According to Clyde Haberman, in an article in Tuesday’s (4/22/08) New York Times (pB1) titled "The Unsavory Is No Rarity at City Hall," the last three City Council Speakers have employed a governing model molded in a Passover tradition called "Afikomen". He writes of Afikomen, "This word of Greek origin refers to a piece of matzo that is broken off and is the last thing eaten at the Seder dinner. In a playful tradition meant for the children, it is hidden before the start of the meal. Those who find it are rewarded. It turns out that the last three speakers of the City Council have had a similar tradition. Though none of them are Jewish, they have operated for years under afikomen rules."
The difference though between playing with matzos and concealing three million dollars worth of taxpayer money is nothing to celebrate. Though there is no question that current Speaker Christine Quinn's clandestine transfer of budget monies into phantom organizations has greatly damaged her mayoral aspirations, her position as speaker seems secure for now. The press is easily bored by scandals not involving sex, lapel pins, raving pastors or sniper fire, leaving the reporting of a problem of this severity to inevitably fall off the page(s). What does not go away though is the damage done by, and the precedent set for, the City Council operating in this manner and its effect on taxpayers and the trust they have in their elected leaders.
In a lesson Jews learned long ago, if something is forgotten it is doomed to be repeated. In fact that's precisely what Quinn did, repeated the actions of her predecessors. The differentiating factor for her was being unlucky enough to have been the one holding office when this illegal tradition was uncovered.
Still, the Speaker seems to be navigating through the storm.
Haberman reports that Councilman Charles Barron is the one voice calling for the Speaker's resignation, despite the fact that in 2002 he himself arranged a reception for President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. Haberman writes, "Mr. Mugabe may once have been a liberation hero who ended oppressive minority white rule in what used to be called Northern Rhodesia. But for years he has presided over a country in economic ruin and in extreme disrepute with international human rights groups. Well before that 2002 reception, they found him guilty of all manner of abuses, from jailing and torturing political opponents to repressing judicial independence and press freedoms."
So much for the moral high ground.
Haberman continues, "Now, he appears to have lost an election in late March. Yet, weeks have gone by with no official release of results. Fearful supporters of the political opposition are reported to be fleeing into South Africa. Over the weekend, Human Rights Watch said that members of Mr. Mugabe’s party were taking opponents to “torture camps” for beatings.
This was the leader deemed worthy of being hailed in New York’s seat of democracy. Mr. Barron brought him into City Hall, and the Council leadership under Ms. Quinn’s predecessor, Gifford Miller, stayed silent. Fear of being called racist by Mr. Barron apparently overrode possible objections to honoring a despot."
So much for a tradition of principled leadership.
In related news the New York Sun (p8) reported Wednesday (4/23/08), in an editorial titled “The Council and Morales,” that on April 22nd the Council welcomed another questionable foreign leader, Bolivian President Evo Morales, who spoke before several members. The Sun writes, “As if New York’s City Council weren’t already a complete laughingstock, busy allocating millions of dollars to nonexistent organizations so the money could be used as a political slush fund for the Council speaker, the body yesterday extended its official welcome to an anti-American South American strongman, President Morales of Bolivia. True to form, Mr. Morales used the platform provided by the City Council’s Black, Latino, and Asian Caucus to denounce America, claiming that the American ambassador at La Paz is “at the head” of what he called a “conspiracy” against him and his people. It would be nice to think that were so. Mr. Morales deserves to be driven from office, and so do the three City Council members who stood by him yesterday, John Liu, Robert Jackson, and Melissa Mark-Viverito.”
Whatever one thinks of Mr. Morales, who received a proclamation from the council, his very presence, however ceremonial, in their company leads one to believe that the Council seems less than concerned about the serious problems it faces. Why they would invite such controversy, or worse, take their eye off the ball in terms of controlling the damage done by Ms. Quinn’s irresponsible activities, arouses our curiosity. In the immediate face of embarrassment and scandal one would think South American foreign affairs to be one of the least critical areas of concern for the body.
The Sun continues, “As if it weren’t bad enough that Bolivia is exporting cocaine to addict New York youth and seduce them into lives of crime, Mr. Morales has embraced the terror-sponsoring government of Iran. Pressed about the issue in an interview with Al-Jazeera, he whitewashed the murderous record of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, claiming, “While the Bush administration sends troops to kill people, Iran for example, does not.” So much for the Jews killed in Argentina by the Iranians, or the Iranian agents casing the New York City subways. Or the American troops killed by Iranian bombs in Iraq. Mr. Morales has welcomed Iran’s Holocaust-denying president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to La Paz, where the two issued a joint statement defending Iran’s nuclear program.”
In another Sun (p2) article by Benjamin Sarlin (4/23/08) Morales is quoted, through an interpreter, as saying, “There is a conspiracy in Bolivia. The U.S. ambassador is at the head of it, including plans with USAID, and we know they too are historic enemies of the indigenous people’s struggles. For example, U.S. money comes to Bolivia, but in exchange for ‘zero coca’ or in exchange for fighting terrorism, when there is no terrorism in Bolivia.” The three Council Members each said they “did not have enough information to judge whether Mr. Morales’ accusation about an American conspiracy in Bolivia was accurate.” One would think they may have checked up on that before handing out an award. Then again, in light of the recent phantom funding debacle it seems they may be willfully unaware of several matters happening around them.
Inviting the Bolivian President to denounce the United States and defend Iran while Iranians kill our troops in Iraq may not be the best use of our taxpayer money. Perhaps if Council Members Liu, Jackson and Mark-Viverito were more fully concerned with the higher childhood asthma rates, higher crime rates, and the lack of affordable housing and healthcare in their districts than with providing a soap box for third world foreign leaders their constituents would feel better about handing them their hard earned taxpayer dollars in the wake of recent controversies. Let congress deal with hosting foreign leaders, not city government. It would behoove the Council, in the heat of their own improprieties, to concentrate solely on the betterment of New York City. Getting serious about the problems we face in these hard economic times would go a long way in repairing the relationship between the Council and the people it represents. As Alexandre Dumas once said, “Nothing succeeds like success.”
The Sun concludes, “If Council Speaker Quinn can’t rein in these sorts of shenanigans, her political future is going to confront even bigger obstacles than the slush fund scandal.”
They may be right. Ms. Quinn has been fortunate in her misconduct’s unfolding. The media has as of yet not come up with a "gate" title for her scandal. Originating with the Watergate scandal, named after the Watergate Hotel, the press now attaches the word "gate" to any and every type of unethical behavior it finds interesting enough to report on for more than a few days. Sometimes they cannot contain themselves and will reward a significant enough indiscretion with more than one gated name. As Haberman describes, "Former Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s deployment of state police officers to investigate a political foe’s use of state aircraft is referred to as both “Choppergate” and “Troopergate.”
A former professor of mine at Stony Brook described terms, concepts or sayings like "WhiteWatergate," the alleged land use ruse involving Bill and Hillary Clinton, as a rhizome. A rhizome is defined by wikipedia as, "a horizontal stem of a plant that is usually found underground, often sending out roots and shoots from its nodes." In other words, instead of a plant that grows from a single stem into branches, a rhizome grows in a random winding line, shooting off appendages and roots in several directions, which spurt out even more extensions of themselves, on and on. In other words, as the good professor would say, "there is no such thing as originality, only hybridity." Hence the name "WhiteWatergate".
The press has not obsessed over Ms. Quinn's misappropriations in the way that they have Mr. Obama's gaffe about small town Americans being "bitter." This subjective, and completely legal, utterance has earned the name "Bittergate". We now seem to attach the gated appendage even to matters of subjective opinion. In the case of "Bittergate" there was strangely no debate in the media over whether what Mr. Obama said actually made any sense or not. The press, as they often do, fell back into the default position gift wrapped for them by the attacking campaign. The concept of people being bitter, and further having their bitterness turn them to their religion and/or guns, not necessarily a far fetched notion, was never even discussed as if it may have had any validity whatsoever. To do so may have ruined the script.
There is no question on the other hand that Ms. Quinn messed up, not with words, but with actions, and in a much more serious way. Words and their intentions and effects can be debated. The physical act of hiding money and what it means to the integrity of our government cannot. It is inarguably illegal.
Wednesday’s New York Post (4/23.08) features an article written by Tom Topusis (p8) titled, “100 groups feeling $12M ‘slush’ chill, Neighborhood Funds on Hold”. It reports that New York City Comptroller Bill Thompson has frozen more than $12 Million in City Council funds slated to go to 100 community groups while the “Department of Investigation determines whether any of the grants came from money initially allocated by the council to ‘phantom entities’ used as holding accounts.” In the article Thompson is quoted from a letter he wrote to Deputy Mayor Ed Skyler, “All organizations receiving discretionary funds in this fiscal year will now first be reviewed by DOI to ensure that the funds were not initially earmarked for phantom entities."
An article written by Grace Rauh (4/23/08) in the Sun (p3) titled “New Crackdown on ‘Corruption’ Promised” reports that Deputy Mayor Skyler in turn wrote a letter to Thompson stating that he and Mayor Bloomberg “look forward to continuing to work with you to strengthen the existing safeguards against corruption, misuse of taxpayer funds and conflicts on interest.” In the paper there is caption under separate pictures of Quinn and Thompson that reads, “Likely Mayoral Opponents: the Speaker of the Council, Christine Quinn, and Comptroller William Thompson, Jr.”
Wednesday’s Post article continues, “Sources told The Post - which broke the story yesterday - that the contracts on hold at Thompson's office are only the tip of the iceberg. If the funding for any group is determined to have come from the phantom organizations, the contracts will be referred back to the City Council and to law-enforcement agencies to figure out whether the grants should be rescinded.” Both the US attorney’s office and NYC DOI are investigating the matter.
In praise of Thompson Mayor Bloomberg, usually a political ally of Quinn’s said, “It's his job to make sure that an appropriate level of investigation and vetting is done before city monies go out. I think the public needs to be assured that all public monies are spent honestly and that what they're spent on is fully disclosed and if there are conflicts of interest, those are also disclosed."
What is important to note here is that Quinn’s name is not even mentioned in the Post article. Two unnamed Council aides are referenced by the Post for “stealing $145,000 from a community group funded on the recommendation of Councilman Kendall Stewart (D-Brooklyn),” who is their boss. The Sun does mention Ms. Quinn, but only in terms of “proposed changes to the way council allocates money to community groups selected by individual council members.” They also report the council members “are outraged by a series of proposed changes to the way the council allocates money to community groups selected by individual council members, arguing that they would shift the little authority over the budget that the council wields to the mayor.” They continue, “Yesterday, council members and staff met behind closed doors to discuss budget process changes, and it appeared Ms. Quinn may be backing away from her previously announced plans. A council member who attended the meeting, John Liu (one of the Council Members who presented President Morales with a proclamation), said no one mentioned Ms. Quinn’s proposed changes, not even the speaker herself.
‘It’s a difficult situation that the council is in right now and it’s up to the speaker to get the council in the clear,’ he said.” Nothing is mentioned of any legal consequence to the Speaker over her actions, nor any possibility of her stepping down.
As Mr. Haberman concludes, "So Ms. Quinn can thank her stars that she has been spared 'Slushgate' or 'Budgetgate' or some such. It may mean that, afikomen rules notwithstanding, she can still cling to the hope that, come January, she will be able to look toward the mayor’s suite of offices and say longingly, 'Next year in City Hall.'"
That may well depend on how well she can hide her matzos.