Category: News and Opinion

There has been a raging debate over immigration reform which has been taking place for too many years now. I have kept relatively silent for many solid reasons. One of which is the fact that I am foreign born. I didn’t want the silly people who troll these blogs to accuse me of some built-in bias.

Despite the fact that I do try to look at issues objectively for the most part, there are those trolls who just post crap in the threads for whatever reason their strange minds perceive. Recently, I was pleasantly surprised when V.J. Machiavelli told me to my face, that I am relatively open minded about most issues (or something to that effect); since VJ is one of those blog trollers I observe and study. He is very lucid when you meet him in person. He is nowhere near the silly and strange poster he sometimes projects.  I found him to be quite engaging: pleasantly so.

Need Based Immigration Reform

By Michael Boyajian

The country is in an uproar over the immigration problem and those with a racist bend seem to be pushing through their own harsh and most likely unconstitutional solutions.  One wonders if they would care at all about immigration if those crossing the border were white.

The recent announcement from State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo that Senate Majority leader Pedro Espada Jr. and family members allegedly looted more than 14 million from the government-funded nonprofit Soundview HealthCare Network reminded me of the last man to hold the seat before Cuomo—the so-called “Sheriff of Wall Street.”

While on a personal level, the two democrats Elliot Spitzer and Andrew Cuomo are not fans of each other, they do share some interesting similarities. (please see Sam Roberts piece in the NY Times…. Spitzer on Cuomo: He’s Driven, Often by Politics)

-Nearly a year in advance of the 2006 race, polls showed Spitzer, the heavy favorite in his run for governor, and four years later Cuomo is looking at the same situation—with basically only token opposition from republicans and in all likelihood is the next governor of New York State.

I have known John Sampson for near twenty years now. He is one of the most likeable politicians in Brooklyn. Period. He is not the type to make a lot of waves, nor is he the type to go looking for enemies, controversies or problems. He is essentially a diplomat. He is also a nice guy. He honestly tries to get along with all people. Unlike many elected blacks, he doesn’t harp on race and ethnicity – even though he skillfully played up his Caribbean-American heritage /ethnicity, to gain his initial victory fourteen years ago. His father was born in Guyana, South America; and his mother was an Afro from the South.

Conservative “think tanks” continue to push the so-called “fair tax” plan — replacing the progressive federal income tax with a regressive national sales tax. Their argument is that the U.S. needs to tax work and investment (income) less and consumer spending more, to rebalance the economy. The fact that the tax burden would shift from the wealthy to the middle class and poor, in this view, is merely an unimportant (and undisclosed) side effect. Meanwhile, a Federal Deficit Reduction Commission may recommend a federal value added tax – a sales tax that is more difficult to cheat – in addition to the income tax. Former Fed Chairman Volker has suggested it. The reason is the United States is broke, and we are facing higher taxes and diminished public services as a result. On April 15 the U.S. Senate, dominated by members of Generation Greed who do not want to admit what they have done to their children and the country, passed a non-binding resolution objecting to the addition of a value added tax by an overwhelming margin.

As usual, there is an option that I would be in favor of that no one is likely to consider – enacting a regressive value added tax as a replacement for the even more regressive payroll tax. If a shift in the tax burden from work to spending were the goal, and the shift from the rich to the rest were not, Republicans and conservatives would be in favor. If restraining excess consumerism while raising revenue without hurting exports, which President Obama proposed to double, were the goal Democrats would be in favor. And yet I have not heard anyone make this proposal.

Time to End School Bullying

By Michael Boyajian

My fondest memories of childhood were of joyously finger painting in New York City kindergarten.  Then mid-term my family moved to Long Island where I entered another kindergarten class as the new guy in school and my happy world came crashing down to a sad end.

Usually, when I disagree with one of my fellow writers on Room Eight New York Politics, I would simply go to the thread of the article and express my disagreement; but I couldn’t do that last week since the thread was closed off from comments in Dominic Carter’s last column. Carter wrote an article suggesting that Bill Thompson (former Comptroller of NYC) is the potential frontrunner to become the next mayor of this city. He believes that it is Thompson’s race to lose. Dominic Carter is way off base and way too early with his analysis. I don’t even think Thompson will be a candidate when the time comes; but we shall see. 

In New York Politics, it’s never too early to talk about the Race for Mayor.

The last contest was only five months ago, but that’s not stopping us from looking ahead to 2013.

A recent Marist Poll, with its excellent director of polling Dr. Lee M. Miringoff, had some very interesting numbers.

I was shocked to see despite the very strong finish of former City Comptroller Bill Thompson to Mayor Bloomberg, and another way to state this, Thompson’s much closer than expected loss—that Thompson in the Marist Poll is actually trailing Congressman Anthony Weiner.

The Crossroads of America:   A Family History

By Michael Boyajian

There is a great deal of talk about immigration as of late but what does it mean to be an American?  I have been recording an oral history of my extended family for some time now.  I have learned that my family represents a cross section of global civilization all of whom settled in America at one time or another.

As we await final, detailed data from the 2007 Census of Governments, the U.S. Census Bureau has released pension system finance data for FY 2008. There is no need for me to keep endlessly repeating myself, so if you want a detailed look at New York’s pensions over time read this post, and compared with other parts of the country read this post, downloading the attached spreadsheet. I’ll go into even more detail when the 2007 finance data comes out.

I did do a couple of couple of calculations with the 2008 data, which are shown in the spreadsheet attached to this post. In addition to the points I made in the two posts above, which one ought to read if one hasn’t already, what jumps out at me about 2008? New York City pension plan payments drained 9.1% of their total assets that year, compared with a national average of 6.1%. These payments are for work done in the past, which was supposed to be paid for in the past, when taxpayers benefitted from the work. There is supposed to be enough money in the pension plans that if the City of New York disappeared, all vested benefits could be paid. New York’s public employees, however, spend 25 to 40 years in retirement on average, after working for just 20 to 25 years. And yet at the FY 2008 rate of drain, before the big financial hits in the fall of that year, its public employee pension plans were sinking so fast the money would be gone in just eleven years. Only Rhode Island, West Virginia and Connecticut were worse off. California and New Jersey, which have been and will be very much in the news on the pension issue, were better off.