Category: News and Opinion

Conspiracy of Silence on the NYC Public Schools

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The New York Times reports that the budget of individual NYC public schools will be cut 5 percent next year, following a cut of 3 percent last year. Despite the federal government borrowing $trillions our children and grandchildren will have to sacrifice to repay to provide stimulus money to those schools. Despite a huge New York State tax increase for the well off, to be followed by additional state tax increases on everyone else, to increase school state aid. Despite NYC property and sales tax increase, disproportionately directed to the schools. Despite the fact that total spending on the New York City schools, including retirement benefits, will be going up not down, even as the money most New Yorkers earn, and wht they can afford, is going down. Total spending up, spending in schools down. But the Times doesn’t ask the question why.

Recently we read that teachers that no principal wants to take responsibility for, previously paid to do nothing, will be stuck in some children’s classroom. Today the Times reports that Fair Student funding, which would have ended the practice of qualified teachers moving on to the schools of the affluent while the poor get a revolving door of the uncertified and unqualified, will be postponed a year — and probably forever. The teacher’s union is thrilled. Also reported by the Times the schools face “deep cuts in after-school and weekend programs,” the kind that give disadvantaged children a chance. An end to summer school and a return of fiscal social promotion seems certain. That is where the money isn’t going. Where is it going? No one will say. 

The Last Hurrah (The Case Against John Heyer–Part Two)

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Independent Neighborhood Democrats (IND), the local political Club in my area, is currently forming a circular firing squad as it puts itself into civil war footing. At the center of the war is a gregarious but somewhat annoying man I’ve rarely found common cause with who has sometimes behaved despicably, and yet, I find myself feeling that he’s being treated unfairly.

I’m talking about the self-proclaimed Mayor of Carroll Gardens, the Merry Mortician himself, one Salvatore “Buddy” Scotto.

Yesterday, a writer at Daily Gotham who I regard as an ally in this battle made a comment about Buddy which compared him and his followers to the Soprano Family.

Does Mole333 even know that Buddy Scotto stood up against organized crime in Carroll Gardens at a time when doing so was an invitation to a premature funeral (which probably would have been the first mob-related funeral in the Scotto firm’s history–the Wise Guys mostly use Raccuglia, sometimes Cusimano or Guido, but never Scotto), and that Buddy has had, at least once, to go into exile for his efforts?

Don’t Heyer Until We See The Rights of My Guys (The Case against John Heyer–Part One)

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OBAMA (5/17/09): What bothered the doctor was an entry that my campaign staff had posted on my website — an entry that said I would fight "right-wing ideologues who want to take away a woman's right to choose." The doctor said he had assumed I was a reasonable person, he supported my policy initiatives to help the poor and to lift up our educational system, but that if I truly believed that every pro-life individual was simply an ideologue who wanted to inflict suffering on women, then I was not very reasonable. He wrote, "I do not ask at this point that you oppose abortion, only that you speak about this issue in fair-minded words." Fair-minded words.

After I read the doctor's letter, I wrote back to him and I thanked him. And I didn't change my underlying position, but I did tell my staff to change the words on my website. And I said a prayer that night that I might extend the same presumption of good faith to others that the doctor had extended to me. Because when we do that — when we open up our hearts and our minds to those who may not think precisely like we do or believe precisely what we believe — that's when we discover at least the possibility of common ground.

GATEMOUTH (2/7/09): The New Tolerant Tolerance, evokes…Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin. To cultural conservatives who might otherwise be disposed to our message, we offer R-E-S-P-E-C-T….R-E-S-P-E-C-T means not automatically using the word “bigot” to describe those who have sincere difference of opinion based upon faith, unless and until they have behaved like swine. It means embracing them for the common humanity we share and searching for some common ground.

Tax Incidence and the MTA

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So rather than require the retired to pay the same taxes on the same income as everyone else (it is their debts, Medicaid costs and pensions that are destroying public services after all), the senior citizens in the New York State Legislature chose to raise New York’s already high taxes on wages to bail out the MTA. But, according to the legislature and councilmember Lew Fidler, who first came up with the idea, businesses will pay the 0.34% payroll tax, not workers. The New York City Partnership, which represents large businesses, was in favor out of the goodness of its heart. Or was it?

For the benefit of the hack attorneys who are running our governments into the ground, I have braved the dust to pull out Public Finance In Theory and Practice, a textbook from my student past. Tax levies, the book (and common sense) informs us, impose “burdens which the individual taxpayer will try to avoid or pass onto others. To determine who pays, we must thus look beyond the tax statutes and the pattern of statutory incidence, i.e., beyond those on whom the legal liability rests.” So who will be paying the MTA payroll tax? I’ll bet it isn’t those who ran up the debts and retiree obligations it will be going to pay for.

The As, Bs, Cs and Ds of this year’s mayoral race….

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The As, Bs, Cs and Ds of this year’s mayoral race: talking about (Anthony) Weiner, (Anthony) Avella, (Anthony) Soprano, (Billy) Thompson, Michael (Bloomberg), (Barack) Obama, Hilary (Clinton), good old Charlie (Charles “Chucky Bee” Barron), and (Derek) Coleman.

Okay; it’s confession time: this column is dedicated to Norman Siegel -the ardent civil rights attorney and political activist. You see, I want Norman to scratch his head and figure out how I am going to write a column with a headline like this one (before he reads it). As they say in Espanol (Spanish): “vamos a ver (let’s see)”. Okay; so this is an inside joke meant for an esoteric group: go figure. 

MTA Analyses That Should But Won’t Happen

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With the cynicism that has been beaten into me over 25 years of observing New York public policy, I find myself agreeing with the New York Post as to what our state government probably wants the next MTA head to do: cover up the problems, run up the debts, cut back on maintenance and reinvestment, protect vested interests in the present while destroying the common future, and take the blame. In other words, more of the same. I might add there is one thing no one in Albany wants the next MTA head to do: make a fair accounting of how we got into this mess and who benefitted, since those in power are and represent the beneficiaries.

The MTA, however, is something I happen to know a lot about. So for interest’s sake if nothing else, I have decided to write down a series of exercises and analyses the next MTA head should undertake and publish — to help improve, or at least raise real understanding of, the agency. These are briefly listed below; I’ve decided to pass on writing multiple posts on the details of who each analysis ought to be conducted.

The Time of Her Time

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Domestic Partner: I am getting tired of everyone asking what it is I could possibly see in Gatemouth. His athletic physique? His sweet disposition? His good manners and sense of fashion? His tolerance for the failings of others?

Since the answer is not immediately apparent, everyone jumps to the same conclusion, but sad to say, they are wrong; being one is not the same as having one.

But please, do not think that I am with Gatemouth because of a mental deficiency; there are other reasons as well. Though I may be appear to be a simple agrarian working on my second graduate degree, I assure you that I am not a country pumpkin; I am witty and irrelevant. Yes, English is not my first language, only my fifth, but do not underestimate me . While it is true that I am beautiful and stylish, I am also very smart. I do have my reasons, even if I’ve long ago forgotten them. Besides, Gatemouth is a person of unparalleled generosity–when he has an opinion, he always makes sure to share it with everyone.

Generation Greed and Secession

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You may be wondering why Staten Island wants to secede from New York City, Rockland, Orange and Duchess counties want to secede from the MTA region, Long Island wants to secede from New York State, and Texas wants to secede from the United States. It is because they want to secede from the consequences of past decisions, and stick those consequences on those left behind. For the past 25 years virtually every public decision, non-decision and deal has benefited the narrow interests that have seized control of our public institutions, particularly the State of New York and its associated agencies. These interests disguised the cost from others, and thus avoided opposition, by shifting that cost to the future — in the form of vast public debts, unfunded pension and other retiree obligations, inadequately maintained infrastructure, and unaddressed environmental issues. Now that the past costs are coming due, those seeking secession are looking at what they will pay and get in the future, and deciding they will be ripped off. So they no longer want to be part of the common future.

Well guess what. As a result of those costs from the past, all of us will be ripped off in the future. Every part of the state, country and, if the scientists are right about global warming, world. Those who got the benefits in the past, and those that didn’t, alike.

Katz in the Cradle

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“If I have to bring Carter with me — to an event, to City Hall for an emergency session — do I have to think twice about being accused of using him as a political prop, or do I decide to take whatever comes because I need to do what's best for my kid? Do I heed the advice of political consultants who tell me I should mention being a mother as much as possible? Having conceived through in vitro fertilization, do I answer personal questions from reporters who ask about Carter's parentage? Regardless of whether I answer or choose not to, I run the risk of having my answer become politicized.” –City Councilwoman Melinda Katz in the Huffington Post.

This year’s race for City Comptroller, like those held in the past, features a groups of candidates virtually no one cares about flailing about desperately for attention. Each of the Comptroller candidates has at least one notable quality which separates them from the rest.

The Newspaper Bailout

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In matters of information and culture, governments in the United States have generally provided financial support only to those sources and styles that no longer appeal to popular audiences but still appeal to elite tastes, even if the elites are more affluent than those who get their information and culture without subsidy. Thus, when a jazz venue was added to Lincoln Center, you knew jazz was on its last legs as popular music. Also on its last legs, suddenly, and seeking some kind of bailout are local newspapers.

The newspapers argue that they have a critical role in investigating and counteracting the disinformation provided by the powerful, political and otherwise, in their own interest. They would have more of a point if the research behind a typical newspaper article, after all the staff cuts, didn’t consist of a press release issued by someone with the money and motivation to have a public relations staff, along with some balancing quotes from some usual suspects. “Balanced” reporting today consists of “he said she said” not “he said and we looked into it and here are the facts.” Were the news media to rely on government support, moreover, it is doubtful it would retain credibility as a check on the government-provided information. There are those who believe that even now newspapers’ dependence on automobile and real estate advertisements limited their objectivity in the housing bubble and SUV fad. The newspapers, however, are not without value and not without a point, particularly since many “internet news” sites generally merely redistribute newspaper content for free. So I would like to propose a “bailout” that does not involve a subsidy.