If you wanted to buy some land to develop for your own profit, would you expect taxpayers to pay the entire bill for you? Well, if you are a law school buddy of Pataki, that is exactly the sweet deal you could get while Pataki was Governor...and the exact deal Bruce Ratner seems to have gotten with you and me footing the bill.

This comes via Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn.

According to the March 9th 2007 Daily News New York City is spending $100 million to buy the property on or near the 22-acre Atlantic Yards site for developer Forest City Ratner.

Of the $205 million proposed to support the project in the Mayor's preliminary budget, $100 million is slated for land acquisition costs and $105 million for roads, utilities and other infrastructure needs, according to EDC officials.

The state is chipping in an additional $100 million.

David Yassky was pretty angry upon hearing this:

"There's no justification to spend public money like this," said Councilman David Yassky (D-Brooklyn Heights). "Government money should be spent on transportation infrastructure, schools and traffic calming - not subsidies for a private company.

47 millions of us are without medical insurance. For everyone at Moveon , health care for all is the number one priority on the domestic agenda. Indeed, this is true for Americans as a whole. Monday's NY Times ran Robert Pear's thoughtful article of how lack of health insurance has begun to poison middle class life in the US. One of the great mysteries to me has been the lack of traction and interest among elected officials for universal health insurance.

You may have read, as I did, in Friday’s New York Times that Americans want health care for all, that they want it to be affordable and that they are willing to pay for it. The NYT poll, which confirms an earlier one done by Pew, (Also see this Q Poll ) have been talked up & written up by progressive labor oriented observers like Jonathan Tasini (scroll down to March 2,).

None the less, as one of the premier health insurance advocacy groups Health Care Now, points out, presidential candidates have not been lining up to support single-payer universal health insurance. The issue national health insurance should come before the Executive Council of the AFL-CIO beginning March 6th says long-time labor writer Harry Kelber. . Will they take action?

My guess is they will not. As part of a Moveon delegation, I met with my Congress Member, Nydia Velazquez a few weeks ago. She is as progressive a representative as any lefty like me could ask for.

Does sloppy bookkeeping and oversight encourage confidence? Not in my mind. Yet the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) continues its shoddy oversight of Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yard's project. Keep in mind that the ESDC has up to now been nothing but a rubber stamp for everything the Axis of crony capitalism (Ratner and his political pawns) has wanted. Now they file an inadequate and incomplete financial projection for Ratner's overdevelopment plan that basically tells the taxpayers very little about what it will actually cost them in the long run. This comes from the number one organization that has been fighting Ratner's corrupt plan from the start, DDDB:

Financial projections released today by the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) purporting to show Forest City Ratner's (FCRC) projected profit for the proposed "Atlantic Yards" project appear to raise more questions than they answer - and to severely understate the developer's profit.

The financial documents, which were released only after State Assemblyman Jim Brennan and State Senator Velmanette Montgomery sued the ESDC for the information, fail to provide sufficient details or underlying assumptions, including information on "sources and uses" typically provided for a project receiving significant amounts of public funding. In some cases, the documents omit information altogether, for example, assigning no projected value to the project's planned hotel. The true value of the assets, once built, would appear to be much higher than the values outlined; several elements of the plan appear to be estimated below market value, let alone future value.

I am quite sympathetic to opponents of the Atlantic Yards project, though I do not consider it the only factor in deciding what candidates to support. I have heard the opponents of the Atlantic Yards uber-development project called a "single issue" group. I have myself referred to them as "single issue," as a matter of fact. Now, there is nothing wrong with focusing on a single issue, but the more I think about it, I realize that issues surrounding NYC development in general, and Atlantic Yards in particular, involve some of the core issues of the progressive movement. Furthermore, in general politicians who understand the problems with Atlantic Yards are the ones who recognize the core values of the progressive movement. Those politicians who don’t get why Atlantic Yards is so wrong don’t get, on a very fundamental level, the core values of the progressive movement. There are exceptions. But in general, it strikes me that Atlantic Yards not only is, but should be one of the dominant issues in local politics. I will add that it should not be the ONLY dominant issue, but it should be one of the dominant issues.

The issues that surround development in NYC in general, and Atlantic Yards in particular, include the culture of corruption that seems to be filtering from the Federal government down to the local level, the neglect or active removal of "undesirable" communities (usually minority and poor), government secrecy, excessive links between business and government, use of tax money to aid big business, and the exclusion of the community from major decisions regarding its own future. The interests of the rich are put above the interests of the city even by the city government, and this is often done in secrecy. It is hard to think of a single issue that encompasses more fundamental concerns of the progressive movement than Atlantic Yards.

One of the key problems with the Atlantic Yards project is the secrecy, dishonesty and probably corruption that surround it. There really have been secret deals made between Rater and the mayor and governors offices promising land and exclusion from full review. The state agency that is supposed to judge if the Atlantic Yards project should be approved, the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC), not only rents space from Ratner, but wants to hire Ratner’s own lawyer, at Ratner’s expense, to advise them on whether they should approve Ratner’s plan. Yes, I know a court just approved these things, but come on folks! This is stuff worthy of the Federal Republican culture of corruption! It stinks. Add to that blatant lies that have been told to the community by Ratner. Lies, secrecy and what sure looks like corruption even if a court approves it. Even if all of this is legal, THESE are the very practices that the progressive movement was formed to fight. Government honesty, transparency and ethics are at the root of the original progressive reforms.

And I am not alone in thinking so. Recently, investigative attorney, former Senior White House Advisor to President Clinton, and current candidate for Attorney General recently sent out a couple of letters stating his stand on Atlantic Yards. His first such letter does an excellent job of outlining many of the problems with Ratner’s plans that I will quote directly from it:

…I believe that the Brooklyn Atlantic Yards development must be stopped-cold until some tough questions get asked and answered. As it is today, this project is the face of what’s wrong with a corrupt culture that mixes business and politics, profits and tax dollars. My objections to the project stem from the flawed and secretive process by which decisions are made. Decisions that could change the face of the community forever. Decisions that deserve more scrutiny, more tough issues like fairness and transparency and including:

· The Forest City Ratner proposal is a selective bid.

· A profound disregard for community involvement in the decision making process.

· The shameful lack of accountability and transparency by Forest City Ratner by failing to provide a detailed financial report.

· There is little evidence…that the decision making process included concern for the historical character of the neighborhood.

· The Forest City Ratner proposal does not adequately address affordable housing questions posed by concerned members of the community.

· Although the MTA appraised the value of the rail yards at $241 million, the MTA chose the lowest bidder instead of the higher bid from Extell.

This plan, as it is, cannot be allowed to move forward; however, I would support responsible development that earnestly seeks a partnership and synergy with the community rather than an exploitation of our beauty and resources in Brooklyn.

Like all of us, Maloney WANTS development. But he does NOT want secrecy, corruption and lies. And those are what we have been give by Ratner, Bloomberg and Pataki.

Now look. I have been told that this project is nothing more than free market. But it isn’t! It is a selective bid, not to mention a LOW BID. It involves the use of tax money. It has involved the threat, though not yet the use, of eminent domain to force the transfer of property from one private owner to another. None of this is free market! It is a collaboration, formed partly in secret with no input from the community, between government and a private businessman. This is the kind of collaboration between the rich and the powerful that the progressive movement was founded to oppose.

I would not say that there was no input from the community. And groups like ACORN are in favor of the project, though they have been heavily criticized for this. In fact Ratner has made a good show of interacting with certain community leaders and groups, getting them on board, and promising jobs and affordable housing. But there is no enforcement of these promises and the affordable housing is judged such that as property values go up, the affordable housing will rapidly cease to be affordable. It is not geared to the means of the community so much as being a certain amount below he market value…which will go up and out of the range of the community.

What Maloney does not even mention is the issues of the infrastructure. Traffic congestion, insufficient coverage from firehouses, inadequate schools and a grossly (literally) overtaxed sewage system are EXISTING problems in Brooklyn. Add on top of these existing problems an arena and seventeen massive skyscrapers, and you have a pretty disgusting mess. Even if there are upgrades around the Atlantic Yards project, the remainder of Brooklyn would still be affected by the added strains of the project. People talk about jobs. Well, don’t more schools, firehouses, upgrading the sewer system Borough wide and adding more public transit create jobs? And they improve the quality of life in the Borough. And the issue of fires brings up another problem that goes even beyond what Maloney covers. There already is a very surprising spike of fires throughout Brooklyn that may be due to arson and/or the neglect of these neighborhoods by the closing of firehouses. Some have even suggested that developers are burning down buildings that are inconvenient for them. This accusation seems likely in the case of the Greenpoint fire where the developer had several other convenient and suspicious fires happen to his property…probably covered by insurance. In the case of the area surrounding Atlantic Yards, there has been a particularly sharp increase in suspicious fires there and it is convenient for the developer who wants to portray the area as blighted. Beyond that, I cannot judge whether or now the old NY tradition of arson to drive out unwanted communities is at work. But, since I work in the triangle shirtwaist factory building, I quite aware that there is a longstanding link between the progressive movement and fire safety, particularly regarding poorer classes. Three politicians, Eric Adams, Bill Batson and Wellington Sharpe, each independently observed the suspicious nature of these fires and called them arson. Each of them observed that these fires are destroying the heart of historic black neighborhoods, threatening entire communities. Bill Batson went so far as to point out the convenience of these fires to developers and points out that many of these development projects are destroying the black history of Brooklyn. He used the Harriet Tubbman museum as an example and points out that if you destroy someone’s culture, you can do anything you want to them.

This threat to our heritage isn’t just affecting the black community. I would say that the Atlantic Yards Project, coupled with the many other giant development plans, changes the entire face or Brooklyn, taking away its great uniqueness. I come from Los Angeles. I am one of the few people who will admit loving Los Angeles. But it does not have much character. Brooklyn has a great character and the current style of overdevelopment destroys that character in large swaths of Brooklyn. Bill Batson calls it the Disneyfication (I think it should be spelled "Disnification," but most people disagree) of NYC through arson. A fellow local activist has called Atlantic Yards project in particular as placing a giant slice of Manhattan in the heart of Brooklyn. Manhattan is fine. But It ain’t Brooklyn.

The politician who I know who has most eloquently expressed what is happening is Chris Owens. He once described it as nothing less than "Losing Home", in essence losing our community, our uniqueness…our Brooklyn. We want development. Of course we want affordable housing and jobs. But the lies, underhanded and secret deals, the closing of our firehouses, the inadequate concern for our schools and infrastructure all combine to make us afraid that we are losing Brooklyn. The loss is much slower and less dramatic than the loss of large parts of New Orleans through criminal neglect. But there are very real parallels.

Progressives respect home, tradition, history and community. Those politicians who most respect progressive values are those who understand the real danger of Atlantic Yards style development. I honestly think that if our elected representatives (you listening Bloomberg, Markowitz? I thought not!) really laid down strict requirements for these development projects, developers would still be rushing to be in on the action. NYC is one of the world’s busiest and best cities and no developer will want to stay away. But if we neglect our schools and our fire safety, over tax our sewage system and roads, and lose our unique character that attracts so many tourists, we will no longer be one of the world’s busiest and best cities. We need a progressive vision for our city, not a vision that has to be formed in secret and covered by lies. That is why so many use Atlantic Yards as a measure for their support of a candidate. It cannot be the only measure. Tom Suozzi gets it when it comes to Atlantic Yards, yet I do not think he quite understands traditional progressive values. Denise O’Donnell didn't take the kind of stand that Sean Patrick Maloney has on Atlantic Yards, nor is she necessarily progressive. But she, along with Maloney, was still an excellent candidate for Attorney General, and I was having a hard time deciding between them. So this one project cannot be the only thing used to pick politicians to vote for. And I don't always agree with everything said and done by groups like Develop, Don't Destroy Brooklyn. But I really think that those who are perceived as excessively focused on Atlantic Yards may actually understand that what is at risk are many of the things that we, as progressives, value.

Celebrate Wal-Martlessness with us Sunday 3pm

From Wal-Mart No Way to the neighborhood believers, from living wage shouters to Rego Park Queens labor heroes – the anti-Wal-Mart community will be honored by Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Gospel Choir on Sunday March 26th at 3 PM, St. Mark's in the Bowery, 10th and 2nd Avenue. Those of you who have done the right thing – PREPARE FOR YOUR SAINTHOOD!

The preacher and the singers have for ten years defended healthy neighborhoods, especially indy shops and community gardens. The monoculture of chain stores and big boxes – that's the Devil! DELIVER US FROM EVIL!

Recently during the cross-country Shopocalypse tour, the Reverend and the church exorcised the Wal-Mart Home Office in Bentonville, Arkansas. Surrounded by corporate police in their SUV's, the church sang and prayed for today's freedom – freedom from the brutality of profits at all costs. CHANGE-A-LUJAH! DO WE HAVE A WITNESS!

All info and res: http://REVBILLY.COM/EVENTS