Back in 2004 I remember all the hullabaloo about the Brennan Center report calling Albany the most dysfunctional legislature in the nation. This dysfunction is like a disease which has infected almost every aspect of government down to New York’s Workers’ Compensation Board.

From Consumer Reports:

The New York Times starts a new series today examining the challenges faced by injured workers in New York State, as they deal with the vast bureaucracy that is the state’s Workers’ Compensation Board. According to the paper, which spent 18 months investigating the issue, the $5.5 billion agency is a “subbasement of the legal world,” that “struggles to treat workers with due speed, protect employers from fraud or mute tensions in the workplace.”

When you click over to the NY Times article there is a paragraph that clearly links the dysfunction of the legislature to the other parts of New York’s government.

Though its commissioners largely function as a legal tribunal, most are not lawyers but relatives or allies of politicians, appointed usually without regard to experience in the field.

Is this “heckuva job Brownie” at the state level we’re witnessing? Now I know for a fact that there are some good Republicans and Democrats in Albany but clearly there aren’t enough good government types there to change things yet.

I happened to see that the blog Uptown Flavor had linked to a post of mine about how Harlem is not for sale. In that blog post of mine, I in turn was referencing a post on NYC Indymedia about the protests and rallies that recently occurred in Harlem concerning gentrification.

In the post on Uptown Flavor where they link to me, they also have the above Youtube video featured as well. The video is really informative and shows what people in Harlem are up against. One thing they’re up against is the Halliburton of Harlem and the Bechtel of the Bronx, the Pinnacle Group. I’ve written about the Pinnacle Group before so I won’t go into them too much again. The reason I associate Pinnacle with Halliburton and Bechtel is to describe the executives of Pinnacle as sociopathic and therefore interchangeable with any of these evil corporations. They could even go work for Wal-Mart, Blackwater, Monsanto or ExxonMobil!

In the video there is a scene where a woman who is currently paying $700 a month in a rent controlled apartment is now constantly pressured to leave by Pinnacle. Now, with the cost of rent skyrocketing over the past few years in NYC I can understand the animosity that corporatists like Pinnacle would hold towards people living in rent controlled units, but the reality is that even $700 a month can be a lot for people! Not only for low income people but even for middle class people! Where would you have this woman go? Of course that’s not Pinnacle’s problem. What do they care that they ride the wave of creating two New York City’s or even two New York States? One where all who can afford it, live in luxury housing in areas that are now considered to be “the place to be” while those who can’t afford it, are tossed out to make room for more of those luxury apartments.

Of course to be fair the Pinnacle Group is but one of many developers and real estate firms looking to bring in the wealth and get rid of the rest. I actually think that another person in the video put it best when they said that they really need to ensure that the plans for the new developments in Harlem aren’t just gentrification in disguise and “a plan to remove us sending us nowhere”. No matter where gentrification is done whether it’s New York or DC the problem is that there will be many people removed with nowhere to go. Sure the Pinnacle Group must look at that woman as a “freeloader” who is getting a nice apartment for seven hundred dollars a month, but she has to live somewhere and she’s been there for a long time. She also has to be able to buy food too! There’s a reason rent control was implemented in the first place.

What’s also another troubling scene in the video is the fact that three New York City council people that represent Harlem voted for a rezoning plan (I believe for 125th Street) that does nothing to really help the current residents, but does a lot for the developers. It was initially said that half of the new housing would be available at an affordable price. It turns out that only five percent will be affordable housing. What those three city councilors voted for amount to a crime against the people of Harlem. I think what the people in that area have to do is run primary campaigns against those three city councilors. Someone needs to run on an affordable housing, smart development and progressive platform. Someone also needs to look at campaign contributions and see what councilors are taking money from real estate developers, then publicize it. You also have to organize people and make sure everyone is registered to vote.

Technorati : harlem, ny, pinnacle group