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State Comptroller Said to be “Getting Close” with Fishkill Audit
By Michael Boyajian
The Office of the New York State Comptroller reported today that the office was “getting close” to the conclusion of its audit of the Town of Fishkill’s financial situation and that details are expected to be available next week.
Perhaps the saddest thing about NY politics is the high percentage of insurgents who resemble Ciafone. Errors And Mysteries As John Ciafone Bids For Ballot In Queens Assembly Race www.cityhallnews.com
Right wing Zionists, please take note–Israel has too many enemies for you to conjure up more out of its friends.
Money quote:
"This heightened vulnerability leads many pro-Israel advocates to reject expressions of “critical support” because insidious efforts to delegitimize Israel internationally gain credibility when Jewish voices rally against its policies. In turn, advocates of “critical support” say a vocal, pro-Israel but anti-occupation position exposes a needed distinction between those who, while critical, stand firmly on Israel’s side – and those whose criticism of Israel masks opposition to the state itself.Tellingly, the Reut report underscores a similar distinction. It notes that Israeli policy often fails to differentiate “critics” from “delegitimizers” and that, by tarring them with the same brush, Israel pushes the former into the hands of the latter. It suggests that Israel should “engage the critics” – even if they’re harsh and unfair, as long as they don’t demonize Israel and don’t blatantly deploy double standards. Not an easy call, but it can marginalize the delegitimizers." What does being pro-Israel mean? www.theglobeandmail.com
BRUTE FORCE (in an early release on the Beatles' Apple Label): “And the Fuh King did what he wanted to do
I said the Fuh King–he went to wherever he wanted to go
Mighty mighty Fuh King
All hail the Fuh King
The mighty Fuh King
All hail, all hail the Fuh King”
CONGRESSMAN PETER KING: Under the freedom of religion in this country, you cannot stop a mosque, a church, a temple from being built… But also, there is a bit of a double standard there. I remember when Catholic nuns wanted to build a convent near Auschwitz and there was a worldwide opposition to that.
I’m not saying that the legal position is the same in Poland as it is in New York…But I’m saying the moral outrage that was shown over that, and that was 50 years after the Holocaust and there still was a feeling of outrage that you would have something of another religion constructed on what was considered sacred ground.
Year after year, the New York State legislature passes bills that enrich the pensions of New York’s public employees. The employees who benefit are often already retired or about to retire, and thus offer neither improved work nor gratitude in return. Even this year, with taxes rising and public services being gutted, dozens of such bills were introduced and many were passed, with the Governor already signing a bill to possibly allow tens of thousands of government workers to retire years earlier than they had been promised – and decades earlier that most New Yorkers in younger generations will be able to.
So how much do all these pension deals cost? Most are passed in the dead of night with no analysis, no debate and no announcement. An irrevocable decision that future state legislators cannot reverse, no matter how disastrous, is hidden from public view. But to the extent the state legislature, Governor and/or Mayor do put a price on these deals, it generally falls into one of two categories. Either they claim it costs nothing, or they claim it actually saves money. I beg to differ. As the model in the spreadsheet attached to this post shows, newly re-attached for those who had trouble downloading it, just the recent deals I am aware have vastly increased the cost of New York’s public employee pensions far beyond what had been promised or admitted. Public services and benefits will be devastated to pay for them. This massive, bi-partisan transfer of wealth from those who are worse off to those who were already better off marks the beneficiaries as selfish and the state legislators as despicable. Totally despicable. Particularly when the unions and legislators subsequently have the nerve to pretend to object to service cuts, benefit cuts, and tax increases, staging a hypocritical show of protest.
Transatlantic Network 2020
By Michael Boyajian
The British Council’s Transatlantic Network 2020 is a network of young emerging leaders from Europe and North America who are interested in establishing transatlantic and global links.
The group includes people like Anabel Knight who works in London for Lisbon’s Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and who believes communications are the key to success. As a global citizen she has spent 9 months in Portugal and has traveled to the U.S. and Chile.
George Steinbrenner deserves the praise of all New Yorkers. He was a legend, and a good humanitarian who exuberated a winning attitude that all New Yorkers could appreciate.
He never talked about it in great detail, but Mr. Steinbrenner did a lot to help African American college football programs.
How?
One relationship Steinbrenner had was with the late great Grambling University football coach, Eddie Robinson.
Not enough people know that Steinbrenner actually loaned Yankee Stadium to Grambling for the annual Whitney M. Young Urban League Football Classic, which showcases black college football teams and even today raises scholarship money.
Could there be anything more despicable than someone who calls himself a "conservative" trying to use landmarks law as a sham-ful and shameful means to deprive someone of their right of religious free exercise?
Memo to Rick Lazio, Tom Ognibene and Carl Paladino: We live in NY, not Saudi Arabia. Rick Lazio Makes Guest Appearance at Landmarks | The New York Observer www.observer.com
We are just a couple of days past a ten-year anniversary. On July 11th 2000, then-Governor Pataki signed one of the biggest of the recent pension enhancements. Comptroller Carl McCall had pushed for some of the changes, which had passed the legislature several times without any votes against but had previously faced Pataki vetoes, and New York City Mayor Giuliani had pushed other changes as part of a deal he had cut with the public employee unions. Pataki, Giulani and McCall, all looking for support (or neutrality) in runs for higher office at the time, claimed that the pension enhancements (which will be discussed in the next post) would cost absolutely nothing. Because the pension law passed in 2000 asserted that from the high point of the biggest stock market bubble in history, the New York State and New York City pensions funds would earn an additional 8.0% per year on average into the future, not the 7.0% that had previously been assumed. New York State and its local governments, and those throughout the country, had already cut the amount that was being contributed to the pension plans based on high stock prices, to levels below what my model finds would be required to pay for the pensions. So how accurate has that 8.0% rate of return assertion turned out to be, and what are the consequences?
Let's hope that after he hears the bell, he decks someone from AIG. New York State Senator Kevin Parker to Ring The NASDAQ Stock Market Opening Bell – MarketWatch www.marketwatch.com
A lie from Beck and the NY Post sucessfully debunked Michael Mukasey's secret plot to aid the New Black Panthers – The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sul
What do three of the last four governors have in common?
Promises to increase opportunities for minority and women owned firms.
Well, here’s something that shocking and how could it exist in a liberal state like New York?
We already know that New York is one of the most ethnically diverse states:
-Has the second highest number of women-owned businesses
-And New York has the third highest number of minority-owned business enterprises
Yet the reality is at the end of the day, when it comes to spending money with such businesses, New York State currently falls behind eight other states.