Category: News and Opinion

I’m going to write one more post using data from the 2007 Census of Governments employment phase, then give it a rest for five years until the next Census of Governments. In a prior post I compared New York City with several other older central cities that were co-terminus with county boundaries, counties being the smallest unit of geography for which comparable local government data can be compiled. These places, however, tend to be much smaller than New York City, and much richer (San Francisco, Boston, Washington) or poorer (Baltimore, Philadelphia, St. Louis) than the New York City as a whole. San Francisco and Boston, for example, are in many ways the equivalent of Manhattan rather than NYC. In the attached spreadsheet, therefore, I compare New York City with the national average and three of the counties with the largest population in the country, Los Angeles, Cook (Chicago) and Harris (Houston), and three counties that have been booming lately, Mecklenberg (Charlotte), possible future headquarters of Merrill Lynch, Wake (Raleigh-Durham), “America’s Boomtown,” and Travis (Austin), the place Barry Popik fled to. In general, all of these places have average local government employment relative to their populations. New York City does not.

Most of us, who are active in Central-Brooklyn’s Afro and Caribbean-American communities, have been quite familiar with the political machinations of one Mr. A. Q. Abu. I can further say that most of us find him to be a man of integrity, who has always been committed to making his overall community a better one. This longtime activist is a former member of School Board 18, and has been a prolific challenger of assembly member Nick Perry over the years. He has also been a member of Community Board 17.

Abu’s last run for public office was in 2004, when he and three others (Asquith Reid, Omar Boucher and Weyman Carey) vied for the open seat of male district leader in the 58th Assembly District. Carey won that race, with Reid coming in second, and Abu third. In that race, the difference in votes from first to last places was about 300 in total; it was close indeed. Abu has lived in the East Flatbush area for most of his life now, and has been involved in many a struggle for empowerment, inclusion and the like; especially during times of changing demographics in the area.

In October, I poked some fun at the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board for writing that the victory (with 38% of the vote) of the Canadian Conservative Party was some kind of a blueprint for the Republicans in the U.S. to win.

“Well, nobody could have foreseen this, surely.

[S]tate elections officials in Albany say that Mr. Espada did not register his campaign for Senate this year; and he could face more than $6,000 in fines. It is not the first time he has run afoul of the State Board of Elections: His 2000 Senate campaign was fined for failing to submit finance reports.

In 2005, three employees of a Bronx nonprofit health care company run by Mr. Espada, the Soundview HealthCare Network, pleaded guilty to diverting $30,000 from programs for family care and AIDS treatment to one of his campaigns. Mr. Espada was never charged.”

Our president-elect Barack Hussein “Barry” Obama has stacked his Economic Recovery Advisory Board: good move. It is headed by an 81 year old economist with a heavyweight reputation: Paul Volcker. He was once the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. Fine. There are others on the board with sterling reputations in economics and economic theory. Great. 

And yet the board is defective in its construction; Barack Obama didn’t select Ralph Nader to a position on the same board: bad move. And before I move forward with this column, let me reiterate: I fancy myself a strong supporter of Barack Obama. However, that doesn’t mean that I am afraid to scrutinize or critique his decisions and actions. Real “change” is bigger than Barack Hussein “Barry” Obama: much bigger. When you read this column you will see what I mean.

I've spent virtually my entire adult life waitng for this moment, and perhaps a majority of that time working for it, only to find out that when it did occur, the devil was in the details.

Literally.  

“The ways in which responsibility may have been shirked, or ignored, in the past, to live for another day — that day has come, and we're going to have to make those tough choices,” news sources say that Governor Paterson remarked in response to the Ravitch Commission plan to save the MTA. But in reality, the Ravitch Commission plan is a replica of the previous two — borrow massively for just a few years of ongoing needs, and live another day, maybe. Everyone in the region is paying a ¼ percent sales tax to the MTA, and will be forever, but the money isn’t used to either operate or rebuild the system, it goes to past debts. The same may be said of the MTA corporate income tax. Other bonds were floated against future fare revenues, something the Ravitch plan criticizes obliquely. It instead plans to create an off-balance sheet entity to borrow $35 billion for the 2010 to 2014 capital plan, and operating costs in 2009. But this isn’t a new idea — there is already such an entity collecting the 1/8 percent additional sales tax to pay bonds for the 2005 to 2009 capital plan. In 2010 and forever after we’ll by paying that extra sales tax, but receive nothing for it. The same will be true of the permanent 1/3 percent wage tax the Ravitch plan proposes to fund the 2010 to 2014 plan. In 2015 we’ll still be paying it, but getting nothing. The “tough choice” is to delay the day of reckoning five years by making things even worse for the future. Again.

As I’ve written in a variety of posts on a variety of subjects, the generations now in charge, in the public sector, private sector and their own lives, have endeavored to “live richly” by securitizing any future anyone might have in this country, and cashing it in. A future they thought would be far off, and that they would not be around to see. But with the recession, credit crisis and collapse in asset values, the future is coming sooner than they expected, and one can almost sense the panic. Today I read a fantastic quote, in a blog post about New Jersey’s public employee pension system, that completely captures the moment. It could have been about NY's pensions, the MTA and the Ravitch Commission, the state and local government budget crises in New York and throughout the nation, Wall Street, private equity, hedge funds, many other businesses, many people's personal finances, etc. “There is a scene in Mel Brooks' The Producers where Gene Wilder realizes the jig is up and starts intoning 'no way out' while clutching his blankie since, being a reasonably learned accountant, he grasps the situation. Zero Mostel however, whose schemes got them into their mess, still thinks there are outs. That's how an unbiased pension actuary would feel looking at the state of the New Jersey pension plan. It's effectively dead but we still have the Zeroes who got us into this mess running around selling more hopes and dreams.”