From an e-mail sent out by Henry J. Stern about former councilman Stanley Michels, who died this morning at age 75:

Stanley E. Michels, 75, a city councilmember from upper Manhattan for 24 years, died this morning at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center. He had fought cancer for two years.

 

Michels, a longtime resident of Castle Village on Cabrini Boulevard, was elected seven times to the Council, serving from 1978 until term limits ended his tenure in 2001. His district was modified by reapportionment to include parts of Central and West Harlem, but he carried the new areas as well as Washington Heights and Inwood, his traditional bases of support.

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Since the story about her aides channeling money into fake organizations broke, Christine Quinn has stressed that said aides were under direct orders for her not to do so. (She also says she knew about the practice of putting money aside, but not about the phantom organizations).  read more »

Henry Stern is in with another column about Albany politics, in which he finds fault with Albany District Attorney David Soares for saying that the governor did nothing criminal.

From Stern’s column:

We do not know which is worse: the inquisitor before whom everyone is guilty, like Savonarola or Torquemada, or the Three Monkeys, see, hear and speak no evil, before whom everyone is innocent. Probably Soares, who was the Working Families Party candidate for DA against the Democratic organization, represents both worlds.

Soares received substantial campaign contributions from George Soros, the billionaire sponsor of moveon.com. He received the money on the basis of a commitment not to prosecute minor drug offenders, although sometimes state law required it. Soares has lost credibility because of the double standard he takes with different state-wide public officials. His conduct in these cases makes his political ambition another casualty of Troopergate, nee Choppergate.

Henry Stern emailed me yesterday to take issue with the way I characterized his recent column on Eliot Spitzer. (Headline: Henry Stern Sticks a Fork in Spitzer.)

The former city parks commissioner says he's still supporting the governor, and that his criticisms--brutal as they may have been--are intended spur Spitzer to get his act together. Because, as Stern says, Spitzer is "the only governor we have."

Here's his full email:

Thank you from quoting the article I wrote on the governor's problems. I appreciate that.

Please allow me to provide some additional material to your readers. The fork that your headine [sic] said I figuratively stuck into Governor Spitzer in my blog was intended to prod him into action, not to celebrate his being so well cooked he could be devoured.

Your quotes were accurate, but in at least three other places in the blog I urged him to do better and suggested ways that he could.

Here they are:

"We would recommend a vigorous, substantive program of reform, a substantial reduction of state expenditures, and the appointment of persons of stature and courage to his staff and toe the agencies.

Cast a wider net." "...we want both the State and the City to do well. The success of an administration depends on the work of people at the bottom as well as the top. They must be motivated and encouraged to do their best."

"...we want Governor Spitzer to do his best, and we want people to treat him with dignity and respect, in the hope that that will encourage him to do the same. He is, after all, the only governor we have. He deserves a fresh start."

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Former city parks commissioner and longtime political agitator Henry Stern is giving up hope on Eliot Spitzer. In his recent column, emailed to, um, everybody, Stern wrote:

"Through a succession of miscues, Governor Spitzer has forfeited his position of  leadership,  He has made intemperate statements, used foul language at inappropriate occasions, acted and spoken autocratically, denounced colleagues personally, caved where he should have stood firm, engaged recently in Nixonian behavior, and pretended not to know what most rational people think he must have known, for if he did not he was more foolish than they believe him to be.  Compare his public persona with that of a Bloomberg, a Giuliani, or a Koch and observe the difference.

"There is not one public official in the state, Democrat or Republican, who defends the way he has conducted himself.   This is not an ideological issue, he is neither a radical or a reactionary, his ideology, his views are mainstream liberal . Senator Craig did him a great favor by taking people's minds off the governor's travails,and hopefully this will continue for a while."

 

John McCain thinks it isn't enough that Larry Craig is stepping down from his committee assignments in the Senate, and has urged him to resign.

But closer to home, political gadfly Henry Stern thinks Craig should hold onto his seat. In a column Stern just emailed around, he wrote:

The voters of the State of Idaho are Craig's employers. They can vote him out when he comes up for re-election in 2008. He has been an elected official for 33 years. Should he resign now, for having deceived the voters for a generation? I would think not. If every public official who fooled the voters had to resign his position, there would be more special elections to fill vacancies than regular elections. And the people who won the special elections might also deceive the voters.

If local precedent is any guide, Stern has a point. After all, how many members of the New York State legislature are holding onto their committee assignments after having been indicted or arrested?

"No commissioner has been publicly fired in the last four years, no matter how many innocent people are killed as a result of employee failures on his or her watch."

For example, it's hard to think of a first-term snafu on the scale of yesterday's property tax embarassment. Maybe Mike was feeling the need to assert control.

Henry Stern writes on his Web site:

This, Stern says, makes a "coup" less likely. Whew.