Stunted

Over the weekend, five of the Democratic party candidates for NYC Mayor spent the night in public housing in Harlem at the request of Al Sharpton. They included Christine Quinn, Bill DelBlasio, Anthony Weiner, Bill Thomspon, and John Liu.

Democratic candidates Christine Quinn, Anthony Weiner, Bill de Blasio, William Thompson Jr. and John Liu spend 12 hours with a host family at the Lincoln Center Houses, located on East 135th Street Between 5th Avenue and Lennox Avenue.

The candidates slept on sofas, air mattresses and sleeping bags in the apartments, some of which were without air conditioning on one of the hottest days of the year.

On Sunday, Christine Quinn discussed the conditions of the apartment she spent the night with the NY Post.

“The apartment I stayed in had a bathroom that was covered with black mold,” said City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. “It was the worst I’ve ever seen. When the city of New York is the landlord, this is unacceptable.”

Quinn was one of five Democratic candidates for mayor who accepted a challenge from the Rev. Al Sharpton to spend a night in a public-housing complex.

The candidates say they wanted to highlight condition in city-run public housing. About 3,100 residents live in the East Harlem project.

All emerged from the overnight stay with claims that all would fight to improve the conditions.

I'm sorry, but I can't believe any of them when they say that they would work to improve conditions.

You see, all of them have been in a position to not only understand the conditions, but to actually fix them.

Christine Quinn is the current Speaker of the New York City Council. As such, she can hold hearings, address budgetary concerns, and demand changes at the New York City Housing Authority which oversees public housing in the City.

Bill Thomspon and John Liu are the former and current City Comptroller, respectively. As such, both could investigate the Housing Authority for mismanagement of city resources, failures to enact reforms on spending, and demand changes in how the Housing Authority operates.

Then, there's Bill DelBlasio, who's the City Advocate. In that position, he's able to gather and collect complaint data about public housing and demand change.

Finally, there's former Congressman Anthony Weiner who could have addressed the matter while in Congress and sought more funding or reforms in the Housing Authority to get local politicians to demand improvements and change.

All five share the failed opportunities to fix the Housing Authority and poor housing conditions while they were in their current positions. Now that all five are seeking the mayorality, they are willing to say or do anything to get the votes of those living in the projects.

None are deserving.

All failed to do what needed to be done when they had the chance to act, but since votes are on the line, all are speaking out about the deplorable conditions. Anyone who spent any time in these projects would have known this - anyone who spoke or responded to constituent letters would have heard the horror stories.

What we had was a photo op that will be quickly forgotten once the votes are counted. That's not how it should be, but there it is.

Anthony Weiner Announces Run For NYC Mayor

Anthony Weiner, who was last seen sending inappropriate photos of himself to women and had to resign from Congress, thinks that enough time has passed and that he can and should be mayor of New York City.

He's released a video indicating his intentions, while addressing that he's made mistakes.



He's got nearly $5 million in a campaign warchest that he can use to inject himself into the middle of what has otherwise been a bland race. All that money can make people who want to forget about his indiscretions choose him over the other candidates in the race, which includes Christine Quinn (NYC City Council Speaker), Bill Thompson (former Comptroller who nearly beat Bloomberg last election), John Liu (current Comptroller), Bill de Blasio (Public Advocate), Sal Albanese (former Councilman) on the Democrat side, and Adolfo Carrion (former Bronx borough president), John Catsimatidis (owner of Gristedes supermarkets and real estate developer), Joe Lhota (former head of the MTA), and George McDonald (businessman).

But they shouldn't.

There's a good reason he had to quit Congress. He engaged in wholly inappropriate acts, and he showed poor character and even worse judgment. There's no reason to think that he's changed or that he wont show similarly poor judgment going forward?

The sad thing is that his wife, Huma, would make a far more compelling and extraordinary candidate than Anthony. Or most of the rest of the race.

At this point, the polling shows that Lhota leads the lackluster field on the Republican side, but things are more spread out in the Democratic race. While Christine Quinn leads all of the recent polling, her edge will be cut significantly by Weiner's entry. Behind Quinn, it's essentially a tossup between de Blasio, Liu, Thomspon and Weiner, with nearly 30% undecided.

It takes 40% to avoid a runoff, and unless we start seeing candidates drop out, it's going to be hard to avoid a runoff with this clown circus of candidates.

Where the Illegal Things Are

President Barack Obama finally waded into the ACORN mess and promptly delivered a mishmash of lies and obfuscations.

It isn't something he's followed closely? Why is that? The videos are shocking enough, but ACORN's response has been even more shocking in claiming that these were merely isolated cases and that fault rested with the duo who filmed the incidents. They got rolled by Andrew Breitbart, who pushed a video a day over the span of a week to show just how badly ACORN is operated nationwide. One video would have been dismissed. Two videos would have been a coincidence, but now that we're up to five separate locations filmed showing ACORN employees providing advice on how to break the law, and you can no longer simply ignore the evidence.

Law enforcement and attorney generals nationwide should be opening investigations and auditing the books and records of ACORN to see what kind of mess is truly going on there, but ACORN has powerful friends that are more than willing to look the other way. ACORN has a dual mission - providing homeowner assistance and political organizing.

The homeowner assistance program has been suspended because of the videos, and one has to wonder what they've been advising customers for years on end. Employees with a certain moral and ethical flexibility are more than willing to provide advice on how to engage in illicit conduct, and ACORN employment practices appear not to weed out those people who are willing to break the law or look the other way.

Government funds ACORN operations across the nation via pork (member items) and outright grants through Housing and Urban Development to provide homeowner assistance. All these programs and funding needs to be scrutinized because of the level of advice being offered.

Politicians that are willing to overlook this criminality ought to themselves be scrutinized for their willingness to continue funding organizations that do a grave disservice to the communities they claim to represent. After all, politicians provide member items (pork to ACORN), and ACORN and its affiliates, including the WFP support and organize on behalf of political candidates.

These are some of the ties that bind:

One of them is Bill de Blasio, the Brooklyn city councilman in a tough runoff election for Public Advocate against Mark Green.

In January, ACORN endorsed de Blasio, who spent nearly $43,000 in campaign funds to hire an ACORN affiliate, N.Y. Citizens Services Inc., for "field staff," "consulting" and "canvassing" leading up to last Tuesday's primary.

As a councilman, the Brooklyn Democrat sponsored or co-sponsored a total of $115,000 in taxpayer dollars for ACORN and an affiliate, the New York Agency for Community Affairs.

He was also endorsed by the Working Families Party, which ACORN helped create and shares office space with, after spending $67,740 to hire WFP's for-profit arm, Data and Field Services, for campaign consulting. He also got $33,000 as a "consultant" for a WFP affiliate.

That's just the most egregious case. There are others:

In the last three years, more than 20 Council members, state assemblymen and state senators sponsored nearly $1.75 million in taxpayer money for various ACORN groups in New York.

That raises conflict of interest questions for pols who also seek the group's endorsement.

Dick Dadey of the nonpartisan watchdog group Citizens Union said the conflict was "more perceived than actual," but added it "doesn't look good" for ACORN's political committee to endorse pols when a related entity gets money "from those same officials."

In this election ACORN, endorsed de Blasio and dozens of council members, including controller hopeful John Liu, as well as many state legislators.