Take a look at this nonsense on KOS

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/6/8/740262/-The-Ghost-of-Joe-Bruno,-Tom-DeLay-Redux,-and-Why-NY-Matters

Gatey,

One of your arguments last fall was, I think,  to keep Marty Connor because his parliamentary legerdemain (my fancy word, not yours) would be needed when the Republicans engaged in shenanigans.  To paraphrase, WWMCHD (What Would Marty Connor Have Done) if he were the Majority Leader during yesterday's brouhaha?  Like you, I see no way out: 32 beats 30, like 3 of a kind beats a pair.  Any Rule of Order tricks available?  Any other thoughts, or perhaps should Malcolm Smith sort of be like Boris Yeltsin and smply storm the TV station playing a video of his demise?

I think it was Lady MacBeth who said that to be thus is nothing unless one is safely thus.   

I think that presented with a 32-30 majority dependent upon unrelaible scoundrels, Connor would have sat down with Skelos early to work out an understanding about governance. I dount he would have yielded too easily, if at all, on the question of committee chairs, but Connor had once served iin a far different Senate when Warren Anderson was the Majority Leader--a Senate where a freshman Democrat was allowed to pass 19 bills his first session; a Senate where bills were allowed to come to the floor without a pre-ordained result and debates sometimes mattered. Maybe with a large majority, Connor would have played distator, maybe not; but with a majority hannging by a few dirty threads, Connor was bound to be nostalgic for the days when the Senate was sometimes a deliberative body.

My guess is that Skelos would have been offered something resembling parity in resources and in budget allocations, as well as the opportunity to impact legislation. The increases to his onw conference would have been such a great improvement that he probalby could have sold them as the best possible under the circumstances.  Being so impressed with his own rhetorical abilities, Connor would probably have relished the opportunity to particpate in a session where his powers of persuasion actually mattered.

So the answer is, that the ledgerdarmain would have been to avoid  ever getting dealt the pair of deuces.

But, had he won in September, it is highly unlikely that Connor would have emerged as leader. The question remains, could he have sold this strategy to Malcolm as a member of the conference? I don't know. What I suspect though is that without Connor, such a strategy was not merely DOA--it didn't even arrive at all.    

If only Madoff had gone belly up two years ago.

established parity in resources and budget allocations. That is how they were able to hire more staff. For decades, the Repugs kept most of the goodies for themselves, including expenditures for stationary.

Could the Repugs have been so addicted to the half mil in member items for each senate committee chair to distribute throughout their districts (Parker's got taken away, hurting his district badly) that they found the 2 most unscrupulous slimators to get in bed with?

And Gate, you were right to ask which candidates were real democrats during last year's candidate forums, although MonsurRat and Esplain-dat were not the topic of your questions.

But what's wrong with this picture? Billionaire Independence Party founder Golisano travels 250 miles to beg for attention and presumably dollars for developmental disability issues (he has a foundation for that), yet he left the state rather than pay a millionaire tax which would have helped fund his pet cause, then he gets mad at Smith's crackberry and engineers this chaos 2 weeks before the session ends? (Why not establish,  fund and manage institutions for the developmentally disabled himself? Surely he can afford it, and leave the government -- that he does not want to pay taxes for -- to conduct other business?)  This is good government? This is reform?

And is this a foretaste of what the Independence Party would do in NYC if they got open primaries?