[UPDATE: Typos corrected! Put this out too quickly for spelling's sake! Thanks to a kind proofreader!]

I have to call BS on Bill de Blasio and Marty Markowitz. I really do. On Marty it's easy. He has gone from populist to Ratner yes-man and doesn't seem to understand that helping Ratner destroy Brooklyn is NOT what he was elected for. But Bill...Bill is smarter and I am surprised he would put himself in a position of such utter blatant hypocrisy.

Let's start with Marty Markowitz. Turns out the community is all just a bunch of fanatics who are filled with hatred for poor, misunderstood Marty Markowitz. In an interview for City Hall [1], poor little Marty whines about the hostility his support of Ratner's project is generating. Does he realize that we resent the fact that Ratner was the low bid but still got the contract? That isn't capitalism! It's cronyism (Ratner was a law school buddy of then-Governor Pataki...did that help his low bid get noticed?). Does he realize that we resent the fact that now every tax payer in NYC is being asked to pay to purchase the land for Ratner? Ratner's low bid was $100 million. Blooomberg has asked the city to pay $100 million in land acquisition for Ratner. Hey...maybe it's a GOOD thing they went with the low bid! Does Marty realize we resent the backroom deals that have promised Ratner MORE land surrounding the current controversial project? Does Marty realize we resent private property owners being kicked out by the government so that another private property owner can make a profit? Does Marty realize we don't want MORE traffic along Flatbush, we don't want MORE traffic down 7th Ave, 5th Ave, etc.? Does Marty realize that we resent being asked to pay higher energy bills so that Con Ed can anticipate the energy needs of Ratner's project? Does Marty realize we resent our tax money being POURED into a project that was approved without even a business plan?

No...Marty attributes the hostility he is getting to unreasonable people who can't compromise. NO, you little schmuck! We all want development! That is what we have been saying for years now. But we want COMMUNITY input into the process (and we don't mean community input where anyone who objects is kicked out of the process by a mean, angry Marty Markowitz). We want a process that is fair and above board. We want a process that ensures our basements won't fill with sewage because Brooklyn's sewers are ALREADY overflowing BEFORE Atlantic Yards. And we want honesty, not pamphlets that leave out huge parts of the plan, replacing them with a park that will never be.

And poor, misunderstood little Marty is leaving out the very public scenes he has recently been making yelling at people and at crowds of people in his petty rage that the community would DARE to question his motives in supporting such a corrupt and secretive process.

But hypocrisy is nothing new for Marty. The man who endorsed Republican Bloomberg for mayor rather than Marty's own party's candidate went on to rage at people who supported Green Party candidate Gloria Mattera over himself. What a goddamned hypocrite, Marty! And a whiny one at that. All I have to say about Marty is Feh! What a schmuck.

Oh...and according to the Brooklyn Paper [2], Community Board 6 member Joseph Porcelli, who survived Marty's purge, also thinks Marty is a schmuck and resigned from the Community Board in protest.

“We are supposed to be appointed to represent independent opinion. As soon as we did, people were whacked,” Porcelli said, referring to the strong position CB6 took against Atlantic Yards, which Markowitz strongly supports...

He said the dismissals by Markowitz and DeBlasio (D–Park Slope) render “the whole community board process meaningless.”

“These were people who were extremely knowledgeable and dedicated to presenting the community’s issues fairly and democratically,” he said.

Then there's Bill de Blasio. Bill is not Marty. Marty is not bright, not savvy and pretty much a bully. I have had disagreements with Bill and he plays his cards very differently. Bill is far more honest with people than Marty and he is someone who I have found it easy to agree to disagree with. And I do disagree with Bill on many things, but I have never really held it against him.

But now I have to say Bill has done something that strikes me as so blatantly hypocritical than it is hard not to call BS on him.

Bill is one of Ratner's biggest cheerleaders. He fully supports Ratner's project that will abuse eminent domain to uproot an entire chunk of Brooklyn that was once called "up and coming" to replace it with a giant monstrosity which will suck a huge amount of taxpayer's money from the state and local levels and won't really deliver affordable housing...or at least not housing that is considered affordable even by the definition used in Manhattan.

Fine. Bill supports something I don't. We agree to disagree on much of it.

Now Bill turns around and suddenly plays community activist against an evil developer. As reported in the Park Slope Courier [3], Ratner's biggest cheerleader on the City Council is playing his own NIMBY game with a different developer.

Councilman Bill de Blasio stood outside the subway stop at the corner of Smith Street and Second Place this week and vowed to stop architect Robert Scarano from constructing a new building that many say doesn’t belong in Carroll Gardens...

“What we have is not only a particular plan for development that doesn’t fit our community, but we have a bad actor,” de Blasio said, “an individual who has proven that he does not have the interest of the community in mind and is willing to cheat and any way he can advantage himself against the interest of the community.”

Ummm...I got news for you Bill. Ratner is worse. Ratner's plan is far larger, goes BEYOND being inappropriate for the community and simply uproots a community, and has proven that the only interest Ratner has in the community is to squeeze it for $100 million to buy the land for a project he is far too lazy, or devious, to provide a business plan for.

I have no problem calling BS on Markowitz. He is so full of BS these days it is frightening. But Bill...I thought you at least were smart enough not to get caught in such BLATANT hypocrisy. Give us some credit, man. You might even be right about Scarano, but when you decided to back the corrupt process behind Ratner, you gave up your right to play community defender.

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