Broken State Budgets: It's The Inequality Stupid!

Here in New York the state legislature managed to close a $17 billion dollar budget gap for this year. California is still working on a budgetary mess that makes NY's situation look easy. Most states around the country have had to skimp on programs and raise taxes due to this difficult economy, but there is one overarching reason why this is happening....and it boils down to the battle between the rich and the poor.

From Too Much Online:

Over recent decades, with more and more income and wealth concentrating at the top, those uninterested in public services have had the resources to do more than grumble about taxes. They’ve been able to bankroll campaign after campaign, in state after state, to roll taxes back.

Growing inequality has helped these campaigns succeed. With the economy’s rewards flowing to the top, and essentially the top alone, Americans in the middle have found their wages and salaries stagnating, even sinking. Tax cuts, for many in the middle, have come to seem the only way to make ends meet.

These tax cuts, once in place, start states on a nasty downward cycle. Tax cuts mean less state revenue. The lower the revenue, the fewer the dollars available for maintaining quality public services. The lower the quality, the greater the number of people who find themselves actively considering private service alternatives.

Soon the modestly affluent, not just the rich, feel better off going life on their own nickel — better off joining a private country club, better off sending their kids to private school, better off living in a privately guarded gated development.

The greater the number of affluent people who forsake public services, the more inevitable still more service cutbacks become — even in “good” economic times, as the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities and the Economic Policy Institute noted last year in Pulling Apart, a detailed look at growing state-level inequality.

It is pretty straight-forward and makes perfect sense, yet legislators, fueled by the wealthy few that influence them, have stripped their states of protection and assistance for the least amongst us. Not only does that arrogance leave the poor to fend for themselves, it ultimately comes around to bite everyone, save for those that have enough money to detach from the community that helped build their wealth in the first place.

Sen. Grassley Admits Gov't Health Care Works

Not in so many words, but his reaction to a constituent the other night showed the Iowan Senator's true feelings about government-run health care and not just the talking points he usually spouts to defend his vote for the health insurance industry:

Bloomberg Misleads Voters About City's Safety Status Again

Mayor Bloomberg is at it again with his false and misleading advertisements. His promise of creating hundreds of thousands of jobs has already been addressed. Now it is time to go after the "safest city in America" line. Bloomberg loves to claim that he is responsible for NYC's safe record, but the way he goes about it is disingenuous at best. In fact, he was already admonished by the FBI for the tactic four years ago.

Now it's back again:

Mayor Michael Bloomberg's re-election campaign claims the FBI ranks New York as the safest large city in America.

That claim is false and Bloomberg knows it.

The FBI doesn't rank cities and specifically states that it's misleading to use its statistics that way.

When Bloomberg made the same claim during his mayoral run in 2005, a complaint from the FBI led his campaign to yank the FBI reference from its political ads, according to an FBI official.

"They modified their ad," the official said. "But now they're doing it again."

Bloomberg is going to do and say anything to be re-elected as Mayor for a third term. That is why he must be checked, and Len Levitt's article in Huffington Post is a great example of taking on the billionaire mayor.

Why Bloomberg can't stick to the facts...well that just goes to show he is another typical politician trying to make himself out to be something he's not. He claims to be something different, but as we've seen with zoning regulations, over-development, term-limit extension and many other issues, he is nothing of the sort.

Where Are Your Principles Governor Paterson?

David Paterson has been suffering as governor for months now. Thanks to ineffective leadership, constant flip-flopping on everything from getting same-sex marriage passed to the structure of the budget and overseeing a dysfunctional state capitol, New Yorkers are clamoring for someone new next year. Now Paterson still has a few months left before Democrats coalesce around AG Cuomo in the primary, but siding with Pedro Espada will do nothing but weaken what support he has left.

From The NY Daily News:

ALBANY - Gov. Paterson said it may be time for his fellow Democrats to accept turncoat Bronx Sen. Pedro Espada Jr. in a major leadership role as warring state senators entered their fifth week of stalemate on Sunday.

"Whatever you think of [Espada], he has been given the highest position on the coalition side," Paterson told the Daily News. "You may not like him, but you have to respect him. That is where he is."

Where he is and where he is going are two completely different things. Pedro Espada is a politician of the worst kind. Flagrantly flouting the law of the land and making it clear that all he cares for is more and more power, Espada is the epitome of Albany's dysfunctionalism. We should be shunning him, not promoting him. I know Paterson, along with everyone else wants Albany to get to work again, but giving in to a common criminal and thief like Espada is simply unacceptable.

DNC Puts Some Weight Behind Fight For Health Care Reform

In the form of advertising, the DNC is getting behind the President and the more progressively- minded Democrats in Congress who are advocating for health care reform. Legislators that are in bed with health insurance companies have to be reminded repeatedly that the American people's best interest must come first, not just for those that donate the most amount of money to their campaign accounts.

Simcha Felder Wants To Do Away With Public Advocate

In a grand display of pledging allegiance to Mayor Bloomberg, Councilmember Simcha Felder is reportedly getting a bill ready to do away with the Public Advocate's office. The elected position was created as to protect New Yorkers from potential abuses from the Mayor and Council. It is seen as a nuisance by Bloomberg and the ethically dubious members in the Council that interferes with their agendas that do not always have the people's best interest at heart. Two weeks ago Speaker Christine Quinn kept the Advocate's budget slashed by 40%, now Felder wants to cut it out completely.

From City Hall News:

The legislation, now under review by Council staffers involved with bill drafting, would likely come before the Council sometime this summer. If passed, a referendum on the matter could go before the voters as soon as the November general election.

If voters approve the referendum, the matter would then need to be reviewed by the Department of Justice. Almost certainly, that would mean the office would stay in place at least through 2013, allowing the winner of this fall’s election to serve one term in office.

Bloomberg will most likely campaign heavily for this referendum, as he has done trying to keep Mayoral Control on the books and the tens of millions already spent on his own re-election campaign. The Mayor has a long history of disliking the office that watches over him.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has long been seen as skeptical of the public advocate’s office—he has paid little attention to Gotbaum during their years of serving together, and in 2003 explored changing the rules of succession in the City Charter which put the public advocate next in line to the mayor. He also supported the referendum which passed that year which stripped the office of several of its statutory responsibilities and powers.

Unsurprisingly, the current candidates oppose such a drastic measure. Whether that is for their own self-interest or if they care about the need for an advocate of the people, that depends on which candidate you are talking about. In my opinion, Norman Siegel is the man that takes the office seriously, as he already advocates for the public without the official title. Though if he had a budget that had enough funds to sufficiently check the Mayor, then this city would be just a little more democratic. Abolishing the office would have the opposite, authoritarian, effect.

Amazingly, The Sky Didn't Fall When Mayoral Control Ended

The Mayor may not care about Muslim holidays in our city's schools, but he sure was in a panic over the end of mayoral control. Contrary to Bloomberg's claims that New York's school children would be engulfed in bureaucratic chaos, quite the opposite occurred. The procedure to put the old system back in place went very well on its first day, for administrators and the kids.

From The NY Daily News:

Predictions of anarchy failed to materialize as the first day of summer school passed without the Soviet-style dysfunction Mayor Bloomberg predicted.

The end of mayoral control seemingly had little effect on students who trudged back to class yesterday.

Shana Marks-Odinga said her ninth-grader, who attended summer school at the High School for Leadership and Public Service in lower Manhattan, was unaware of any changes.

"There was no chaos," said the Harlem resident. "I had full faith in the leadership of the school that everything would go as planned, and it did."

At Public School 129 in Harlem, all the children showed up for class.

"It went quite well," said the school's assistant principal, Roxie Johnson.

"The children are excited. We hugged them, welcomed them and let them know that they are going to learn."[...]

Bloomberg, who earlier had predicted riots if mayoral control was not renewed, acknowledged the first day of classes went off without a hitch.

Shocking I know, who could have imagined that something in the city would work unless Bloomberg had his hands all over it. I'm sure that's what the voters want, someone to micromanage every little detail of our city. In fact I hear that Bloomberg's next big law is mandatory tooth-brushing and flossing, so as to cut down on the city's budget that pays for dental care.

Meanwhile, the schools will keep humming along (albeit still under the misguidance of Joel Klein) and once the State Senate gets their act together, they can pass a bill that gives control back to the people who truly matter here, the parents who send their children off to learn at school and not just to memorize things for the Mayor's standardized testing system.

Finally, Something Michael Steele And I Can Agree On

God bless Michael Steele. The comedy of errors RNC Chairman is always ready to give a few words for the media to broadcast. With Al Franken officially becoming Senator-Elect this week, he didn't disappoint his fans (from both parties) on this subject.

Espada Finally Opens His First District Office...Outside His District

The only interests of note for Pedro Espada tightly circle around Pedro Espada. When he ran for State Senate again last year, it wasn't for some greater good for the East Bronx. No, it was about the self-aggrandizement of Pedro Espada. Once elected, one of the many complaints about the new Senator was that he didn't even bother to open a district office. Well, finally after several months he has managed to fulfill that part of his responsibility as Senator.

Only it isn't in his district:

Pedro's digs

No, we're not talking about where Pedro Espada lives.

As CBS Channel 2's Marcia Kramer (an ex-Newsie) reported last week, the Wascally Wabbit's STILL yet-to-open district office at 400 E. Fordham Road isn't even in his district. It's in State Sen. Jeff Klein's.

Of course, Senator Klein already has a district office...in his district. Perhaps if Pedro actually lived in the 33rd Senate district, he might have known where the boundaries are and where best to open an office so as to best serve his constituents. But that would require him actually giving a damn, which he doesn't.