Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from 2023

Bouie's Column: Giuliani was always like this

  Jamelle Bouie wrote a column in the New York Times today about Rudy Giuliani and he titled it - "Giuliani Was Always Like This." Bouie recounted the famous scene in 1992 at City Hall when Giuliani spoke to thousands of police officers rioting over African American Mayor Dinkins supporting the Civilian Review Board.  Giuliani supported the police and spoke disparaging about Dinkins. This was not the only incident in which Giuliani aligned himself with racist's cops who shouted - "a n***** mayor," or "the mayor's on crack." Other incidents of Giuliani's racism were ignored. He refused to meet with African American political officials, such as NYS Comptroller Carl McCall and Manhattan Borough President Virginia Fields. He spoke pejorative remarks about Al Sharpton.  When Giuliani ran against Dinkins for mayor, he consistently linked Dinkins to Jesse Jackson.  Barry Feinstein , the powerful president of New York’s Teamsters Local 237,  told   Th

Profit Making in NYC's Charter Schools

  Recently, I came across one more way investors are making large profits through charter schools. New York State passed a law requiring charter schools to be nonprofit. Although that is certainly making policy in the right direction, when it comes to real estate, don't ever underestimate how real estate interests can rip off the taxpayer. The NYC school system is required by state law to reimburse charter schools for the cost of its leases if the Department of Education cannot house the charter school in a DOE facility.  No other school district in the state is required to house or reimburse charter schools, just the city. Garvin Healy, a CEC2 member, has written an expose of these leases. Per NYS law, 30 percent of a charter school's per pupil funding can be spent on real estate and facility needs. This amounts to almost $5,500. The more students, the higher the real estate budget and the amount per pupil has more than doubled since 2014. So an LLC buys a building, leases it

Changing the Corporate Structure

In this article, a corporation is defined as a legal entity describing the large " Anglo-American publicly traded business corporation as opposed to small, incorporated businesses...." Over time the Supreme Court legitimated this type of capitalist institution. In Dodge v. Ford  (1919), the Supreme Court created the principle, "the best interests of the corporation; that is, the managers and directors of the corporation must put the interests of the shareholders above all other interests. This means that if a CEO or board wished to give donations to a charity, other shareholders can sue and claim that such an action is not in "the best interests of the corporation." The Supreme Court opened the door to a very greedy corporate culture. Over time, corporations grew into large monopolies sometimes gaining 90 percent of an industry's market. Part of their success relates to our federalist system in which every corporation chooses in which state it wishes to i