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Monday, September 27, 2010

Boogiedowner Chides BP Diaz about Empty Kingsbridge Armory

Here is a posting by the Boogiedowner taking Bronx BP Ruben Diaz to task over his role in stopping the Kingsbridge Armory project. The Boogiedowner mocks the BP's often-quoted statement that "the notion that any job is better than no job no longer applies." It then goes on to taunt him by saying "Hey Ruben, how's that Kingsbridge Armory task force coming along? Any luck moving that unicorn factory along?" My only criticism of this blog posting is that it refers to Candice Giove of the Riverdale Review as a credible writer. In fact she is a below average writer who sold her soul and whatever journalistic ethics she may have had to Andy Wolf, the owner of the Review.

37 comments:

  1. Boro Pres Diaz tried to shakedown the developer and the whole thing went bust. What a permanent mess! This fiasco that should prevent any upward mobility for Mr. Diaz in terms of a political future.

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  2. Rubencito screwed up big time on that amory. It will remain a giant and unavoidable predicament for him throughout his hopefully brief tenure.

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  3. Ms. Giove no longer works for the Review. She has talent unfortunately she lacked professional ethics.

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  4. Remember this from 2008? With Bronx politicians, the allegations of corruption always seem to invole public money, family members and nonprofit groups.

    __________

    New York Daily News, Thursday, June 5th 2008

    F.B.I. PROBING DIAZ DUO OVER MILLIONS

    By Robert Gearty, Daily News Staff Writer

    The FBI is investigating a taxpayer-funded home attendant program largely funded by a Bronx state senator and his assemblyman son, the Daily News has learned.
    Christian Community in Action is part of a sweeping federal probe of Sen. Ruben Diaz and Assemblyman Ruben Diaz Jr.
    Sen. Diaz founded the organization and is a former administrator. His wife, Leslie, is the group's director of field operations and had a $59,056 annual salary as of April 2007. Ruben Diaz Jr. worked there as a teen.
    Three members of Sen. Diaz's staff are members of the group's board of directors.
    Last year, the nonprofit received a grand jury subpoena from the public corruption unit of Manhattan U.S. Attorney Michael Garcia, which was probing fraud and money laundering.
    A month later, the FBI served a subpoena on the Bronx office of the city Board of Elections and seized documents about the Diazes, a development first reported by The News.
    Sen. Diaz, a Pentecostal minister, admitted Christian Community in Action was subpoenaed but said it was "two years ago."
    "As far as I know, nothing happened," he said, refusing to answer questions and hanging up.
    His son is a candidate for Bronx borough president and part of a group of rebel lawmakers seeking to unseat Bronx Democratic Party leader Jose Rivera.
    Last year, Ruben Diaz Jr. spent $25,000 in campaign funds on Manhattan law firm Kobre & Kim, which often defends government targets in criminal cases.
    The assemblyman did not return calls for comment.
    The group's parent, Christian Community Benevolent Association, has received more than $1.5 million in pork barrel spending from the Diazes from 2003 to 2007. The association is not on a list of pork projects designated for funding this year.
    Christian Community in Action also has a $26 million contract with the city to provide home health care to 1,000 seniors.
    Last year, Christian Community in Action told the mayor's office it was being investigated.
    In a vendor questionnaire obtained by The News, the nonprofit said the investigation began in early 2007 and was "ongoing," but contended it did not know what probers were trying to find.
    Attached to the document was a copy of the subpoena issued by a grand jury in Manhattan Federal Court which demanded names, addresses, salaries and Social Security numbers of all current and former employes, consultants, board members, benefactors and contractors back to 1999. It also demanded all documents relating to the group's funding since 1999.
    A woman who answered Leslie Diaz's office phone said Diaz was on vacation. Her boss, program director Luis Alejandro, declined to comment.
    Three ministers on Christian Community in Action's board said they did not know about the FBI investigation.
    "It surprises me," said the Rev. Rafael Melendez, who is Sen. Diaz's 74-year-old half-brother. He said the board meets regularly every two months.
    Sen. Diaz is no stranger to scrutiny. In 2005, he repaid the state $5,000 because he'd used state and federal funds given to the nonprofit Soundview Community in Action to buy furniture for his district office and loudspeakers for his campaign.
    Workers at the nonprofit Soundview said former Gov. Eliot Spitzer ignored more serious allegations that Diaz forced them to give his wife and ex-wife no-show jobs.


    Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/bronx/2008/06/05/2008-06-05_fbi_probing_diaz_duo_over_millions-2.html#ixzz10r1nksC2

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  5. A personal attack on a reporter? Stay classy.

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  6. She's not a reporter. Her writing was fiction, not fact.

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  7. After reading Candice Giove's imaginative but deliberately false writing at the Riverdale Review for many years, I think it's fair to say that she has been a journalist in name only.

    Hopefully Ms. Giove will change if she starts writing for a real newspaper with normal journalistic standards.

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  8. For many years, Andrew Wolf (the editor and publisher of The Riverdale Review) and his tiny crew of journalistic prostitutes (prostitutes in the sense of writers who compromise their ethical principles for pay, like John DeSio and Candice Giove), have produced a regular flow of misinformation, inflammatory nonsense and outright lies, usually focused on local politics and schools in Riverdale and Kingsbridge.

    If you want to know about whether or not The Riverdale Review could be considered a real newspaper, I would ask Bernard L. Stein, the Pulitzer Prize-winning former publisher of The Riverdale Press, who now teaches journalism at Hunter College and at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.

    A few years ago, Mr. Stein publicly challenged Mr. Wolf to tell his readers about the secret deals that influence what The Riverdale Review prints. He asked Mr. Wolf to disclose the hidden roles that Congressman Eliot Engel and Councilman G. Oliver Koppell played in helping to finance Mr. Wolf’s purchase of The Riverdale Review. Needless to say, Mr. Wolf never responded to that challenge, nor has he revealed the identities of the politically connected people who loaned him the money.

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  9. The current Riverdale Press is a rag for Dinowitz.

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  10. I'm surprised that Candice Giove even remembers how to write a story not filled with lies. The Riverdale Review is the worst piece of garbage I've ever read. The publisher, Andy Wolf, is a self-appointed vigilante who specializes in false accusations, innuendo and character assassination. Most people know that the Review is only good for lining parakeet cages. But, sadly, some in Riverdale actually believe the lies that he writes.

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  11. I can read the Riverdale Review in 30 seconds. There's no news there. It all ranting against some pretty good people.

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  12. To Anonymous Sept. 28 at 10:53:

    Candice M. Giove is still stuck at the The Review. There are FOUR articles by her in the paper that just came out dated Sept. 30 - Oct. 6.

    With the type of crap she usually writes, she's not going anywhere.

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  13. Ruben Diaz, Jr.'s horrible mishandeling of the Kingsbridge Armory will be a permanent albatross around his neck. It will be used against him if he ever seeks higher office, and rightfully so.

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  14. L'amour! John DeSio and Candice Giove!

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  15. I really miss the days when Bernard Stein and Richard Stein were at the helm of The Riverdale Press. They were a credit to the proud tradition started by their parents, David and Celia Stein, who founded the newspaper in 1950.

    The Press was a quality newspaper for the almost 60 years that the Stein family owned it. But recently, the new owners who took over in 2008, Clifford Richner and Stuart Richner of Richner Communications, Inc., seem determined to drive that paper into the ground.

    These days, there’s less and less actual news in The Riverdale Press, and the newspaper has been downsized from three sections to two.

    A couple of weeks ago, The Press had an embarrassing incident where it ran photo of a US flag flown by a military veteran on 9/11 with the mistaken headline “Eyesore of the Week.” Also, the editing at The Press is getting increasingly sloppy in other ways, such as messing up official titles and the names of government offices and commissions.

    And these days, The Press also wastes a lot of print by reporting on things with little or no connection to Riverdale, such as schools, crimes, and events in neighborhoods well beyond Riverdale’s boundaries.

    As for the news articles themselves, they have become annoyingly superficial, probably because they are written and edited by a group of journalists who seem to have no idea of anything local that happened before 2008.

    It seems to me that Riverdale’s best newspaper days are firmly in the past.

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  16. ALLOW ME TO CRITICIZE THE RIVERDALE REVIEW

    It is sad that The Riverdale Press is not the newspaper that it used to be, but luckily it has not declined to the offensive level of the Riverdale Review, an irresponsible rag which I can usually get through in less than a minute.

    Each week, the Riverdale Review (a free neighborhood tabloid with an unknown circulation) sets new standards of world-class bad journalism. Its ranting and narcissistic editor, Andrew Wolf, and his small band of awful writers, are blissfully misinformed, totally biased, occasionally bigoted, and often spiteful in the extreme.

    To read the Riverdale Review is to experience a constant supply of wild errors of fact, deliberate omissions, incoherent cartoons, and sheer wackiness. In addition, the Riverdale Review is full of typos, grammatical problems, and schizoid headlines that often have no sense of the thrust of the poorly written story they present.

    The Riverdale Review is a true waste of perennial woody plants and I am always ready to throw into the recyclable pile.

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  17. Unlike other bloggers on this site, I won't engage in spineless character assassination anonymously. And just to be upfront with everyone reading this, I do work for Andy Wolf though I disagree with him on a number of issues - and he knows it, too. I work on the art and production side of the Riverdale Review, so I have no editorial interest or bias to defend, which all newspapers have - from the New York Times and Riverdale Press to the Wall Street Journal and New York Post. But you wouldn't know that from the attacks being made on Candice Giove of the Riverdale Review.

    When you take the king's shilling, you do his bidding. This is true for every editor, reporter, and cartoonist who works for a publisher or owner. It's also true for every political hack trying to work his or her way up the ladder from community activist, political aide, and local politician. From the anonymous posts that I've read about Ms. Giove's work, I'd say they were all written by local political wannabes and competitors with ulterior motives. All comments are general without citing a single specific quote or notation - and these people want you to believe that they are more credible and truthful than Ms. Giove?

    As for the lone identifiable post by Tony Cassino, his words reveal a level of mendacity that's beneath contempt. One has to wonder if Mr. Cassino is also posting comments anonymously to give the impression that there are widespread doubts about Ms. Giove's integrity, which I can personally say is far and away above the personal invective and immaturity displayed by Mr. Cassino.

    In fact, I began working at the Review at the same time as Ms. Giove, and I've seen how she's progressed as an individual and professional. In my previous positions with other newspapers and agencies, I've worked as a department head and evaluator of people, and I've seen how Ms. Giove has gone from a novice reporter to associate editor, capable of handling multiple assignments, meeting her deadlines, and handling other office responsibilities that she should never have to manage. She's had to overcome all the obstacles thrown in her way by local political hacks bent on making her job difficult, if not impossible, and she has succeeded despite the pressures heaped upon her. This obviously upsets the little people who can only attack her integrity with baseless comments and innuendo. It's time to grow up, kids.

    What's really ironic, or typical, is that the accusations of innuendo leveled at Ms. Giove - or Andy Wolf for that matter - are being employed by Mr. Cassino and his anonymous minions. That's called "projection" and it shows just how unsophisticated Ms. Giove's detractors are. You can disagree all you want with Andy Wolf, but trying to damage the reputation of his employee just to get back at him may be all you need to know about the character and integrity of Mr. Cassino and his associates. So I'd say Ms. Giove must be doing something right; and she'll get farther in her professional career that the failures who think they can derail her.

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  18. Hi Everyone,

    Don’t forget that in 2004, when Democrat Jeffrey Klein won the State Senate District 34 seat, the losing candidate (Republican/Independent Stephen Kaufman) was endorsed by Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz and the Riverdale Review. Congressman Eliot Engel also endorsed the Kaufman. So maybe the secret financial connection that Buddy Stein wrote about in the past involves not just Councilman Oliver Koppell and Congressman Engel, but also Jeffrey Dinowitz.

    Amusingly, Jeff Klein (whom Dinowitz is said to loathe) is now the Deputy Majority Leader of the Senate, while Dinowitz is still stuck in the Assembly chairing a committee on aging.

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  19. Tony Cassino, you may hope someday to become a corrupt politician yourself, but you are still are a better man than Andy Wolf of The Riverdale Review. Here’s why: You just published criticism about you from Wolf’s employee. However when anyone tries to criticize Wolf in a letter to the editor of his paper, he tries to hide it or dilute it by beginning the angry letter on one page & finishing it buried somewhere in the middle of the paper.

    On another topic, why don’t you do something about that sinkhole in the middle of the intersection at Independence & 237th near the RJC, 141 and 3777. The city keeps filling it but it keeps coming back.

    Also, how about a traffic light or at least a stop sign at Independence & 235th? Go there any weekday morning & look at the dangerous problem that intersection is.

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  20. That Tony Cassino posted my criticism on the site may be well and good in the mind of, once again, an anonymous poster; but the fact remains that he still initiated a vendetta designed to injure the reputation of someone in Andy Wolf's employ with his comments about Candice Giove. And all that did was offer cover for Mr. Cassino's rear should my criticism ever find its way into a more broadly circulated venue where many fair-minded people may agree. Let's not be distracted by this maneuver, though. Both Andy Wolf and Tony Cassino enjoy the privilege of deciding what to put in their venues - that's called "editorial discretion" and it's the divine right of kings in the IT/media world. To think that this maneuver somehow mitigates the severity of Mr. Cassino's initial motive is naive and laughable. And whether Mr. Cassino is more forthright and temperate in his dealings with other reporters in the future will depend on whether he really believes that others have a right to differ with him and those who share his agenda.

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  21. It's funny that Andrew Wolf or his mercenaries on staff at the Riverdale Review are so thin-skinned that that they can’t handle even the slightest criticism. Please consider the fact that Mr. Wolf and his writers have been dishing out much worse to plenty of people throughout the Bronx for years. I’m really glad that some people are finally able to give Mr. Wolf & Company a taste of their own medicine.

    As for Richard Reay, the self-righteous Riverdale Review staffer trying hard to defend the honor of his co-worker Candice Giove, give it a rest. She sold away her honor years ago. And if Ms. Giove had any good sense, she’d take a few serious courses in journalism from Richard Stein before she tries passing herself off as a respectable journalist.

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  22. Can't we all just get along?

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  23. It's good to see that the Review’s Richard Reay is a chip off the old Andy Wolf block, specializing in character assassination. BTW, my parakeet loves Richard’s art work, since the Review lines its birdcage.

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  24. I love watching all of you beat each other to a pulp!

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  25. Defending the integrity of an associate is being thin-skinned? Self-righteous? Ha-ha! This is great stuff!!! Obviously I've gotten under the skin of "Mr. Anonymous" who won't reveal his identity. I think the "thin-skinned" reference is just another example of projecting onto your critics what you yourself are guilty of. And believe me, Mr. Anonymous, I did enjoy getting under your skin. But all good things must come to pass, and I hope you continue to stew in your own juices. Good night and good luck.

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  26. Hi Richard Ray,

    Speaking of having a problem with anonymous comments, what about all of the anyonymous comments and rumors that Andy Wolf and his wench have printed? That whole newspaper is built on anonymous!

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  27. What makes you think I pee standing up?

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  28. Richard, Richard, Poor Richard:

    "Defending the integrity of an associate"?? What are you talking about?

    I work with many people at my job. Some of them are great people and some not so great. But I would never waste a single moment defending their integrity. What are you in love or something?

    As a worker for Andrew Wolf, you should be asking yourself 2 questions: "What I am doing working for this A-hole?" and "Why I am writing overly protective notes about a woman who devotes her days to hatchet jobs on people who actually have integrity?"

    Poor Richard, it's time you realized the truth. The one that you yearn for is working the streets doing the journalistic equivalent of the world's oldest profession. So stop pining for her. It will only lead you down the road to perdition.

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  29. Thanks so much for this blog site. I am very happy that there is finally a place for Riverdalians who are disgusted with the Riverdale Review to express themselves freely without censorship.

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  30. For wider distribution, Tony Cassino should add this to his Facebook.

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  31. The one constant I've noticed with Andy Wolf and his Review is that anyone he disagrees with is automatically demonized, mocked and insulted in his newspaper. What a strange black-and-white world he must live in. No shades of gray.

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  32. Oh Lordy, such sharp words! I guess that two-bit rag of a newspaper has made folks angry.

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  33. The Riverdale Press used to be a high-quality newspaper, now it's a shadow of it's old self. But the Riverdale Review never even amounted to a newspaper, just some free trash.

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  34. OMG thank you. Maybe by increasing your coverage of Andy Wolf, John DeSio and Candice Giove on this blog you will teach them a lesson, so they can sample some of the unpleasantness that they have been giving to other people for so long.

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  35. Whenever I see the Riverdale Review, that's where I put it, right into the trash .. each and every copy that I can carry!

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  36. YES! YES! I like the idea that The Riverdale Review is nothing more than trash made fresh weekly. I hope there will be a lot less of it out on the streets since we all know what to do with trash when we see it. Let's keep Riverdale clean one corner at a time.

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