Category: News and Opinion

Earlier this week -and without much fanfare-a city council candidate for this year's elections, went up with a brand new website; that candidate was yours truly. Although the site is a perpetual work in progress, and will be frequently modified and updated until I am fully satisified with it, viewers can still get a comprehensive look at my personal history, my political activism, my record of public service/community involvement, and also my political vision. 

I hope many of you will go up and take a look at my positions on some of the many issues facing this city -and also the district in which I seek public office (again). 

The public sector institutional collapse approaches. With the help of lies by actuaries, Generation Greed is absconding with all the resource we have, and will have. In the future, the vast majority of taxes, extracted from younger generations and exempting those older, will go to past debts, early retirement pensions, other retiree benefits such as health care, and other services for senior citizens. (Until younger generations face old age in the absence of such services for senior citizens).  Other public services and the social safety net will ebb away. Taxes will be paid for nothing, seized with nothing in exchange. And now we have a Democratic State Senator refusing to increase taxes to pay for a government largely operated by taxes, so as not to be associated with the ripoff that it is. After all, his job, pension, his relative’s jobs, and the sinecures of associated people with connections will be the last to go, and his generation’s needs will be taken care of.

The private sector is no different. All our institutions are being drained of all they have, with only IOUs left behind. I suggest reading this article to the end. It is but one example. And there seems to be no stopping it. And no one pays attention until its too late, and at that point they are manipulated to blame other victims.

Back when the Brennan Center was releasing reports showing how undemocratic and phony the New York State legislature is, I recall reading comments from Sheldon Silver and Joe Bruno, its leaders, in the newspaper. They didn’t come right out and say it, but reading between the lines they pretty much implied that if New Yorkers knew what those who grab and perpetually hold sinecures through our non-elections were like, they would be glad there were only three men in the room when anything important was at stake.

I bring this up without comment, other than to point out that decisions to sell out New York’s future (now the present) to free up money to hand out to interest groups in the present (now the past) were generally bi-partisan and had the support of both leaders, and many member of their generations. Is that really worse than what has been going on recently? In any event, credit to Gatemouth, whose history of the last time the Democrats were sort of in charge in the 1960s meant that no one who read it is surprised. I’m never surprised by something bad for ordinary people, particularly those in younger generations, coming out of Albany.

He's good enough, he's smart enough and doggone it, people like him.  

GOVERNOR SANFORD: “I have been doing a lot of soul searching on that front. What I find interesting is the story of David, and the way in which he fell mightily, he fell in very very significant ways. But then picked up the pieces and built from there.”

Maria is my Bo Peep; she is special and unique and fabulous in a whole host of ways that are worth a much longer conversation.. To be continued

She maketh me to lie down to give me magnificently gentle kisses,

She leadeth me beside her tan lines and the curves of her hips and the erotic beauty of her holding herself (or two magnificent parts thereof) in the faded glow of night’s light

Following public policy in New York is like watching the same horror movie over and over again, while knowing that what appears on the screen will eventually happen to you, your children, and/or people you care about. Case in point, the long series of “screw the newbie, flee to Florida” public employee union contracts that both inflate the cost of public services and degrade their quality, while cheating younger generations.

Just 18 months ago, Bloomberg and the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) cut a deal, the state legislature passed it (virtually zero no votes), and then-Governor Eliot Spitzer signed it, to allow existing teachers age 55 and up to walk out the door into retirement up to seven years early, receiving unlimited untaxed health insurance from the city without assistance from federal Medicare for ten years rather than three, without contributing an extra dime. Those just under age 55 would have to pay more for just a few years before retiring seven years early, and receiving pension income free of New York City state and local taxes. Because that deal also cut the take home pay of future teachers by 5 percent for the first ten years of their careers, and because a historically (looking at long term data) impossible rate of return on pension assets was assumed, the undebated, unvetted, unannounced deal was described as costing nothing. Well guess what? This week, for the umpteeth time, we got the first phase of the inevitable second half of that deal – the screw the newbie and the children half.

I really want to like Kevin Parker. Really.

There’s good reason why I should. Of the five Democratic State Senators who‘ve ever been indicted, Kevin is the only who has neither made common cause with the Republicans, nor has even threatened to.

Unlike the other members of that illustrious crew (who I shall refer to only by their nick-names: Embezzlement, Assault, Extortion and Heroin Dealing), Kevin has never been part of the Gang of Four, the Four Horsemen of the Preposterous, Carl and the Passions, The Three Amigos (“we want Amigo money”) or the Aztec Two-Step.

Though also accused of assault, Kevin has the virtue of loyalty, at least in regard to his party.

From THE RETURN OF MARTY CONNOR by Elizabeth Benjamin (6/23/09)

"…A short while ago, there was a little confab in the middle of the chamber floor between Shelly Mayer, counsel to the Senate Democrats, Sen. Malcolm Smith and former Minority Leader Marty Connor.

“I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute, where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote; where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference; and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.

I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish; where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials; and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all….

Thursday’s NY Times has an amazing story about Curtis Brooks, a self-described “eviction specialist.”

The Times reports on the allegation that Brooks has been forging documents on behalf of a non-existent lawyer to collect fees from landlords to evict people.

Like I said, it’s an amazing story and I won’t repeat all the details but one part jumped out at me.