Category: News and Opinion

Some Good News

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Since joining Room 8, I’ve spent much of my time writing about things I’m not happy about, generally about the policies of the State of New York. After all, it is those things that I want to see change. But I don’t want people to get the impression that I am dissatisfied with everything. Aside from my personal life, about which I have no complaints, there are many things that have gotten better in the past 30 or 40 years. In the holiday spirit, I’ve decided to list a few of those. "

Thirty or forty years ago, reasonable people thought it possible that a nuclear war would lead to human extinction in the near future. Sadly, the risk of a single nuclear, biological or chemical incident is much greater, thanks to the rise of international terrorism. But with the number of warheads greatly reduced and the Cold War over, extinction caused by a massive nuclear exchange seems to be off the table, at least for the foreseeable future.

Behind the NYC Population Forecast: The Schools

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Last week, there was a news splash about the city's population projection, with an overall gain but a decline in school-aged children. I read the fine print, and it appears that my former mates at City Planning did what I consider the right thing, and constrained the population forecast by land use. That is, since NYC is already developed at a high density, there are only so many housing units that can be added, and demographic trends are driven here (unlike in Texas) more by the occupancy of existing housing than by the amount of new housing. And here DCP used migration by type of person from 1980 to 2000 to see who would flee and who would move in. Therefore, the city's official population projection assumes that parents of school age children with the means to leave will continue to be driven out of NYC by bad schools and small housing units, as they were in my generation.

In The Seasonal Spirit Of Giving

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I downloaded the spreadsheet of member items for my Assembly Member, and found that he has magnificently bestowed on his district $386,000 over the past three fiscal years. Moreover, looking at the specific list of grants, I found there isn’t a howler in the bunch. He sent $4,000 per year to every school in the district (not just those in Park Slope but also those in Parkville), for things like after school enrichment, software, contacts with parents, “multi-cultural” books, programs in music, bookcases and file cabinets. He provided grants for computer training and gardening for senior citizens, along with day care and transportation. He funded Pap test for poor women, language training for immigrants, assistance with safe homes and
crime prevention, a newsletter for businesses, etc. etc., generally with grants of $3,000 to $6,000 per year. Who could be against such things? Goes this mean I agree with the Daily Politics poster that “Everybody seems to forget that one man's pork is another's ‘vital infrastructure improvement?’” Absolutely not!

Supreme Court Primary Preview

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I have written before about the possibility that candidates for New York Supreme Court Justice will be selected in contested Primaries. I think it’s now time to look at what such Primaries might look like in New York City in 2007.

This assumes that the U.S. Supreme Court does not agree to hear the appeal from those who support keeping Judicial Conventions and that no alternative to some sort of Primary system are agreed to by the State Legislature and Governor.

The strong rumor is that the Democrats in the State Assembly are in favor of a system of Judicial Conventions and Primaries like the present way candidates for statewide office are picked. Each Party would have a convention in May or early June. Candidates for Supreme Court who receive 50%+1 of the vote of the delegates would automatically be placed on the ballot as the Party’s endorsed choice. Candidates who received 25% could also run and candidates who did not receive 25% or more could then petition to get on the ballot.

Fidler On The Black Roof (Part One)

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A rather militant black political-activist associate of mine, called a short time ago, and uttered this remark in apparent disgust; “why is it that Lew Fidler seems to always involve himself in the politics of black districts?” My reply was ambiguously nuanced yet simple, to wit: all politics is local, and all local elected officials have a right to be involved; more so when the jurisdiction that he or she represents, has contiguous borders with districts where the racial make-up maybe somewhat different to his or hers. He then retorted; “but do you see local black elected officials in the middle of things in say Bensonhurst and/ or Bay Ridge?” He further queried; “do you ever see black elected officials interjecting themselves in the elections that take place in these white areas and amongst the white candidates?” I didn’t respond to those questions. No sireee Bob; I couldn’t touch them with even a ten-foot pole. Fact is, I don’t recall at anytime- in my near 34 years involvement in Brooklyn’s politics- where black electeds were deeply involved in white races. Maybe Gatemouth could help me out here, since he has a firmer grasp on the political history than I- especially in the white areas of Brooklyn.

Can The Clarkes (Una and Yvette) Successfully Handpick Their Successor To The 40th Council District Seat Out Of Brooklyn?

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Brooklyn’s 40th City Council district came into existence in 1991, when via charter revision the city council expanded from thirty-six to fifty-one districts. It also came about because many Caribbean-American political activists, demanded lines be drawn that were favorable to electing one of their ilk. The 40th and 45th districts were drawn with that objective in mind somewhat, cutting through the heartlands of areas where Caribbean-Americans live in majority. That same year, a pugnacious Jamaican-born woman, stubbornly insisting that she was a “maroon”, emerged victorious. And the ‘icon” that many now refer to by one name, was born. She was Una Clarke. Una held the seat for ten years, before she was eventually term-limited out of office.

General Election Mini-Analysis

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Last Thursday, the State Board of Elections official certified this year’s General Election Results and both they and the City BOE have made detailed results available. I’ve reviewed the results to see what was interesting and/or surprising and have found not much – at least among the major Parties.

No parsing of the numbers makes a Democratic landslide look like anything else. Among the statewide candidates, the four Democrats each carried every Assembly District except one. The 62nd AD, on Staten Island was won by Jeanine Pirro (57%), John Spencer (51%) and Christopher Callaghan (50%).

The Transit Strike: Governing is About Values

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According to press reports, Governor-Elect Spitzer is assembling a fully credentialed panel of wonks, lawyers and financiers. It’s good to know he will have a full supply of facts at his disposal, but facts are just the beginning of governing. First you have the facts. Then you have opinions about what the facts mean – hopefully the people Spitzer has hired will be truthful enough to distinguish between the two when advising him, or Spitzer will be sharp enough to realize if they are not. In the end, however, one has to decide what to do about the facts, and the right decision is generally not an automatic consequence of them. Decisions, unlike deals, also involve values, and it is in terms of values that the Governor-elect will have to speak if anything is going to get better. I am reminded of this because this a year ago New York City Transit was on strike, and our elected officials, particularly Governor Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg, failed utterly to speak in terms of values.