Beach Towns to New York City Residents: Go Away

Today marks the beginning of the Memorial Day weekend and some beach resort towns do not want visitors from New York City.  Virginia Beach's beaches are open with restrictions - the rest of Virginia's beaches are not - as the City tourism industry hopes the weekend, traditionally when high summer revenues begin - will not be a total washout despite an improving weather forecast (this week has been wretched).  Meanwhile, in New Jersey and beach towns on Long Island are trying to make visits by residents of New York City difficult  through parking restrictions, bans on short term rentals and AirBnB rentals.  It may be a foreshadowing of a very different summer season for many resort towns that are in the catch-22 of needing revenues, but fearing visits from outsiders, especially those from Covid-19 hot spots.  Here are highlights from the New York Times:

In the Hamptons, the locals have put up barricades to limit parking and deployed enforcement officers to ticket outsiders. Jersey Shore towns have banned short-term leases and Airbnb rentals. The Suffolk County executive’s office taunted Mayor Bill de Blasio: “Do your job. Figure out a plan to safely reopen your beaches.”

Since the coronavirus pandemic began, tensions have repeatedly flared over whether too many New York City residents have decamped to outlying vacation areas, potentially taking the virus with them. But now the region appears on the brink of a full-fledged (and nasty) battle over beaches, touched off by the city’s decision to keep its shoreline closed.

In normal times, the Memorial Day weekend start of beach season sparks a mass migration from the city to Long Island, the Jersey Shore and, to a lesser extent, Connecticut. But the closings in New York City have led to a backlash from local officials in those areas, who say they fear that their shorelines will be overwhelmed by an exodus of sun-starved New Yorkers blocked from their own beaches, which can in normal times attract a million people a day.

To maintain social distancing, beaches across the region are moving to limit access to everyone. On the Jersey Shore, some towns are reducing parking and keeping their iconic boardwalks closed, with seaside restaurants providing takeout and delivery service only.

But special rules have also been adopted to keep outsiders away. Westchester County, just north of the city, has restricted its beaches at Playland in Rye and Croton Point Park to county residents. In Groton, Conn., only residents can use Eastern Point Beach on weekends and holidays.

The most sweeping rebuke of outsiders, however, seems to be coming from Long Island, many of whose beaches are convenient to New York City.

The Suffolk County executive, Steve Bellone, closed two county-run beaches — Smith Point, on Fire Island, and Cupsogue Beach, in the Hamptons — to nonresidents. He took to Twitter to chide Mr. de Blasio, who had earlier in the week said restrictions “should not be about any ill feeling toward people depending on where they come from.”

Oyster Bay, Hempstead and Brookhaven, all on Long Island, have also moved to limit access. Farther east, the Town of East Hampton suspended the sale of nonresident parking permits and began enforcing summer beach parking regulations early this year.

Mr. de Blasio, however, has warned that opening the city’s 14 miles of public beaches may pose risks to the strict social-distancing rules that city health officials have credited with helping to ease the peak virus infection rates seen in April.

It is part of a difficult balance Mr. de Blasio has tried to strike between providing critical cooling options without squandering the city’s hard-fought gains in bringing case numbers down.

New York City has had roughly 200,000 confirmed cases of the coronavirus and more than 20,000 deaths, a toll that exceeds those in most countries around the world.

Long Island has also been a hot spot in the outbreak, with roughly 78,000 cases and roughly 4,400 deaths.

Corey Johnson, the New York City Council speaker, said the solution to the spat with Long Island was simply to open city beaches immediately.  “I’m not sure it’s realistic to believe that people will not attempt to swim this summer,” Mr. Johnson said, “and we don’t want to be arresting people in the midst of this pandemic.”

Amazon to Split New HQ Between Crystal City, Virginia and Long Island City, New York

Long Island City, New York

Crystal City, Virginia

It is expected that Amazon will announce today that its new headquarters will be split between Crystal City, Virginia and Long Island City, New York, handing Virginia governor Ralph Northam a major economic victory.  The other victor is the Long Island City portion of New York City which has already seen amazing redevelopment and gentrification over the last 20 years.  When the announcement comes, it will underscore the reality that red states are making themselves increasingly unattractive to progressive corporations and businesses that want educated populations that are welcoming to a diverse work force.  A piece in the New York Times looks at Amazon's decision and its likely economic impact.  Here are highlights (the Washington Post also has a piece here): 

After conducting a yearlong search for a second home, Amazon has finalized plans to have about 50,000 employees in two locations, according to a person familiar with the decision-making process.

The company has decided to move to the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens, and to the Crystal City area of Arlington, Va., a Washington suburb, the person said. Amazon, which plans to officially announce the decision on Tuesday, already has more employees in those two areas than anywhere else outside of Seattle, its home base, and the Bay Area.

The need to hire tens of thousands of high-tech workers has been the driving force behind the search, leading many to expect it to land in a major East Coast metropolitan area. Many experts had pointed to Crystal City as a front-runner, because of its strong public transit, educated work force and proximity to Washington.

About 1,800 people in advertising, fashion and publishing already work for Amazon in New York, and roughly 2,500 corporate and technical employees work in Northern Virginia and Washington. Amazon announced plans for a second headquarters in September 2017, saying that the company was growing faster than it could hire in its hometown, Seattle. The company said it would invest more than $5 billion over almost two decades in a second headquarters, hiring as many as 50,000 full-time employees that would earn more than $100,000 a year on average.

HQ2 would be the “full equal to our current campus in Seattle,” the company said. Picking multiple sites allows it to tap into two pools of talented labor and perhaps avoid being blamed for all of the housing and traffic woes of dominating a single area. It could also give the company greater leverage in negotiating tax incentives, experts said.

The HQ2 search sent states and cities into a frenzied bidding war. Some hired McKinsey & Company and other outside consultants to help them with their bids, investing heavily in courting Amazon and its promise of 50,000 jobs. Even half of that would amount to one of the largest corporate location deals on record, according to Greg LeRoy, executive director of Good Jobs First, which tracks corporate subsidies. “These are very big numbers,” he said.

As Amazon’s search dragged on, residents in many of the 20 finalist cities worried about the impact such a massive project could have on housing and traffic, as well as what potential tax incentives could cost the community. The decision to split HQ2 into two sites could alleviate some of that resistance.

Seattle has been one of the fastest growing cities in the country, in part because of Amazon’s growth. The company has about 45,000 employees in the city, and the company said it needed to hire more employees than the city could attract or absorb.

The piece in the Post notes as follows:

The choice of Crystal City in Arlington County as one of the winners could cement Northern Virginia’s reputation as a magnet for business and potentially reshape the Washington region into an eastern outpost of Silicon Valley over the next decade. The decision hands Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) and local leaders the largest economic-development prize in a generation — one promising billions of dollars in capital investments alone — but could also put pressure on the region’s already steep housing prices, congested roads, and yawning divide between wealthy and low-income residents.

It also would represent a victory for New York Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) and Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D), who had joked that he would change his name to “Amazon Cuomo” if necessary to land the project.

New York City Weekend - Day 2

We had a great time yesterday afternoon and evening with the high point being seeing Hello Dolly with Bette Midler.   We had dinner in the theater district before the show and came across an interesting looking restaurant for dinner tonight.  After the show last night I had a chance to talk briefly with Gavin Creel - one of the cast members - as a collection for Broadway Cares (Creel is on the board of trustees) was taken up. We finished the evening with drinks at the Monster Bar located 1/2 block up the street from where we are staying. 

Today's agenda includes shopping, including some consignment shops where we have found great cowboy boots - we like them in the winter months - vintage formal wear and accessories.  This afternoon we are meeting the daughter of one of the husband's clients who lives here in NYC and works in the fashion industry.  Then it will be dinner followed by a gay themed off Broadway show.  Odds are we will end the day at the Monster Bar where there will likely be creative Halloween costumes based on what we saw last night (a guy in full Maleficent regalia was over the top).

New York City Weekend - Day 1

Looking forward to a fun weekend in NYC, starting with Hello Dolly tonight with the divine Bette Midler.   Once again, we are staying at a friend's apartment at 30 Christopher Street in the West Village.  Posting frequency may be down as we see friends, family that live here in NYC, and some of our favorite haunts.   On the home front, the Ralph Northam staffer that we have been housing since July 4th  weekend will watch after the house and the two Chihuahuas who have become very attached to him.  The photos are of the view flying in earlier today! 

Politico: Meet the Real Jared Kushner

A viper behind a pretty face?

Now that it is known that he is a person of interest in the Russiagate investigation, I suspect that we will be learning much more about presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner.  Based on a piece in Politico's magazine section, what we are likely to learn is not going to be good or flattering. Seemingly,  in the opinion of the article's author, beneath the polite veneer he works to maintain, Kushner is far more like his thuggish father-in-law and only too willing to play dirty and engage in underhanded conduct.  One would have thought that Kushner would have realized the truth would come out at some point.  His ties to Russiagate will likely accelerate that process and his reputation in society circles could well take a hit.  Here are brief highlights from a very long article:

He was supposed to be the calm one, cool and unflappable under his Ray-Bans and beltless blue bespoke suits. If Steve Bannon was the Rumpelstiltskin of the administration, donning multiple half-tucked dress shirts at a time and always carrying a clutch of briefing papers and barreling through the administrative state, Jared Kushner, through pedigree and temperament, could reach out one of his long, elegant fingers and tap everyone in the West Wing on the shoulder and urge them to just cool out a bit. In a White House sullied by ties to Russia and all sorts of unsavory characters from the fringe, Kushner was set to float above, surrounding himself with fellow figures from the elite worlds of Manhattan finance and real estate and deep-sixing the harder-edged ideas of the White House’s “nationalist” wing.

Except that this isn’t quite how it has gone in the White House over the last several months. It was Kushner who reportedly pushed for the firing of FBI Director James Comey over the objections of Bannon. And it was Kushner who was the lone voice urging for a counterattack after Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announced the appointment of a special prosecutor, according to the New York Times. And it is now Kushner whose family’s business activities leave him open to the same level of charges of conflict of interest that have dogged his wife and father-in-law, and Kushner who appears to be as closely tied to the Russian government as anyone serving in the White House: NBC News and the Washington Post reported Thursday that the FBI is taking a close look at his contacts with the Russians.

The widespread assumption liberals make about Kushner seems to be this: Because he is soft-spoken, slim and handsome, with degrees from Harvard and NYU and a family that donates to Democrats, he couldn’t possibly be the same guy knifing his West Wing rivals and urging the president to go to war with the Justice Department and the FBI.  But that assumption is wrong. . . . . those who know him from his days as a young New York real estate magnate and newspaper publisher say that America is just getting to know the Jared Kushner they have always known. . .

By all accounts, Jared was deeply affected by his father’s prison sentence [for illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion and witness tampering], and visited him weekly.

And so in an effort to rehabilitate the family name, Kushner focused the family business on Manhattan and purchased the New York Observer, a pink-paged society weekly that made up in influence among the social and literary elite what it lacked in circulation or profitability (full disclosure: I worked as a political reporter there from 2010-2012). But the paper soon expanded into coverage of Kushner’s home turf of commercial real estate, and people in that world saw the paper’s editorial resources devoted to pushing Kushner’s agenda or settling his scores.

“The Observer became his mouthpiece in the world of New York City real estate,” said one prominent real estate broker who asked to remain anonymous because “like everybody else in New York and New Jersey real estate I realize there is no upside to talking about Jared Kushner or Donald Trump.”

[T]he anger toward him among former Observer employees runs deep. . . . . Just before the election, Kahlon described her former boss on Facebook thusly: “We’re talking about a guy who isn’t particularly bright or hard-working, doesn’t actually know anything, has bought his way into everything ever (with money he got from his criminal father), who is deeply insecure and obsessed with fame (you don’t buy the NYO, marry Ivanka Trump, or constantly talk about the phone calls you get from celebrities if it’s in your nature to ‘shun the spotlight’), and who is basically a shithead.”

Meanwhile, damaging stories keep landing as journalists dig into the Kushner real estate empire, which is said to have taken part in at least $7 billion worth of acquisitions over the past decade and, according to Forbes, to have a worth close to $1 billion. A recent investigation by ProPublica revealed that Kushner Companies have bought thousands of distressed apartment complexes in Rust Belt cities in recent years, hardly the stuff of Manhattan dreams. A subsidiary that manages the complexes has been ruthless in pushing out those who didn’t pay their rent, ProPublica reported, hitting them with steep late fees and even going after them in court.

Alec MacGillis, who reported the story, found that few of the “Kushnerville” residents he met knew their money was going to a company owned by the son in law of President Trump. “That Jared Kushner?” one exclaimed. “Oh, my God. And I thought he was the good one.”

Read the whole piece.

The Out Hotel Is No More, Thanks to Ted Cruz

Out Hotel and club

Readers may recall when I wrote about Ian Reisner and his business partner, Mati Weiderpass, self-anointed A-List gays who hosted a fundraiser for anti-gay zealot, Ted Cruz.   The backlash against Reisner and Weiderpass has taken its toll and now the Out Hotel and New York City and the affiliated gay club (which the husband and I visited a year ago last September) has been sold and will no longer cater to an LGBT clientele.  The Advocate looks at the fall of Out Hotel thanks to Ted Cruz.  Here are excerpts:

The hotel that had become a symbol of support for Ted Cruz’s antigay policies is now closing.

The Out Hotel in New York City faced a heated boycott last year after its gay owners held a fundraising dinner party at their home for the Texas senator and Republican presidential hopeful. Ian Reisner and his business partner at Parkview Developers, Mati Weiderpass, came up with a lot of reasons for that party, but none flew.

 

Numerous groups canceled events in outrage, including the New York Gay Men’s Chorus, AIDS Walk, Broadway Bares, Urban Bear, and more. When the boycott began spreading to the Fire Island Pines commercial district, the management there publicly distanced themselves from their chief investor. A Facebook group launched in the hopes of exacting a punishment, though exactly what that should be was always unclear. 

Things had recently calmed down, with that Facebook group disbanding, but business remained slow. The Real Deal, a real estate blog, reports Out NYC was just sold for $40 million to Merchants Hospitality. Its hotel, restaurant and nightclub will no longer cater to a gay clientele.

Cruz, booed by his own party during the Republican convention, was named The Advocate’s Phobie of the Year at the end of 2014. Along with a table of high-dollar guests, he’d met with Reisner and Weiderpass in April 2015. The two had first claimed it wasn’t a fundraising dinner but later admitted donating $2,700 — the maximum allowed — as a show of “support for his work on behalf of Israel.” 

The owners have been alternately contrite and angry during the boycott. They feigned ignorance about Cruz’s anti-LGBT policies and asked for forgiveness. Nothing seemed to work.

It wasn’t a win for Cruz either. When asked about the dinner party on the campaign trail, he called himself a “big tent Republican” and simultaneously announced he’d push for two new anti-LGBT bills in the Senate. The first would amend the Constitution to allow states to define marriage as only between one man and one woman, and the second would ban federal courts from ruling on marriage. Amping up his anti-LGBT rhetoric, though, didn’t stop the meeting from coming up here and there in attacks against him as weak on LGBT issues. 

The hotel might never have made money, even before the boycott began. In an interview in May 2015 with New York magazine intended to smooth things over — but that actually insulted LGBT consumers — Reisner said it hadn’t turned a profit. 

 

 

Hillary Easily Wins New York, Blunts Sanders' :Momentum"

Growing up through high school in Central New York, down state - i.e., everything from Westchester County and Orange County south - was always the Democrat bastion of New York State.  It proved to be so yesterday when Hillary Clinton beat Bernie Sanders by over a 15%  margin.  Clinton carried all of "down state" and all of the large upstate cities except Albany.  Like here in Virginia, there is a pronounced rural/urban divide in New York, although one sees far fewer Christofascists than in rural Virginia.  One question now is whether or not Sanders will continue to try to destroy Clinton at any cost with no regard to possible handing the White House to Republicans in November.  The ultimate goal is to stop the GOP and I hope Sanders will begin to realize this and put his personal ego aside.  Here are highlights from the New York Times on Clinton's win:

Mrs. Clinton’s decisive victory ended a string of wins by Mr. Sanders and gave her more delegates than her advisers expected. Her base of support was Long Island, the five boroughs, and upstate cities, with female and black and Hispanic voters turning out for her in especially strong numbers.

Mrs. Clinton was set to win roughly 30 more delegates than Mr. Sanders, out of 247 at stake. She already had a lead of more than 200 delegates in the race.

Smiling broadly throughout her victory speech, Mrs. Clinton drew cheers as she thanked her adopted home state and then boomed, “Today, you proved once again, there’s no place like home.”

“The race for the Democratic nomination is in the home stretch and victory is in sight,” Mrs. Clinton added, reflecting the overwhelming mathematical advantage she has in delegates.

Sanders advisers had said that beating Mrs. Clinton in her adopted home state represented one of their campaign’s best opportunities to damage her candidacy and sow doubts about her strength as a general-election nominee. On Tuesday, however, Mrs. Clinton drew deep support among women and blacks — two groups that have been essential for her in many states — while Mr. Sanders was outpacing her among white men and people under 45, according to exit polls

“Bernie Sanders got very negative attacking Hillary Clinton and dividing the party in New York, and I think he now has to ask himself if he wants to keep going down that path,” said Jay Jacobs, a Clinton supporter who is the Democratic chairman in Nassau County on Long Island. “After New York, we’re moving into a phase of the campaign where we have to start uniting the party.”

Mr. Sanders and his team spent Tuesday looking past New York. Mr. Sanders held a rally at Pennsylvania State University in State College on Tuesday night, then flew home to Burlington, Vt., and spoke to reporters just after the race was called.

The Sanders campaign spent roughly $2 million more than the Clinton campaign on television ads in New York. The magnitude of the loss — both in the popular vote and in delegates — was steep for Mr. Sanders, who said he intended to get “recharged and take a day off.”

The senator’s advisers were optimistic that he would perform strongly in next Tuesday’s primaries in Pennsylvania as well as in Rhode Island and Connecticut. The other two states voting next week, Delaware and Maryland, are widely seen as Clinton strongholds. The Sanders campaign is already running television ads in those five states and Indiana, which votes May 3.

Is Ted Cruz Lying to Evangelical Christians?

It's no secret that I despise Ted Cruz.  Not only does he remind me of the late Joe McCarthy of the Red Scare days, but he comes across as shifty and untrustworthy, willing to say and do anything to further himself politically.  In this regard, he has fully prostituted himself to the Christofascists in the GOP base and as a result garnered the endorsement of virtually every anti-gay hate group, many of which have strong white supremacy undercurrents.  Now, as a piece in Politico suggests, "Mr. Authenticity" may be a liar, the only issue is determining which time he makes conflicting statements is he lying.  As Politico reports, at a private fundraiser, Cruz has made statements on same sex marriage that would make Christofascist heads explode.  Here are article highlights:  

In June, Ted Cruz promised on NPR that opposition to gay marriage would be “front and center” in his 2016 campaign.  In July, he said the Supreme Court’s decision allowing same-sex marriage was the “very definition of tyranny” and urged states to ignore the ruling.

But in December, behind closed doors at a big-dollar Manhattan fundraiser, the quickly ascending presidential candidate assured a Republican gay-rights supporter that a Cruz administration would not make fighting same-sex marriage a top priority.

In a recording provided to POLITICO, Cruz answers a flat “No” when asked whether fighting gay marriage is a “top-three priority,” an answer that pleased his socially moderate hosts but could surprise some of his evangelical backers.

While Cruz’s private comments to a more moderate GOP audience do not contradict what the Republican Texas senator has said elsewhere, they demonstrate an adeptness at nuance in tone and emphasis that befits his Ivy League background. Indeed, the wording looks jarring when compared with the conservative, evangelical rhetoric he serves at his rallies, which have ballooned in size and excitement as he has moved to the front of the pack in Iowa.

The claim about Cruz by rival campaigns isn’t so much that he changes his message to different audiences, but that the prioritization of his agenda changes.

The recording was provided to POLITICO by an attendee at the fundraiser, held Dec. 9 at the Sullivan & Cromwell law firm on Madison Avenue. The contribution levels were $10,800 to be on the host committee, $2,700 to attend a VIP reception, and $1,000 for lunch. The donors were generally moderate to liberal on social issues, and largely conservative on fiscal and national-security issues.

During the question period, one of the donors told Cruz that gay marriage was one of the few issues on which the two disagreed. Then the donor asked: “So would you say it's like a top-three priority for you — fighting gay marriage?”

“No,” Cruz replied. “I would say defending the Constitution is a top priority. And that cuts across the whole spectrum — whether it's defending [the] First Amendment, defending religious liberty.”

A well-known Republican operative not affiliated with a 2016 campaign said by email when sent Cruz's quote: "Wow. Does this not undermine all of his positions? Abortion, Common Core — all to the states? ... Worse, he sounds like a slick D.C. politician — says one thing on the campaign trail and trims his sails with NYC elites. Not supposed to be like that."

[A]n adviser to a rival campaign, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wants to stay behind the scenes, said the Manhattan comments could help opponents portray Cruz as “calculating” at a time voters are rewarding authenticity.  “There’s an Iowa Ted and a New York Ted,” the adviser said. “He sounds different behind closed doors.”

“His answer [on gay marriage was] the same as all the mainstream candidates,” the operative said. “Cruz gets Carson's evangelical supporters because they believe him to be a born-again Christian, not because of his views on individual issues. He makes a real connection with those voters as they abandon Carson.”

If Cruz is deliberately lying to and playing the Christofascists in the GOP base there would be a delicious irony in it: these people lie at will to further  their theocratic agenda.  It would be fun to watch Cruz out play them at their own game of calculating dishonesty and lies.

A Last S.O.S. for the S.S. United States

The super liner U.S. United States was built at Newport News Shipbuilding less than ten miles from where I sit typing this post and was launched in the same year that I was born.   In her prime, she was the fastest ocean liner afloat and counted presidents, movie stars and royalty among her passengers.  Now, she is a rusting hulk facing the scrape yard if funds are not raised to maintain her while a plan to develop her into a water front attraction and hotel in New York City are completed.  The S.S. United States is small compared to some of today's massive cruise ships that resemble mammoth hotels slapped on a hull, but her sleek lines and wind swept superstructure recall the days when crossing the Atlantic was most often for the rich and famous.  The New York Times looks at the ship and the fate that I hope she manages to dodge.  Here are excerpts:

A Titanic-sized supership that once ferried presidents, Hollywood royalty, actual royalty and even the Mona Lisa has a place in the history books as the fastest oceanliner in the world. The owners are now racing to avoid having the ship, the S.S. United States, relegated to the junk heap.

A preservationist group, the S.S. United States Conservancy, saved the vessel from being scrapped a few years ago. Its members are working with a developer to give the mothballed vessel a new life as a stationary waterfront real-estate development in New York City, the ship’s home port in her heyday.

Their big dreams, however, now face a financial crisis: Short of money, the conservancy in recent days formally authorized a ship broker to explore the potential sale to a recycler. In other words, the preservationists might have to scrap their vessel.

The conservancy continues to seek out donors, investors or a buyer to preserve the ship and press forward with development. But unless something happens by Oct. 31, the group said in a statement, “We will have no choice but to negotiate the sale of the ship to a responsible recycler.”

The decision to seek bids from scrappers was “excruciating,” said Ms. Gibbs, particularly since the development plan emerged in the last year. “We’ve never been closer to saving the S.S. United States, and we’ve never been closer to losing her,” she said.

In the 1950s and ’60s, the ship was a marvel of technology and elegance, offering regular passenger service between New York and Europe. The 1952 maiden voyage smashed trans-Atlantic speed records. She was so fast, her propellers were a Cold War state secret.

Passenger jets doomed the superliners, however. The S.S. United States left service in the late 1960s. Today she is docked in Philadelphia, stripped of her interiors and rusting in the Delaware River across the street from an Ikea store.

The redevelopment plan is underway, said Keith Harper, vice president for design at Gibbs & Cox, the firm that originally designed the S.S. United States. Late last year, a real estate developer hired the firm to help devise specific ideas for possible reuse. . . . . The ship has roughly 600,000 square feet of floor space.

 
Admirers remain optimistic. Among them is John Quadrozzi, whose company happens to own a pier in Brooklyn big enough to accommodate an oceanliner. He says he would welcome the ship there, where docking costs would be considerably lower. The conservancy is considering the move, if the money can be raised.

The S.S. United States was conceived with two purposes: to provide luxury passenger service to and from Europe, and to quickly convert into a superfast military transport, although that need never arose. Built partly with government funds, the ship represented a powerful expression of American postwar optimism and ambition.

Newspapers speculated on her secret top speed and wrote about her comings and goings like no airplane route gets written about. In the 1950s and ’60s, she was featured in a Disney movie, a Munsters movie, and a sequel to the Marilyn Monroe blockbuster “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” according to a conservancy history. Her twin red-white-and-blue stacks can be glimpsed in the opening of “West Side Story.”

America, unlike much of Europe, destroys its history and historic buildings and, in this case, ships.  The S.S. United States is one of a kind and I hope the funds are found to save her and make her into a waterfront destination.    Consider making a donation here.

Push Begins to Turn Stonewall Inn Part of National Park System

Whenever the husband and I visit New York City, we typically stay at a friend's apartment on Christopher Street less than a stone's throw from the Stonewall Inn where the modern struggle for LGBT rights began on June 28, 1969.  Like I suspect many others do, we often will either stop by for a drink or walk by sensitive to the history attached to the site.  Now, U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D) and U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D) say it is time to honor the site by adding it to the nation's national park system - a move that will no doubt make the usual suspects in the professional Christian crowd go berserk.  God forbid that the nation honor the history of all citizens.  Here are highlights from The Raw Story:

A New York congressman and senator announced plans on Sunday to designate Stonewall Inn in New York City — the birthplace of the gay rights movement — into a national park, reports the Washington Blade.

Over 40 years after a police raid on the watering hole pushed the gay community over the edge due to harassment, U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D) and U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D) say it is time to honor the site.

“The National Park Service, through national monuments, through national battlefields, all kinds of national things, illustrates the story of this country,” Nadler explained. “It’s important to expand the diversity of this story presented by the National Park Service, in this case, to present the story of the struggle for civil rights of LGBT Americans. There is nothing in the National Park System that deals with this, and that’s a huge omission in terms of the history of this country, the history of this struggle and the ongoing struggle for human rights.”

Plans for the historic designation were announced in June of this year and Sunday’s announcement was timed to coincide with the debut of the “Stonewall” motion picture being released next week.
Police raided the bar on June 28, 1969, looking for liquor violations, and met with unexpectedly strong resistance that became a nearly week-long series of violent demonstrations against police harassment acknowledged today as a pivotal moment for the gay-rights movement.

The Stonewall Inn is already part of the Greenwich Village Historic District and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1999.

According to lesbian activist Martha Shelley designating the site on a national level also helps to celebrate the people who took part in the early years of the gay rights movement.
“It’s important for people to know the history, and instead of being a shameful secret and being the kind of people who get destroyed really for being who they are, we ought to be celebrated for who we are,” Shelley said. “And it’s important for people to understand change has happened, those kinds of changes, because ordinary people protest, because ordinary people are out in the street.”

New York Police Wrongfully Arrest Black Tennis Star

While the apologists on the far right refuse to admit that there are serious problems in many of the nation's police forces when it comes to excessive force against blacks, the wrongful arrest and excessive force used by the New York City police against James Blake a retired Harvard educated tennis star.  Sadly, in the minds of too many police offers, being black - or in Blake's case, bi-racial - automatically makes one guilty and opens the door to abusive force.  Pretending the problem doesn't exist or that President Obama is undermining respect for the police doesn't solve the serious problem.  The New York Times looks at the latest embarrassment to the NYPD.  Here are excerpts:

A New York Police Department officer was stripped of his gun and badge as Mayor Bill de Blasio and Police Commissioner William J. Bratton issued swift apologies on Thursday for the rough arrest of James Blake, the retired tennis star, after he was misidentified as a suspect in a fraudulent credit card ring.

Criticism swirled over whether Mr. Blake had been mistreated because he was biracial. But it was Mr. Bratton’s acknowledgment that excessive force may have been used when an officer threw him to the ground that put a renewed national focus on the everyday arrest tactics long criticized by members of minority groups.

The officers failed to report the mistaken arrest, as they were required to do, raising the possibility that it would not have come to light had Mr. Blake not spoken out.

The officer’s decision to throw an unarmed, compliant man to the ground added to the sense that black people are often roughed up by the police out of view, with few resources to bring attention to their grievances. In a sign of the shifting discourse on race and policing, Mr. de Blasio and Mr. Bratton moved with unusual speed to contact Mr. Blake to apologize. But the gestures also raised questions about whether they would have moved so swiftly if the encounter had not involved a well-known figure.

“This shouldn’t have happened and he shouldn’t have been treated that way,” Mr. de Blasio said in an interview on NY1 on Thursday, echoing remarks made earlier by Mr. Bratton.

The actions of the officer, James Frascatore, were under review by internal affairs investigators and the Civilian Complaint Review Board. At least three force-related complaints, one of which was partially substantiated, were filed against Officer Frascatore, 38, with the review board in 2013, said a law enforcement official, who spoke anonymously because the police inquiry was continuing.

Video of the arrest reviewed by the authorities revealed how a botched sting operation had ensnared a sports celebrity, resulting in his being body-slammed to the sidewalk, according to his account, and handcuffed for 15 minutes on Wednesday afternoon.

Mr. Blake, 35, who retired from tennis two years ago, said the episode had drawn attention to the kind of rough arrest tactics that he believed were all too common in New York City.

“I do think most cops are doing a great job keeping us safe, but when you police with reckless abandon, you need to be held accountable,” Mr. Blake, whose mother is white and whose father was black, said in an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

The self-effacing tennis star, known on the tour for his speed and sportsmanship, was leaving the Grand Hyatt New York on East 42nd Street around noon on Wednesday to make an appearance for a corporate sponsor at the United States Open when Officer Frascatore, who was dressed in street clothes, barreled toward him.

“This happens too often,” Mr. Blake said, “and most of the time it’s not to someone like me.”

There's more to the story, but you get the drift.  There are many good police officers, but there are a number that have no business wearing a badge and carrying a gun.  Sadly, most internal affairs departments' number one goal is protecting police officers rather than the public.  Until police departments get rid of the "bad apples," they deserve to be viewed with distrust.  It is ultimately their own fault when they continue to have officers like James Frascatore and those who have shot unarmed individuals on their staffs.  

Hillary Announces Her Agenda

Hillary Clinton made her first "big speech" yesterday on Roosevelt Island in the East River of New York City.  Reportedly, the crowd turnout wasn't what was hoped for, yet her speech which some described as "flat" covered many issues and, as The Atlantic notes, laid out details that no Republican presidential candidate, declared or not, has yet to offer.  The event underscored what are Hillary's biggest challenges: (i) she does not have her husband's charisma, and (ii) she has yet to ignite any real excitement.   Personally, I find ALL of the GOP would be presidential nominees to be frightening, and not merely because they all seem to be seeing who can be the most anti-gay, but because they seem only too willing to betray our troops by launching more fool's errands in the Middle East and because their economic policy continue the GOP war on the middle and working classes.  Will others support her and turn out to the polls in November 2016 merely because they find the GOP candidate too frightening?  Here are excerpts from The Atlantic piece:

In her 45-minute address on New York's Roosevelt Island, a wooded sliver in the East River between Manhattan and Queens, Clinton laid out many proposals that Democrats care about. She did so in a speech that was almost aggressively pedestrian, devoid of soaring rhetoric or big ideas. “America can't succeed unless you succeed,” she said. “That's why I am running for president of the United States.” Clinton’s entire candidacy, it seemed, was built around a non sequitur.

The occasion itself was a strange one. Saturday's speech was, according to Clinton's campaign, a “launch,” yet Clinton announced her candidacy two months ago. Was she hoping to start over? Certainly not, her staff insisted—everything, they say, is going just fine, terrifically even. The chairman of Clinton's campaign, John Podesta, resorted to a baseball metaphor to explain the double beginning: “We've had spring training,” he said. “Now it's opening day.”

In keeping with the campaign so far, Saturday's speech was quite substantive and quite liberal. It was also quite flat. Clinton read it slowly off the teleprompter, articulating every word, sometimes with odd emphasis, in a near-monotone. Clinton spoke in Four Freedoms Park, a locale chosen for its symbolic freight.

She segued into what she called her “four fights”: to make the economy work for the middle class; to strengthen America's families with pro-worker policies; to “maintain our leadership for peace,  security and prosperity”; and to reform government and revitalize democracy. Under these vague headings she crammed expanding renewable energy, fighting climate change, funding infrastructure, universal preschool and childcare, making college affordable, paid sick days, paid family leave, equal pay for women, services for the addicted and mentally ill, a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, a ban on discrimination against gay and transgender people, and automatic voter registration.

[N]o one could accuse Clinton of not having an agenda; none of the Republican candidates has offered such a barrage of proposals. Recent polls have shown that most voters do not find Clinton trustworthy. She is apparently betting that policy and substance can be a substitute for character and personality.

Clinton’s advisers worry about the lack of passion the candidate elicits, but Saturday's speech was so non-rousing as to make one wonder whether that wasn't intentional—was it an attempt to bring Clinton down to earth, to make her ordinary? To deflate the aura of fame that clings to her and turn her into just another candidate, one who is solid and sensible and not too flashy, with lots of concrete plans?

Clinton tried this tack before, in 2008, when she tried in vain to convince Democratic voters that Barack Obama was all style and no substance. But this time, she is hoping she won't have that kind of competition.

Will Hillary Clinton Announce on Sunday?

Now that she has inked a lease for her campaign headquarters in Brooklyn, speculation is rampant as to when Hillary Clinton will make her formal announcement as a presidential candidate.  Some now say that her announcement will come on Sunday.  Or so reports the New York Daily News.  Here are article highlights:

The long wait’s almost over — Hillary Clinton’s official campaign announcement is expected Sunday, a source close to the campaign told the Daily News.

The former secretary of state is likely to throw her hat in the ring via video and social media as she kicks off her long-expected second shot at the White House.

She’s then expected to begin her campaign with a series of smaller events in early-voting states including Iowa and New Hampshire — though it remains to be seen how low-key the high-profile candidate will be able to keep her trip.

Clinton appears to have an easy path to the Democratic nomination — her poll numbers among Democrats have remained strong for months and no serious challengers appear likely to dent her in the primaries.

She’s also led most of her GOP foes in national and state-level polling for much of the past year, though those numbers may be taking a bit of a hit — a new Quinnipiac University poll Thursday showed her slipping in the swing states of Iowa, Colorado and Virginia in the wake of stories about the private email server she used as secretary of state.

Democrats are hopeful the official announcement will let her get out there and help right the ship.

“I think this is great news. As far as I’m concerned the quicker she gets in the better everything will be,” said veteran Democratic strategist Jim Manley. “Among other things, now that she’s getting in she’ll have a full operation to help her not only define her policies but to ward off all these attacks that are coming from the right as well.”

Sources close to Clinton have said for more than a month that she was aiming for an April announcement coinciding with the beginning of the fund-raising quarter, and her campaign’s move toward renting office space in Brooklyn last week confirmed that timeline.

Clinton will be by far the best known of the candidates to jump into the White House scrum. Republican Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ted Cruz of Texas have also thrown their hats into the ring, and Marco Rubio of Florida is expected to do so on Monday.

Republican-turned-Democrat former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee announced he’s looking at the race in a surprise Monday video, joining former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb in the field of little-known Democrats looking to challenge Clinton. Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders is also mulling a challenge from the left, as is former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley.

Once she announces, the slug fest with the GOP clown car will begin.