MESSAGE
| DATE | 2009-03-31 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [NYLXS - HANGOUT] MTA Vrs Kruger - an unexpected allie in the Village Voice
|
Tom Robbins
Vanguard of the Senate Revolution
When no one else will, Kruger and Espada battle on behalf of the people
By Tom Robbins
Tuesday, March 31st 2009 at 2:38pm
*
AP Photo/Mike Groll
Cadillac Carl (left) and his Senate allies Ruben Diaz Sr. and
Pedro Espada Jr.
Cadillac Carl (left) and his Senate allies Ruben Diaz Sr. and
Pedro Espada Jr.
* Related Articles
* Related Topics
Related People/Topics
*
Woody Allen & the Eddy Davis New Orleans Jazz Band
March 18, 2009
*
I'm Not Waking Up Tomorrow Morning And Finding Out There's No
J-Hud There
August 14, 2008
*
Bruno's Replaced by New York Hot Dog and Coffee (From Korea)
June 17, 2008
Related Topics
Most Popular
* Most Viewed
* Most Commented
* Most Emailed
* Is Foie Gras Torture?
* Zack Snyder Didn't Ruin Watchmen
He just sapped it of its superpower.
* The Roots Take Manhattan
Meet the new kings of late-night, God (and Jimmy Fallon) willing
* The Astral Travels of Van Morrison
A brilliant and mercurial singer revisits perhaps his finest hour,
40 years later
* On the Bad-Sex Revenge Fantasies of Lily Allen
A starlet finds 50 ways to insult your lover
* No U2 Schadenfreude, Baby (17)
A mediocre album from this band is bad news whether you're a lover
or a hater
* DOOM Laughs Last (8)
Rap's biggest enigma is back with more off-color jokes and
apocalypse theories
* Is Foie Gras Torture? (7)
* Zack Snyder Didn't Ruin Watchmen (7)
He just sapped it of its superpower.
* Bloomberg Turns Over His Next Campaign to Blagojevich's Ex-Deputy
* (6)
* Is Foie Gras Torture?
* Zack Snyder Didn't Ruin Watchmen
He just sapped it of its superpower.
* The Roots Take Manhattan
Meet the new kings of late-night, God (and Jimmy Fallon) willing
* The Astral Travels of Van Morrison
A brilliant and mercurial singer revisits perhaps his finest hour,
40 years later
* On the Bad-Sex Revenge Fantasies of Lily Allen
A starlet finds 50 ways to insult your lover
Carl Kruger, state senator from Brooklyn's most southern reaches,
barreled up the thruway to Albany last week in his black 2008 Cadillac
sedan. He was in a hurry to get there because, thanks to the Democrats
finally winning control of the State Senate this year—Hurray! Power to
the People!—he has a great deal to say these days about bills and
budgets.
This influence stems from his new position as chairman of the mighty
Senate Finance Committee. In fact, now that this blessed new day has
dawned, and the Senate is no longer a Republican graveyard of
progressive hopes and dreams, Kruger is the people, and the people have
finally got the power.
His elevation to the finance post brought a cheer the likes of which has
not been heard since the 1960s, when the Senate had its last brief taste
of Democratic control: "All the way with Chairman K.!" they roared.
The Chairman is 59 years old, built like a fireplug, and the possessor
of a Brooklyn mouth that roars. Here he was late last week, thundering
on the telephone about this latest attack on the people: the push to
charge tolls on drivers crossing the East River. The idea was advanced
by Richard Ravitch, the former MTA chief, as a way to keep fares low for
the millions who ride subways and buses. The governor embraced it. The
Assembly's leader, Sheldon Silver, re-jiggered the numbers so that the
bridge toll was roughly that of a subway fare. His members, he said,
were good to go. None of this fooled Chairman Kruger.
"This is not just a battle over the so-called Ravitch rescue plan for
the MTA," says Kruger, biting off his words like Hugo Chávez firing up
the masses. "This is a feeding frenzy by the Manhattan elite at the
expense of the outer boroughs!"
Thanks to the people's victory at the polls last fall, this is not empty
talk. Kruger now commands the vast arsenal of legislative weapons
enjoyed by the Senate majority—weaponry that was once aimed at the
people's interests by Republican reactionaries, but which is now rightly
aimed at their true enemies.
"I am prepared to use the full subpoena power of the finance committee,"
said the Chairman. His target? Nothing less than the MTA itself.
"The goal is to have them open their books, pull up the venetian blinds,
and shed some sunlight on that dark and musty entity that they call the
MTA," he said.
I ask you: Could Chávez himself have said it any better?
Part of his anger at the agency, the Chairman acknowledges, is personal:
The district he represents has long been shortchanged by the mass
transit system. True, as the blatantly pro-MTA Daily News pointed out
last week, there are 20 subway stations in the neighborhoods Kruger
represents, serving some 109,000 riders daily. But, as the Chairman
understands, the personal is political. What the newspapers don't tell
you is this sad fact:
"When they built the subways, we were not only ignored, we were treated
like we didn't exist," he says. "We have an antiquated bus network that
drops us off at the Flatbush Junction. That's it."
Because of this second-class-citizen status, local residents like the
Chairman must rely on vehicles like his mighty Cadillac to get around.
Not to say he doesn't sometimes use a Metrocard. At least twice last
year, Kruger bought monthly transit passes at $81 apiece. This fact is
proven by his campaign expense reports, which show that he used those
funds to purchase the passes. In fact, when the New York Post (another
MTA mouthpiece) pulled a silly stunt last week by asking to see the
Metrocards of Kruger and his Senate allies, the Chairman quickly shamed
the paper by pulling an envelope right out of his pocket.
"Do I have a Metrocard? Yes, I do," he told us last Thursday, moments
before the Post pranksters caught up with him. "Sometimes it goes empty.
My most use is not so much the subway because the subway takes me
nowhere."
We rest our case. A man of the people who clearly speaks the people's
language.
Equally committed to waging this battle is the Chairman's very close
ally, Pedro Espada Jr. Espada, 56, is a former boxer and knows how to
fight. The people's Democratic revolution in the Senate quickly
recognized his many talents. Since joining the new majority, Espada's
titles include: Vice Chairman of the Senate Rules Committee; Vice
President of the Senate for Urban Policy; Chairman of the Senate
Committee on Housing, Construction & Community Development; and Chairman
of the Senate Task Force on Bronx Economic Development.
The newest Bronx state senator was too busy last week to get on the
phone with the Voice. In fact, he has been so busy that he has not even
had time to open an office in his northern Bronx district. True, he is
the only newly elected state senator without a district office, but that
is totally irrelevant. What he has been doing has been fighting for the
people, on this MTA issue and other matters.
1 2 Next Page »
Recent Articles
ou can get a taste of his fighting spirit—which is very much like
Chairman Kruger's—from an excellent clip available on his State Senate
website, in which he uses the new video equipment that the Democrats
appropriated from the old Republican misleaders. In the clip, the Vice
Chairman explains what he and his fellow senators are trying to
accomplish with their own MTA funding proposal, one that does not
include any miserable bridge tolls and which sharply cuts the amount of
payroll tax included in the so-called Ravitch rescue plan.
But let him speak for himself:
"It is a very responsible proposal," he says, speaking into his
Senate-financed camera. "What it did not do is give the MTA a blank
check. It seeks the MTA to be accountable, to be responsible, to be
transparent, and to really undergo the kind of auditing that any
corporation or agency should undergo before it starts asking for more
money."
In a separate statement issued last week, and forwarded by his press
aide, Espada said that all this talk about imminent fare hikes is really
just a scare tactic. "I believe there is ample time for Albany to step
in and prevent these massive fare hikes and service cuts," he said. But,
with the people's money, it is most important to be careful, he said.
"Fiscal prudence must prevail," he stated.
Espada knows whereof he speaks. At the exact same time that he is
insisting on transparency from the transit agency, he is doing the same
with the State Board of Elections. The agency has been giving him a hard
time about the fact that he has yet to file what it deems proper
campaign expense statements from his 2008 primary and general election
contests.
Actually, if the board's lawyers would only listen, they would see that
Espada has already made several filings for a committee called "Espada
for the People" (what else would you call it?). OK, there was a slight
oversight in that the committee had the wrong designation—a political
action committee, versus an election committee—but is that really
important? It is all being straightened out.
And the fact that there were no expenditures at all listed on his
"11-day pre-primary" filing? Or that the general election reports are
still among the missing? Again, this is the kind of nit-picking that
only bureaucratic pinheads would engage in.
What do they think he is? The MTA?
trobbins-at-villagevoice.com
--
http://www.mrbrklyn.com - Interesting Stuff
http://www.nylxs.com - Leadership Development in Free Software
So many immigrant groups have swept through our town that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological proportions in the mind of the world - RI Safir 1998
http://fairuse.nylxs.com DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS - RI Safir 2002
"Yeah - I write Free Software...so SUE ME"
"The tremendous problem we face is that we are becoming sharecroppers to our own cultural heritage -- we need the ability to participate in our own society."
"> I'm an engineer. I choose the best tool for the job, politics be damned.<
You must be a stupid engineer then, because politcs and technology have been attached at the hip since the 1st dynasty in Ancient Egypt. I guess you missed that one."
© Copyright for the Digital Millennium
|
|
