Good morning, it’s Thursday, which is one day away from Friday, in case you might have forgotten. (But who could, really?)
Here’s something that’s really in our wheelhouse as New Yorkers: It’s International Anti-Corruption Day, which, according to the UN’s website: “seeks to highlight the rights and responsibilities of everyone – including States, Government officials, civil servants, law enforcement officers, media representatives, the private sector, civil society, academia, the public and youth – in tackling corruption.”
The UN argues that each and every one of us, as individuals, has a role to play in combatting corruption, and the theme of this year’s effort is “Your right, your role: say no to corruption.”
Actually, the UN has been running a six-week campaign, (which must be fairly under the radar, because this is the first I’ve heard of it), leading up to this day, with each week focusing on one of the following topics: Education and youth, sport, gender, private sector, COVID-19, International cooperation.
Of course, we here in the Empire State are hardly strangers to corruption – especially of the government variety.
We have seen a whole slew of elected officials head off to prison over the past several decades, or, at the very least, get ousted from office for engaging in a wide variety of bad behaviors – from patronizing prostitutes to stealing public funds to allegedly sexually harassing members of their staff.
I just realized as I was writing the paragraph above that I haven’t looked up the definition of “corruption” in a while, and so off to Oxford I went, and found the following: “Dishonest or fraudulent conduct by those in power, typically involving bribery.”
But that seems rather narrow to me. I prefer this one, compliments of the good folks at Merriam-Webster: “Dishonest or illegal behavior especially by powerful people (such as government officials or police officers) : depravity. Also, inducement to wrong by improper or unlawful means (such as bribery) the corruption of government officials.”
Yes, much better, don’t you think?
Anyway, setting aside the sad reality of the fact that corruption is so deeply entrenched in human nature that we need a whole day to bring international attention to the combatting of this phenomenon, it IS indeed a worthy – if perhaps futile – undertaking.
This seems like a good time to highlight the work of some very worthy organizations, such as Transparency International, which was founded by Peter Eigen, a World Bank official, after he witnessed the negative impact of corruption in East Africa and decided to start a non-profit to shed more light on the issue.
Transparency International also developed the Corruption Perception Index in 1995 to measure corruption across sectors and practices in various countries and rank them. New Zealand scored highest (88) in the 2020 index, which focused (understandably) on health care, while Somalia and South Sudan are tied for last place with a score of 179 out of 180.
From the 2020 press release:
“Continuing a downward trend, the United States achieves its worst score since 2012, with 67 points. In addition to alleged conflicts of interest and abuse of office at the highest level, in 2020 weak oversight of the US$1 trillion COVID-19 relief package raised serious concerns and marked a retreat from longstanding democratic norms promoting accountable government.”
So that’s downright depressing. Good thing it’s also National Pastry Day, which really helps take the sting out of things. Chocolate croissant to ease my burden? Don’t mind if I do. Or maybe a nice scone with some clotted cream.
After yesterday’s not necessarily distasteful taste of winter…I mean, a little light snow is nice now and again, as long as it doesn’t cause people to drive like idiots…we are back to gray and cold. Blah.
In the headlines…
The Senate voted to block President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate on private employers in the latest blow to his push to flex federal power to boost vaccinations in the U.S.
The measure heads to the Democratic-held House. It faces a tougher path to passage in the House, and the Biden administration has threatened a veto if it reaches the president’s desk.
Biden ruled out sending US troops to Ukraine to defend the country from a Russian invasion a day after laying out the consequences for such an incursion during a stern phone call with President Vladimir Putin.
A new website, a new presidential trip to the American heartland – and still Biden is struggling to turn his successful bid to upgrade the United States’ infrastructure into political capital.
Biden flew to Kansas City, Missouri yesterday on the latest stop of a tour he hopes will finally get Americans excited by the promise of transforming the roads, bridges and other vital links they use every day.
Biden made an early morning trip to church to mark the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception ahead of an afternoon flight to Kansas City to push his spending agenda.
Biden signed an order to make the federal government carbon neutral by 2050 via a panoply of clean-energy initiatives including electric vehicles and environmentally friendly buildings.
Under the order, the White House is set to spend billions of dollars to expand its federal fleet of electric vehicles, upgrade buildings owned or leased by the government and add more clean electricity to the country’s grid.
The government would use 100 percent net-zero electricity by 2030, including 50 percent produced from fully carbon-free sources such as wind and solar. Federal buildings would have to reduce their emissions by half by 2032 and reach net-zero by 2045.
Biden nominated Meg Whitman, a business executive and onetime California gubernatorial candidate, to serve as the U.S. ambassador to Kenya.
Whitman spent decades in high-level corporate roles, but she has also been politically active for years.
The U.K. and Canada joined a widening diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, citing concerns over China’s human rights record.
Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows sued House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and all nine members of the House select committee investigating the deadly Capitol riot, a court filing shows.
Meadows’s suit came hours after the committee said it would move forward with a criminal contempt of Congress referral against Meadows after he refused to appear for a scheduled deposition.
Nearly two years into the Covid-19 pandemic, the world remains “dangerously unprepared” for the next major outbreak, according to a new report.
More than 200 million Americans — over 60 percent of the population — have been fully vaccinated against the coronavirus.
UNICEF, perhaps the most recognized arm of the United Nations, is commemorating its birthday with the most sobering of messages: The pandemic is the worst threat to gains made for children since the agency was created to help them 75 years ago.
Researchers have found that the coronavirus infects both fat cells and certain immune cells within body fat, prompting a damaging defensive response in the body.
As the world learns more about the Omicron coronavirus variant and Delta continues to cause Covid-19 cases to rise around much of the US, the need for booster shots becomes clearer than ever, even beyond the growing data about waning vaccine immunity.
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said people might need a fourth Covid-19 shot sooner than expected after preliminary research shows the new omicron variant can undermine protective antibodies generated by the vaccine the company developed with BioNTech.
The World Health Organization said the highly mutated omicron variant of Covid-19 could change the course of the pandemic.
The exact impact is “still difficult to know,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a media briefing from the group’s Geneva headquarters.
WHO officials said that preliminary data suggest omicron presents a rapid increase in transmission but the variant causes milder cases of covid-19 than delta, which is still spreading across the globe.
The FDA authorized a preventive antibody combination from AstraZeneca that has shown strong efficacy in reducing risk of symptomatic Covid-19, offering a first-of-its-kind alternative for a minority of people for whom vaccines are less effective.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced major new Omicron-related restrictions, reversing course on a long-held policy at a moment of acute political peril, with his staff accused of flouting the rules by holding an office party during last year’s lockdown.
“It’s become increasingly clear that omicron is growing much faster than the previous delta variant,” Johnson said at a televised press conference. It’s the “proportionate and responsible thing to do to move to Plan B,” he said.
Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin offered a public apology after being criticized for spending a night out in Helsinki following exposure to Covid-19.
Marin, who turned 36 last month, said she missed an alert warning her that her foreign minister had tested positive for COVID on account of having left her government council phone behind before hitting the town Saturday.
Even before the omicron variant establishes a firm foothold in the U.S., coronavirus infections and hospitalizations are soaring again, including in highly vaccinated regions like New England.
After a few months of relative calm, some public schools are going remote — or canceling classes entirely — for a day a week, or even for a couple of weeks, because of teacher burnout or staff shortages.
The count of confirmed omicron coronavirus cases in New York State climbed by six yesterday, bringing the total tally to 20.
The union representing NYC correction officers sued City Hall in hopes of halting the “draconian vaccine mandate” that has exacerbated the agency’s staffing crisis.
State AG Tish James is running for governor of New York. She just isn’t acting like it.
James wants to create a state fund to pay for abortions sought by women who live outside of New York, as the U.S. Supreme Court weighs a final decision on reversing a Mississippi law aimed at restricting the procedure.
A new legislative proposal includes the recommendation to fund the procedure for low-income women who come to California for abortion services.
Allergen, a large pharmaceutical manufacturer, has agreed to pay $200 million in a settlement reached just before closing arguments began in a months-long opioid trial in New York, James announced.
A Facebook communications manager should be investigated for secretly suggesting that Andrew Cuomo’s aides “victim shame” the woman who sparked the sexual harassment scandal that forced him from the governor’s office, a JCOPE complainant says.
NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio insisted that his private-sector COVID-19 vaccine mandate is “going to work,” despite concerns of Mayor-elect Eric Adams’ allies, who say de Blasio’s dumping a half-baked mess on his successor.
Even after being warned to stop, de Blasio continued to hit up well-connected donors for money, according to documents that the city has now released after years of an extraordinary legal campaign by his administration to keep the documents secret.
De Blasio, in his final crime briefing before he leaves office, presented a bleak picture of surging murders, robberies and hate crimes, along with staggering crime increases in the city’s transit system and public housing complexes.
The City Council is set to overwhelmingly approve de Blasio’s push to use zoning as a “racial justice” tool in two of the Big Apple’s poshest neighborhoods — SoHo and NoHo.
The Rev. Al Sharpton is protesting de Blasio’s legalized drug injection site in Harlem, charging that city officials are treating the predominantly black neighborhood as a dumping ground for addicted, homeless and mentally ill New Yorkers.
Adams has returned from Ghana and is preparing to take office.
Adams is expected to name longtime city educator David Banks as the next chancellor of the New York City Department of Education today, according to multiple sources.
Banks was long seen as a leading contender for the job; he has been meeting with education leaders and advocacy groups for weeks. He was the co-chair of Adams’ educational transition team.
Adams will announce his selection of Banks this morning appearance at Public School 161, the elementary school in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn that Banks attended as a child.
Banks, 59, began his ascent during the Bloomberg administration and is best known for founding several city public schools — including a network that primarily educates boys of color.
Fresh off his trip to Ghana, Adams is hosting a fundraiser for his inauguration at a ritzy Manhattan club this evening.
Former City Council Speaker Christine Quinn called on Adams to find $3.3 billion in new spending to combat family homelessness and appoint officials to the Department of Homeless Services who have personally experienced homelessness themselves.
Queens Councilwoman Adrienne Adams, a Democrat, wants to raise the charge of forcible touching where a correction officer is the victim from a misdemeanor to a felony punishable by more than one year in prison.
In an editorial, the Oneonta Daily Star said it’s time for SUNY Chancellor Jim Malatras to resign.
The embattled SUNY chancellor’s days appeared numbered yesterday as more than 30 Assembly members signed onto a letter calling for his resignation or firing. The draft letter being circulated will be sent to the SUNY Board of Trustees.
New York’s commuter railroads will run dry this weekend as the MTA implements a booze ban during the city’s annual SantaCon festival, a loosely organized bar crawl in Manhattan that draws throngs of drunken buffoons dressed in Santa suits.
After Columbia University administrators sent an email saying that students who remained on strike after Friday were not guaranteed jobs next term, union members turned up the heat.
The arsonist who allegedly torched the Fox News Christmas tree was freed after his arraignment last night because his charges were not eligible for bail under new liberal reform laws.
Transit advocates want the city to scrap its “gridlock alert days,” which they claim do nothing to stem the crush of cars that cripple NYC streets during the holiday season.
Arlene Shuler, the president and chief executive of New York City Center, a historic home for dance that hosts the accessible and popular Fall for Dance festival, has announced that she will step down at the end of the 2021-22 season this summer.
Just two weeks after receiving $50 million from the city to upgrade its building and modernize the galleries, the Brooklyn Museum announced that Kimberly Panicek Trueblood will be its new president and chief operating officer.
Ahead of the legislative session in January, the state Senate Ethics Committee is holding a hearing today to gather ideas for bills reforming the state’s troubled ethics enforcement system. But it’s expected to be lightly attended.
A public hearing on New York horse racing held yesterday took an enthusiastic tone, as testimonials touted the industry’s successful comeback this year after a pandemic-stifled 2020 and looked to potential future gains in online betting.
According to Ana Hall, the spokeswoman for the Ethics Committee chair Alessandra Biaggi, the leaders of five investigative bodies turned down the chance to testify at a hearing and answer lawmaker questions about their offices’ work.
New regulations on staffing levels and profits are set to shake up New York’s nursing home industry when they take effect Jan. 1. The laws are already having something of an impact, but there’s still a question as to whether they’ll actually be implemented.
A mandated panel to study road salt contamination in the Adirondack Park missed a Dec. 1 deadline to produce its first report, because the body still has not been formed.
Capital Region schools reported nearly 1,400 new cases of COVID-19 last week, a 47 percent increase over the number of cases the week before Thanksgiving – the previous high.
Saratoga Springs Commissioner of Public Safety Robin Dalton has asked the city’s Ethics Board to rule on Mayor Meg Kelly’s use of her office’s authority to secure a $200,000 gift for a private school where Dalton says the mayor works.
In her final days in office, Kelly is seeking to ensure her deputy, a political appointee, has a job come January.
Zoning plans for a second Amazon facility in Schodack with 400 jobs were approved by the town and site work to clear the 56-acre parcel on Route 150 is underway.
Experts who have engaged with the market for industrial space say they are seeing something they’ve never seen in their decades-long careers: “unprecedented, historic and record-setting” demand.
Work has started to replace the bridge spanning the Northway that got whacked by an oversized truck earlier this spring.
In light of an ongoing glass shortage, some major distillers are borrowing a page from soda bottlers and turning to plastic containers for their spirits.
“Jeopardy!” producers said that Mayim Bialik and Ken Jennings will continue to share the job through the end of Season 38, taking them through the summer.
The jury began deliberating yesterday in the trial of actor Jussie Smollett on charges that he orchestrated a hate crime against himself in 2019 in Chicago. No verdict was reached, and jurors will get back at it today.
An umbrella-wielding Alec Baldwin was filmed rushing towards a reporter who confronted him outside Woody Allen’s Manhattan townhouse.
