It’s beautiful-looking, the content is wildly diverse, and everything I’ve read so far has been outstanding. The staff bios (all Columbia graduate and undergraduate journalism students) suggest that these might be some of the most interesting people in Brooklyn. Perhaps because of the student management, there’s no sense of editorial hierarchy, or even a “contact” tab. (As the adage goes, shoemaker’s children go without shoes; I suppose the parallel is that some journalists don’t make it easy to arrange interviews or submit media queries).

So check out The Brooklyn Ink, or just wait for me to start plagiarizing their excellent work in earnest. And more soon about EveryBlock.com – more particularly, NYC.EveryBlock.com – which, once you’ve isolated the New York City slice(s) – you can then start searching by Zip, by neighborhood name, or by a neighborhood that you define graphically on a map. I don’t – yet – see that one can  slice by census block, block/lot, police precinct or sector, or community board boundaries. But it looks like many things are possible – and that the more of us check out and contribute to EveryBlock, the more useful and entertaining it would be.

An emotional state Senator Carl Kruger pleaded guilty to four federal corruption charges in Manhattan federal court on Tuesday.

Kruger, who teared up in the courtroom, pleaded guilty to two conspiracy counts and two counts citing Travel Act violations. The Brooklyn Democrat who represented Flatbush, Mill Basin and Coney Island since 1994, resigned his seat prior to his court appearance.

He agreed not to appeal any prison sentence up to 11 years and three months.

“My actions were in violation of the law, and I knew that they were wrong,” Kruger said. “I accept responsibility for my actions and am truly sorry for my conduct.”

State Senator Carl Kruger Pleads Guilty to Corruption Charges, Resigns

By Bob Hennelly, Senior Political Reporter, WNYC.org

It’s good, of course, that the Southern District successfully prosecuted Senator Kruger. One hopes that the sentence serves as a deterrent – but the lessons of history in New York, which has made official misconduct and corrupt a local art form – but we worry that, even with this prosecution and sentence, we’re still at business at usual.

There are more than 41,000 New Yorkers living in the city’s homeless shelters — the highest number ever, according to to a new report from the Coalition for the Homeless.The group said 17,000 children sleep in shelters each night and that shelter stays are getting longer. Homeless families now spend an average of 11 months in the shelter system, up from 8 months a year ago.

The report is based on city data on the shelter population at the end of October, but that number fluctuates daily. The report found the rise is due to the end of a city program that provided housing subsidies to homeless families.

 

Stuart Appelbaum, an influential union leader in New York City, was in Tunisia last month, advising the fledgling labor movement there, when he received a flurry of phone calls and e-mails alerting him to the rumblings of something back home. Protesters united under a provocative name, Occupy Wall Street, were gathering in a Lower Manhattan park and raising issues long dear to organized labor.

And gaining attention for it.

Mr. Appelbaum recalled asking a colleague over the phone to find out who was behind Occupy Wall Street — a bunch of hippies or perhaps troublemakers? — and whether the movement might quickly fade.

So far, at least, it has not, and on Wednesday, several prominent unions, struggling to gain traction on their own, made their first effort to join forces with Occupy Wall Street. Thousands of union members marched with the protesters from Foley Square to their encampment in nearby Zuccotti Park.

“The labor movement needs to tap into the energy and learn from them,” Mr. Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, said. “They are reaching a lot of people and exciting a lot of people that the labor movement has been struggling to reach for years.”

In fact, the unexpected success of Occupy Wall Street in leveling criticism of corporate America has stirred some soul-searching among labor leaders. They have noted with envy that the new movement has done a far better job, not only of capturing interest, but also of attracting young people. Protests have spread to dozens of cities, including Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles.

 

Major Unions Join Occupy Wall Street Protest – NYTimes.com.

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE and CARA BUCKLEY, The New York Times,,  published: October 5, 2011.

Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz showed up at “Occupy Wall Street” this week to show his support for the protest and clearly outline what he sees as the worst crimes of the American financial sector. In a brief speech amplified by an “echo chamber” of protesters (who shouted Stiglitz’s own words as a group because they’re banned from using megaphones), the Colombia University professor said that Wall Street had become wealthy by “socializing losses and privatizing gain,” calling it a scheme that’s “not capitalism.” “After the bubble broke, they continued in their way of disobeying the law, in a sense. Throwing people out of their houses, even in some cases when they didn’t owe money… “We bailed out the banks with an understanding that there would be a restoration of lending. All there was was a restoration of bonuses. Unless we deal with the anti-competitive practices with the reckless vending and speculative behavior, with the anti-competitive practices, unless we restore demand to the function it should serve, we won’t have a robust recovery.”

• Accountability and transparency from the leaders of financial system, in and out of government;
• A fair tax system;
• A reasonably generous safety net, includingg unemployment and disability insurance;
• Universal access to health care.

This doesn’t, in our view, make them extremists. But a system which requires such dramatic political organizing for this sort of agenda is itsef a bit extreme.

Stay tuned.