What does it say about Governor Spitzer and his team that the best defenses of his actions on the issue of driver licenses & “troopergate” were in newspapers – and not articulated by them.?
I refer to Bill Hammond in the Daily News regarding the licenses.
Here is the highlight of Hammond’s defense, which points to facts that I have no heard Spitzer or his aides state –
DMV offices will not be handing out licenses willy-nilly to anyone who shows up with a Mexican or Saudi Arabian birth certificate. People who lack a Social Security number will have to produce, at a minimum, a valid, up-to-date passport with photo – which the DMV will check for authenticity with special scanning machines. They must also provide backup documentation of their ID and prove they live in New York. And Spitzer is ordering the DMV to use photo-comparison software to make sure one person cannot get more than one license.
And the Kingston Freeman, a newspaper in Ulster County puts “troopergate” into perspective –
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=18863866&BRD=1769&PAG=461&dept_id=82701&rfi=6
* State Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno will spend $450 an hour and up to $500,000 in taxpayers' money …
* to investigate Gov. Eliot Spitzer and his subordinates for having used state resources to sleazily, but legally, investigate Bruno …
* for using state resources to sleazily, but legally, fly to political events.
Joe Bruno's use of state aircraft was about as sleazy as it gets. The attorney general documented trips in which actual governance that could justify the trip appears little more than a fig leaf for the political or personal use of the aircraft on the taxpayers' dime. The Spitzer probe was motivated primarily by the chance to slime up Bruno, essentially by compiling a public record of the use of public equipment and personnel. But why there shouldn't already have been an existing public record – that indispensable mechanism of accountability – of the use of state aircraft is beyond us.
Let me end by once again quoting Bill Hammond and wonder why Spitzer isn’t smart enough to do this –
The facts are on your side, Gov. Use them.