by Robert Lederman(4/27/99), President of A.R.T.I.S.T. (Artists' Response To Illegal State Tactics)<ARTISTpres@aol.com>
provided through OPENAIR-MARKET NET
In the Godfather movies the Marlon Brando character, unlike mob bosses in other parts of the country, used lawyers to great effect. Mayor Giuliani may be the world's greatest student of the Godfather films. He seems to have learned at least one important lesson from watching them over and over again: take care of your lawyers.
That's why despite cutting funding for education, hospitals, legal aid, parks, the arts and virtually all City services Mayor Giuliani just gave his 680 Corporation Counsel lawyers a big raise. According to Michael H. Hess who heads the Corporation Counsel's office, the raises would be given to the agency's "most talented lawyers". In this context "most talented" means those lawyers who were most successful at defeating legitimate civil rights lawsuits against the Mayor, minimizing damages paid to those injured, killed or abused by the police and whose efforts allowed Mayoral polices that violate the U.S. Constitution to continue unchanged.
For those cheerleading Giuliani's ever-evolving police state it must be comforting to know that the $89.2 million in tax dollars the Mayor has budgeted for the agency in this coming year will be used to violate the rights of every New Yorker while protecting the Mayor from civil and criminal penalties. The Godfather would be proud.
Here are a few of the legal issues the Corporation Counsel will be working on for the Mayor in the year ahead.
1. Mandatory DNA sampling for all people arrested. Possible DNA sampling for all newborn children.
2. Defending the Mayor's latest unconstitutional restrictions on access to City Hall.
3. Defending the confiscation and forfeiture of cars from those accused of DWI.
4. Putting thousands of WEP workers into minimum wage jobs once held by union members.
5. Rewriting the City Charter to keep Mark Green from becoming Mayor.
6. Preventing thousands of civil rights lawsuits filed against the Mayor and the NYPD from being adjudicated or settled and blocking discovery by plaintiffs in all of these suits.
7. Defending the proposed new vending ordinance and its blanket restrictions on free speech.
8. Defending racial profiling and other illegal NYPD policies the Mayor uses to produce his statistics.
9. Privatizing public schools, parks and sidewalks and turning them over to corporations.
10. Defending the Mayor against charges of accepting illegal campaign contributions.
Robert Lederman, President of A.R.T.I.S.T. (Artists' Response To Illegal State Tactics), (718) 369-2111
Email: ARTISTpres@aol.com
Website: http://www.openair.org/alerts/artist/nyc.html