(If she wants it so bad, she needs to earn it. Period. - promoted by phillip anderson)
There are several reasons to oppose having Caroline Kennedy be appointed to the U.S. Senate, and several arguments in her favor, that have been dissected in dozens of op-ed columns and blog diaries in the past week.
No column or diary, to my knowledge, has referenced the work of Wayne Barrett of the Village Voice, who has, as a veteran investigative reporter, dug out some interesting stuff that has not made it into other media (aside from one radio show this morning).
For example, CK's work for the city schools is a lot less than you've been told, and she got that volunteer position through a close college friend.
And, she's clearly Republican Mayor Mike Bloomberg's person for the job, which should make real Democrats uneasy.
Details, below. |
Barrett's blog post yesterday notes that CK did not support the Democratic candidate for mayor (against billionaire incumbent Bloomberg) in 2005.
Kennedy has so far outdone Sarah Palin by enjoying media adulation virtually without talking to reporters. If anyone ever gets a chance to ask Kennedy real questions, the one that will be tough to answer is the one about which Democratic mayoral candidate she's supporting after being appointed to a Democratic seat in the Senate by a Democratic governor.
It would be a rhetorical question, because the main thing on CK's resume, her volunteer fund-raising for city public schools, results from her personal connection to the wife of city schools Chancellor Joel Klein.
Klein, whose wife went to Radcliffe with Kennedy and was a bridesmaid at her wedding, recruited her at a social gathering in Martha's Vineyard.
Barrett did some shoe-leather reporting, and discovered that CK did not personally raise as much money for the schools as has been reported elsewhere, and that her volunteer gig was very part-time.
One of Kennedy's main jobs as chief executive of the Office of Strategic Partnerships was to oversee the Fund for Public Schools, the public/private partnership that raised hundreds of millions under Bloomberg. The Fund's tax-exempt filings with the Internal Revenue Service listed her as working one hour a week for the Fund in 2003 and two hours in 2004, the years she was at DOE. She has remained a vice chair of the Fund, which is also represented by (Bloomberg PR profiteer Josh) Isay and is chaired by Klein, and has more recently continued to do two hours a week of service, according to the filing.
Barrett demolishes the idea that CK was single-handedly responsible for the fund's fund-raising.
Though Klein told the New York Times that he "credited" CK with getting a $51 million grant from Bill Gates' foundation, Barrett notes that Bloomberg calls Gates one of his closest friends, so he would hardly need or use an intermediary to solicit such a major gift. And that a city schools staffer had been working with the Gates foundation since before Bloomberg was elected.
The most tawdry part of the Bloomberg cheerleading has been the exaggeration of the Kennedy resume.
Barrett points out that CK has engaged Josh Isay's political PR firm that become filthy rich from its association with Bloomberg (and also did work for Bloomberg's buddy Joe LIEberman in 2006).
Isay runs a consulting firm that literally feasts on its ties to Bloomberg. His clients include the Partnership for New York City, the NYC Cultural Institutions Group, NYC & Co., Forest City Ratner, Primary Care Development Corporation, and the Building Trades Employers Association, all of which do business with Bloomberg City Hall. He's got a metal bat company out of California that lists itself as having lobbied the mayor against a council ban, and a taxi company that's approved by the Taxi & Limousine Commission to put driver and passenger information monitors in cabs. He did the television ads for PlaNYC 2030, the premier initiative of the Bloomberg administration, paid for by the Real Estate Board of New York and others.
Barrett was on Fred Dicker's WGDJ radio show this morning (not a transcript, an MP3 file), where he said that another reason CK has the inside track to the Senate is that Gov. David Paterson's longtime, though no longer due to failure to file income tax returns, top aide Charles O'Byrne is a Kennedy family friend, who when he was a priest, officiated at the funeral of CK's late brother.
"There's no way she would do this without a wink from O'Byrne, without O'Byrne saying, 'I can tie this up for you,'" Barrett said.
Barrett argued that Bloomberg and his people are "tremendously overhyping this single thing on her resume ... 22 months as a part-time volunteer at the New York City Board of Education."
Barrett also said that Bloomberg is pushing Kennedy so strongly as a way to, hopefully, keep Obama from actively supporting and/or campaigning for Bloomberg's Democratic opponent in 2009.
And Barrett called a possible CK appointment "an insult to the work ethic, to say that all you have to be is a person with a name and a beautiful face and you can go to the United States Senate. ... These things are not supposed to be handed to you; you have to achieve something."
The Senate appointment is Paterson's prerogative, so it's an electorate of one who has obviously been impressed, in the past, by O'Byrne's Kennedy connections.
The mother's milk of politics is having an inordinate influence on the N.Y. Senate appointment, and it's not the small-donor-netroots kind of money -- it's billionaire/multi-millionaire money.
Given the mega-money of CK and her network, and of her good friend Bloomberg, the appointment of CK as our next senator is likely.
But that does not make it right, nor does it assure New Yorkers that CK is the best person to represent us in the Senate for the next two years.
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