Category: News and Opinion

The Gateway (Sex and the Single Amigo Edition)

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Robbins jokingly links Carl Kruger's problems to the Russian Spy Imbroglio–one day after Gatemouth did.

Thankfully, this time there were no nude photos. Carl Kruger's Russian Secrets – Page 1 – Columns – New York – Village Voice

　

Sullivan calls out Linda Lingle for thwarting Civil Unions in Hawaii, and I agree–maybe she is even a homophobe; but we could probably have Civil Unions by next week in NYS, if not for politicians afraid of being called homophobes if they support them  (No, Civil Unions would not be my preference, but I didn't let my preference for Single Payer stop me from supporting Health Care Reform) . Not Even Civil Unions – The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com

　

The GOP Economic Strategy

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The GOP Economic Strategy

 

By Michael Boyajian

 

The GOP under Richard Nixon developed what is called a Southern Strategy where they would appeal to voters in the south who were unhappy with President Johnson’s civil rights legislation.  The strategy worked in this Democratic stronghold and the Republicans were launched into the White House.

Census Bureau Education Finance Data: Recent Trends

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In my previous post, I looked at comparative public school spending per child in FY 2008 using data aggregated by the U.S. Census Bureau, with a flashback to the 1990s and a look ahead based on budget data. In the spreadsheet attached to this post, I compare the public school revenues and expenditures of the United States, New York City, the Downstate Suburbs, Upstate New York and New Jersey in FY 2008 with FY 2007, the year before the Campaign for Fiscal Equity Lawsuit was settled, and FY 2002, the last budget before the start of the Bloomberg Administration. The output pages of the spreadsheet are designed to print on two letter-sized pages. My review of the findings is below.

The Gateway (Just When You Thought It Was Safe to Go Back Into the Courts Edition)

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Truth is better than fiction department: disgraced former Judge Michael Garson is running for delegate to the Brooklyn Democrats Judicial Nominating Convention. And it looks like he will be unopposed!

 

Kinsley offers crucial advice to political writers:

"…today’s sermon is about something much more important than the future of the world economy. It’s about what to do when you, as a writer, run into people who didn’t like what you wrote about them. The real risk in a situation like this is not of a nice Hawaiian punch. It’s much worse: excruciating embarrassment. This is on my mind because…Jim Fallows discusses it in a recent posting. And also because it happened to me last week…Fallows has a simple solution. He says that you shouldn’t write anything about anybody that you would be reluctant to say to their face. He says he was taught this by Ralph Nader. But it’s an impossibly high standard. It requires either too much tact or too much courage.

Social interaction depends crucially on people not saying what’s on their minds. (God, you’re ugly. Where did you get that hideous tie? I hate your last book/new husband/lasagna.) People who insist on telling the truth about these things are jerks and boors. People who routinely lie about them are slick and oily. The only sensible thing is to avoid the subject. But if you’ve written about it, your mere presence in the room brings the subject up. Yet not to write about these subjects is no solution. There are important things that need to be said but don’t need to be said in the presence of those who might not care for them.

Therefore, young writers, ignore Fallows's advice. Write about what you think is important. Write the truth. And if you see someone coming you’d just as soon not run into, feel free to run away instead.” Krugman Is Crude | The Atlantic Wire www.theatlanticwire.com

　

With our schools, it’s not time for business as usual

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The logic has escaped me for for several days now, and I still just don’t get it.

Maybe you can help me.

What good can possibly come out of keeping open 19 failing NYC schools?

The State Appeals court recently ruled against the City of N.Y that wanted to close the schools for low performing results, in favor of the United Federation of Teachers and the NAACP.

The court found that the city failed to provide statements fully showing the impact for closing the 19 schools. (In other words, not fully accounting for how the closures would affect the communities the schools are located in)

Census Bureau FY 2008 Education Finance Data

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The U.S. Census Bureau has released elementary and secondary school finance data for fiscal year 2008, and I have once again come up with a couple of spreadsheets that I will write about in the next two posts. Attached to this post is a spreadsheet with data for the year for New York City, Downstate New York, Upstate New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and the U.S., plus all school districts within New York State. The data includes revenues by source (federal, state and local), and spending by category (instructional vs. non-instructional, wages, benefits and other, interest and debts), all expressed per student. In high-wage high-cost areas – New York City, the Downstate Suburbs, New Jersey and Massachusetts – an adjustment is made for this.

Without that adjustment, just using the data as provided by the Census Bureau, one group has found that NY State’s public school spending per student is the highest in the United States. But even with an adjustment, school spending was sky high in New York State in FY 2008, even in New York City where it had historically been low. That year, total public school expenditures averaged $12,279 per child in the U.S. and $16,842 in Upstate New York, compared with an adjusted figure of $15,840 in New York City, $16,171 in the Downstate Suburbs, $15,616 in New Jersey, and $12,369 in Massachusetts. Take out the need for Massachusetts to pay its public school employees more to compete in a more expensive labor and housing market, in other words, and that state matched the U.S. average almost exactly, whereas New York and New Jersey were much higher. The unadjusted figures are $21,085 per student in New York City, $21,526 in the Downstate Suburbs, $18,637 in New Jersey, and $14,801 in Massachusetts. That New York City’s public school spending per child nearly matched the Downstate Suburbs and exceeded New Jersey is a stunning development, but the sky-high total is also stunning, and was probably affordable only due to a debt-fueled financial boom that started to collapse in August 2007, just before the kids headed to school in the fiscal year covered by this data.

They’ve Got To Be Kidding

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From a complaint about Senator Pedro Espada, seeking to have has membership in the Democratic Party revoked. “Sen. Espada’s decision to affiliate with the Democrats is the result of opportunism and personal gain, not a commitment to Democratic ideals.” Of course. But does New York’s Democratic Party actually have ideals? And aren’t all the state legislators basically backed by those whose primary interest is personal gain? Isn’t that who is contributing to their campaigns, and collecting their signatures? Can’t the same be said of the Republicans?

My preference is to work backwards. Add up what is actually done, and attempt to infer the ideals from that. The ideals I get are personal gain, and the collective gain of Generation Greed, aside from a few symbolic social issues. “Quite clearly, Senator Pedro Espada, Jr. left the Democratic Party long ago in all but his official party affiliation. Through his repeated public statements and bad conduct, Sen. Espada has shown he is not ‘in sympathy’ with our party’s fundamental principles,” according to the letter that is circulating in the news. But the letter doesn’t list such principles. If it did, it would probably be easy to show they should all be thrown out.

The Gateway (Rerun Time for Sneaky Pete Edition) [Revised–More Amigos and Soft Core Porn (can you tell the difference?) Added]

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The Post’s Fred Dicker is a lot of awful things, but stupid is not among them, so I guess it was the editor of his piece–about a purported effort to throw Pedro Espada out of the Democratic Party–who took out the part about Marty Connor trying to do this to Pedro in 2002, only to have the Courts rule that anything Espada did on the Senate floor was protected under the State Constitution, and thus could not be used in a disenrollment proceeding.

I also wonder what the relevance of possible future criminal charges against Espada is. There is at least one Senate Democrat under indictment today (Kevin Parker –with players to be named later seemingly queuing up at the Courthouse door) and no one, not even his opponent, is proposing to throw him out of the party. Certainly, being the target of a criminal investigation does not disqualify one from being a Democrat, even if Republicans with the title of Majority Leader have been more creative in their efforts at wealth enhancement about than Espada has (poverty pimping is so 1970s).

And, as to Espada’s living in Westchester, lots of Democrats do, including at least three other State Senators. It might be a reason to throw him out of the Senate, but the party?

Supreme Court Battle of the Sexes

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Supreme Court Battle of the Sexes

 

By Michael Boyajian

 

The Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival put on another brilliant performance at Boscobel of their interpretation of a William Shakespeare play, this time the Taming of the Shrew.  The initial dialogue between Katherina and Petruccio as performed by Gabra Zackman and Richard Ercole enshrines Shakespeare as the greatest writer in the history of Western Civilization.

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