Look at what Marty Markowitz, Bruce Ratner, Bill de Blasio, Michael Bloomberg and Bertha Lewis, to name a few, have brought to Brooklyn. Atlantic Yards seems to be bringing some real sleaze to our city, though not much in the way of real, long-term jobs or affordable housing.

Barclay's, the company that bought naming rights to Bruce Ratner's arena, has just been fined for more than a decade of illegally doing business with the likes of Iran, Libya, Sudan and Burma. From BBC News:

Barclays Bank is to pay $298m (£190m) to settle criminal charges that it violated US sanctions in dealings with Cuba, Iran, Libya, Sudan and Burma.

The bank was charged with breaching the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the Trading with the Enemy Act in dealings between 1995 and 2006...

Barclays has agreed to pay $149m to the US government and a separate $149m in a deferred prosecution agreement with the district attorney in New York.  read more »

(Photo from Queens Crap)

Bertha Lewis of ACORN is a nasty, corrupt piece of work.

Just because Republicans lie about ACORN doesn't mean everything ACORN does is okay. Locally, ACORN's Bertha Lewis is solidly in the pocket of developers and has recently shown her nasty side but gleefully cheering on the eviction of a family from their homes thanks to eminent domain abuse. This is a letter Bertha Lewis sent out (I got it the day she sent it but only got around to posting it today):

> From: Bertha Lewis
> Date: Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 8:04 PM
> Subject: Daniel Goldstein and the 7 year itch
> To:  read more »

Since Bruce Ratner and his businesses, Forest City Ratner (which he officially runs) and the Empire State Development Corporation (which he seems to unoffically own) have been using the court settlment reached by Daniel Goldstein and the ESDC that finally forces him out of his apartment for their own PR purposes, and since they are misrepresenting the situation to pretend eminent domain abuse wasn't used to force Mr. Goldstein and his family out of their home, Mr. Goldstein has released the following statement:

From DDDB's co-founder, Daniel Goldstein:

As has been widely reported (see the invaluable NoLandGrab for full coverage), I reached a financial settlement with the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC), tool of Atlantic Yards developer Forest City Ratner, to move out of my home—which the ESDC took ownership of on March 1st—by May 7th.

I did not know, when Wednesday started, that a settlement was in store. It was nothing that I expected to happen. I only knew that I had to defend myself against eviction by New York State.  read more »

Today was the official groundbreaking ceremony for Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards, which former slave traders Barclays has the naming rights for. I was going to try and make the protests against this ceremony to mark the destruction of Central Brooklyn, the increased sewage load on an already over flowing sewage system and the increased gridlock in an already over crowded road system. But I couldn't skip work today. So I missed it. From what I hear, not that many elected officials made the groundbreaking either...perhaps realizing how unpopular the traffic, street closings and sewage overflows are going to be. And maybe when taxpayers realize how much people like Bloomberg, Marty Markowitz and Vito Lopez are making us pay for Ratner to make money, people will like it even less. But now the damage begins.

Here is the statement from Councilmember Tish James on the groundbreaking:

“He, who has money, has power, influence, and ultimately politicians.  read more »

This last weekend was the 5th DDDB Walkathon to raise money for the legal challenges against Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards scheme. Joy and I have participated in the walkathon each year...and we have taken Jacob along each time, so this has been almost a birthday event for Jacob for each of the 5 years he has been alive.

DDDB, contrary to the lies told by the likes of Marty Markowitz and Bruce Ratner's other cronies, is not an anti-development group. They support community involvement in the development process, oppose the misuse of eminent domain to seize properties for the profit of private developers, and they believe that the other plans for developing the Atlantic Yards area (e.g. the Unity Plan) are better than Ratner's and feel they should get due consideration. Keep in mind that Ratner was the LOW BIDDER for the project but got it anyway, probably because he happened to be a friend of Pataki's and has been generous with political donations.  read more »