Just when you thought Albany couldn’t get any more disgusting, Vito Lopez’s ethics-bending sexual harassment report became public. The findings eviscerate Lopez for his lecherous behavior toward eight former staff members and taint Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver as his enabler. The report’s slimy details made us so uncomfortable that we’ll go take another shower while you take a look at our winners and losers.   Ray Halbritter – The Oneida Nation’s representative extolled this week’s catchall agreement between his people, the state and two… [More]

  What does Mayor Michael Bloomberg do on his birthday, which also happens to be Valentine’s Day and the day he addressed the city in his 12th and final State of the City talk? Does he put on a tuxedo and throw himself a classy yet staid black tie party at the Waldorf Astoria like Jack Donaghy did once? Does he pop a copy of Annie Hall into his 90-inch television and curl up on his animal print sofa with… [More]

  You’ve fanatically opened up First Read each Friday to find out our picks for winners and losers of the week. Taking all 52 weeks into consideration, who were the crème de la crème and the bottom of the barrel? With 2012 drawing to a close, we offer a special extended edition of Winners & Losers to share our nominees for the biggest winners and losers of the year. Preet Bharara – If anyone can clean up New York politics,… [More]

Good government and womens groups are worried the state ethics commission won’t fully probe an Assembly sexual harassment scandal. The National Organization for Women NYC and Common Cause New York raised the pressure on the state Joint Commission for Public Ethics’s investigation into Assemblyman Vito Lopez’s alleged verbal and physical abuse of female former employees and his confidential settlement with the Assembly by calling for a “list of expectations” from the ethics committee. “Sexual harassment is rarely an isolated incident,”… [More]

While rapper Ja Rule and ex-state Comptroller Alan Hevesi go over their tax forms in prison, a federal judge tasked with selecting the state’s congressional primaries threw a dart and hit the month of June. U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara wasn’t Time’s Man of the Year, just man of the week, and the redistricting charade continued to play out across the state. Here’s who’s up and who’s down this week in New York politics: Andrew Cuomo – Another week, another lesson… [More]

A classroom of Bronx high school students was discussing John Steinbeck’s literary classic Of Mice and Men last week when a gray-haired, dark-suited visitor chimed in with the perspective of an extra 50 years. “One of the messages there is that things will work out,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg said as students gawked. “That there’s still problems around, not everybody’s perfect, we still have the same battles to fight, we’re better today then we were then. “But we still have a long… [More]

By Chris Bragg, Andrew J. Hawkins, Jon Lentz, Adam Lisberg and Laura Nahmias Membership of the Computer Club exploded this year! It’s always had stalwarts like Gale Brewer and Bill Mahoney playing with keyboards and spreadsheets, but this was finally the year when everybody else got into the Internet. A lot of it is because of that rich kid Mike Bloomberg. He was waving his checkbook at every pocket protector and every pair of suspenders in the hallways. (Let’s hope… [More]

By Chris Bragg, Andrew J. Hawkins, Jon Lentz, Adam Lisberg and Laura Nahmias Okay, so it’s not much of a club yet if it can’t play for real money. But poker is so popular, and everybody at the other schools is doing it, and if they can rent out the gym for bingo games, why can’t the poker club do it too? John Bonacic has been way ahead of the pack saying the poker club could set up tournaments as… [More]

We would have made the leader of the growing Occupy Wall Street movement a winner this week, if the rag-tag band of protesters had a leader. And we would have made NYPD Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna a loser for pepper-spraying protesters, if we thought he would actually be punished for it. So here are 10 other individuals who did make the list: Dan Cantor – The Working Families Party got a boost this week when former President Bill Clinton gave… [More]

New York’s Ninth Congressional District faces an existential crisis: The seat is empty now, and is likely to vanish after next year. So perhaps it’s fitting that Ninth District voters face an existential crisis of their own: How can they pick their next congressman when the election has nothing to do with their neighborhoods? The Democrats picked an organization man, Assemblyman David Weprin, as their candidate in what had always been a solid district for them. Then Republican Tea Party… [More]