video: the irreplaceable Juan Gonzalez talks about some of his greatest hits

Investigative reporter Juan Gonzalez is retiring from the Daily News after 30 or more years. Here is the speech he gave at a party for him at DC 37 tonight.  He starts off saying, after being on the Young Lords, he was never afraid. He'd already been arrested, tear gassed and beaten; what else could they do but fire him? And he could always get another job.

He goes onto to recall the back stories behind covering the general strike in the Dominican Republic, the attempt to suppress his reporting on the health effects of 9/11, and the irony of the massive corruption of CityTime under Bloomberg.  Take a look!

Juan Gonzalez speech 5.10.16 from Class Size Matters on Vimeo.

CityTime, heckuva job, Bloomie! Some quotes from Mayor Mike

Today, federal prosecutors said that  nearly all the $600 million taxpayers shelled out for the disastrous CityTime project was stolen; and that the fraud goes back to 2003, shortly after Bloomberg's election. (See NYT story) 

They concluded that the "corruption on the CityTime project was epic in duration, magnitude and scope," (NBC New York) and that the scandal represents "one of largest frauds ever committed against NYC." (NY1).

Yet here are some quotes from our mayor, even after the scandal started to break:

For all the problems with Citytime, “ it will save us money once it gets going." (Dec 2010).

"We actually dida pretty good job here, in retrospect," the mayor said on his weekly WOR radio show.  (May 27, 2011) 

The scandal-plagued CityTime payroll project is now "way ahead of schedule," Mayor Bloomberg boasted Monday. (March 1, 2011)

"CityTime, when you write the history of it down the road, will have saved enormous amounts of money for the city," Bloomberg concluded . (March 1, 2011)

The story of Bloomberg reign: consultants win big & kids lose.  The $600 million stolen in taxpayer funds would pay for the threatened loss of the six thousand teaching positions, nearly twice over.

Shouldn't he have to pay us back?