Free Republic

Has Bill de Blasio gone bonkers? The mayor chose to give voice to the rage he and his people have felt over the past month because they think Gov. Cuomo’s budget and policy negotiations with the state Legislature were designed to disempower de Blasio. Which is certainly true. De Blasio wanted to be given control over the city’s schools for the balance of his term; he got it for only a year. He didn’t want new charter schools; he got 25 more shoved down his throat.

Mayor de Blasio lit Gov. Cuomo up Tuesday with a double-barreled blast of political payback. In stunningly frank language, the mayor accused the governor of deliberately thwarting his Albany agenda out of political pique and revenge — and hurting New Yorkers in the process. Hours before leaving on a vacation out West, de Blasio called reporters into his office and spoke calmly in a calculated decision to take off the gloves and reveal the “frenemies” were really enemies.

I’m guessing this is the new face of equality. Or at least a redefinition of sanity. In any case, welcome to the Big Apple, employers! (From the NY Daily News) In front of emotional supporters, Mayor de Blasio signed legislation Monday that will prohibit employers from inquiring about a candidate’s criminal record prior to a job offer.“Today I see hope for people like me,” said Marilyn Scales, 52, of the Bronx, who said she never has had a full-time job because of her record for dealing heroin. As crazy as this may sound, there’s actually a bit more to...

Mayor Bill de Blasio, unleashing months of frustration on Tuesday, said Gov. Andrew Cuomo undermined his Albany agenda and wasn’t focused on New York City residents but instead cared about “deal making” and “revenge.” Mr. de Blasio said he expected more retribution from the governor, a fellow Democrat, for expressing his views Tuesday afternoon, but he said he was prepared to handle it. Mr. de Blasio also said the governor had been disappointing since the mayor endorsed him last year for re-election. ... Melissa DeRosa, a spokeswoman for the governor, said Mr. Cuomo wished the mayor well on his coming...

Suffering from a clear lack of intellectual honesty, the morally bankrupt progressive socialist mayor of New York City seems to have a knack for tax avoidance. (And remember: despite what Harry Reid would have you believe, tax avoidance is not a crime.) According to public records, Bill “punish the rich” de Blasio paid a mere 8 percent of his income in federal taxes. Just to put that in context for any liberal that has accidently stumbled across this paragraph: That’s less than that capitalist pig, Mitt Romney paid in prior years. Of course, to be fair, it is possible...

New York City Democratic mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio has captured the attention of both constituents and political rivals by campaigning against racial profiling by the police and being a vocal proponent of fiscal egalitarianism in the country's wealthiest city. However, there are several aspects of the City Hall hopeful’s personal life that remain unknown to many New Yorkers. 1. He's a Red Sox fan. The New York Yankees have historically kept a tight grip on City Hall, claiming numerous mayors as tried-and-true pinstripes fans, but the mayoral candidate with strong chances of winning the seat confessed to being a...

It really is a tale of two cities — this time with the tony Upper East Side getting the shaft! Huge swaths of the UES had been not been plowed by early Tuesday evening, according to the city’s own map of snow-plower activity. “He is trying to get us back. He is very divisive and political,” said writer and life-long Upper East Side mom Molly Jong Fast of Mayor de Blasio. “By not plowing the Upper East Side, he is saying, ‘I’m not one of them.’ But we have everyone in this area on the Upper East Side. We have rich...

**SNIP** “If government dependence on welfare is rising in a good economy, what’s going to happen in a bad economy?” wondered study author Stephen Eide, who said the trend was antithetical to data dating back to around 1960. The surprising uptick, reformers say, is partly by design. De Blasio’s pick to head the $10 billion Human Resources Administration, Steven Banks, is a proponent of loosening welfare restrictions. With Banks at the helm, the HRA launched a series of sweeping changes in its state-approved Biennial Employment Plan, including changing requirements for welfare recipients with kids younger than 4 years old. Recipients...

Mayor Bill de Blasio spoke in sober terms at a news conference on Saturday at Woodhull Hospital after two police officers were shot and killed in Brooklyn. It is the sequence that every mayor dreads: the ominous report, the scramble to the hospital and the confirmation that, yes, an attack against the police has proved fatal. But for Mayor Bill de Blasio, the tragedy on Saturday — when two police officers were shot and killed in an ambush in Brooklyn, according to the authorities — arrived at a particularly trying moment, amid an already fractious relationship with the police. Police...

The world was a beautiful place as Bill de Blasio folded himself into the front passenger seat of a black SUV. The late-afternoon sun was shining on Park Slope, and a grand political breakthrough was within reach. Sure, it had been a complicated few weeks as Governor Andrew Cuomo and the Working Families Party, bitter codependents, tried to agree on a deal that would give Cuomo the WFP’s ballot line this fall in exchange for the governor’s publicly pledging to get behind a progressive policy agenda. Now, though, thanks in part to de Blasio’s mediation, a compromise was falling into...

Texas Senator Ted Cruz has more than the White House on his mind–he’s also taking a shot at Gracie Mansion. The conservative Republican, a probable presidential contender in 2016, blasted Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, for his educational views in a speech he gave yesterday at the Heritage Action Conservative Policy Summit in Washington, D.C. Mr. Cruz, a supporter of charter schools, said Mr. de Blasio’s opposition to Eva Moskowitz’s charter network amounted to throwing “young African-American kids” out of school. “In my view school choice is the civil rights issue of the 21st century. And I gotta say...

Who's afraid of Mayor Bill de Blasio in Albany? Not state Senate Republicans, who denied his request for permanent mayoral control of New York City schools, granting him one year instead. Not Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who didn't deny he and his team were the unnamed officials in news reports who belittled the mayor as "incompetent" and clueless on influencing the legislative process. Not advocates for charter schools, who won a lifting of a cap for new schools over de Blasio's opposition in the three-way agreement last week among Cuomo, state Senate Republicans and the Democrat-led state Assembly. "There isn't...

Two days after the Supreme Court affirmed gay marriage as a fundamental right, New York City’s pride parade began, appropriately enough, with a wedding. Presiding over the same-sex ceremony, which took place in front of the historic Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village on Sunday afternoon, was New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, according to Newsday. Cuomo, who noted he was officiating his first wedding ceremony, wed Human Rights Campaign staffer David Contreras Turley, 36, and UBS financial analyst Peter Thiede, 35, while a crowd of onlookers cheered and The Beatles’ “Love Is All You Need” played, Newsday reported. The Stonewall...

Mayor Bill de Blasio, in a sharp shift from his initial objections, is poised to hire nearly 1,300 additional officers for the New York Police Department, a surprising addition in a $78.5 billion budget deal announced by city leaders on Monday night. The mayor, who has pledged to improve police-community relations, has long been hesitant to hire more officers, saying he felt comfortable with the city’s near-record-low level of crime. But his administration has come under intense pressure in recent weeks after a notable increase in homicides and shootings compared with the same period last year.

ALBANY - Days after getting the right to marry people, Gov. Cuomo will officiate a same-sex marriage Sunday morning an hour before marching in the city gay pride parade. Cuomo will marry David Contreras Turley, 36, and Peter Thiede, 35. "It’s hard to believe everything that’s happened in the last 24 hours,” Turley told the Daily News on Saturday night. “The opportunity arose for us to get married by the governor, and we couldn’t be happier.” Longtime gay rights activist Edie Windsor, who was part of a landmark Supreme Court decision, will deliver the opening remarks at the ceremony, which...

Two Muslim filmmakers have filed a lawsuit against the operator of New York subways claiming the agency rejected their advertisements under a rule that prohibits disputed political views. They argue the ads have nothing to do with politics and should not be banned. In a lawsuit filed Thursday in Manhattan federal court, the filmmakers, Negin Farsad and Dean Obeidallah, claim the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is violating their First Amendment right to free speech. The two created the advertisements to help promote their 2013 film, “The Muslims Are Coming.” They say the overall message of both the ads and the film...

The street, which runs through the center of Fort Hamilton, New York City's only US military base, was named in honor of Robert E. Lee, who led the Confederate troops during the Civil War

Four people were shot at a Harlem deli Wednesday afternoon, police said. The gunman opened fire inside the 20 Stars deli on East 132nd Street near Madison Avenue around 3:30 p.m., cops said. A 25-year-old man was shot in the head and a 17-year-old man was shot in the torso. The chaos then spilled outside, with the shooter letting off several more shots

Mayor de Blasio declared Sunday that Donald Trump is no real New Yorker, even if the mogul has his name plastered on so many buildings in town. The mayor told reporters that The Donald’s politics were out of line with “the values” of everyone else in the city. De Blasio — who is still refusing to endorse his former boss Hillary Rodham Clinton for president — took the shot at Trump during a Washington Heights press conference in which a reporter asked about the billionaire being the only New York City resident running for the White House. “I don’t think...

Facebook user Seth Torres-Campbell posted a video to his page early yesterday morning that shows two NYPD officers getting punched multiple times by an angry onlooker during what looks like the arrest of a young woman.The woman getting arrested can be seen trying to grab the female NYPD officer’s gun numerous times during the altercation.