SHEEPSHEAD BAY'S ONLY INDEPENDENT NEWS BLOG

Oberman

We wanted to check in with Igor Oberman, the Russian-American attorney who announced in April that he’d be running against State Senator Carl Kruger. So when we reached out to him late last week, we were disappointed to receive a note over the weekend saying, “I have dropped out of the race. It was a hard decision but I felt a primary with Sen. Kruger would be too disruptive to the thin democratic majority in the Senate.”

We didn’t get anything else out of him, but hopefully we can pick his mind soon.

In the meantime, New York Observer has got our Oberman fill. And what we see is that Oberman appears to be getting the swing of Albany politics without even being there. How else do you explain an outsider candidate who railed against the incumbent’s unwillingness to respond to his constituent’s needs suddenly drop out by citing party allegiance and then backing the incumbent?

Oh, you didn’t know? He’s backing Kruger now:

“It wasn’t the right time to do a challenge. There is too thin of a Democratic majority right now, and with the budget the way it is it wasn’t time to go forward,” Oberman said.

Oberman insisted that no one pressured him to drop out of the race–”People always think there was some kind of backroom deal,” he said. “That wasn’t the case–” and he said he now supported Kruger’s re-election.

“I believe he is someone important to Brooklyn and the Democratic majority,” he said. “There was room at the table for another person, but at this point I would say that we need someone like him representing Brooklyn.”

Oberman told the Observer that he’s planning another political foray in the future, and that redistricting following the census results would mean more opportunities for Russian-Americans in the area. But it remains to be seen if his sudden commitment to Kruger and the “thin Democratic majority” will hurt or help him in a district where residents clamor for a choice.

​From the Village Voice:

The latest state campaign filings show that Brooklyn state senator Carl Kruger — who hasn’t had a tough race in 15 years — took in another half-million bucks from his many supporters. The haul keeps Kruger, who represents a swath of south Brooklyn, at the top of the state senate’s political money mountain, with a new total of $2.55 million in his war chest. That’s two and a half times the $989,000 that senate leader John Sampson has in his own campaign bank. Only Assembly boss Sheldon Silver has more, with $2.7 million.

…

Whatever the probe’s status, the filings show that Kruger shelled out $7500 to the law firm of Meissner, Kleineck & Finkel, where partner Richard Finkel is representing Kruger chief of staff Jason Koppel who was also cited as part of the federal probe. Finkel told the Voicelast month that his client is also out of the woods with the feds.

And he doesn’t even have an opponent. How disgusting.

Courtesy of NYS Senate

From the New York Post:

Embattled Brooklyn state Sen. Carl Kruger last year tapped his campaign fund for $10,500 in payments to an obscure New Jersey company that operates out of a private home and communicates via post-office box, The Post has learned.

The payments went to Reliable Repair Inc., a Fair Lawn, NJ, firm the Democratic lawmaker said was hired to install air conditioning and heating systems at his district office.

But campaign records on four 2009 payments to Reliable gave conflicting addresses for the business, including three that list a nonexistent address in New Jersey.

The fourth address was for a New Jersey post office, where a worker said Reliable pays for a box but operates from a home a half-mile away. Neighbors were unfamiliar with any business there.

Kruger, who’s being probed by the FBI in an alleged pay-to-play scheme, said the firm came “highly recommended” by Brighton Beach and Sheepshead Bay constituents.

Reached by phone to answer questions about work done for Kruger, Mark Yanishevsky, named as Reliable Repair’s vice president, asked: “Why are you trying to blackmail me? How did you find me?”

Here at Sheepshead Bites, we’ve got a lot of Kruger’s Brighton Beach and Sheepshead Bay constituents as readers. So does anyone recommend Reliable Repair Inc.?

Keep reading to find out how much Kruger spent on possibly illegal uses, and what he has to say.

Courtesy of NYPost.com

I know we already posted today about State Senator Carl Kruger, but I just came across this article in Courier-Life exposing the extravagance of that shyster, and his smugness in rebutting it.

Kruger’s been dipping into his $2.1 million campaign war chest – the largest in the State Legislature – to pay for all kinds of crud unrelated to getting reelected. Of course, it’s been a longtime tradition for state representatives to use leftovers from their reelection campaigns to fund a more comfortable living situation, but the shocking degree to which Kruger is making it rain shows just how far out of touch he is with his constituents.

Keep reading to see the breakdown of his expenses, as well as some seemingly inflated items

Photo courtesy of Legislative Gazette

State Senator Marty Golden gathered with a handful of Senate Republicans to blast the governor on the state’s parole policies, and to introduce reforms that would make it more difficult for cop-killers to walk the streets.

From Legislative Gazette:

“There are over 2,500 parolees in the city of New York right now, and they are wondering why crime is going up,” said Senate Crimes and Corrections Committee Ranking Member Martin Golden, R-Brooklyn, at a June 8 press conference in the Capitol.

“There are no jobs so these parolees are going back to what they know best. What is that?” he asked.

“It’s raping, murdering and killing — and that’s what’s happening,” said Golden, answering his own question.

Following a Parole Board decision to release a convicted cop killer and in advance of another cop killer up for parole, the senator, a retired police officer, lambasted Governor Paterson for giving violent offenders a “second chance.”

Find out about Golden’s parole reform plan, and the governors response.

The above clip may well go down in the annals of New York State history as the most bizarre moment of gushing hypocrisy to spill forth from that Deepwater Horizon of political corruption known as Albany. In it, State Senator Carl Kruger addresses his peers on the occasion of the 11th appropriation special extender to this year’s budget – passed on June 14.

Kruger, ever the champion of civil service, took the opportunity to remind the senators that service must come before politics. He said, “For these past 10 weeks, this Democratic majority has kept government functioning while the unanimous sentiment of the Republican minority was to close down government. Our obligation was to put service over politics … After all the rhetoric is over, and after all the speeches are made, the fact is the campaigning has to end, and governing has to begin.

“So lets talk for a moment about this extender…”

He then continued to take a fat dump upon his Republican colleagues.

Senator, please, follow your own advice and stop playing games with the budget. Remove your political kickbacks that continue to stall the process, open up the budget hearings, and work with your colleagues in both parties to get the work done.

After we posted our article last week about a supposed cohort of State Senator Marty Golden intimidating constituents with “psychopathic” petitioning, the editor of Atlas Shrugs in Brooklyn, John Galt, wrote to us assuring the piece’s validity.

If you don’t remember, a man was seen making rounds in the 49th Assembly District “shouting down, intimidating, and even physically threatening elderly voters.” Atlas Shrugs wrote that the man was known as a Golden affiliate. We wrote that Atlas Shrugs hasn’t always had kind words to say about Golden, and we were still looking for confirmation of who the man worked for.

Read Galt’s letter to Sheepshead Bites, and our thoughts behind the story.

With the fiscal crisis so deep it’s only eclipsed by the leadership crisis, massive budget cuts are coming down the pipeline. No one, no group, no organization or service will be spared.

Except, that is, for the Orthodox Jewish communities.

State Senator Carl Kruger is calling an $18 million subsidy to a handful of rabbinical schools in the city and suburbs a “must have.” Of course, while it’s more than $18 million in funds that will have to come from libraries and classrooms and housing programs, it’s a “must have” for this unscrupulous greed-ball because the Orthodox are the crux of his political base.

The NY Post writes:

An $18 million tuition subsidy devised by Gov. Paterson as a political gift to the city’s Orthodox Jewish community has emerged as an 11th-hour sticking point in budget talks, The Post has learned.

The unprecedented expansion of the state’s Tuition Assistance Program – derisively dubbed “Rabbi TAP” by frustrated budget negotiators — guarantees grants of up to $5,000 a year to at least 3,660 students at a few dozen rabbinical schools in the city and suburbs.

Paterson slipped the program into his 2010-11 spending plan while he was planning to run for election and desperately courting political support from the Orthodox. The controversy comes at a time when he’s demanding massive cuts to public colleges and universities.

The Assembly is seeking to kill the program, sources said. That has sparked a clash with Senate Finance Chairman Carl Kruger (D-Brooklyn), who calls the subsidy a “must have.”

“Obviously, it’s totally inappropriate to advance a significant new program, when we’re cutting SUNY, when we’re cutting CUNY, when we’re cutting community colleges,” said Assembly Higher Education Chairwoman Deborah Glick (D-Manhattan).

This is a rotten shame; a disgusting play that put the interests of a few donors before the interests of the city and state. Contact State Senator Carl Kruger by e-mail, and tell him you won’t stand to have your needs sacrificed to serve his fundraising friends.

Courtesy of Atlas Shrugs In Brooklyn

With election season drawing near, candidates for State Assembly and State Senate are sending their minions into the street to collect signatures. The petitions, as they’re known, are a requirement to be listed on the ballot.

Atlas Shrugs In Brooklyn, a Republican blog covering the Brooklyn GOP, is reporting that a “psychopathic petitioner” is making rounds in the 49th Assembly District, which includes Dyker Heights, Bath Beach, Bensonhurst and Borough Park.

Keep reading to find out what Atlas Shrugs says this

Friends of Carl, the committee to re-elect State Senator Carl Kruger, just moved into this shoebox on East 22nd Street between Avenue U and Avenue V. In terms of campaign fundraising, Kruger is the State Senate’s wealthiest man, having raised more than $2.1 million. If this is what he’s renting, it must mean he’s saving money to make sure we all get bombarded with more mailers touting his supposed accomplishments.

Or maybe not. The man’s got $2.1 million to spread around, right? Let’s think Kruger style: in what ways do you think he’ll be assaulting the district’s collective conscious this election year?