Tag Archives: mayor

New Jersey’s Largest Paper on Christie Endorsement: "We Blew This One"

by 0df53x21 Posted on February 10, 2014

Mother Jones

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Last fall, New Jersey’s largest paper, the Newark Star-Ledger, endorsed Gov. Chris Christie for reelection. Parts of its admittedly reluctant endorsement read more like a takedown. For instance:

The property tax burden has grown sharply on his watch. He is hostile to low-income families, raising their tax burden and sabotaging efforts to build affordable housing. He’s been a catastrophe on the environment….The governor’s claim to have fixed the state’s budget is fraudulent. New Jersey’s credit rating has dropped during his term, reflecting Wall Street’s judgment that he has dug the hole even deeper.

The peculiar statement left many people scratching their heads (including Rachel Maddow, who mocked it at length on her MSNBC show). Why, they wondered, would the paper endorse a candidate it held in such low esteem? Now, following the Christie administration’s George Washington Bridge scandal and other damning accusations, the paper is backing away from its choice. Editorial page editor Tom Moran and the editorial board admitted in Sunday’s Star-Ledger that they made a mistake by endorsing Christie. In their words:

An endorsement is not a love embrace. It is a choice between two flawed human beings. And the winner is often the less bad option.

But yes, we blew this one…We knew Christie was a bully. But we didn’t know his crew was crazy enough to put people’s lives at risk in Fort Lee as a means to pressure the mayor. We didn’t know he would use Hurricane Sandy aid as a political slush fund. And we certainly didn’t know that Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer was sitting on a credible charge of extortion by Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno.

Interestingly, despite his flaws, the authors won’t rule out endorsing him again one day.

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New Jersey’s Largest Paper on Christie Endorsement: "We Blew This One"

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Can clean energy replace a shuttered nuke plant in California?

by Bonita2376 Posted on January 23, 2014

Can clean energy replace a shuttered nuke plant in California?

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Last year’s decision to close the San Onofre nuclear power plant in Southern California has created a challenge for utilities and utility regulators: How best to replace the facility’s 2,200 megawatts of generating capacity?

The region’s utility is pushing for more fossil fuel power. Environmentalists want a cleaner solution — and the state’s thriving cleantech sector says it could provide just that.

The California Public Utilities Commission is due next month to consider allowing construction of a natural gas–fired plant near the Mexican border. The commission had rejected the plant a year ago, but it’s being reconsidered as part of a mixture of renewable and fossil fuel projects that could help meet the state’s electricity needs in the wake of the San Onofre closure.

Environmentalists and neighbors of proposed new gas plants have been pleading with commissioners for months to reject such proposals. They want more solar, wind, and efficiency to help fill the gap left by lost nuclear power. A clear majority of Southern Californians agree, according to a poll conducted last year.

“There’s all sorts of capacity for clean energy that will be able to take up the slack,” Solana Beach Deputy Mayor Lesa Heebner told La Jolla Patch. “It’s not in [San Diego Gas & Electric’s] financial plan to have solar rooftops in their portfolio as a generator, because they can’t control it.”

And now the state’s cleantech leaders are joining the fight, saying, “We got this.” Here are highlights from a letter that a coalition of renewable energy investors, companies, and industry groups sent to Gov. Jerry Brown (D) this week:

State agencies analyzing how to replace power for the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS), a 100% carbon-free facility, are considering allowing new fossil fuel plants to be built for a large part of that power. We believe this would be a step backwards for climate, clean tech and the California economy.

Replacing SONGS with new natural gas would be a missed opportunity to showcase the clean technologies coming out of California, which are fully capable of solving this decrease in generation capacity without using fossil fuels. Through renewables, energy efficiency, demand response and other smart grid technologies, California can meet all its future energy needs with clean resources.

We say, “Have at it, cleantech.” Here’s hoping that Brown and other officials come to see it the same way.

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Business & Technology

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Can clean energy replace a shuttered nuke plant in California?

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Hoboken Mayor: Christie Denied Me Sandy Relief Funds Unless I Played Ball

by Gina72Ebzwtxbe Posted on January 18, 2014

Mother Jones

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The mayor of Hoboken, who was apparently a big fan of Chris Christie for his first few years in office, went public today to say that Christie’s office told her last year that Hoboken wouldn’t get any Hurricane Sandy relief funds unless she approved a redevelopment project being managed by some pals of Christie:

The mayor, Dawn Zimmer, hasn’t approved the project, but she did request $127 million in hurricane relief for her city of Hoboken….On May 10, 2013 Zimmer got a call from the Lieutenant Governor, Kim Guadagno, who wanted to come to town to do an event at a ShopRite to spotlight businesses that had recovered from the storm.

On May 13, Guadagno and Zimmer met at the Hoboken ShopRite. That is where, Zimmer said, Guadagno delivered the first message about the relief aide.

Zimmer shared this diary entry which she said she wrote later that day. “At the end of a big tour of ShopRite and meeting, she pulls me aside with no one else around and says that I need to move forward with the Rockefeller project. It is very important to the governor. The word is that you are against it and you need to move forward or we are not going to be able to help you. I know it’s not right — these things should not be connected — but they are, she says, and if you tell anyone, I will deny it.”

The second warning, according to Zimmer, came four days later. She and Constable, who now led Christie’s department of community affairs, were seated together on stage for a for a NJTV public television special on Sandy Recovery.

Again, Zimmer provided this diary entry from May 17, which she said captured the incident.

“We are mic’ed up with other panelists all around us and probably the sound team is listening. And he says “I hear you are against the Rockefeller project”. I reply “I am not against the Rockefeller project; in fact I want more commercial development in Hoboken.” “Oh really? Everyone in the State House believes you are against it — the buzz is that you are against it. If you move that forward, the money would start flowing to you” he tells me.

Are Christie’s Democratic enemies helping orchestrate this? Of course they are. Does that matter? Not even slightly. All that matters is whether it’s true. If it is, I’d presume there should be two big pieces of evidence to support it:

Testimony from others confirming that Zimmer contemporaneously complained about the threats.
Records of how much Sandy aid Hoboken got, and how it compares to other comparably affected areas.

We’ll have to wait and see about these two things. In the meantime, the chum is in the water and the sharks are circling Christie. He’s obviously a guy who plays political hardball, and now that Bridgegate has weakened him, we can expect to see a lot more people telling stories like this one. In the past they wouldn’t have hurt him too much thanks to his carefully manicured reputation for being tough (but fair!) with people in order to get things done in a state that desperately needed someone unafraid to kick all the right asses. But Christie isn’t getting the benefit of the doubt anymore. If this story turns out to be true, it’s just one more nail in the presidential coffin.

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Hoboken Mayor: Christie Denied Me Sandy Relief Funds Unless I Played Ball

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Chris Christie: I Am "Heartbroken" And "Embarrassed" About Bridge Scandal—But Not Guilty

by LaurelBos Posted on January 9, 2014

Mother Jones

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On Thursday, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie fired a top aide who ordered lane closures that caused a weeklong traffic jam on the George Washington Bridge and in nearby Fort Lee. Christie also forced his former campaign manager, Bill Stepien, who was aware of the lane closure plans, to drop out of the running to chair the New Jersey Republican Party, and told Stepien to cancel a lucrative contract with the Republican Governors Association, which Christie chairs.

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Bridgegate Edges Closer and Closer to Chris Christie Himself

In a press conference Thursday morning, Christie apologized to the people of Fort Lee and New Jersey and to the state Legislature for the lane closures. He said that his deputy chief of staff, Bridget Anne Kelly, “lied to me” about her role in the traffic mess, while insisting that he knew nothing about the decision to cause the traffic jam. “I am heartbroken that someone that I permitted to be in that circle of trust for the last five years betrayed my trust,” Christie said.

Emails and text messages released Tuesday strongly suggest that Kelly, the senior Christie aide, ordered the traffic debacle as political retribution against the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee, who had declined to endorse Christie in his 2013 gubernatorial race. “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee,” Kelly wrote to David Wildstein, a Port Authority official who resigned in the wake of the traffic jam.

Christie has denied that he personally made the call to close the bridge lanes that caused the traffic jam. “I am outraged and deeply saddened to learn that not only was I misled by a member of my staff, but this completely inappropriate and unsanctioned conduct was made without my knowledge,” he said on Wednesday.

At his press conference, Christie reiterated that he had no role in the bridge debacle and that he first learned about it Wednesday after his morning workout. “I was blindsided yesterday morning,” he said. “I had no knowledge or involvement in this issue, in its planning or its execution, and I am stunned by the abject stupidity that was shown here.” But he added that the responsibility for the scandal is his. “Ultimately, I am responsible for what happens on my watch, the good and the bad, and when mistakes are made, I have to own up to them and take the action that I believe is necessary to remediate them.”

In response to critics who said Christie sent the tone of his administration, he said the bridge scandal was “the exception, not the rule.” He said he would visit the borough of Fort Lee to apologize for the bridge scandal, and he pledged to “work cooperatively” with state and federal investigations into the scandal.

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Chris Christie: I Am "Heartbroken" And "Embarrassed" About Bridge Scandal—But Not Guilty

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Will San Francisco’s Plan to Charge Tech Buses $1.5 Million Satisfy Activists?

by jiigy3e Posted on January 8, 2014

Mother Jones

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On two separate days last month, buses carrying employees of major tech companies were blockaded by Bay Area activists. First, a bus bound for Google’s headquarters was stopped at 24th & Valencia in the Mission district of San Francisco. Activists from the anti-gentrification and eviction group Heart of the City boarded the bus and held a sign in front of it which read Warning: Illegal Use of Public Infrastructure. Meanwhile, union organizer Max Alper posed as a Google employee and shouted at the protestors (his real identity was later revealed.

The bus was one of hundreds in the San Francisco Bay Area that provide an estimated 35,000 boardings per day for private companies, who use the city’s MUNI bus stations as pick up and drop off points, free of charge.

A few weeks later, another round of blockades occurred throughout San Francisco and Oakland. Buses bound for Apple, in addition to buses bound for Google, were blockaded. This time signs read “Eviction Free San Francisco“, “Fuck Off Google” and so on. A Google bus window in Oakland was shattered during its blockade.

The blockades exemplified the San Francisco Bay Area’s rising income disparity and eviction rates, caused largely by the influx of technology companies.

So yesterday, when news broke that San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee was announcing a new series of proposed regulations for these tech buses, it appeared to be a win for area activists and organizers. Among the requirements for the mayor’s plan: shuttle providers would pay a daily fee based on the number of stops they make, plus they would have to yield to Muni buses and avoid steep and narrow streets.

But SFMTA spokesman Paul Rose told Mother Jones the recent blockades did not have any effect on the timing of the mayor’s announcement. And in fact, he says data gathering for the new policy began as early as 2011.

Plus, activists are not likely to find comfort in the mayor’s financial estimates for the pilot program. Due to California’s 1996 ballot measure Proposition 218, the new proposed fees are limited to the cost of providing the new policy. So Mayor Lee expects the permit fees to generate about $1.5 million over the first 18 months, and the new fees will reportedly cost shuttle operators only $1 per day per stop. Activists were demanding the industry pay $271 for each “illegal usage of a bus zone“, which they estimated would total around $1 billion in fines.

The mayor’s proposal must be approved by the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s board of directors, which will vote on the proposal January 21. Final plans would be approved by public hearing in late Spring.

Read the full press release here.

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Will San Francisco’s Plan to Charge Tech Buses $1.5 Million Satisfy Activists?

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Christie Administration’s Bridge Lane Closure Slowed Search for Missing 4-Year-Old, Says Official

by EdWampleriipwu Posted on January 8, 2014

Mother Jones

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Private messages released on Wednesday strongly suggest that a top adviser to Republican Gov. Chris Christie orchestrated a massive traffic jam in Fort Lee, New Jersey, as political retaliation against the city’s Democratic mayor.

READ MORE: Gov. Christie’s bridge scandal, explained. Future-Image/ZUMA

Calling the messages “astonishing” and “unconscionable,” members of the Fort Lee borough council described the mid-September traffic disaster, caused when the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey unexpectedly closed two of the town’s access lanes to the George Washington Bridge, as having dire consequences.

“There was a missing child that day. The police had trouble conducting that search because they were tied up directing traffic,” says Jan Goldberg, a Fort Lee councilman who works with local emergency personnel. Police found the missing child, a four-year-old. “But with the streets in the condition they were, I would venture to say that the search took longer,” Goldberg says.

Ila Kasofsky, a Fort Lee councilwoman, tells Mother Jones that ambulances and other emergency vehicles could not get through the gridlock. In the aftermath of the lane closures, Kasofsky says she spoke with a Fort Lee resident who couldn’t get over the bridge to support her husband through major surgery. Another Fort Lee woman was unable to pick up her son after his dialysis session.

Police Chief Keith Bendul cited these problems when he spoke to New Jersey press in September. “On Monday, while all this was going on, we had to contend with a missing four-year-old, a cardiac arrest requiring an ambulance, and a car running up against a building,” he said. “What would happen if there was a very serious accident?”

Christie aides appear to have considered the potential public safety ramifications of the traffic jam. In one exchange released on Wednesday, Port Authority appointee David Wildstein waved away complaints from the Fort Lee mayor that school buses filled with children were stuck in traffic. “Bottom line is he didn’t say safety,” Wildstein wrote.

Goldberg called the messages revealed on Wednesday “outrageous,” saying, “It’s unimaginable that they could stoop to that level.”

“I was furious,” adds Kasofsky. “To affect the lives of thousands and thousands of people, their safety, their basic quality of life—how could anybody do such a horrible thing?”

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Christie Administration’s Bridge Lane Closure Slowed Search for Missing 4-Year-Old, Says Official

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Chris Christie’s Bridge Scandal, Explained

by MaritaMontefior Posted on January 8, 2014

Mother Jones

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Update: Gov. Chris Christie has released a statement denying he knew of his staff’s actions before Wednesday. Click here to read his full statement.

Internal emails released Wednesday strongly suggest that a top aide to New Jersey Republican Gov. Chris Christie orchestrated massive traffic problems in Fort Lee, New Jersey, last fall as an act of political retribution against the city’s Democratic mayor. For months, Christie and his administration have denied allegations that road closures in Fort Lee were politically motivated. The emails, released as part of an investigation by Democratic state legislators, could spiral into a major political scandal for Christie, a possible 2016 presidential candidate. Here’s what you need to know.

READ MORE: A Fort Lee official says the Christie lane closures slowed the search for a missing 4-year-old child. Tracie Van Auken/ZUMA

How’d this begin? In mid-September, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey unexpectedly closed two access lanes on the New Jersey side of the George Washington Bridge, which spans the Hudson River and serves as a major commuter route between the two states. A massive, weeklong traffic jam ensued, clogging the streets of nearby Fort Lee.

Cops and lawmakers in Fort Lee said they were given no warning about the decision to close the lanes, which delayed school buses, first responders, and commuters bound for New York City. The Port Authority justified its decision by saying it was conducting a “traffic study.”

Why is this political? Soon after the traffic jam, rumors emerged that the Port Authority closed the bridge lanes as political retribution against Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich, a Democrat who endorsed Gov. Chris Christie’s opponent in the 2013 gubernatorial campaign. As news outlets and New Jersey Democrats dug deeper into the circumstances of the bridge incident, they eventually connected the lane closures to two Port Authority officials with close ties to Christie: Bill Baroni, the deputy executive director of the agency, and David Wildstein, its director of interstate capital projects. Baroni and Wildstein have since resigned, and both men have retained criminal defense attorneys.

All along, the Christie administration had denied any connection to the decision to close the bridge lanes. In September, a Christie spokesman called the retribution claim “crazy.” Christie told reporters at a December press conference that the Fort Lee traffic snarl was “absolutely, unequivocally not” a result of political score-settling.

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Chris Christie’s Bridge Scandal, Explained

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Photos of San Francisco Before the Silicon Valley Bros Invaded

by I ambit Posted on December 20, 2013

Mother Jones

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San Francisco’s housing market became the nation’s priciest this year, with a median rent of $3,414 across all units. If you’ve been paying attention, you’ve probably come across a media report—or a lament, or a tirade—about what’s been happening in the City by the Bay as it increasingly becomes a bedroom community for Silicon Valley and a tech center in its own right. Namely: a 170 percent increase in Ellis Act evictions, an 8 percent rent hike during a single quarter this year, runaway gentrification, techie elitism, class warfare, and the end of everything artistic and independent as we know it.

South of Market, or SoMa, is one of the neighborhoods most affected by San Francisco’s post-millennial boom. Once a nondescript refuge for working-class families, SoMa has recently transformed into an epicenter for startups, luxury condos, tony restaurants and breweries, boutique shops, and lofts. It’s emblematic of both the city’s encroaching corporatism and America’s ever-widening income inequality. For many native San Franciscans, it’s also a harbinger of worse to come.

Janet Delaney’s new book, South of Market, is a photographic record of SoMa’s first great makeover, which began in the 1960s. That’s when the city announced plans to build a 300,000-square-foot convention center—named for slain San Francisco Mayor George Moscone—in the heart of SoMa. Poor and elderly residents protested, accurately, saying that they’d be displaced; the city nonetheless approved the construction, and by 1981 Moscone Center occupied 10 acres of prime downtown real estate. To make room for this gleaming testament to civic pride, scores of low-income housing units—including several historic residential hotels—were bulldozed. Nearby rents swelled almost 300 percent. A mini-exodus to the picturesque Tenderloin and points west ensued. Once the dust settled, it was clear the neighborhood had permanently changed. No longer affordable, it began its long second act as a playground for entrepreneurs and real-estate salespeople.

Delaney began documenting the neighborhood in 1978. Her book chronicles a city in flux, but it’s not unequivocally bleak. For every photo of a demolished hotel or evicted family, there’s an elegantly composed shot of children skipping rope, business owners posing proudly in their shops, and streetscapes of hushed, now elegiac, beauty. Her interviews with longtime residents reveal outrage at the city’s indifference and anxiety about climbing rents, along with fear of a new soullessness. “There’s a lot of people here that weren’t here yesterday,” says one, and we can see in Delaney’s photos a new architecture of privilege as well. “You’ll find a great deal of the present in the past,” Delaney told me.

Bobby Washington and her daughter Ayana, 28 Langton Street Janet Delaney

Park Hotel, 429 Folsom Street Janet Delaney

Longtime neighbors, Langton at Folsom Street Janet Delaney

Greyhound Bus Depot, 7th Street between Mission and Market Janet Delaney

Flag Makers, Natoma at 3rd Street Janet Delaney

Saturday afternoon, Howard between 3rd and 4th streets Janet Delaney

Langton Park, Langton and Howard streets Janet Delaney

Remains of a five-alarm fire on Hallam Street Janet Delaney

Market at 2nd Street Janet Delaney

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Photos of San Francisco Before the Silicon Valley Bros Invaded

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Bloomberg Wants Restaurants to Compost

by Myrna Posted on November 22, 2013

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said he was proposing a bill that would require restaurants that generate more than a ton of food waste a week to separate their food waste from the rest of their garbage. See the original article here: Bloomberg Wants Restaurants to Compost ; ;Related ArticlesIran Would Eliminate Stock of Some of Its Enriched Uranium Under DealUrbanites Flee China’s Smog for Blue SkiesWorld Briefing | Europe: Russia: Most of Greenpeace Crew Have Now Been Released on Bail ;

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Bloomberg Wants Restaurants to Compost

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I Really Hope Richard Cohen is Wrong About Iowans

by Ajax Isaac Posted on November 12, 2013

Mother Jones

Richard Cohen today:

Iowa not only is a serious obstacle for Christie and other Republican moderates, it also suggests something more ominous: the Dixiecrats of old….Today’s GOP is not racist, as Harry Belafonte alleged about the tea party, but it is deeply troubled — about the expansion of government, about immigration, about secularism, about the mainstreaming of what used to be the avant-garde. People with conventional views must repress a gag reflex when considering the mayor-elect of New York — a white man married to a black woman and with two biracial children.

WTF? It’s 2013, even in Iowa. This sounds like the reaction of a stone racist, not someone with “conventional views.” Does anyone even bother reading this stuff after Cohen turns it in?

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I Really Hope Richard Cohen is Wrong About Iowans

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