woman in Lower Manhattan last October, law enforcement officials and Greg Kelly’s lawyer said Wednesday.”

Al Baker looks at a First Amendment battle going on in the city’s firehouses.

Art in America National Arts Club Suffers Continued Irregularities by Brian Boucher 01/24/12 It's a big week at New York's National Arts Club, with

2012-01-26T12:22:00.002-05:00

by Brian Boucher 01/24/12

It's a big week at New York's National Arts Club, with internal hearings taking place that will determine whether a longtime president will be ousted from the club's membership.

The august East Side institution, which hosts art exhibitions, film screenings and other events, has boasted members from Cecilia Beaux to Martin Scorsese. Under investigation by the state attorney general and the Manhattan district attorney for financial irregularities, the club is at the center of a series of suits and countersuits, as reported this weekend in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal.

The controversy radiates from the eccentric, wealthy and frequently bow-tied O. Aldon James, 64, president of the club from 1986 until 2011, when board members forced him out. The same board members are holding a hearing this week to discuss revoking club membership for James and his identical twin brother, John, along with their friend Steven Leitner.

Founded in 1898 by Charles de Kay, former literary and art critic for the New York Times, and housed in a grand Gothic Revival mansion overlooking New York's Gramercy Park, the club has seen a succession of crises involving misappropriated money over the last decade. After admitting to tax evasion and misuse of club funds in 2003, John James paid $500,000 in fines and restitution and spent three months in a psychiatric facility, according to the Times.

The opposing board members aim to have the three men evicted from as many as 20 apartments and other spaces they have colonized in the residential building that adjoins the club's premises—on some of which they pay as little as $356 a month, the Times says. Aldon James is accused of misusing hundreds of thousands in club funds for personal flea market purchases and then storing them in club-owned apartments—costing the club an estimated $1.5 million in rental income—as well as verbally abusing club members and generally running the institution as a fiefdom, according to the article.

New club president Dianne Bernhard, once Aldon James's protégé, has been involved with the club since the mid-'90s. Wife of an heir to the Value Line financial services dynasty and a self-described "farm girl from Texas," she took over the presidency when James's increasingly strange behavior, including verbal and physical fights with his brother, reportedly led to his taking a three-month leave in spring 2011.

A few more highlights from the Times account:

Aldon James grew the club from 385 members in 1985 to more than 2,000 today, but various members describe him as a despot: "Aldon James and his group created a mini-communist state there, with portraits and busts of him everywhere," according to club member Ted Andrews. "He controlled peoples' lives to some extent because he controlled the apartments in the building." Andrews is the spokesman for Concerned Artists and Members of the National Arts Club, which has opposed the James brothers' leadership since the early 1990s.

Bernhard tells the Times that when she first arrived at the club, "I felt like I had stepped back in time," then continued, "I felt like I was at the nexus of the art world." She comes in for harsh criticism from the pro-James faction. "Dianne Bernhard is a cultural fraud," Laurence Cutler, chairman of Newport, R.I.'s National Museum of American Illustration, is quoted as saying. "If you look at her art, it's the kind of stuff you see on velvet."

Building superintendent Steve Acosta reports finding cups of urine among the James' personal clutter in club stairwells. The James brothers allegedly threatened to fire him when he attempted to clean up.

The club now seeks a manager. It sounds like a tough job, but they're offering $100,000 a year.

Espada, Arraigned In Court, “Absolutely Ready” For His Corruption Case

2012-01-25T19:32:00.005-05:00

Written by Andrew J. Hawkins on January 25, 2012. Posted in Blog
Time posted: January 25, 2012 6:17 PM-

Ex-state Sen. Pedro Espada and his son Pedro G. Espada were arraigned in federal court today on charges they stole money from their Soundview health clinic to pay for their lavish lifestyle.

Federal prosecutors filed a superseding indictment today, adding two additional charges of creating false documents. Both Espadas pled not guilty to the charges.

Leaving the courthouse in Brooklyn this evening, Espada said he felt good about his case, and was confidant that he and his son would be vindicated.

“We have faith in this system,” said Espada, dressed in a light gray suit and a purple tie. “It is a system that I took an oath of office to serve in the State Senate. This is the same system that allowed a kid from Puerto Rico to come to the United States, be homeless and be successful. We look forward to it. We’re absolutely well represented here, but mostly we trust our faith, our family and the system of justice that we’re absolutely ready for.”

Susan Necheles, Espada’s attorney, said the federal government’s case against her client was difficult to pin down, mainly because prosecutors kept adding and removing charges at random.

“One day they’ll say we stole something, the next day they’ll take that out of the indictment, no we didn’t steal it, instead you stole something else,” Necheles said. “They keep changing those things. And now they found another document. They this other document is a false document. So it’s hard to say what exactly they are because they keep changing.”

Prosecutors unveiled new charges against Espada earlier this month, accusing the former legislator of making false statements to the federal government and underreporting his salary on government forms.

Espada, who represented a district in the Bronx even while residing in Westchester County, was defeated in a Democratic primary in 2010 by Gustavo Rivera. Espada had a colorful tenure in the Senate, being named majority leader in 2009 after throwing the chamber into chaos during the infamous Senate coup.

Espada’s due back in court on Feb. 17, when his trial will begin. During the arraignment, Judge Frederic Block seemed to suggest that the case could drag on for several months, due to the volume of evidence.

“I hope no one’s planned any vacations,” the judge said.

Here’s the federal government’s indictment against Espada:
Espada Indictment S-2

The New York Times

2012-01-25T13:32:00.000-05:00

Patrick McGeehan reports: “A blunt new poster from the Bloomberg administration shows an overweight man on a stool, his right leg missing below the knee. A pair of crutches leans against a wall beside him. The advertisement, being placed throughout the subway system, warns that ever-growing portions of fast food and sodas could cause diabetes, which could lead to amputations. But it turns out that the person shown in the advertisement did not need crutches because his legs were intact. The health department confirmed on Tuesday that its advertising agency had removed the lower half of the man’s leg from the picture to make its point: the headline over the image reads ‘Portions have grown. So has Type 2 diabetes, which can lead to amputations.’ “

Michael Powell writes: “The New York City police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, through a top aide, acknowledged for the first time on Tuesday that he personally cooperated with the filmmakers of ‘The Third Jihad’ — a decision the commissioner now describes as a mistake.”

Thomas Kaplan reports: “On Friday, in a meeting room at a capacious Midtown Manhattan hotel, a seat at the table with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo is for sale. The cost: $50,000. The beneficiary: Mr. Cuomo’s fellow Democratic governors, whose election campaigns the proceeds will help finance. For writing that big a check, a corporation could buy a spot on a panel discussion with Mr. Cuomo on infrastructure projects, according to an invitation obtained by The New York Times. The panel is part of a conference Mr. Cuomo is hosting for the Democratic Governors Association.”

UFT Blasts Bloomberg On Teacher Evaluations

2012-01-25T09:58:00.001-05:00

BY Celeste Katz

The city teachers union is blasting Mayor Bloomberg’s education record in a television attack ad that’s airing amid the tense standoff over teacher evaluations.

Our Ben Chapman reports:

More than eight million viewers are expected to see the union’s 30-second spot, which pulls no punches in its critique of the mayor’s education reforms.

“Ten years as Mayor, and Mike Bloomberg still doesn’t get it,” begins the narrator’s criticism of Bloomberg’s record on schools, starting with his appointment of Cathie Black as schools chancellor.

“Fudged education test scores, closing schools, parents shut out of the process,” the somber voice continues, over a montage of photos of city students.

The ad -- which doesn't specifically mention the evaluation controversy -- finishes with a harsh message to the mayor, who hasn’t been on speaking terms with the teachers union since Dec. 30, when city officials walked away from talks on instructor evaluations.

“If you really want to do right by our kids, you'll work with teachers and parents and stop playing politics with our schools,” the voice says.

City officials hit back at the union’s $1 million ad, calling it a “political stunt” that distracts the public from the real issue of teacher evaluations.

“The Mayor, Governor, and State Education Department are working collaboratively to implement a rigorous teacher evaluation system,” said Bloomberg spokeswoman Lauren Passalacqua, adding: “It's a shame that the UFT continues to block accountability measures that will help students.”

The city stands to lose nearly $60 million in federal aid for 33 failing schools because city officials and the union were unable to reach a deal on instructor evaluations.

At the state level, the lack of a comprehensive evaluation system for teachers and principals threatens nearly $1 billion in federal education money.

Despite signs of a thaw at Monday’s legislative hearing on Gov. Cuomo’s education budget, on Tuesday city union and education officials said they still had not met to discuss the issue.

The New York Times

2012-01-24T14:58:00.001-05:00

Fernanda Santos notes: “On the issue of public school funding, at least one point of disagreement emerged at a hearing on Monday between the budgets proposed by the state’s Board of Regents and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo: the amount of money to be devoted to performance grants.”

Anna Phillips reports: “Many New York City teachers and principals are not using the city’s $80 million student information database, according to an audit released on Monday by the comptroller, John C. Liu.”

Occupy Wall Street looms over wins vs. SOPA bill, oil pipeline and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker

2012-01-24T09:16:00.002-05:00

Astonishing trifecta for nation's populist movement against corporate greed

Comments (7)

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Thursday, January 19 2012, 9:23 PM

Giuseppe Aresu/Bloomberg

Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, blacked out his website Wednesday to protest a bill in Congress against online piracy.

This nation’s fast-growing populist movement against unbridled corporate power scored an astonishing trifecta this week.

In the span of just a few hours on Wednesday, three vastly different protest movements all achieved startling success the same way: by mobilizing the fury of tens of thousands of ordinary citizens.

An unprecedented one-day Internet blackout drew the most attention. Organized by free speech advocates, and backed by several major Internet companies, the protest sought to derail bills in Congress that the powerful entertainment industry has demanded against online piracy of movies and music.

If that legislation passes, its critics argue, the government will be able to shut down access to any website suspected of carrying copyrighted works, even if the website operator does so unknowingly, and even before any court hearing is held.

“These bills are very badly written,” Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales told me in an interview yesterday. “It’s all well and good . . . to find solutions to criminal behavior online. It’s not OK to set up a censorship regime in response to that.”

Wikipedia and more than 10,000 websites went dark, while firms like Tumblr, Google and Facebook directed millions of their users to flood Congress with phone calls and petitions.

By the end of the day, several stunned senators and congressmen who had originally supported the legislation — including both Democrats and Republicans — had jumped ship, and the bills in their current forms now seem dead.

The Internet blackout was just one citizen victory that day.

Environmental activists were equally elated when President Obama announced his rejection of a permit request by energy giant TransCanada to build a 1,700-mile pipeline to pump oil from Canada’s tar sands through the heartland of the U.S. all the way to Texas.

Republicans in Congress had pushed through legislation requiring Obama to make a decision by February. But he faced strong opposition to the pipeline from environmentalists and midwestern farmers concerned about the potential damage to the land, especially to the country’s largest aquifer in Nebraska.

Last year, more than 1,200 people were arrested in protests against the pipeline outside the White House. So despite the Republican ultimatum, and despite fierce lobbying by the oil and gas industry, Obama finally showed some backbone.

The third grassroots success was in Wisconsin, where an unprecedented coalition of labor unions and citizen groups delivered more than 1 million signatures from voters demanding a recall of Republican Gov. Scott Walker.

Remember Walker? He’s the guy who pushed through a controversial law last year ending collective-bargaining rights for most public workers in Wisconsin, a law that sparked weeks of massive sit-ins in the state’s capitol.

Those million signatures were nearly twice the number required for a recall. They amount to an astounding 46% of all the votes cast in last year’s Wisconsin elections.

Walker’s fate will likely be decided in a new vote in the spring or summer. That vote will instantly become a referendum on whether workers in this country still have a right to collectively bargain for their wages and labor conditions.

Three amazing victories in one day, for young Internet activists and civil libertarians, for environmentalists, and for union members.

Yes, the Occupy Wall Street camps are all gone now, but the populist fire they kindled still burns bright in the growing number of Americans standing up to the 1%.

In a Club Fight, Power, Ego and Real Estate

2012-01-21T22:08:00.006-05:00

Center Photo by Elizabeth D. Herman for The New York Times; Patrick McMullan

When O. Aldon James Jr., left, was ousted as president of the National Arts Club, center, Dianne Bernhard took over.

By JOHN LELAND

Published: January 21, 2012

THE president of the National Arts Club, Dianne Bernhard, sat on a loveseat the other day and spoke affectionately about the man she succeeded. Her lawyer sat opposite.

Read more articles in this week's Metropolitan section.

Amid Finery and, Some Say, Vermin, Elite Arts Club and Its Ex-President Battle (December 15, 2011)
Times Topic: National Arts Club

Follow @NYTMetro on Twitter for New York breaking news and headlines.

Ashley Gilberston for The New York Times

O. Aldon James Jr. in his office in 2009.

“I miss my friend,” she said, gazing across the club’s plush Victorian parlor toward Gramercy Park. “He hasn’t said anything to me still. He can’t look at me.”

The friend in question is O. Aldon James Jr., who ran the club from 1986 until a group of board members led by Ms. Bernhard ousted him in June. At a club hearing this week, the same group will push to remove Mr. James, along with his identical twin brother, John, and Steven Leitner, a longtime friend, as members of the club and evict them from their apartments in its adjoining residential building. Court papers filed for the board accuse Aldon James of using club checks and debit cards to make hundreds of thousands of dollars of purchases at flea markets and elsewhere for his own use, and of commandeering club apartments and rooms to stow the stuff, causing $1.5 million in lost rental income. They accuse both twins of harassing club members. Deciding the matter will be the club’s board of governors, including the same people bringing the charges.

In the meantime, the club is under financial investigation by the state attorney general and the Manhattan district attorney over nonprofit irregularities. Mr. James, in turn, is suing both to block the hearing and to remove Ms. Bernhard and others as club officers.

Feelings have been trampled. Birds have died. Leopard-print rugs have been rolled out in “Age of Innocence” interiors. This is a story of power and ego and money and hoarding and real estate. Don’t expect it to be pretty.

“It’s like something out of ‘Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,’ “ said Shawn Burkley, a club member and resident who said the James brothers had seemed “quirky but fun” until John James threatened his wife, saying he had “nothing but time and money” to come after her. “You want to go back and write the novel. Their biggest crime was being mean. I don’t think anybody would’ve cared about the rest. There’s something vindictive there. They needed to express some power.”

To others, though, this story is about Shakespearean betrayal, in which a protégée turned against her more gifted mentor.

“Dianne Bernhard is a cultural fraud,” said Laurence Cutler, chairman and founder of the National Museum of American Illustration in Newport, R.I., who has been a club member for 20 years. “If you look at her art, it’s the kind of stuff you see on velvet. I could never understand how Aldon could have this vacuous woman at his side, and then she turned out to be Brutus.”

THE National Arts Club, founded in 1898 by Charles de Kay, a former art and literary critic for The New York Times, occupies the Gothic Revival mansion of former Gov. Samuel J. Tilden of New York, plus an adjoining 13-story residential building with 38 apartments. Club members have included three United States presidents, along with prominent artists and patrons. For most of its history it has been a genteel presence on the city’s most exclusive park.

But for the past decade it has been more visible for its controversies and internal disputes, including a series of highly public lawsuits waged against the Gramercy Park Trust. The club’s dining room operator and Mr. James’s brother, John, were investigated over allegations of tax evasion and pleaded guilty. John James agreed to pay more than $500,000 in fines and restitution and spend three months in a psychiatric institution for misusing the club’s tax-exempt status to buy and sell jewelry.

Through it all, Aldon James, 64, a college dropout of independent means, served as the mansion’s ubiquitous figurehead, presiding over the club’s growth to more than 2,000 members now from 385 in 1985, with cash assets of over $1 million.

“Aldon made that club,” said Marguerite Jossel, a board member who joined in 1970. “Before that it was an old ladies’ club. He came in and made it exciting.” Of Ms. Bernhard, she said: “She’s pretty. She couldn’t be sweeter to me. I like Dianne, but I can’t believe she says she loves Aldon like a brother. I never met anyone who could turn like that.”

Supporters and critics alike compare Mr. James to Max Bialystock in “The Producers,” who used all his wiles to coax dollars from wealthy women.

The James brothers and Mr. Leitner declined to be interviewed for this article. Their lawyer said they denied all charges against them.

Andrew Adler, 'Atlanta Jewish Times' Publisher, Apologizes For Obama Assassination Comments

2012-01-20T21:39:00.006-05:00

From the YFP editor: If an average American call for the assassination of the United State President the FBI and the whole apparatus of the Federal government will bring criminal charges to the person. While Mr. Andrew Adler is still free of criminal charge? Why are the Jewish community and their leadership so silent? Do they remember Nazi Germany?

Antiobama Rant

Huffington Post Leigh Owens Posted: 1/20/12 05:47 PM ET

Andrew Adler, the owner of local publication the Atlanta Jewish Times, has apologized after suggesting that assassinating President Barack Obama is an option that should be considered by the Israeli government.

As reported by Gawker, Adler's article, written earlier this month, describes the urgency in protecting the Israeli people from threats such as Hamas and Hezbollah and argues that there are essentially only three options available: attack Hamas, beat back Hezbollah, or assassinate Obama.

From Adler's column, which is not available online, but which Gawker uploaded to the web:

Yes, you read "three" correctly. Order a hit on a president in order to preserve Israel's existence. Think about it. If I have thought of this Tom Clancy-type scenario, don't you think that this almost unfathomable idea has been discussed in Israel's most inner circles?
Another way of putting "three" in perspective goes something like this: How far would you go to save a nation comprised of seven million lives ... Jews, Christians and Arabs alike?

You have got to believe, like I do, that all options are on the table.

In a subsequent interview with Gawker, Adler seemed hesitant to stand by his words, saying he had written them just to "see what kind of reaction I would get from readers."

Now, however, Adler has issued a full apology.

"I very much regret it, I wish I hadn't made reference to it at all," he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Friday.

Of course this is not the first time Obama has come under fire for his talk of diplomacy in the region, as well as his overall foreign policy platform, which his detractors have viewed as too passive at times. In the midst of the 2012 election cycle, GOP hopefuls such as Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney have attacked the president on his handling of threats from unfriendly nations. According to The Hill, some GOP candidates feel that the president is being too hard on Israel and not tough enough on its enemies.

"This president appears more generous to our enemies than he is to our friends," Romney said at the Republican Jewish Coalition forum in December.

Former presidential candidate Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) also claimed that "Obama has confused engagement with appeasement, and it has inspired Israel's enemies."

Despite the criticism from GOP hopefuls and the rhetoric of local spectators, Obama seems to be holding up well in his popularity within the Jewish community, a voting populace that is considered imperative to his re-election. According to Forward, a Jewish news site, top-level Jewish fundraisers from Obama's 2008 campaign are sticking with the president in 2012.

The National Arts Club Counter Sues it's former President

2012-01-19T17:45:00.024-05:00

by Rafael Martínez Alequín

NAC "Board Room" as it looked in 2009 when initially reported to the FDNY

Your free press has received documentation of the counter suit filed by the National Arts Club against O. Aldon James, it's former President, his twin brother John T. James and their cohort Steven Lietner. Below you will find details of how decades of their influence on the National Arts Club has led the charitable organization to seeks damages. Over a year ago yourfreepress received photographs from former Arts Club employees and was the first media outlet to publish photos and details of the hoarding and alleged abuses of power by Aldon James, his twin and Mr. Lietner. The National Arts Club is a 501c3 tax exempt organization whose mission is to "stimulate, foster and promote public interest in the arts and educate the American people in the fine arts." It would seem that that mission has been on hold for some time. Over the summer a massive renovation took place at the Arts Club under the leadership of the current President Dianne Berhard and in the last few days a new National Arts Club website has gone up. A digital page is turning on the National Arts Club and yourfreepress will continue to keep a vigilant eye out for it's progress. This storied New York institution may have it's best days ahead of it.

On Monday January 23rd the board will meet after many legal postponements brought by the James Group's, to decide whether or not to revoke the trios membership rights including the right to occupy an apartment there. The trio have had 14 of the 20 apartments taken out of their control and could loose the remaining six depending on the outcome of the Board's hearing. Regardless of how that turns out the Board in response to the James Group's law suit against them for their alleged attack on them, has brought counter claims detailed below.

COUNTERCLAIMS

A. ALLEGATIONS COMMON TO ALL COUNTERCLAIMS

179. From 1986 to March 2011, plaintiff and counterclaim defendant O. Aldon James,Jr. (“Aldon James”) served as the president of the National Arts Club (the “Club”), and as a

member of the Club’s Board of Governors (the “Board”).

180. As the president of the Club, and as a member of the Board, Aldon James was a fiduciary of the Club, and owed it a fiduciary duty to preserve the Club’s property, assets and funds; to avoid self-dealing at the Club’s expense; and to avoid diverting for his own use and benefit any of the Club’s property and corporate opportunities.

COUNTERCLAIMS

A. ALLEGATIONS COMMON TO ALL COUNTERCLAIMS

179. From 1986 to March 2011, plaintiff and counterclaim defendant O. Aldon James, Jr. (“Aldon James”) served as the president of the National Arts Club (the “Club”), and as a member of the Club’s Board of Governors (the “Board”).

23181. As a member of the Club, a member of the Board, and an officer of the Club, Aldon James was also subject to and bound by the Club’s Constitution, By-Laws, Rules and Policies duly adopted by the Club’s Board or its membership.

182. Because of his position and his relationship with Steven U. Leitner, Aldon James was at all relevant times both a “disqualified” person and a “related individual” within the

meaning of, and subject to, the Club’s Conflict of Interest Policy.

183. From 1980 to the present, plaintiff and counterclaim defendant John James has been a member of the Club.

184. As a member of the Club, John James had a duty to the Club not to take actions that would harm the Club or waste or damage the Club’s property, and he had a duty not to use the Club’s property for his personal benefit without the knowledge and approval of the Board.

185. As the brother of Aldon James, John James was at all relevant times a “related individual” within the meaning of, and subject to, the Club’s Conflict of Interest Policy.

186. From 1986 to March 2011, plaintiff and counterclaim defendant John James was authorized and allowed by Aldon James to assume and exercise executive authority at the

Club and attended and participated in meetings of the Board, although not an elected member thereof. As the result of such participation and exercise of authority, John James owed the Club a fiduciary duty to preserve the Club’s property, assets and funds; to avoid self-dealing at the Club’s expense; and to avoid diverting for his own use and benefit any of the Club’s property

and corporate opportunities.

187. From 1964 to the present, plaintiff and counterclaim defendant Steven U. Leitner (“Leitner”) has been a member of the Club.

24188. From some time in the 1980’s to early 2011, Leitner was an officer and/or governor at the Club. For example, beginning in 1986, Mr. Leitner was in charge of “Rentals” and the “Dining Room” at the Club. In 1989, Mr. Leitner was elected Assistant Treasurer of the Club, and he also began serving on the “Development Committee” during 1989. Thereafter, Mr. Leitner was elected to the Board of the Club in 1992, and he served as a member of the Board for approximately nine years, while continuing to be in charge of the rental of the apartments in the

Club’s Studio Building and the Club’s Development Committee. Beginning in at least 2000, Mr. Leitner was a member of and at various times was chairperson of the House Committee at the

Club, and continued in that capacity until early 2011. As an officer of the Club, as a member of the Board, and as a member of and chairman of the House Committee, Leitner was a fiduciary of the Club, and owed it a fiduciary duty to preserve the Club’s real estate assets; to avoid selfdealing at the Club’s expense, and to prevent self-dealing by other officers, governors and members of the Club; to avoid diverting for his own use and benefit any of the Club’s real property and corporate opportunities relating to Club’s real property, and to prevent other officers, governors and members of the Club from diverting for their own use and benefit any of the Club’s real property and corporate opportunities relating to the Club’s real property.

189. Because of his position at the Club and his relationship with Aldon James during the relevant period, Leitner was at all relevant times both a “disqualified” person and a “related individual” within the meaning of, and subject to, the Club’s Conflict of Interest Policy.

B. ALLEGATIONS CONCERNING THE CLUB’S REAL

ESTATE ASSETS

190. For many years, and during the period from January 2005 until June 2011, plaintiffs and counterclaim defendants (hereinafter, “plaintiffs”) were tenants of the Club.

25During this period, each of the plaintiffs had a lease to occupy one apartment in the Club’s Studio Building, (the “Plaintiffs’ Apartments” and the “Plaintiffs’ Leases”).

191. The Plaintiffs’ Leases charged, and each of the plaintiffs paid, rents that were below the prevailing market rates during the many years they leased the Plaintiffs’ Apartments in the Club’s Studio Building.

192. For many years, and from at least January 2005 to June 2011, the plaintiffs occupied approximately 15 additional spaces at the Club (the “Additional Spaces”), located in both the Club’s Studio Building and the Tilden Mansion at 15 Gramercy Park South, which is also owned by the Club.

193. The Additional Spaces occupied by the plaintiffs at the Club consisted of apartments in the Studio Building, as well as transient rooms, office spaces and meeting rooms in

the Tilden Mansion.

194. During the year 2006, the Board made an inquiry to determine the status of the apartments located in the Studio Building. During this inquiry, the Board never received

accurate information from the plaintiffs concerning the multiple spaces they were occupying in the Studio Building.

195. In fact, the plaintiffs never disclosed to the Board how many apartments they were occupying in the Studio Building in 2006. Nor did the plaintiffs inform the Board that they were occupying Additional Spaces in the Tilden Mansion.

196. Upon information and belief, as of the time of the filing of these counterclaims, the plaintiffs occupy at least two apartments in the Studio Building without any leases, and

occupy an additional four apartments in the Studio Building (the “Additional Apartments”). Upon information and belief, the plaintiffs began occupying the Additional Apartments as 26 elderly tenants in the Studio Building passed away, and the plaintiffs moved in to their apartments.

197. At a Board Meeting held in November 2006, the Board was informed that Aldon James and John James were occupying one apartment each in the Studio Building at a below market rent. The Board approved that occupancy, and approved the payment of single, below market rents for each of Aldon James and John James.

198. However, at that meeting, and thereafter, the plaintiffs concealed from the Board the fact that that they were occupying the Additional Spaces and Additional Apartments.

199. The plaintiffs never obtained the Board’s approval to occupy the Additional Spaces. Nor did the plaintiffs ever obtain the Board’s approval to occupy the Additional Apartments.

200. At the November 2006 Board meeting, the Board also resolved that going forward all leases and all rentals of apartments by the Club must be approved by the Board.

201. The plaintiffs paid no rent to the Club in connection with their occupancy of the Additional Spaces during the many years they occupied the Additional Spaces.

202. The plaintiffs never paid more than one below market rent each for the multiple apartments they occupied in the Studio Building, until plaintiff John James began paying rent on

Apartment 4C in January 2011, as described below.

203. For many years, and from at least January 2005 until June 2011, plaintiffs used the Additional Spaces and Additional Apartments they occupied at the Club to collect items of

personal property.

27204. The plaintiffs co-mingled their personal property, detritus, trash and other items in the Additional Spaces and the Additional Apartments with many and various items of Club

property, including fine art and antiques.

205. The manner in which the plaintiffs occupied multiple spaces at the Club created health and safety hazards for the Club’s other tenants, by attracting vermin, and creating

potential fire hazards.

206. The plaintiffs failed to maintain the spaces they occupied at the Club, and allowed them to decay and fall into disrepair, and the spaces occupied by the plaintiffs became uninhabitable. When many of the Additional Spaces occupied by the plaintiffs and counterclaim defendants were reclaimed by the Club in 2011, dozens of dead rodents and hundreds of dead cockroaches were found in those spaces.

207. By occupying the Additional Spaces and Additional Apartments at the Club without the knowledge or approval of the Board and while paying a minimal, single rent each,

the plaintiffs have denied the Club the ability to use or rent the Additional Spaces and Additional Apartments occupied by the plaintiffs for years.

208. In December 2010, plaintiff Aldon James granted a lease or license to a member of the club, which purports to permit the member to use an apartment in the Studio Building as a

“museum” for ten years, without paying any rent to the Club.

209. This lease or license was never disclosed to or approved by the Board, despite the November 2006 Board resolution that required such disclosure and approval.

210. In January 2011, plaintiff Aldon James granted a lease to plaintiff John James for Apartment 4C in the Studio Building, in the name “Decorative Arts – Planned Giving,” even 28 though John James already occupied at least two other apartments in the Studio Building while paying a single below market rent.

211. Upon information and belief, plaintiff John James had occupied Apartment 4C rent free for approximately six months prior to the January 2011 Lease.

212. The lease to Apartment 4C was granted by Aldon James to John James at a below market rent, and without the knowledge or authorization of the Board, despite the November 2006 Board resolution that required the disclosure of the lease to the Board and the Board’s approval of the lease.

FIRST COUNTERCLAIM:

CONCERNING THE CLUB’S REAL ESTATE ASSETS

(FOR BREACH OF FIDUCIARY DUTY AND ACCOUNTING

AGAINST ALL PLAINTIFFS AND COUNTERCLAIM DEFENDANTS)

213. Defendants and counterclaim plaintiffs repeat and re-allege paragraphs 179 through 212 as if fully set forth herein.

214. As fiduciaries of the Club, the plaintiffs each had a duty to preserve and protect the Club’s assets; to prevent the Club from engaging in transactions of the sort described in paragraphs 208 and 210 above, which effectively denied the Club appropriate rents on two of the apartments in the Studio Building; and to take steps to prevent the conduct described in paragraphs 190 through 212 above.

215. Plaintiffs Aldon James, John James and Steven Leitner willfully disregarded and violated their fiduciary duties to the Club, and they intentionally and willfully damaged the Club

in violation of the Club’s Conflict of Interest Policy, by failing to pay appropriate rent for the multiple spaces they occupied at the Club.

29216. Section 720 of New York Not-For-Profit Corporation Law compels directors and officers of not for profit corporations to account for their official conduct when they have: 1) neglected or failed to perform their duties in the management and disposition of corporate assets committed to their care; and 2) acquired for themselves, transferred to others, or wasted

corporate assets due to their neglect, failure to perform, or other violation of their duties.

217. The precise amount of damage done to the Club by the plaintiffs by their failure to pay appropriate rent for the multiple spaces they occupied at the Club is will be established at trial, but is believed to exceed $1,500,000.

SECOND COUNTERCLAIM:

CONCERNING THE CLUB’S REAL ESTATE ASSETS

(FOR WASTE OF THE CLUB’S REAL ESTATE ASSETS

AGAINST ALL PLAINTIFFS AND COUNTERCLAIM DEFENDANTS))

218. Defendants and counterclaim plaintiffs repeat and re-allege paragraphs 179 through 212 as if fully set forth herein.

219. None of the plaintiffs properly maintained the spaces they occupied at the Club. To the contrary, the plaintiffs damaged the spaces they occupied, failed to clean them and rendered them unfit to occupy and unfit to rent.

220. Plaintiffs Aldon James and Steven Leitner, as president and Chairperson of the Housing Committee respectively, willfully neglected the Club’s real estate assets, and intentionally failed to authorize necessary repairs to be made to the Tilden Mansion and Studio Building, including but not limited to repairs necessary to maintain and fix the elevators, the boilers, the roofs, plumbing, electrical systems and the carpets in the Studio Building and Tilden Mansion.

30221. Plaintiffs Aldon James and Steven Leitner even failed to do repairs to remove and/or ameliorate potential fire hazards as directed by the New York City Fire Department.

222. The conduct of the plaintiffs in willfully failing to authorize necessary repairs to the Club’s real estate, and their failure to maintain the Club’s assets violated their respective fiduciary duties to the Club, and caused financial damage to the Club.

223. Section 720 of the New York State Not-For-Profit Corporation Law authorizes the Club to bring an action against its officers and governors when their actions have wasted the

Club’s assets.

224. The precise amount of damage done by the plaintiffs to the Club’s real estate assets by their willful neglect and waste will be proven at trial, but is believed to exceed $500,000.

THIRD COUNTERCLAIM:

CONCERNING THE CLUB’S REAL ESTATE ASSETS

(FOR SELF-DEALING IN THE CLUB’S REAL ESTATE ASSETS

AGAINST ALL PLAINTIFFS AND COUNTERCLAIM DEFENDANTS)

225. Defendants and counterclaim plaintiffs repeat and re-allege paragraphs 179 through 212 as if fully set forth herein.

226. As fiduciaries of the Club, the plaintiffs each had a duty not to engage in transactions concerning the Club’s real estate assets for their personal benefit and to the detriment of the Club.

227. As fiduciaries, the plaintiffs each had a duty to prevent self-dealing by others.

228. As fiduciaries, the plaintiffs each had a duty not to deal in the Club’s property for his benefit, and to the detriment of the Club.

31229. As “related individuals” subject to the Club’s Conflict of Interest Policy, the plaintiffs could not acquire the Club’s assets for themselves on terms that were more favorable than those available to other members.

230. The transactions by which the plaintiffs gave themselves the right to occupy and use multiple spaces at the Club for their personal benefit effectively denied the Club the ability rent the spaces or to employ them for the Club’s benefit.

231. All of the transactions by which the plaintiffs occupied more than a single apartment each without the knowledge and approval of the Board, and without paying market rent were self-dealing transactions.

232. When Aldon James granted a lease to plaintiff John James for Apartment 4C at a rent below market, as described above, that transaction also amounted to self-dealing, and violated the Club’s Conflict of Interest Policy, because it gave the plaintiffs the right to occupy an additional space at a rent below that which could be obtained from another Club member.

233. Section 720 of New York Not-For-Profit Corporation Law authorizes a not-forprofit corporation to bring an action to set aside any unlawful conveyance, or assignment or transfer of corporate assets, where the transferee knew of its unlawfulness.

234. The Court should declare null and void and set aside the self-dealing transactions engaged in by the plaintiffs with respect to the Club’s real estate assets. In addition, the Court

should award the Club damages to compensate it for the damage done to it by the plaintiffs’ selfdealing transactions with respect to the Club’s real estate assets. The amount of monetary

damages done to the Club by the plaintiffs’ self-dealing in connection with the Club’s real estate assets will be established at the time of trial, but is reasonably believed to exceed $1,500,000.

32FOURTH COUNTERCLAIM:

CONCERNING THE CLUB’S REAL ESTATE ASSETS

(FOR DIVERSION OF CORPORATE OPPORTUNITY,

AGAINST ALL PLAINTIFFS AND COUNTERCLAIM DEFENDANTS)

235. Defendants and counterclaim plaintiffs repeat and re-allege paragraphs 179 through 212 as if fully set forth herein.

236. By taking for themselves numerous apartments and other spaces at the Club rather than renting them to Club members or third parties, the plaintiffs and counterclaim defendants

denied the Club multiple and significant opportunities to profit from its real estate assets.

237. By denying the Club multiple and significant opportunities to benefit financially from its real estate assets, and diverting those opportunities to themselves, plaintiffs and counterclaim defendants Aldon James, John James and Steven Leitner violated their fiduciary duties to the Club, violated their duties as members of the Club not to engage in actions that would harm the Club, and violated the Club’s Conflict of Interest Policy.

238. The amount of damage done to the Club by the plaintiffs and counterclaim defendants by their diversion of the Club’s corporate opportunities to themselves will be proven at trial. However, the Club believes that the damage done to it by the plaintiffs’ and counterclaim defendants’ diversion of corporate opportunities to themselves exceeds $1,500,000.

C. ALLEGATIONS CONCERNING THE CLUB’S PERSONALTY

239. The Club owns many valuable pieces of fine and decorative art, which it has acquired through bequests made to the Club, and, in some cases, by purchasing the pieces of fine

and decorative art.

240. During his tenure as president of the Club, Aldon James failed to properly maintain the Club’s collection of fine art and decorative art, and many pieces of the Club’s fine 33and decorative art collection were stored in improper conditions, despite the protests of the Club’s curator of fine art, and the requests of the curator and others that the Club’s art collection

be stored in appropriate conditions.

241. In addition, certain pieces of fine art bequeathed to the Club were lost during Aldon James’ tenure as president of the Club, and many of them have never been found. The value of the fine art bequeathed to the Club that is now missing is believed to exceed $150,000.

242. Some of the “missing” pieces of fine and decorative art that were lost during Aldon James’ tenure as president of the Club have very recently been found in the multiple spaces at the Club occupied by the plaintiffs.

243. The pieces of fine and decorative art that were found in spaces occupied by the plaintiffs were not stored in an appropriate manner, and do not appear to have been properly

maintained. They were simply kept together with the clutter, trash and detritus collected by the plaintiffs, and those pieces of fine and decorative art possessed by the plaintiffs are in serious

danger of being damaged or even destroyed if they continue to be stored in the unsanitary and unsafe spaces occupied by the plaintiffs. The diminution in value of the Club’s assets because

items of fine and decorative art are missing, or were possessed by the plaintiffs and stored in unsanitary and unsafe conditions is unknown, but is believed to exceed $400,000.

FIFTH COUNTERCLAIM:

CONCERNING THE CLUB’S PERSONALTY

(FOR REPLEVIN OF UNIQUE ASSETS

AGAINST ALL PLAINTIFFS AND COUNTERCLAIM DEFENDANTS)

244. Defendants and counterclaim plaintiffs repeat and re-allege paragraphs 179 through 189, and 239 through 243, as if fully set forth herein.

34245. From at least 2005 to 2011, plaintiffs spent the Club’s funds to purchase thousands of items of decorative art at flea markets, antique stores, second-hand stores and other

venues.

246. In August 2011, plaintiffs claimed ownership of more than 2000 items of decorative art located in the common spaces of the Club.

247. Despite the Club’s repeated demands, the plaintiffs have not produced any evidence to the Club to establish their ownership of the items they claimed to own in August 2011.

248. The Club believes in good faith that the items claimed by the plaintiffs in August 2011 belong to the Club, because thousands of dollars in Club funds were used to purchase items

of decorative art from 2005 to 2011.

249. Plaintiffs have removed specific items of Club property from the Club’s common spaces, and have kept that property amongst the detritus, trash and other property in the apartments at the Club that the plaintiffs occupy and control.

250. Among the unique items of Club property taken by the plaintiffs from the Club are: a watercolor by Louis Comfort Tiffany; a watercolor by August Rodin; and a watercolor by

Robert Seyffert.

251. Each of the items of fine art and decorative art in plaintiffs’ possession which belong to the Club, including which are described in paragraphs 245 through 250 above, is

unique.

252. As of the date hereof, Plaintiffs have not returned many of the items of fine and decorative art described in paragraphs 245 through 250, despite the Club’s demand that these

items be returned to it.

35253. Accordingly, defendants and counterclaim plaintiffs request that the Court enter an order compelling the plaintiffs to return to the Club all property in their possession which is

identified at trial as the property of the Club.

ALLEGATIONS CONCERNING THE CLUB’S BANK ACCOUNTS

254. From 1986 until January 2011, as president of the Club, plaintiff Aldon James controlled the Club’s bank accounts and had signatory authority for the Club’s checking account.

In addition, from at least 2005 to 2011, plaintiff Aldon James had possession of and the authority to use the ATM/debit card associated with the Club’s checking account to make purchases for the Club.

255. From at least 2005 to early 2011, plaintiff Aldon James wrote handwritten checks to pay for personal expenses for himself, John James and Steven Leitner, and to pay for

unauthorized expenditures of the Club’s funds. These expenditures were not known to the Board and were not authorized by the Board.

256. In addition, from at least 2005 to early 2011, plaintiff Aldon James used the Club’s ATM/debit card to pay for personal expenses for himself, John James and Steven Leitner,

and to pay for unauthorized expenditures of the Club’s funds. These expenditures were not known to the Board and were not authorized by the Board.

257. The plaintiffs were unjustly enriched by the expenditures described in paragraphs 255 and 256.

258. Section 720 of New York Not-For-Profit Corporation Law authorizes the Club to against directors and officers account for their official conduct when they have: 1) neglected or failed to perform their duties in the management and disposition of corporate assets committed to 36their care; and 2) acquired for themselves, transferred to others, or wasted corporate assets due to their neglect, failure to perform, or other violation of their duties.

259. Upon information and belief, a conservative estimate of the amount of Club funds improperly spent by Aldon James in the manner described in paragraphs 255 and 256 exceeds $600,000.

SIXTH COUNTERCLAIM:

CONCERNING THE CLUB’S BANK ACCOUNTS

(FOR ACCOUNTING WITH RESPECT TO THE CLUB’S FUNDS

AGAINST PLAINTIFF AND COUNTERCLAIM DEFENDANT

ALDON JAMES)

260. Defendants and counterclaim plaintiffs repeat and re-allege paragraphs 179 through 189, and 254 through 259, as if fully set forth herein.

261. As is indicated by the foregoing, pursuant to New York Not-For-Profit Corporation Law Section 720, the plaintiff Aldon James is liable to account to the Club for his mismanagement of the Club’s bank accounts, because he acquired for himself and wasted corporate funds through his violation of his fiduciary duty to preserve the Club’s funds, by his misuse of handwritten checks and the Club’s ATM/debit card.

262. The amount due and owing to the Club by plaintiff Aldon James as a result of his mismanagement and waste of the Club’s funds will be established at trial, but is believed in good faith to exceed $600,000 for the period from January 2005 to June 2011.

SEVENTH COUNTERCLAIM:

CONCERNING THE CLUB’S BANK ACCOUNTS

(FOR WASTE AND MISAPPROPRIATION OF CLUB FUNDS

AGAINST ALL PLAINTIFFS AND COUNTERCLAIM DEFENDANTS))

263. Defendants and counterclaim plaintiffs repeat and re-allege paragraphs 179 through 189, and 254 through 259, as if fully set forth herein.

37264. From at least early 2005 to 2011, plaintiff Aldon James frequently made expenditures of Club funds that were outside the ordinary course of the Club’s business and which constituted a waste of the Club’s funds.

265. Examples of expenditures that constituted a waste of the Club’s funds include donations of more than $40,000 to the Cherry Lane Theater; payments of approximately $35,000

to an organization known as “The Radio Reading Project, Incorporated;” payments of more than $15,000 to pay for lodging for one or more of the plaintiffs at the Inn at Irving Place, when Aldon James and the other plaintiffs possessed and controlled at least 6 different apartments in the Studio Building.

266. The Club’s Board of Governors did not know about these payments and did not authorize them.

267. To the extent the plaintiff Aldon James made extraordinary expenditures of the Club’s funds without the knowledge and authorization of the Board, he violated his duty of loyalty to the Club, wasted the Club’s funds, and unjustly enriched himself and the other plaintiffs.

268. To the extent that the extraordinary expenditures of the Club’s funds without the knowledge and authorization of the Board benefitted Aldon James, John James or Steven Leitner, such expenditures were made in violation of the Club’s Conflict of Interest Policy.

269. The plaintiffs should be required to pay damages to the Club in connection with their waste of its funds. Those damages will be established at the time of trial, but are believed to exceed $100,000.

38EIGHTH COUNTERCLAIM:

CONCERNING THE CLUB’S BANK ACCOUNTS

(FOR SELF-DEALING AGAINST ALL PLAINTIFFS

AND COUNTERCLAIM DEFENDANTS)

270. Defendants and counterclaim plaintiffs repeat and re-allege paragraphs 179 through 189, and 254 through 259, as if fully set forth herein.

271. The payments authorized by plaintiff Aldon James without the knowledge and authorization of the Board that directly benefitted the plaintiffs constituted self dealing at the expense of the Club, unjustly enriched the plaintiffs, and violated the Club’s Conflict of Interest Policy.

279. Sections 715, 717 and 720 of New York Not-For-Profit Corporation Law prohibit payments of corporate funds for the personal benefit of officers, governors or members of a NotFor-Profit corporation of the type made by Aldon James to and for the benefit of himself, Steven Leitner and John James, as described above.

280. By making the unauthorized and self-dealing payments described above, the plaintiffs and counterclaim defendants have unjustly enriched themselves and damaged the Club

in an amount to be determined at trial, but which is believed to exceed $600,000 for the period from 2005 to 2011.

RESERVATION OF RIGHTS

281. Defendants reserve their rights to move to amend their Answer to assert additional defenses and counterclaims. The Club’s investigation of this matter is ongoing, and to the extent

evidence is discovered that supports additional defenses or counterclaims, the Defendants reserve their rights to assert such defenses or counterclaims.

39PRAYER FOR RELIEF

WHEREFORE, Defendants The National Arts Club, The Board of Governors of the National Arts Club, Dianne Bernhard, as President of the National Arts Club, John Morisano, as First Vice President of the National Arts Club, and Tara Cortes, Stephen Hedberg, Milbry Polk, Alex Rosenberg and Ross Znavor, as Governors of the National Arts Club, respectfully request that the Court grant the following relief with respect to Plaintiffs’ causes of action:

A. That each of Plaintiffs’ eleven causes of action be dismissed in its entirety and with prejudice; and

B. That Defendants be reimbursed for the costs and disbursements associated with this action, including reasonable attorney’s fees, and be granted such other and further relief as the Court may deem just and proper.

In addition, with respect to the counterclaims asserted by the Defendants herein, the Defendants respectfully request that the Court grant the following relief:

A. On the First Counterclaim, an order compelling the plaintiffs and counterclaim defendants to account for their actions with respect to the Club’s real estate assets, and, after such accounting is completed, to pay money damages to the Club in an amount to be determined at trial, but which is believed to exceed $1,500,000;

B. On the Second Counterclaim, a money judgment in favor of the Club and against the plaintiffs in an amount to be proven at trial, but which is believed to be at least $300,000;

C. On the Third Counterclaim, a judgment setting aside the self-dealing transactions described in the Counterclaims with respect to the Club’s real estate assets, and awarding the Club damages in connection with such self-dealing transactions in

40 an amount which will be proven at trial, but which is believed to be at least $1,500,000;

D. On the Fourth Counterclaim, a judgment in an amount which will be proven at trial, but which is believed to exceed $1,500,000;

E. On the Fifth Counterclaim, a judgment compelling the plaintiffs to return to the Club all items proven at trial to be unique Club property in the possession of the plaintiffs, including the items described in the Fifth Counterclaim;

F. On the Sixth Counterclaim, a judgment compelling Plaintiff Aldon James to account for his unauthorized expenditures of the Club’s funds, and after such accounting is completed, to pay money damages to the Club in an amount to be determined at trial, but which is believed to exceed $600,000;

G. On the Seventh Counterclaim, a judgment compelling plaintiffs to pay money damages to the Club in connection with their waste and misappropriation of the Club’s funds, an amount to be determined at trial, but which is believed to exceed $100,000;

H. On the Eighth Counterclaim, a judgment compelling the plaintiffs to pay money damages to the Club in connection with their self-dealing payments, in an amount to be determined at trial, but which is believed to exceed $600,000;

I. In connection with all Counterclaims, an award of the COUNTERCLAIMS

A. ALLEGATIONS COMMON TO ALL COUNTERCLAIMS

179. From 1986 to March 2011, plaintiff and counterclaim defendant O. Aldon James, Jr. (“Aldon James”) served as the president of the National Arts Club (the “Club”), and as a

member of the Club’s Board of Governors (the “Board”).

182. Because of his position and his relationship with Steven U. Leitner, Aldon James was at all relevant times both a “disqualified” person and a “related individual” within the

meaning of, and subject to, the Club’s Conflict of Interest Policy.

183. From 1980 to the present, plaintiff and counterclaim defendant John James has been a member of the Club.

184. As a member of the Club, John James had a duty to the Club not to take actions that would harm the Club or waste or damage the Club’s property, and he had a duty not to use

the Club’s property for his personal benefit without the knowledge and approval of the Board.

185. As the brother of Aldon James, John James was at all relevant times a “related individual” within the meaning of, and subject to, the Club’s Conflict of Interest Policy.

186. From 1986 to March 2011, plaintiff and counterclaim defendant John James was authorized and allowed by Aldon James to assume and exercise executive authority at the

and corporate opportunities.

187. From 1964 to the present, plaintiff and counterclaim defendant Steven U. Leitner (“Leitner”) has been a member of the Club.

Club’s Studio Building and the Club’s Development Committee. Beginning in at least 2000, Mr. Leitner was a member of and at various times was chairperson of the House Committee at the

189. Because of his position at the Club and his relationship with Aldon James during the relevant period, Leitner was at all relevant times both a “disqualified” person and a “related

individual” within the meaning of, and subject to, the Club’s Conflict of Interest Policy.

B. ALLEGATIONS CONCERNING THE CLUB’S REAL

ESTATE ASSETS

190. For many years, and during the period from January 2005 until June 2011, plaintiffs and counterclaim defendants (hereinafter, “plaintiffs”) were tenants of the Club.

25During this period, each of the plaintiffs had a lease to occupy one apartment in the Club’s Studio Building, (the “Plaintiffs’ Apartments” and the “Plaintiffs’ Leases”).

191. The Plaintiffs’ Leases charged, and each of the plaintiffs paid, rents that were below the prevailing market rates during the many years they leased the Plaintiffs’ Apartments in

the Club’s Studio Building.

193. The Additional Spaces occupied by the plaintiffs at the Club consisted of apartments in the Studio Building, as well as transient rooms, office spaces and meeting rooms in

the Tilden Mansion.

194. During the year 2006, the Board made an inquiry to determine the status of the apartments located in the Studio Building. During this inquiry, the Board never received

accurate information from the plaintiffs concerning the multiple spaces they were occupying in the Studio Building.

195. In fact, the plaintiffs never disclosed to the Board how many apartments they

were occupying in the Studio Building in 2006. Nor did the plaintiffs inform the Board that they

were occupying Additional Spaces in the Tilden Mansion.

196. Upon information and belief, as of the time of the filing of these counterclaims,

the plaintiffs occupy at least two apartments in the Studio Building without any leases, and

occupy an additional four apartments in the Studio Building (the “Additional Apartments”).

Upon information and belief, the plaintiffs began occupying the Additional Apartments as

26elderly tenants in the Studio Building passed away, and the plaintiffs moved in to their

apartments.

198. However, at that meeting, and thereafter, the plaintiffs concealed from the Board the fact that that they were occupying the Additional Spaces and Additional Apartments.

199. The plaintiffs never obtained the Board’s approval to occupy the Additional Spaces. Nor did the plaintiffs ever obtain the Board’s approval to occupy the Additional Apartments.

200. At the November 2006 Board meeting, the Board also resolved that going forward all leases and all rentals of apartments by the Club must be approved by the Board.

201. The plaintiffs paid no rent to the Club in connection with their occupancy of the Additional Spaces during the many years they occupied the Additional Spaces.

202. The plaintiffs never paid more than one below market rent each for the multiple apartments they occupied in the Studio Building, until plaintiff John James began paying rent on

Apartment 4C in January 2011, as described below.

203. For many years, and from at least January 2005 until June 2011, plaintiffs used the Additional Spaces and Additional Apartments they occupied at the Club to collect items of

personal property.

27204. The plaintiffs co-mingled their personal property, detritus, trash and other items in the Additional Spaces and the Additional Apartments with many and various items of Club

property, including fine art and antiques.

205. The manner in which the plaintiffs occupied multiple spaces at the Club created health and safety hazards for the Club’s other tenants, by attracting vermin, and creating

potential fire hazards.

207. By occupying the Additional Spaces and Additional Apartments at the Club without the knowledge or approval of the Board and while paying a minimal, single rent each,

the plaintiffs have denied the Club the ability to use or rent the Additional Spaces and Additional Apartments occupied by the plaintiffs for years.

208. In December 2010, plaintiff Aldon James granted a lease or license to a member of the club, which purports to permit the member to use an apartment in the Studio Building as a

“museum” for ten years, without paying any rent to the Club.

209. This lease or license was never disclosed to or approved by the Board, despite the November 2006 Board resolution that required such disclosure and approval.

210. In January 2011, plaintiff Aldon James granted a lease to plaintiff John James for Apartment 4C in the Studio Building, in the name “Decorative Arts – Planned Giving,” even 28though John James already occupied at least two other apartments in the Studio Building while paying a single below market rent.

211. Upon information and belief, plaintiff John James had occupied Apartment 4C rent free for approximately six months prior to the January 2011 Lease.

FIRST COUNTERCLAIM:

CONCERNING THE CLUB’S REAL ESTATE ASSETS

(FOR BREACH OF FIDUCIARY DUTY AND ACCOUNTING

AGAINST ALL PLAINTIFFS AND COUNTERCLAIM DEFENDANTS)

213. Defendants and counterclaim plaintiffs repeat and re-allege paragraphs 179 through 212 as if fully set forth herein.

215. Plaintiffs Aldon James, John James and Steven Leitner willfully disregarded and violated their fiduciary duties to the Club, and they intentionally and willfully damaged the Club

in violation of the Club’s Conflict of Interest Policy, by failing to pay appropriate rent for the multiple spaces they occupied at the Club.

corporate assets due to their neglect, failure to perform, or other violation of their duties.

217. The precise amount of damage done to the Club by the plaintiffs by their failure to pay appropriate rent for the multiple spaces they occupied at the Club is will be established at

trial, but is believed to exceed $1,500,000.

SECOND COUNTERCLAIM:

CONCERNING THE CLUB’S REAL ESTATE ASSETS

(FOR WASTE OF THE CLUB’S REAL ESTATE ASSETS

AGAINST ALL PLAINTIFFS AND COUNTERCLAIM DEFENDANTS))

218. Defendants and counterclaim plaintiffs repeat and re-allege paragraphs 179 through 212 as if fully set forth herein.

30221. Plaintiffs Aldon James and Steven Leitner even failed to do repairs to remove and/or ameliorate potential fire hazards as directed by the New York City Fire Department.

223. Section 720 of the New York State Not-For-Profit Corporation Law authorizes the Club to bring an action against its officers and governors when their actions have wasted the

Club’s assets.

224. The precise amount of damage done by the plaintiffs to the Club’s real estate assets by their willful neglect and waste will be proven at trial, but is believed to exceed $500,000.

THIRD COUNTERCLAIM:

CONCERNING THE CLUB’S REAL ESTATE ASSETS

(FOR SELF-DEALING IN THE CLUB’S REAL ESTATE ASSETS

AGAINST ALL PLAINTIFFS AND COUNTERCLAIM DEFENDANTS)

225. Defendants and counterclaim plaintiffs repeat and re-allege paragraphs 179 through 212 as if fully set forth herein.

226. As fiduciaries of the Club, the plaintiffs each had a duty not to engage in transactions concerning the Club’s real estate assets for their personal benefit and to the detriment of the Club.

227. As fiduciaries, the plaintiffs each had a duty to prevent self-dealing by others.

228. As fiduciaries, the plaintiffs each had a duty not to deal in the Club’s property for his benefit, and to the detriment of the Club.

31229. As “related individuals” subject to the Club’s Conflict of Interest Policy, the plaintiffs could not acquire the Club’s assets for themselves on terms that were more favorable

than those available to other members.

234. The Court should declare null and void and set aside the self-dealing transactions engaged in by the plaintiffs with respect to the Club’s real estate assets. In addition, the Court

should award the Club damages to compensate it for the damage done to it by the plaintiffs’ selfdealing transactions with respect to the Club’s real estate assets. The amount of monetary

32FOURTH COUNTERCLAIM:

CONCERNING THE CLUB’S REAL ESTATE ASSETS

(FOR DIVERSION OF CORPORATE OPPORTUNITY,

AGAINST ALL PLAINTIFFS AND COUNTERCLAIM DEFENDANTS)

235. Defendants and counterclaim plaintiffs repeat and re-allege paragraphs 179 through 212 as if fully set forth herein.

236. By taking for themselves numerous apartments and other spaces at the Club rather than renting them to Club members or third parties, the plaintiffs and counterclaim defendants

denied the Club multiple and significant opportunities to profit from its real estate assets.

237. By denying the Club multiple and significant opportunities to benefit financiallyfrom its real estate assets, and diverting those opportunities to themselves, plaintiffs and counterclaim defendants Aldon James, John James and Steven Leitner violated their fiduciary duties to the Club, violated their duties as members of the Club not to engage in actions that would harm the Club, and violated the Club’s Conflict of Interest Policy.

C. ALLEGATIONS CONCERNING THE CLUB’S PERSONALTY

239. The Club owns many valuable pieces of fine and decorative art, which it has acquired through bequests made to the Club, and, in some cases, by purchasing the pieces of fine and decorative art.

be stored in appropriate conditions.

243. The pieces of fine and decorative art that were found in spaces occupied by the plaintiffs were not stored in an appropriate manner, and do not appear to have been properly

maintained. They were simply kept together with the clutter, trash and detritus collected by the plaintiffs, and those pieces of fine and decorative art possessed by the plaintiffs are in serious

danger of being damaged or even destroyed if they continue to be stored in the unsanitary and unsafe spaces occupied by the plaintiffs. The diminution in value of the Club’s assets because

items of fine and decorative art are missing, or were possessed by the plaintiffs and stored in unsanitary and unsafe conditions is unknown, but is believed to exceed $400,000.

FIFTH COUNTERCLAIM:

CONCERNING THE CLUB’S PERSONALTY

(FOR REPLEVIN OF UNIQUE ASSETS

AGAINST ALL PLAINTIFFS AND COUNTERCLAIM DEFENDANTS)

244. Defendants and counterclaim plaintiffs repeat and re-allege paragraphs 179 through 189, and 239 through 243, as if fully set forth herein.

34245. From at least 2005 to 2011, plaintiffs spent the Club’s funds to purchase thousands of items of decorative art at flea markets, antique stores, second-hand stores and other

venues.

246. In August 2011, plaintiffs claimed ownership of more than 2000 items of decorative art located in the common spaces of the Club.

247. Despite the Club’s repeated demands, the plaintiffs have not produced any evidence to the Club to establish their ownership of the items they claimed to own in August 2011.

248. The Club believes in good faith that the items claimed by the plaintiffs in August 2011 belong to the Club, because thousands of dollars in Club funds were used to purchase items

of decorative art from 2005 to 2011.

250. Among the unique items of Club property taken by the plaintiffs from the Club are: a watercolor by Louis Comfort Tiffany; a watercolor by August Rodin; and a watercolor by

Robert Seyffert.

251. Each of the items of fine art and decorative art in plaintiffs’ possession which belong to the Club, including which are described in paragraphs 245 through 250 above, is unique.

252. As of the date hereof, Plaintiffs have not returned many of the items of fine and decorative art described in paragraphs 245 through 250, despite the Club’s demand that these items be returned to it.

35253. Accordingly, defendants and counterclaim plaintiffs request that the Court enter an order compelling the plaintiffs to return to the Club all property in their possession which is

identified at trial as the property of the Club.

ALLEGATIONS CONCERNING THE CLUB’S BANK ACCOUNTS

254. From 1986 until January 2011, as president of the Club, plaintiff Aldon James controlled the Club’s bank accounts and had signatory authority for the Club’s checking account.

255. From at least 2005 to early 2011, plaintiff Aldon James wrote handwritten checks to pay for personal expenses for himself, John James and Steven Leitner, and to pay for

unauthorized expenditures of the Club’s funds. These expenditures were not known to the Board and were not authorized by the Board.

256. In addition, from at least 2005 to early 2011, plaintiff Aldon James used the Club’s ATM/debit card to pay for personal expenses for himself, John James and Steven Leitner,

and to pay for unauthorized expenditures of the Club’s funds. These expenditures were not known to the Board and were not authorized by the Board.

257. The plaintiffs were unjustly enriched by the expenditures described in paragraphs 255 and 256.

259. Upon information and belief, a conservative estimate of the amount of Club funds improperly spent by Aldon James in the manner described in paragraphs 255 and 256 exceeds $600,000.

SIXTH COUNTERCLAIM:

CONCERNING THE CLUB’S BANK ACCOUNTS

(FOR ACCOUNTING WITH RESPECT TO THE CLUB’S FUNDS

AGAINST PLAINTIFF AND COUNTERCLAIM DEFENDANT

ALDON JAMES)

260. Defendants and counterclaim plaintiffs repeat and re-allege paragraphs 179 through 189, and 254 through 259, as if fully set forth herein.

261. As is indicated by the foregoing, pursuant to New York Not-For-Profit

Corporation Law Section 720, the plaintiff Aldon James is liable to account to the Club for his mismanagement of the Club’s bank accounts, because he acquired for himself and wasted

corporate funds through his violation of his fiduciary duty to preserve the Club’s funds, by his misuse of handwritten checks and the Club’s ATM/debit card.

262. The amount due and owing to the Club by plaintiff Aldon James as a result of his mismanagement and waste of the Club’s funds will be established at trial, but is believed in good

faith to exceed $600,000 for the period from January 2005 to June 2011.

SEVENTH COUNTERCLAIM:

CONCERNING THE CLUB’S BANK ACCOUNTS

(FOR WASTE AND MISAPPROPRIATION OF CLUB FUNDS

AGAINST ALL PLAINTIFFS AND COUNTERCLAIM DEFENDANTS))

263. Defendants and counterclaim plaintiffs repeat and re-allege paragraphs 179 through 189, and 254 through 259, as if fully set forth herein.

265. Examples of expenditures that constituted a waste of the Club’s funds include donations of more than $40,000 to the Cherry Lane Theater; payments of approximately $35,000

266. The Club’s Board of Governors did not know about these payments and did not authorize them.

38EIGHTH COUNTERCLAIM:

CONCERNING THE CLUB’S BANK ACCOUNTS

(FOR SELF-DEALING AGAINST ALL PLAINTIFFS

AND COUNTERCLAIM DEFENDANTS)

270. Defendants and counterclaim plaintiffs repeat and re-allege paragraphs 179 through 189, and 254 through 259, as if fully set forth herein.

280. By making the unauthorized and self-dealing payments described above, the plaintiffs and counterclaim defendants have unjustly enriched themselves and damaged the Club

in an amount to be determined at trial, but which is believed to exceed $600,000 for the period from 2005 to 2011.

RESERVATION OF RIGHTS

281. Defendants reserve their rights to move to amend their Answer to assert additional defenses and counterclaims. The Club’s investigation of this matter is ongoing, and to the extent

evidence is discovered that supports additional defenses or counterclaims, the Defendants reserve their rights to assert such defenses or counterclaims.

39PRAYER FOR RELIEF

WHEREFORE, Defendants The National Arts Club, The Board of Governors of the National Arts Club, Dianne Bernhard, as President of the National Arts Club, John Morisano, as

First Vice President of the National Arts Club, and Tara Cortes, Stephen Hedberg, Milbry Polk, Alex Rosenberg and Ross Znavor, as Governors of the National Arts Club, respectfully request that the Court grant the following relief with respect to Plaintiffs’ causes of action:

A. That each of Plaintiffs’ eleven causes of action be dismissed in its entirety and with prejudice; and

Defendants respectfully request that the Court grant the following relief:

B. On the Second Counterclaim, a money judgment in favor of the Club and against the plaintiffs in an amount to be proven at trial, but which is believed to be at least $300,000;

40an amount which will be proven at trial, but which is believed to be at least $1,500,000;

D. On the Fourth Counterclaim, a judgment in an amount which will be proven at trial, but which is believed to exceed $1,500,000;

I. In connection with all Counterclaims, an award of the COUNTERCLAIMS

A. ALLEGATIONS COMMON TO ALL COUNTERCLAIMS

179. From 1986 to March 2011, plaintiff and counterclaim defendant O. Aldon James, Jr. (“Aldon James”) served as the president of the National Arts Club (the “Club”), and as a

member of the Club’s Board of Governors (the “Board”).

182. Because of his position and his relationship with Steven U. Leitner, Aldon James was at all relevant times both a “disqualified” person and a “related individual” within the

meaning of, and subject to, the Club’s Conflict of Interest Policy.

183. From 1980 to the present, plaintiff and counterclaim defendant John James has been a member of the Club.

184. As a member of the Club, John James had a duty to the Club not to take actions that would harm the Club or waste or damage the Club’s property, and he had a duty not to use

the Club’s property for his personal benefit without the knowledge and approval of the Board.

185. As the brother of Aldon James, John James was at all relevant times a “related individual” within the meaning of, and subject to, the Club’s Conflict of Interest Policy.

186. From 1986 to March 2011, plaintiff and counterclaim defendant John James was authorized and allowed by Aldon James to assume and exercise executive authority at the

and corporate opportunities.

187. From 1964 to the present, plaintiff and counterclaim defendant Steven U. Leitner (“Leitner”) has been a member of the Club.

Leitner was elected to the Board of the Club in 1992, and he served as a member of the Board for approximately nine years, while continuing to be in charge of the rental of the apartments in the Club’s Studio Building and the Club’s Development Committee. Beginning in at least 2000, Mr. Leitner was a member of and at various times was chairperson of the House Committee at the Club, and continued in that capacity until early 2011. As an officer of the Club, as a member of the Board, and as a member of and chairman of the House Committee, Leitner was a fiduciary of the Club, and owed it a fiduciary duty to preserve the Club’s real estate assets; to avoid selfdealing at the Club’s expense, and to prevent self-dealing by other officers, governors and members of the Club; to avoid diverting for his own use and benefit any of the Club’s real property and corporate opportunities relating to Club’s real property, and to prevent other officers, governors and members of the Club from diverting for their own use and benefit any of the Club’s real property and corporate opportunities relating to the Club’s real property.

189. Because of his position at the Club and his relationship with Aldon James during the relevant period, Leitner was at all relevant times both a “disqualified” person and a “related

individual” within the meaning of, and subject to, the Club’s Conflict of Interest Policy.

B. ALLEGATIONS CONCERNING THE CLUB’S REAL

ESTATE ASSETS

190. For many years, and during the period from January 2005 until June 2011, plaintiffs and counterclaim defendants (hereinafter, “plaintiffs”) were tenants of the Club.

25During this period, each of the plaintiffs had a lease to occupy one apartment in the Club’s Studio Building, (the “Plaintiffs’ Apartments” and the “Plaintiffs’ Leases”).

191. The Plaintiffs’ Leases charged, and each of the plaintiffs paid, rents that were below the prevailing market rates during the many years they leased the Plaintiffs’ Apartments in

the Club’s Studio Building.

193. The Additional Spaces occupied by the plaintiffs at the Club consisted of apartments in the Studio Building, as well as transient rooms, office spaces and meeting rooms in the Tilden Mansion.

194. During the year 2006, the Board made an inquiry to determine the status of the apartments located in the Studio Building. During this inquiry, the Board never received accurate information from the plaintiffs concerning the multiple spaces they were occupying in the Studio Building.

196. Upon information and belief, as of the time of the filing of these counterclaims, the plaintiffs occupy at least two apartments in the Studio Building without any leases, and

occupy an additional four apartments in the Studio Building (the “Additional Apartments”). Upon information and belief, the plaintiffs began occupying the Additional Apartments as

26 elderly tenants in the Studio Building passed away, and the plaintiffs moved in to their apartments.

198. However, at that meeting, and thereafter, the plaintiffs concealed from the Board the fact that that they were occupying the Additional Spaces and Additional Apartments.

199. The plaintiffs never obtained the Board’s approval to occupy the Additional Spaces. Nor did the plaintiffs ever obtain the Board’s approval to occupy the Additional Apartments.

200. At the November 2006 Board meeting, the Board also resolved that going forward all leases and all rentals of apartments by the Club must be approved by the Board.

201. The plaintiffs paid no rent to the Club in connection with their occupancy of the Additional Spaces during the many years they occupied the Additional Spaces.

202. The plaintiffs never paid more than one below market rent each for the multiple apartments they occupied in the Studio Building, until plaintiff John James began paying rent on Apartment 4C in January 2011, as described below.

203. For many years, and from at least January 2005 until June 2011, plaintiffs used the Additional Spaces and Additional Apartments they occupied at the Club to collect items of personal property.

27204. The plaintiffs co-mingled their personal property, detritus, trash and other items in the Additional Spaces and the Additional Apartments with many and various items of Club

property, including fine art and antiques.

205. The manner in which the plaintiffs occupied multiple spaces at the Club created health and safety hazards for the Club’s other tenants, by attracting vermin, and creating

potential fire hazards.

207. By occupying the Additional Spaces and Additional Apartments at the Club

without the knowledge or approval of the Board and while paying a minimal, single rent each,

the plaintiffs have denied the Club the ability to use or rent the Additional Spaces and Additional

Apartments occupied by the plaintiffs for years.

208. In December 2010, plaintiff Aldon James granted a lease or license to a member

of the club, which purports to permit the member to use an apartment in the Studio Building as a

“museum” for ten years, without paying any rent to the Club.

209. This lease or license was never disclosed to or approved by the Board, despite the

November 2006 Board resolution that required such disclosure and approval.

210. In January 2011, plaintiff Aldon James granted a lease to plaintiff John James for

Apartment 4C in the Studio Building, in the name “Decorative Arts – Planned Giving,” even

28though John James already occupied at least two other apartments in the Studio Building while

paying a single below market rent.

211. Upon information and belief, plaintiff John James had occupied Apartment 4C

rent free for approximately six months prior to the January 2011 Lease.

212. The lease to Apartment 4C was granted by Aldon James to John James at a below

market rent, and without the knowledge or authorization of the Board, despite the November

2006 Board resolution that required the disclosure of the lease to the Board and the Board’s

approval of the lease.

FIRST COUNTERCLAIM:

CONCERNING THE CLUB’S REAL ESTATE ASSETS

(FOR BREACH OF FIDUCIARY DUTY AND ACCOUNTING

AGAINST ALL PLAINTIFFS AND COUNTERCLAIM DEFENDANTS)

213. Defendants and counterclaim plaintiffs repeat and re-allege paragraphs 179

through 212 as if fully set forth herein.

214. As fiduciaries of the Club, the plaintiffs each had a duty to preserve and protect

the Club’s assets; to prevent the Club from engaging in transactions of the sort described in

paragraphs 208 and 210 above, which effectively denied the Club appropriate rents on two of the

apartments in the Studio Building; and to take steps to prevent the conduct described in

paragraphs 190 through 212 above.

215. Plaintiffs Aldon James, John James and Steven Leitner willfully disregarded and

violated their fiduciary duties to the Club, and they intentionally and willfully damaged the Club

in violation of the Club’s Conflict of Interest Policy, by failing to pay appropriate rent for the

multiple spaces they occupied at the Club.

29216. Section 720 of New York Not-For-Profit Corporation Law compels directors and

officers of not for profit corporations to account for their official conduct when they have: 1)

neglected or failed to perform their duties in the management and disposition of corporate assets

committed to their care; and 2) acquired for themselves, transferred to others, or wasted

corporate assets due to their neglect, failure to perform, or other violation of their duties.

217. The precise amount of damage done to the Club by the plaintiffs by their failure

to pay appropriate rent for the multiple spaces they occupied at the Club is will be established at

trial, but is believed to exceed $1,500,000.

SECOND COUNTERCLAIM:

CONCERNING THE CLUB’S REAL ESTATE ASSETS

(FOR WASTE OF THE CLUB’S REAL ESTATE ASSETS

AGAINST ALL PLAINTIFFS AND COUNTERCLAIM DEFENDANTS))

218. Defendants and counterclaim plaintiffs repeat and re-allege paragraphs 179

through 212 as if fully set forth herein.

219. None of the plaintiffs properly maintained the spaces they occupied at the Club.

To the contrary, the plaintiffs damaged the spaces they occupied, failed to clean them and

rendered them unfit to occupy and unfit to rent.

220. Plaintiffs Aldon James and Steven Leitner, as president and Chairperson of the

Housing Committee respectively, willfully neglected the Club’s real estate assets, and

intentionally failed to authorize necessary repairs to be made to the Tilden Mansion and Studio

Building, including but not limited to repairs necessary to maintain and fix the elevators, the

boilers, the roofs, plumbing, electrical systems and the carpets in the Studio Building and Tilden

Mansion.

30221. Plaintiffs Aldon James and Steven Leitner even failed to do repairs to remove

and/or ameliorate potential fire hazards as directed by the New York City Fire Department.

222. The conduct of the plaintiffs in willfully failing to authorize necessary repairs to

the Club’s real estate, and their failure to maintain the Club’s assets violated their respective

fiduciary duties to the Club, and caused financial damage to the Club.

223. Section 720 of the New York State Not-For-Profit Corporation Law authorizes

the Club to bring an action against its officers and governors when their actions have wasted the

Club’s assets.

224. The precise amount of damage done by the plaintiffs to the Club’s real estate

assets by their willful neglect and waste will be proven at trial, but is believed to exceed

$500,000.

THIRD COUNTERCLAIM:

CONCERNING THE CLUB’S REAL ESTATE ASSETS

(FOR SELF-DEALING IN THE CLUB’S REAL ESTATE ASSETS

AGAINST ALL PLAINTIFFS AND COUNTERCLAIM DEFENDANTS)

225. Defendants and counterclaim plaintiffs repeat and re-allege paragraphs 179

through 212 as if fully set forth herein.

226. As fiduciaries of the Club, the plaintiffs each had a duty not to engage in

transactions concerning the Club’s real estate assets for their personal benefit and to the

detriment of the Club.

227. As fiduciaries, the plaintiffs each had a duty to prevent self-dealing by others.

228. As fiduciaries, the plaintiffs each had a duty not to deal in the Club’s property for

his benefit, and to the detriment of the Club.

31229. As “related individuals” subject to the Club’s Conflict of Interest Policy, the

plaintiffs could not acquire the Club’s assets for themselves on terms that were more favorable

than those available to other members.

230. The transactions by which the plaintiffs gave themselves the right to occupy and

use multiple spaces at the Club for their personal benefit effectively denied the Club the ability

rent the spaces or to employ them for the Club’s benefit.

231. All of the transactions by which the plaintiffs occupied more than a single

apartment each without the knowledge and approval of the Board, and without paying market

rent were self-dealing transactions.

232. When Aldon James granted a lease to plaintiff John James for Apartment 4C at a

rent below market, as described above, that transaction also amounted to self-dealing, and

violated the Club’s Conflict of Interest Policy, because it gave the plaintiffs the right to occupy

an additional space at a rent below that which could be obtained from another Club member.

233. Section 720 of New York Not-For-Profit Corporation Law authorizes a not-forprofit corporation to bring an action to set aside any unlawful conveyance, or assignment or

transfer of corporate assets, where the transferee knew of its unlawfulness.

234. The Court should declare null and void and set aside the self-dealing transactions

engaged in by the plaintiffs with respect to the Club’s real estate assets. In addition, the Court

should award the Club damages to compensate it for the damage done to it by the plaintiffs’ selfdealing transactions with respect to the Club’s real estate assets. The amount of monetary

damages done to the Club by the plaintiffs’ self-dealing in connection with the Club’s real estate

assets will be established at the time of trial, but is reasonably believed to exceed $1,500,000.

32FOURTH COUNTERCLAIM:

CONCERNING THE CLUB’S REAL ESTATE ASSETS

(FOR DIVERSION OF CORPORATE OPPORTUNITY,

AGAINST ALL PLAINTIFFS AND COUNTERCLAIM DEFENDANTS)

235. Defendants and counterclaim plaintiffs repeat and re-allege paragraphs 179

through 212 as if fully set forth herein.

236. By taking for themselves numerous apartments and other spaces at the Club rather

than renting them to Club members or third parties, the plaintiffs and counterclaim defendants

denied the Club multiple and significant opportunities to profit from its real estate assets.

237. By denying the Club multiple and significant opportunities to benefit financially

from its real estate assets, and diverting those opportunities to themselves, plaintiffs and

counterclaim defendants Aldon James, John James and Steven Leitner violated their fiduciary

duties to the Club, violated their duties as members of the Club not to engage in actions that

would harm the Club, and violated the Club’s Conflict of Interest Policy.

238. The amount of damage done to the Club by the plaintiffs and counterclaim

defendants by their diversion of the Club’s corporate opportunities to themselves will be proven

at trial. However, the Club believes that the damage done to it by the plaintiffs’ and

counterclaim defendants’ diversion of corporate opportunities to themselves exceeds $1,500,000.

C. ALLEGATIONS CONCERNING THE CLUB’S PERSONALTY

239. The Club owns many valuable pieces of fine and decorative art, which it has

acquired through bequests made to the Club, and, in some cases, by purchasing the pieces of fine

and decorative art.

240. During his tenure as president of the Club, Aldon James failed to properly

maintain the Club’s collection of fine art and decorative art, and many pieces of the Club’s fine

33and decorative art collection were stored in improper conditions, despite the protests of the

Club’s curator of fine art, and the requests of the curator and others that the Club’s art collection

be stored in appropriate conditions.

241. In addition, certain pieces of fine art bequeathed to the Club were lost during

Aldon James’ tenure as president of the Club, and many of them have never been found. The

value of the fine art bequeathed to the Club that is now missing is believed to exceed $150,000.

242. Some of the “missing” pieces of fine and decorative art that were lost during

Aldon James’ tenure as president of the Club have very recently been found in the multiple

spaces at the Club occupied by the plaintiffs.

243. The pieces of fine and decorative art that were found in spaces occupied by the

plaintiffs were not stored in an appropriate manner, and do not appear to have been properly

maintained. They were simply kept together with the clutter, trash and detritus collected by the

plaintiffs, and those pieces of fine and decorative art possessed by the plaintiffs are in serious

danger of being damaged or even destroyed if they continue to be stored in the unsanitary and

unsafe spaces occupied by the plaintiffs. The diminution in value of the Club’s assets because

items of fine and decorative art are missing, or were possessed by the plaintiffs and stored in

unsanitary and unsafe conditions is unknown, but is believed to exceed $400,000.

FIFTH COUNTERCLAIM:

CONCERNING THE CLUB’S PERSONALTY

(FOR REPLEVIN OF UNIQUE ASSETS

AGAINST ALL PLAINTIFFS AND COUNTERCLAIM DEFENDANTS)

244. Defendants and counterclaim plaintiffs repeat and re-allege paragraphs 179

through 189, and 239 through 243, as if fully set forth herein.

34245. From at least 2005 to 2011, plaintiffs spent the Club’s funds to purchase

thousands of items of decorative art at flea markets, antique stores, second-hand stores and other

venues.

246. In August 2011, plaintiffs claimed ownership of more than 2000 items of

decorative art located in the common spaces of the Club.

247. Despite the Club’s repeated demands, the plaintiffs have not produced any

evidence to the Club to establish their ownership of the items they claimed to own in August

2011.

248. The Club believes in good faith that the items claimed by the plaintiffs in August

2011 belong to the Club, because thousands of dollars in Club funds were used to purchase items

of decorative art from 2005 to 2011.

249. Plaintiffs have removed specific items of Club property from the Club’s common

spaces, and have kept that property amongst the detritus, trash and other property in the

apartments at the Club that the plaintiffs occupy and control.

250. Among the unique items of Club property taken by the plaintiffs from the Club

are: a watercolor by Louis Comfort Tiffany; a watercolor by August Rodin; and a watercolor by

Robert Seyffert.

251. Each of the items of fine art and decorative art in plaintiffs’ possession which

belong to the Club, including which are described in paragraphs 245 through 250 above, is

unique.

252. As of the date hereof, Plaintiffs have not returned many of the items of fine and

decorative art described in paragraphs 245 through 250, despite the Club’s demand that these

items be returned to it.

35253. Accordingly, defendants and counterclaim plaintiffs request that the Court enter

an order compelling the plaintiffs to return to the Club all property in their possession which is

identified at trial as the property of the Club.

ALLEGATIONS CONCERNING THE CLUB’S BANK ACCOUNTS

254. From 1986 until January 2011, as president of the Club, plaintiff Aldon James

controlled the Club’s bank accounts and had signatory authority for the Club’s checking account.

In addition, from at least 2005 to 2011, plaintiff Aldon James had possession of and the authority

to use the ATM/debit card associated with the Club’s checking account to make purchases for

the Club.

255. From at least 2005 to early 2011, plaintiff Aldon James wrote handwritten checks

to pay for personal expenses for himself, John James and Steven Leitner, and to pay for

unauthorized expenditures of the Club’s funds. These expenditures were not known to the Board

and were not authorized by the Board.

256. In addition, from at least 2005 to early 2011, plaintiff Aldon James used the

Club’s ATM/debit card to pay for personal expenses for himself, John James and Steven Leitner,

and to pay for unauthorized expenditures of the Club’s funds. These expenditures were not

known to the Board and were not authorized by the Board.

257. The plaintiffs were unjustly enriched by the expenditures described in paragraphs

255 and 256.

258. Section 720 of New York Not-For-Profit Corporation Law authorizes the Club to

against directors and officers account for their official conduct when they have: 1) neglected or

failed to perform their duties in the management and disposition of corporate assets committed to

36their care; and 2) acquired for themselves, transferred to others, or wasted corporate assets due to

their neglect, failure to perform, or other violation of their duties.

259. Upon information and belief, a conservative estimate of the amount of Club funds

improperly spent by Aldon James in the manner described in paragraphs 255 and 256 exceeds

$600,000.

SIXTH COUNTERCLAIM:

CONCERNING THE CLUB’S BANK ACCOUNTS

(FOR ACCOUNTING WITH RESPECT TO THE CLUB’S FUNDS

AGAINST PLAINTIFF AND COUNTERCLAIM DEFENDANT

ALDON JAMES)

260. Defendants and counterclaim plaintiffs repeat and re-allege paragraphs 179

through 189, and 254 through 259, as if fully set forth herein.

261. As is indicated by the foregoing, pursuant to New York Not-For-Profit

Corporation Law Section 720, the plaintiff Aldon James is liable to account to the Club for his

mismanagement of the Club’s bank accounts, because he acquired for himself and wasted

corporate funds through his violation of his fiduciary duty to preserve the Club’s funds, by his

misuse of handwritten checks and the Club’s ATM/debit card.

262. The amount due and owing to the Club by plaintiff Aldon James as a result of his

mismanagement and waste of the Club’s funds will be established at trial, but is believed in good

faith to exceed $600,000 for the period from January 2005 to June 2011.

SEVENTH COUNTERCLAIM:

CONCERNING THE CLUB’S BANK ACCOUNTS

(FOR WASTE AND MISAPPROPRIATION OF CLUB FUNDS

AGAINST ALL PLAINTIFFS AND COUNTERCLAIM DEFENDANTS))

263. Defendants and counterclaim plaintiffs repeat and re-allege paragraphs 179

through 189, and 254 through 259, as if fully set forth herein.

37264. From at least early 2005 to 2011, plaintiff Aldon James frequently made

expenditures of Club funds that were outside the ordinary course of the Club’s business and

which constituted a waste of the Club’s funds.

265. Examples of expenditures that constituted a waste of the Club’s funds include

donations of more than $40,000 to the Cherry Lane Theater; payments of approximately $35,000

to an organization known as “The Radio Reading Project, Incorporated;” payments of more than

$15,000 to pay for lodging for one or more of the plaintiffs at the Inn at Irving Place, when

Aldon James and the other plaintiffs possessed and controlled at least 6 different apartments in

the Studio Building.

266. The Club’s Board of Governors did not know about these payments and did not

authorize them.

267. To the extent the plaintiff Aldon James made extraordinary expenditures of the

Club’s funds without the knowledge and authorization of the Board, he violated his duty of

loyalty to the Club, wasted the Club’s funds, and unjustly enriched himself and the other

plaintiffs.

268. To the extent that the extraordinary expenditures of the Club’s funds without the

knowledge and authorization of the Board benefitted Aldon James, John James or Steven

Leitner, such expenditures were made in violation of the Club’s Conflict of Interest Policy.

269. The plaintiffs should be required to pay damages to the Club in connection with

their waste of its funds. Those damages will be established at the time of trial, but are believed

to exceed $100,000.

38EIGHTH COUNTERCLAIM:

CONCERNING THE CLUB’S BANK ACCOUNTS

(FOR SELF-DEALING AGAINST ALL PLAINTIFFS

AND COUNTERCLAIM DEFENDANTS)

270. Defendants and counterclaim plaintiffs repeat and re-allege paragraphs 179

through 189, and 254 through 259, as if fully set forth herein.

271. The payments authorized by plaintiff Aldon James without the knowledge and

authorization of the Board that directly benefitted the plaintiffs constituted self dealing at the

expense of the Club, unjustly enriched the plaintiffs, and violated the Club’s Conflict of Interest

Policy.

279. Sections 715, 717 and 720 of New York Not-For-Profit Corporation Law prohibit

payments of corporate funds for the personal benefit of officers, governors or members of a NotFor-Profit corporation of the type made by Aldon James to and for the benefit of himself, Steven

Leitner and John James, as described above.

280. By making the unauthorized and self-dealing payments described above, the

plaintiffs and counterclaim defendants have unjustly enriched themselves and damaged the Club

in an amount to be determined at trial, but which is believed to exceed $600,000 for the period

from 2005 to 2011.

RESERVATION OF RIGHTS

281. Defendants reserve their rights to move to amend their Answer to assert additional

defenses and counterclaims. The Club’s investigation of this matter is ongoing, and to the extent

evidence is discovered that supports additional defenses or counterclaims, the Defendants reserve

their rights to assert such defenses or counterclaims.

39PRAYER FOR RELIEF

WHEREFORE, Defendants The National Arts Club, The Board of Governors of the

National Arts Club, Dianne Bernhard, as President of the National Arts Club, John Morisano, as

First Vice President of the National Arts Club, and Tara Cortes, Stephen Hedberg, Milbry Polk,

Alex Rosenberg and Ross Znavor, as Governors of the National Arts Club, respectfully request

that the Court grant the following relief with respect to Plaintiffs’ causes of action:

A. That each of Plaintiffs’ eleven causes of action be dismissed in its entirety and

with prejudice; and

B. That Defendants be reimbursed for the costs and disbursements associated with

this action, including reasonable attorney’s fees, and be granted such other and

further relief as the Court may deem just and proper.

In addition, with respect to the counterclaims asserted by the Defendants herein, the

Defendants respectfully request that the Court grant the following relief:

A. On the First Counterclaim, an order compelling the plaintiffs and counterclaim

defendants to account for their actions with respect to the Club’s real estate assets,

and, after such accounting is completed, to pay money damages to the Club in an

amount to be determined at trial, but which is believed to exceed $1,500,000;

B. On the Second Counterclaim, a money judgment in favor of the Club and against

the plaintiffs in an amount to be proven at trial, but which is believed to be at least

$300,000;

C. On the Third Counterclaim, a judgment setting aside the self-dealing transactions

described in the Counterclaims with respect to the Club’s real estate assets, and

awarding the Club damages in connection with such self-dealing transactions in

40an amount which will be proven at trial, but which is believed to be at least

$1,500,000;

D. On the Fourth Counterclaim, a judgment in an amount which will be proven at

trial, but which is believed to exceed $1,500,000;

E. On the Fifth Counterclaim, a judgment compelling the plaintiffs to return to the

Club all items proven at trial to be unique Club property in the possession of the

plaintiffs, including the items described in the Fifth Counterclaim;

F. On the Sixth Counterclaim, a judgment compelling Plaintiff Aldon James to

account for his unauthorized expenditures of the Club’s funds, and after such

accounting is completed, to pay money damages to the Club in an amount to be

determined at trial, but which is believed to exceed $600,000;

G. On the Seventh Counterclaim, a judgment compelling plaintiffs to pay money

damages to the Club in connection with their waste and misappropriation of the

Club’s funds, an amount to be determined at trial, but which is believed to exceed

$100,000;

H. On the Eighth Counterclaim, a judgment compelling the plaintiffs to pay money

damages to the Club in connection with their self-dealing payments, in an amount

to be determined at trial, but which is believed to exceed $600,000;

I. In connection with all Counterclaims, an award of the Club’s costs and attorneys

fees incurred in prosecuting the Counterclaims; and such other relief that the Court should deem just and proper.

New York Times

2012-01-19T16:47:00.000-05:00

Michael Grynbaum notes: “A day after Mitt Romney conceded that he paid a lower tax rate than many Americans, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg — another politician who made his fortune in the financial industry — said on Wednesday that he personally paid ‘the highest personal income tax rate.’ “

Thomas Kaplan writes: “Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Wednesday unveiled a new Web site promoting his proposed state budget, featuring a photograph of the smiling governor, his sleeves rolled up, greeting farmers in a flood-stricken upstate community.”

John Eligon notes: “Looking to rein in the use of public money to pay what he called excessive salaries, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo signed an executive order on Wednesday placing a $199,000 limit on the amount of state funds that contractors can use to pay executives. Organizations that contract with the state to provide services like health care may still pay their executives higher amounts, but the state will reimburse the provider only up to the stated amount, barring extraordinary circumstances, according to the order.”

‘Lyin’ king Pedro Espada hit with new raps

2012-01-19T16:42:00.001-05:00

NYPost: Spencer Burnett

Former New York state Senate Majority Leader Pedro Espada Jr. (far left with son Pedro) was hit yesterday with two new charges - of making false statements - in his federal

Marianne Gingrich, Newt Gingrich's Ex-Wife, Says He Wanted An 'Open Marriage'

2012-01-19T15:43:00.003-05:00

First Posted: 1/19/12 11:19 AM ET Updated: 1/19/12 01:10 PM E

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So, it seems that one part of that juicy ABC News "bombshell" interview with Marianne Gingrich concerns one of the "big ideas" that Newt Gingrich, hive of constant innovation, had during the period of time the former House Speaker was out of office: he wanted Marianne, his second wife, to enter into an "open marriage" arrangement, so that he could continue to consort with Callista Bisek. (You know, the third wife that introduced him to Catholicism.)

ABC's Brian Ross interviewed Gingrich about the matter:

GINGRICH: I said to him, we've been married a long time. And he said, yes, but you want me all to yourself. Callista doesn't care what I do.
ROSS: What was he saying to you, do you think?

GINGRICH: He was asking to have an open marriage, and I refused.

ROSS: He wanted an open marriage.

GINGRICH: Yeah, that I accept the fact that he has somebody else in his life.

ROSS: And you said?

GINGRICH: No. No. That is not a marriage.

Of course, to a certain extent, this is something we've already basically known. Let's recall that in the August 2010 Esquire profile of Gingrich, Marianne offered this account of their marriage's last days:

Early in May, she went out to Ohio for her mother's birthday. A day and a half went by and Newt didn't return her calls, which was strange. They always talked every day, often ten times a day, so she was frantic by the time he called to say he needed to talk to her.
"About what?"

He wanted to talk in person, he said.

"I said, 'No, we need to talk now.'"

He went quiet.

"There's somebody else, isn't there?"

She kind of guessed it, of course. Women usually do. But did she know the woman was in her apartment, eating off her plates, sleeping in her bed?

She called a minister they both trusted. He came over to the house the next day and worked with them the whole weekend, but Gingrich just kept saying she was a Jaguar and all he wanted was a Chevrolet. "'I can't handle a Jaguar right now.' He said that many times. 'All I want is a Chevrolet.'"

He asked her to just tolerate the affair, an offer she refused.

So, the new wrinkle here is that Marianne Gingrich is characterizing this as a desire on Newt's part to have an open marriage, rather than just have his wife tolerate his affair on the side. In many ways, this is a distinction without a difference, though I suppose it now makes a lot of his new demonstrations of Catholic conversion to be ... well, I suppose the phrase we're using these days is, "pious bologna."

Newt Gingrich has yet to weigh in on these new allegations from his ex-wife. In the past, he's written off his infidelities as events that occurred while he was too busy loving America.

UPDATE: There's been a mad dash to break these Marianne Gingrich scooplets, and the Washington Post has their own interview with Marianne Gingrich on the matter of this "open marriage." (This is the "exclusive print interview" with Marianne Gingrich, by the way.)

The fun part is that we learn that the day after Newt Gingrich asked Marianne for a divorce, he gave a lecture to the Republican Women Leaders Forum titled, "The Demise of American Culture" in which he decried the way liberals "talk about values," suggesting that they would not prefer that "young people" to "learn that George Washington was...A man of standards, a man who earned the right to be father of this country?"

As Marianne Gingrich told the Post:

“How could he ask me for a divorce on Monday and within 48 hours give a speech on family values and talk about how people treat people?” she said.

I mean...has she met Newt Gingrich?

[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not?]

Background on Newt Gingrich:

Experience -- And Baggage

1 of 10

Newton Leroy Gingrich entered Washington politics as a Georgia congressman in 1979 and exited in 1999 after resigning his position as speaker of the House.

His four-year speakership is most frequently noted in conservative circles for his success in pressuring President Bill Clinton to sign a conservative welfare reform package into law and overseeing a short period of balanced or near-balanced budgets. He also received a large share of the blame for the 1995 government shutdown, when the public saw him as a stubborn politician more willing to allow the government to run out of funds than to compromise.

But beyond the capital he's cultivated in the conservative movement, Gingrich's real political credentials have always been undercut by his personal history. He's had three wives. He reportedly brought divorce papers to his first wife while she was in a hospital bed recovering from uterine cancer (though this narrative was denied by both Gingrich and his daughter, Jackie Gingrich Cushman, in a recent report). His eventual separation from his second wife was less dramatic, but no less memorable. According to an extensive profile in Esquire, he told Marianne Gingrich that she was a "Jaguar" and that "all I want is a Chevrolet." That brought him to his third marriage to Callista Gingrich, who was a House staffer when she began an affair with her eventual husband.

The Russians Are Not Coming

2012-01-19T11:39:00.001-05:00

After 10 Years of Winning Elections the Russians Still Don't Get A District or Respect. It is A New Russian Cold War Against GOP

GOP Cuts the Man Who Delivered Votes Out

Last week Russian radio owner community leader Gregory Davidzon after he was humiliate an disrespected by the GOP ran to the arms of the political thug Lew Fidler against Russian GOP candidate David Storobin. Davidzon whose proven vote delivering ability made Turner a congressman, wanted a Russian state senate district. Instead he was told by the senate's GOP leadership that the Russians in Brooklyn would be cut into several districts, Golden, Sampson, the Kruger district and Savino. In addition the radio station owner was told by the GOP leadership that they were backing their own Russian candidate and would not back him for the seat.

10 Years Ago the Russians Were Also Block From Getting Their Own District by CM Recchia For the rest of the Recchia story and the top 10 reasons why the Russians did not get representation

Read Today's True News

The 3rd Annual Peace Week Press Conference

2012-01-19T00:25:00.004-05:00

Enterpreneur Russell Simmons & NYC Councilman Jummaane Wiliams (Co-Chair of City Council Anti-Violence Taskforce) with Erica Ford (Founder and CEO of Life Camp) at a news conference at City Hall, to help combat the culture of violence in New York City and promote a LifeStyle of Peace.

video by Rafael Martínez Alequín

Spain Proceeding With Bush Torture Case

2012-01-16T20:03:00.001-05:00

Reports: "International human rights groups have turned to the European courts after losing successive efforts to bring cases in US courts, which typically invoked the states secret doctrine to get lawsuits dismissed not on the merits but as a national security necessity."

Detainees at Guantanamo Bay are watched by military police. (photo: Reuters)

Spain Proceeding With Bush Torture Case

By Carol Rosenberg, The Miami Herald

16 January 12

The Obama administration may want to look forward but but other countries are still interested in determining whether Bush-era anti-terror practices violated international law.

Spanish judge on Friday re-launched an investigation into the alleged torture of detainees held at the U.S. detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, one day after a British authorities launched a probe into CIA renditions to Libya.

The twin developments demonstrated that while the Obama administration has stuck to its promise not to investigate whether Bush administration officials acted illegally by authorizing the use of harsh interrogation techniques, other countries are still interested in determining whether Bush-era anti-terror practices violated international law.

In Madrid, Judge Pablo Rafael Ruz Gutierrez handed down a 19-page decision Friday in which he said he would seek additional information - medical data, a translation of a Human Rights Watch report, elaboration on material made public by WikiLeaks, and testimony from three senior U.S. military officers who served at Guantánamo - in the case of four released Guantánamo captives who allege they were humiliated and subjected to torture while in U.S. custody.

Ruz said, however, that it would be premature to notify the former U.S. officials named in the former detainees' complaint that they are under investigation. Those officials include former President George W. Bush, former Vice President Dick Cheney, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and two former Guantánamo commanders, retired Marine Maj. Gen. Michael Lehnert and retired Army Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller.

Ruz said the complaint had yet to tie any of them to specific acts. He said he would ask Spanish prosecutors to determine who in the United States should be informed of the probe so that they could offer exculpatory evidence.

In London, the Crown Prosecution Service and Scotland Yard said Thursday that they would investigate allegations of British involvement in the Bush-era "extraordinary rendition" program, specifically whether British intelligence had a hand in delivering two Libyan opponents of Col. Moammar Gadhafi to Libyan jails, where they were tortured by Gadhafi's secret police.

Scotland Yard agreed to go forward on that probe while dropping another involving the interrogation in Morocco of former Guantánamo detainee Binyam Mohamed. British human rights activists had sought to hold British intelligence responsible for Mohamed's treatment in Morocco - he called it torture, and the investigators said there was no reason to doubt his account. But they found "it is not possible to bring criminal charges against an identifiable individual."

International human rights groups have turned to the European courts after losing successive efforts to bring cases in U.S. courts, which typically invoked the states secret doctrine to get lawsuits dismissed not on the merits but as a national security necessity.

"In the globalized world in which we live, justice processes are going to go forward," said James Goldston, executive director of the Open Society Justice Initiative, a legal advocacy group founded by investor George Soros.

"These crimes are universal crimes and it's very clear that until the United States holds to account those responsible for these crimes, other judicial actors in other countries are going to press for accountability."

Goldston said international investigations were necessary because the United States has heeded President Barack Obama's call to look forward, not back.

"There's no accountability process," he said. "There're no court proceedings. There're no truth commissions. There's even less appetite today than there was three years ago."

Open Society has asked the European Court of Human Rights to press Poland to investigate the CIA's treatment of a current Guantánamo captive who was waterboarded and threatened with a cocked gun in a secret CIA prison.

That case's theory: Europe has an obligation to intervene because the Pentagon is seeking the execution of that captive, alleged USS Cole bomber Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, who is currently facing charges before a military commission at Guantánamo.

Ruz ruled that under international law the United States has no right to declare itself immune from international prohibitions against torture "even in times of war or the fight against terrorism." He also rejected U.S. claims that Guantánamo detainees had no right to protection under the Geneva conventions.

The roots of the Spanish torture case, in a twist, were a request from the Bush administration that Spain prosecute Spanish detainee Lahcen Ikassrien on terror charges upon his release from Guantánamo. Spain did and initially found him guilty. But Spain's high court threw out that case, saying his statements while being interrogated at Guantánamo were unreliable because he had been tortured.

Three other former Guantánamo detainees joined Ikassrien in his complaint: Hamed Abderraman Ahmed, who also was released to Spain, and Jamil el Banna and Omar Deghayes, both of whom are now in Great Britain.

The Spanish judge said he decided to proceed with the case because the United States had never responded to a July 2009 question from the Spanish government about whether an investigation would be launched into the allegations.

There was no immediate comment Friday from the State Department.

Ruz said the first step in his investigation would be to obtain medical statements that the complainants had suffered injuries consistent with torture. He also asked the defendants to provide a Spanish-language translation of a July report by Human Rights Watch titled "Getting Away With Torture: The Bush Administration and Mistreatment of Detainees."

Ruz also ordered the Spanish newspaper El Pais to surrender documents it had obtained from WikiLeaks that the paper had cited in April as evidence of abuse. He said the documents - secret assessments of the four prisoners that WikiLeaks shared with several news organizations, including McClatchy - were necessary to determine if the officers who'd signed them - Army Maj. Gen. Jay W. Hood, retired Army National Guard Brig. Gen. Mitchell Leclaire, and Army Reserve Brig. Gen. James E. Payne III - should be called as witnesses.

Hood was in charge of the prison camps at Guantánamo and signed the assessment of Ikassrien in November 2004. He also signed Banna's assessment in May 2005. Leclaire, who retired as commander of the Michigan Army National Guard, was deputy commander at Guantánamo and signed Omar Deghayes' risk assessment in 2004. Payne, who also served as deputy commander of the camps, signed Hamed Abderraman Ahmed's assessment in 2003.

Cheat sheet: How Super PACs work, and why they’re so controversial

2012-01-14T10:14:00.008-05:00

McCain's slammed them. Colbert just gave his away. Here's a refresher on the basic

By Braden Goyette / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Friday, January 13 2012, 3:31 PM

Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Comedian Stephen Colbert appears before the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to ask for a media exemption to create a political action committee (PAC) on June 30, 2011 in Washington, DC.

This week, John McCain predicted that the “huge flood of money” from Super Political Action Committees, or Super PACs, will be a source of “huge scandals.”

Newt Gingrich has been livid over the attack ads pro-Romney Super PACs have been running, and he’s countered with a special interest group of his own.

Stephen Colbert just transferred his Super PAC over to Jon Stewart.

But what exactly are they, and why are they so controversial? Here's a cheat sheet on how Super PACs work, how they're regulated and how they’re affecting the 2012 election.

WHAT IS A SUPER PAC?

Super PACs are organizations that can raise unlimited funds from individuals, corporations, and other groups to support or defeat a political candidate. They can do many of the things that candidate's campaigns do -- run ads, make phone calls, send out mailers.

WHAT CHANGED AFTER SUPER PACS CAME INTO THE PICTURE?

Before 2010, corporations and unions were prohibited from independently spending money to influence federal elections.

In Citizens United v. FEC, the Supreme Court found that this ban to be unconstitutional. Super PACs themselves were created by a subsequent ruling, SpeechNow.org v. FEC.

Regular political action committees can only accept contributions of up to $5,000 from individuals, and they can't take money from groups. They can donate a limited amount of money directly to candidates.

Now individuals and groups can make unlimited contributions to support or attack candidates through Super PACs.

And since groups can make political donations, it's also become harder to tell which individuals are spending big to support a candidate.

WHAT'S THE ARGUMENT FOR SUPER PACS?

That corporations and unions have a right to support and criticize politicians, and that restricting them from doing is a violation of the right to free speech.

"The alternative is greatly restricting the rights of outside individuals to fund speech criticizing politicians," The Cato Institute's John Samples wrote in a Daily News op-ed. "This seems to me to be a far scarier outcome."

WHAT ARE THE RESTRICTIONS ON SUPER PACS?

Super PACs can't give money directly to candidate's campaigns, and they're prohibited from 'coordinating' with them -- in other words, Super PACs can't plan the particulars of their operations with the candidate they're supporting.

But they've been allowed to push this line pretty far. Candidates aren't allowed to discuss the details of ad buys with Super PACs, but it's alright for them to appear as featured speakers at Super PAC fundraising events, as long as they don’t solicit unlimited contributions. Since June, candidates and party officials are allowed to encourage supporters to make limited contributions (up to $5,000) to Super PACs.

And even if candidates and Super PACs did break the rules and coordinate, it's not clear what the consequences would be. The FEC decides the penalty for violations on a case-by-case basis, according to a report from the Center for Public Integrity.

WHY HAVE SUPER PACS BEEN SO CONTROVERSIAL?

Critics say that by allowing candidates to benefit from unlimited resources, Super PACs effectively subvert restrictions on campaign contributions. (Individuals can only give up to $2,500 to campaigns directly, and corporations can't contribute to them at all.)

"Candidates appreciate million dollar donations to the Super PACS that support them as much as they would appreciate donations directly to their campaigns, if they were legal," said Paul Ryan, an attorney with the Campaign Legal Center, a non-profit that advocates for campaign finance reform.

Candidate-specific Super PACs are often set up by former staffers and funded by donors, so it's been argued that they act like an auxiliary campaign staff, even if they can't coordinate with the official campaign.

Limits on campaign contributions were initially set up to prevent corruption or the appearance of corruption.

The rise of Super PACs has raised fears that candidates can be bought by the special interest groups who are spending to elect them, and that wealthy individuals can exert undue influence on the political process.

WHAT ROLE HAVE SUPER PACS PLAYED IN THE 2012 ELECTION SO FAR?

So far we've seen a boom in attack ads, and candidates haven't had to take responsibility for them. Newt Gingrich, in particular, was slammed with attack ads from the pro-Romney Restore Our Future PAC. The former Speaker accused Romney of running a smear campaign. "Understand, these are his people running his ads, doing his dirty work while he pretends to be above it," Gingrich told reporters in Iowa.

Candidates are also able to spend less on advertising and hang in the race for longer, the New York Times noted, while Super PACs pick up the slack.

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Murdoch's Revenge Of A Canceled Contract

2012-01-14T09:40:00.005-05:00

Is the NYP Using Cuomo to Get Even With the UFT Last August UFT president Mike Mulgrew the state to reject a $27 million contract with an educational technology company owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. Murdoch brought Joe Klein over from the city to jump start an education company off of the city's back. Teachers Unions Urge State to Reject Contract with Murdoch-Owned Vendor(WNYC) The NYP has certainly gotten even with John Liu who they have call the UFT's sock puppet controller after he went after News Corp education contracts with the city. Controller Liu tosses $2.7 million contract tied to with Joel Klein(NYDN)

@RupertMurdoch: Gov. Cuomo is ‘chicken’

Yesterday Murdoch on Twitter call of Cuomo a chicken was to paint governor who knows how to run between the raindrops into the corner in the teacher evaluation dispute. Today Murdoch right hand man on the post Bob McManus pens a column following Up on Murdoch's Twitter attack on the governor. * During Address, Murdoch Goes After Cuomo on Twitter(NYT) On his Twitter account, now only two weeks old, Rupert Murdoch of News Corporation referred to the governor as “chicken Cuomo” while praising Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s ideas. Mr. Murdoch wrote: “Bloomberg’s bold teacher proposals today terrific. How will chicken Cuomo respond? If UFT refuses this money good teachers will scream.” He was referring to the United Federation of Teachers, a union that often opposes rigorous teacher evaluations, which figured prominently in the mayor’s speech.

Bloomberg and Murdoch Team Up Against Cuomo, Has Dicker Been Kidnapped?

Post editorial page editor Bob McManus says Bloomberg’s speech yesterday tossed a “grenade in Cuomo’s lap” when it comes to changing current teacher evaluation Bob McManus: “(W)hat Bloomberg really did yesterday was toss a grenade in Cuomo’s lap — with the hope, if not the expectation, that when it explodes, some of the shrapnel will hit Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver.” Your move, Governor – don’t blow it (NYP)

Who is A Chicken?

“Chicken Cuomo,” as Rupert Murdoch dubbed him, has not yet responded to the media mogul’s Twitter jab.* The NYT’s Michael Grynbaum found Murdoch’s choice of “schoolyard taunt” against Cuomo to be “decidedly strange” since Bloomberg and the governor are. * The Times notes that Andrew Cuomo isn’t used to being called a “chicken,” as Rupert Murdoch did.

NY1 Reporter Gets A "C Grade" For Her Question to the Mayoral Candidates On the Mayor's Speech

2012-01-13T10:58:00.010-05:00

A Safe Question Vs. the People Right to Know

The problems from the question NY1 reporter Courtney Gross asked the mayor candidates was that it was too general. The question she did not ask the candidates is what would they do to solve the teacher evaluation dispute between the teachers union and the city, that is costing the city $60 million dollars in federal education funds. The NY1 report allowed the pols to duck the important issue of the loss of federal education funds and the teacher evaluation conflict, while protecting their hope of getting the union's campaign endorsement and support. Elected Officials Criticize Bloomberg's Approach To Education In State Of The City Speech (NY1)

"I think the lone ranger approach to education reform just doesn't ever seem to work, and to use this forum to go after teachers in a very hostile way just is not going to get us the changes that we need," said Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer. "Rather disheartening that he almost threw down the gauntlet against our teachers, who have already been through a great deal of anti-teacher rhetoric where City Hall takes credit for everything that goes right in schools and blames teachers for things that aren't going so well in school," said City Comptroller John Liu. "This struck me as an attempt to set up a line between them and talk about differences rather than unify," said Public Advocate Bill de Blasio. City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, known as a Bloomberg ally, took a different tact. She said the mayor set forth an aggressive education agenda and that it was up to the teachers union to respond.* BP Stringer's Statement on the Mayor's State of the City Address

100 Most Powerless New Yorkers

2012-01-12T09:24:00.003-05:00

A 'power list' for the rest of us

A A A Comments (22) By Steven Thrasher Wednesday, Jan 11 2012

Photos by Caleb Ferguson

More photos: the Most Powerless New Yorkers

Have you noticed that power lists, which have been spreading like the clap lately, from the Time 100 to the Forbes 500, tell you things you already know about the rich and famous and give publicity to people who already have more of it than they know what to do with? For the rest of us, here’s a power list to get 2012 going in the right direction. They're in no particular order. (Like it really matters.)

1. Weed-delivery guys

Caleb Ferguson

40. Occupy Wall Street crust punks

Caleb Ferguson

42. Street vendors who sell porn magazines

Details

More photos: the Most Powerless New Yorkers

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The reason so many marijuana arrests are of black and Hispanic people is not because they smoke weed more. White New Yorkers, by the NYPD's own numbers, have a higher per-capita rate of contraband when they're arrested. However, white people stay safe in their apartments while colored folks deliver drugs to them. Delivering drugs puts you on the bottom of a pyramid scheme where you usually earn less than minimum wage, making you vulnerable to homicide and giving you about as much of a chance of becoming a rich kingpin as being a production assistant or a media intern gives you of becoming a celebrity.

2. The St. Mark's Bookshop staff

These are not good days to be a bookseller, and the staff of the St. Mark's Bookshop are particularly at peril. Although celebrities as diverse as Gwyneth Paltrow and Michael Moore have recently given their endorsement to the quaint bookshop (and Voice neighbor), and Cooper Union has granted it a rent reduction reprieve, its staff's jobs are on the line if either of the seemingly inevitable occur: the continued rise of e-books and the fury of Cooper students at the possibility of having to pay tuition.

3. Bodega owners

Over the past decade, your neighborhood bodega has likely been replaced by a bank outlet or driven out of business by a Duane Reade popping up nearby. Walmart's unrelenting push to move many stores into the city (with a tacit blessing from Michelle Obama and an explicit blessing from Ruben Diaz) seems inevitable eventually, considering mounting public support. The day Sam Walton rolls into town, the few bodega owners still holding on (and their arguably more powerful cats) will be as toast as the bread in a $2.99 bacon, egg, and cheese special.

4. Any cab driver looking to fill up or take a leak in Manhattan

Cabbies have to rely on Starbucks for somewhere to urinate, but then there are those rumors that the coffee-joint johns might close. As for finding a pump to fill up at in Manhattan, there are only 41 gas stations on the entire island.

5. Rosemary Maude, Access-a-Ride user

Like many elderly people living in New York City, Rosemary Maude depends on Access-a-Ride to get around. This leaves her waiting on the street for long stretches of time, and she sometimes misses rides when her drivers come early and stand her up. Like many people her age, Maude doesn't regularly have access to a cell phone, so if she goes up to her 11th-floor apartment to call and see where the hell her ride is, it might miss her at the curb and leave.

6. Registered Republicans

The vast majority of New York voters are registered Democrats, leaving Republicans and independents effectively powerless in general elections. All but five of the City Council's 51 seats and the state's electoral college hasn't gone to a Republican since Calvin Coolidge's landslide of 1924. (Still, City Hall has been in Republican hands for anywhere from two to five terms, depending on which party Mayor Bloomberg is claiming at the moment.)

7. The person holding the sign at the end of the Trader Joe's line

Bouncers have power over lines and who can even get into them; the Trader Joe's employees who have to hold a sign are just showing people the end of the damned line. All they can do is bring misery to people.

8. Bill de Blasio, Public Advocate

De Blasio is the holder of the most useless office in the city, a position so powerless, it was first held by Mark Green. Since it was created, its budget has been cut nearly in half, and there are repeated calls to abolish it altogether. And though second in line to succeed the mayor, no former occupant has yet to move into Gracie Mansion.

9. Carriage horses

These horses work in the hottest hot and the coldest cold. Despite the fact even the best-trained horse can be spooked unexpectedly, they walk right in the middle of traffic on the busiest streets of Midtown, even at rush hour. This past year, three have collapsed, one fatally, on the job.

10. Food-delivery people

Not only is a food-delivery person (typically a Chinese or Hispanic immigrant) usually murdered every year, but also far more are killed in bicycle accidents. Moving through the city while carrying large sums of cash, they are easy targets for theft and assault. Because many are undocumented, their assailants think they're too powerless to go to the authorities.

11. NYPD officers working evidence rooms

As Graham Rayman reported in the Voice, cops go to the evidence rooms when they've been stripped of their guns, their mobility, and the power to police the streets (indeed, just about every reason they became cops in the first place). It is among the most humiliating and least powerful jobs on the entire force. Further, when a cop is sent to guard the 10 million items in evidence (about 1.6 million added per year), they aren't even given the tools to effectively police these inanimate objects. As Rayman wrote: "The responsibility for tracking that sheer volume of items is difficult and complicated. But in the year 2011, a time when computer scanners and bar codes are commonplace in Walmart and Rite Aid stores all over the country, it is shocking to learn that the NYPD still relies on ledger books, black ink, typewriters, and carbon copies to track that volume of material." Evidence is routinely lost and unable to be found.

OWS: They Are Back

2012-01-11T18:37:00.002-05:00

OWS after Bloombito unleashed his police and kick them out of Zuccotti Park, in 2012 they are back, after the police barrier were removed.

video by Rafael Martínez Alequín

Anti Fracking in New York State

2012-01-11T17:54:00.003-05:00

NYS Senator Tony Avella, (Dem. Queens) and Liz Kruger (Dem. Manhattan) urgin Governor Cuomo and State Commissioner Josephs Martens, urgen them to extend the deadline for the public comment period to 180 days on the revised Draft.
video by Rafael Martínez Alequín

True News Asked what Did Bruce Ratner Know and Do About the Lipsky Bribe?

2012-01-10T16:51:00.001-05:00

True News Wags the NYT Again and Again

On January 5, Right After the Ratner lobbyists took a plea True News wrote a story containing the following facts and asked the following questions

1. True News Asked what Did Bruce Ratner Know and Do About the Lipsky Bribe?

2. Lipsky was Ratner 2nd Lobbyist Bribery Indictment in a Year 3. Developer of Major New Rochelle Project, Forest City Ratner, Bribed Yonkers Official Sexy Sandy Annabi, U.S. Attorney Charges (Talk of the Sound) FCR Vice President Bruce Bender leaned on him in 2006 to change his expected vote opposing a controversial FCR development. Kruger crony leaned on me for vote: pol

4. Forest City Public Tit Money Caught in Corrupt Kruger

Today's NYT Writes . . .

Developer Bruce Ratner is a recent recurring theme in corruption scandals. Every one of True News points is picked up.

Mayor Bloomberg and Congressman José Serrano Announces Opening of First Small Business Incubator in the Bronx

2012-01-09T22:36:00.008-05:00

video by Rafael Martínez Alequín

Mayor Bloomberg and Congressman José Serrano Announces Opening of First Small Business Incubator in the Bronx, Part of City's Network of Affordable Office Space Designed to Foster Innovation and Create Jobs
Mayor Bloomberg today announced the opening of the Sunshine Bronx Business Incubator, the first City-sponsored business incubator to be located in the Bronx. The Sunshine Bronx Business Incubator, which is housed in the historic BankNote Building at 890 Garrison Avenue in Hunts Point, will ultimately accommodate up to 400 entrepreneurs from the Bronx and across New York City over the next three years, and will further the City's efforts to encourage entrepreneurship and innovation across a variety of sectors.
The BankNote building is located in Congresman Serrano district. Congressman Serrano is a tenant in the building where his have congressional office.

Gov. Andy Cuomo looks like he's running New York City, as well as New York State

2012-01-07T13:13:00.003-05:00

Philip Kamrass

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo delivers his second State of the State address.

ALBANY — Gov. Cuomo says he has two roles: governor and lobbyist for the state’s students.

To a number of city and state observers, he has a third job: co-mayor of New York City.

Cuomo in recent months has interjected himself more and more into city business, from taxi regulation to seeking an end to the fingerprinting of food stamp applicants — and with a plan to redevelop of the West Side that blind-sided Mayor Bloomberg.

By making the city his sandbox, he’s often found himself pitted against Hizzoner — and Democratic insiders say Bloomberg only has himself to blame.

One said that by circumventing the City Council to push a controversial livery cab bill in Albany, Bloomberg opened the door for Cuomo’s involvement.

He then angered the governor with a threat to scuttle a $1 billion plan for the state to convert a nonprofit health insurer to a for-profit company.

“The governor is not a guy who needs an invitation to take power,” said one Democrat. “The mayor made it possible for him [with the taxi bill\] and then spit in his eye to give him further reason to do it.”

The end result? Bloomberg will now need Team Cuomo approval before being able to sell the bulk of new yellow cab medallions designed to net the cash-strapped city more than $1 billion.

Cuomo’s call in his State of the State address Wednesday to end food stamp fingerprinting was also seen as a direct shot at the mayor, since the city is the only municipality impacted.

While Bloomberg argued that fingerprinting cuts down on fraud, he is powerless to stop Cuomo from eliminating the requirement through state regulation.

And like with the fingerprinting issue, the first the mayor heard about Cuomo’s plan to develop a mega-convention center in Queens — and also redevelop the Jacob Javits Convention site on Manhattan’s West Side — was shortly before he heard Cuomo say it in the speech.

“Is this a fight (Cuomo’s) picking with the mayor?” asked veteran Democratic consultant rhetorically. “The governor is very politically powerful and if there’s a conflict, it will be against the lame-duck mayor.”

A Cuomo aide denied extra involvement in the city, saying the governor has dealt with local issues across the state. “We involve ourselves in the issues that are important,” the aide said.

As is his custom, Bloomberg has tried to downplay any tensions with Cuomo.

But a number of state lawmakers saw Cuomo’s speech as the latest salvo in the increasingly hostile relationship between the two.

“New York City mayors traditionally are the second best known (American) politician in the world — but the governor has more power,” said one state lawmaker who deals with both men.

klovett@nydailynews.com

What Did Bruce Rattner Know and Do?

2012-01-05T13:53:00.002-05:00

What Did Bruce Rattner Know and Do?

Feds Must Find If the High Fees Paid To Lobbyists Are Intended for Bribes

Lobbyist Pleads Guilty to Paying Bribes to a State Senator(NYT)

Prosecutors charged that over several years, Mr. Lipskyhad shared lobbying fees with Mr. Kruger in return for the senator’s actions on matters about which Mr. Lipsky had been paid to lobby.

Media Only Reports on the Pleas Ignores Others Involved

The NYT mentioned Rattner' Forest City real estate company as one of Lipsky's clients but did not say what Kruger did for them or who was involved with them. * Lobbyist Lipsky Admits to Bribery(WSJ) * Lobbyist Linked To Kruger Pleads Guilty In Bribery Case(NY1)

Lipsky was Ratner's Forest City 2nd Lobbyist Bribery Indictment in A Year

Developer of Major New Rochelle Project, Forest City Ratner, Bribed Yonkers Official Sexy Sandy Annabi, U.S. Attorney Charges (Talk of the Sound)

A Forest City Ratner executive whose cozy relationship with state Sen. Carl Kruger is featured in a new criminal complaint against the Brooklyn politician personally lobbied a Yonkers councilman hours before a controversial vote that later led to bribery charges against a councilwoman. Yonkers Council Majority Leader John Murtagh Jr. said FCR Vice President Bruce Bender leaned on him in 2006 to change his expected vote opposing a controversial FCR development. Kruger crony leaned on me for vote: pol

Forest City Public Tit Money Caught in Corrupt Kruger

Bruce Bender, an executive with the development company Forest City Ratner who came out of Kruger's Thomas Jefferson club, was pressing him for $15 million in state funding for three Brooklyn projects. Mr. Kruger said he would get back to him. Half an hour later, he checked with his aides, found out he had $500,0000 left over at his own discretion, and told them to give it to the company for a project at Prospect Park. “I love you,” Mr. Bender said a few minutes later In a Series of Phone Calls, an Ear Into a Federal Corruption Case * Atlantic Yards Efforts in View in Kruger Case(WSJ) * "I Don't Mind F-king The Bridge."(Develop Don't Destroy) *WSJ, regarding Kruger case, goes easy on FCR's obligation to rebuild bridge, reveals unmet request for additional city housing subsidy (Atlantic Yard Report)

Bloomberg funds Randalls Island playpen for rich on city’s dime while nearby East Harlem goes begging

2012-01-05T12:44:00.003-05:00

Sportime tennis center tied to John McEnroe has gotten $8.9 million in city earmarks while adjacent nabe struggles

Comments (10)

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Wednesday, January 4 2012, 6:00 AM

Craig Warga/New York Daily News

The spiffy, and private, $19 million Sportime tennis center on Randalls Island, connected to court legend John McEnroe, is planning to expand. Neighboring East Harlem has seen its parks deteriorate, but earmarked budget funds from Mayor Bloomberg have added $8.9 million to the club's bottom line since 2005.

EAST HARLEM community leaders are furious about the proposed expansion of a $19 million private tennis center at Randall’s Island that is connected to tennis legend John McEnroe.

Those leaders want to know why Mayor Bloomberg keeps handing barrels of money to the Randall’s Island Sports Foundation, the public-private group that manages the 256-acre park.

Since 2003, City Hall has provided an astonishing $155 million for 65 new ballfields, new bike and hiking paths, comfort stations, and shoreline reconstruction at Randalls, and plans to spend another $22 million by 2013, according to the Independent Budget Office.

All that investment has steadily turned the island into an idyllic and isolated playground for affluent New Yorkers who flock to the golf range and the tennis courts, and for private schools that bus their students to the park each weekday to use the sparkling new fields.

Court fees at the two-year-old Sportime tennis center, for example, run from $72 to $102 per hour. And that’s on top of annual fees of $500 to $750.

Meanwhile, improvements for an adjacent East Harlem park languish.

“The East River esplanade in this neighborhood has giant holes in the pavement where residents stare at river swirling below,” said George Sarkissian, district manager of Community Board 11. “As for the E. 107th St. Pier, it is completely dilapidated, yet we’re told there’s no money to fix it.”

Randalls Island Foundation even benefits from special allocations Bloomberg occasionally slips into the budget .

Since 2005, for example, the mayor, a one-time member of Randall’s Island’s high-powered board of directors, has quietly earmarked $8.9 million to the foundation from his discretionary city capital budget allocations.

The mayor’s earmarks have been done so discreetly that even East Harlem City Councilwoman Melissa Mark-Viverito, who chairs the Council’s Parks Department Committee, did not know about them until the Daily News alerted her last week.

“This reaffirms to me the murky element to these private-public partnerships,” Mark-Viverito said.

Over the years, Randall’s Island Foundation has devised an array of privatization schemes — all without meaningful input from the park’s neighborhoods.

Several years ago, the foundation’s effort to lure a private aquatic theme park to Randall’s collapsed. Then its pay-to-play plan, which would have handed 20 Manhattan private schools exclusive use of the park’s renovated ballfields during weekdays — in exchange for $2 million annual payments — was struck down by the courts. Judges ruled twice that Bloomberg failed to give the City Council a chance to vote on the plan.

In 2009, Sportime was granted a 20-year concession for the tennis center, though critics claim that plan, too, should have required City Council approval.

The John McEnroe Tennis Academy, which operates there, charges thousands of dollars for enrollees. McEnroe’s brother Mark McEnroe, the general manager, notes that scholarships and free court time are provided to the community.

“Thanks to Sportime, more tennis instruction, more tennis courts, and more tennis hours are made available to children of the surrounding communities than ever before,” Parks Department spokewoman Vickie Karp said.

You would expect some benefits for the community from a public park.

Mark McEnroe admitted recently his center wants to do a better job of public relations. He and the Randall’s Foundations could start, says Mark-Viverito, by revealing how much money the center is making, and exactly how it will better serve the community.

Randall’s Island, after all, is still a public park, not a private playground.

jgonzalez@nydailynews.com

Lobbyist Richard Lipsky to take guilty plea for relaying bribes to Carl Kruger, sources say

2012-01-03T22:54:00.009-05:00

Prosecutors say Lipsky clients paid $260G in bribes for favors from ex-state Sen. Kruger

Comments

By Robert Gearty / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Tuesday, January 3 2012, 10:01

David Handschuh/New York Daily News

Lobbyist Richard Lipsky (l.), shown with lawyer outside Manhattan Federal Court, plans to enter a guilty plea before Judge Jed Rakoff, sources say.

Jefferson Siegel for New York Daily News

Disgraced former state Sen. Carl Kruger pleaded guilty to corruption charges two weeks ago.

A TOP LOBBYIST is expected to cop a plea Wednesday to funneling bribes to Carl Kruger — part of a scheme that netted the former pol $1million in payoffs.

Richard Lipsky is scheduled to enter a guilty plea before Manhattan Federal Court Judge Jed Rakoff, sources said.

His anticipated plea comes two weeks after a sobbing Kruger appeared before Rakoff and confessed to selling his office to line his own pockets.

Prosecutors charge Kruger, as a state senator, did favors for Lipsky clients in exchange for $260,000 in bribes.

In one case, Kruger wrote to a judge urging enforcement of cigarette taxes.

The feds say the letter helped a Lipsky client, a supermarket chain, hurt by the sale of tax-free cigarettes on Indian reservations.

On Tuesday, the CEO of the former Parkway Hospital in Queens pleaded guilty to paying Kruger $60,000 in bribes.

Dr. Robert Aquino, 54, said he made the payments in a futile effort to keep Parkway open.

“My actions were in violation of the law, and I knew that they were wrong,” said Aquino, a licensed emergency room doctor.

Don Reynaldo Robledo, his son Lazaro, and Edmundo Cardona, a club member, in front of Robledo Winery tasting room.

2012-01-02T21:23:00.011-05:00

The Sonoma Valley winery created by the Robledo family, with vineyards in Napa, Sonoma and Lake counties, produces award-winning wines, including Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Moscato, Pinot Noir, Syrah, Chardonnay, Petite Syrah, Pinot Blanc, Pinot Grigio, Sauvignon Blanc, Tempranillo and Port.

Tasting Room Open By Appointment
Mon-Sat 10am-5pm & Sun 11-4pm

21901 Bonness Road, Sonoma, CA 94576
T. 707.939.6903, F. 707.939.6978, Toll-free 888.939.6903 Robledo Family Winery

Lake County Tasting Room Hours
Friday - Sunday 10am to 5pm
2040 Soda Bay Road. Lakeport, CA 95453
T.707.263.0100 F.707.263-0111

video by Rafael Martínez Alequín

Obama 2012: Now for the Bad News

2012-01-01T15:32:00.000-05:00

Obama 2012: Now for the Bad News

John Cassidy, The New Yorker
Cassidy begins: "A few days ago, in the form of a faux Christmas memo from David Axelrod, I laid out the optimistic argument for President Obama securing a second term.... Of necessity, the evidence I cited was somewhat selective. Today, I will try and redress the balance by focusing on some of the factors I left out or minimized."
READ MORE

Congress Seeks Legal Framework for Internet Censorship

2012-01-01T15:22:00.000-05:00

Both the PIPA and SOPA Internet censorship bills threaten to silence the voices of America, posing serious threats to democratic rights, 12/28/11. (photo: ISyndica.com/flickr)

By Mike Ingram, World Socialist Web Site

01 January 12

wo bills aimed at establishing a legal framework for government and corporate censorship of the Internet are expected to be discussed in January when Congress returns from its winter break.

The first is the so-called PIPA, or Protect IP Act, introduced to the US Senate on May 12 by Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy. The second is the Stop Online Piracy Act, known as SOPA. This bill was introduced to the House of Representatives on October 26, 2011 by Republican Lamar Smith. The bills are the latest bipartisan attempt to give the government the ability to shut down the Internet or parts of the Internet.

In the name of defending intellectual property and copyrights, PIPA would force US Internet providers to block access to websites deemed as enablers of copyright infringement, particularly those outside of the US. PIPA also requires advertising networks and financial transaction providers to cut services to domains found to violate the law. PIPA adds search engines and others to the list of providers that can be forced to comply with court orders.

The new bill includes a provision encouraging advertising networks and financial transaction service providers to cut ties voluntarily with domains it believes are "dedicated to infringing activities." PIPA promises immunity from liability for such actions as long as they are undertaken in good faith and with "credible evidence."

Furthermore, PIPA allows copyright and trademark holders to sue the owner or operator of a domain directly. Once a suit is initiated, the plaintiff can ask the court to issue an injunction or restraining order, effectively shutting down a site on the say-so of private individuals. Likewise, those individuals can also use courts to require cooperation from financial transaction providers and Internet advertising services.

If passed, SOPA will serve as what the Electronic Frontier Foundation has described as the US government and private corporation blacklist of sites. Provisions of SOPA include:

* Allow the US attorney general to seek a court order that would force search engines, advertisers, DNS providers, server hosts, and payment processors from having any contact with allegedly infringing websites

* Allow private corporations to create their own hit lists composed of websites they feel are breaking their copyright policies

* Give payment processors the power to cut off any website they work with, as long as they can provide a strong reason for why they believe a site is violating copyrights

Both bills claim to be aimed at protecting intellectual property and preventing online piracy and have received predictable support from the film and music industry. In fact they pose a serious threat to democratic rights.

While pandering to the intellectual property rights holders, politicians of both capitalist parties are seeking to introduce a legal framework which will allow the government to shut down entire domains, both in the US and internationally.

There is widespread opposition to this blatant act of state censorship. The domain registrar Go Daddy, which had been an early supporter of the SOPA bill, was forced to change its position following a boycott call posted on the social news site reddit.com. The tech web site macobserver.com reported December 26 that Go Daddy had lost over 72,000 domain names in five days.

In an "Open Letter From Internet Engineers to the US Congress" issued December 15, a group of 83 prominent engineers and inventors who had been instrumental in the development of the Internet protested against SOPA and PIPA, calling on Congress to reject both bills. Signatories to the letter include Vinct Cerf, the co-designer of the TCP/IP protocol used to transfer traffic across the Internet, and Paul Vixie, the author of BIND - the software used to run much of the Domain Name System.

Referring to their role in building the various parts that make up the Internet, the letter states, "We’re just a little proud of the social and economic benefits that our project, the Internet, has brought with it."

The authors warn, "If enacted, either of these bills will create an environment of tremendous fear and uncertainty for technological innovation. … Regardless of recent amendments to SOPA, both bills will risk fragmenting the Internet’s global domain name system (DNS) and have other capricious technical consequences. ... Such legislation would engender censorship that will simultaneously be circumvented by deliberate infringers while hampering innocent parties’ right and ability to communicate and express themselves."

The letter continues, "These bills are particularly egregious ... because they cause entire domains to vanish from the Web, not just infringing pages or files. Worse, an incredible range of useful, law-abiding sites can be blacklisted under these proposals. In fact, it seems that this has already begun to happen under the nascent DHS/ICE seizures program."

In 2010 the Department of Homeland Security and its ICE security wing seized around eighty domains, including the popular BitTorrent search engine Torrent Finder. BitTorrent is a protocol which allows large files to be broken down into small chunks which can be distributed over multiple computers via a peer-to-peer networks and reassembled upon being downloaded to the user's computer. The protocol has long been the target of the music and movie industries despite its numerous other uses such as the distribution of free open source software. Wikileaks has also made available torrent files of its documents to be used in the event the site is shut down.

In February 2011, the Spanish web site Rojadirecta was taken down in an operation targeting streaming sites aimed at preventing illegal streaming ahead of the Superbowl.

The Open Letter continues, "The current bills - SOPA explicitly and PIPA implicitly - also threaten engineers who build Internet systems or offer services that are not readily and automatically compliant with censorship actions by the US Government. When we designed the Internet the first time, our priorities were reliability, robustness and minimizing central points of failure or control. We are alarmed that Congress is so close to mandating censorship-compliance as a design requirement for new Internet innovations. This can only damage the security of the network and give authoritarian governments more power over what their citizens can read and publish.

"The US government has regularly claimed that it supports a free and open Internet, both domestically and abroad. We cannot have a free and open Internet unless its naming and routing systems sit above the political concerns and objectives of any one government or industry."

In fact, US Government claims to support a free and open Internet are the height of hypocrisy. In recent years, the US government has vastly expanded efforts to remove content from the Internet, including through the persecution of WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange. As part of its efforts against WikiLeaks, the Obama administration solicited the support of PayPal and credit card companies to block the ability of the organization to raise funds online.

The American ruling class, intent on pursuing a policy of endless war and social reaction, is deeply suspicious and hostile to the free flow of ideas and information. It is this hostility that at the root of the constant efforts to increase government control of the Internet.

SOPA opponents may go nuclear

2012-01-01T15:03:00.011-05:00

by Declan McCullagh

See the original article here news.cnet.com

The Internet's most popular destinations, including eBay, Google, Facebook, and Twitter seem to view Hollywood-backed copyright legislation as an existential threat.
It was Google co-founder Sergey Brin who warned that the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act "would put us on a par with the most oppressive nations in the world." Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, Twitter co-founders Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone, and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman argue that the bills give the Feds unacceptable "power to censor the Web."
But these companies have yet to roll out the heavy artillery.
When the home pages of Google.com, Amazon.com, Facebook.com, and their Internet allies simultaneously turn black with anti-censorship warnings that ask users to contact politicians about a vote in the U.S. Congress the next day on SOPA, you'll know they're finally serious.
True, it would be the political equivalent of a nuclear option--possibly drawing retributions from the the influential politicos backing SOPA and Protect IP--but one that could nevertheless be launched in 2012.
"There have been some serious discussions about that," says Markham Erickson, who heads the NetCoalition trade association that counts Google, Amazon.com, eBay, and Yahoo as members. "It has never happened before." (See CNET's SOPA FAQ.)
Web firms may be outspent tenfold on lobbyists, but they enjoy one tremendous advantage over the SOPA-backing Hollywood studios and record labels: direct relationships with users.
How many Americans feel a personal connection with an amalgamation named Viacom -- compared with voters who have found places to live on Craigslist and jobs (or spouses) on Facebook and Twitter? How would, say, Sony Music Entertainment, one of the Recording Industry Association of America's board members, cheaply and easily reach out to hundreds of millions of people?
Protect IP and SOPA, of course, represent the latest effort from the Motion Picture Association of America, the RIAA, and their allies to counter what they view as rampant piracy on the Internet, especially offshore sites such as ThePirateBay.org. It would allow the Justice Department to obtain an order to be served on search engines, Internet providers, and other companies forcing them to make a suspected piratical Web site effectively vanish, a kind of Internet death penalty.
There are early signs that the nuclear option is being contemplated. Wikimedia (as in Wikipedia) called SOPA an "Internet Blacklist Bill." Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales has proposed an article page blackout as a way to put "maximum pressure on the U.S. government" in response to SOPA.
The Tumblr microblogging site generated 87,834 calls to Congress over SOPA. Over at GoDaddyBoycott.org, a move-your-domain-name protest is scheduled to begin today over the registrar's previous--and still not repudiated--enthusiasm for SOPA. Popular image hosting site Imgur said yesterday it would join the exodus too.
Technically speaking, it wouldn't be difficult to pull off. Web companies already target advertisements based on city or ZIP code.
And it would be effective. A note popping up on the screens of people living in the mostly rural Texas district of SOPA author Lamar Smith, Hollywood's favorite Republican, asking them to call or write and voice their displeasure, would be noticed. If Tumblr could generate nearly 90,000 calls on its own, think of what companies with hundreds of millions of users could do.
If these Web companies believe what their executives say (PDF) about SOPA and Protect IP, they'll let their users know what their elected representatives are contemplating. A Senate floor debate scheduled for January 24, 2012 would be an obvious starting point.
"The reason it hasn't happened is because of the sensitivity," says Erickson, "even when it's a policy issue that benefits their users." He adds: It may happen."
Or it may not. It would change politics if it did.
Other predictions for 2012:
Privacy from above
A few years ago, it would have been something that only the military could afford, but for $300 or so, you can buy Parrot's remarkable AR.Drone quadricopter. In addition to being a technological tour de force that will enrapture any child, it's an iPhone-controlled spy cam and capable airborne surveillance platform.
Which means it and similar aircraft are capable of invading privacy in novel ways -- don't be surprised if the Ed Markey set concocts proposals to somehow regulate or license them. On the other hand, they also offer novel ways to advance government and police accountability.
Journalists and activists are already starting to do just that. The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is taking footage of Japan's whaling fleet; Occupy Wall Street has its "occucopter"; CNN has shot aerial footage with a drone. Your 12-year old neighbor won't be far behind.
Obama fails privacy test
In 2011, the surveillance enthusiasts at the U.S. Department of Justice firmly opposed a proposal from Internet companies and civil liberties groups to enhance the privacy of anyone who owns a mobile device or uses Web-based email. (Cloud computing users currently are second-class citizens: they have more privacy if they store documents on their own hard drive at home.)
The Justice Department's announcement might come as a surprise to anyone who voted for candidate Obama based on his campaign promises at the time. He told CNET in 2008 that: "I will work with leading legislators, privacy advocates, and business leaders to strengthen both voluntary and legally required privacy protections."
Which has yet to happen. If pro-privacy legislation introduced this summer advances, Obama will get to choose between honoring his civil liberties pledge or siding with the surveillance-industrial complex. Given his poor record in this area so far, this is one privacy test he's likely to fail.
Antitrust on the rise
It tends to be far cheaper to pay lobbyists to cripple your rival than compete in the marketplace. A decade ago, Sun, Oracle, and Netscape teamed up to convince the solons at the U.S. Justice Department that arch-enemy Microsoft needed to be lopped off at the knees.
Now Google is a primary target, and Microsoft and its allies are the ones lobbying for some impromptu axe-wielding. The latest round came this week when the Wall Street Journal reported: "Competitors say Google is abusing its power in Web search to gain sway over the $110 billion online travel business."
There's no evidence that Google's Flight Search is harming consumers, which is supposed to be the modern requirement for an antitrust violation. Or that Facebook Credits somehow violates antitrust law, which some activists have claimed. But because bureaucrats build careers on high-profile prosecutions, don't expect that to stop the antitrust aficionados in the U.S. government in 2012.
Anonymous takes on politicians
If 2011 was the Year of the Hackers, 2012 may be the Year the Hackers Upset the Political Establishment.
Anonymous has taken aim, with various degrees of success, at targets including Sony, police, and the San Francisco-area subway system.
The obvious 2012 election-year target: politicians, especially ones supporting SOPA. Sarah Palin's e-mail was hacked in 2008, revealing nothing especially interesting, but the Twitter account of threesome-loving ex-congressman Anthony Weiner proved to be an entertaining read. A recent Reddit thread says it's time to "destroy" a pro-SOPA politician, and suggestions of dubious legality are already surfacing.

Verizon Folds To Molly and 130,000 of her Friends

2012-01-01T14:43:00.007-05:00

By Luis Garcia

This time it did not take that long. On the heals of a sucussful petition that had the Bank of America ditch it's $5 monthly fee Molly Katchpole a 22 year old recent college graduate seems to have won again. Just two days after Molly started a change.org petition to stop Verizon's proposed $2 bill pay fee over 130,000 people signed it and Verizon issued the following statemet:

"At Verizon, we take great care to listen to our customers. Based on their input, we believe the best path forward is to encourage customers to take advantage of the best and most efficient options, eliminating the need to institute the fee at this time."

Shortly thereafter Molly updated the over 130,000 people who signed that petition with a mass email that reads:

"Molly again, with huge news:
Verizon just announced that it's not going to charge customers a fee to pay our bills online.
Two nights ago, I started a petition on Change.org telling Verizon that it can't nickel and dime customers like me with new fees. Within hours, more than 130,000 of us signed the petition. (Thanks, by the way -- you're amazing!)
It took months of hard work to get Bank of America to drop its $5 debit card fee, but Verizon backed down in less than 24 hours. Turns out people like you and me are getting more powerful by the day.
Congrats, and happy New Year!
- Molly

P.S. The Change.org team asked me to remind you that it's super easy to change something in your community. You can start your own petition in about 2 minutes -- just click here. (Seriously, you should do it. Do it!)"

Fighting the Good Fight

2011-12-31T17:32:00.004-05:00

Norman Lear, Los Angeles Times
Norman Lear, award-winning creator of 'All In the Family,' political activist and founder of People for the American Way and social commentator extraordinaire. (photo: AMERICA IN PRIMETIME)

Occupy Wall Street protesters carry American flags up Seventh Avenue toward Times Square. (John Minchillo / AP Photo)

By Norman Lear

December 30, 2011

I was recently shown a picture from one of the Occupy protests taking place across the country. It featured a young woman surrounded by police. She was the only protester in the picture, but she didn't seem intimidated. All by herself, up against the police barricade, she held a handwritten sign saying simply "I am a born again American."

I've never met this woman, but I think I know exactly what she's feeling.

I had my first "born again American" moment 30 years ago, when I was moved to outrage and action by a group of hate-preaching televangelists who were trying to claim sole ownership of patriotism, faith and flag for the far right. One of them asked his viewing congregation to pray for the removal of a Supreme Court justice.

I did what I knew how to do and produced a 60-second TV spot. It featured a factory worker whose family members, all Christians, held an array of political beliefs. He didn't believe that anyone, not even a minister, had a right to judge whether people were good or bad Christians based on their political views. "That's not the American way," he wound up saying. I ran it on local TV, and it was picked up by the networks. People For the American Way grew out of the overwhelming response to that ad.

One of the most encouraging things to happen in 2011 was the birth of the Occupy Wall Street movement, which is giving the entire country the chance for a "born again American" moment. In calling attention to the country's widening chasm between rich and poor, the Occupiers have unleashed decades of pent-up patriotic outrage against the systematic violation of our nation's core principles by the "say good-bye to the middle class" alliance of the neocons, theocons and corporate America.

To those many millions of Americans whose guts tell them the Occupy movement is on to something but aren't the sort to camp out or protest in the street, I say find another way to let your voice be heard in the new year. Work with others who share your passion for equal opportunity and equal justice for all Americans, and find ways to channel outrage into productive action. I'm betting you'll find, as I have over my nearly four score plus 10, that you'll form some of the most rewarding relationships and have some of the most meaningful experiences of your life.

I have been lucky in many ways. I was raised by my immigrant grandfather to treasure the freedom and opportunities America offers. I also learned early to fear the power of demagogues with megaphones, as an 11-year-old listening to the anti-Semitic ravings and attacks on President Franklin D. Roosevelt from radio priest Father Coughlin, the spiritual godfather of those who poison our airwaves and online forums today. By the time I was a teenager, I knew that the values of individual and religious liberty were worth fighting for, which is why I dropped out of college to enlist in the war against Hitler.

Since then I have repeatedly seen Americans get off their couches to hold this country accountable to its stated values. They did it to fight for civil rights and the dismantling of the legal apartheid of Jim Crow; for the women's movement; for equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans. They have rallied to ensure that immigrants are treated with dignity and justice. All these efforts to overcome bigotry and institutionalized prejudice are still works in progress, but I am awed by the progress we have made.

Generations of Americans have worked to create a nation in which individual liberty can thrive alongside commitment to the principle that all members of a community should have the opportunity to pursue their dreams and build a decent life for themselves and their families. In recent decades, that dream has been betrayed.

The religious right leaders who got me engaged in politics often portray such things as free expression and equal protection for all Americans no matter their race, religion or sexual orientation as anti-Christian and un-American, as symptoms of cultural decline. I couldn't disagree more. What strikes me as un-American are the greed, deception and systematic corruption that have infected politics, business and so much of our culture in recent years. Some of those with power and privilege have worked to create a system that continually reinforces that privilege and power, leaving ever-increasing numbers of Americans without reasonable hope for the kind of life their parents worked to give them.

Many Americans are in despair, and it has left them open to demagoguery and political manipulation. Blame gays, liberals, unions, immigrants or feminists for your family's struggles, for shrinking economic opportunity, for foreclosures and disappearing wages and benefits. Blame secularists or Muslims, or both, for the sense that our values have gone haywire.

A year out from the 2012 election, I am already tired of those who use the phrase "American exceptionalism" to reassert the far-right's claim that God, the Founding Fathers and any decent freedom-loving American must share their reactionary political agenda. I embrace the idea too that our nation should be a "shining city on a hill." We are the spiritual heirs to those Americans who struggled to end slavery and segregation, to end child labor and win safe conditions and living wages for workers, to enable every American to enrich his or her community and country by finding a place and a way to flourish in the world. We must make ourselves worthy of that legacy.

Call it the American dream, the American promise or the American way. Whatever term you use, it is imperiled, and worth fighting for. It is that basic, deeply patriotic emotion that I believe is finding expression — bottom-up, small-d democratic expression — in the Occupy movement. We can, and I would say must, fully embrace both love of country and outrage at attempts to despoil it. What better cause? What better time?

Television writer and producer Norman Lear founded People for the American Way.

Verizon Wireless to Charge $2 to Pay Some Bills

2011-12-30T15:10:00.004-05:00

Verizon Wireless, the country's largest cellphone company, says it will start charging $2 for every payment subscribers make over the phone or online with their credit cards. (Dec. 30)

Quinn Under Fire for Seabrook’s Spending

2011-12-30T14:57:00.001-05:00

December 29, 2011, 5:14 PM ET

By Michael Howard Saul

Under a barrage of criticism Thursday, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn stood behind her decision to give Councilman Larry Seabrook access to a pool of taxpayer funds that he allegedly abused.

A federal judge declared a mistrial in the corruption case against Seabrook earlier this month after jurors said they could not reach a verdict. The Bronx councilman has pleaded not guilty to charges he directed more than $1 million in taxpayer funds to a network of nonprofit organizations that he controlled. U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said he intends to retry the case.

Quinn, a potential 2013 mayoral candidate, has been the target of fresh criticism this week for her decision to allow Seabrook access to these funds while he remains under federal indictment. On Thursday, Democratic mayoral hopeful Tom Allon lashed out at Quinn and argued that she failed to properly police Seabrook. The editorial boards of the New York Post and the Daily News also excoriated the speaker.

“She doesn’t seem to understand the gravity of not disciplining her members and continues to enable them to waste our precious taxpayer dollars,” Allon said. “She should cut Larry Seabrook off immediately.”

Jamie McShane, a spokesman for Quinn, denied that the money goes to waste, saying that “funding allocations are subject to approval based on a rigorous vetting process.”

As the Journal reported in June, Seabrook’s funding requests have faced a increased scrutiny because of the federal charges. A Quinn aide noted that Seabrook allocates funds to several well-regarded organizations, such as the Bronx Botanical Gardens and the Jewish Association for Services for the Aged.

Quinn has allowed Seabrook to access these so-called member items — derided by critics as pork — while he remains under indictment for abusing this same pot of taxpayer money. As part of the most recent budget cycle, Seabrook requested nearly $400,000 in taxpayer funds be directed to 13 organizations. These funds are a fraction of the nearly $50 million in member items that the council approved in the city’s $66 billion budget for the current fiscal year.

There has been no evidence that any of the funds Seabrook directed to be spent since the indictment are fraudulent, and there’s no evidence that he has an improper connection to any of the groups to which he has directed funds. Seabrook has remained an active voting member of the council while under indictment.

According to the indictment, Seabrook directed at least $2.5 million of council discretionary funds to nonprofits from 2002 through 2009 — including more than $1 million to groups he controlled. Roughly $530,000 ended up in the pockets of Seabrook’s girlfriend and family members, federal officials charged.

The most notorious allegation in the indictment involved a bagel. According to the charges, Seabrook bought a bagel sandwich and soda for $7 at an eatery near City Hall and doctored the receipt to show he spent $177.

In the News editorial, the board argued that Quinn should take away Seabrook’s access to these funds. “But that’s not how Speaker Christine Quinn sees it. She’s going to keep him on the gravy train. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong,” the News’ editorial said. The Post editorial called Quinn “a serial aider-and-abetter of council chiselers and cheats.”

Quinn aides have called these allegations unfair and untrue. In the spring of 2010, Quinn announced a set of reforms for discretionary funding that were supported by the city’s Department of Investigation, which conducted a probe that led to Seabrook’s indictment.

“The allegations in the indictment pre-date the council’s reforms, and none of the alleged actions could have happened since the reforms were implemented,” said McShane, a spokesman for Quinn.

The allegations against Seabrook have already been referred to the council’s Standards and Ethics Committee, which has held the matter in abeyance pending the outcome of the criminal case. If the criminal case ends without a felony conviction, the committee could then take up the allegations and recommend a punishment ranging from a reprimand to expulsion.

State can bounce Pedro Espada Jr. health care operation from Medicaid, judge rules

2011-12-30T14:43:00.002-05:00

Espada claimed Gov. Cuomo was mounting a 'vendetta' against him by targeting Soundview Health Care Network

BY Daniel Beekman
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Thursday, December 22 2011, 9:23 PM

Linda Rosier/New York Daily News

Then-state Sen. Pedro Espada Jr. was nearing the height of his influence at the mike in January 2009 swearing-in, but his fall from power continued Thursday when a judge ruled the Cuomo administration had the right to kick Espada's health network out of the state's Medicaid program.

A BRONX judge on Thursday upheld the Cuomo administration’s decision to dump ex-state Sen. Pedro Espada’s Bronx health care network from the Medicaid program.

The decision could spell the end for Espada’s Soundview Health Care Network because Medicaid bucks account for some 70% of its funding.

Bronx Supreme Court Justice Mark Friedlander sided with the state Health Department, which in August had moved to remove Soundview from Medicaid. The agency cited Soundview’s failure to develop and follow a comprehensive compliance program as required by law.

Espada, who faces an upcoming corruption trial, was bounced from the Medicaid program in January, but he remains in the company’s hierarchy.

After the Health Department’s ruling, the network was granted a temporary stay, with Espada accusing Gov. Cuomo of pursuing a personal vendetta.

The decision was projected to cost the network more than $6 million a year. Monica Harris-Coleman, chairwoman of the network’s board, blasted the judge’s ruling, saying 20,000 patients would be affected.

“Government does not have a right to dictate how and where patients are seen by their medical providers, nor does it have the right to interfere with lawful employment contracts,” she said.

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Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, his wife, Veronica, and their son Greg.

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