Professor Lynne Weikart, PhD

Martin Luther King in "Letters from a Birmingham jail" "First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.”  Why aren't there more people in the streets objecting to ICE agents actions?

 The Mollen Commission, named after former Judge Milton Mollen, was created in 1992 by NYC's Mayor Dinkins to investigate police officers after several were arrested on drug charges in Suffolk County. The Mollen Commission recommended several changes to recruitment and retention that Trump and his advisors should consider when hiring ICE personnel. The Mollen Commission Report found that the rising crime of the 1980ss "led to a striking increase in the rate of hiring new officers accompanied by a systemic failure to conduct thorough background checks and hold applicants to standards beyond the stated automatic disqualifiers." IN effect the conclusion was that "approximately 20 percent of the officers suspended or dismissed should never have been admitted into the department." There were obvious red flags before they were hired which were ignored. Just as shocking, 88 percent of the officers in the study "entered the Police Academy before the completion of t...

 February 25, 2025 The Federal Budget by Lynne Weikart Both Houses of Congress wrestle with passing a Budget Resolution - the financial goals for their budget, and their goals are deep cuts in Medicaid, which is health care for the poor. Congress refuses to discuss revenue; its focus is spending cuts.  There are two sides to a budget - the revenue side and the spending side. Before cutting spending, why not examine what can be done on the revenue side? Congress avoids discussing revenue because it wishes to extend the Trump tax cuts that expire at the end of 2025.  In FY2024, we collected $4.92 trillion in revenues. Republicans will not look at the revenues.  Let’s look at the revenues.   The expenditures were $6.752 trillion for a deficit of $1.83 trillion in FY2024. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), permanently extending the expiring Trump tax cuts would cost $4 trillion over the next 10 years or $400 billion per year. That $400 trillion is m...

  What most people don't know. Our federal government employees' salaries take up only a tiny proportion of the federal budget. Our spending on employees is relatively small. In FY2022, the federal government only spent $271 billion to pay 2.3 million civilian workers. In FY2024, our federal government spent $6.9 trillion. Do you really think cutting this tiny portion of federal salaries will make a dent in our federal budget? Our national budget is really just an insurance company with an accompanying military expenditure. The majority of spending is mandatory in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, not employees' salaries but payments to citizens. It's like insurance. This attention to our minuscule federal workforce is misplaced and disastrous for our citizenry because it takes away from the real problem, which is the extraordinary shift in wealth in this country from the working and middle class to the rich. The country's focus should be on the revenue s...

 In an article in Patch , Riverhead  Town Supervisor Tim Hubbard released a statement Friday stating that despite recent federal executive actions, police will not detain anyone for suspected violations of immigration laws. Other East End towns, Shelter Island and Southold, have also made similar pronouncements. Some have yet to act to protect their neighbors and their service workers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agents (ICE). There is no legal requirement for state, municipality, town, or other non-federal entities to assist or cooperate with such federal round-ups.  We need not and should not participate.   New York State has enacted a law, the Protect Our Courts Act, that keeps ICE officers from making civil arrests in and around NYS Courts, including City and other Municipal Courts. That is the extent of the restrictions on ICE. Consequently, ICE officers can go to our schools, homes, and places of business and arrest anyone they choose. But...

 January 25, 2025 Trump has fired seventeen independent Inspectors General, flouting a law passed in 2022 that requires 30-days notice and explanation of the firing to be given to Congress,  according to Reuters. The dismissals appeared to violate federal law, which requires the president to give both houses of Congress reasons for the dismissals 30 days in advance. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. An inspector general is an independent position that conducts audits and investigations into allegations of waste, fraud and abuse of power. Agencies are pressing ahead with orders from Trump, who returned to the presidency on Monday, to   reshape the federal bureaucracy   by scrapping diversity programs, rescinding job offers and sidelining more than 150 national security and foreign policy officials. According to Meidas Touch,  the firing happened after the Pete Hegseth confirmation to Secretary of State because Senator Chuck Gra...

 I am writing a second edition to my first book, Follow the Money, and have found interesting events that I had never heard or read about before. My book is an examination of how New York City mayors responded to the demands of federal and state officials as well as financial elites to the city's 1975 fiscal crisis in which city officials were forced to reduce the city's expenditures in order to balance the budget and avoid bankruptcy. Before I write about an interesting event, let me discuss the two political theories are often used to explain decision making around city resources. The first competing theory is pluralism.  The best example of a community power study examining liberal pluralism is Robert Dahl’s famous study of New Haven, Connecticut, Who Governs ?  Dahl concluded that there were multiple centers of power in which groups would come together in different configurations for a particular urban issue. In effect, there are a collection of interest groups all s...

  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...

  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...

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...

 August 17, 2022 Austerity Politics: The Difference in Mayoral Leadership Lynne A. Weikart, PhD Introduction This book is a book about leadership. It is the story of how each of six New York City mayors since the 1975 fiscal crisis coped with state and financial interference. New York State government in close cooperation with the major banking institutions strongly asserted their power over New York City during the city’s 1975 fiscal crisis. Both state government officials and bankers created strong institutional structures that prevented the City from investing in its citizens in a myriad of ways – City officials no longer had control of its resources – institutions created by these two external powers did. By the summer of 1975, City officials could no longer sell its bonds in the bond market. Because the city had accumulated billions of dollars in short-term debt, it faced bankruptcy unless it could borrow the money in the bond market to meet payroll. Bankruptcy was not ...

I want to share Bloomberg's article about free speech in the Wall Street Journal.  Republican Censorship Goes for Woke Ron DeSantis’s efforts to control educational and corporate speech are no better than the left’s. By  Michael R. Bloomberg Aug. 15, 2022 in Wall Street Journal Republicans often rightly complain that college campuses are hostile to the free exchange of ideas. Speakers over the past decade have regularly been disinvited, shouted down and even physically attacked by student activists unwilling to entertain different ideas and perspectives. This behavior is anathema to a university’s mission and deeply damaging to our nation. Unfortunately, instead of taking a principled stand for free speech, many Republicans are now saying: “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.” Consider Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who signed a bill that as of July 1 bars professors from expressing any view in a classroom that “espouses, promotes, [or] advances” anything that c...

 Main Street is hurting. Inflation has arrived; the kids are still not back in school on a regular basis; Covid is worse than ever. Wall Street is still booming although it is increasingly edgy. President Biden enters the room and tells us all the good things he has done. He even called on Tom Hanks to put out a video sharing the good things that have happened. But that is not the way Americans are feeling. And yes, job growth is terrific and unemployment is low. But what Biden doesn't get is that the kids are still not back in school, and that we are paying more for groceries, and the cost of a new car is out of sight. Biden needs to take a page from FDR. Yes, the Democrat who changed the course of American history. FDR did not deny that times were bad. He said so and then he told the American people everything he had done to improve their lot. And then he asked them to do something - in FDR's case, the people had to go to the banks and put their money back into the banks. FDR...

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...