Fred Newman

Controversial Independence Party activist Fred Newman gave his take on the presidential race during his weekly conversation with fellow activist Jackie Salit.

He thinks it has nothing to do with the candidates.

From an email:

“War vs. peace. As I see it, that's what the vote's going to look like a year from now on Election Day. It's going to be war vs. peace. The Republican is going to be the war candidate. The Democrat is going to be the peace candidate. And people will vote party, in my opinion.”

It's Friday, and you know what that means: Only two more days until Sunday morning! If you're anything like me--and if you're reading this blog at 4:45 on a Friday afternoon, I suspect you are, you poor devil--Sunday morning is your Friday night, the few hours a week that make life worth living. There's Russert and Stephanopoulos and even boring old Bob Schieffer, not to mention all those other ranters and ravers on the cable networks. It's like a religion without the guilt.

Anyway, I mention this because for quite some time now, I've been enjoying the weekly ... I dunno ... searching for the right word here ... dispatches of Independence Party activists Fred Newman and Jacqueline Salit. Newman and Salit are just like me when it comes to their Sunday morning routine. Except they yell at the television. And then they transcribe their rants and distribute them.

A little background here: Newman is the Marxist playwright, psychotherapist and alleged "cult leader" who is the supposed brains behind the Independence Party. He's also the man behind Lenora Fulani's presidential campaigns, and it says something about his politics that Fulani was the more electable of the two. In this amazing six-part series on Newman by Rita Nissan, Newman says it’s okay for a doctor like himself to have sex with his patients. Salit, his sidekick, is an Independence Party "strategist."

Anyway, I bring all this up because last Sunday’s dialogue was all about Michael Bloomberg, the former Democrat-turned-former-Republican. Newman said Bloomie is now the “Poster Guy” for the independent movement he’s long been fighting for.

(Fred's political punditry is after the jump.)  read more »

Fred Newman, a social therapist and controversial figure among some Independence Party activists, said he's not surprised by the shooting at Virginia Tech last week, that left 32 people, plus the lone gunman, dead. 

Newman said stuff like that is just bound to happen in a country that has guns and warfare.   read more »

Lenora Fulani is one of those people who no one can find anything nice to say about, so small wonder that four politicians--Betsy Gotbaum, Alan Hevesi, Jerrold Nadler and Chris Quinn --have joined hands (and followed in Scott Stinger's footsteps) to oppose $12.5 million in tax-free financing that the Bloomberg administration will consider at a public hearing tomorrow for a Fulani-affiliated nonprofit youth program, the All Stars Project. What makes this interesting is that Bloomberg has had trouble distancing himself from Fulani ("a virulent anti-Semite," according to Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum) or her mentor Fred Newman (the "figurehead of a cult that sexually exploits women"), although he did cop 74,000 votes from the Independence Party last year, which was once led by her and in which she is still influential. -Matthew Schuerman

Gawker has all the Tom Suozzi you can handle. Dawn Summers has a must-read riff on the race in the Brooklyn 11th congressional district, and how it's affecting her family.

"Nothing you can do? There'd better be something you can do. There is an election coming up and if this is how you treat constituents, you can bet I have voted for my last Owens. In fact, I'm voting for the white guy."

Yassky, mom. His name is Yassky. Then you can say the white guy.

Well, one hour later, a representative from Congressman Owens' office was at the SS office, with mom straightening out the whole mess.

The non-profit group associated with Lenora Fulani and Fred Newman is poised to get funding from City Hall.

Bloomberg's administration is poised to provide Fulani and Newman with new $12 million tax-free bond financing for a controversial nonprofit organization they have long controlled. The bond deal, due to be approved by the city's Industrial Development Agency next month, would allow a youth program called the All Stars Project to refinance $8.3 million in outstanding city bonds and add an additional $4.2 million to allow the group to make improvements at its headquarters...

Eliot Spitzer responds to what he thinks is a "ridiculous question" about his commitment to reform politics.

And former Assemblyman Ryan Karben and his wife smile for the camera at the BBQ they hosted this week, where the guests included a few hundred friends - and the two people running to replace him.  read more »

-- Azi Paybarah

The Manhattan Institute has a well-produced indictment of Albany out today, and a new Web site to go with it.

Their bottom line is that the state taxes and spends too much, and the targets for blame are "the special interests," identified as teachers unions, public authorities, public employees, public "servants," and the plaintiffs' bar.

It's hard to argue that any of those groups don't have a great deal of power over Albany, but it seems unfair to leave out the vast private-sector contracting world that has grown fat off lobbying and doing business with state government. Like that Newt Gingrich line about it taking two to make a corrupton scandal.

To be fair, one policy recommendation is to make contracting more competitive.  read more »

Another, newsier suggestion -- Fred Newman, rejoice! -- is introducing a California style system of initative and referendum.

Lenora Fulani must just not have gotten that memo from the Bloomberg campaign telling her they don't want her support. (No, we didn't get the memo either.) Anyway, the best known of Fred Newman's crew (which, according to Tom Robbins, is the right way to cast this) was spotted at a baptist church in Fort Greene last night, singing Bloomberg's praises.  read more »

For a while, it seemed like Lenora Fulani and her allies just kind of strayed into the fraught political terrain of the Middle East conflict along their larger Marxist travels.

But sometimes it seems like they're courting controversy in this political season.

Today, for instance, a press release went out from the Castillo Theater, one of the interlocking organizations -- the Manhattan Independence Party and the All Stars Project are the best known -- linked to Fulani, her partner Fred Newman, and other long time members of their group.

The theater, which has received private support from Mayor Bloomberg, occupies a building financed with a loan the Mayor's administration approved.  read more »

And the show they just announced? An Austrian artist's take on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, natch.

"The Castillo Theatre presents 'Hidden Images,' an exhibition of paintings by the contemporary Austrian artist, Wolf Werdigier, that reveal the personal, human and emotional toll of the Middle East conflict and the dreams and hopes of ordinary residents of the region."

The American Jewish Congress is keeping up the heat on the pols who do business with Lenora Fulani. They're calling on officials to refuse the party's line if Fulani doesn't resign. (They misidentify her as "head" of the Independence Party, which isn't technically true, but never mind.)

We wonder whether Chuck and Eliot will drop the line, taking away the cover they've given Mike; or whether Mike will jump first, leaving his Democratic friends behind.

One line in the press release did catch our eye, from our friend Jeff Wiesenfeld, co-President of the New York arm of the AJCongress.

"Fulani and party leader Fred Newman ought to be thrown out of the party and not given a home, especially one where mainstream public leaders like Senator Charles Schumer, Attorney General Eliot Spitzer or Mayor Michael Bloomberg lend them any bit of credibility."  read more »

Hmm. Didn't Wiesenfeld's old boss, one Mr. Pataki, seek that line rather avidly in 2002?

Mike Bloomberg offered a full-throated endorsement of Fred Newman's and Lenora Fulani's wing of the Independence Party last night, and thanked them again for last year's "anti-corruption award," an honor he shares with convicted felon Guy Velella.

Worth noting were the pols who saw fit to buy advertisements in the event's program, a crucial step in demonstrating your appeal to these independent-minded sorts. Joe Hynes (full page!), Eva Moskowitz, and Joe Bruno all seem to feel they need the Party's line.  read more »

Carolyn Maloney, on the other hand, must just be a true believer in this charming organization.

Right now, Fred Newman is best known as the man behind Lenora Fulani, an African-American psychologi  read more »