US Politics Mega-thread - Page 458

ANDREW CUOMO HAS a glaring conflict of interest when it comes to the politics of abolishing ICE. Luxury landlords across the state collect millions in rent from the agency — money they have turned around and funneled to Cuomo’s political campaigns, according to a new report by the New York-based watchdog group Public Accountability Initiative.

Cuomo, meanwhile, hasn’t joined other New York politicians — from likely incoming Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to 2020 hopeful Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand — in calling to dismantle Immigration and Customs Enforcement, instead telling NY1 recently that the agency “should be a bona fide law enforcement organization that prudently and diligently enforces the law.”

Looking largely at publicly available data from the General Services external lease database, PAI researchers have documented extensive financial ties from Cuomo donors and members of his inner circle to ICE and Customs and Border Protection — the main agencies tasked with carrying out America’s increasingly brutal immigration policies. Since his first run for governor in 2011, PAI found that Cuomo has accepted at least $807,483 from companies, individuals, and the relatives of people who rent space to federal immigration authorities, and furnished many of them with positions in state government.

Rob Galbraith, PAI’s senior research analyst, told me by phone, “We saw that a lot of people were investigating the private-sector actors benefiting from immigration policy. We found that there is a significant overlap [between] those actors and the landlords and real estate interests that have close ties to the Cuomo administration.”

Cuomo’s primary challenger, Cynthia Nixon, who has called for abolishing ICE, wrote in an emailed statement that “while its reprehensible that Governor Cuomo has profited from ICE’s existence, it’s hardly surprising. … Many have been bewildered by the Governor’s continued support for ICE as its atrocities mount and so many other New York leaders have called for ICE’s abolition. Now we have an explanation: the Governor won’t call to abolish Trump’s rogue deportation force because his donors don’t want him to.”

In Manhattan, the iconic Starrett-Lehigh Building — co-owned by RXR Realty and Blackstone Group — has for 16 years been home to an ICE Homeland Security Investigation field office, which pays $12.4 million a year to lease part of the sprawling property overlooking the Hudson River, which bills itself as “a place to create, to influence and to succeed.” ICE’s fellow Starrett-Lehigh tenants include period-proof underwear brand Thinx and the offices of Martha Stewart’s multifaceted lifestyle brand.

The agency that handles leasing for federal agencies is the U.S. General Services Administration. Asked about standard procedures for federal agency leasing, GSA Regional Public Affairs officer Alison Kohler said over email that GSA “leases space from private entities when it is the best solution to meet the space requirements of GSA’s federal agency customers.”

In the case of the Starrett-Lehigh Building, GSA — using eminent domain or “condemnation” — relocated federal immigration enforcement offices there after 9/11, when the World Trade Center offices of several agencies that would eventually be consolidated into the Department of Homeland Security were destroyed. “GSA used its condemnation authority for immediate occupancy, and then executed a 10-year lease in November 2002 with renewal options. GSA exercised one option in 2013,” Kohler said.

Top executives at both RXR Realty and Blackstone, which acquired its stake in the building in 2015, have close ties to the Governor’s Mansion.

The chair and CEO of RXR Realty is Scott Rechler, whose family has donated at least $613,000 to Cuomo’s various runs for office. In exchange, Cuomo appointed Rechler to the board of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, a post he held from 2011 to 2016. In 2017, Cuomo tapped him again, this time for a seat on the board of the notoriously dysfunctional Metropolitan Transportation Authority that he still holds. A New York Times investigation found that Rechler and several other Cuomo appointees continued to give to the governor after taking their state jobs, despite a 2007 executive order from former Gov. Eliot Spitzer that sought to prohibit such arrangements. On top of his government posts, Rechler is also a member of the Real Estate Board of New York, an influential trade lobby for developers in the city whose other members have also given generously to Cuomo.

In a statement over email, Rechler said, “While I have the utmost respect for the career professionals at the Department of Homeland Security and within ICE, as an American, I do find certain federal policies set by the current Administration relating to immigration, including family separation, to be disturbing and inhumane. It is my hope that we rethink our nation’s approach to immigrants and immigration more broadly.”

According to the New York Times, all of Lesley Zemsky’s $95,000 in donations to Cuomo were given after her husband’s appointments. Zemsky himself stopped donating to Cuomo after taking those positions, though that didn’t stop Cuomo from bringing him along to an at least $1,000-a-seat fundraiser for his campaign last summer, attendees to which very likely included executives at companies that Zemsky has the power to award contracts and tax breaks to through his controversial upstate development plans. To fortify the pair’s friendship, Zemsky paid an estimated $5,000 last summer to charter a private plane for Cuomo to and from Buffalo to officiate his daughter Kayla’s wedding. “Obviously, I am not going to ask him to come across the state at taxpayer expense, so I provided transportation,” Zemsky told the New York Daily News.

Another Western New York landlord, Uniland Development, collects $1.95 million per year from ICE and $562,756 from CBP in rent, in Buffalo and Cheektowaga, respectively. Uniland and the family that controls it, the Montates, have altogether donated at least $39,500 to Cuomo’s campaigns. Both of these properties, GSA writes, were obtained via a competitive bidding process for a federal contract that Uniland won.

The PAI report goes on to list several other ICE and CBP lessors that have given to Cuomo in smaller amounts. Researchers also note that Cuomo attended a $5,000-a-plate fundraiser in a private box at Mets stadium for the lobbying firm Constantinople & Vallone, which represents private prison and immigration detention center contractor GEO Group.

Staff from Cuomo’s offices did not return The Intercept’s requests for comment. A spokesperson for ICE refused to comment on leasing, directing us to submit a FOIA request. A spokesperson from CBP referred us to GSA.

On July 13 2018 00:53 TheTenthDoc wrote:


The temporal disturbance continues.

You cite an article from March 2018 about Canada's 2018 budget being a reduction, but still having a 10-year plan to increase spending, then a June 7 2017 article (basically the Newsweek article redux) about the 10-year increase in spending.

None of this has anything to do with the recent summit because it happened in June 2017 and nothing's changed in a year, and none of it will result in spending of 2% GDP because it's a 70% projected increase in dollars spent, not share of GDP.