CDL’s Michael White Featured in BKLYNR, Brooklyn Brief

Citizens Defending Libraries Michael White is more than just a DENIZEN of Brooklyn Heights. this brilliant man is a Leader
of thousands of book lovers. Michael and Carolyn demonstrate heartfelt caring to the Brooklyn Heights Community and beyond, as they passionately work to prevent the selloff of libraries.

Seriously? Wow. Your energy could be so (perhaps) useful if it were put to some good use. Oh well – enjoy.

Superb article–thanks for the link.

Your posts should be banned. Instead of arguing the issues you make personnal attacks.

I made the very same analogy about the fight to save our hospital — LICH. If you think we’re living in a democracy, look around you and process all that goes on here — how much power only the very wealthiest have.

LOL

I am not his co-chair

I unequivocally support LICH and cannot stand Cuomo. But this is really inappropriate and not helpful.

Please, understand the basis of political cartoons before you get all huffy and puffy.

A good political cartoon has an element of truth to it and is funny. This one is neither.

I’m assuming that White and most of his other supporters are equally as uncomfortable with this as I am.

Many thanks to Michael and his important work…

Like you, I am frustrated at the corrupt waste and lack
of smart government in Albany that is causing this state to have the
highest taxes pushing the middle class and businesses out and causing
suffering of the poor. Hospitals have been disappeared throughout NYC
for condos for over a decade now. The leadership and professionalism
that made New York the economic, cultural and idea capital of the world
has gone, replaced by a generation of politicians whose elective office
will be the best and only jobs they have.

Campaign promises have become disconnected from governing. As a cynical
class of insider politicians have mastered the election process, the
public is powerless to stop them. Case in point, Bill de Blasio, Steve
Levin, Daniel Squadron, Brad Lander and Peter Sikora used LICH
hospital as an election prop last year and they’ re at it again.

Council Member Steve Levin makes that perfectly clear in the Brooklyn Eagle on July 1, 2014:

…Levin also credited Sikora with coming
up with the idea to get arrested to try to keep LICH open. “At the time,
the candidate who was third in the polls, candidate Bill de Blasio,
said, ‘That’s a really good idea…’”

Now these elected officials — City
Councilman Brad Lander, City Councilman Steve Levin, NYS Senator Daniel
Squadron — are endorsing Sikora, a candidate who has never been
involved in our community unless he was paid mostly working for their
election efforts. They are supporting Sikora not to empower our
community, but to give themselves more power to control us.

No mater who is elected, the permanent
government, as journalist Jack Newfield called them a generation ago,
stays in power. Today’s elected officials are put in power by the
permanent government and kept in power by their campaign contributions.

Breaking campaign promises
— whether it’s LICH, condos in Brooklyn Bridge Park or shrinking and
closing libraries for more condos — is unfortunately only a symptom of
the damage to our neighborhood. The worst thing today’s political class
of politicians has done to us by controlling the election process is
the taking of power of governing away from our community and you and
consolidating it for themselves and the permanent government to do as
they please.

The progressives attacked Dick Cheney, and
rightly so, for spinning facts and creating fake realities. But sadly
our local parties in power (Democratic and Working Family Parties) have
copied his methods. Mayor de Blasio recently sent out a propaganda
letter via his PR machine, Campaign for One New York, rejoicing ‘less is
more’ without a full service hospital. It was clearly paid by a PR
front but signed by Gary Reilly represented as a board member of Carroll
Gardens Neighborhood Association. This deceptive representation was
pure Orwellian.

The
question our elected officials and the media is not asking is why did
SUNY buy a losing money hospital ($300 million a year) and
turn around to sell it to developers? Was it to save Stanley
Brezenoff’s company (Stanley got a golden parachute). Shortly after
taking office, Mayor Bill de Blasio, who is obviously close with Sikora,
hired Stanley Brezenoff the former President of Continuum, the company
that took control of LICH and bleed it out. When hospitals close
people die.

I was the guy at the Community Board 6
meeting in 2008 fingering Brezenoff, asking him how much he was being
compensated as he slit LICH at the throat by trying to close Pediatrics
and OB/GYN at the time (strategic step even just announcing it if one
wants to slay a neighborhood hospital). Council Member Bill de Blasio
was there and asked Brezenoff nice-nice questions about his bio,
allowing Brezenoff a platform to not only look like a qualified and
dedicated man but almost celebrate how lucky we were to have him.
Apparently, Council Member de Blasio believed Brezenoff so much that he
hired the mastermind of LICH’s doom when he became mayor or maybe it is
just plain old corruption. How anyone could have been at that meeting,
professing to care about our community, yet turn around to hire this man
once elected to higher office is not unclear, it’s simply disturbing.

It was nice to know LICH was there. LICH
saved my child’s life when he had a bad Asthma attack a few years ago.
I’ve met countless folks over the years and again petitioning the last
few weeks who believe LICH saved their lives. Without full cardiac and
stroke centers, our seniors in our community face unnecessary and
unprecedented peril. This is shameless.

And don’t believe that these
elected officials are powerless. Interfaith Hospital just a few miles
away from LICH faced a similar fate yet African American elected
officials went straight to Governor Cuomo, flexed their representative
power and saved the hospital. Our community elected officials all come
from inside the political system. They put pressure on only in front of
the cameras. In the back rooms, they bow to the permanent government
who got them elected.

We have to give power back to the communities — back to you the voter.
Today’s elected will not attack the special interests that put them in
office. I am running for Assembly because I believe this permanent
class of politicians who have seized control of our city, state and
country is destroying the future not only for us, but our children and
grandchildren. We must take New York back for them.

Doug Biviano
Candidate for Assembly