TWU Doesn't Realize Shame Won't Work On State Senate GOP

Getting a comprehensive bill passed to help the M.T.A. and the millions that use it is becoming more and more of a longshot. The closer we come to May 31st, the harder it gets. The State Senate is unable to get something done because of a few bad apples in the Democratic caucus that think political grandstanding is worth a 25% fare increase for straphangers. The Transit Workers Union, who will also suffer from lost jobs due to service cuts, is trying to push NYC's three Republican Senators in hope of sparing them the doomsday budget.

From The NY Daily News:

Hoping to shame Republicans into supporting a Metropolitan Transportation Authority bailout, the Transport Workers Union will launch an ad campaign Monday targeting a trio of GOP senators from the city.

"Republican state Sens. Frank Padavan, Marty Golden and Andrew Lanza have a choice to make," the TV advertisement states. "They can vote for an MTA rescue plan that saves fares, services and jobs - or they can join their fellow Republicans and sit on their hands while our transit system grinds to a halt."

This effort, while well-intentioned is not going to do anything but help sustain the advertising revenue of whomever plays the spots. Shame isn't going to work on a minority caucus that is hoping the Senate fails New York in such spectacular fashion that the GOP might be able to take back the majority next year.

The only hope of getting something passed is having the troublesome Democrats (Espada, Kruger, Diaz, etc.) get back on board and support whatever Smith and Silver come up with. While that would be an incredible feat, it is much more likely than the likes Lanza, Golden and Padavan scorning Dean Skelos' message of how Republicans are being treated like dirt by Smith and therefore the minority must hold out together because of it.

Wm. Black Explains How To Solve Banking Problem And What Geithner Refuses To Do

Former regulator and financial expert William Black was on Bill Moyers last week and now he's here at Cenk Uyugr's show on Air America. The more he gets press the better, because everyone needs to know what he's talking about.

Ex-Pols Love Their Vanity Plates

They may not have their special-issue state plates anymore, but a few local politicians who have either left or been kicked out of office still like their cars to seem official. The Daily News caught a number of these former electeds with official-looking vanity plates where it could be argued they're looking for a certain kind of treatment with NYPD's parking enforcement.

From The NY Daily News:

Longtime State Sen. Marty Connor lost his reelection bid last fall, but you wouldn't know that from looking at his Jeep Cherokee.

Connor, an election lawyer in Brooklyn, has license plates reading "25 SD" - presumably referring to the 25th Senate District, which he represented for 30 years.

The former senator, who registered the vanity plates just days before his successor was sworn in, brushed off the suggestion that his plate referred to the seat he lost in November.

"That's your conclusion," he said. "I don't have to tell you why I picked the plate."

Connor isn't the only former politician sporting vanity plates that appear to give an air of authority. Several former City Council members own cars with license plates starting with an official-looking "NYC."

Perhaps Connor just likes the letters "SD" and the number "25" put together for aesthetic reasons. And perhaps the other former pols like putting "NYC" on their plates to show they live in New York as opposed to the ten million or so cars that also have New York license plates. However, this is a more realistic reason:

The advocacy group Transportation Alternatives said that, for some government workers and elected officials, plates that appear official are part of a "culture of entitlement."

"Official-looking plates, to our eyes, are one of the most widespread ways that people skirt the law and manage to avoid parking enforcement," said the group's spokesman, Wiley Norvell.

It may not legally give special powers to these former pols, but on the chance that it will fool a parking enforcement official, then the fee would be worth it. Though I really think that may just be a potential bonus, what it comes down to is that these politicians are into their own vanity, and express it on their cars.

Rangel Fails To Endorse Dems Over Bloomberg

Yet another sign of Democratic disunity in New York was on display yesterday when the ethically-challenged Congressman Charlie Rangel couldn't manage to side with his party for the upcoming mayoral election. Rangel is known for blowing off the press in regards to his own corruptive nature, but this is the first I've heard of him blowing off the Democratic party.

From The Daily Politics:

At separate events today, two Democratic heavyweights - Rep. Charlie Rangel and former President Bill Clinton - were effusive in their praise of Mayor Bloomberg, and although both stopped short of endorsing his re-election outright, they didn't announce support of his opponent, Comptroller Bill Thompson, either.

Rangel, a veteran Harlem pol and dean of the congressional delegation, said he is not ready "at this time" to take sides in the mayor's race, despite the fact that Thompson is vying to become only the second African American to hold the post in the city's history.

The DN's Erin Einhorn reports from a Harlem affordable housing announcement that Rangel said Bloomberg has "done a great job," but also added: "Having the comptroller being prepared to be able to run, I think, is totally unfair and the way that term limits have been removed."

Asked point-blank whether he has decided who he will back, Rangel said: "Not yet, no."

So with Bill Clinton at his side, Rangel took out a figurative pistol and shot Thompson in the foot, while the former President looked on without comment. As much as I would hope that Rangel could endorse Thompson (or even Avella) on his own and show that he cares about his local party, the disloyality goes much deeper than just one Harlem Congressman. What we need is leadership and currently, there is none.

Tedisco's New Ad To Help Poll Absentee Voters

Jimmy Tedisco is on the air again in order to raise money for his "ballot integrity" fund:



Yet when we take a closer look at what Jim's post-campaign machine is up to, integrity is the farthest thing from what is actually going on.

A Dream Come True: The "Bush Six"

I always love hearing a good story about how seemingly crazy, wishful thinking slowly but surely becomes certifiable fact. Case in point is British lawyer Phillippe Sands who wrote a book claiming that several of the top men in the Bush Administration would be tried in court for their crimes against humanity. The subjects of the book responded harshly and most of the traditional media in the U.S. ignored it. Now however, Sands' prediction is starting to stand on more solid ground and the story caught the eye of the New Yorker this week:

Last week, Sands’s accusations suddenly did not seem so outlandish. A Spanish court took the first steps toward starting a criminal investigation of the same six former Bush Administration officials he had named, weighing charges that they had enabled and abetted torture by justifying the abuse of terrorism suspects. Among those whom the court singled out was Feith, the former Under-Secretary of Defense for Policy, along with former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; John Yoo, a former Justice Department lawyer; and David Addington, the chief of staff and the principal legal adviser to Vice-President Dick Cheney.

In Washington the other night, over a cup of camomile tea, Sands described the behind-the-scenes role he played in spurring the Spanish court to action. He paced his hotel room, seeming by turns proud and stunned at what he had done. “This is the end of these people’s professional reputations!” he said. “This is no joke. We’re talking about the serious potential deprivation of liberty.”

A deprivation of liberty is exactly what those men need, and you can add Dick Cheney and George Bush to that list as well. Yet one has to wonder, how did this Brit get so involved in the illegalities of American politicos?

The current torture case began in the spring of 2004, when photographs of abused prisoners at Abu Ghraib surfaced. Sands said that he read the protestations of innocence from Bush Administration officials, who blamed a few “bad apples” for the incidents, with the eye of a barrister. He recalled, “I could spot right away that they were speaking as advocates of a cause. So I decided to find out what really happened.” While keeping up his busy law practice, he travelled to America to interview the key players in what he described as “a writing project I am engaged in on international law and the war on terror.” Many Bush officials, including Feith and William J. Haynes II, the former Pentagon general counsel, who was also named in the Spanish lawsuit, agreed to meet with Sands, perhaps expecting a friendly chat. “I spent two years trekking around the country, finding out that they were manifestly untruthful,” Sands said. “I’ve got a particular bugbear about lawyers,” he added. “If not for lawyers, none of these abuses would have ever occurred.”

Like Sands, I've got a serious bugbear with all of the White House goons that were involved with the condoning of torture. There were some serious crimes committed under Bush's watch and hardly anyone tried to stop the perpetrators. Without much scrutiny, the masterminds were able to blame the little people and expected to get away with their terrible deeds. Now that we have at least one court in trying them, hopefully justice will prevail as Sands predicts.

NY To Paterson, Stay Home Next Year!

Governor Paterson continues to get bad news from the polls. His latest rating has him disapproved by more than two-thirds of New Yorkers and a solid majority want him to simply leave after what is left of Eliot Spitzer's term is up. He may have only been on the job for a little more than a year, but what people have seen so far is basically not good enough.

From PolitckerNY:

Sixty-three percent of voters said Paterson should not be elected to a full term in office, compared with only 22 percent that said he should, according to a new Quinnipiac poll released this morning.

Paterson’s job approval rating sunk to 28-60 percent.

Democrats, by a margin of 49-45 percent, say Paterson should announce now that he won’t seek election to the governor’s office next year. Democrats also said that if the election were held today, they’d vote for Andrew Cuomo instead of Paterson, by a margin of 61 to 18 percent. That’s a slightly larger margin than Cuomo had over Paterson in Quinnipiac’s poll in February, where he led 55-23 percent. (Coincidentally, I'm sure, the attorney general has begun openly campaigning against Paterson, authorizing a critical statement about the budget to Fred Dicker in today's Post.)

Cuomo is in the best position to run for governor by simply doing his job as Attorney General and letting Paterson sink himself. Not only has Paterson let himself be sucked into all that is dysfunctional with Albany, he couldn't even get anything done with his extraordinary powers. Instead, weak leadership and no real vision has left most voters sour with the accidental executive and wanting for someone that can actually take charge...hopefully with some real reform for the system as well.

Sen. Schneiderman Argues To Remedy The Damages Done By Rockefeller Drug Laws

Senator Schneiderman addresses his critics concerns, then goes full throttle in his defense of the smartest thing the Senate has done since Democrats took over. Watch it here:

Congress Considers Regressive Campaign Finance Reform

Generally when a legislative body considers reform of some sort, the intent is to help society progress in some fashion. However, that is not the case with the latest bill that addresses the tenuous issue of campaign finance. The battle over money in politics has gone on for decades, but the current Congress (particularly those that wrote these bills) is trying to hoodwink the public into thinking something is being done when the "big donor" and "special interest" money is merely being diverted. Dan Jacoby dug through the language of the legislation and found what was being done.

From The Albany Project:

Looking at the House bill, the key sentence is found on in Section 513, on page 17. (House bill text available at the GPO website.) It reads, "For purposes of this subsection, a payment made by a political party in coordination with a participating candidate shall not be treated as a contribution to or as an expenditure made by the participating candidate." In other words, political parties, and their various committees, can continue to raise and spend all the money they can get their greedy hands on.

Under this bill, it becomes obvious to anyone who has been involved in campaign fundraising that instead of a candidate trying to raise $4,600 directly, the candidate will ask for $100 for his or her campaign, and have the other $4,500 donated to the candidate's political party committee. The money won't disappear; it will merely shift from a candidate's campaign committee to the party's campaign committee.

Meanwhile, in a complete waste of taxpayer money, the government will be dumping hundreds of millions of dollars into campaigns to replace money that will still be raised and spent on campaigns and elsewhere.

This all means that everything bad about money and politics will remain the same, with the addition of federal money to back it up. The critics get plenty of ammunition to shut this flawed bill down and allows for another year, or two or more to go by with no real solution to our campaign finance problem. Meanwhile, there is a blueprint to go by that works, but the authors of this bill think they can trick us.

Being A Drunk-Driving Ex-Congressman Really Doesn't Work

Ex-Congressman John Sweeney needs help. The former legislator got pulled over for his second DWI in 17 months, qualifying him as a felon. Apparently he didn't learn his lesson in 2007 that drinking and driving don't mix. Though from his professional qualifications, you'd think he would know this stuff already.

From The Times-Union:

At 3:30 a.m., Sweeney, 53, was stopped for speeding on Route 9 in Clifton Park, State Police said. He refused sobriety tests and was charged with felony DWI, police said.

Saratoga County District Attorney James Murphy said Sweeney will automatically lose his license for a year because he refused the breath and blood alcohol tests.[...]

Sweeney, a former STOP-DWI coordinator in Rensselaer County, has made headlines a number of times in recent years after brushes with the law. In addition to his DWI arrests, in September it was revealed that federal investigators are exploring Sweeney's dealings with an Albany lobbying firm after the four-term congressman was appointed to the House Appropriations Committee in 2001.

The irony doesn't fail to deliver here. Perhaps he was frustrated that his former Congressional seat might be lost to yet another Democrat, or that his own legal troubles (non-alcoholic) are getting the best of him. Whatever the case, Sweeney should know better, and now he'll have to pay for it.

Honoring The Fallen In Iraq By Acknowledging Them

For the entirety of the war in Iraq, George Bush banned cameras from Dover Air Force Base when our dead soldiers came home. To him, it was better that we not think about the consequences of his action and go on with our lives as if the war was something that happened "over there," not here at home. Now with a new President, we as a nation can finally start to honor those that gave the ultimate sacrifice.

It's An Incumbent's World In NY

The politicians were patting themselves on the back last week for allowing one of their comrades in the state senate to vote for the budget after she had fallen ill, going so far as to hit back against the press that has slammed them for their corruption and greed. Yet when you take a good look at what is going on in Albany whatever the Malcolm Smiths say in response to their critics is mostly fabricated.

So we should vote these corrupt bastards out, right? Well not so fast, the DN's Henry Stern tells us why that is highly unlikely to happen, even if the politician needs to be kicked to the curb.

From The NY Daily News:

The first is gerrymandering. The boundaries of existing districts have been carefully drawn to include areas where the incumbent is popular and exclude areas where potential opponents may reside. The Legislature has repeatedly rejected efforts to provide nonpartisan districting, because the current system gives incumbents districts that have been made-to-order for their political convenience. There's no sign of this changing anytime soon.

The second major advantage office-holders enjoy is free mailing privileges. For most of the year, incumbents send out illustrated brochures, styled as reports to constituents, but largely consisting of self-serving prose about the incumbent's accomplishments and photographs of himself, alone, with children or with grateful senior citizens.

Although these "reports" may not be mailed for a 90-day period before an election, the incumbent will have been sending these advertisements for the preceding year and nine months of his two-year term.

When you factor in that most incumbents have served for many terms - the average tenure exceeds 10 years - the public gains familiarity with the incumbent, even if they have no clear idea of who he is or exactly what he does.

Then you have to navigate New York's antiquated petition-signature process, get around the pork legislators are allowed to bring to their district and of course the cost of dealing with the expense of advertising in the #1 media market in the country. That is why over 90% of incumbents never leave their office until they are good and ready.

And that doesn't just apply to our state government. That is the way it works in the city as well. Term limits was supposed to help curb the powers of incumbency, but we all saw how the powerful politicians (see Mayor Bloomberg, Speaker Quinn and 28 others) were able to skirt the laws that the public had put in place to prevent such abuse.

Either one of two things must happen to right this ship we are all on. Reinstituting term limits for the city...and a new law for the state would help to some degree. It was starting to work in NYC and that is exactly why Bloomberg and Quinn got rid of it. Or, we could completely overhaul our government so that gerrymandering isn't allowed, pork is cut and the election process is majorly overhauled. Yeah, that is a tall order, so maybe we should start with term limits and go from there...preferably in a quick fashion so that clean elections follows soon after.