Today is Sunday, January 1, 2023. A new year has begun and we can only look ahead with hope and anticipation for better things to develop in the New Year like the indictment of the former president known as Trump. According to a legal analyst for MSNBC who previously served as a prosecutor for the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, Jordan Rubin, predicted that Dumpf will be hit with criminal charges in 2023. In a new column, Rubin outlined why he believed that the twice-impeached former demagogue would face charges in 2023. This forecast is covered in a Raw Story article by Eric Dolan entitled ‘The former president should be worried’: Trump is facing a terrible 2023 – according to this legal expert.”

Bluntly commenting, “The former president should be worried,” Rubin laid out all of the legal woes facing the ex-president like the evidence that was brilliantly presented by the now defunct House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, in which the panel voted to refer Dumpf to the Department of Justice (DOJ) for obstruction of an official proceeding of the U.S. government, conspiring to defraud the United States, making false statements to the federal government and inciting or engaging in an insurrection.

In addition to this strong case against the Constitution-challenged ex-president, Herr Dumpf is also facing criminal and civil investigations into his business practices. His efforts to overturn his election defeat in the swing state of Georgia are also under intense scrutiny.

In a dramatic and unprecedented move, federal agents seized classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida in early August in 2022. Even with all of these charges looming for Dumpf, could it still be possible for him not to be charged anywhere, thus justifying the appellation of Teflon Don II, which would enrage millions of law-abiding Americans, Rubin does say that Dumpf will be facing a bad year in 2023. A very bad year!

On a more local level, this month marks the one-year mark for New York’s 110th mayor, Eric Adams. An extensive article in today’s Daily News reviews his record for the year. At the end, I will provide you my assessment of this pugnacious new mayor. I can say it’s not too complimentary.

The expose on Adams’s first year in office is simply called “Hizzoner’s first year,” and it’s written by Chris Sommerfeldt, Cayla Bamberger, and Michael Gartland.

When Adams took the reins of government last year, the city was first emerging from the darkness of COVID-19, crime was trending in the wrong direction (Adams won the mayoralty race on his promise to reduce crime), and public schools were struggling to make up for educational ground ceded during the pandemic. Within days of being sworn in, two NYPD officers were shot dead in Harlem, a woman was fatally shoved in front of an R train, and 17 people perished in a Bronx blaze that marked the deadliest fire in the city in decades.

Hank Sheinkopf, a longtime Democratic strategist, stated this about Adams in his new role, “He inherited from his predecessor a budget crisis, a housing affordability crisis, and the impacts of COVID continue to linger.”

Other challenges facing Adams include his building commissioner abruptly quitting after his home was searched by federal authorities this fall, the controversy surrounding his recently resigned chief of staff, and his friendships with some questionable characters.

Adams’ hiring habits have raised eyebrows like tapping Philip Banks, an ex-NYPD chief who resigned in 2014 while under federal investigation, as his deputy mayor for public safety and tried to appoint his own younger brother to a six-figure-salaried security post (his brother, Bernard Adams, did get the job, but in an unpaid capacity).

The major challenge for Adams is the perception of crime running amok here in the city and, to address surging gun violence, he reinstated a modified version of the NYPD’s anticrime unit, a team that was disbanded under former Mayor Bill de Blasio (remember him?) after coming under attack for being overly aggressive. Adams restored it as the neighborhood safety unit, but vowed that there would be a zero-tolerance policy on police officers violating people’s civil rights.

Thus far, over the last year, shootings have decreased by 17 percent and murders are down by 12 percent – but crime is still spiking in other areas overall, despite some recent improvements.

Areas that skyrocketed in 2022 are robbery, burglary, and grand larceny, respectively, up 26 percent, 23 percent, and 26 percent, as compared with the corresponding period in 2021, NYPD data show. “Public safety concerns have also been fueled by a rash of high-profile random attacks, including multiple incidents on the subways.” This perception of these attacks increasing on the subway has demotivated many of my friends who have spurned taking the subway. No wonder the number of people driving has multiplied exponentially since the first subway attack was reported in the media.

To address subway crime, Adams dispatched more cops to patrol trains and platforms, but his administration has yet to unveil any specific initiatives aimed at cracking down on the increases in other crime categories.

Another bone of contention for the new mayor is the treatment of homeless people (I see evidence of more homeless people right here in Forest Hills within the last year or so). Adams has recently announced that the city’s new approach to the homeless is to remove mentally ill persons who pose a risk to themselves and others from public. Once detained by police, if deemed by a doctor to be a risk, those people would require inpatient care – but critics have indicated that there are a dearth of hospital beds in the city dedicated to the mentally ill.

Adams told this paper, “We wanted to get people help. And we wanted to clean up the visual presence of a city that was dirty [it still is, in my opinion] and that was disorderly.”

A strong critic of Adams’ homeless policies here is Norman Siegel, a veteran civil rights attorney, who has advised the mayor informally for years, who urged Adams to instead focus on expanding the use of so-called safe haven and stabilization shelters, where homeless people are typically able to have their own rooms and access a slate of services.

A big part of the problem Adams faces when it comes to homelessness is the city’s shortage of affordable housing, which is a perennial problem, sadly, and, to a lesser rate, market-rate housing.

These are just a few issues plaguing our new mayor and it’s still too early to say if he can vanquish these thorny problems before the end of his first term. I did say that I would put in my two cents’ worth of criticism of the relatively novel mayor and ever since Adams changed his mind about protecting the health benefits of retirees like myself in the last year, I and many other retirees have felt betrayed by this new mayor. Before he took office, he promised to preserve the benefits that accrued to us after we retired from unions such as the Department of Education and other civil service unions right after taking office, his tune drastically changed, thus making him a persona non grata in my view. He is now calling on the City Council to change an administrative code to the Municipal Labor Committee (MLC), forcing us to enter a Managed Care entity that essentially would offer us fewer health options and that would generally refuse certain surgical procedures for its members that would otherwise be approved by Medicare. To opt out of this service, retirees would now have to pay an additional $191 per month to stay in the traditional Medicare program. As of now, this intended decision to strip us of our promised health care benefits is being litigated in court by the New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees. So if you ask me if I approve of what Mayor Eric Adams is doing, I would respond with a strong, “No.”

I am also a little leery of this mayor’s shady contacts, as discussed by the article here. When asked about his association with these questionable persons, Adams just gets very huffy. I think he’s a little too arrogant for my taste and it appears he likes to hobnob with the “beautiful crowd” too much at night. Intrinsically, there’s nothing wrong with this, but Adams just sets a bad precedent by mingling with too many ambiguous characters that could possibly see the inside of a courtroom sometime in the near future.

Well, enough of my musings here. For those who live here, what are your views of Mayor Eric Adams? Is he doing a good job, you think?

Stay safe and be well.