I found this buried in an email Rock Hackshaw sent around. This score card is from the Human Rights Project. The score card (in PDF form) can be found here.

The scorecard is VERY detailed and I can't do it justice in a short post. They cover homeless issues, race issues, gender issues including LGBT issues, poverty, etc.

Among the WORST rated council members is Chirstine Quinn. She gets a miserable 12% rating. Keep in mind this is the person who wants to be Tsarina...er, I mean MAYOR of NYC. She gets zero ratings for workers' rights, criminal/juvenile justice, disabled rights and voting rights and a very low score for housing rights. Is THIS what we want for mayor? Someone who is bad for workers, justice, disabled people, housing and voting rights?

In fairness, I want to look into the past records of former city council members who are competing with Quinn for mayor. Both Bill de Blasio and John Liu moved on from the City Council in 2009, both having refused to participate in Bloomberg's Third Term Power Grab the way Lap Dog Quinn did. So de Blasio and Liu BOTH are already better than Quinn on that issue alone to me. But let's compare Quinn, de Blasio and Liu in the 2008 and 2009 score card: (ranking system presented a bit differently each year it seems)

Christine Quinn: a mediocre 45% average score in 2008 and got a "C" for 2009.

John Liu: an 61% score in 2008 (8th highest scoring council member so on the top ten list) and a 2009 rating of "A" (4th highest scoring council member, so also on the top ten list).

So Quinn is clearly the WRONG candidate for Human Rights. John Liu does BEST with Bill de Blasio coming in second. Note that Borough Presidents would not be rated on these score cards so I can't compare them.

The top scoring City Council members in 2011 are:

Melissa Mark-Viverito. Manhattan Council District # 8 – Democrat (Score: 90%)

Helen D. Foster. Bronx Council District # 16 – Democrat (Score: 88%)

Letitia James. Brooklyn Council District # 35 – Democrat (Score: 88%)

Jumaane D. Williams. Brooklyn Council District # 45 – Democrat (Score: 86%)

Charles Barron. Brooklyn Council District # 42 – Democrat (Score: 80%)

Brad Lander. Brooklyn Council District # 39 – Democrat (Score: 74%)

Gale Brewer. Manhattan Council District # 6 – Democrat (Score: 73%)

G. Oliver Koppell. Manhattan Council District #11- Democrat (Score 65%)

Jimmy Van Bramer. Queens Council District #26- Democrat (Score 65%)

I want to note that included on this list are council members I have agreed with and ones that I have disagreed with in the past. I will say that I am happy that Tish James is among the top, and congrats to Brad Lander, who I have had many a run in with, for making the top.

Let me emphasize a few things. First, one of the best parts of the score card is its analysis of the City Council process itself. It shows that basically a bill has little shot of even having a hearing let alone being voted on if it doesn't have either the support of the mayor or the speaker. This emphasizes something I have said MANY times: NYC has one of the weakest City Councils I have seen, almost 100% dominated by the mayor and his lap dog speaker, Quinn (hat tip to the attendees of my Eating Liberally group last night who used "Bloomberg's lap dog" to discuss Quinn). NYC is possibly the least democratic of cities. Now I have only seen it under Republicans like Giuliani and Bloomberg, so a don't know if it was different under a Democratic administration, but I somehow doubt it. Certainly it is clear Quinn, a Democrat, would be just as dictatorial as Tsar Bloomberg.

Second I want to emphasize that this scorecard doesn't cover ALL important issues, so I would not use this as my only way to judge a council member, but it does cover some extremely important issues, particularly ones taken up by Occupy Wall Street, so politicians who got a low score should look to their record a bit.  read more »

I witnessed in 2004 the brutal use of motor scooters by the NYPD to "control" a crowd (which was perfectly peaceful at the time). I predicted then that they were likely to hurt someone some day if they continued such a stupid (yes, it is STUPID) and brutal tactic. Take scooters up to a crowd and push them into it and you will one day hurt someone needlessly. And this last week that is exactly what happened when one such scooter cop ran over the leg of a NEUTRAL LEGAL OBSERVER.

Again let me emphasize the absolute stupidity of this tactic. And I assure you Bloomberg, who in 2004 called us protesters, (my wife and I included) the equivalent of terrorists. In my mind Bloomberg and those among the NYPD who use these tactics on peaceful protesters are themselves all too close to being terrorists. Certainly they are using terror to suppress First Amendment rights.

Let me be clear. I have spoken in support of cops, police unions and police running for office many times in the past. But these stupid, brutal tactics Bloomberg and the NYPD are using make it damned hard for me to support them. Let me say that the net time the New York City Police Foundation calls me they are going to get an earful from me about First Amendment rights and police brutality.

Here is the latest stupid and brutal action by the NYPD: (from Daily Kos)

What I notice is that the protesters are BEHIND THE POLICE BARRIERS and the horse cops CROSS THAT BARRIER into the crowd.

Here's another view, showing how determined and deliberate the cops are at forcing their horses into a crowd that is doing NOTHING except exercising its American Constitutional rights:

Are Bloomberg, Kelly and the leadership of the NYPD complete idiots? This is unnecessary and counterproductive. From what I have seen the average cop isn't like this. This is the leadership forcing brutal tactics on the police force.

Are the cops really proud of this? Using motor scooters and horses to brutalize unarmed, peaceful New Yorkers? Attacking their own neighbors? This is Bloomberg's deliberate policy. He has screwed over the cops countless times, trying to break the Police Union. New Yorkers supported the cops. Bloomberg then orders the cops to deliberately attack peaceful protesters. I can only assume that Bloomberg is using this to deliberately drive a wedge between two groups who oppose him. And the cops are following their orders.

I have often complained about how here in NYC we have seen mass transit quality fall sharply (my wife even recently said she feels it is just starting to get as bad as it was in the 1980's) while the rates per ride continue to go up, up, up.

But recently, while going over the finances of my apartment co-op, I realized that there is another area where New Yorkers are being charged more and more and more...our water rates. I noticed how starting in 2007 water rates started going up far more sharply than before, and realized that this made little sense when one considered the rate of inflation. So I decided to compare on a year by year basis our water rate increases to the rate of inflation over the past decade. Here's what I found:

WATER RATE INCREASES FOR THE PAST DECADE:
(taken from the NYC Waterboard Website and from Bureau of Labor Statistics)

2011: + 12.9%
2010: + 12.9%
2009: + 14.5% (inflation: -.4%)
2008: + 11.5% (inflation: +3.8%)
2007: + 9.4% (inflation: +2.8%)
2006: + 3% (inflation: +3.2%)
2005: + 5.5% (inflation: +3.4%)
2004: + 5.5% (inflation: +2.7%)
2003: + 6.5 (inflation: +2.3%)
2002: + 3% (inflation: +1.6%)
2001: + 1% (inflation + 2.8%)  read more »

Usually, when I disagree with one of my fellow writers on Room Eight New York Politics, I would simply go to the thread of the article and express my disagreement; but I couldn’t do that last week since the thread was closed off for comments in Dominic Carter’s last column. Carter wrote an article suggesting that Bill Thompson (former Comptroller of NYC) is the potential frontrunner to become the next mayor of this city. He believes that it is Thompson’s race to lose. Dominic Carter is way off base and way too early with his analysis. I don’t even think Thomson will be a candidate when the time comes; but we shall see.  read more »

I guess it was just too much for me to hope that the quality of black and Hispanic electeds will get better in a post-Obama USA. After all, there was really nothing to base that on. And after years of frustration with the quality emerging from New York, I guess I was just grasping at straws, in hope that we could elect people, who are not only intellectually developed to tackle real issues facing the polity, but also possessive of the moral character and courage to do the right thing when the right time comes.

Look, there are no perfect politicians. In fact there are no perfect human beings anywhere. If we were all perfect, we would have nothing to strive for; so hopefully we keep reaching for the good within, hoping that one day we get to become the best we can be. I know that I am not perfect, but I do strive to be a better human being every day of my adult life. I also try to learn from my mistakes and not repeat them: to me, this is basic; this is fundamental for trying to live a decent life.  read more »