Looks like Rick Lazio and Chris Collins are as good as it's going to get for NYS GOP in the 2010 gubernatorial race. That Lazio hasn't said or emoted anything remotely approaching the milieu of bizarro utterances from the Six Sigma Sertified Savant from Buffalo, probably makes Lazio the front runner.  Word's already on the street that Collins is a real bozo.

For his part, Lazio appears to think he gets to come into this thing like the Virgin Mary--i.e. no record and pure as the driven snow--just because he's spent the past several years not in government building a record, but rather on Wall Street accruing fiscal gravitas and that mythical "private-sector experience" while working for JP Morgan as a managing director.

On its face, it's not an unreasonable plan.  And it's worked before.

Here's Lazio's putative meta-theme from the top of his website:

The present government in Albany is broken. It's a national embarrassment. It can't be repaired by tweaking it here and there. It's dysfunctional and we need to start all over from the beginning -- not to help the politicians in Albany but to help our children and our grandchildren so they can dream of an Empire State and have a Government they respect and have confidence in.

Lazio has New York as a national pariah: broken, dissolute and corrupt. So unlike Wall Street. So unlike investment bankers like Rick.  And so unlike other states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Connecticut, and the so-called "failed state" of California.  It's not even worth going into just how clueless/disingenuous/lazy Lazio is vis a vis other states and New York's place among them.

So Lazio slithers across the state, delivering his ethically-embroidered disquisitions--evoking some kind of anti-incumbent, private-sector-fixer image. Imagining himself a serious fiscal guy by dint of doing high-finance things on Wall Street--at least on the surface.  But here's the thing: Lazio's praying that what he and his company were/are really up to proves to be too esoteric for the MSM to really drill down on--and just bore the shit out of anybody else.

So, kind of like a public service for everybody but Slick Rick and JP Morgan, we thought we'd jump down Rick's rabbit hole and show just how boring and esoteric it really isn't.

To this end, here's a list of simple, sourced and bite-sized questions that somebody really ought to ask full-disclosure-Rick.  Preferably after his next ethical monologue or self-serving harangue about crummy New York. Warning: These are guaranteed to work if you want to see Lazio sweat, scratch, stammer and squirm:

1. Rick, while a managing director at JP Morgan, did you have any role in slinging the swaps that JP Morgan foisted upon Jefferson County, AL--and to which JP Morgan now owes $50M in penalties for literally driving the place into bankruptcy?  Could you also tell us about your company's write-down of nearly $800M in Jefferson County swap fees and why the SEC made this determination? And while at JP Morgan, did you work with these guys? What about this guy?

2. Could you please describe in less than a thousand words how this picture works? Especially now that you're all about dysfunction, budgets, full disclosure, national embarrassment, and most of all, "results?"

3.  Turning to some other JP Morgan "products" and states, did you have anything to do with marketing or selling CDOs (collateralized debt obligations)? Like those sold to Springfield, MA--nearly wiping out the city in the process?   

4.  Could you please tell us about JP Morgan's role--and profit--in the New York State auction rate securities debacle? You know, Rick, that scheme in which the state and many of its local governments--like Nassau County--got stuck holding the bag while simultaneously getting soaked for millions a week in trading fees, mostly for worthless pieces of paper that never traded. Finally, how much was JP Morgan forced to reimburse under the terms of Andrew Cuomo's settlement?

5. Were you or JP Morgan involved in any infrastructure securitization deals? And if so, how were your and/or JP Morgan's fees determined?  And what were they?

6. Speaking of fees, Rick, please tell us about your bonuses.  How big were yours and how were they determined? Preferably by year, but especially crosswalked by deal.

7.  Rick, are you only now running for governor because you and your ilk finally succeeded in exterminating the once-thriving Municipal Golden Geese? In other words, is there any state and local government left within the United States that you guys didn't get your hooks into--and then bleed dry?

Not for nothing, this blog has no particular axe to grind with Wall Street. Nor with the people who work there, the vast majority of which are not clueless plutocrats, craven nepotists, corporate felons--or political hires like Lazio--but rather secretaries, accountants, mid-level systems analysts, even mathematicians and software engineers--plus a huge supporting network of caterers, car services, office supply vendors, temp services, messenger services. And since these folks' taxes built our kids' schools, we should be highly grateful that it's all embedded in our state and our city, and not in say, Boston.  

However, this blog does has an axe to grind with petulantly hypocritical gubernatorial candidates who hurl proverbial stones from their non-proverbial glass investment banks.  On second thought,  'dysfunctionally operative mirror' might be better metaphor for Lazio and his newest boilershop operation for cashing-in on another patch of government--this time an election. After spending years in an industry that literally bled-out places like Springfield MA and Birmingham AL, and a whole host of other places across the country.  And now this guy thinks he should be governor because of this. Kinda like how this guy should be running the Romanian Red Cross.

But what's even more hideously outrageous about Lazio's boilerplate that New York is the worst state in the US that now needs him, is that he and his company sucked everything they could out of the "nationally embarrassed" state of New York along with any number of places within the state, like Nassau County.  

Somebody needs to ask Lazio just how stupid he really thinks we are.