Sam Levin

Adam Clayton Powell IV and Charlie Rangel on 125th Street today.

It's just politics!

That's how Adam Clayton Powell IV brushed aside questions today about why he is endorsing longtime Congressman Charlie Rangel for re-election -- after running against him (and thus frequently and harshly criticizing him) in a crowded race two years ago.

In one of the most watched local congressional races, Rangel, the incumbent who has held his Harlem seat for 40 years, is facing tough opposition in the primary as he fights to be re-elected to Congress to represent a newly-drawn district that now includes parts of the Bronx and has a larger Latino population.

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Sam Levin

Mayor Mike Bloomberg takes questions today at Google's headquarters in Manhattan.

Today, City Comptroller John Liu and Mayor Mike Bloomberg talked about the actual one percent of New York City. And unsurprisingly, they differ in their views on how the wealthiest top percent of New Yorkers impact the city's economy.

Liu, who is expected to run for mayor in 2013, released a report today on income disparity in the city, finding that the top one percent of income tax filers receive one-third of all city personal income -- a share which his office says is nearly twice the national average. The report, called "Income Inequality in New York City," -- drawing on Occupy Wall Street rhetoric -- found that nationally, the top one percent accounts for 16.9 percent of income, while in New York, the richest percent account for 32.5 percent of reported income in 2009 (which is the most recent data available from the state).

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Sam Levin

From left to right, Google CEO Larry Page, Cornell President David Skorton, Technion's Director Craig Gotsman, and Mayor Mike Bloomberg.

Move aside, Silicon Valley! Or, you know, watch your back. New York City is trying to compete with the tech-y town to be the tech center of the universe -- and Google is helping.

(FYI: New York City is still second to Silicon Valley, but it's trying!)

Today, Mayor Mike Bloomberg joined Google CEO Larry Page and Cornell President David Skorton to announce that Google will be doing something outside of its typical scope of activities: providing space for a temporary university campus in New York City.

As a central part of its Applied Sciences initiative -- aimed at attracting industry jobs and startups and expanding the Big Apple as a tech hub -- the city is building a campus on Roosevelt Island for CornellNYC Tech, an engineering and applied science campus that will be run by Cornell University and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.

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Sam Levin

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Mayor Mike Bloomberg at a press conference.

Governor Andrew Cuomo announced today that he is ending a controversial policy that requires food stamp applicants to be fingerprinted -- a move that has pitted him squarely against Mayor Mike Bloomberg. The news today is also one that puts Bloomberg in direct opposition with City Council Speaker and mayoral hopeful Christine Quinn (and a handful of other local politicians).

At the center of the debate is the policy that requires all food stamp applications and recipients in New York State to be fingerprinted, which the governor, along with a group of advocates, says creates a stigma around receiving welfare, slows down the process, and creates barriers to reducing hunger. But Bloomberg, who butted heads with Cuomo on the policy back in January, has repeatedly defended fingerprinting, arguing that it stops New Yorkers from abusing the benefits and saves the city millions of dollars by stopping fraudulent recipients.

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From New Settlement Parent Action Committee flier.

This afternoon, parent advocates in the Bronx are organizing a march that will start at a transportation hub in the borough, move to a suspensions hearing center onward to an early care education site, and then to an elementary school and a middle school. The final destination of the rally is a juvenile justice center.

This, they say, is a reflection of the path that all too many Bronx youth take today -- from school to prison.

A South Bronx group called the New Settlement Apartments Parent Action Committee is holding a rally today to shed light on some alarming statistics around the arrests that take place inside schools and to push the Dept. of Education to make policy changes that they say would better address behavioral problems and curb the rates of youth incarceration.

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Sam Levin

Public Advocate Bill de Blasio at an immigration event earlier this year.

The debate over the NYPD's controversial stop-and-frisk policy is in full swing this week with a proposal from the public advocate prompting a badmouthing match between the mayor and the elected official who hopes to replace him in 2013.

Yesterday, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, an expected mayoral candidate, launched a campaign to reform stop-and-frisk, urging Mayor Bloomberg to dramatically reduce the number of unwarranted stops. That led Bloomberg, via a statement from his deputy mayor, to criticize de Blasio and dismiss his ideas as out of touch with the realities of crime in the city. De Blasio kept the momentum going this morning with a conference call with reporters to, well, respond to the mayor's response to him.

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Sam Levin

Mayor Bloomberg takes questions at 30 Rockefeller yesterday.

After mounting pressure, the mayor's office last week released a 133-page report on the city's emergency response protocols, which says that the 9-1-1 system struggles with inefficiencies, errors, and delays.

Questioned about the findings and recommendations of the consultant's report yesterday afternoon, Mayor Bloomberg said that the city's record of responding to emergencies is better than ever and that his administration takes the report seriously.

That doesn't, however, mean he actually read it.

Pushed on some of the specifics of the 9-1-1 report at a press conference on the set of Saturday Night Live, Bloomberg ultimately blurted out, "I didn't even bother to read it!" as his press secretary tried to move along the news conference to a different question.

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Sam Levin

Mayor Bloomberg, on the SNL set today, takes questions from reporters.

Mayor Mike Bloomberg, a strong supporter of same-sex marriage, decided not to take a position today on President Obama's stance on marriage equality, which has made headlines this week.

But Bloomberg is still a big fan of gay marriage!

After a reporter from BuzzFeed asked the mayor -- who was holding a press conference at (where else?) the set of Saturday Night Live -- whether it's time Obama openly supports same-sex marriage, Bloomberg said, "You have to ask the president. He's gotta decide what he believes and what he wants to do."

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Sam Levin

SNL writer and actor Seth Meyers watches Mayor Mike Bloomberg speak Spanish at a press conference at 30 Rockefeller.

Forget the cast of Gossip Girl, Miss Piggy, Kermit the Frog, and Lady Gaga.

Mayor Mike Bloomberg brought in some serious entertainment power to really spice up his press conference this afternoon: Saturday Night Live.

Well actually, it was just Seth Meyers. But he got to use the whole stage of SNL at 30 Rockefeller Plaza! We were hoping for some Kristen Wiig or maybe even a Bloomberg-impersonating Fred Armisen, but oh well, you can't have it all, right? And Meyers certainly managed to make it more colorful and comedic than, well, the average mayoral announcement.

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Mayor Bloomberg must have quite a sense of humor for saying today that the NYPD "does not have quotas," in response to the PBA ad published in this morning's Daily News.

He must be joking to take that position after what's happened over the past two years: the dozen or so police officers who have publicly disclosed the existence of quotas, the class action lawsuit by New Yorkers against quotas, the recent legislation that has passed on quotas, and the tape recordings, published in the Voice, of police supervisors pressuring cops and actually quoting specific numbers of summonses and stop and frisks that each officer is required to hit.

And yet, there he was, pretending that elephant in the corner does not exist. "You know it's always an issue," the mayor declared this morning. "Does the Police Department measure productivity? Of course they do. They're supposed to do that. They have a responsibility to do that."

"We do not have quotas," he added. "My recollection is quotas per say are illegal, so we certainly don't have them."

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