Category: News and Opinion

The race for the 40th City Council District: Rock Hackshaw gets the endorsement of the Independence Party. Is this an epic of things to come? 

By now most of you know that I am running for the New York City Council, in the 40th District. That’s one of many reasons why I haven’t been writing much here lately. I have been so busy with this race -and the requirements of campaigning, etc. – that I have been writing very few columns lately. And yet -despite my busy schedule- I hope to intermittently keep you up to date on my campaign and other political developments. So do stay tuned-in folks. 

In a piece I posted yesterday, I outlined the sad facts of life for the State Senate Democrats, as well as for all New Yorkers, who are facing the prospect of Pedro Espada one heartbeat away from the Governorship.

Efforts for the Democrats to hang onto the 32 votes needed to pass legislation in the State Senate appear to be doomed. At best, the Democrats still have a shot at winning back the vote of Hiram Monserrate. If the Democrats can both win back Monserrate, and obtain a ruling voiding Monday’s vote changing the Senate Leadership, then the leadership of the Senate, and the concomitant control over office space, lulus, leadership positions and other internal resources will remain in their hands, although, without 32 votes, they will still lose their power to pass legislation. 

Loyal Democrats and Republicans would prefer to look at the goings on in Albany these days as an aberration, one that doesn’t reflect the deeply held values of their particular tribe. I don’t see it that way.

Paul Newell thinks the only sane person in Albany may be Sheldon Silver. And this frightens him.

On his Facebook Page 6/9/09

On 10/22/2007 I posted a piece called The Joe Bruno Democrats, for which I took a lot of abuse at the time. In part, I made the following observations, which were adapted from remarks I first posted in a thread on another blog back in May 2007:

The Senate Republican majority is doomed in the long-term unless they find a way to corral some non-Republicans into either switching parties or voting with them to organize. This has now been their long-range strategy for many years. They find "Democrats In Name Only" and run them in prohibitively Democratic districts, so they can hold them in reserve in case the Dems ever take the majority.

In my two previous pieces detailing the intrigues afoot in the New York State Senate, I was puzzled by the vehemence of the State Senate Democrats in mindlessly and repeatedly chanting their mantra insisting that the Republican attempt to stage a coup had failed, because the vote had been illegal.

What if it were true? Unless one could manage to come up with 32 votes, the Republicans would eventually take over anyway.

The 2009 printed edition of Prime News, Prime New York’s annual compilation of New York City election results has been mailed.

The attached spreadsheets compress National Transit Database data for 2007 operating costs into two three-page tables. The first shows operating costs per each hour a revenue vehicle (bus or rail car) is operated in revenue service, per unlinked trip, per passenger mile and per employee work hour. The second shows fare revenue per trip, and the percentage of operating costs covered by the fare. Data is provided for all automated guide way (AG), commuter rail (CR), heavy rail (subway or elevated) HR, light rail (LR), and ferry boat (FB) systems. My chief contribution to the tables is to limit the number of demand response (DR) handicapped paratransit systems, and bus (MB) systems, that are included, to the largest and a few others in New York State, as there are many such systems throughout the country, most quite small.

The data shows that the total cost New York City Transit pays to operate a subway car for an hour is lower than any comparable system other than Chicago, which apparently wasn’t paying enough of its pension, retiree health care, and track maintenance cost in recent years, resulting in a massive fiscal collapse and a near meltdown in service. Long Island Railroad and MetroNorth costs to operate each rail car for an hour were much higher than the subway — and other similar commuter rail systems. NYCT buses do not have a similar advantage per revenue vehicle hour, and are in fact relatively expensive due to relatively high costs per employee work hour. NYCT bus costs are among the lowest per trip, however, as its buses are fuller. The subway covered 67% of its operating costs in 2007, down from prior years but better than virtually any other public system, MetroNorth (59.3%), the LIRR (46.3%), or PATH (41.4%). NYCT buses covered 36.9% of their operating costs, better than most but about the same as Westchester’s Bee Line (36.2%) and Long Island Bus (34.9%), something I hadn’t expected.

As the great sportswriter Jimmy Cannon used to say, nobody asked me but…

Immediately after posting my piece yesterday concerning the antics of  Pedro “The Mamaroneck Bomber”  Espada and Hiram "The Sultan of Swat Monserrate", collectively known as "The Aztec Two-Step", I was besieged with email, most of which came from Republicans calling me an anti-Latino bigot, and the balance of which came from fellow Democrats, telling me I was “not being helpful.”

There was a Party Line, and the Party Line was that this was a “Failed-Attempted-Coup.“

Well, despite the best efforts of Malcolm Smith to bring about Republican control of the State Senate sooner, it took Republican an entire six months to get the deed done, courtesy of their signing the team of Pedro Espada and Hiram Monserrate, who shall from now on be referred to in this department as the “Aztec Two-Step.”

It was an astonishing display of "Brown Power." Indeed, when it comes to role models in leading a legislature, each Party Leader in the NYS Senate has a Brown as his avatar. In Dean Skelos' case, it is Willie (who pulled off the same maneuver in California only about a dozen or so times), in Malcolm's case, Gordon.