Speaker Quinn And The Power Of Pork

While the New York City Council (rightly so) examines Mayor Bloomberg's problem with hiring minorities, it turns out they have a few in-house problems to fix themselves. The just-passed budget has approximately $50 million in pork-barrel spending that Speaker Quinn has the power to dole out to the other fifty Council Members. With power like that, you'd think an investigation would be warranted.

Oh wait, there is one:

Christine C. Quinn, the speaker of the New York City Council, has hired a criminal defense lawyer to represent her in federal and city investigations into Council spending practices, an aide said on Friday.

The move comes a week after disclosures that Ms. Quinn’s office had appropriated millions of dollars to organizations that do not exist, instead routing the money to organizations favored by individual council members.

The lawyer retained by Ms. Quinn, Lee S. Richards III, a former federal prosecutor, will be paid with city funds, as will Sullivan & Cromwell, a firm that the Council has hired to assist in responding to the investigations.

Asked why the speaker felt she needed her own lawyer, Jamie McShane, a Quinn spokesman, said in an e-mail message that the lawyer would assist “the speaker in her cooperation” with inquiries by the city’s Department of Investigation and the United States attorney’s office.

The only problem is that nothing is being done about it (this article referenced above is more than two years old), and the idleness of the U.S. Attorney's Office allows the problem to continue. While she has taken action to clean up the worst abuses of the infamous slush funds, clearly this year's budget shows New York City has a long way to go.

NYC Council Hands Out Nearly $50 Million In Pork

Times are tough, the Mayor and Council tell us we must skimp and save to weather the economic storm. They're doing that by increasing the sales tax, cutting city services and of course, pulling in almost a billion in fines. However, despite preaching to New Yorkers about fiscal responsibility, the Council is terrible practicing what they legislate for the rest of us. Thanks to Quinn's "reforms" concerning city spending after she was caught in a slush-fund scandal, we get a whole 24 hours to see what they are going to spend on member items. The possibility that this so-called transparency will do anything to combat their wasteful spending is slim to none.

From The NY Daily News:

The funds are disbursed by Council members to several thousand nonprofit and charitable groups that defenders say will help a wide variety of needy constituency groups.

But it also lets Council members - most of whom are running for third terms because they and Mayor Bloomberg lifted the prior two-term limit - boast they've brought home the bacon.

In a public disclosure on Thursday fraught with missteps, Council aides said the new pork pie is to be spent as follows:

$17.7 million dispensed by the individual 51 Council members, with some members getting to dole out bigger slices because they chair major committees or hold leadership posts;

$17.9 million dispensed through Speaker Christine Quinn (D-Manhattan);

$7.7 million equally divided among the 51 members to give to youth-service groups;

Another $5.5 million to be disbursed by the members to senior citizen groups.

Quinn of course gets the largest piece of the pie and from that, a tremendous amount of influence with specific groups that are essential for her to hold onto power. It is incredibly unethical, should be criminal, yet she continues to do so because that is the name of the game in New York City. Nearly two years after the scandal broke concerning the secret slush fund, there still has been no accountability for the Speaker's actions and she continues to (falsely) claim that everything has been addressed and resolved. Of course, it hasn't it because the political will to take out Quinn from within is simply not there, especially with that smile of hers.

All-You-Can-Eat Pork Barrel Spending Fest In Albany

For every little good thing that comes out of our state government, there seems to be several bad or depressing items right behind it. The amount of pork is certainly a big part of that negative equation and our elected representatives are making sure it gets spread around, despite massive budget cuts elsewhere. To the three men in the room, putting member's names on small projects is more useful than system-wide fixes for education, infrastructure and the overall health of the state's economy.

From The NY Times:

ALBANY — While state analysts are forecasting lean times, lawmakers are bankrolling what some see as a bumper crop of pork.

Late Tuesday, the Senate approved $350 million worth of capital projects. At the direction of Senate Republicans, the state will be spending $5 million to pay for buses at private or parochial schools, $1 million to finance an archival depository at the Center for Jewish History in Manhattan and $500,000 for the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.

“These economic development projects will continue our successful partnership among the private sector, higher education and state government to help create new jobs and retain the highly skilled work force necessary to sustain future economic growth,” the Senate majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno, said in a statement.

What Bruno means by sustaining economic growth is that the 'pay to play' culture in Albany will continue as it has for a long time now. We wouldn't want to actually invest in our state as a whole when legislators can get big campaign checks from a specified amount of donors that are able to capitalize on their contribution to state politics, right? This is why we need to get rid of Bruno and everyone else like him with a real reform package that includes clean elections. It is a must if we ever want to see a real improvement in how our tax dollars are managed in the Empire State.

And The Biggest Pigs In Albany Are.....

Ah its Monday morning and what do I feel like for breakfast? How about some bacon? If you go up to Albany, there is plenty of it and certain members in the Senate are extremely well adept at spending that pork. Can you guess who the winner of that contest is? If you guessed Joe Bruno, you'd be correct.

From The Daily Politics:

1) Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, $4.211 million (about $1 million more than Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver plans to personally allocate in this fiscal year).

2) Deputy Majority Leader Dean Skelos, $3.740 million (from Long Island, leader-in-waiting).

3) Sen. Tom Libous, $3.497 million (a Binghamton-area senator once considered a contender for Bruno's leadership post).

4) Sen. Owen Johnson, $3.276 million (chairs the Finance Committee).

5) Sen. Joe Robach, $2.550 million (a Rochester-area Democrat-turned-Republican who is one of the Senate minority's top targets this fall).

6) Sen. Thomas Morahan, $2.464 million (a Hudson Valley lawmaker who is the Senate's liaison to the executive branch).

7) Sen. Dale Volker, $2.446 million (a Western NY veteran lawmaker who recently said he thought someone connected to the State Police was spying on him during the Spitzer administration).

8) Sen. Serphin Maltese, $2.441 million (of Queens, the Democrats' top priority to oust).

9) Sen. Frank Padavan, $2.438 million (also from Queens, also in the crosshairs).

10) Sen. Cathy Young, $2.322 million (Western NY senator elected in a 2005 special election to fill the seat of the late Sen. Patricia McGee).

Oh yeah, they are all Republicans. That of course comes with being in the leadership. There is no equal sharing or fair play when it comes to spending in the State Senate. Now for those that cry out that the Democrats do it too, well, you'd be correct, though as you can see in the excel sheet, it isn't quite as bad (per member that is). The bottom line is, like everything in Albany, it must be reformed.

McCain's "Hypocritical Flip-Flop Express" Continues To Chug Along

I would never have imagined writing about John McCain for my last post in 2007. I thought this guy was dead in the water back in June. Now he is re-surging faster than George Bush can shred the Constitution. Of course the easy answer for this is because Republican voters hate all their choices and are leap-frogging from candidate to candidate. Remember when Fred Thompson was all the rage, or Mike Huckabee way back in mid-December?

Well anyways, I also remember McCain going into this mess back in late 2006 and he was being described as the "eventual nominee" much as Hillary was up until a month or two ago. My my how things can change in Presidential politics. So being the re-up and coming contender, it seems McCain is still up to his old tricks. Those tricks being saying one thing, even doing one thing, then turning around and doing the opposite.

From The Washington Post:

McCain began his anti-special-interest drive two decades ago after he and four other senators were accused of trying to influence bank regulators on behalf of donor Charles Keating, a savings and loan financier later convicted of securities fraud. The Senate ethics committee said McCain had used "poor judgment" but also said his actions "were not improper" and did not merit punishment.

Ever since, McCain has made high ethical standards a hallmark of his public persona. In his 2002 memoir, he wrote that "money does buy access in Washington, and access increases influence that often results in benefiting the few at the expense of the many." Just this month in Detroit, he told reporters that he had "never done any favors for anybody -- lobbyist or special interest group -- that's a clear, 24-year record."

Nonetheless, a recent study by the nonpartisan Campaign Finance Institute and the liberal advocacy group Public Citizen found that McCain has more lobbyists raising funds for his presidential bid than do any of his rivals. He has 32 "bundlers" of donations who are lobbyists. Former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani (R) is the closest to him with 29 lobbyist bundlers, followed by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) with 18.

McCain's campaign has also been guided by lobbyists. Davis, the campaign manager, is a former lobbyist who represented major telecommunications companies. The campaign's senior adviser is Charles R. Black Jr., chairman of BKSH & Associates, which represents drug companies, an oil company, an automaker, a telecommunications company, defense contractors and the steel industry, among others.

Not only is he guided by K Street, he likes to talk tough about another flip-flopper, who I would like to call King Flip-Flop, or Mitt for short. Romney is also going after his impromptu protege as he feels threatened by the Senator from Arizona.

It really is anyone's game...on both sides, but at least Democrats aren't playing tricks like these. I wonder who came up with that holiday card.