Category: News and Opinion

Word out of East New York today is that Inez Barron is running for the state Assembly (40 AD) in the upcoming primary next September, if the seat becomes vacant. Inez Barron is the wife of NYC councilman Charles Barron (42), and a retired principal of a Bedford Stuyvesant public school. She worked for about thirty years with the NYC Department of Education, and was once the Executive Assistant to the Superintendant of the Brownsville School Board. She was also a teacher in the public education system.

Mrs. Barron- who is a member of the organization “Operation Power”- is also a political activist in her own right-just as much as her husband. She was a member of the House of Lord Church in Brooklyn (Rev. Herbert Daughtry) long before she married Charles, about twenty five years ago. She has played prominent roles in her husband’s many political campaigns, and is an astute political technician. Barack Obama likes to say how smart his wife Michelle is, and that she is the backbone of the family unit; and Bill Clinton always says that Hillary is smarter than he is on many issues; they are both correct. If Charles Barron said that his wife is smarter than he is, well he will probably be correct too; she does have a Master’s degree to go with her Bachelor’s degree. He has an Associates and a Bachelor’s only/lol.

Room Eight unceremoniously celebrated its second birthday last week. Recently I asked the editors (Gur Tsabar and Ben Smith) to tell me what their vision was for this site; I am still waiting for that conversation to begin. Look, don’t get me wrong here, both of these individuals have been people I admire and respect; I still do. They are both pioneers. The idea of a political-blog writer’s colony that they implemented here two years ago is something many still praise. But there comes a time when we all have to introspect, and I believe the time is here for these two to reflect on where Room8 goes now.

A Novel By James “Gatemouth” Ellroy (author of "Albany Confidential")

Chapter One 

Roger Stone  

"They sent him to New York to kill a Jew Prosecutor named Eliot Spitzer. He was sure he could do it.  

In the past, on something like the state budget, I would write a post describing what I would do, or what our “leaders” should do. But I’ve had a shift of views recently, and will now base my writings on the assumption that it is hopeless, and our elected officials and those who back them will keep taking and taking until the rest of us have nothing left to lose. Thus they have no reason to care what the rest of us have to say. If it is otherwise, Patterson, Silver and Bruno are free to contact me, and I will go to Albany and tell them what they ought to do and why they ought to do it in person. In the meantime, what I will say is that the budget is a three-year decision.

"This was a military-style ambush from start to finish . . .a coup d'etat with David Paterson waiting in the wings, and perhaps Joe Bruno queuing up behind him."       

        District Attorney James “Gatemouth” Garrison

The gatekeepers at Fox News network like to boast that their news is fair and balanced: that’s bullshit. I think it is fair for me to say that Fox News network has an obvious right-wing slant that they don’t even try to disguise. And that’s okay to a point, since it’s their business. But when it comes to electing the next president of the USA, human decency should dictate that some level of fairness be considered when the principals are being reported on; and relative to how they are scrutinized and treated. Fox News network has been trying to destroy Barack Obama’s candidacy for quite some time now and it is time to stop this obvious vendetta. The world is watching.

He could not have known it, but the credit crisis makes Monday, March 17th an ironic day yet appropriate day for David Paterson to have chosen to be sworn in as Governor. And not because it’s Saint Patrick’s Day. Since it is clear that everything didn’t change on Day One, and certainly cannot be expected to change on day 442, I thought it worthwhile to predict the our future under the Paterson Administration, or rather the Paterson, Silver, Bruno and related parties and organizations administration, by examining the past. Since a Census of Governments is being conducted for FY 2007, detailed Census Bureau data on public employment and payroll in 2007 will not be out until the fall. The New York State Department of Labor, however, has recently released revised and updated payroll employment data through 2007 (see attached). Looking at annual data from 1990 to that year, I think we can get a sense of where things are headed, and how New York City is likely to be affected. If you are planning on enjoying St. Patrick’s Day festivities, don’t read this until you are done celebrating and prepared to merge your personal hangover with the national one.

The biggest impediment to solving the problem of racism in the USA is the denial that comes from all sides of the divide. Only when this denial is confronted will we get anywhere closer to solving this seemingly intractable issue. Let’s take the latest Clinton campaign dust-up. Geraldine Ferraro- one of HRC’s big feminist supporters- made probably the most nonsensical statement of this campaign cycle so far, when she suggested that Barack Obama has gotten where he is (his success in this presidential race to date) because he is lucky to be black. This is the same woman, who in 1988 said that Jesse Jackson was only running in the presidential primary (and with some success too), because he too “was black”. Talk about double-speak/lol; or is it double-talk? This was not accidental or coincidental; this was deliberate on Ms. Ferraro’s part. This lady needs some sensitivity training; even at age 72 it can be useful.

In their enthusiasm to be rid of Eliot Spitzer, many news outlets have overstated the firsts in David Paterson’s, and his father Basil’s, biographies.

As has already been widely note, Paterson is not the nation’s first legally blind Governor, that distinction belongs to Bob Reilly of Arkansas.

And Basil Paterson was not the first black man to be nominated for statewide office by a major party. That would be Edward Dudley who was the Democrat-Liberal candidate for Attorney General in 1962, years before Basil Paterson even entered the State Senate.

And surely Basil was not, as Herb Boyd stated last night on NY One, the first African-American to serve in the NY State Senate, although Basil did succeed the first African-American woman, Constance Baker Motley, who’d left to replace Dudley and become the third African American to serve as Manhattan Borough President (the first was Hulan Jack, elected in 1949), as well as the first woman of any color to serve on the old Board of Estimate.

On the street corners of many a black congressional district, you would often hear soul-folks saying: “no big thing but a chicken wing”. This can be heard whenever there is a fuss about something or the other that soul-people think is being overblown. On corners of white congressional districts (and by white and black, I am only alluding to where the majority of the residents are of that color; that’s all), you may hear the same sentiments expressed this way: “much ado about nothing”. Well that’s how I feel about all this super-delegate noise, coming out from many tense corners of hot and heavy political competition; like the kind taking place between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama- as they compete for the Democrat’s presidential nomination.