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The responses to my unapologetically pro-Obama pieces on this election have come in two varieties; The first is where some Cro-Magnon, usually a pro-life lunatic or a Republican operative, vents their spleen:
“So let me get this.. about people of color….yes, because if this election has taught us nothing else it's that any comment made, no matter how true, must be motivated by racial hatred unless it equates to fawning over a candidate. Truly pathetic.”
During the discussion thread on a piece I published about three weeks ago called “The_Return_of_the_Welfare_Queen”, about the Republican effort to create a straw man/scapegoat story about a purported Democratic/ACORN conspiracy to commit voter fraud on a national scale, I got into a discussion with an anonymous poster who was quite obviously a Republican operative peddling a discredited fairy tale about how, two years ago, a black Democrats won a Westchester State Senate election by bussing in loads of ineligible voters from the Bronx.
Miffed by this idiocy I wrote: “Of course, you didn't have the evidence to prove it in court, but when has that ever stopped the Republicans from spreading libelous lies about people of color?
Every five years the U.S. Census Bureau conducts a census of government employment and finances in the United States. The finance data for 2007 is due out next summer; the employment data was released (thus far on their “ftp” site only) last week. It will take a great deal of work data for me to reorganize the data for states and counties (including data for all local governments within a county) into usable form, as I did for 2002. To put the election for President into perspective, however, I have whipped up a summary of federal, state and local government employment at the national level (attached). The data show that the federal government accounted for just 12.3% of the 22 million U.S. government employees in 2007. A few exclusively federal categories, national defense and international relations, the post office and the space program, accounted for more than half of all federal workers. Excluding as well other functions that are primarily divided between federal and state governments, such as social insurance administration (mostly Social Security at the federal level, unemployment insurance at the state level) and natural resources, the federal government accounted for just 2.6% of government employment. These categories, and (more importantly) state universities and prisons, account for most state government jobs.
Looking at the vast majority of government functions, local governments account for 85% of total government employment. Federal governments collect and distribute money, but local governments do the work. The next President will only directly administer, for the most part, national defense, the post office, and collection and distribution of money via Social Security and the IRS. He will influence much else, but only in association with the Congress and state governments, which control the flow of funds to other organizations. Obama vs. McCain is just one piece of the decision. Aside from foreign and military issues, control of Congress and the State Senate are as important or more important.
http://www.politickerny.com/azipaybarah/332/billionaires-helping-maltese
Serf Maltese, the Republican State Senator facing a tough re-election race against Democratic City Councilman Joe Addabbo, is getting help from two billionaires today.First, Michael Bloomberg will campaign with Maltese in his Western Queens district this afternoon.
An old friend of mine, journalist Jim Sleeper, read the recent stories in the NY papers about the Mayor & Board of Elections officials arguing about how ready we are for Election Day.
As a result, Jim posted a remembrance of an unbelievable but true scandal at the BOE in 1982 that Jim was instrumental in exposing.
He and I both think Room 8 readers will appreciate reading about it, so with his permission, I’m posting it here –
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/10/31/treat_or_trick_elections_offic/index.php
Talking Points Memo Café
October 31, 2008
Charles Krauthammer, the Pulitzer Prize winning columnist apparently uses the same incompetent researchers as William Kristol.
In his Halloween column, Krauthammer tries to scare voters about Barack Obama.
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2008/10/31/2008-10-31_beware_the_morning_after_barack_obama_wo.html
Among the scary things that Krauthammer says Obama will impose on the country of dupes who won’t vote the way Krauthammer wants –
"The so-called Fairness Doctrine – a project of Nancy Pelosi and leading Democratic senators – a Hugo Chavez-style travesty designed to abolish conservative talk radio."
Some time I ago, I reported having read in the Wall Street Journal that the rich pensions top executives had bestowed on each other were contributing nearly as much to the destruction of American business as the rich pensions grabbed by the unionized rank and file. A commenter asked for a reference, but I didn’t have one at the time. Today, it its lead story (summary — full article subscribers only), the Journal repeats the assertion. “Financial giants getting injections of federal cash owed their executives more than $40 billion for past years' pay and pensions as of the end of 2007, a Wall Street Journal analysis shows.” The analysis is an estimate because the future obligations to executives are hidden, disguised, and underestimated in company accounts. At some firms, according to the Journal, the pensions and other deferred compensation for executives “exceed what they owe in pensions to their entire workforce,” and the practice of awarding hidden rich pensions and other deferred compensation, and paying little up front for it, “is common in big business.” A familiar story for those who have read my posts on public sector pensions. Since the costs are shifted to the future, they are described as minimal, and those in power take the absolutely guaranteed money up front. The consequences come later.
Mark this one done under the title: Rock’s Long Range Predictions. I predict that after he signs the term limit extension bill next week, Michael Bloomberg will find his approval ratings dropping like a heavy load. They will drop all the way to his political demise. Recently, his approval was in the high sixties percentile, having been as high as the seventies before that. By the end of next January, I predict that his approval ratings will come in be under fifty percent.
Furthermore, I expect that when the issues around the economic crisis sinks in, and when they begin to affect the city’s budget and attendant services in extreme ways; Bloomberg’s ratings will sink even lower. He will have little time to prevent the freefall, since the election is one year away. It is evident that the mayor will have to raise taxes and fees to increase revenue flow in the coming months; these won’t be popular measures. Like Senator John McCain in this presidential cycle, Mayor Michael Bloomberg will be negatively affected by the country’s current economic woes. They will both suffer similar election-fates.
A majority of the two-decade span between my first and last service on the payroll of a New York elected official was spent in service to leaders of the NY State Senate Democrats, and though I’ve long been out of that business, like a junkie, I’ve never lost the taste. The need for the Democrats to take the Senate Majority is something I’ve written about quite passionately (for example here and here) through my years as a blogger. And now it looks like it is in sight.
But, as my friend Roscoe Conway likes to say (channeling Ben Franklin) "a Majority, if you can keep it."
Newspapers are dying because they continue to produce papers, but are reducing the extent to which they produce news, and continue to produce news that is only fair and relevant to those still buying paper. A recent article demonstrates the first half of this statement. According to the New York Times, which has problems of its own, “The Star-Ledger, New Jersey’s largest newspaper, will cut its newsroom staff about 40 percent by year’s end, one of the largest reductions in a single move by a major American paper.” According to this source, however, the newsroom staff only accounted for 330 of 750 non-union jobs with the paper. Presumably there are at least that many unionized workers printing and distributing the papers in addition, so workers producing “news” are a small and shrinking share of the staff. In contrast at the research company I work for, one that publishes by subscription on the internet, those producing information account for well more than half of those employed. Clearly no one informed The Star Ledger that the most recent industry classification system moved the newspaper industry out of “manufacturing” and into “information.” Some newspapers have devolved into nothing more than distribution channels for the Associated Press, while others are considering dropping the AP to save money. Those still trying are losing more and more money.