OWENS SEEKS ARENA JOBS FOR BLACKS Chris Owens, the son and wanna-be successor of Rep. Major Owens, has put together a list of conditions under which he'd support Bruce Ratner's plan for a basketball arena next to Atlantic Center. The demands are so lengthy and lopsided that it would never be agreed to, which is precisely why Owens released them-it's an intentionally facetious offer. But we found one noteworthy condition in there: "that at least 80 percent of ALL employees…related to this project will be residents of Brooklyn, no less than 80 percent of the employed Brooklyn residents are people of color and that no less than 60 percent of those people of color are of African descent."

Now, efforts have been made to set aside a percentage of government contracts to minority-owned businesses, but we haven't heard specific demands that a percentage of jobs go to minorities. Owens recalled one example for us, but it was when a rogue organization showed up unannounced at construction sites demanding jobs for its members, in what some alleged was an extortion scheme. Besides, the arena-housing plan wouldn't be a government project. It would be Ratner's project. Owens says Ratner should get no public subsidies, but should be told by the government whom to hire-and how much to charge for Nets tickets.

You can see why Owens's conditional offer to support the project is rhetorical. We're more likely to see Walter O'Malley's kids re-purchase the Los Angeles Dodgers and move them back to Brooklyn.

MEMORIES…OF THE WAY WE WERE Oh, how fond Brooklyn's gay political activists once were of Councilman Vinny Gentile. We refer to the Lambda Independent Democrats' newsletter of November 1998, when Gentile, then a state senator, won his first reelection bid over former State Senator Chris Mega.

"LID battled Mega for all of his career and takes particular delight in what appears to be a career-ending defeat," the newsletter declared. "We are proud of its strong financially and volunteer support we provided to Senator Gentile in this and his previous campaign. Lesbian and gay residents of Bay Ridge, Bensonhurst, and Staten Island should be pleased that they will still have the services of a hard-working, effective, progressive state senator in Vincent Gentile. And all LID members can be proud of the fact that you helped protect a vote for a statewide lesbian and gay nondiscrimination bill by defeating Chris Mega." But when the bill, known as SONDA, finally came up for a vote last December, Gentile voted against it.

TAITT RUES PATH NOT TAKEN Past and future City Council candidate Sam Taitt is still kicking himself for not trying to knock 2003 Democratic primary opponent Erlene King off the ballot. King's petitions looked shaky to Taitt, but he feared a backlash of female voters if he ousted the only woman in the race. At least, King threatened to drum up a backlash against Taitt, which was probably a bluff because she didn't have the wherewithal to do so.

So Taitt didn't challenge her petitions in court, and she ultimately received 601 votes. Taitt lost by fewer than 200 votes. King said her voters wouldn't have pulled the lever for Taitt had King not made the ballot. But we'll never know.

After the election, Taitt began to suspect that King ran not to win, but to divide the anti-incumbent vote, thus aiding Councilman Kendall Stewart, who emerged victorious. "She was put there as a spoiler," Taitt charged. But he wouldn't state on the record who he believes masterminded King's campaign. Her primary political supporter was the Rev. Lloyd Henry, who preceded Stewart in the East Flatbush seat, but Henry apparently didn't do much for her. We tend to doubt there was any mastermind, because King's campaign was anything but masterful. With no campaign experience, she spent most of her time on the street, arguably the worst place to get votes, rather than in churches and senior centers.

Before the primary, Taitt met with King to see if she might drop out of the race. "She kept saying the people who were supporting her would not support me," Taitt recalled. "I kept thinking that she meant the people who were voting for her. After the campaign I realized it meant the people who were funding her campaign. Had I known that, I would have taken her out." However, we looked at King's campaign finance records and didn't find any major donors or any discernable pattern to the donations. She reported contributions of just $11,642. Taitt, meanwhile, raised $27,177, received $63,460 in public matching funds, and outspent King nearly 6-to-1.

King applied for matching funds but never got them and thus couldn't afford to mail any literature or otherwise publicize her New York Times endorsement, which fell on deaf ears because virtually no one in East Flatbush reads the Times, King said. King flatly rejected Taitt's suggestion to quit. "As far as I'm concerned, Sam Taitt and Kendall Stewart are cut from the same cloth. They're two buffoons," she charged. "Why should I drop out when he and Kendall Stewart are two of the same people? Why would I remove one person to put in his twin? I was endorsed by The New York Times because I was the only one who was competent."

The race's third-place finisher was Omar Boucher, who Taitt said captured some Haitian votes by using a Haitian pronunciation of Boucher-"boo-SHAY"-before Haitian audiences. The candidate himself pronounces it BOW-cher. Boucher told us when he ran for State Senate in 2002 that he uses either pronunciation, but Taitt said Boucher made a special effort to appeal to Haitians who were furious with Stewart for comments they perceived to be anti-Haitian.. "He's a liar. He never, ever used that pronunciation until the Haitian fallout," Taitt said of Boucher. "Suddenly it became convenient for him to become Boo-SHAY."

"Since Sam Taitt doesn't have a very good command of the English language, I suppose he can't pronounce Boo-SHAY," Boucher responded. "I answer to both (pronunciations). My parents gave me the name. I was born with it and I can choose to pronounce it any which way I want." Boucher added, "He's a sore loser. He should worry about the issues that affect our communities and his inactivity in addressing any of them. He's always missing in action."

Boucher chastised Taitt for calling King a spoiler candidate. "He shouldn't say she's a front...He should stop moaning like a little child and take his lumps like a man." Not surprisingly, Taitt has decided to challenge Stewart again in 2005. "There's widespread dissatisfaction with his performance," Taitt said.

But Taitt may again see the anti-incumbent vote split by another candidate, or two. "I am certainly not going to give him a free ride," Boucher said. King said she might run as well. She plans to warm up for the 2005 race by running for Democratic district leader in 2004 against Gail Reed-Barnett.

GELLER'S TWO CENTS (AND WORTH EVERY PENNY) District leader Mike Geller of Sheepshead Bay has found a venue for his opinion-the incipient Web site of his Democratic club, where he posts occasional columns.

In one, we found this nugget of wisdom about our schools: "Perhaps the time has come to put an end to the touchy-feely, feel-good nonsense that passes for a curriculum. Do we need Women's History Month, Black History Month, Puerto Rican History Month, Dominican Month? Having ethnic pride is fine, but why can't families teach children their individual heritage at home. Perhaps we need more class projects that teach American pride."

Actually, we have plenty of those in our American history classes, which attempt to foster national pride by emphasizing our proud moments (like the American Revolution) and burying or ignoring our ignominious ones, which are too numerous to mention here, but are well chronicled in publications (like The Nation or Noam Chomsky's books) that rarely find their way into American classrooms. Our two cents (also worth every penny) is that we should teach facts, not pride. You can't teach pride.

ODDO ANNOYED Councilman Jim Oddo took the time to write us a two-page letter after we reported on his objection to the city giving away nicotine patches. Oddo had told the city health commissioner, "Adults can go out on their own and acquire nicotine patches. Parents of kids in non-public schools who no longer have school nurses can't on their own go out and get those services. So wouldn't that money have been better spent, whether it was $1 or $100,000, in providing a service that New Yorkers couldn't get on their own?"

We wrote that non-public schools should provide their own nurses, prompting Oddo to claim in his letter that state law requires identical health services in public and non-public schools. Hence, according to the councilman, the city is violating state law by putting nurses in some schools and not others. If so, Oddo should have sued the city Department of Health long ago.

GUTNIK'S "STUPID" SUIT Last summer, Russian political activist Oleg Gutnik encouraged Anatoly Eyzenberg (a/k/a Tony Eisenberg) to run for City Council, and was among his biggest supporters as Eyzenberg fought unsuccessfully to stay on the ballot. But if there's any goodwill left between them, it certainly wasn't reflected in the assessment by Eyzenberg's son David Eyzenberg of Gutnik's false-arrest lawsuit against the city. "It's stupid," the younger Eyzenberg told us. "It's an embarrassment to the Russian community to have this lawsuit."

Gutnik gave notice that he would sue for $100 million after police arrested him and another Russian for fighting over a parked car in Sheepshead Bay. Gutnik claims he was attacked but was arrested because the other man's friend, pretending to be a disinterested bystander, told police Gutnik threw the first punch. Eyzenberg said the suit would reinforce the stereotype that Russian immigrants are trying to milk the system. "Our community has to deal with preconceived notions about us," he said. "This just adds to the list. It debases our community."

THE DORA DILEMMA When the Bush administration, acting on a recommendation from Governor George Pataki, nominated Dora Irizarry to be a federal judge in Brooklyn, it didn't go unnoticed by Democratic machine operators who've been defending the way Civil Court and State Supreme Court judges are elected. The nomination if Irizarry, they believe, shows that appointing judges is similarly political and doesn't keep bozos off the bench. Irizarry, whose temperament to be a judge has been questioned, was one of three Bush nominees (out of 200) rated unqualified by the American Bar Association.

As a New York Observer editorial put it, "A year ago, an obscure-make that completely unknown-former judge named Dora Irizarry agreed to be the Republican Party's sacrificial-lamb candidate against State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. In return, Ms. Irizarry no doubt anticipated a reward. It's one thing, however, to appoint a mediocrity to some impressive-sounding but meaningless job in a state agency. It's quite another to nominate an unqualified hack to an important judicial post."

Political fallout for Pataki was minimal, but Senator Chuck Schumer was harshly criticized for not using his power on the Senate Judiciary Committee to block Irizarry's ascension to the federal bench. In fact, he supported it, preferring to save his arrows for more conservative Bush judicial nominees. "While people have raised questions about her temperament, nobody doubts that she is clearly in the mainstream-unlike so many of President Bush's radically conservative nominees," Schumer said in a written statement. "You have to pick your battles, and I'd much rather have Judge Irizarry on the bench than someone who has a perfect temperament but would like to turn this country's clock back to the 1890s."

The Department of Justice Web site claims that Irizarry has been active in the East Village, where she lives, but longtime community leaders there told The Villager they'd never seen Irizarry around and didn't even know she resided there.

FEDS ZAP AMBULANCE MAN Steven Zakheim, a Kings Highway resident in the private ambulance business, posted $250,000 bail after being charged in Brooklyn federal court with funneling political contributions through his employees in order to evade donation limits.

We ran his name though the campaign finance databases to see what legitimate contributions he made to Brooklynites. We found gifts of $125 to City Council candidate Irma Kramer (who lost to Mike Nelson) in 1999, $1,000 to the late Assemblywoman Lena Cymbrowitz in 2000, $500 to Assemblywoman Helene Weinstein in 2001, and $500 to State Senator Seymour Lachman in 2002. Zakheim also gave $300 last April to Brooklyn Democrats, the fundraising arm of Clarence Norman's party machine.

Though contributors' home address are supposed to be listed with their donations, Zakheim's frequently appears as that of Metropolitan Ambulance on Foster Avenue and East 58th Street. But we found one record of his address as Kings Highway between Foster and Farragut. The charges stem from $32,500 in gifts to the Senate campaigns of Rudy Giuliani in 2000 and Chuck Schumer in 1998, plus two other campaigns.

ENDNOTE One of our spies frequently sees cars with out-of-state license plates parked in the lot on Jay and Joralemon streets reserved for Brooklyn Supreme Court judges, who are required to live in New York. It's amazing what people making $136,700 a year (not including bribes) will do to save on car insurance. OK, that was a cheap shot. Go ahead and sue.

Contact Brooklyn Politics at (718) 399-3693.

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