SHEEPSHEAD BAY'S ONLY INDEPENDENT NEWS BLOG

Yes, it’s last minute, but we’re passing it along anyway…

State Assembly Insurance Committee Chair Kevin A. Cahill will be holding a roundtable today at 2:00 p.m. at the Shorefront YM-YWHA of Brighton – Manhattan Beach (3300 Coney Island Avenue) to discuss the claims settlement practices of insurers related to Superstorm Sandy. He will be joined by Assemblymembers Steven Cymbrowitz, Helene Weinstein and Alec Brook-Krasny.

Cahill has been making the rounds to Sandy-afflicted areas to discuss the topic, and it may result in proposed legislative changes in the case of future disasters.

“The damage caused by Sandy left hundreds of thousands of homes and commercial properties without power and caused an extraordinary amount of property damage,” said Cahill. “This roundtable will help us determine if insurance companies adequately responded to claims from families and businesses that rely on their insurance policies to recover from such a disaster.”

The committee will also hear testimony from representatives of the Department of Financial Services, insurance agents and brokers, consumers, adjusters and major insurance companies.

The ad Gallo refers to.

Republican contender Russ Gallo, seeking to unseat Assemblyman Steven Cymbrowitz, blasted the incumbent in a press release this morning for advertising a job posting on Craigslist, which he said is “notorious for being used by criminals and those peddling immorality.”

According to Gallo, Cymbrowitz’s campaign used the website to advertise a recent job opening. That action, Gallo suggests, puts him in the company of drug dealers and prostitutes.

“Instead of reaching out directly to college students, activists or employment agencies, Steven Cymbrowitz chose a website notorious for being used by criminals and those peddling immorality,” wrote Gallo. “Steven Cymbrowitz is supposedly sensitive to issues of addiction, yet advertises to employ people on the same website where drug pushers freely sell addictive prescription drugs like Adderall.  He also proclaims to be ‘conservative’, yet advertises alongside drug dealers, prostitutes and people seeking ‘casual encounters’.  How can he justify this?” said Gallo.

The ad Gallo refers to was posted yesterday, and is seeking part-time staffers for his campaign. A second ad mentioned in Gallo’s e-mail was posted in July, advertising for interns to work on constituent issues in his office. It has since expired and been removed from the site.

To prove the point that Craigslist is more nefarious than an opium den, Gallo notes that the NYPD recently conducted a major sting, netting 21 arrests of those illegally selling prescription narcotics on the site. Selling illegal items is against Craigslist’s Terms of Service.

In the press release, Gallo describes Craigslist as ”a website where users place advertisements for just about anything, including illegal and immoral wares.”

It also just happens to be the ninth most visited website in the United States, and claims 60 million individual users in the United States a month.

That’s a lot of prostitutes and drug dealers. We await Cymbrowitz’s justification for throwing his lot in with them.

Feinblum

Allan Feinblum, a 73-year-old progressive retired businessman, is asking voters to eschew the party candidates and write in his name to represent local Assembly District 45 in the upcoming elections.

“My platform, in a nutshell, is human rights,” said Feinblum to Sheepshead Bites in an interview.

If elected, Feinblum hopes to improve gay rights, help the mentally ill, and modify the criminal justice system.

Regarding the rights of gays, Feinblum feels this issue should not be discussed in relation to the law or political campaigns. He said that other politicians spend too much time, resources, and energy on an issue out of the realm of the state.

“Marriage is a lifetime commitment between two people who are in love,” he said. “It is a human right. Lets not bring up an issue which is not law.”

Feinblum himself has been married to a woman for 50 years, yet he believes individuals should have the right to determine who they want to live with, regardless of gender.

All three candidates carrying an established party line in the election – Cymbrowitz, Ben Akselrod and Russ Gallo – have expressed opposition to gay marriage.

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Gallo joins members of the Cooperative Community Organization (Source: Gallo campaign)

Don’t be fooled into thinking the campaigns for the 45th Assembly District, currently occupied by Assemblyman Steven Cymbrowitz, are over. The September 13 primary that saw Cymbrowitz best Ben Akselrod was only the first round, and the incumbent now faces off against Republican Russ Gallo.

Gallo is ramping up his campaign and is now borrowing a play from Akselrod’s book, seizing on the mounting frustration of  some of the district’s co-op owners who find themselves swept up in divisive battles with their co-op boards’ alleged abuses. [UPDATED]

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Members of the New York State Legislature doing what they do best. Get it? Source: Wikipedia

BETWEEN THE LINES: A show of hands, how many of you think our state legislators deserve a pay raise?

Not too many hands.

Now, if they were to get a raise, how many think that a 26 percent hike, the amount that has been reported, is too much, even though they haven’t had an increase since 1999?

That’s more like it. Almost all of you agree that’s too much. It’s like they’d be making up for lost time with an average of two percent a year for the last 13 years, which is when they got their last pay boost.

The current salary would jump from $79,500 to $100,000. But, in return, those noble lawmakers would sacrifice the $165 per diem they now receive when they’re in session. When you tally the numbers, legislators would give up just over $11,000 for a 67-day session — the standard annual legislative session — for a sizeable $20,500 raise.

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Steven Cymbrowitz (l.) and Ben Akselrod (r.)

In the days before today’s face-off between incumbent Steven Cymbrowitz and challenger Ben Akselrod, it appears the campaign has taken a personal turn, with Akselrod supporters turning the assemblyman’s marriage to a non-Jewish woman into a political issue.

The Daily News reports:

Syrian Jews in the 45th district have been swamped with emails slamming Cymbrowitz for breaking Jewish law by marrying Vilma Huertas after his Jewish wife, Lena, died in August 2000 following a long battle with cancer.

“Cymbrowitz does not follow [RELIGIOUS]community values,” one email from BrooklynMessage said.

The supporters are likely tied to challenger Ben Akselrod’s campaign, multiple sources familiar with the race said.

“The campaign is not very conventional,” an Akselrod source said.

“It’s definitely organized,” a Brooklyn political pundit added. “It’s not the average Joe saying they feel very strongly about a particular viewpoint. They use fake email addresses and names to try to get the negative message out.”

The e-mails also point out that Cymbrowitz has not opposed the proposed mosque on Voorhies Avenue, which Akselrod has claimed is tied to a radical organization he incorrectly said was “outlawed” by the United States. Cymbrowitz has not taken a stand for or against the mosque; its location is outside of his district.

Akselrod declined to comment about the e-mails.

“There’s a lot of misinformation out there,” Cymbrowitz told the Daily News. “When a candidate doesn’t have a record to stand on the only thing he can do is be negative.”

After nearly five days of silence since Sheepshead Bites first reported on the mailing of thousands of campaign fliers in which Assembly candidate Ben Akselrod claimed crime is up in the “negrohood,” the candidate behind the mailer has issued an apology calling the comment a “typo.”

Akselrod sent out the following statement yesterday evening:

I was deeply saddened and troubled to learn that a mailer sent out recently by my campaign for New York State Assembly, contained a typo which could be misconstrued as a racial slur. As the candidate, I take full responsibility for this inadvertent error and I am sorry to anyone who was offended by it.

For the record, to accuse me or my campaign of intentionally using racially inflammatory language is an insult. As a person who faced the scourge of discrimination for being born Jewish in the Soviet Union, I reject any form of racial and ethnic bias. I have always stood strongly and proudly for combating discrimination against any individual, irrespective of gender, race or religion.

It is very unfortunate that instead of focusing on the real problems of our neighborhoods, supporters of my opponent are focusing their energy on looking for orthographical errors and typos in our press releases and mailings. The facts are clear: this year, crime rate in the 61st Precinct went up dramatically and the current Assemblyman did nothing to stop this dangerous crime wave. This is the issue we should be talking about. By refusing to debate me, Assemblyman Cymbrowitz is denying voters an opportunity to hear firsthand about our differences and to make an educated choice on September 13.

Neighbors around the district received the mailer on Thursday, August 23. After our report on Friday, the campaign treasurer for Friends of Ben Akselrod contacted us, saying he never gave permission for his address to be used in the flier. He resigned Monday evening.

Ben Akselrod faces off against Assemblyman Steven Cymbrowitz in the Democratic primary on September 13. The winner will face a challenge from Republican Russ Gallo in November.

CORRECTION (11:58 p.m.): Speaking of typos, the original version of this story introduced Akselrod as “Assemblyman Ben Akselrod.” We meant to write “Assembly candidate Ben Akselrod.” The post has been updated.

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: The campaign treasurer for Friends of Ben Akselrod resigned yesterday, outraged that his address was put on thousands of mailers to neighbors that said crime is up in the “negrohood.”

Sheepshead Bites was the first news outlet to report last week that Ben Akselrod, looking to unseat State Assemblyman Steven Cymbrowitz, sent out a mailer to thousands of residents that Cymbrowitz was “allowing” crime to rise in the “negrohood.”

Additionally, the flier contained several typos and factual errors.

The flier came from “Friends of Ben Akselrod,” one of two campaign groups supporting Akselrod for Assembly, and had the return address of the campaign treasurer, Bryan Goldstein.

Following our report, Goldstein contacted Sheepshead Bites and said that he was “not involved” in creating the literature, and that his address was used “WITHOUT permission or authority.”

“As you can imagine, when I found out about this over the weekend I was quite upset about this,” he told us on Monday. “I agreed to be the treasurer for Ben Akselrod. We’ve been friends since high school. It was not something I was thrilled to get involved with but I figured I’d do a favor for a friend.”

Goldstein, a lawyer, said that he was largely just a name on the account, occasionally signing paperwork, cutting checks and depositing donations. (It is not unusual for campaign treasurers to have little involvement in the campaign.)

But since the mailers went out, Goldstein is worried that the nefarious flub would muddy his name, and that “weirdos and nutcases” may try to contact him.

“Basically, I think the feeling was that it was no big deal to use my address …  that no harm would come of that, and obviously I disagree,” he said. “Naturally, when you see something like that and have my home address attached to that, naturally that’s very disturbing.”

Goldstein said he had no involvement in the creation of the flier, and that he wasn’t sure how it could have happened.

“I have no idea how this quote got into it; it was never explained to me and to my knowledge, Mr. Akselrod does not know about it,” he said.

Asked if, as treasurer, he issued payment for the printing, he indicated that no payments had been made to anyone that would be large enough to cover such a printing, but that it was possible he had not yet received the invoice.

At 5:27 p.m. on Monday, Goldstein sent an e-mail to Sheepshead Bites that said, in part, “Effective immediately, I have resigned as treasurer of the campaign for Ben Akselrod.”

Despite multiple requests for comment, no one from the Akselrod campaign has responded.

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: State Assembly candidate Ben Akselrod is likely a little red in the face today, after thousands of mailers went out to Democratic voters in the 45th Assembly District saying that crime is up in the “negrohood.”

In an inset in the mailers, received by most in the area yesterday, Akselrod takes aim at his incumbent opponent, Steven Cymbrowitz, for “allowing” crime to rise in the confines of the 61st Precinct.

The inset reads as follows:

I am running for Assembly because I believe the number 1 job of that office is to keep the community safe. The current assemblyman has allowed crime to go up over 50% in our  negrohood so far this year. I am fighting for video cameras throughout our community to protect our seniors who are the most vulnerable and cut down on anti-semitic attacks in our community. I will also make sure the mayor gives our community more police to patrol our streets. [sic] (emphasis added)

According to the latest CompStat report issued by the 61st Precinct, the command has seen a 43.71 percent increase in crime so far this year, not “over 50%.” In the 60th Precinct, a portion of which is also in the 45th Assembly District, crime has gone up only 6.96 percent.

It’s not the inaccuracy of the numbers, however, that has spurred dozens of readers to contact Sheepshead Bites – it’s the flub in calling the neighborhood a “negrohood.”

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Helene Weinstein

Assemblywoman Helene Weinstein has sponsored The Foreclosure Fraud Prevention Act of 2012, which would increase the penalties for deceitful practices relating to home foreclosures if passed.

Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman introduced this bill in the New York State Legislature on Friday. This bill includes the introduction of criminal penalties and jail time to those who knowingly participate in fraudulent business practices concerning foreclosures. Managers of residential mortgage businesses who are aware of fraudulent foreclosure practices performed by their employees will also suffer these consequences.

“For many middle class New Yorkers, their life savings is in their home,” Schneiderman said to PostStarNews. “To take away people’s homes under fraudulent circumstances is a crime deserving of jail time.”

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