With Big Bucks Out To Hijack Truth and Broadcasting Integrity- The Daily Show and Bill Moyers Set Models for WNYC Radio

October 29, 2014, Jon Stewart takes on the Koch's when they advertise on his show.

This October when the Koch Brothers ponied up $$$$ to muscle in on the Daily Show (broadcast on a commercial network- Comedy Central) to gain influence through paid-for advertising spots, Jon Stewart pushed back scathingly with a brilliant “adjusted” version of the Koch's own commercial, torpedoing the Koch ad by sinking it in proper context, i.e. the pertinent facts of what the Koch’s are actually up to.  (See: Democalypse 2014 - South by South Mess: Ad of Brothers, October 29, 2014.)

Bravo!

A Model for Public Broadcasters, Maybe WNYC Public Radio?

That raises the question of what happens when similarly objectionable sponsors hope their money plus messages will hijack the public’s reliance on the integrity that people expect from public broadcasting, integrity we expect partly because so many of us ante up our own contributions so that such broadcasting will be paid for largely by our own listener dollars.. . .   The fracking industry has been paying public radio to run its pro-fracking “think about it”campaign. David H. Koch, a heavy funder of climate science denial, sponsors, with mysterious intention ,“Nova,” a premier PBS science program. And David Koch has been put on public broadcasting boards!  Where is Stewart’s spirited, contextual, integrity-regaining push-back against such sponsorships on these non-commercial public networks?

Similarly, what does public radio station WNYC do when $$$$$ is flashed by an objectionable and powerful entity intent on selling fictions about itself?  Do they perhaps put that entity’s Chief Operating Officer on its policy-setting board and send out a press release that spiffs up that CEO’s reputation, if that, in fact, is the very least they do?  (Would that be a poor attempt to follow in the steps of the Daily Show to evoke laughter?). . .

. . .  At least $$$$$$ is the presumed reason that people believe that MaryAnne Gillmartin, the CEO of our local real-estate-subsidy-pursuer Forest City Ratner, was recently appointed as a WNYC trustee, because people can see no other explicable reason for her appointment other than $$$$$ and see lots a reasons why she should definitely not have been appointed to such a position.   See: Sunday, November 16, 2014, Is Forest City Ratner, As Victor, Writing Our History?- WNYC's Press Release on Appointing Forest City Ratner's MaryAnne Gilmartin to Its Board of Trustees and  Tuesday, November 18, 2014, Was Forest City's Gilmartin appointed to WNYC board because of "passion for public radio" or fundraising help?

The Message to Send Back

How does one push back effectively?

For the Daily Show the vehicle was humorous satire, but the “adjusted” Koch brothers commercial the Daily Show crew created provides a model for what to do when someone comes knocking at your door seeking to buy what will be perceived as true.  Such a response doesn’t necessarily have to be couched in satire. . . . And the essence of the Daily Show’s tactical response applies quite well to the ways that Forest City Ratner can be outed when it lies about itself.

The `adjusted’ Koch brothers commercial, with some helping emphasis from Stewart’s bantering introduction to it, let us know:

    •    Who the Kochs are really are behind this offered veil, a not so friendly giant that’s far too eagerly controlling far too many aspects of our environment.
    •    That their commercial is the facile purchase of a cheerily false veneer of happiness, a virtual “smile factory” to generate a “how bad could they be” message.
    •    That, in a shadowy way, they deploy a spider web of dark money that buys our elections and politicians.
    •    That the ad is far more important for what it leaves out than for what it includes.
    •    The ad has a 180 degree from the truth message: We are making your (the listeners’) lives better, instead of, in actuality, destroying much of the essential environment and natural ecosystem around you.
    •    There is a scary ubiquity, omnipresence, inescapable dominance on the part of the sponsor, relegating or exiling the rest of us to potential non-entity status.
    •    That even our thoughts and basic understanding of the truth is at risk as these entities work to indoctrinate all, even our innocent children, to believe their manufactured falsehoods and seek to commandeer and rewrite our sources of knowledge.
    •    That, in their view, everything, every aspect of us, is up for their monetizing grabs.
    •    That they are unfair to the average worker they employ, offering low wage jobs.
    •    That they are: “The next generation of robber barons bending the democratic process to our will.”

(While the description above is generated from viewing the Daily Show segment about the Kochs, the hyperlinks are all set up to document the similarities to the Forest City Ratner organization.)

Another Choice Video, Another Model for WNYC

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Indecision Political Humor,The Daily Show on Facebook

(Above: Democalypse 2014 - South by South Mess: Ad of Brothers, October 29, 2014, click through to Daily Show for best viewing).

If you haven't already watched this four-minute Daily Show segment I highly recommend that you do and I don't think that my analytic summary above will subtract from your chortles or appreciation of what an exquisitely structured piece it is.  . . .

I have another choice segment of exquisitely constructed video, 22 minutes, that I am going to urge you to watch that I will discuss here as a second model for where WNYC should want to head in dealing with Forest City Ratner and the New York City real estate industry in general.  This one is from another broadcaster, Bill Moyers.  I specifically cited it as such an example in an email I sent to WNYC president Laura Walker in follow-up to talking with her after the last WNYC trustees meeting.



(Above: Full Show: The Long, Dark Shadows of Plutocracy, November 28, 2014- transcript available at this link- click through to Moyers & Company for optimal viewing.)
 
First let me set the scene a bit.

WNYC Community Advisory Board Meetings

November 18, 2014 WNYC Community Advisory Board meeting.  Attendance of New Tech City's  Manoush Zomorodi (facing, far right) was featured.

Some of us who considered absurdity together with danger to be inherent in Ms. Gilmartin’s appointment to WNYC’s policy-setting board went to the last two WNYC Community Advisory Board meetings (October 20, 2014 and November 18, 2014) to comment and object.  By the second of these two meetings the advisory board was beginning to weigh and think about our objections.  Unfortunately, the advisory board is no more than advisory; it doesn’t run things and can only relay to the board of trustees that does run things the feedback gotten from the public.  Unfortunately, the Community Advisory Board’s reports to the WNYC trustees board are only annual.   The next report including these objections won't go to the trustees until October of 2015!

At the October 20, 2014 Community Advisory Board meeting there was a presentation about sister station WQXR's aspirations/ambitions

December 3, 2014 WNYC Trustees Meeting

December 3, 2014 WNYC Trustees Meeting

No matter, some of us then went to the December 3, 2014 WNYC trustees meeting, the first trustees meeting held since Ms. Gilmartin was placed on the board. Ms. Gilmartin sat in a seeming position of honor right next to Laura R. Walker, board member, President & CEO of WNYC who conducted most of the meeting.  Ms. Gilmartin sat somewhat sullenly without speaking, probably aware that objections had been raised about her appointment.  When I spoke with President Walker afterwards she said that, because seating at the meeting was not assigned, nothing should be inferred from who was sitting where, but she refused to say who sat next to whom first respecting Ms. Gilmartin and herself.

Second and third from left, Walker and Gilmartin seated next to each other

While the WNYC board apparently hadn’t heard from the Community Advisory Board, a number of the members, Ms. Walker included, were expecting us and knew why we were there.  Even so, apparently not all the members were similarly aware and the Noticing New York’s article about Ms. Walker’s appointment had not been distributed to all the trustees.

An opportunity for public comment was not part of the meeting, but Ms. Walker noted that the public could approach and speak with the trustees who lingered after the meeting's executive session (during which the public had to exit the room).  Returning afterwards is when I spoke with Ms. Walker and an assisting staff member.

I was told that Ms. Gilmartin’s appointment had been in the works for more than a year.  Although I pressed for an answer, Ms. Walker would not say whether anyone had raised the obvious likely objections to Ms. Gilmartin’s appointment other than to let me understand that there had been discussions about Ms. Gilmartin's qualifications.  I asked, and Ms. Walker said that she had known Ms. Gilmartin for a number of years.

At the meeting, and outside of it afterwards, there was discussion about a gala (including what to wear) and, outside the board meeting room, there was also some discussion about how there was a lot of money in the borough of Queens, as in Flushing, that was not and ought to be represented on the NYC board.  As we were there to say that representation of actual people and listeners ought to be represented in the composition of WNYC’s board, not Forest City Ratner’s money, I was sensitive to the phraseology that there was “money” in New York City that needed to be represented on the board.

This dispersal of board members after the meeting was rapid.  I did not get to have much in the way of conversation with very many, but one of the board members who said he was aware of the controversy about the Gilmartin appointment said that he did not have any problem with it because he thought that Ms. Gilmartin and her interests should be represented on the board as part of representing the interests of “all New Yorkers.”

My Noticing New York point of view is that WNYC and public broadcasting is intended to be an alternative to the relentless expression of commercial speech and is not supposed to be setting up a he-said/she-said balance on its board between all of the city’s commercial interests and those of the public.  There is also concern that with any such `balance' it will shift inexorably in the direction of the commercial interests represented.

Kurt Andersen Interview of  Cultural Affairs Commissioner Tom Finkelpearl

Left Cultural Affairs Commissioner Tom Finkelpearl.  Right Studio 360's Kurt Andersen

As if to emphasize the intersection of NYC's coverage of news and culture in New York with governance and politics, a centerpiece of the publicly held  portion of the trustees meeting was a half hour interview of NYC Cultural Affairs Commissioner Tom Finkelpearl.  He was interviewed by Kurt Andersen, known for his "Studio 360" program broadcast in prime slots in the station's line up.  Andersen quipped that without the editing and typical winnowing of a typical "Studio 360" interview (talking for an hour but getting the best ten minutes) he and Mr. Finkelpearl were not going to sound nearly as good as what usually goes out on the air.  It was, indeed, odd to hear Mr. Andersen's familiar voice associated with a face I might not have guessed went with it.  Present in the room with him, he didn't sound quite so perky.  If you'd like to listen to Mr. Andersen, "Studio 360" did an absolutely brilliant, recently rebroadcast, 2013 hour about the Disney Company parks that included discussion of urban planning issues, but not in ways that would relate those issues obviously to NYC.

Agenda for Trustees meeting

Commissioner Finkelpearl, a pleasant, erudite fellow may be familiar to our readers as he has gone to bat several times to speak on behalf of "Spaceworks."  Noticing New York views the Spaceworks very differently since the private Spaceworks firm, formed at the end of the Bloomberg administration (and not covered by WNYC yet) albeit "nonprofit," seems to have a decided real estate bent and has declared as one of its primary missions the acquisition and shrinkage of New York City Library space as "underutilized."

The Finkelpearl/Andersen interview discussing how culture and economics interrelate generally got around to discussing real estate, specifically Hudson Yards, which, as it is a thematic sister to Forest City Ratner's Atlantic Yards, should have been reason for Ms. Gilmartin's ears to perk up.  Conversely, might Mr. Finkelpearl's perception of Ms. Gilmartin have gotten an adjustment from sitting across from her that morning?  Hudson Yards is fewer acres and in many ways not as bad as Atlantic Yards, but similar vintage, both being mega, single developer projects sired under Bloomberg.

The discussion of Hudson Yards came up in the context of the millions of dollars the city is spending in terms of "partnerships" with cultural institutions and how culture, in the likely form of a governmentally assisted institution ($75 million), could be integral to moving the huge, single-developer Hudson Yards project along.

Back to David Koch

Concluding the Finkelpearl session, trustees were able to put their own questions to the Commissioner and the first as about whether Mayor de Blasio cares sufficiently about the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  Mr. Finkelpearl said this was not true, recounting that the department was actively involved with the Met and that he police commissioner had gotten involved with the issue of food cart vendors outside of the Met.  The issue has been exacerbated by the opening of the new (publicly protested) David H. Koch plaza outside the Met and is one that David Koch, living nearby, is speculated to be one he takes a personal interest in. Koch thought the old fountains outside the Met were "crummy" and  says of the replacement scheme "I suggested the whole project," reportedly getting into the "micro-details" of it.  We heard Mr. Finkelpearl explain that the Met gets $24 million a year from Cultural Affairs plus often getting "large capital investments."  City schools get $22 million yearly from the department.

Mention here of David Koch provides an opportune segue to discuss the Bill Moyers segment I recommend and the email I sent about it to Ms. Walker.

The Koch brothers represent the essential epitome of the fossil fuel industry and its outsized power.  In my email communication to Laura Walker about omissions that weaken WNYC’s coverage I cited, by example (you see how I detailed this in the actual email I sent below), the new episode of Moyers & Company that addressed itself to the outsized power of the real estate industry in New York City.  One point made during the Moyers show was the equivalency of the real estate industry  vis-à-vis New York City to the overbearing influence of the oil and fossil fuel industry nationally.

Putting Ms. Walker on the Spot

Compensation information for WNYC president Laura Walker from station's 2012 990 IRS filing

You may perhaps observe that my questions in my email below put Ms. Walker very firmly on the spot.  Before feeling too sorry for her consider that she is paid big bucks for these decisions and presumably to take the heat for it.  WNYC’s most recent IRS 990 forms on file with the Guidestar service (signed 05/14/2014) show that Ms. Walker’s reportable compensation for 2012 was $559,838 in addition to which she received from WNYC that year another $98,178 in the category of deferred compensation and non taxable benefits, for a total compensation package back in 2012 of $658,016 for her estimated 35.5 hours of work per week.  (Her salary, $486,688 in June 2007, was last noticed by Gawker in 2009, so it’s been going up a bit.)


In point of reference, talk show host mainstays Leonard Lopate and Brian Lehrer were paid for that reported year, $236,211 and $287,084, respectively (plus, respectively, $25,219 and $31,900 in the category of deferred compensation and non-taxable benefits).

My Followup Email to Ms. Walker

From Noticing New York's December 24, 2013 coverage (like Moyers) of the plutocratic towers casting shadows on Central Park- Slide promoting Skyscraper Museum Show-"View of Central Park from One57"

Here is my email to Ms. Walker:

Dear Ms. Walker,

When we talked after the WNYC board meeting yesterday you said that if there were ways I thought that WNYC could be doing a better job covering and addressing issues that I believe need to be addressed in this city I should let you know and that you would relay my thoughts to the WNYC editorial board assuring me that, notwithstanding the recent appointment of Forest City Ratner CEO MaryAnne Gilmartin as a trustee to WNYC's policy-setting board, that the listeners of WNYC will get the coverage of important issues that is deserved.

In that regard, I call to your attention a new episode of Moyers & Company: The Long, Dark Shadows of Plutocracy, Aired: 11/28/2014.

Although Moyers & Company is an independently produced nationally syndicated program that deals with issues of national importance I think you will observe that the entirety of this particular 22-minute program focuses on a series of connected concerns that are all local New York City issues, the kind that it would be the natural province of WNYC, our city public radio station, to cover.

This Moyers & Company episode, in a connecting-the-dots fashion showing the interrelationships, zeros in and seamlessly addressees all of the following issues:

    •    Increasing wealth inequality in NYC with the ascension of a privileged elite buying power to create an increasingly unlevel playing field that's being taken advantage of to create more power and wealth inequality.  (i.e. the  "dark shadow of plutocracy")
    •    The invasion of a significant public commons with its sacrifice to privileged private interests.  In this case that public commons is specifically, but also somewhat symbolically, the example of Central Park.  It is important to remember that WNYC similarly represents a significant public commons.
    •    Reminders of how our collectively shared commons represent the experience of democracy and its effective functioning.
    •    An elucidating equation of the power of the real estate industry in NYC with the all too influential national oil industry centered in Texas.
    •    How this disequilibrium translates into bad urban design and degraded living conditions for the average New Yorker with developer greed driving that detriment.
    •    An analysis of how the "Swiss bank account money" fueling these subtractions from the public good (per New York Magazine's "Stash Pad" cover story) likely doesn't pull its weight in contributing to the local economy, notwithstanding former Mayor Michael Bloomberg's defense of the super-rich and his political urging that the NYC economy be channeled in this direction.
    •    That, because of political machinations and dodgy deals in Albany linked to questionable campaign contributions, democracy and the public interest is being sold out in these regards, which means that these wealthy luxury apartment owners who very frequently don't pay local income taxes also very dramatically escape a proper shouldering of their fair share of real estate taxes.
    •    How the Moreland Commission, set up to investigate abuse and corruption in Albany politics, was focusing on these exact city real estate industry issues when it was dismantled by Governor Andrew Cuomo as it got too close to his own conduct in regard to these particulars.
    •    How the imbalances in the way we are managing our public resources is resulting in a less diverse, increasingly exclusive city with the needs of significant sectors of the population being insufficiently or completely unsupported.
    •    Some thought about what makes for effective public protest and countering political actions in the face of these things.

I doubt that you would disagree that all of these concerns plus the way that they are interconnected are of vital interest to New York City's populace and WNYC's listeners.  I therefore invite you to submit this Moyers episode to your editorial board and ask them when WNYC has covered these issues and their interrelation with similar comprehension and vigor.  I also ask you and the editorial board to identify when WNYC has subjected the Forest City Ratner organization and its activities that very much affect the city to the same kind of careful scrutiny.

I recognize that pieces of much of the above have been covered in fits and starts from time to time by various WNYC programs.

Brian Lehrer, for example, has (almost unavoidably) independently covered such topics as "stash pads" and the luxury towers casting shadows into Central Park, and has also had some excellent discussion about Governor Andrew Cuomo's dissolution of the Moreland Commission. Still, given that WNYC intends to be a station that prides itself on long-format, in-depth and analytical, in-context reporting, where is the kind of in depth reporting from WNYC that, like the Moyers story, pulls these things together, interrelating them for the kind of comprehensive overview that begs to be made?

I've covered much of what the Moyers episode addresses in Noticing New York, routinely making most of the same connections, and I do so because it has been my priority to deal with what I believe is most critically in need of being addressed in terms of New York City development, governance and politics.  That NNY coverage has been possible despite the fact that financially Noticing New York is essentially a shoestring, zero-budget operation.  So it doesn't take money.

Yesterday I repeated to you the suggestion made by one of the public attendees at the last WNYC Community Advisory Board meeting, that if comes to a question money (one of the CAB members suggested money was at the root of certain practices in question) that WNYC should simply consider "doing less with greater integrity."

A side note before concluding:  I realize that in holding out to you the Moyers work as an example, I may be undermining arguments I have recently been making because: 1.) It involves commendable actions recently taken by the Municipal Art Society although I have criticized MAS to the extent to which they, with board changes of their own, have abdicated- or reversed- much of the core mission MAS once pursued, and 2.) the broadcast came to New Yorkers via WNET Public television which I have criticized for not covering the the real estate industry issues that beset the city.  Quite true, but: A.) MAS could hardly ignore the magnitude of the issue (even if it is interesting that after the 1980s TimeWarner building construction battle precursing this more recent tower shadows issue was not completely won, MAS appointed that questionable building's architect as its board chair), and B.) As a nationally syndicated program the Moyers show bypassed the local editorial board, and was not a product of it.

I am thankful for WNYC's coverage of such local development issues and associated politics whenever it is clearly good, which it can be, but I am taking you up on your offer to communicate what needs and ought to be better, gaps that need to be filled.   Please let me know and direct my attention accordingly, if I have overlooked WNYC coverage that would match up to the story that Moyers & Company just produced.  Likewise, do let me know if you think that there has been rigorous coverage of Forest City Ratner that is comparable.  If that's not the case, I'd be delighted to hear that you are communicating to the WNYC editorial board that there are standards toward which they yet need to strive with the expectation of beneficial results to follow.

Thank you for your attention.

Above and below from the Moyers report

 "Masculine" vs. "Feminine" News, What's Most Important To Cover

Years ago, I heard on public radio (I was traveling and I am not sure it was WNYC and cannot retrieve more facts) a fascinating speech by a prominent national female news anchor of the time.  I am guessing that the speaker might have been Diane Sawyer and that this was in the 1990s.  She spoke about what is perceived as  “male” or “masculine” news, which was considered “hard” news and more important than what was considered “female” or “feminine” news.  Political news was generally viewed as falling into the “masculine” news category that also frequently preoccupied itself with headlines about crises that might be covered with relatively short spans of attention from the media.  Conversely, “female” or “soft” news, often dismissively viewed, tended to focus on the very intricate texture and meaning of our daily lives, often in ways that might help foreshadow or help us comprehend and prevent crises.

I remember coming away from hearing the speech with a very deep respect for the importance of this deeper, more contextual, background kind of news often viewed as “feminine” and inferior.

Fluffy News to Put You to Sleep?

That being said, I am beginning to wonder whether there has been a programming shift at WNYC to the less substantial, less meaningful, the kind of stuff that life-style commercial networks already cover with more than sufficient adequacy.  I asked Ms. Walker what she thought the purpose was of including Ms. Gilmartin in a July 15, 2014 Brian Lehrer segment about how to get a better night’s sleep.  At the time that of that broadcast Ms. Walker and her board were obviously, based on what she said, considering honoring Ms. Gilmartin with an appointment to the WNYC board.  Ms. Walker did not really have an adequate answer, except to say that Ms. Gilmartin was just there as another female executive although I pointed out that her appearance in that segment alongside Arianna Huffington, head of the Huffington Post and AOL was obviously burnishing for Gilmartin’s reputation.

Background IS Indeed Important News

I actually view politics as being deeply imbued in the fabric, texture and background of our lives, what might be considered the feminine, often dismissed side of the news cycle.  Ergo, Ms. Gilmartin’s appearance in the context of that segment has political meaning.  Similarly, the background urban environment in which we live and the meaning it gives our lives is important, part of what we pay attention to and the decisions we must make when we govern ourselves.  For instance: Aren’t landmarks an important part of the way we feel and emotionally connect to the city in which we live?  It appeared the real estate industry had inveigled the de Blasio administration to do a massive, wholesale “de-calendering” of all of the landmarks now before the city Landmarks Commission to preserve, a total of about 100, jettisoning years of work by preservationists. . . New York Times architectural critic Michael Kimmelman posted to Facebook that it was “a sop to the real estate industry and the opposite of transparent, especially without a public hearing.”  

Indeed, done en masse under the vague “housekeeping” rubric, attested to an intention to hide exactly who was intended to be benefitted by whatever the juiciest handouts were in the group, but it was a safe bet that there were at least several really juicy ones, one of them perhaps the intention to build yet one more in the parade of supper tall towers south of the park at the site of the 57th and 5th Avenue’s Bergdorf Goodman!

. . . The Brian Lehrer show didn’t get around to covering the potential disaster but, thankfully, the plan was set aside after massive opposition anyway.  The Leonard Lopate show got around to it after the fact, almost too late.

Moyers Watching Stewart

Moyers commenting favorably on Stewart's treatment of his Koch sponsors

Will Jon Stewart’s bite the hand that sponsors you by assembling appropriate truth-telling adjustments catch on with public media?  Stewart’s push-back apparently did catch the eye of one public broadcasting veteran, none other than Bill Moyers himself.  Days after the Daily Show segment aired, the Billmoyers.com website put up a post with a link back to the Daily Show observing how Stewart had meted out his  honest helping of justice for the Kochs’ “series of treacly, feel-good commercials touting all the wonderful things the company does to make our lives better.”

The Goldman Sachs commercial that pops up links to more video promotion for Goldman, including its involvement with huge real estate projects in New York City.

There’s work for Moyers to do in this regard because the efforts of $$$$$ to encroach are everywhere. . .  It’s ironic, but when I clicked to watch “The Long, Dark Shadows of Plutocracy” what I got first before it started to play was a “treacly, feel-good commercial” for Goldman Sachs and company “touting all the wonderful things the company does to make our lives better.”   As written about previously here in Noticing New York, Goldman, including a subsidy-abusive real estate manipulation to build its own NYC office tower, was squarely targeted by Moyers in at least one previous Moyers broadcast.

Does this go in the “you just can’t win” category?  I’d like to think that Moyers has dished out far better than he has been subjected to, that his integrity is as mightily intact as it appears to be, and that at this point he is miles ahead of those who spend to piggy-back on his message, hoping to neuter the truth he offers. . .  That he, like Jon Stewart, may still be thought of as setting a good example for WNYC.

PS:  Something for Noticing New York to do next?:  Look more carefully at the composition of the rest of the WNYC board to consider whether we can expect there to be adequate checks and balances to the kind of influences that come with appointments like Ms. Gilmartin's.

The Petition To Save The Libraries Is Working: Confirming Petition Points BPL Head Linda Johnson, Library Officials Trip Up Defending Plans

What could Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein have to do with the plan of the trustees of the Brooklyn Public Library to sell off and shrink libraries, the Brooklyn Heights Library and others, in highly finagled real estate deals benefitting developers?  Read on.

The petition seems to be working.

The petition I am referring to is the Citizens Defending Libraries petition: Save New York City Libraries From Bloomberg Developer Destruction, with which I am involved, now with about 7,900 signatures.  It protests how New York City libraries are being sold and underfunded and the city’s library system shrunk because the system has now shifted to a new focus: the creation of real estate deals for developers.

Why do I think the petition is working?  Because the Daily News has been covering the story and the head of the Brooklyn Public Library, Linda Johnson, and library officials are tripping up defending their plans.  The more public statements they put out there the more they succeed in confirming major points made in the petition and which have also been reported in articles appearing here in Noticing New York.

The Daily News ran the first library article in a recent series of library shrinkage articles.  It focused on the petition and one of its objections, the shrinking of the Brooklyn Heights library (where Brooklyn Heights meets downtown Brooklyn at 280 Cadman Plaza) on Sunday, February 17, 2013: Coming to Brooklyn Heights: the incredible shrinking library, patrons and residents charge-  Controversial plan to sell library building to private developer who will build apartment tower over it, by Lore Croghan.   At that time, as the article reports, the petition had about 900 signatures.  My wife Carolyn and I both appeared in the article and accompanying pictures as proponents of the petition.

That first Daily New story explained how the Brooklyn Heights library is being shrunk. The shrinking involves a proposed deal to turn the library property over to a developer (very possibly Forest City Ratner) to build a very tall tower that is supposed to have a much smaller library in it when completed.  The current Brooklyn Heights library is actually two libraries functioning on an integrated basis. One of them is the neighborhood’s branch library.  The plan includes booting the other, the Business and Career library, out of its traditional Downtown Brooklyn central business district location, at the hub of transportation and adjacent to borough universities.  To the questionable extent that the booted-out library continues to exist afterwards it will be jammed into the more remote main branch library in Prospect Heights near the park, making that library effectively smaller.

The current Brooklyn Heights library is 62,000 square feet.  The replacement is being spoken of as being a projected 15,000 to 16,000 square feet.  Library officials assert that the plan would in essence cut the size of the library only in half because the library contains space not currently directly accessed by the public and space they say the library has not chosen to fully utilize (there is space, not opened to the public that was originally a bomb shelter.)

The administration officials for the library have acknowledged that the Business and Career library ought to be keeping longer hours as it and other libraries did in the past (and still ought to be doing).  According to information from those officials, the planned exile of the Business library would facilitate having relatively shorter hours at the branch library remaining afterwards in Brooklyn Heights.  They have chosen to express this as a positive, saying that the Business and Career library might go back to relatively longer hours after it is moved.

We told the Daily News reporter that both the petition and the problem of the shrinkage of the library system and sell-off of libraries to developers was city-wide, not confined to Brooklyn Heights.  That was not the story the reporter wanted to cover at that time.  There will be more about how the Daily News is reporting that much bigger story a little later in this article.

The next article in the recent Daily News series of library articles ran eight days later when the petition signatures had climbed by may thousands.  Library CEO Linda Johnson, having her say, defended the shrinkage plan, telling the Daily News that in about four years (the time they are perhaps optimistically estimating it will take to provide a new library):

“we hope people’s objections are going to disappear when they have a better experience” in the new library.

(See: Brooklyn Public Library CEO Linda Johnson says downsized Brooklyn Heights branch will silence critics - Part of plan announced last month to sell the building to a private developer who will tear down the 50-year-old facility and construct an apartment tower with library branch inside, by Lore Croghan, Monday, February 25, 2013)

Johnson depicted her envisioned future as if it was a done deal, furnishing details of the design:

 . . a light-filled facility full of patron-pleasing technology. .

The new Heights library will be an open space with few walls, Johnson said, describing “space that’s flexible to accommodate new technology we don’t even know about.”

It will have space for community gatherings, spots where patrons can work together — and room for the branch’s book, DVD and film collections.

The next day the Daily News ran an article about how, starting in just months, there will be a more than 50% shutdown of the library, cutting its hours down by more than half in response to what officials cite as supposedly insurmountable air conditioning problems.  See: Brooklyn Heights Library patrons are going to be fired up over cuts in hours this summer: branch expects to be open only half-time because of air-conditioning troubles–  Will further inflame residents who are already angry about Brooklyn Public Library's plan to sell off the valuable Court St. site to a private developer, who would build an apartment tower that includes reduced-size library, by Lore Croghan, Tuesday, February 26, 2013, 8:12 PM

The new library hours would be 8:00 AM to 1:00 PM and the latest word from the library officials is that the library would no longer be open Saturdays.  Not mentioned in the article is that the library will “redeploy” the library’s staff elsewhere.  Would the library be reopened after the summer?  With the staff redeployed in the shutdown and library officials announcing their plan to ink a deal handing the library off to a developer before December 31, 2013 (the last day of Mayor Bloomberg’s term) that is an unlikely assumption.  After the Donnell Library in Manhattan (closed for sale and 50% shrinkage in 2008) sat idle for years local residents asked City Council for a law to compel its reopening.  It never happened.  Open libraries generate constituencies that tend to get in the way of furthering real estate sell-offs.  (During the Brooklyn Heights branch multi-year closure there would be a really small temporary replacement of perhaps 5,000 square feet.)

What are library officials telling the public?  Visitors to the Brooklyn Heights branch are getting a handout that, despite Johnson’s descriptions of what she knows the new library will look like, says:

Selling the Brooklyn heights branch will involve a rigorous public review and review by our local elected officials.  In 2013, BPL staff will present our vision for the branch to the community at community board meetings and other forums.  We expect to begin the review and development process this year.  It is anticipated that the review and approval will take approximately two years, during which time the branch will remain open at its current location.  BPL is committed to maintaining service in Brooklyn Heights throughout this period and will provide a temporary service location for the duration of the construction period.

(emphasis supplied by the BPL)

BPL handout, click to enlarge

Not communicated is that because library officials say they want to ink the deal that hands the library to a developer before Bloomberg leaves office December 31st, that inked hand-off would come well before those two years of promised review.  It doesn't say that a more than 50% shutdown of the library operation would be in place almost immediately, well before the public could provide any input about whether it wants its library shrunk, hours reduced or the Business and Career library exiled.

The handout also notes that the shrinkage and replacement of the library will involve a cost to the library that is unspecified but is cheerfully characterized as “little.”  One wonders whether that “little” cost would be less than the cost of repairing the air conditioning.

That brings us to a consideration of the air conditioning costs that have been announced.  The ostensible reason the BPL now wants to sell the library is because of the theoretically prohibitive cost of repairing the air conditioning system and the reason they say they have to sell it now while Bloomberg is in office is because of the impossibility of coming up with any temporary air conditioning solutions so that things won’t have to be rushed along as if there was an emergency.  The two-story building (built in 1963) including its HVAC system providing the air conditioning was renovated just twenty years ago.  The air conditioning costs promulgated by the library started in the $700,000 to $750,000 range, climbed to $3 million as they were about to roll out the real estate deal and then went to $3.5 million (They have been misreported by the Brooklyn Paper as $9 million). I invite you to talk to your own construction friends and advisors and decide where you think these estimated costs lie on the spectrum between “highly suspect” and “totally absurd.”

At a meeting the other night the library’s spokesperson was very firm that nobody should think about raising money for the repairs (Bloomberg might be quite chagrined if someone did), just as firm about how there was no solution for summer climate control (visiting PC Richards for a few window units or ceiling fans, etc.).

October 2011 Daily News article about plans to sell libraries

So how do these inconsistent stories fit in with the larger narrative?  To decide that it is valuable to go back in time and look at an interview the BPL’s Linda Johnson did in 2011 when she visited the Daily News editorial board to sell them on the idea of library sales: Brooklyn Public Library head Linda Johnson seeking to sell some property to raise money for repairs, by Erin Durkin, Sunday, October 16, 2011.  That interview, particularly in view of more recently unfolding events, highlights and confirms the points made in the petition and previous Noticing New York Articles. 

Confirmation that the focus is on real estate deals, the juiciest ones first

Johnson told the Daily News that her focus was on “certain pieces of real estate we have that are very valuable.”  Johnson did not then identify that the Brooklyn Heights branch or the Pacific branch (both adjacent to Forest City Ratner properties) were two of the “certain pieces of real estate” she was looking at.  In fact, the library has not yet revealed what other libraries are next in line for such treatment even though I’ve personally had some of the other parcels that are being looked at by the system identified to me by the development community.

Confirmation that the Brooklyn Heights library was not the one single library that Bloomberg and library officials are looking at selling off.

At the recent meeting when the plan to sell the Brooklyn Heights library was first publicly described, the spokesperson for the library denied that the sale was part of an overall plan involving selling more libraries.  It was asserted that it was “just this library.”  That’s obviously not so and didn’t acknowledge that the spokesperson was also dealing with the press about the sale of the nearby Pacific branch.  (The BPL’s strategic plan formally states that all the system’s real estate is in play.)  At the same time the front of the New York Times that week had the Michael Kimmelman article’s information about the sell-off and contraction of the most important libraries in Manhattan.

Confirmation that when the library is sold the money doesn’t go to the library, but to the city.

The article made clear Johnson knew that:

the city owns the branch buildings - and under current rules any money garnered from selling them would go to the city's general fund, and the library wouldn't see a dime.

It said only that Johnson was “trying to work out a deal with Bloomberg administration officials” whereby the library could get some money upon such sales.  Unfortunately, as former City Parks Commissioner Adriane Benepe made clear when speaking of such deals in the context of parks, such deals are impossible to make in any true meaningful way because money is fungible.  In fact, such a deal has never been reached.

Without a basis to believe that money would go to the library as the result of such a sale and without knowing how much money that might be, it is impossible to do any sort of analysis about why or whether such a sale would be good for the library system.  And yet, without having done any such analysis, Johnson has now decided to sell the library.  Ergo, in a failure of trust, the only goal in mind in making this decision is the real estate deal being created.

Confirmation that what we are looking at is city-wide.

If one needed confirmation that what is being done is being looked at as a city-wide strategy, proof that goes beyond the similarities between what is being pushed in Brooklyn Heights (and with Pacific Street) and what is happening with Manhattan’s libaries, Donnell, the three other libraries involved in the Central Library plan (involving the irrevocable destruction of the 42nd Street library as a proper research library), there is this: Johnson said her sales “could be a model for the city's other library systems.” 

Confirmation that the decision to sell the Brooklyn Heights library was in the works before the air conditioning problems manifested themselves.

One very interesting thing about Linda Johnson's interview with the Daily News editorial board about how she expected to sell “certain pieces of real estate we have that are very valuable” is that it was in October of 2011 (the article is dated October 16, 2011).  The following summer was when the library discovered it had air conditioner problems.  See: Brooklyn Heights Library Admits AC System Is Kaput, by Chuck Taylor on July 18, 2012.  Back then they weren’t saying the problems could be quickly solved or that temporary solutions would be worthless.

Confirmation that we need to be worried about board trustee mind-set and motivations.

Johnson shared with the Daily News editorial board that she had it in mid to “build a better board” and that her idea of building a better board would be to put Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein on the board.  (From what she says, she apparently hobnobs a bit with him.)

Mr. Blankfein would, for two reasons, be an absolutely perfect pick if the purpose to find board members to get behind real estate deals that shrink libraries while craftily conferring more benefits upon the wealthy and connected. First, Mr. Blankfein’s Goldman Sachs took advantage of special relationships and maneuvering to procure unique real estate benefits, design overrides and subsidies for its new corporate headquarters in Battery Park City.  That was written about here in Noticing New York: Monday, February 23, 2009, Un-funny Valentines Arriving Late: Your Community Interests at Heart.  Second, Mr. Blankfein is a proponent of the notion that the public needs to lower its expectations about entitlements that he is firm“they're not going to get.”


   


Both of these things about Mr. Blankfein were made very clear in a recent Bill Moyers essay spotlighting Mr. Blankfein: Bill Moyers Essay: The ‘Crony Capitalist Blowout’, January 11, 2013, explaining “how last week’s fiscal cliff deal gave tens of billions in tax breaks to Wall Street and corporations — what even the Wall Street Journal calls a “crony capitalist blowout” and beginning with Moyers talking about the “extraordinary rise in wealth and power of the very rich during this era of unregulated greed.”

The Moyers essay is about how a larding of special corporate tax breaks and loopholes was pushed through as part of the recent fiscal cliff negotiation and settlement, something that even the Wall Street Journal was appalled by, hence that paper’s application of the “crony capitalist blowout” phrase. Blankfein’s Goldman Sachs provided one of the very worst examples.

“You're going to have to. . lower people's expectations, the entitlements and what people think that they're going to get.  Because they're not going to get it.”  (Libraries?) From the CBS interview

Here is a transcript of part of the Moyers essay that deals with Blankfein which included a clip of CBS newsman Scoot Pelley interviewing Blankfein.

    Moyers: CEOs, lobbyists were tripping over themselves as they traipsed up and down Pennsylvania Avenue between Congress and the White House privately protecting their interest as they publicly urged austerity on everybody else.  Here's Lloyd Blankfein, CEO and chair of the global investment giant Goldman Sachs when asked by CBS news Scott Pelley about how he would reduce the federal deficit:

    (Beginning of clip)

    Blankfein: You're going to have to, undoubtably, do something to lower people’s expectations, the entitlements and what people think that they're going to get.  Because they're not going to get it. 

    Pelley: Social Security Medicare, medicaid?

    Blankfein; Some things. You know you can go back and look at the history of these things.  And Social Security wasn't devised to be a system that supported you for a 30 year retirement after a 25 year career.  Entitlements have to be slowed down and contained.

    Pelly: Because we can't afford them, going forward?

    Blankfein: Because we can't afford them!

    (End of clip)

    Moyers: Ah yes, but Goldman makes sure their entitlements aren't touched. 

Moyers then explained a brand-new chapter concerning the Goldman Sachs headquarters shenanigans I hadn’t caught up with.  After 9/11, Goldman used special connections to get for their headquarters tax-exempt Liberty Bonds intended to help with the city's recovery (that I knew).  During the fiscal cliff negotiations Goldman's lobbying got these benefits specially extended.  (I hadn’t heard about this and probably few others have either.)  

Goldman Sachs building under construction

So, on two different scores Blankfein is absolutely the most perfect choice as the foxiest guy to guard the hen house: The engineering of tricky real estates deals for the rich and well connected, and simultaneously telling the public they are going to have to expect and get less.

Are books getting the heave-ho with a “starbuckified” digitalization of the libraries?

Some are concerned that Johnson’s vision of the libraries is to make them all look like Starbucks.  She is prone to comparing the library to Starbucks and did so In the 2011 Daily News article as she has in other interviews.   This is not to say that digitalization is, itself, bad: I often buy digital books.  If the book is important book, I often also buy a physical copy of book at the same time, finding it efficient to go back and forth between them for different purposes.  This is what the Daily News article documented about Johnson respecting her views:

Johnson envisions more big changes,  and concedes that not everyone in the BPL family is thrilled about it.

"When I talk about what the library's going to look like in five or ten years, and talk about the fact that books become less and less a critical part of the mission - at least traditional hard-copy books - I can see that (librarians) are crestfallen," she said. "And it makes me sad too, because I love a book as much as anybody does.

"The fact is, now we're competing with Barnes & Noble and Starbucks," she said.

Confirming top-down planning for BPL system changes.

A key issue about the plans to remake the libraries as real estate deals concerns the observation that these plans and new regimes are being imposed top down based simply on what the Linda Johnsons and Lloyd Blankfeins of the world believe is best for the public.  That we are not, as Jane Jacobs would suggest, is allowing for common sense to filter up from the people actually using the services.  This was problem when Donnell Library was closed in 2008.  It is a problem with the secretively produced Central Library plan in Manhattan.  Listen to the users?  Here is what Johnson offers:

“We need to be using technology just a little bit ahead of where the customers are so we can actually be helpful, instead of letting them drag us where they want to go.”

So does Johnson already know what the new much smaller Brooklyn Heights library is going to look like? Is she already able to confidently describe it because it is already designed and being imposed from the top?  Does that mean that during the “approximately two years” of upcoming “review and approval” that the library assures that public should expect (most of which the library officials want to have occur after handing off the property to a developer that will possibly/likely include Forest City Ratner) the library officials won't actually be listening to the public because they will already be dedicated to an existing plan, unwilling for the public to “drag us where they want to go.”

Why do I say the petition is working?  Because it is flushing these issues out while library officials defending the plan fall over themselves with mistakes and obvious inconsistencies, each making it more and more clear that what they are doing was never intended to be in the public’s interest.  (Click to sign: Save New York City Libraries From Bloomberg Developer Destruction.)