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A Pan African Olympics
By Michael Boyajian
The idea for the Olympics is to use sports to bring the diverse nations of the world together for a moment of peace every two years. The idea goes back to 776 B.C. when the games began in Ancient Greece and were used to bring together all the independent Greek city states until 393 A.D.
Room Eight New York Politics (www.r8ny.com) is the blog site where one of my Puerto-Rican brothers in activism (Manny Burgos) promised an early response to my last column on the Puerto Rican situation -relative to its future relationship with the USA. A good thing I didn’t hold my breath. So while Mr. Burgos tries to (re)fashion and (re)shape his arguments for Puerto Rico becoming the 51st state of these (dis)United States, let me give him some more to think about.
Whenever you ask Hispanics about the current PR situation (as a ward of the USA), I invariably get an apology of sorts. No matter where the person originated (Caribbean, Europe or Latin America), I will hear similar things like: “Well what else can they do?” “They don’t have natural resources of any significance to fall back on”. “They need the USA; otherwise they will be worse off than any of the many backward(s) 3rd world countries in Africa”. “You want another Haiti in the Caribbean Sea?” “The people will suffer; there will be even greater poverty”. And so on, and so on.
I expected my last two columns about political wars in Brooklyn to attract lots of comments and they did.
Unfortunately, in both cases, this was because they were hijacked by a war of words between Rock Hackshaw and another blogger named JP. The argument got heated, and Rock called JP a racist.
Today, this narrow circle jerk widened as JP posted a spirited defense of himself.
It’s been four years since I first started posting on this site, and I might as well continue the tradition with another retrospective. First, I’d like to thank Ben and Gur for providing me with a website to post essays on the public policy non-decisions no one wants to talk about, with the capacity to attach spreadsheets with the facts no one wants to see. Creating such a site was beyond my capability, and I appreciate their free web hosting and technical support.
Writing on this blog has been, in a sense, my final howl against the moon in frustration with the generations in power for selling out the future of my state and community, to hide from everyone else the cost of enormous resources transferred to those working the system. The recession, as recessions do, has just started to reveal to everyone else what has happened. Four years ago, in another election year for Governor, I posted a series of data analyses showing how New York State, and different parts of New York State, compared with other states and the national average, with essays that identified problems with state and local government and the state in general, and made a series of proposals. This year I’ll probably continue to post data as it become available, in case there is anyone out there who is interested in the actual facts, but I don’t think I’ll talk much about what should happen next. Because between then and now I’ve learned something: things are so rotten to the core that nothing will change prior to a collapse. Consider it my New York City education.
Andrew Cuomo’s Marriage Equality Battle Cry
By Michael Boyajian
Same sex marriage advocates have been fighting to advance marriage equality in New York State after the debacle in the state’s senate last year by reaching out to the public, fielding senate candidates and by raising money.
“Public pensions in New York City and State have had a cost-of-living adjustment feature since 2000, but it applies only to the first $18,000….The cost-of-living adjustment was the most expensive pension enhancement enacted in recent memory in New York, according to the Independent Budget Office. The cost has, once again, proved higher than expected.”
Expected by whom? In any event, that retroactive pension enhancement, neither worked not bargained for, was the means Carl McCall used to get the 2002 nomination for Governor over Andrew Cuomo, getting the support of the public employee unions. Not that the unions went all out in the general election to actually make McCall Governor. They had cut a deal with Pataki to sign the legislation, following the deal Pataki cut with Local 1199 and the Greater New York Hospital Association. Of course all this was a long time ago. Which is how things were planned, because we have not yet begun to suffer to pay for all of this.
So the Times has a two part series on collapsing public pensions in the business section today, with a debate on what to do about it. What the debate doesn't say is that all "solutions" discussed involve younger generations becoming worse off, as taxpayers (due to deferred costs that have to be paid for with interest later) and public employees (lower compensation relative to those who came before). And that even if the pay and pensions of future public employees is slashed, public services are going to be completely gutted for decades — particularly if inflation doesn't devalue what is owed. No matter what. Done deal. And, or course, the massive debts run up over the past two decades are on top of that.
The New York Times decided to give Rush Limbaugh’s biographer, Zev Chafets a free advertisement on their Op-Ed page, where Chafets declare Limbaugh is the ‘most obvious explanation …for Republican success in 2010.
As I’ve already documented, there is an undercurrent of dissatisfaction about the reign of Kings County Democratic Leader Vito Lopez, both among those elements normally considered to be reformers, and also among certain elements previously considered to be Regular Democrats who supported Lopez.
One element uniting both these groups is a feeling that Lopez has overreached by, among other things, running candidates against incumbents and backing candidates of other parties against the Democrat in general elections.
It's official.
Political consultant Basil Smikle is off and running against Harlem State Senator Bill Perkins.
You might as well call this the race over choice. That is charter school choice.
Perkins does not support charters, but the problem that could cost Perkins his job is his position does not sit well with many parents in the district.
Smikle came out on the attack Thursday afternoon in Harlem:
