Category: News and Opinion

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ioldoglB9NS7sO2LOY6qQtqgztTgD94GR7O02

It wasn’t easy and it wasn’t fun, but I’ve compiled a spreadsheet of local government employment and payroll data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2007 Census of Governments in time for Governor Paterson’s emergency budget session. The attached spreadsheet has two summary tables that print in two pages; one shows the number of full time-equivalent workers in various categories (police officers, sanitation department workers) per 100,000 people in March 2007, and the second shows their level of pay at that time, relative to the national average. In each case, the summary tables provide data for all local governments in the United States; New York City; the downstate suburban counties (Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester, Rockland, Putnam); the mostly highly urbanized Upstate NY counties (Albany, Broome, Dutchess, Erie, Monroe, Niagara, Oneida, Onondaga, Orange, Rensselaer, Saratoga, and Schenectady); the other more rural Upstate New York counties; the total for New Jersey, and Fairfield County in Connecticut. In a new feature, I have put one additional column in the summary tables — “your county here.” By blocking that column, and replacing text in the existing formula with the column letter (s) for whatever county one is interested in, one can put any other county in the table. The choices are all the counties in New York and New Jersey, almost all of the counties elsewhere in the country with the most total private-sector employment in 2006, and a few others that interest me, because I know people who live there. A discussion of where the data came from and how to interpret it follows.

On the fifth of September, 2008, I did a column about the double standard that passes for justice in this country; something which often occurs when whites and blacks face the system against identical or similar charges. I totally anticipated doing another column on this issue before the end of the year: so here it is. 

In that column I spoke about the former mayor of Detroit, a black man named Kwame Maleek Kilpatrick. He pleaded guilty to two counts of obstruction of justice; in a situation emanating from issues surrounding his adulterous affair with his female chief of staff. I compared his dilemma to the one former president Bill Clinton faced during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. I suggested that at various points, and in various places/situations, there was a double standard of justice for black electeds when compared to their white counterparts. 

A very compelling read is to be had examining an article posted by James Kirchick yesterday on the on-line edition of the New Republic entitled “Let Lieberman Live” and subtitled “The case for allowing him to keep his committee chairmanship.”

Kirchik’s article is smart, well argued and neatly sums up Lieberman’s case. Speaking from my perspective as a pragmatic, centrist, Clintonite, neo-liberal, new Democrat with closet DLC tendencies, who’s crazy about Rahm Emanuel, I have to say that Kirchick is dead wrong.

The first part of this column left a few gaps for detractors to exploit, so I hope I can close some of the gaps here. We shall see. Maybe I should have drawn up a list of those New York City Council members, who I now see as having outlived their usefulness -as elected officials- prior to doing my last column; but in previous columns during this current term-limits brouhaha, I felt I had made the identities of some of these individuals quite clear to readers. Maybe I haven’t. Maybe someday I will.

Anyone who was elected knowing full well the two term rule when they ran -limiting them to eight consecutive years in the council and no more- should not seek re-election once their time is up. Period. Beyond the culprits already listed, include the likes of Larry Seabrook, Kendall Stewart, Martin Dilan jnr. and a few others we all know. What they have done is dishonest. Period. Anyone who voted for the mayor’s disgraceful bill overturning the will of the voters, should be voted out of office; period; and with no exceptions -including the mayor himself. Hijacking democracy is a capital crime against the polity. It is difficult to imagine that these people are such intellectual midgets that they don’t get all this.

The possible appointment of Senator Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State has spurred speculation about whom Governor Paterson might appoint to replace her.

Some have suggested Paterson appoint himself to the post.

If Clinton does leave the Senate, I hope Governor Paterson and his advisers review what happened to governors in other states when they did that. It’s not a pretty picture.

The following was compiled by Ken Rudin of NPR when he was at the Washington Post;

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/campaigns/junkie/archive/junkie080699.htm

Montana, 1933 – Sen. Thomas Walsh (D) died. Gov. John Erickson (D) appointed self, lost 1934 primary.
Kentucky, 1939 – Sen. Marvel Logan (D) died. Gov. Happy Chandler (D) appointed self, won elections in 1940 and 1942.
Nevada, 1945 – Sen. James Scrugham (D) died. Gov. Edward Carville (D) appointed self, lost 1946 primary.
Idaho, 1945 – Sen. John Thomas (R) died. Gov. Charles Gossett (D) appointed self, lost 1946 primary.
Wyoming, 1960 – Sen.-elect Keith Thomson (R) died. Gov. John J. Hickey (D) appointed self, lost 1962 election.
New Mexico, 1962 – Sen. Dennis Chavez (D) died. Gov. Edwin Mechem (R) appointed self, lost 1964 election.
Oklahoma, 1963 – Sen. Robert Kerr (D) died. Gov. J. Howard Edmondson (D) appointed self, lost 1964 primary.
South Carolina, 1965 – Sen. Olin Johnston (D) died. Gov. Donald Russell (D) appointed self, lost 1966 primary.
Minnesota, 1977 – Sen. Walter Mondale (D) elected vice president. Gov. Wendell Anderson (D) appointed self, lost 1978 election.

The destruction of our public and private institutions due to their exploitation by greedy insiders, the former I have long been familiar with and frustrated by, the latter has been shocking to me in its extent, have much in common. Take this recent article from Bloomberg News. “Americans, it seems, don't want declines of 50 percent or 70 percent in the year-end bonuses paid to those who work at the nation's banks and securities firms, or at least the ones they now own, partly through the government's $700 billion bailout. No, these Americans want Wall Street bonuses to go to zero.” “The industry, however, seems not to get it. Maybe the survivors are in denial. Perhaps they believe that surely since they did a good job this year — presuming they don't work in mortgage securities or derivatives or whatever the real losers are — that they deserve the same bonuses they got during the seven fat years. Or maybe they think if they get just one more good hit, they will have accumulated ‘the number’ they need to retire and never work again.” So who on the public sector side will be looking to make one last score and hit “the number” and never have to work again?” I’ll give you a hint: for some the number is currently 55, for others the number is 62, and the idea is to get a special deal to reduce it, for those anywhere close now, at the expense of the future. Again.

The data is out for the employment phase of the 2007 Census of Governments (the finance phase will not arrive until next summer), and I have thus far tabulated the information for selected state governments: the State of New York, the U.S. average for all states, some other states around the Northeast — New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Connecticut — and some other states carried by President-elect Obama in 2008 — California, Colorado, Virginia, and North Carolina. One might expect people in those states, as opposed to (say) Tennessee, to have similar public service expectations to those of New York. The data show that New York had less state employment per 100,000 residents in March of 2007 than the U.S. average and all of the states listed save Pennsylvania and California, and that while New York State’s per capita income was 19.9% above the national average in 2006, it’s March 2007 payroll per full time equivalent worker was only 17.3% above average. A more detailed analysis, however, shows this is somewhat misleading — low New York employment and pay in higher education, and the shift of some functions to the local level, offsets above average employment and pay in other categories. The data is attached (set to print in two pages), and discussed below.

In recognition of the recent departure from the ranks of the Doghouse Democrats (Pedro Espada, Carl Kruger and Ruben Diaz) of Senator-Elect Hiram Monserrate, I’ve marked them down from “The Four Horsemen of the Preposterous," and renamed them "Carl and the Passions" (in memory of what is arguably the worst album ever issued by the Beach Boys while they were still trying). When it comes to loyalty to their political party, the theme song of the Passions is not “Be True to Your School,” but rather “I Get Around.”

I hold no particular brief for Senate Minority Leader Malcolm Smith, and can rattle off the names of several members I think would make a better Party Leader, but, for whatever reasons, Smith was the choice of his Conference by an overwhelming margin, and therefore, he deserves the support of all Senate Democrats when the Senate organizes in January.

It seems like Al Vann has been around Brooklyn’s politics since George Washington was president of the USA; no joke. In politics, his name has been discussed more times than the daily weather report on any television station. I have been told that over the years he has been a teacher, unionist, political activist and elected official. He was an assembly member in the Albany legislature for 27 years (1974-2001). He won election to the New York city council in 2001. Some of his detractors have suggested that he came here on pre-retirement leave.

I know that there are some good things that Al Vann has done -in terms of public service- and I believe that one of these days a street in Bed-Stuy will be named after him. After all, he has held public office for about 35 years. Fine.