Category: News and Opinion

If you haven’t already, you should download this spreadsheet linked in the first paragraph of this post and print out the “local output” and “state output” tables, before reading what I have written here. The data shows that according to public employment data from the Governments Division of the U.S. Census Bureau, there were 3,980 full time equivalent local government workers per 100,000 people in the United States in March 2010, about the same proportion as in March 2002. In 2010 local government employment was somewhat higher relative to population in New Jersey at 4,414, and substantially higher relative to population in New York City at 5,135, and in the rest of New York State at 5,084.

New York City’s higher local government employment is explained by the broad range of municipal services provided here, including public water, public sewer, public transit, professional fire protection, municipal garbage collection, and extensive public housing, hospitals and social services for the poor. The city’s local government employment, moreover, was slightly lower relative to population in 2010 than it had been in 2002. Extensive services are much less of an explanation for the high level of local government employment in the rest of New York State, since not all areas of the rest of New York State have all these services. Local government employment in the rest of the state, moreover, has been soaring for two decades, with increase from 4,683 per 100,000 residents to 5,084 just over the eight years in the table.

Look; I know that an official statement hasn’t been released, so I expect the usual coy denials will be forthcoming when mainstream-media sources dig into this topic later this week.  I am going to put my credibility on the line here: Hakeem Jeffries has decided to challenge Ed Towns for the 10th congressional seat in next year’s primary.

So how do I know? Well……………….…………..ancient Chinese secret/lol.

Those looking to chew the fat with Gate will been able to see him in a rare public appearance.

Oh, fuck off!

Visiting Snow Valley in Fishkill it is hard to believe that you are in affluent New York State.  The poverty here goes beyond Appalachia rivaling the ghettos of Brazil or parts of Africa.  You feel that you are no longer in America.

For some time now, there has been an ongoing group-protest on Wall Street and New York’s financial district. The protesters are mainly young Caucasian brothers and sisters, who are totally fed up with where society, capitalism and democracy have been heading for too long now. It is no secret that significant numbers of enlightened folks nationwide are fed up with the many ways money corrupts the political system; and the many ways greed, connections, influence, self-over-indulgence, indiscretion, recklessness, power, unethical behavior and the like, corrupts the economic system.

If Schneiderman is really the national "progressive counterpoint" to Obama, what does it say about progressives that the best they could do is the AG of the 4th largest state?

The governments division of the U.S. Census Bureau has released state and local government employment and payroll data for March 2010. I’ve compiled it for New York City, the rest of New York State (by subtraction), New Jersey and the United States, along with some related and relevant private sector data, and added 2002 data for comparison. Due to technical difficulties, the spreadsheet is located off site at this location. Follow the link to download it and save it. The “local” worksheet (see tabs at the bottom) shows data for local government, and includes a four page (hopefully) printable table. The “state” worksheet includes data for the State of New York and the State of New Jersey compared with the total for all state governments in the U.S., and prints on two pages.

The rest of this post is a discussion of how the data was compiled (mostly copied from a post on a similar exercise for the March 2008 data). I might follow this with a couple of more posts if I can, but I spent a lot of time compiling the information and wanted people to have it now.