For those of you who haven’t been following the private-sector wing of the institutional collapse of the United States, as a result of several generations’ determination to collectively suck out far more than they put in, this has been an eventful week. Yesterday marked the third largest bank failure in history, as S&L IndyMac Bank was seized by federal regulators. “The collapse is expected to cost the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. between $4 and $8 billion, potentially wiping out more than 10% of the FDIC’s $53 billion deposit insurance fund,” according to the Wall Street Journal. Meanwhile, rumors persisted that mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac might go under and be taken over by the federal government. Taxpayers will have to bail them out, a host of congressional representatives and pundits asserted, because if they went under the entire mortgage system would collapse, and the entire financial system with it.
Category: News and Opinion
Congressman Ed Towns Calls for Immigration Commission
|Most of you know that I was born on the Caribbean island called Trinidad; as such, the issue of immigration is near and dear to me. Most of you also know that my core belief is that most individuals born in the USA are xenophobic, and that’s why the issue is so volatile. I don’t make this claim lightly. I have been dealing with this issue for over thirty years. With all this as a backdrop, let me say that it was refreshing to hear Brooklyn congressman Ed Towns (10th) call for a national commission to deal with the issue of immigration. Towns wants to empower a commission to thoroughly study the issue and to come up with recommendations for resolving it, once and for all.
The Categorical Imperative
|In Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, ethical philosopher Immanuel Kant asserted a “categorical imperative” that determines whether an action is right or wrong: “I ought never to act except in such a way that I can also will that my maxim should become a universal law.” In other words, if you wouldn’t want everyone to do it, or (in the case of the distribution of benefits and burdens) wouldn’t want everyone to get it or avoid paying it, whatever the consequences, then one cannot morally do it, get it or avoid paying for it oneself. By asserting the right to do, get, or avoid something oneself without considering the consequences for others, one makes an exception for oneself, and that is morally wrong. Kant’s ideas fly in the face of what some politicos say in response to anger at “special interests” – that everyone and everything is a special interest, with none having any greater claim than any other. Not so. There are those who only want for themselves what could work for everyone, and those who want something just for themselves that others would be sacrificed for them to get, with the latter including just about everyone associated with the government of the State of New York.
I point this out not to bore the reader with something out a college philosophy class, but in response to and inspired by comments by Ed Ott, the executive director of the New York City Central Labor Council, as reported by the New York Times. “Going forward,” he said, “if we don’t raise the standards for the lowest-paid workers in the city, and there are literally hundreds of thousands of them, our own levels that we achieved — of wages, pensions and time off — they’re not sustainable.”
How Many Governments in New York?
|The U.S. Census Bureau is apparently busy crunching numbers for the 2007 Census of Governments, and the first data from that effort — the organization phase — has been released. The data is limited — the number of local governments by category (counties; municipalities such as cities, towns, and villages; school districts; and other special districts) in each state. But as it happens it is relevant to a debate going on in New York State right now — can the state’s high taxes and unaccountable politicians be explained by the large number of overlapping local governments in the portion of the state outside New York City? And can it be improved by consolidating those local governments?
It certainly makes sense in theory. Large organizations have economies of scale that small ones lack, and the more local governments you have, the more mayors, city council members, and school board members, not to mention personnel officers, chief accountants, and superintendents, you have to support. Elected officials with a lot of power attract a lot of attention and, therefore, more electoral accountability, while many special district elections don’t even happen on Election Day, with few voters taking part and virtually no media coverage. But does the theory hold in general? The data, in the attached table, is inconclusive but seems to favor consolidation a little bit.
The columns I hate to do right now (Part one of two)
|I really don’t want to give the Republicans any fodder for this upcoming general election, because I have more than a hundred rock-solid reasons why Barack Obama is better for this country -and the rest of the world for that matter- as the next president of the USA. Better than John McCain or any of the other presidential candidates in this field, when compared. And yes (if you caught it), the attempt at a pun was intended. Thus I will have to hold back a lot in this column for reasons that will be obvious to many; so read in between the lines please.
Come November, I intend to vote for Barack Obama -barring some unexpected cataclysm. I intend to vote for him with enthusiasm, with pride, with joy and with a lot of hope. I want to go even further and say that if offered a chance I will gladly work for his campaign and/or administration.
New Prime News On-Line
|The 2008 edition of Prime News is at the printer and will soon be mailed to @1,500 political activists.
Prime News is the publication my partner Stu Osnow and I produce each year that lists the most complete New York City election results published. It also includes information about what we at Prime New York are up to and this some of our history as we are celebrating our 20th annivesary.
If you can't wait to get it in the mail or are not on our mailing list, you can dowmload the 2008 Prime News on our website at –
May 2008 Local Government Employment: Temporary Reversal in NYC
|I’m back, and from what I read in the newspapers, it appears that while I was out of town the city budget passed. In a triumph of the (actual rather than theoretical) liberal values of Democratic New York, this year’s cost of having teachers retire at age 55 instead of 62 (after working just 25 years) will be borne by the poor residents of NYC public housing projects, rather than children in the classroom. The schools were spared, for now, or so I read. Ironic, because not too long ago residents of public housing projects weren’t expected to do an work to benefit other people at all, but post-welfare reform, and given that none of them will get pensions, they’ll be working until age 67, at the earliest, when Social Security kicks in. This shows that the easiest cuts are to the “unaccountable” agencies that the group of politicians making them can disclaim responsibility for, such as the New York City Housing Authority, the MTA. The Department of Education will likely join them after Mayoral control ends, and after the recent pension deal and given the likely alternative of Mayoral accountability without real authority, it might as well.
I won’t comment further on the city budget at this time, because what is passed doesn’t always reflect what actually happens, and almost certainly won’t this year. The big decisions, the tough decisions, are yet to come. Instead, let’s look to something that is less likely to change — the past, and the trend in government (and related) employment prior to the new budget, as tabulated by Current Employment Survey data from the New York State Department of Labor. Here, while most trends remained in place based on the change in jobs in the year to May, one changed course – New York City’s local government employment rose significantly. Expect that trend, along with libraries that are actually open rather than just dead spots on the commercial street, to be short-lived.
Gatemouth Shows some Rachmonis to the Republicans
|In an early 2008 interview with Yahoo! News, presidential candidate John McCain said, "I am a [computer] illiterate that has to rely on my wife for all the assistance I can get."
The Difference Between Democrats and Republicans (an anecdote recovered from my digital wastebasket)
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One morning, in a prior life, I was dispatched to work on a campaign in Queens. Another “volunteer”, similarly dispatched from my office, had been sent out to buy bagels, and had returned with two dozen, all plain.
Peeved at the prospect of sinking my teeth into bland white bread without getting anything stuck between them, I questioned her about her choice. She said that she wasn’t sure what variety people would want, and therefore chose the lowest common denominator.
A Card Carrying Abomination (REVISED-shaggy dog opening anecdote now replaced by some histortical perspective)
|“25th AD (Queens): Evidence would seem to indicate that both Morshed Alam and Rory Lancman are insufferable egomaniacs. But, the evidence also indicates that only one of them is an insufferable egomaniac who sucks up to Republicans. Frank Padavan is almost a case study of what is wrong with Albany. Morshed Alam is Frank’s padawan Therefore, three cheers for Lancman." —Gatemouth’s Voter’s Guide (9/7/06)