• From Fox News - Dem senator charged with bribery once claimed Trump cou

    From ?=@21:1/5 to All on Fri Sep 22 16:16:29 2023
    Dem senator charged with bribery once claimed Trump could be
    'compromised' by Russian government

    https://www.foxnews.com/politics/dem-senator-charged-bribery-once- claimed-trump-compromised-russian-government
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  • From justan@21:1/5 to Justan on Tue Sep 26 14:23:08 2023
    On Fri, 22 Sep 2023 16:16:29 -0400 (EDT), Justan <?@ż.com> wrote:

    Dem senator charged with bribery once claimed Trump could be
    'compromised' by Russian government

    https://www.foxnews.com/politics/dem-senator-charged-bribery-once- >claimed-trump-compromised-russian-government

    How sad, and unlike Republicans, who don't mind Trump's corruption and
    lying, the Democrats are calling for him to resign.

    --
    ż


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  • From 3452471@gmail.com@21:1/5 to All on Wed Sep 27 09:24:26 2023
    On Fri, 22 Sep 2023 16:16:29 -0400 (EDT), Justan <?@Âż.com> wrote:

    Dem senator charged with bribery once claimed Trump could be
    'compromised' by Russian government

    https://www.foxnews.com/politics/dem-senator-charged-bribery-once- >claimed-trump-compromised-russian-government

    How about that "judge" in NY?

    "“These are huge towers. I’ve lived in the city my whole life. You can’t just do this because the zoning allows it. I just can’t believe this is the case.”
    — State Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron

    Early in my career, I wrote about the backroom dealmaking that produces state Supreme Court judges. Now, at The Real Deal, I see the havoc these jurists wreak on the city and its real estate industry. It compels me to revisit the tawdry topic of how they
    get to the bench.

    New Yorkers might assume their judges are top-notch legal minds who have reached the pinnacle of the profession. Um, no.

    Many were middling, undistinguished lawyers. You’d almost have to be to subject yourself to the shady, debasing process one must endure for a shot at holding the gavel.

    State Supreme Court judges, who preside over cases big enough to matter to the industry, serve 14-year terms and make $210,900. That adds up to $3 million, not including pension benefits, potential future raises and any additional terms. Beats hustling
    for clients in the backwaters of Brooklyn or toiling away as a law secretary.

    These robed men and women rule on high-stakes real estate disputes and rezonings for projects and entire neighborhoods. Lately, some of their key decisions have been reversed on appeal, which suggests they are not doing a bang-up job.

    Take the quote above by Engoron, who ruled that four towers proposed by JDS Development, L+M Development, CIM Group and Starrett Corporation in the Manhattan neighborhood Two Bridges required a rezoning, even though they complied with the zoning in place.
    If that sounds like sound legal reasoning, I’ve got two bridges to sell you.

    The developers appealed and won. The Appellate Division also overturned recent anti-real estate rulings at SJP Properties’ 200 Amsterdam Avenue and in Inwood, where a sweeping rezoning had been temporarily invalidated because Judge Verna Saunders
    decided the land-use review process should — for the first time in its 30-year history — have included a racial impact study.

    “Part of [the Appellate Division’s] job is to clean up the crap from the trial courts,” said one judicial system veteran. “Frankly, there’s a lot of it.”

    But wait. These judges are elected. Can’t New Yorkers just vote for better judges?

    Again, no. These judicial elections bear no resemblance to democracy. The Democratic county organizations nominate as many candidates as there are Supreme Court openings. If your ballot in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens or the Bronx says “vote for any six
    candidates,” there will be exactly six Democrats. In New York’s Republican counties, the GOP does the same thing.

    “This is an insider game where it’s a question of who you know, not what are your abilities.”
    Lincoln Restler, Brooklyn reformer

    Under the state constitution, this is a partisan process involving a judicial convention. The local political machines have the infrastructure to control it, rendering the annual convention a Soviet-style affair.

    “The whole system is so wrapped up in politics and patronage, there’s no incentive for anyone to relinquish authority,” said Ken Fisher, a land-use attorney at Cozen O’Connor and former City Council member. “Absent some miraculous burst of
    civic leadership out of Albany, there’s no reason to think the system is going to change any time soon.”

    A candidate for judge must round up support from party functionaries. In Brooklyn, 42 Democratic state committee members — known as district leaders — elect a county leader. To keep their loyalty, the county leader fills the judicial slate with
    candidates who have garnered the most support among them. Candidates win that support by attending district leaders’ fundraisers and writing checks.

    That is why in any interview about judge-making in New York, the phrase “chicken dinners” will come up.

    “The idea that you can attend a few chicken dinners … and that determines whether you’re deciding cases of consequence is terribly disappointing and unacceptable,” said Lincoln Restler, a City Council candidate who has tried to reform the system.
    “This is an insider game where it’s a question of who you know, not what are your abilities.”

    “The process is bizarre,” said the court system veteran, who navigated it years ago and spoke on condition of anonymity to protect professional relationships. “Oddly enough, the system produces some very good judges, [but also] a lot of mediocre
    judges and some turkeys.”

    Lawrence Knipel, for example, became a judge because his wife, district leader Lori Knipel, “bulldozed him through,” as the source put it. Fortunately, Knipel turned out to be one of the court’s best judges.

    Noach Dear did not. The late former City Council member, who failed the bar exam repeatedly before getting an exemption to take it untimed, got his judgeship without ever having tried a case. It is not clear that he had even practiced law.

    “It’s not that good judges don’t come out of the system. It’s that the system is not designed to produce the leading scholars,” said Fisher, who once sat on a screening panel created to ensure judicial candidates at least had basic
    qualifications.

    “In the years when I was involved in vetting them, I don’t recall a single assistant district attorney, a single law professor, a single partner in a law firm to even inquire about doing it,” he said.

    Candidates rejected by screening panels can still make it to the bench. Some of them just blow off the panels, calling them rigged.

    Besides judicial incompetence, a second problem is influence. This is where real estate gets hurt. Judges who come through a political process do not get a nod from a political boss in the back of the courtroom, but they tend to be “more sensitive to
    public opinion, more sensitive to the feelings of the people they garnered support from,” said Fisher.

    He was speaking generally, but a case he is handling bears mentioning. Fisher represents a group favoring the de Blasio administration’s Gowanus rezoning plan, which is being held up by Judge Katherine Levine because its public hearings would be held
    on Zoom.

    Early in the case, which is itself being litigated on Zoom, Levine seemed to be just fine with virtual hearings. “That’s life,” she told opponents in January. “That’s Covid.”

    But she has since pondered the matter long enough that the rezoning might not get done before the mayor and Gowanus’ two local City Council members leave office. That would seriously jeopardize its chances, potentially denying developers the right to
    build 8,000 apartments and 20,000 people the opportunity to live in them.

    “The whole system is so wrapped up in politics and patronage,there’s no incentive for anyone to relinquish authority.”
    Ken Fisher, land-use attorney

    Emboldened, opponents of a Bruce Eichner project in Crown Heights are suing on the same grounds. Levine is on that case too. The judge’s beef with Zoom endangers dozens of rezoning applications and billions of dollars’ worth of development.

    As it happens, a politician whose Democratic club put Levine on the bench, Assemblywoman Jo Anne Simon, has demanded that the Gowanus rezoning be paused until in-person hearings can be held.

    I’ve known Simon since she led the Boerum Hill Civic Association in the early 1990s. She later became a district leader and was considered a reformer. She would never call a sitting judge about an active case. Still, her connection with Levine
    undermines public confidence in the case.

    “If the community is up in arms, opposing a development, does that impact judges? Absolutely. They are human beings,” a former Supreme Court judge told me. “But hopefully they are still ruling on the law.”

    Judging by the reversals, some are not. While winning at the trial court matters, lawyers concentrate on getting all their evidence and arguments into the record because the appeals panel cannot consider new material.

    Fisher is now less focused on swaying Levine’s decision than on simply getting her to make one. His enemy is time. Besides, as with most real estate cases, this one is likely to be decided by the Appellate Division.

    By the way, appellate judges are also products of politics: They are picked by the governor, sometimes based upon who is whispering in his ear. But that’s a story for another day."

    ---- Ahh, NY. A cesspool of liberal politics, judges, and general malfeasance. The judge ruling on Trump's civil case is a product of that very system.

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  • From justan@21:1/5 to 3452471@gmail.com on Thu Sep 28 17:49:58 2023
    On Wed, 27 Sep 2023 09:24:26 -0700 (PDT), "345...@gmail.com" <3452471@gmail.com> wrote:


    On Fri, 22 Sep 2023 16:16:29 -0400 (EDT), Justan <?@ż.com> wrote:

    Dem senator charged with bribery once claimed Trump could be
    'compromised' by Russian government

    https://www.foxnews.com/politics/dem-senator-charged-bribery-once-
    claimed-trump-compromised-russian-government

    How about that "judge" in NY?

    "“These are huge towers. I’ve lived in the city my whole life. You can’t just do this because the zoning allows it. I just can’t believe this is the case.”
    — State Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron

    Early in my career, I wrote about the backroom dealmaking that produces state Supreme Court judges. Now, at The Real Deal, I see the havoc these jurists wreak on the city and its real estate industry. It compels me to revisit the tawdry topic of how
    they get to the bench.

    New Yorkers might assume their judges are top-notch legal minds who have reached the pinnacle of the profession. Um, no.

    Many were middling, undistinguished lawyers. You’d almost have to be to subject yourself to the shady, debasing process one must endure for a shot at holding the gavel.

    State Supreme Court judges, who preside over cases big enough to matter to the industry, serve 14-year terms and make $210,900. That adds up to $3 million, not including pension benefits, potential future raises and any additional terms. Beats hustling
    for clients in the backwaters of Brooklyn or toiling away as a law secretary.

    These robed men and women rule on high-stakes real estate disputes and rezonings for projects and entire neighborhoods. Lately, some of their key decisions have been reversed on appeal, which suggests they are not doing a bang-up job.

    Take the quote above by Engoron, who ruled that four towers proposed by JDS Development, L+M Development, CIM Group and Starrett Corporation in the Manhattan neighborhood Two Bridges required a rezoning, even though they complied with the zoning in
    place. If that sounds like sound legal reasoning, I’ve got two bridges to sell you.

    The developers appealed and won. The Appellate Division also overturned recent anti-real estate rulings at SJP Properties’ 200 Amsterdam Avenue and in Inwood, where a sweeping rezoning had been temporarily invalidated because Judge Verna Saunders
    decided the land-use review process should — for the first time in its 30-year history — have included a racial impact study.

    “Part of [the Appellate Division’s] job is to clean up the crap from the trial courts,” said one judicial system veteran. “Frankly, there’s a lot of it.”

    But wait. These judges are elected. Can’t New Yorkers just vote for better judges?

    Again, no. These judicial elections bear no resemblance to democracy. The Democratic county organizations nominate as many candidates as there are Supreme Court openings. If your ballot in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens or the Bronx says “vote for any six
    candidates,” there will be exactly six Democrats. In New York’s Republican counties, the GOP does the same thing.

    “This is an insider game where it’s a question of who you know, not what are your abilities.”
    Lincoln Restler, Brooklyn reformer

    Under the state constitution, this is a partisan process involving a judicial convention. The local political machines have the infrastructure to control it, rendering the annual convention a Soviet-style affair.

    “The whole system is so wrapped up in politics and patronage, there’s no incentive for anyone to relinquish authority,” said Ken Fisher, a land-use attorney at Cozen O’Connor and former City Council member. “Absent some miraculous burst of civic
    leadership out of Albany, there’s no reason to think the system is going to change any time soon.”

    A candidate for judge must round up support from party functionaries. In Brooklyn, 42 Democratic state committee members — known as district leaders — elect a county leader. To keep their loyalty, the county leader fills the judicial slate with
    candidates who have garnered the most support among them. Candidates win that support by attending district leaders’ fundraisers and writing checks.

    That is why in any interview about judge-making in New York, the phrase “chicken dinners” will come up.

    “The idea that you can attend a few chicken dinners … and that determines whether you’re deciding cases of consequence is terribly disappointing and unacceptable,” said Lincoln Restler, a City Council candidate who has tried to reform the system. “This
    is an insider game where it’s a question of who you know, not what are your abilities.”

    “The process is bizarre,” said the court system veteran, who navigated it years ago and spoke on condition of anonymity to protect professional relationships. “Oddly enough, the system produces some very good judges, [but also] a lot of mediocre judges
    and some turkeys.”

    Lawrence Knipel, for example, became a judge because his wife, district leader Lori Knipel, “bulldozed him through,” as the source put it. Fortunately, Knipel turned out to be one of the court’s best judges.

    Noach Dear did not. The late former City Council member, who failed the bar exam repeatedly before getting an exemption to take it untimed, got his judgeship without ever having tried a case. It is not clear that he had even practiced law.

    “It’s not that good judges don’t come out of the system. It’s that the system is not designed to produce the leading scholars,” said Fisher, who once sat on a screening panel created to ensure judicial candidates at least had basic qualifications.

    “In the years when I was involved in vetting them, I don’t recall a single assistant district attorney, a single law professor, a single partner in a law firm to even inquire about doing it,” he said.

    Candidates rejected by screening panels can still make it to the bench. Some of them just blow off the panels, calling them rigged.

    Besides judicial incompetence, a second problem is influence. This is where real estate gets hurt. Judges who come through a political process do not get a nod from a political boss in the back of the courtroom, but they tend to be “more sensitive to
    public opinion, more sensitive to the feelings of the people they garnered support from,” said Fisher.

    He was speaking generally, but a case he is handling bears mentioning. Fisher represents a group favoring the de Blasio administration’s Gowanus rezoning plan, which is being held up by Judge Katherine Levine because its public hearings would be held on
    Zoom.

    Early in the case, which is itself being litigated on Zoom, Levine seemed to be just fine with virtual hearings. “That’s life,” she told opponents in January. “That’s Covid.”

    But she has since pondered the matter long enough that the rezoning might not get done before the mayor and Gowanus’ two local City Council members leave office. That would seriously jeopardize its chances, potentially denying developers the right to
    build 8,000 apartments and 20,000 people the opportunity to live in them.

    “The whole system is so wrapped up in politics and patronage,there’s no incentive for anyone to relinquish authority.”
    Ken Fisher, land-use attorney

    Emboldened, opponents of a Bruce Eichner project in Crown Heights are suing on the same grounds. Levine is on that case too. The judge’s beef with Zoom endangers dozens of rezoning applications and billions of dollars’ worth of development.

    As it happens, a politician whose Democratic club put Levine on the bench, Assemblywoman Jo Anne Simon, has demanded that the Gowanus rezoning be paused until in-person hearings can be held.

    I’ve known Simon since she led the Boerum Hill Civic Association in the early 1990s. She later became a district leader and was considered a reformer. She would never call a sitting judge about an active case. Still, her connection with Levine
    undermines public confidence in the case.

    “If the community is up in arms, opposing a development, does that impact judges? Absolutely. They are human beings,” a former Supreme Court judge told me. “But hopefully they are still ruling on the law.”

    Judging by the reversals, some are not. While winning at the trial court matters, lawyers concentrate on getting all their evidence and arguments into the record because the appeals panel cannot consider new material.

    Fisher is now less focused on swaying Levine’s decision than on simply getting her to make one. His enemy is time. Besides, as with most real estate cases, this one is likely to be decided by the Appellate Division.

    By the way, appellate judges are also products of politics: They are picked by the governor, sometimes based upon who is whispering in his ear. But that’s a story for another day."

    ---- Ahh, NY. A cesspool of liberal politics, judges, and general malfeasance. The judge ruling on Trump's civil case is a product of that very system.




    Please stop cumming on my face! Only Trump is allowed!!
    --
    ż


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