sisyphusshrugged | the new bipartisanship

Mayor Bloomberg (R-NY) is very peeved at Democrats for, um, supporting Democrats. As that would suggest, he's a big Lieberman supporter

While Lieberman vowed to continue fighting for reelection as an independent, many of his high-profile supporters - including Sens. Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer of New York - have switched their endorsement to Lamont.

On his weekly WABC-AM show, Bloomberg lambasted these elected officials for failing to stand by Lieberman, although he named no names.

"All of a sudden the same elected officials say, 'Oh, he's no longer the best guy. He shouldn't be elected. You can't vote for him. You should vote for the guy that a week ago I was saying was not the best guy,'" Bloomberg said.

"Something's wrong when you think about that," Bloomberg declared.

Bloomberg, a lifelong Democrat who became a Republican to run for mayor, supports nonpartisan elections at all levels of government.

so what does he like about Lieberman?

"This country needs nonpartisan elected officials who think that doing the right thing for the public is more important than supporting some party," said Bloomberg.

And, you know, as a New Yorker, I'm relieved to hear it, because I was starting to wonder if maybe this example of Bloomberg supporting his party rather than doing the right thing for the public

When city officials denied demonstrators access to the Great Lawn in Central Park during the 2004 Republican National Convention, political advocates and ordinary New Yorkers accused Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of squelching demonstrations that could embarrass fellow Republicans during their gathering. The Bloomberg administration denied being guided by politics in banning the protests. Instead, officials said they were motivated by a concern for the condition of the expensively renovated Great Lawn or by law enforcement's ability to secure the crowd. But documents that have surfaced in a federal lawsuit over the use of the Great Lawn paint a different picture, of both the rationale for the administration's policy and the degree of Mr. Bloomberg's role in enforcing it.

Those documents, which include internal e-mail messages and depositions in the court case, show that Mr. Bloomberg’s involvement in the deliberations over the protests may have been different from how he and his aides have portrayed it. They also suggest that officials were indeed motivated by political concerns over how the protests would play out while the Republican delegates were in town, and how the events could affect the mayor’s re-election campaign the following year.

“It is very important that we do not permit any big or political events for the period between Aug. 23 and Sept. 6, 2004,” read one Parks Department e-mail message, referring to issuing permits for the days framing the convention. “It’s really important for us to keep track of any large events (over 1,000 people), and any rallies or events that seem sensitive or political in nature.”

...

Throughout his tenure as mayor, Mr. Bloomberg has made much of his political independence, saying that his decision-making is guided more by a sense of what is right, than by political expediency or popular opinion. But the documents, which are part of the lawsuit brought by the National Council of Arab Americans and the Answer Coalition, an antiwar civil rights group, indicate that politics and appearances were at the center of the administration’s strategy and that Mr. Bloomberg was more intimately involved in the discussions over demonstrations in the park than he said.

At the time of the convention, Mr. Bloomberg said that he had largely delegated responsibility for determining where protesters could demonstrate to the Parks Department and the Police Department, and he told the court later that he had no knowledge of specific permit denials other than the one for the enormous rally for 250,000 people organized by United for Peace and Justice, an antiwar group.

Mr. Bloomberg wrote that he did “not have unique, personal knowledge regarding the basis of the decision,” and that he had “no knowledge at all regarding the denial of a Parks Department permit to plaintiff,” the National Council of Arab Americans, “beyond a general understanding that other groups sought and were denied Parks Department permits to demonstrate on the Great Lawn during the RNC.”

But an e-mail message from Adrian Benepe, the parks commissioner, to Mr. Bloomberg in June 2004 indicates otherwise.

“Following your call, I spoke to Ray about 10 minutes ago,” Mr. Benepe wrote, referring to Raymond W. Kelly, the police commissioner. “Coincidentally, our lawyer and Chief McManus and the Law Department are meeting at this very minute to agree on the language and strategy of the letter rejecting the Arab-American rally on the Great Lawn,” Mr. Benepe continued, referring to Assistant Chief John B. McManus, who oversaw Police Department strategy for the convention.

and this example of Bloomberg supporting his party rather than doing the right thing for the public

Dennis Kyne put up such a fight at a political protest last summer, the arresting officer recalled, it took four police officers to haul him down the steps of the New York Public Library and across Fifth Avenue.

"We picked him up and we carried him while he squirmed and screamed," the officer, Matthew Wohl, testified in December. "I had one of his legs because he was kicking and refusing to walk on his own."

Accused of inciting a riot and resisting arrest, Mr. Kyne was the first of the 1,806 people arrested in New York last summer during the Republican National Convention to take his case to a jury. But one day after Officer Wohl testified, and before the defense called a single witness, the prosecutor abruptly dropped all charges.

During a recess, the defense had brought new information to the prosecutor. A videotape shot by a documentary filmmaker showed Mr. Kyne agitated but plainly walking under his own power down the library steps, contradicting the vivid account of Officer Wohl, who was nowhere to be seen in the pictures. Nor was the officer seen taking part in the arrests of four other people at the library against whom he signed complaints.

A sprawling body of visual evidence, made possible by inexpensive, lightweight cameras in the hands of private citizens, volunteer observers and the police themselves, has shifted the debate over precisely what happened on the streets during the week of the convention.

For Mr. Kyne and 400 others arrested that week, video recordings provided evidence that they had not committed a crime or that the charges against them could not be proved, according to defense lawyers and prosecutors.

Among them was Alexander Dunlop, who said he was arrested while going to pick up sushi.

Last week, he discovered that there were two versions of the same police tape: the one that was to be used as evidence in his trial had been edited at two spots, removing images that showed Mr. Dunlop behaving peacefully. When a volunteer film archivist found a more complete version of the tape and gave it to Mr. Dunlop's lawyer, prosecutors immediately dropped the charges and said that a technician had cut the material by mistake.

Seven months after the convention at Madison Square Garden, criminal charges have fallen against all but a handful of people arrested that week. Of the 1,670 cases that have run their full course, 91 percent ended with the charges dismissed or with a verdict of not guilty after trial. Many were dropped without any finding of wrongdoing, but also without any serious inquiry into the circumstances of the arrests, with the Manhattan district attorney's office agreeing that the cases should be "adjourned in contemplation of dismissal."

...

Throughout the convention week and afterward, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said that the police issued clear warnings about blocking streets or sidewalks, and that officers moved to arrest only those who defied them. In the view of many activists - and of many people who maintain that they were passers-by and were swept into dragnets indiscriminately thrown over large groups - the police strategy appeared to be designed to sweep them off the streets on technical grounds as a show of force.

or this example of Bloomberg supporting his party rather than doing the right thing for the public

But when it comes to controlling the gun trade, an issue Mr. Bloomberg has pushed to the top of the city's legislative agenda, he has not been following his own advice. An analysis of Federal Election Commission filings shows that in recent years he has mostly opened his overstuffed checkbook for pro-gun candidates, often contributing the maximum permitted by campaign finance rules.

According to the filings, which list donations above $200, of the 11 Congressional candidates to whom Mr. Bloomberg has made contributions since 2000, 7 received high marks from the political arm of the National Rifle Association, the country's chief gun lobby. And as recently as 2004, Mr. Bloomberg spread $10,000 among three Republican congressmen, John E. Sweeney and Vito J. Fossella of New York and Harold Rogers of Kentucky, none of whom received lower than an A- from the N.R.A. that year, meaning they had a solid record of siding with the pro-gun lobby.

And recently, just days before Mr. Bloomberg gave wallet-size cards to the wealthy donors as handy reminders of the city's needs for when fund-raisers came calling, Mr. Bloomberg sent Mr. Sweeney $4,200, again hitting the maximum donation allowed for the current election cycle.

Indeed, Mr. Bloomberg's financial support is not limited to individual contributions. Earlier this year, he was the host at a fund-raiser at his Upper East Side town house for Mr. Fossella, bringing in roughly $100,000, according to a spokesman for the congressman.

might represent some a bit of a priority problem.

*phew*