POLICE-STATE ON 21st STREET!

[alexismckinnon]

Re: POLICE-STATE ON 21st STREET!

N/A. Because that isn't what is happening.

The presence of the NYPD on this street isn't to benefit the clubs; it's to contain the clubs' antics to a specific area. It also does have the default effect of protecting both other local businesses and residents. If the cops are there, it's much less likely that Joe Q. Clubkid is going to smash the windows of the other businesses on the block for fun.

It doesn't mean that the NYPD is supporting this. Let's look at another example. What about those vile religious protesters who travel around with the signs saying "God hates f--gs?" Wherever you see them, you will see more police. Are the police there to protect these creeps? Does the police chief who authorizes increased presence approve of these creeps? No, s/he has decided that the manpower is a necessary expenditure to keep the creeps away from everyone else.

The clubs also do pay for the NYPD. Any time a street is closed down for any reason, with or without increased police presence-clubs, street fairs, parades, whatever--there's a permit fee that has been paid to the NYPD. These clubs are also paying cabaret licenses, liquor licenses and a large variety of other fees, as well as for their own bonded security (and the fees that go with that) inside the venues.

One of the problems with having the clubs provide private security on the street is that these officers have little to no clout in public. Inside a club, which is private property, they can enforce whatever rules the club wishes them to enforce. On a public street they do not have the same abilities and therefore can't do what the NYPD can. Not to mention that people don't tend to heed "rent a cops" the same way they do the police.

If you think that these clubs should be required to pay more for their permits, and that might be a very valid point, you want to bring up at one of the community board meetings, which the NYPD attends.

Over and out.

[JS]

Re: POLICE-STATE ON 21st STREET!

The police I've spoken to there agree that the clubs should be paying a premium in fees for the extra protection. What makes you think there's actually a 'permit fee' being paid? None of the cops said anything about that...

Most bars and restaurants who pay cabaret license fees don't need cops closing down the block, lighting it like daylight to prevent crowds of patrons from looting and shooting.

Indeed police protection is needed, people get killed and stabbed around those clubs. Cops are needed to police neighborhoods against crime, not to guard streets because of the dangerous patrons of sleazy bars. So these bars are taxing the people unfairly not only in salary and costs to cops, but in taking attention away from where police are actually needed.

Suppose there was a genuine emergency, and there weren't enough police because some sick place called Porkies creates a crowd of violent drunkards playing Animal House? The whole thing stinks. If bars are that rowdy, they should be shut down, or forced to pay the city a huge premium for police protection. There's not enough economic activity drawn by these crowd-generating hellholes at 4:00 AM to justify spending public money to babysit their violent clientele.

Of course you can't let the clubs hire Blackwater goons to police the streets, they'd need to be NYPD, but the clubs would need to pay for the extra protection, since the protection is not supporting a public function, it's a tax on the public to cover for a hazard created by a private enterprise. And it's every friggin' weekend, rain or shine, year after year.

It's not like it's a street-fair, or a demonstration. They're clubs, and unsavory clubs, where people get killed and stabbed, and are otherwise noisy and unruly.

I did write to Bloomberg a couple of times, not a word in response (he's too busy cutting services on workers because he let his hedge-fund friends get away tax-free back when an epic amount of cash flowed through wall-street).

Obviously I find these places a detriment to the community, but can't rightly have my personal opinion govern what sort of clubs people open. But forcing them to properly pay the expenses they're operations cost the city, might add a bit more justifiable overhead instead of taxing the public with their private practices, and hopefully the real cost of their operation will ultimately help shut them down.

Anyway, it would have to be a community action, not one raving outraged citizen (I'm not going up against P Diddy and his thugsters alone), and it appears there's no community interest in that which I find so outrageous. So be it.

[catalyst]

Re: POLICE-STATE ON 21st STREET!

But forcing them to properly pay the expenses they're operations cost the city, might add a bit more justifiable overhead instead of taxing the public with their private practices, and hopefully the real cost of their operation will ultimately help shut them down.

Personally, I agree with the above sentiment. There's always a but... it's generally against public policy for businesses to pay for essential services. The reasons are many, including the very basic concept of what would be fair and reasonable for a certain business to pay as opposed to an different business, possible disparity of services among businesses who pay more versus businesses who pay less, possible selective enforcement, etc. In essence, we do pay for these services through our taxes. Unfortunately, this formula ensures that some pay more for less and others pay less for more. Uneven, and unbalanced? Yes, but it is the fairest system that we have for right now. I would not want to be in a situation where police, fire or sanitation came to a location and had to perform a payment status check perform they could act.

[alexismckinnon]

Re: POLICE-STATE ON 21st STREET!

The police I've spoken to there agree that the clubs should be paying a premium in fees for the extra protection. What makes you think there's actually a 'permit fee' being paid? None of the cops said anything about that...

Of course the cops on the beat there would think the clubs should have to pay extra...crowd control is a crap detail, and most cops on it are unhappy about being there.

As for permits, if you've ever tried to organize any sort of community event, do a film shoot, hold a block party, or do anything else that requires closing down a street, you would find that there's paperwork, there are permits and there are fees involved. NYPD or city administrators would be the ones to ask; not the beat cops.

Most bars and restaurants who pay cabaret license fees don't need cops closing down the block, lighting it like daylight to prevent crowds of patrons from looting and shooting.

It's really about the number of clubs there; that causes the problem. Even if they were listening to opera music and drinking tea, you'd still have quite a concentration of people on a small street, and they'd need the police there for crowd control. If you go to the theatre district where they have five Broadway theatres on the block, and stand outside after the shows let out, you can see the mounties and NYPD presence there too.

I still think if you want to address this, the community board, or one of your local elected officials (ie, not the mayor), would be the way to go. I'm not a fan of these clubs in general, but I think as a community and as a city, there are far larger fish to fry.

[tarmill]

Re: POLICE-STATE ON 21st STREET!

Tarmil,[/FONT]

Last place I thought I'd find a bunch of closet limbaugh-lovers was in Chelsea... Can't say if I were you I'd be too proud of your legacy of Botch, undoubtedly you love the mess we're in at your party's right-wing behest. But apparently ?conservatives? are shown clinically to have a brain-disorder where they are unable to change and adjust and correct their concept.[/COLOR]

So, this is it, even the city of NY is infested by Billo-watching, limbaugh-loving militaristic arrogant, fascist-apologist, bush-voting neocon republicans who believe the invasion of Iraq was a good thing, and that Rambo needs to go back and finish job in Vietnam, and that we should nuke Iran, and that we were right to subjugate Latin-American by force at the expense of the democratically elected governments there, promoting genuine torture and police-state mass-murders there in the name of amerigun ?democracy?. [/COLOR]

Ooh, sounds like the first time you've ever talked to a Christian or a conservative. You seem visibly shaken!

I don't know what's up with all the gratuitous personal insults JS, but I'm pretty surprised no other Chelsean bothered to call you on it. I mean even if we disagree on issues, I'm sure other Chelseans support free speech and have a great disdain and distaste from the kind of vitriolic insults you've engaged in. If they can't support my freedom of speech without such insults, then the loss of theirs won't be far behind.

Anyway, since you said NOTHING that has a shred of foundation, there's nothing really to respond to.

To be an 'anti-Semite' you'd need to have a problem ethnically with jews.

Oh yeah? Where did you get that definition from? My defition of an anti-semite is someone who doesn't think Jews deserve a place on this earth to call home. My definition of an anti-semite is a person who looks at a map of the world and sees all the Arab/Islamic countries occupying a piece of land roughly approaching the size of the United States, and then seeing Israel - which occupies a piece of land smaller than the slender state of New Jersey - and concluding that the Jews must have done something immoral.

My definition of an anti-semite is someone who purposely twists facts and mis-reports history. Your statement that Jews were "LEGITIMATELY kicked out" 2000 years ago is factually wrong. Jews have ALWAYS lived there, and before Israel became a state a group of people calling themselves "Palestinians" didn't even exist. Nor did a state called Palestine ever exist. The reason these so-called Palestinians are even there is because their brother Arab states refuse to take them in. And you know why they refuse? They refuse because leaving them there is the best way to fake a claim to Israel. It's the only thing they can come up with to justify their desire to see Israel destroyed and wiped off the map. And you would know this if you ever exposed yourself to a diversity of views and information.

I feel really sorry for you - living in such an insular world. Totally protected from any contact with those who have different views. Getting all your information from sources that always agree with you. Insularity is very unhealthy. It's amazing to me how people like you blow such a fuse when someone comes along who disagrees! You can't even address me on the issues. You just lash out with a thousand personal insults. Very interesting.

OK Mr Nazi... I'm out.

Oh by the way, how do you feel that Mr. Obama is going to leave troops in Iraq until 2011... the exact same year Bush was? And how do you feel that he's still keeping Gitmo open? Lots of great promises broken already!

[JS]

Re: POLICE-STATE ON 21st STREET!

Once again, right-wingers with nothing left to say end up pulling out 'nazi'. Got bored with 'godless communist' did ya?

Hey, I'm a jew, and I have a place to call home, right here. And nobody's persecuting, bombing, or hating me for it. There are ethnic jews, of which I'm one, who call 'home' all over the world, and didn't need to install themselves in the desert at the expense and oppression of the locals. And I hardly hate jews, some of my best friends and family, after all, are ethnic jews.

(Ever wonder why so many Israelis are escaping that hell-hole and moving here?)

Zionists, however, are a scripturally-based quasi-political ideology. Once again, to illustrate the derangement of those calling themselves 'Zionists', consider Hagee and his followers, who preach the rapture of the second-coming via nuclear incineration, requiring the return of Israelits as part ot the 'prophesy', and in which the protestant zionists are bodily drawn up above the resultant fray, while the jews they paid AIPAC to support, burn.

I don't think protestant 'zionists' are looking for a 'home' for any jew, they are a cult believing that the jews are a vehicle for their own ?salvation?.

This is deranged. But you are perfectly free to preach it, just don't get it any where near the Whitehouse or the nuclear button, and don?t call people ?nazis? because they are likewise perfectly free to disagree with your hyper-radical, ultra-rightist, war-criminal, scripturally-based delusions.

For you or anyone else to equate 'christians' with 'conservatives' is the pinnacle of pretension. Dr. King was a Christian. The Catholic Workers are Christians. Jesus himself was a compassionate pacifist who would hardly smile on your politics.

Zionist christians are a cult of Christianity by any measure, which is by definition radical, anti-conservative, and as deranged as the Branch Davidians.

Zionist jews are using the superstitions of scripture to promote a hostile, nuclear-tipped, hyper-armed, arms-producing political installation at significant expense to world peace, which is the cause of much grief, war-crimes on all sides, wasted news attention for the sake of preposterous biblical literalism, and to which the USA inexplicably devotes more tax dollars than to the whole of starving Africa.

The existence of contemporary Israel has nothing to do with the survival of jews, in fact congregating them all on one patch of desert is anathema to the vow of 'never again', they are much safer dispersed.

In any case, their genuine war-crimes, as confirmed by the Red Cross during this last siege of Gaza is just the sort of thing that drains empathy for their plight. I propose that if they want to live there, so be it, but they live only on land they purchase at fair market value, subject to the laws of the democratic state of Palestine. Too close to the fire for comfort? Come to NY like everyone else.

(oooh, what a heretic, eh? Your god will surely smite me... except ~ I'm still here!).


Anyway, it's hardly to the point of the post. I mean, as a ?conservative? ?religious? person, you?d find a place like Porkys ?Fun???? A good Christian would call this a ?den of iniquity? if there ever was one. Bet you spend your vacations in Vegas?

It seems you are clearly obsessed with sponsoring a born-again militaristic, religious cult of so-called 'conservatism', and you will promote and sponsor the worst, most anti-progressive, gung-ho war-criminal administrations out of allegiance to your particular cult, and you?ll gerrymander districts, slant courts, steal elections, torture, sponsor the vast corruption, graft and greed of ?conservative? trickle-up economics, deregulate banks derailing economic progress forever, all in service to your deranged, anti-democratic ideals. Hardly an egalitarian, humanitarian, law-abiding, rational ideology.

We've had enough of your ilk meddling in international affairs, you need to move to a mega-church and leave politics alone. There was a reason the founders divided church from state (and you exemplify that reason), which applies to Christians as well as jews. So be a good patriot and keep your disproved, cultist religious meddling out of politics.

You should see Religulous...

[JS]

Re: POLICE-STATE ON 21st STREET!

Oh by the way, how do you feel that Mr. Obama is going to leave troops in Iraq until 2011... the exact same year Bush was? And how do you feel that he's still keeping Gitmo open? Lots of great promises broken already!

Personally I don't like it one bit, nor the fact that he wants to keep 50k troops there indefinitely, just another one of the USA's absurd permanent military bases it burns its revenue on around the globe. And I like even less the 'surge' in Afghanistan, especially after one of Obomba?s drones apparently wiped out a wedding. But then, don't blame me, I didn't vote for OBomba!

(Heck of a lot better than McBomb/ImPalin, though... As Pat Buchanan said, McCain would make Cheney look like Gandhi).

But I still don't see what the Botch war-criminal disaster you were apparently personally complicit in aiding & abetting and now defending, has anything to do with unruly clubs on 21st st and over-the-top police presence.

Here?s a thought, help ameliorate the damage your conservative friends in Congress did when they pushed a bill repealing Glass-Steagall allowing deregulation of banks, and the resultant economic disaster: Today is a rally in Union Square to reform the banks. We?ll see ya there!

[AEG]

Re: POLICE-STATE ON 21st STREET!

your conservative friends in Congress did when they pushed a bill repealing Glass-Steagall allowing deregulation of banks

The irony here is that without the repeal of Glass-Steagall the failing investment banks would not have been able to have been purchased by commercial (non-investment) banks. These investment banks would simply have gone under. If you believe that the failing of banks has led to the current economic situation than having Glass-Steagall in place would have caused more banks to go under. Also, regardless of whether you agree with this line of reasoning, Bill Clinton signed-off on the dissolution of the bill (as opposed to vetoing).

Now you can of course respond to this post by calling me any name in the book you associate with those who disagree with you, or you can address the matter posted.

[JS]

Re: POLICE-STATE ON 21st STREET!

AIG,

Like most proles I'm no expert in finance, but overwhelming majorities in both houses hardly gave Clinton a veto (not that he wasn't complicit, but the rabid deregulationists are traditionally conservative republicans, per 'we're all a buncha whiners' Gramm).

It appears investment banking is an extinct industry, good riddance. Put them all on a pyre of their toxic paper with all the other fatcat shysters, from small-time Gordon Gekko corporate raiders, junk-bond dealers, Enron, WorldCom, Kohlberg Kravis, and all the mortgage swindlers... If one silver lining to this thing is the end of finance capitalism as we know it, maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

You know the drill; repealing Glass-Steagall allowed the merging of investment/savings/insurance/brokerages into megalithic institutions creating behemoths of theft 'too big to fail' (or too big to exist, break them up if they're that dangerous), producing junk derivatives and cdo's (specifically allowed by the repeal of Glass Steagall), making billions on bogus cooked-book paper, and selling this vast greed-based timebomb to the world knowing full well it was bound to collapse.

Mortgage peddlers were like drug dealers, Countrywide, the Sandlers, Mozila, all should be jailed, except that what they were doing was apparently perfectly legal, which is the problem. Finance needs to be regulated to smithereens. We've all seen the various lists of the 'culprits of collapse'.

Banksters are obviously no fools, how Thain sold that imploded pile of scrap-metal of Merrill for $50 bn (!), it was genius as Madoff. Which is exactly why you regulate them, you don’t allow them to merge, you don’t try to privatize their ‘assets’ with Geithner’s pppip, rather you break them up and nationalize them, you nationalize the Fed, and make credit a service to people, not a ponzi-scheme by banksters. Proles are simply not smart enough to follow the grand theft of banksters, they clearly can't be trusted with money, and like organized crime, it all needs to be re-regulated.

If you're in finance benefitting now from bailouts, for shame (talk about ‘welfare queens’!). If you're a lobbyist for financial services, you are inhumane-- New legislation proposed last week to reign in credit-card pirates and their 30% interest rates, if lobbyists bribe and graft their way out of this, well we the people want names and addresses this time... The ramifications from their greed by some estimates may cause millions of infant deaths in the developing world.

Likely the monetary system needs complete reform, starting with the shady private central bank. But if you keep populating treasury and the fed with graduates of Goldman (grrrr...) sachs, the vast 'inside job' theft by banksters will never end.

There’s a reason why the ultra-rightist conspiracy theorists are obsessed with some shadow banker conspiracy of Bilderbergers who they think pick presidents and plan world dominion at Bohemian Grove (the latest version of the ‘protocols of the elders of zion’, or the jew pulling all the strings, now that’s anti-Semitism, tarmill!). Banking became a highly sinister business in collusion with government and the fed, and the wrong-headed bailouts of their vile ‘legal crimes’ could have ‘bailed out’ the entire developing world.

Krugman says banking needs to be again a boring business, likely he’s right.

[tarmill]

Re: POLICE-STATE ON 21st STREET!

JS, why don't we do this. Count up how many times you've called me names, then count up how many times I've called you names. Whoever has the greatest number - loses.

You obviously have something against religion, whether you're a Jew or not. You've expressed much hatred towards religious people. That's never acceptable in a civilized society. But you do make the point that if hte world was run by atheists it would surely be worse off than it is with religious people in it. No matter how flawed the religious are they always somehow seem less flawed than the militantly unreligious.

I'm curious how many of your best friends are religious Jews?

Since you didn't have anything particularly thoughtful or insightful to say, I thought you'd enjoy this little video as it characterizes your responses here perfectly:

[JS]

Re: POLICE-STATE ON 21st STREET!

Well that was insightful, and true to form, answered NONE of my points: Religion in politics? Mossadeq? War-crimes? Or how about police states which you so abhor, but willingly sponsored in Latin America.

As to names, let's see... how many names does calling someone a 'Nazi' count for?

And what sort of intelligence calls someone both a nazi and a liberal at the same time? (Or as Rush recently did, both a Stalinist and a McCarthyist at the same time)

Be not so smug, oboma supporters, these are the people who almost got Palin a heartbeat away from the button. They will be b-a-a-a-k.

Indeed the belligerent noise will never ‘Shut Up’, the gift that keeps on grifting:

Billo's favorite line:
“SHUT UP” :

[minnie-me]

Re: POLICE-STATE ON 21st STREET!

JS

HA - Love the video

[JS]

Re: POLICE-STATE ON 21st STREET!

Tarmill:
'Right' Religion?

Coulter on Jews:

"There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest."

~Elie Wiesel

[JS]

Re: POLICE-STATE ON 21st STREET!

Limbaugh Channels Fred Phelps
(Conservatives 'Love' People, eh?)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeJYT...layer_embedded

[minnie-me]

Re: POLICE-STATE ON 21st STREET!

No matter how flawed the religious are they always somehow seem less flawed than the militantly unreligious.

Tar,
Just wondering.....
Does that include the religious Islamic Fundamentalists that attacked us on 9/11?


Maybe it's just me, but that kind of religious fervor doesn't seem "less flawed" then atheism to me.