Professor Lynne Weikart, PhD

  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...

 Voting is a form of speech . And this country has had trouble with free speech since its inception. America was split ideologically at its beginning. When John Adams won the presidency in 1797 following eight years of George Washington's two terms of office, he demonstrated the split in our countrty., He proceeded to weaken the First Amendment - freedom of speech and press - by jailing those who criticized his administration. Since his party, the Federalist Pary, had taken the legislature and the presidency, he had the legislative support to get the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1797 passed by Congress to charge all those who opposed him with sedition. It was an ugly time. Fortunately, the Alien and Sedition Acts had a sunset provision so that those legislative acts evaported at the end of his one presidential term in office. But it set the precedent for the First Admendment to be under attack and not so sacroscant as you might have been taught in your education   Since th...

In James Whitman's book, Hitler's American Model, he writes that the German Nazis regime in the 1930s learned much from American racism. In 1935, the Nazis sent 45 lawyers to America to study our race-based legal system. These lawyers had a reception with the NYC Bar Association. Whitman found document after document in the German archives about the lessons Nazis had learned from the United States. We knew before he was elected that Trump was a racist. He demonstrated that time and again in New York City. His most infamous action - asking for the death penalty for the "Central park Five" who, ten years after imprisonment, were found to have been innocent. Trump continued as president to be incredibly racist. After Charlottesville, Timothy Snyder in the New York Times writes that President Trump faced an easy test , and failed. When presented with an obvious opportunity to condemn the evil that was and is Nazism, he first waited, then equivocated, then read from a te...

Bloomberg took office two months after 9/11. The results of 9/11 - the city lost over 100,000 private sector jobs in one year. The city was devastated. Corporations were fleeing the city as were residents. Bloomberg created an economic development machine that roared through all five boroughs and brought over 400,000 new jobs.    Just about the time the city recovered from 9/11, there was a national recession and Bloomberg guided the recovery. That recovery was cushioned by the fact that Bloomberg had raised taxes twice and the city had surpluses to help navigate the recession. Very early in his mayoralty, Bloomberg made it very clear that he would not tolerate discrimination against Muslims. In 2002 shortly after Bloomberg became mayor, he announced he was against a city council bill that would ban the Palestine Authority from their offices in the city. A few years later in the hysteria surrounding the proposed building of an Islamic Community Center a few blocks from the d...

Trump held 8 of the 12 federal appropriation bills hostaged. These eight were Homeland Security; Agriculture; Commerce, Justice and Science; Energy and Water Development; Financial Services and General Government; Interior and Environment; State and Foreign Operations; and Transportation and HUD. For those who want a simple way of looking at it, here are the departments that were closed except that some federal employees were told to come to work even though they were not getting paid -  Department of the Treasury Department of Agriculture Homeland Security Department Department of the Interior Department of State Department of Housing and Urban Development Department of Transportation Department of Commerce Department of Justice More than 420,000 of the 800,000 furloughed had to come to work even though they were not getting paid. This included the air traffic controllers, coast guard, the FBI and border security. Even a few IRS agents were called back to work - no...