Category: News and Opinion

The Injustice of the St. Patrick’s Day Parade: A Postmortem

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The Injustice of the St. Patrick’s Day Parade: A Postmortem

 

By Michael Boyajian

 

There was a time that although I am not Irish I would exuberantly celebrate the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in New York.   With spirits high from the pending arrival of Spring I would wear green, work the governor’s brunch before the parade, watch the parade with my wife up by the Metropolitan Museum of Art where we would enjoy a fine lunch of corn beef and cabbage followed that very evening by another meal of corn beef and cabbage.  All day I would get choked up by the passing bag pipers and elderly Irishmen would come up to my wife and say she had the map of Ireland on her face.

A Few Minutes Of Mort Tells Us A Lot

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I watched a few minutes of Morning Joe on MSNBC this morning, where their guests included Daily News publisher, Mort Zuckerman.

John Harris of Politico reported on a story by Room 8 co-founder Ben Smith about union leaders pressuring Democratic Congressmen to vote in favor of the health insurance plan.

Harris pointed to the role being played by Andy Stern, President of the SEIU.

Zuckerman, in an obvious attempt to imply that Obama is a corrupt as those horrible Clintons, stated said that Stern was #1 on the list of people who had overnight stays at the White House.

Saving the Tuba Player

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Saving the Tuba Player

 

By Michael Boyajian

 

The proposed Obama Administration education reforms make for a good start but do not go far enough at least in New York State.  The simplest way to level the education playing field and equalize the system is to revamp the school financing formula. 

Today’s Poll

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Poll for the day:

Which would be the best way to deliver to Hiram the political equivalent of cutting him (and not on his face) with a piece of broken glass?

1) Build up Peralta's victory margin?

2) Hope the Republican edges him out of second place?

3) Take him and his collaborators, shave their heads and run them naked through the streets (before you choose this option, remember that it would involve seeing Carl Kruger with his clothes off)?

The Search for (the Wrong, Less Politically Powerful) People To Blame

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While certain state politicians are demanding an audit of the MTA they defunded, I caught an interesting statistic in an article on the on the taxi overcharge scandal. According to the New York Times, New York City has 48,000 taxi drivers. That number rang a bell, and sure enough according to page VI-145/146 of the latest MTA budget, New York City Transit required 48,600 workers to transport a far larger number of people around New York City. Streetsblog, meanwhile, has drawn a striking comparison between the cost of having New York City Transit carry schoolchildren around the city, which New York State is unwilling to pay for, and having private school bus companies, which are big campaign contributors, do it, for which the state pays less for in New York City than in other parts of the state.

Meanwhile, I read that the state has been intensively auditing S.U.N.Y., finding the usual examples of services that could be consolidated and bookkeeping errors that need to be corrected. While I have no problem with holding S.U.N.Y. and C.U.N.Y. strictly to account, however, the reality is that staffing and pay are low in New York State in state government higher education (colleges and universities)  and in New York City in local government higher education (community colleges) relative to the national average, according to governments division data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Particularly when the higher cost of living downstate is accounted for in payroll. Meanwhile, elementary and secondary school spending, staffing and pay in the portion of New York State outside New York City is off the charts. It appears that the whole focus in a fiscal crisis in on the places where the money isn’t. Somehow, I don’t think that’s an accident.

Rising Tide for Same Sex Marriage

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Rising Tide for Same Sex Marriage

 

By Michael Boyajian

 

The Fishkill Democratic Committee gathered recently for its monthly meeting and to hear from Didi Barrett who is expected to run against New York State Senator Stephen Saland an opponent of same sex marriage.  Didi Barrett is important to the gay community because she is a candidate who has pledged to support same sex marriage and because she is the first of many candidates who will ultimately be running this year in support of marriage equality making it a movement unseen since the days of abolition.  After the debacle of same sex marriage in the state senate last year the gay community vowed to field candidates against all those who had opposed the measure.

Problem Solved (Guest Column by Roscoe Conway)

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Monserrate needs a job, right?  And he's in full campaign mode?  And the Dems in CD 29 are having trouble finding a candidate, right?  See where this is heading?

Monserrate is a resident of the state, which is the threshhold for Congress – Paterson can call the election, and get out in front with an endorsement.  Paterson can spend the entire campaign criss-crossing CD 29 with Monserrate, day after day.  Neither of these guys are ever going to be accused of having tickle fights with male satff members, and it could be just the shot in the arm the Dems up there need to revive flagging hopes.

New York State Income Tax Payments by Place of Residence

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Not long after I mentioned it in a prior post, that data is out for 2007. New York City accounted for 45 percent of the state's income and 47 percent of its income tax payments in 2007.  Those figures only include the taxes paid by state residents. New York State income taxes paid by commuters from Connecticut and New Jersey are in addition, and most of those are collected in New York City. New York City received 38.3 percent of New York State school aid that year. New York City's share of the state's income and taxes have probably fallen quite a bit since then, particularly since such a large share of the workers in the rest of the state are public employees and retirees. The city fell from 41.6% of state tax payments in 2000 to 39.4% in 2002, during the last Wall Street meltdown. So, based on who got cut the most in previous recessions, will it share of state school aid, if back door school aid and other gambits are included.

The Trauma of War

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The Trauma of War

 

By Michael Boyajian

 

When I was younger I used to watch war movies, mostly John Wayne stuff like his cavalry trilogy, his World War II forays and finally the Green Berets.  As kids we all played with our G.I. Joes dressing them up in Marine dress up or a frogman outfit.  All the neighborhood kids would run around the block playing army with toy guns.  How did we know how to play army?  Well, they were broadcasting the Vietnam War on television every evening.