Category: News and Opinion

The real measure of this year's state budget is not whether it is on-time, but whether there is a second, devastating budget after the November elections. If Bear Stearns merges, as seems likely, it will take a big chunk of the city and state tax base with it, and that may be just the beginning. My guess is this state faces two years like it hasn't seen since the 1970s, with the only "good news" being that this time most other parts of the country will be faring worse, so there will be nowhere to flee to.

In New York, it isn't "affordable housing" unless it is made such under a government program, so it can be allocated in the way government often allocates things — politically. Elsewhere, however, something else is going on. Among other things, "affordable housing" developments are running into financial trouble because housing is getting too affordable, even in places like Boston where the bubble made housing unaffordable not long ago. In other places, the unaffordable units are now cheaper than the affordable units.  

Not much changed on Day One. Our state government continues to hand out benefits to already-privileged insiders in good years while making promises to everyone else, and then holding those deals harmless while sacrificing everyone else when the economy turns down. The problems with the budget process, and the results, are for the most part pretty much as I described them here when I ran as a candidate against the state legislature. But at least one thing has changed for the better in Albany.   Perhaps today is a good day to point it out.

People who have worked the system to get, shall we say, very good deals for themselves have left us with a potentially diminished future. They have done so by taking away future revenues, and shifting past costs forward, all in order to live in way they feel entitled to with the diminished effort they felt like making. And not just through the MTA. In a way, the region’s transportation system never recovered from the deferred maintenance of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. At first, through the work and sacrifices of many people, the transit system, police and other services partially recovered from the years of high taxes with essentially nothing in return. But then subsequent generations merely substituted a greater financial hole, through debts and public employee pension enrichments unmatched by adequate contributions, for a reduced level of physical deterioration. Meanwhile, a third bond issue has been passed for the Second Avenue Subway, and yet the proposed capital plan does not even have the money to finish three stations. If the state legislature wanted to do the right thing, is there still a way out? I think there is, although the MTA and legislature are unlikely to approve it.

For sometime now the Billary Clinton campaign has been complaining that mainstream media has been unfair to Hillary Clinton. But is this true? Lots of supporters from both the Clinton and Obama camps, have (at various points of this marathon) attacked the media treatment of their candidate; the Clintonistas in particular have gone to great lengths in trying to drive this point across. Comedians and comedy shows have lampooned their very complaints. And yet all mainstream media is doing is nothing short of pursuing their unaltruistic everyday agenda of: sensationalism and controversy-creation. It is not only about providing information for public dissemination and action; it is also about profits.

The whole national political scene is not my interest, unless it involves public policies I care about, but someone forwarded this to me and I thought some of you might be interested.

"Welcome to the 'Re-create 68' website, your virtual activists' Convergence Center for the Denver Democratic National Convention of 2008. This website was created for all the grassroots people who are tired of being sold out by the Democratic Party."

"R-68 agrees with the proposition, POTESTAS IN POPULO, "all power comes from the people." What stands between the people and power are the party machines. The parties were devised as a means to represent the people. Today they represent nobody, not even party members, but only party bureaucracy. The people have been left without appropriate institutions for their representation. We intend to create those institutes!"

Streetsblog reports that our overlords in the New York State Assembly will be having a public hearing on congestion pricing, and it will be taking place right around the corner from the place I work. The last time they did so, I decided to show them up by riding a bicycle part way to work and comparing my trip mode to theirs here. My neophyte bike commute had some problems, but I found that I really, really had fun doing it. Enough fun that I did some research, made some adjustments, and observed how and where others locked up their bikes. Beginning a month after that first hearing, I have been biking the nine miles to and from work three or four times a week. It’s the most exercise I have gotten since college, or maybe high school, and it costs me little if any extra time out of my day. What had seemed impractical now seems to be the most practical thing I have done in years, and I wish I had done it 20 years (and 40 pounds) ago. One might say that this is the only good thing the New York State Legislature ever did for me. I’ll write more about some changes in my thinking as a result later, but for now I’ll put yet another two cents in on congestion pricing, and I’ll do it here because the “public hearing” is by invitation only and surprisingly I didn’t get an invitation.

The situation our transportation system finds itself in, as evidenced by the proposed 2008 to 2013 MTA Capital Plan, is in part an outgrowth of the broader generational war that has also affected federal, state and local debts of all types, labor deals featuring richer pension benefits for those cashing in and moving out and lower pay and benefits for new employees, and a general decline in infrastructure investment. But it is also the result of the capture of our government in Albany by producers of public services, in the public, private and non-profiteer sectors, at the expense of consumers of public services and taxpayers. If you want to be robbed by public employee unions, you are a Democrat; if you want to be robbed by contractors, you are a Republican; if you want to be robbed by the non-profiteers, you can be either. But if you don’t want to be robbed at all, you are out of luck. Given what contractors have been charging the MTA for capital projects, it is no surprise that money has been borrowed, because there is no way New Yorkers could have collectively afforded to spend so much in the past. Given that, how can we afford to spend that much and more, plus the interest on past debts, in the future?

The 2008-13 MTA Capital plan, if one looks past the press release and presentation and reads the entire document, is a nightmare that implies the transportation system and New York region have little hope for the future. The MTA hasn’t even tried to hide it, perhaps assuming no one will bother to read the entire document and do a little math. The $20.2 billion “core” plan, supposedly intended to maintain what we already have, contains only $8.6 billion in money collected in the six years it would be spent, and almost all of that will purportedly comes from a federal government that may be in no position to deliver. The other $12 billion would be borrowed, and presumably be paid back over 30 to 50 years, adding to the $1.4 billion per year in debt service the MTA is already paying. Even with that additional debt for the Tier I “core” plan, for the absolute basics, the transit system will be subject to 1970s-like deferred maintenance on an epic scale, in the clear words of the MTA itself. And the major improvements, promised for so long, even as insiders in older generations had the government borrow money and in effect transfer it to themselves, will only proceed if another $10 billion is borrowed. And not all of them, just some of them — the rest are put off to a time when the MTA is certain to be bankrupt.

If you look up the word “mulligan” in the dictionary, you would find that it is a re-taken golf shot; or better still: a shot that- against the rules- a golfer allows an opponent to take again. Bill Clinton is known to take many mulligans when playing friendly games of golf; his wife (Hillary Rodham Clinton) seems to have learned this bad habit quite well. It is all about changing the rules in mid game, especially when things aren’t going their way. It’s about refining techniques that give them an unfair advantage in any competitive event. It is cheap, low and crass.

If Billary were to go to any toy store to purchase a device for their pleasure, what they would find is that in near all devices sold: “batteries are not included”. So after Tuesday’s primaries (Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island and Vermont), all rational Democrats need to emphatically make the case- to both Bill and Hillary Clinton- that mulligans (just like batteries) are not included in the rules of this year’s primary elections.