The Mayors of the Greater City of New York | 9 Jan. 2021 |

Prior to 1898, New York City consisted of only the Island of Manhattan and part of what later became the Borough of the Bronx. The push for annexation of Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island to New York City dated as far back as the late 1860s. Proponents of annexation saw that a centralized municipal government could facilitate the development of railroads, utilities and infrastructure necessary to maintain New York's dominant role in the nation's economy.

It took nearly thirty years to persuade voters in the areas to be annexed of the benefits of consolidation. Perhaps the most significant incentive was the realization that access to revenue from real estate taxes on the commercial areas of Manhattan could be used to fund needed infrastructure improvements throughout the region.

Finally, in 1894, voters in all areas to be affected approved a non-binding referendum on consolidation. A New York State commission issued a new charter for the greater city joining the formerly separate governments of Manhattan, Bronx Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island into a single entity. Voters approved the new city charter in 1897.

Some Great Music. FREE!!! A Blanket Invite To Any Interested BTers. (Cross country, now)

Posted by Arthur Gilroy | Mar 11, 2007 | 12 |

I may as well post this here as a diary. The info is also on a comment I wrote on Booman's wonderful YouTube post today. I also posted in a slightly different...uhhh, context...on My Left Wing. (You don't want to know...)

Anyway, I hereby reiterate my oft-offered and rarely accepted idea that I would be glad to get any lefty bloggers who are interested into the work I do for free (or in some cases, semi-free) to hear the high-level NYC-style jazz and latin-jazz groups with whom I play.

This spring, beside NYC......LA, Chicago, Cleveland, U of Michigan, Holland MI, and Toledo. Just for starters.

ALL are welcome. Lovers, haters, doubting Thomases...the works.

Hidden Comments

Posted by Oui | Dec 22, 2018 | 0 |

My two comments erased by AG's resident trolls 😉

AG's diary - Agnew? Just Another Corrupt Baltimore Pol. Like...Guess Who???

Race & Teabaggers: Mr. Gilroy's Right

Posted by Steven D | Mar 23, 2010 | 10 |

There's a diary in Booman Tribune's recommended list I'd like you to read if you haven't already done so by Arthur Gilroy, The Teabaggers and the Truth of the Matter. I don't always agree with Arthur (does anyone AG?), and he can be quite blunt, but the truth is the truth, and he states it here better than anyone that the Tea Party is all about Racism:

   I can travel 10 to 15 minutes in any direction (by any mode of transportation from walking to automobile) from my mixed-race, working class Bronx neighborhood and be right in the middle of Tea Party Central.

    Hell...all I have to do is drop into one of the many remaining Irish bars...almost all cop bars and fireman bars now...along Broadway from about 180 St. right on up into Yonkers to be be surrounded by Tea Party sympathizers. Most of them armed and allowed by law to use those arms.

    Or walk into any police station or firehouse.

    Or hang out with any construction crew.

    Or walk into almost any diner/truck stop.

    Just for fucking starters!

    In a 100 mile radius, there are innumerable all-white neighborhoods.

    Italian neighborhoods.

    Irish neighborhoods.

    Polish neighborhoods.

    Catholic neighborhoods.

    Literally millions of people live in those neighborhoods, and the most active among them are Tea Partiers either by action or by sympathy and vote.

Let me elaborate on AG's point from my experience.

If the Tea Party movement was simply about opposition to "progressive issues" like re-regulating the Financial industry after it almost tanked the world's economy, and we wouldn't have fought over and passed a health care reform bill that, as David Frum, former Bush speechwriter noted, was essentially the Republican health care plan circa 1993.

   The Obama plan has a broad family resemblance to Mitt Romney's Massachusetts plan. It builds on ideas developed at the Heritage Foundation in the early 1990s that formed the basis for Republican counter-proposals to Clintoncare in 1993-1994.

Got that? Frum says Obamacare is founded upon what The Conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation and the GOP proposed in opposition to what they derisively smeared as "Hillarycare" the last time a Democrat in the White House was elected to the Oval Office. He says "Obamacare" had Republican and Conservative movement fingerprints all over it, and he ought to know.

An open letter from so-called Jacobin Arthur Gilroy to Booman

Posted by Arthur Gilroy | Oct 2, 2008 | 11 |

In a reply to a comment that I made on Booman's post A Kaleidoscope Vote, Booman responded by calling me a "Jacobin".

Here is the phrase to which he was responding:

    Fuck it. Whole hog plus postage. Let the goddamned thing fall and then maybe we will be able to start over clean again.

And here is my response to both his position and the position of the bailout supporters in general.

Read on if you are interested.

Or...just go turn on your TV and then go peacefully back to sleep. If you do so you will certainly be in the majority.
Jacobin, eh?. Another cant word.

What is a "Jacobin", exactly?

In the context of the French Revolution, a Jacobin originally meant a member of the Jacobin Club (1789-1794), but even at that time, the term Jacobins had been popularly applied to all promulgators of revolutionary opinions. In contemporary France this term refers to the concept of a centralized Republic, with power concentrated in the national government, at the expense of local or regional governments. Similarly, Jacobinist educational policy, which influenced modern France well into the 20th Century, sought to stamp out French minority languages that it considered reactionary, such as Breton, Basque, Catalan, Occitan, Alsatian, Franco-Provençal and Dutch (West Flemish).

Oui's addition ...

The Batavian Republic (Dutch: Bataafse Republiek; French: République Batave) was the successor state to the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands. It was proclaimed on 19 January 1795 after the Batavian Revolution and ended on 5 June 1806, with the accession of Louis Bonaparte to the Dutch throne. From October 1801 onward, it was known as the Batavian Commonwealth (Dutch: Bataafs Gemenebest). Both names refer to the Germanic tribe of the Batavi, representing both the Dutch ancestry and their ancient quest for liberty in their nationalist lore.

In early 1795, intervention by the French Republic led to the downfall of the old Dutch Republic. The new republic enjoyed widespread support from the Dutch populace and was the product of a genuine popular revolution. However, it was founded with the armed support of the French Revolutionary Army. The Batavian Republic became a client state, the first of the "sister republics", and later part of the French Empire of Napoleon.

In The first Kiss this Ten Years! --or--the meeting of Britannia & Citizen François (1803), James Gillray caricatured the peace between France and Britain.

Yup.

That's me alright.

What bullshit. The degradation of the use of the English language is perhaps the most disturbing aspect of modern American culture.

I am not a "Jacobin", Booman. I am not even a revolutionary as that word is most often used. I am simply observing the root cause of the ongoing collapse of the United States and proferring the only solution that I can see.

A PROGRESSIVE BLOG TOTAL BS SMEAR AND CHARACTER ASSASSINATION

Arthur Gilroy in talks with strategists ahead of FIFTEENTH diary this month

Posted by JoelDanWalls | Feb 19, 2019 | 2 |

Bet on it.

Reliable sources report that Arthur Gilroy has been in close consultation with Roger Stone, Jerome Corsi, Julian Assange and the reanimated corpse of Andrew Breitbart about the topic for his fifteenth Booman Tribune diary this month. Gilroy, a professional musician from New York City known for his stream-of-consciousness reports filed from roadside diners throughout the northeastern US, and for his exegeses of the Bible, the lyrics of Bob Dylan, and the plays of William Shakespeare, is thought to be preparing another hagiographical essay about former Rep. Beto O'Rourke (D-TX). However, this reporter has learned that Gilroy's strategists are recommending he return to his roots and instead write a concise summary of Ron Paul Thought. A title for this work has yet to be chosen, but in a telephone conversation yesterday, Gilroy acknowledged that he was leaning toward WTFU .

Watch.

Calling themselves "Democrats" at the Pond ... community party goers of shallow minds ... a new generation.

About son of Ron Paul ...

Trump's BIG Beautiful Bill to spread poor man's money to the Ultra Rich in America.

Senators Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Susan Collins of Maine, and Rand Paul of Kentucky ultimately broke ranks with their fellow Republicans in spite of Trump's threats to campaign against lawmakers who voted against the bill.

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GOP senator said he's lost `a lot of respect' for Trump after rescinded invitation

Why some Republicans are concerned about Trump's "big beautiful bill" | CBS News |