Your State

Amid outrage over a law that empowers the NYPD to remove people from their homes without giving them the opportunity to go before a judge, the de Blasio administration is resisting legislative reforms. City Hall argues that safeguards are already in place to protect the rights of defendants, and that any changes can be handled internally.

When the Academy Award for Best Picture is called this Sunday night, the biggest prize may well go to The Big Short. Based on Michael Lewis’ nonfiction book about the collapse of the housing and credit bubble in 2008, the film (also nominated for Actor in a Supporting Role, Directing and Adapted Screenplay) has been lauded for deftly explaining the financial crisis in an entertaining two hours.

According to water investors, the West’s millions of acres of farmland account for less than 2 percent of the region’s economic output, and moving just 10 percent of the water off farms would likely resolve the region’s current water shortfalls.

ProPublica

Thus began a 2001 article by Eric Lipton in The New York Times. It must come as no surprise to the reader that almost 15 years later, ProPublica detailed how New York City failed to police expensive tax subsidies it gave out to developers in exchange for limiting rent increases and including a modest number of affordable apartments in projects.

While peaceful climate change protesters were being hit with tear gas and pepper spray in Paris over the weekend, hundreds marched around New York City city hall in a quiet demonstration of solidarity. The People's Climate Movement of New York organized the march in the Big Apple after French authorities banned the big climate march planned for Sunday November 29, the day before the UN COP21 Climate Talks kicked off.

Almost one year ago today, The New Yorker published the story of a young man named Kalief Browder, who spent three years on Rikers Island without being convicted of a crime. Accused of stealing a backpack in 2010 at the age of 16, he was held on Rikers for more than 1,000 days waiting for a trial that never happened. His brutal detention included, among other abuses, two years in solitary confinement and beatings by officers and inmates. This tragedy of criminal justice was further compounded last June when, two years after his case was dismissed for lack of evidence, Browder, 22, committed suicide.

, , ,

There's an exciting new movement happening in food, and these two gentleman at Back to the Roots are riding the top of the wave with their inventive and fun DIY gardening creations. Congratulations to Nikhil Arora and Alejandro Velez for making the cover of the largest natural & organic trade magazine, NFM - Natural Foods Merchandiser!

Previously undisclosed emails by a mortgage industry lobbyist doubling as a consultant for then Attorney General Andrew Cuomo show the lobbyist played a self-described “critical role” in one of Cuomo’s signature financial crisis investigations.

Another Wall Street Appointee On The Way

Via Ring of Fire: http://www.youtube.com/golefttv

President Obama has presented his nominee for Treasury Secretary, and as expected, we’ve been giv

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is meeting in Baltimore this week, and members are considering whether to begin the process of revising — and likely tightening — its directives governing health care mergers and partnerships. The goal, according to a USCCB press release, would be to incorporate Vatican principles ensuring that Catholic institutions do not “cooperate immorally with the unacceptable procedures conducted in other health care entities with which they may be connected” or “cause scandal” as a result of such collaborations.

A central tenet of government finance is that money borrowed over the long term should be spent on projects that will outlast the debt – things like buildings, bridges or other essential infrastructure. That's not what upstate New York's Niagara County did with much of its money from tobacco bonds. Golf carts. Computers. Defibrillators. Portable radios. The money did not go toward the health care costs of smoking – as hoped by framers of the 1998 legal settlement with tobacco companies that has paid billions to states, counties and other governments.

The administration of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo altered and delayed the findings of a key federal fracking study commissioned by the state, according to a review of internal government documents published on Monday.