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Featured PostsThe Injustice of the St. Patrick’s Day Parade: A Postmortem
The Injustice of the St. Patrick’s Day Parade: A Postmortem By Michael Boyajian There was a time that although I am not Irish I would exuberantly celebrate the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in New York. With spirits high from the pending arrival of Spring I would wear green, work the governor’s brunch before the parade, watch the parade with my wife up by the Metropolitan Museum of Art where we would enjoy a fine lunch of corn beef and cabbage followed that very evening by another meal of corn beef and cabbage. All day I would get choked up by the passing bag pipers and elderly Irishmen would come up to my wife and say she had the map of Ireland on her face.
A Few Minutes Of Mort Tells Us A LotI watched a few minutes of Morning Joe on MSNBC this morning, where their guests included Daily News publisher, Mort Zuckerman. John Harris of Politico reported on a story by Room 8 co-founder Ben Smith about union leaders pressuring Democratic Congressmen to vote in favor of the health insurance plan. Harris pointed to the role being played by Andy Stern, President of the SEIU.Zuckerman, in an obvious attempt to imply that Obama is a corrupt as those horrible Clintons, stated said that Stern was #1 on the list of people who had overnight stays at the White House. Saving the Tuba Player
Saving the Tuba Player By Michael Boyajian The proposed Obama Administration education reforms make for a good start but do not go far enough at least in New York State. The simplest way to level the education playing field and equalize the system is to revamp the school financing formula.
Today's Poll
Poll for the day: Which would be the best way to deliver to Hiram the political equivalent of cutting him (and not on his face) with a piece of broken glass? 1) Build up Peralta's victory margin? 2) Hope the Republican edges him out of second place? 3) Take him and his collaborators, shave their heads and run them naked through the streets (before you choose this option, remember that it would involve seeing Carl Kruger with his clothes off)?
The Search for (the Wrong, Less Politically Powerful) People To Blame
While certain state politicians are demanding an audit of the MTA they defunded, I caught an interesting statistic in an article on the on the taxi overcharge scandal. According to the New York Times, New York City has 48,000 taxi drivers. That number rang a bell, and sure enough according to page VI-145/146 of the latest MTA budget, New York City Transit required 48,600 workers to transport a far larger number of people around New York City. Streetsblog, meanwhile, has drawn a striking comparison between the cost of having New York City Transit carry schoolchildren around the city, which New York State is unwilling to pay for, and having private school bus companies, which are big campaign contributors, do it, for which the state pays less for in New York City than in other parts of the state.
Meanwhile, I read that the state has been intensively auditing S.U.N.Y., finding the usual examples of services that could be consolidated and bookkeeping errors that need to be corrected. While I have no problem with holding S.U.N.Y. and C.U.N.Y. strictly to account, however, the reality is that staffing and pay are low in New York State in state government higher education (colleges and universities) and in New York City in local government higher education (community colleges) relative to the national average, according to governments division data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Particularly when the higher cost of living downstate is accounted for in payroll. Meanwhile, elementary and secondary school spending, staffing and pay in the portion of New York State outside New York City is off the charts. It appears that the whole focus in a fiscal crisis in on the places where the money isn’t. Somehow, I don’t think that’s an accident. Rising Tide for Same Sex Marriage
Rising Tide for Same Sex Marriage By Michael Boyajian The Fishkill Democratic Committee gathered recently for its monthly meeting and to hear from Didi Barrett who is expected to run against New York State Senator Stephen Saland an opponent of same sex marriage. Didi Barrett is important to the gay community because she is a candidate who has pledged to support same sex marriage and because she is the first of many candidates who will ultimately be running this year in support of marriage equality making it a movement unseen since the days of abolition. After the debacle of same sex marriage in the state senate last year the gay community vowed to field candidates against all those who had opposed the measure.
Problem Solved (Guest Column by Roscoe Conway)
Monserrate needs a job, right? And he's in full campaign mode? And the Dems in CD 29 are having trouble finding a candidate, right? See where this is heading?
Monserrate is a resident of the state, which is the threshhold for Congress - Paterson can call the election, and get out in front with an endorsement. Paterson can spend the entire campaign criss-crossing CD 29 with Monserrate, day after day. Neither of these guys are ever going to be accused of having tickle fights with male satff members, and it could be just the shot in the arm the Dems up there need to revive flagging hopes.
Pass the Salt-Police
No one will deny that we Puerto Ricans are proud of our culture and very proud of our cuisine. Much of our food contains – dare I say it: salt. It’s part of who we are, have been, and will be. The unique blend of salt and a variety of flavors in every Puerto Rican meal is to be savored and enjoyed. It’s hard to understand how any Puerto Rican would consider making a law to cast our food aside and recommend ways to punish restaurants that prepare and serve Puerto Rican dishes.
New York State Income Tax Payments by Place of ResidenceNot long after I mentioned it in a prior post, that data is out for 2007. New York City accounted for 45 percent of the state's income and 47 percent of its income tax payments in 2007. Those figures only include the taxes paid by state residents. New York State income taxes paid by commuters from Connecticut and New Jersey are in addition, and most of those are collected in New York City. New York City received 38.3 percent of New York State school aid that year. New York City's share of the state's income and taxes have probably fallen quite a bit since then, particularly since such a large share of the workers in the rest of the state are public employees and retirees. The city fell from 41.6% of state tax payments in 2000 to 39.4% in 2002, during the last Wall Street meltdown. So, based on who got cut the most in previous recessions, will it share of state school aid, if back door school aid and other gambits are included. The Trauma of War
The Trauma of War By Michael Boyajian When I was younger I used to watch war movies, mostly John Wayne stuff like his cavalry trilogy, his World War II forays and finally the Green Berets. As kids we all played with our G.I. Joes dressing them up in Marine dress up or a frogman outfit. All the neighborhood kids would run around the block playing army with toy guns. How did we know how to play army? Well, they were broadcasting the Vietnam War on television every evening.
NY Times Defines Social ModerationToday’s New York Times reports on the latest candidate who thinks he can beat Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. Ravitch is A Member of Generation Greed Too
So that's the answer. The generations in charge keep all the deals they have promised themselves but refused to pay for, and to put off the day of reckoning a while longer until they move out of die off, money will be borrowed. Again. With a promise of repayment backed by diminished public services and benefits, and higher taxes, for those still here in the future. Again. That is their legacy, a poisoned legacy in their communities, in their state, in their country, and in many cases in their families. "I want for me now," right to the end. "And I won't face the fact that I am acting to harm anyone else because I won't think of anyone else; just me, just right now." Consequences for others and the future therefore just appear, they rationalize to themselves.
I'll write more about this later, but just let me clear one thing up as a matter of fact. It's Time to Cash in on the Misery of Others and Gatemouth Needs a Publisher
On Wednesday, March 12, 2008 a meltdown occurred on my hard drive destroying a nearly complete 600 page manuscript documenting my life and times in the world of New York City political blogging. Simultaneously, a meltdown of far less significance to my daily life occurred in Albany, as New York Governor Eliot Spitzer announced his resignation from office. The origins of both these events, each of which I consider to be tragic (but surely regarded by many others with glee), stemmed from similar sources. My hard-drive contracted a virus probably acquired from visits to venues mostly frequented by naked women. The origins of the Governor’s meltdown had a similar pedigree, although my disabling virus was contacted at sites where the admission was free, while the Governor’s problems seemingly stemmed from a misunderstanding of the Albany concept of “pay to play”.
School’s Out Forever
School’s Out Forever By Michael Boyajian The pariah of school cuts to arts and music has raised its ugly head once again. Those who use but one side of their brain have decided that only math and science count when it comes to financing our schools. By corrupting and taking a hard right off Plato’s conjectured road they say to hell with art, music, philosophy and the humanities in general without giving thought for a minute to the simple modern world facts that those with musical skills excel in science and that without the art and literature of science fiction there would be no landing of a man on the moon.
COUNCIL MEMBERS DARLENE MEALY AND TISH JAMES SLAM MTA AT PUBLIC HEARING IN BROOKLYN
Don’t ever say that some of the female members of Brooklyn’s city council delegation are soft: they aren’t. There was a raucous public hearing last Wednesday evening at the Brooklyn Museum (near Grand Army Plaza), that was aimed at getting the general view on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s proposed service cuts in the next fiscal year; at this event, NYC council members Darlene Mealy and Tish James -both from Brooklyn- made outstanding oral presentations which captivated the loud crowd of attendees. Throughout the procedures scores of teenagers outnumbered the elderly, in openly expressing their disenchantment with the proposed cuts by the MTA’s board members. Eventually four arrests were made amongst the spirited -but at times rowdy- youngsters; as police officers had to be called in to help maintain order.
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