Wacky Albany Wednesday

As ridiculous as all this early June rain is in NYC, we'd have to see cats and dogs fall from the sky to keep up with Albany's pace of insane batshit craziness. Wednesday was another day of drama and childish behavior run amok on display by our state senate. While the judge has recused himself from resolving Espada, Monserrate (at least for the first few days) and Skelos' coup, the senate has become even more of a pathetic mess. Where the end of this is, nobody knows.

Espada and Skelos have been busy plotting to hold onto their usurpation of power. Needless to say, their idea is going absolutely nowhere as long as there are 31 Democratic senators. The TAP thinks the GOP overplayed their hand and since nothing legislative is being accomplished in the 11 days this has gone on, each day of this stalemate will make those responsible for the coup look even worse in the public's eye.

Newly designated conference leader John Sampson wants to go home instead of wasting the taxpayer's time and money and at least one senator has the guts to say what is really going on. One thing is for sure though, I will definitely not being voting for Pedro next year (and I'll show it on what I wear), and I encourage everyone in the East Bronx to do the same.

Then again, like Espada's former pal Hiram Monserrate, he might be indicted and be put on trial before he even gets a chance to be re-elected. DA Robert Johnson is on the trail and he's collecting evidence. Espada, being the slimy weasel that he is, claims that this is a politically motivated stunt and that because a jury let him go last time, obviously he'll be let go this time. He asked the Inspector General to look into the DA's motives, but even that guy instantly shot him down. Until then though, Espada will talk all kinds of crazy, such as the premise that he can have two votes to break the deadlock. Now that is some fuzzy math.

And now on to Thursday....I wonder if it can top Wednesday? Wait, of course it will, this is Albany folks!

Heuvel Vs. Cantor, Not Even Close

When it comes to health care, or any issue for that matter, smart, strong women like Katrina vanden Heuvel will decimate GOP hacks like Congressman Cantor anytime, any day. Here on MSNBC, she made him look like a fool when discussing the merits of having a public option in the upcoming health care reform legislation.

Pots And Kettles Show Up For NYC Controller Debate

To David Yassky, John Liu, Melinda Katz and David Weprin's credit, at least they showed up to debate each other. Yet since all of them have a chance at winning, it is simply politics 101 that a candidate attend events that gives free public exposure. Yet when as the Daily News points out that all four Controller hopefuls have similar viewpoints, these debates can get ugly, as they did last night.

This exchange about what races they've run for was quite amusing:

"I emphatically see the controller job, not as a steppingstone but an unbelievable opportunity to change city policy," said City Councilman David Yassky (D-Brooklyn).

Councilman John Liu (D-Queens) scoffed that Yassky recently ran for Congress and Brooklyn district attorney.

"Dave, you've got to admit that this is like the fifth office you've run for in a number of years," Liu said.

But Liu was himself a late entry to the controller race after campaigning much of last year for public advocate.

He infuriated fellow Queens Dem David Weprin when he changed races, and Weprin wasn't about to let that slide.

"I just wanted to point out, since Councilman Liu brought it up about Councilman Yassky, that Councilman Liu was actively running for public advocate for a long period of time prior to announcing, only after Mark Green entered the race, that he was now running for controller," Weprin said.

Weprin agreed with Liu that Yassky had run for too many offices.

When Yassky insisted he had never run for district attorney, and had merely considered a run, Weprin said he attended a DA fund-raiser for Yassky.

"I was supporting you!" he said.

The comedy writes itself, but really, it is sad when four elected officials resort to calling each other out on being stereotypical politicians. Most voters are aware they are this way and for the most part, have accepted it. What they should be talking about is how they'll be effective controllers who will stand up to the overpowering office of the mayor. Though according to the Daily Gotham, you can at the very least cross Katz and Yassky off that list. At least Weprin and Liu have some relevant experience. Perhaps they can talk more about it and over the petty accusations of who has the most slime on their record.

More Than Meets The Eye For Education In The City Budget

Mayor Bloomberg and Speaker Quinn stood up proudly earlier this week to say that they managed to reduce cuts to education. Heck, they are even keeping libraries open on Saturdays! Yet education advocates are not jumping up and down, because the reality of the situation is that the city's budget is still putting an extreme strain on the public school system. Bloomberg and Quinn can claim that they won't be firing any teachers (in large amounts and most importantly, for the meantime) but there is more to education than that.

From NY1:

"After school programs, art, music, staff are going to be laid off. We don't know the exact numbers, but it could be somewhere between two to 3,000 staff members," said City Councilman and Education Committee Chair Robert Jackson.

A Department of Education spokesperson says no teachers will get laid off, although some teacher vacancies won't be filled.

The department has ordered school principals to cut nearly four percent out of their budgets for next year by this Thursday. But education advocates warn there's little left to cut without affecting the classroom.

"We're cutting into the bone of a system where the majority of kids don't graduate on time," said Geri Palast of Campaign for Fiscal Equity.

Of course we have to acknowledge that these are dire times and the budget deficit has been a hard one to fill with so much Wall Street tax revenue that has gone up in smoke. Yet if we want New York to have a solid future, we need to fix our public school system and not make it solely about passing the standardized tests that Bloomberg loves under his complete control of the system.

Examining The Protests In Iran

The images are inspiring to see, hundreds of thousands of Iranians demanding that their leaders adhere to the rules of democracy. It has to drive the hard line clerics mad. Yet as much as we here in America might want to help the opposition along, all we can do is be supportive from the sidelines and let the situation play itself out all on its own. We've made enough of a mess in Iran in the 20th century, let's not continue it in the 21st.

Pedro Espada: Renters' Public Enemy #1

Millions of New Yorkers better take notice. Renters who were hoping for reform under that new Democratic majority have Senator Pedro Espada to thank for extinguishing all hopes of getting something done this year. Sen. Hiram Monserrate also shares in the blame, but if you have to give top billing to one of them, it would be Espada. Good government groups have been up in arms over his refusal to follow campaign finance laws and now we have a lead on why. The most powerful lobbying group, the real estate industry, has a very good reason to financially support Pedro and it is one he'd rather not talk about.

From The NY Times:

In the weeks before Mr. Espada bolted, Senate Democrats were poised to vote on the most significant expansion of rent regulation and tenant rights in a quarter-century, including legislation that could have cost the owners of the more than one million rent-stabilized apartments in New York City and its suburbs billions of dollars on their investments.

Mr. Espada, as chairman of the Senate Housing Committee, had assured Democratic leaders he would take up the bill, already passed by the Assembly, but repeatedly blocked it, citing technical objections and scheduling issues. Last Monday, after he defected to the Republicans and ascended to the Senate presidency, he announced he was opposed to the legislation.

His move has all but assured that the bill will die this year.

“It’s dead,” Michael McKee, a leading advocate for tenants, declared last week.

Democrats said Mr. Espada’s actions raise questions about whether he received financial support from real estate interests as he contemplated his switch of allegiance to the Republicans. As chairman of the Housing Committee, he would be expected to be a primary beneficiary of contributions from the industry, which is among the most powerful in Albany.

But no one knows how much money he got from them, because Espada shuns his responsibility from the law (I wonder where he learned that one from). All he cares about is himself and how much money he can make, presumably before he gets kicked out of office, but I'm sure there's a lobbying group that'll love to have such a sniveling snake as he.

Now Monserrate presumably has said he's a big champion of vacancy decontrol (an important part of tenant reformers goals) and if he does stick to such a principal, that could be one of the reasons he came back to the Democratic caucus after a week. Yet if he had done five minutes of homework, he would have seen that his "friend" had been stalling rent reforms for the entire session this year. It wouldn't have taken a rocket scientist to figure out Espada wasn't a friend of the renters in his district or any other in the state.

Monserrate will be gone if and when he is convicted of slashing his girlfriend in his face but Espada thus far has not been charged with any crime (though he is being investigated for several). It is Mr. Espada that we must focus on, because his lust for power can do far more damage than I believe Monserrate ever dreamed of doing.

Tortured Detainee Admits He Told Interrogators What They Wanted To Hear

This was last night's news, but it bears repeating. When Dick Cheney or any other torture apologist tries to say that breaking the Geneva Convention helps procure good intelligence, they are lying. Recently released information from the White House adds to the overwhelming evidence that torture does not work, just ask one of the guys they tortured.

From ThinkProgress:

The Bush administration has long justified its use of torture by claiming that it obtained valuable information from torturing 9-11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Late last year, former Vice President Dick Cheney said, “Did it produce the desire results? I think it did.” He explained:

I think, for example, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was the number three man in al Qaeda, the man who planned the attacks of 9/11, provided us with a wealth of information.

But according to documents released by the Obama administration in response to a lawsuit brought by the ACLU, Cheney was lying. Mohammed told U.S. military officials that he gave false information to the CIA after withstanding torture:

“I make up stories,” Mohammed said, describing in broken English an interrogation probably administered by the CIA that concerned the location of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

“Where is he? I don’t know. Then he torture me,” Mohammed said. “Then I said, ‘Yes, he is in this area.’”

Interrogation experts have always maintained that torture does not work, and actually hinders an investigation because of false information being told to make the pain stop. The very fact that we are having this debate is bad enough, but at least the truth can come out that shows people like Dick Cheney, John Yoo, George Bush and the rest of them are full of it when it comes to fighting terrorism with torture.

Mickey Carroll Sees A Disconnect Between Term Limits And Bloomberg

The latest Quinnipiac poll shows Bloomberg's approval rating and twenty point lead over his top challenger Bill Thompson. What the poll doesn't show is how people feel about the term limits extension and how Bloomberg manipulated the process to get that extension through. Quinnipiac director Mickey Carroll talks about it with the Observer's Azi Paybarah, and asserts people just don't care enough about it to sway their decision about who they'll vote for in November.



Perhaps the problem is that while people know something about the term limits extension, they do not know the full truth about how far Bloomberg went to get that passed without letting the people have a say. His authoritarian notions would impress many a dictator around the world for how he pulled that off, and this is still a matter of informing voters of what exactly went down last fall...and of course, everything else he's done to this city.

Espada And GOP Could Care Less About Power-Sharing Or The Judge's Ruling

Yesterday after the failed meeting between Senate leaders on both sides, Republicans (including Espada) proclaimed they were the leaders based on last week's vote and that compromising with the Democratic caucus wasn't going to happen without Judge McNamara's adjudication this morning. Well 10 a.m. came and went, and the judge delayed his decision again in the name of progress between the two camps. I wonder if he thought that about the latest development from Espada, Skelos et al.

From The Daily Politics:

This doesn't necessarily bode well: Sens. Dean Skelos and Pedro Espada Jr. just announced they have scheduled a session for 3 p.m. with 62 bills on the active list, many of which are "critically important" to counties and cities across the state.

A brief review of the list finds it includes bills sponsored by both Democrats and Republicans, including this little number:

- S4071: Provides for the sanitization of every used mattress or bedding material transported, stored or sold in the state.

Guess who the sponsor is? Sen. Hiram Monserrate.

First though, McNamara is reconvening the court at 1p.m. so we will get to hear his reaction to Espada's idea of compromise. Strong-arm politics is a more apt name for this game and hopefully the judge does not look too kindly on that after he instructed both sides to work together, not over each other. McNamara should heed the warning of Charles Barron, who calls out the hustlers who are putting themselves in charge of this gigantic mess.

Bloomberg's Billions And The Budget Are Tools For His Re-election

As has been argued before, there is more to Bloomberg's campaign strategy than simply inundating mailboxes and television commercials with his deceiving messages. With yesterday's $59.4 billion dollar budget deal, it seems that the Mayor, and his Deputy Mayor ally Chris Quinn is getting his ducks in a row to win over key constituencies while leaving the door open to cut more programs once the election is over.

From PolitickerNY:

Michael Bloomberg and the City Council agreed on a $59.4 billion City budget deal that squashes the mayor’s plan to shutter sixteen fire companies, maintains current six-day services at libraries, prevents layoffs of child welfare workers, and trims by an unspecified margin the number of layoffs planned for other city workers.

“This is basically, as Chris said, preserving services,” Bloomberg said, referring to Council Speaker Christine Quinn, during an event with the Council in the City Hall rotunda this evening. “I don’t think there is any major cut that is going to really hurt anybody.”

But advocates gathered around City Hall quietly muttered to themselves and reporters the fear that whatever was placed into the budget could be stripped after the November elections, when Bloomberg and a majority of the Council are expected to be re-elected.

“This may not be the last word on this year’s budget,” said Bloomberg, referring to projections that the national and local economies were projected to grow slightly in the months ahead.

Bloomberg is going to do whatever it takes to win this election, already showing that he's willing to spend tens of millions to convince New Yorkers to re-elect him. The latest polls show him ahead by 22 points or more but people are starting to get tired of all the advertising. Bloomberg has many smart minds on his team and they most certainly realize all of this. So blitzing the Internet, the postal service and the airwaves is not enough for Bloomberg's ambitions. Making deals with unions and holding off on cuts in services goes a lot further with people than any ad.

The important thing for voters to realize is that the programs saved today may not be around come mid-November. The key is to look at what Bloomberg has done over the last seven years, not in the last few weeks.

Bill Maher Wants Obama To Deliver On Health Care

Making speeches is easy to do, but getting real reformational policy enacted is another. Obama spoke forcefully for the public option in front of the American Medical Association but back in the Senate, things are going more and more for the GOP and the corporate agenda. Maher, like he mentioned on "New Rules" a few days ago, wants Obama to act like Bush and get things the other side doesn't like, passed.

Espada And Senate GOP Refuse Compromise

So much for working together. Yesterday, after Judge McNamara told both sides of the Senate to go work out their differences, Skelos and Espada left the meeting after an hour. Smith followed newly chosen Conference Leader John Sampson into the negotiating room to come up with some way to share power, but they were rebuffed.

From The Times-Union:

During the meeting, Senate Democrats proposed a power-sharing plan that would rotate the position of president pro tempore between two the parties on a daily basis, with that person running the Senate with a floor leader from the opposition party. A bipartisan committee of six senators, three from each party, would set the session agenda.

Espada and Skelos emerged after less than an hour to essentially throw the future of negotiations back into state Supreme Court, saying no progress could be made until the question of the coup's legitimacy had been resolved.

"We have decided that we need the judicial decision from Judge McNamara," Espada said.

"Our position is that it's 32-30," said Skelos. "That was the vote. So as many times as you want to say it didn't occur, it occurred." The Democrats, he added, "are getting paid and they aren't showing up for work."

While Skelos can say what he wants to the press about 32-30, the reality of the situation is that Monserrate flipped back to the Democrats. The dog has left the coalition and if Skelos tries to do anything with this stubborn attitude, he's always going to end up with one senator short of a quorum. So instead Espada and the Republicans will go before the judge this morning and await his decision. Hopefully McNamara will assess the situation and rule to reflect the reality of what is going on, not what Skelos wishes for.