Bit by bit the power of Party Boss Vito Lopez is slipping. This was evident in this year's Democratic County Committee meeting this last Monday where what seemed to me to be some three, maybe four, groups of insurgents disrupting the scripted farce.

This was our third County Committee meeting. The first was when Joy was already overdue with Jacob. We had kind of hoped she would go into labor right then and there and disrupt the script. That would have been especially satisfying because it would have disrupted former Party Boss Clarence Norman's last hurrah before he went to prison. But Jacob debut came days later, so he didn't manage to upsatge Clarence Norman. That first meeting was also our entry into the insurgency as we saw what a farce it was, nothing more than a rubber stamp to the Party Boss's power with no real democracy as part of the Democratic Party in Brooklyn. The highlight was Ken Diamondstone's efforts to expose the farce for what it was. Diamondstone's efforts were ineffective, but they were both entertaining and illustrative. Sometimes the only way to fight a farce is with farce.

This story begins on October 15th, 2007, in Brooklyn. Then-frontrunner Hillary Rodham Clinton spent some time that day, as her hosts made it out, paying her respects to the Brooklyn machine, as represented and headed by one Vito Lopez, Assemblyman in the 53d District.

But for Assemblyman Vito J. Lopez, the Brooklyn Democratic Party leader, Mrs. Clinton’s visit to Brooklyn apparently represents far more than that. He said it was a sign of newfound respect for the party organization.

Now we learn how Vito decided to acknowledge that respect - by costing Hillary votes for her delegates. Here's the palm card for Hillary distributed in the 53d District:

The full palm card distributed in the part of the 12th Congressional District outside of Vito's immediate grip, and some distribution details, after the jump.

Below is a link to a story positioning Steve Harrison as the candidate of the people and Domenic Recchia as the Brooklyn machine's choice in City Hall News.

The article mentions the Daily Gotham, but the reporter didn't contact Bouldin and Mole as I suggested when he was writing the piece.

http://www.cityhallnews.com/news/128/ARTICLE/1316/2007-11-12.html

I have voted Republican. Once, I think. Just once. I have voted Green. Once...maybe twice.

The vast majority of the time I vote, donate, agitate and work for the Democratic Party with varying degrees of pride, enthusiasm and, occasionally, holding my nose.

The Democratic Party Machine in Brooklyn, led by Vito Lopez, pretty much makes you hold your nose because there is always a stench of sleaze around them. There are debates as to whether they are an improvement over the previous incarnation of the Brooklyn Machine, the one whose former head is now deservedly in jail. Well, if you have to debate whether they are better than someone who is jailed for corruption, you know you are in trouble.

Imagine, if you will, the following scenario. You are in the Jim Crow South. You are in a courtroom as a party to a lawsuit. You are black. Your judge has actively campaigned for segregation.

How certain are you that you will get justice from the bench?

Fast forward to the very near future, in January 2008, when this exact scenario will play out in Brooklyn, one of the constituent parts of the shining global metropolis that is New York City. Except that, in keeping with the most current prejudices, you need to be gay or lesbian to face this disquieting perspective, should you wind up in the courtroom of one Noach Dear, who recently prevailed in a primary battle for a civil court seat.

Dear, of course, led the opposition to New York City's gay rights bill; was the only member of the Brooklyn City Council delegation to vote against the 1998 domestic partnership bill; and, in an abortive Congressional run as a republican against Anthony Weiner, had the latter's speeches in favor of LGBT equality taped and then replayed to Orthodox audiences. As bigots go, he is nothing if not consistent; so perhaps it's not a surprise that he's also done business with Apartheid-era South Africa. In that context, it's particularly ironic that, while running in a black-majority district for state Senate, he called himself Noah and pretended to be black.

Noach, or Noah depending on which voters he courts, is currently a commissioner with the Taxi and Limousine Commission, a post to which he was appointed by none other than Rudy Giuliani; which may perhaps explain why half the funds he raised for his state office run came from taxi and limousine companies, which of course rely on his regulatory functions to shape their business environment. This time around, however, there's no indication that he received forty seven sequentially numbered money orders that turned out to not have been made out by the people listed on them as donors, as happened in the above-mentioned Congressional race.

Alan Fleischman, an out district leader in Brooklyn, sums up the problem neatly:

"It is outrageous that Noach Dear claims to have honesty and integrity. He is a notorious anti-choice, homophobic bigot who led the fight against the 1986 NY City Council Gay Rights bill and doesn't have the basic fairness and judicial temperament to serve on the Civil Court bench.

It is questionable why anyone in their right mind would support him for judge."

This is the man who was endorsed by the following elected officials, all Democrats:

Soon Brooklyn will have a man, Noach Dear, as one of its Civil Court judges. This is a man who never seems to have practiced law in his life and has been declared unqualified to be a judge by the NYC Bar Assn. How did this man become judge? Because a handful of politicians decided it would be politically convenient for him to be shoved aside on a court bench, essentially making the Brooklyn court system a political garbage dump. This is what these backroom politicians think of Brooklyn.

Things were supposed to change once Clarence Norman was in jail. That is what people keep telling me. Brooklyn politics will be better now that Clarence Norman is out of the way. No more unqualified judges, some told me. They had their chance to prove that this year and, to some degree, there certainly was an improvement in the quality of judges endorsed by the political insiders of Brooklyn. But they spoiled that effect by bringing out possibly one of their worst choices ever for a judge. Well, now the proof is in the pudding and this time the pudding is the unqualified Judge Noach Dear. Who delivered this unsavory pudding on our plates? These politicians:

Been thinking about the Brooklyn Surrogate race and many people have been talking to me about it. I know to non-insiders this seems like a minor thing, but in reality the Surrogate Judge, and all judges, are important elected positions and the fact that the machine's lock on appointing judges has majorly slipped is a very big deal.

My post-primary piece might have been a bit overly pessimistic, though I think fairly accurate. But the reform clubs are celebrating and for good reason. I put down the reform clubs a bit in my last piece, but honestly they did help swing the race for Diana Johnson and did hand Vito Lopez a solid defeat.

And it really was a solid defeat. Diana Johnson won with almost 60% of the vote. That means Vito Lopez and his machine lost about as decisively as you really ever expect in a judicial election. There was a time when Surrogate Judge was the machine's to give away like a plum. It was one of the bigger plums the machine could give.

I have written extensively about the lies and corruption surrounding Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards project. From Marty Markowitz, Brooklyn's Clown and whiny wannabe mayor of NYC, to Bloomberg and Pataki promising more and more land (at taxpayer expense) to Ratner in backroom deals, Ratner is surrounded by corruption.