SHEEPSHEAD BAY'S ONLY INDEPENDENT NEWS BLOG

Former NYC Mayor, Edward I. Koch, 1924-2013. Source: adam.luis.amengual / Flickr

Of all the elected officials I have known personally — with the exception of former Congressman Stephen Solarz for whom I once performed an internship during his first term as assemblyman for the 45th Assembly District — I’ve had the most personal contact with our former mayor, Ed Koch.

My First Encounter

It was 1969. One year before my college internship with Solarz. Unsurprisingly, I chose transportation as my topic for a political science school paper at Hunter College, where I did my undergraduate work. I wanted to write about what the federal government was doing to improve mass transit and someone suggested I see the local congressman whose office was located on Second Avenue, in the upper seventies. I was skeptical of obtaining any information because I did not reside in the “silk stocking” district, as the Upper East Side was then called. I was told that the congressman’s name was Ed Koch, a name I had never heard before. I was told he was active in introducing legislation to help mass transit and that’s why I should see him.

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Despite the fact that he confessed to accepting bribes and now sits in jail on charges of corruption, ex-State Senator Carl Kruger‘s campaign committee has over $417,000, according to the New York Post.

And, apparently, the campaign is keeping the reserves for the pol’s potential payday when he gets out of the big house.

The Post said that the committee, “Friends of Carl,” continued to exist after Kruger left the Senate in December of 2011, and even after he was placed in jail last month. They have not collected money in the past six months, yet they have been paying their bills and even kept some money aside for Kruger after he finishes serving his seven-year sentence.

In addition, Kruger is receiving a taxpayer-funded pension of $65,000 a year.

State election law says that political campaigns can use “contributions received by a candidate or a political committee may be expended for any lawful purpose,” said the New York Post.

However, the law continues and says that the money cannot be used for personal use unconnected to the political campaign. Yet law experts said that almost all expenses can be connected to politics, and therefore, officials can do whatever they’d like with the money.

Here’s how Capital Confidential, which first reported on the leftover warchest, puts it:

Recall: under New York’s current campaign finance laws, YOU CAN DO BASICALLY WHATEVER THE HELL YOU WANT WITH CAMPAIGN MONEY. Like buy a car. Or have your widow continue to spend it five years after you die. Legal legal legal. S’all good. This is, in my opinion, one of those things that makes the Empire State great.

Sen. Liz Krueger has proposed a bill to eventually let campaign committees die. It may shock you to learn that it hasn’t advanced at all.

Local elected officials representing Southern Brooklyn communities, joined by former Mayor Ed Koch, stood before the Museum of Jewish Heritage yesterday morning to denounce Brooklyn City Councilmember Charles Barron as an anti-Semite, and urged voters to ensure defeat for Barron’s attempt to become a congressman.

Barron is competing against Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries in a June 26 primary. The winner will be the Democratic candidate in the November election for the congressional seat currently occupied by Ed Towns, who is retiring.

Because of redistricting, the current 10th Congressional District will become the 8th District and move further south, covering neighborhoods including parts of Sheepshead Bay, Marine Park, Brighton Beach, Manhattan Beach, Mill Basin and Bergen Beach. With an area so densely populated by Jewish residents, Koch end the local elected are urging voters to show up on June 26 and stop a candidate they say has pushed an extreme anti-Semitic and anti-Israel agenda.

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Courtesy of NYMag.com

I’m so very tired of these hacks and has-beens, these ineffectual buffoons, dragging one of the greatest states in the nation down into the trenches of mediocrity. So very, very tired.

I’m talking, of course, about our esteemed State Senators – all of them – who collectively comprise the foulest carnival of corruption and ineptitude in the developed world. And I say this after having lived in New Jersey for four years, circa Jim McGreevey.

And the worst part is that these jerks have put me in a particularly uncomfortable position: agreement with Former Mayor Ed Koch. (Okay, it’s far from the worst part. But it’s still uncomfortable.)

Koch is the face of New York Uprising, a non-partisan political action group formed in April to belittle, embarrass and shame Albany’s spineless shlubs into supporting legislation to reform redistricting. As it’s done now, whichever party is in power gets to gerrymander, ensuring that their party remains in power until the maps are redrawn 10 years later. Koch supports legislation that will create a nonpartisan committee that will draw up the districts.

According to Koch, gerrymandering is one of the key tools used by incumbents to insulate themselves as much as possible from the public, sparing them the repercussions of their incompetence.

Keep reading about Koch’s Uprising and his thoughts on Kruger, and discover other groups with similar goals.