Category: News and Opinion

Please note that this column is rated for “mature audiences only”. If one or two “choice” words offend your pristine tastes: then skip this column. And please don’t lecture me in the comments-section about my writing-style unless you are willing to join the Room Eight colony of writers/bloggers, in order to demonstrate how best to do this.

And while I am on to disclaimers, let me state that I work for no political campaign this summer (and that was by my choice). Let me also state that I have no personal dislike for Vito, Bernie or Shawndya, who are the subjects in this two-part series; the issue at hand is bigger than either one of them. Let’s hope that this time around, they (and others) catch my drift; which I don’t even think is an abstract one.

To fully understand public policy, one must first understand what the three levels of government – federal, state and local – actually do, the relative magnitude of spending on different government functions and services, and how these are paid for. No one can figure this out just by reading the newspaper or watching the television news. The media discusses each issue, and each public expenditure category, one at a time, generally without reference to the totality of government activity. With the 2008 elections around the corner, I have elected to provide a comprehensive overview of what the government does, who does it, and who pays for it, what is relatively more or less important, and what is a federal, a state or a local responsibility. I will follow with a further discussion of equity and eligibility, since (as you will see) a large share of government expenditures are only available to those who meet eligibility requirements.

As Errol Louis wrote over the weekend, the New York City Housing Authority is facing a financial disaster similar to that faced by the New York City Transit Authority in the 1970s, and perhaps again soon. The causes are similar. “Solutions” that provided benefits to many politically important groups in the short run have proven to be a disaster in a future no one cared about. The NYC housing projects are, by (I believe early 1980s) federal law, the place of refuge for the worst off, most troubled and most vulnerable not just of NYC, but from anywhere. And, these people are only required to pay 30 percent of their income in rent, no matter how low that income is. At first, this federal burden was coupled with federal money that covered the net cost of the projects, the difference between what it cost to operate them and the paltry rent received. But more recently the federal government, because public housing is concentrated in NYC and has little support elsewhere, has cut funding for it. The projects have also been a politically convenient place for New York City to put those who for whatever reason become homeless. In fiscally difficult times, however, both the state and the city have cut their support, relying on the agency to shift burdens to the future. Moreover, the unlimited health care and the 2000 pension enhancement that are a boon to current and former NYCHA staff has sucked money away from services and maintenance in the projects. There is one key difference between the NYCHA and the MTA however. For public housing, the future is now.

If Sheldon Silver is right and Eliot Spitzer has learned his lesson, then he has learned the wrong lesson, and the rest of us need to be worried. Silver's lesson probably is:

a) Don't contest elections, even against the other political party, and upset the deal.

b) Don't challenge existing fiscal priorities.

c) Don't concern yourself with fairness for the victims of those priorities.

Mayoral control of the New York City public schools doesn’t expire until June 2009, but with the state legislature seemingly in the mood to oppose anything Mayor Bloomberg is in favor of, the Mayor has already started a public relations push. I happened to be at home one day last week and saw a commercial on the subject, albeit obliquely on the subject, on daytime television. And in late June Crain’s NY Business reported that in a breakfast for business leaders the Mayor “vowed to fight for renewal of mayoral control of the school system when the law authorizing it expires.” “It's hard for the Legislature not to reauthorize something where parents say, ‘My kids for the first time in memory are getting the kind of education they need to compete in the world,’” the Mayor is quoted as saying. Another publication quoted the Mayor as not wanting to go backward on education. Well, it isn’t hard for the New York State legislature to do anything, regardless of how good or bad it is for the city’s children. They don’t care. They don’t have to. But even if they did, it isn’t clear Mayoral control should simply be extended as it.

Just because someone cames up with a really bad solution doesn’t mean he didn’t identify a legitimate problem. At the core of Marx’s economic thought is the identification of a “contradiction” in capitalism: each individual business can maximize its own profits by cutting its workers’ pay, but business in general has to turn around and sell products and services to those same workers in order to make money. The result, Marx asserted, there would be a series of increasingly dire crises and depressions, a theory that looked pretty good in 1932. But capitalism is an adaptable economic system. For the past decade or more, businesses have been able to make rising profits, and top executives have been able to capture a rising share of national income, by selling more and more to those who have less and less. This has been possible for three reasons. First, thus far health insurance and pensions, which affect well being in the future when one is sick or retired, have been cut more than cash, which is spent today. Second, Americans have gone deeper and deeper into debt, increasing spending today but cutting it tomorrow. And third, people in the rest of the world have been willing to lend Americans the money they need to spend more than they earn. But the wheels may be about to come off this system, and New York City and State had better be ready for the fiscal consequences.

We New Yorkers know that Rudy Giuliani often has to worry about his nose growing when he speaks about the past. The problem is that too many reporters don’t know this.

The latest little white lie from Rudy is in Wednesday’s Washington Post.

Giuliani also brushed aside efforts by former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney to portray himself as the ultimate family man by releasing a video of a family vacation filled with scenes of giggling grandchildren.

"He has a right to emphasize the things he wants to emphasize," Giuliani told The Washington Post after a speech on energy policy in San Francisco. "I never emphasize those things."

Never emphasize these things?

Thank goodness for YouTube.

One of the reasons I'm taking my personal time to research posts and blog here is that I generally don't find what I know, and what I think, presented anywhere else. But today I had the rare pleasure of having one of my recent posts echoed far more eloquently by one of the smartest people in the country, superstar bond manager Bill Gross, in his August newsletter here. The wealthy, Gross says, are taking too much for anyone's long term interest, as thoughtful rich people like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates understand and other rich people do not. In addition, due to the housing bubble, the credit bubble and their aftermath, hard times are coming. I suggest reading Gross's post.

There is a reason why advertisers target the young, and why they are willing to pay more for media that attracts a young audience. It isn’t that they young have more money; they have less today and, as a result of public policies, their own spending habits, and the decisions of prior generations in the marketplace, today’s young people may also have less throughout their lives. Despite this, advertisers target the young, and opinion leaders among the young, because there are apparently very few people with open minds. Most people, it seems, do and think what people around them do and think, rather than deciding how they are to live and what they will believe. And once they have been shaped in a particular way, this tends to get locked in. The general unwillingness to be open to new ideas has implications both for politics and public policy, including transportation policy.

Thursday was the deadline for candidates to submit designating petitions to run for public and party office this year. This year is an “off-year” in New York City with very few electoral contests.

Here is a list of what contests there are with some commentary about who is who.

Note that this list is subject to change as a result of candidates withdrawing or being removed from the ballot.

Queens

There are no Democratic, Independence, Conservative or Working Families Primaries.