Category: News and Opinion

We have two sets of election problems in New York State. One is that gerrymandering and campaign finance abuses make the number of legislative districts that are competitive between Republicans and Democrats slightly smaller that it would otherwise be, allowing the Republicans to control one small part of the government – the State Senate – despite a majority of the voters being Democrats. The New York Times and Citizens Union, among others, are passionate about this election problem and Governor Spitzer was willing to go to the mat for reform last year, before being thwarted by…Republicans in the State Senate. The second problem is that, gerrymandering or no, the majority of legislative and Congressional districts are not competitive between Republicans and Democrats, so there really is no election on Election Day. And given that running against incumbents in a primary is verboten for those who want to remain in good standing in the political portion of the ruling class, there aren’t any of those either.

The Governor and the Times are less concerned with the second problem. The former seems more concerned with winning swing districts from Republicans than creating election challenges in one-party districts for Democrats and Republicans alike. The latter would prefer more primary challenges in one-party districts, despite the fact that only members of the dominant party can vote in those elections, and only insiders and grifters tend to show up and do so. As a resident of a one-party district, I am much more concerned with the second type of problem. While I have either been a non-affiliated voter or minor party enrollee for my entire voting life, I don’t have a problem with the two-party system. It is the one party system I have a problem with. Is anyone willing to do something about it? Governor Spitzer, how about you?

As someone who has blogged for over year that Mike Bloomberg was not a serious candidate for President, I’m happy that the local press has now decided that Mike saying in print the same thing he has said out loud for two years, that he was not going to run, means that he is not going to run.

However now that one farce has ended a new one has started.

We will now be bombarded with endless stories about who Mike will support for President.

Today’s NY Sun starts the new mania by interviewing Bloomberg pollster Doug Schoen, who as part of the PR blitz for his latest book, talked about a bunch of other thing Mike could do to help a Presidential candidate.

Four years ago at this time, I decided to do something I never imagined I would do – run for state legislature, with no chance to win, despite the fact that doing so would mean losing my job (per my employer’s policy), putting a burden on my family until another one could be obtained, and exiting the public sector. Nothing else had had an impact, including writing reports like this one, writing letters to the editor, feeding information to reporters for articles like this one, and trying to point out the winners and losers in the state’s priorities in city publications that I was asked to write sections of, but which no one ever read. Voting did not and does not matter, because aside from a few districts competitive between Republicans and Democrats, there is generally only one name on the ballot (or only one who actually campaigns) for state legislature (and, for that matter, Congress) in November, and few primary challenges as well. After years of complaint about public policies that sold out our common future to benefit insiders today (if you’ve read posts here you know what those are; if not you can still read my platform here), simply complaining and not doing anything became morally unsupportable.

So after a few years of trying to convince people “someone should do something about this,” I decided that if no one else would, I would try. I didn’t make much of an impact, as I explained here

The following appeared on The Politico.

Imagine if the names were changed from Rick Renzi to Charlie Rangel (or any NY Democratic Congressman) and from John McCain to Hillary Clinton?

Wouldn’t this be a much bigger story?

http://www.politico.com/blogs/thecrypt/0208/McCain_in_Oct_2006_Renzi_has__tenacity_honesty_and_integrity_beyond_reproach.html#comments

After almost a week of uninformed comments by conspiracy theorists and some reformers, the New York City Board of Elections has released a report on the tempest in a teapot concerning the short fall of Obama votes on Super Tuesday.

No New York City newspaper other than AM New York has yet to post the story on the report on their websites.

The gist of the report is that in 35 cases, Board of Elections’ employees made mistakes, in 20 instances Police Department employees made the error and in 27 election districts there was no mistake and Obama did receive no votes.

When Hillary Clinton was a teenager in the nineteen-sixties, a young black boxer named Cassius Clay was streaking undefeated towards the heavyweight crown. This young man later changed his name to Muhammad Ali, on his way to becoming the most popular international sports-figure in history. Next Monday (25th) will be the forty-fourth year anniversary of one of the greatest challenges Ali ever faced. It was the first title fight between the mean and surly champion named Sonny Liston and the charismatic Ali himself. It was the first of two meetings between these boxers. The Liston v. Clay saga is being re-played today folks; right before our very eyes; only the names have changed.

One of the more predictable results of the tempest in the teapot story in last Saturday’s New York Times about inaccurate unofficial results from the New York Presidential Primary was the renewal by some to fix things by removing those pesky politicians from the elections process.

Certain reformers think that a non-partisan approach to running elections rather than the bi-partisan system we use in New York will be a vast improvement.

Now I admit to being a defender of the New York City Board of Elections from unfair and just plain stupid attacks but I will admit that they are not perfect and can be improved.

“Every election has problems, but in this case, all the problems seem to have been his…He got all the zeroes and undercounting…Some gross mistakes have been made. In this case, it was strictly with regards to Obama [the issue is more] than one or two delegates…It reflects the popularity and the weakness to her in her home state. It contributes to a false momentum”.

On February 7th, the Residential Resales table in the Sunday Real Estate section of the New York Times reported on two similar, recently-sold houses, one in Oyster Bay, Nassau County, Long Island and one in Fresh Meadows, Queens, New York City. The former was a 3-bedroom, 2 bath, 51-year-old ranch, on a 100-by-100-ft. lot that sold for $535,000. The latter was a 3-bedroom, 1-bath, 67-year-old brick-and-stucco-sided colonial-style house on a 40-by-100-ft. lot that sold for $635,000. According to the Times, the suburban house owed $10,455 in property taxes, while the city house owed $3,729, but city residents also have to pay New York City’s virtually unique local income tax. So in which location would a prospective buyer pay more in taxes overall? The answer, calculated using the TurboTax program, is that the break-even point for a working couple with two children and only wage and salary income would be $225,000. Above that amount, the city income tax would hit hard enough to more than offset the property tax savings, but below that amount the Oyster Pay property taxes would pose more of a burden. The details, and spreadsheet with chart, follow.

Saturday’s NY Times printed a story about the published results of the New York Democratic Presidential Primary having numerous errors.

While the story made it clear to anyone who read it closely that the errors would actually have no bearing on the allocation of delegates, the inevitable has happened. Numerous conspiracy theorists got to work immediately and claimed that this was another case of an election being stolen.

I was going to post something about this but late on Saturday, I received an e-mail from Doug Kellner, the Democratic Co-Chair of the New York State Board of Elections that explained how the votes are counted in New York much better than I could. Here is Kellner’s report –