Category: News and Opinion

When asked at the end of the1974 season why he was replacing his general manager, the owner of the Houston Oilers football team replied “I gave him an unlimited budget, and he exceeded it!”  The same may be said of New York State’s Medicaid program.  Its budget is unlimited – its cost goes up by whatever it does every year, and taxes are raised and other services cut to make up the difference. Medicaid, along with debt service and pensions, get the first, second and third bites of the apple.  (Public schools in the portion of New York State outside New York City get the fourth.)  And when the cost of Medicaid is restrained, as in the mid-to-late 1990s, it is by reducing the number of beneficiaries who receive health care benefits, not by restraining the increase in what the health care industry decides to charge.  The number of people employed by that industry in New York, fueled in large part by government money, rises rapidly each and every year.  With just 6.5% of the nation’s population, New York State accounted for 15.1% of its Medicaid spending (see attached spreadsheet).

Sunday morning Arriana Huffington was on CNN pontificating about the Connecticut Primary and other events.

She continued to blast Joe Lieberman for running as an independent and called his actions unprecedented – losing a Primary and continuing to run.

Now in my last post, I pointed to at least one precedent – Mario Cuomo in 1977 who continued his campaign for Mayor against Primary winner Ed Koch as the candidate of the Liberal Party and a party his campaign created – Neighborhood Preservation Party.

But in honor of Arianna, I decided to jog my memory to find more precedents and to see how those who “turned on their Party” were punished.

I received some good news about my daughter’s future orthodontist bill recently.  Good news for me that is, at least in the short run.  My wife’s dental insurance will cover part of the cost.  While that insurance is part of her salary, it does not count as taxable income, and is thus exempt from federal, state, local and social security taxes.  And, we’ll be able to put aside money on a pre-tax basis to cover the balance, under a plan she has at work, with a similar exemption from taxes.  My wife works for a quasi-public agency.  The government, therefore, will end up paying indirectly (through the tax break, and through private dental insurance purchased on her behalf) for about $3,000 of my daughter’s improved smile.  The same government, that is, which (unlike the government of virtually every other developed country) doesn’t provide universal insurance for at least basic health care.  If you aren’t a senior citizen, don’t have health insurance provided by your employer, cannot afford an individual policy, and are thus uninsured, her smile – which you are helping to pay for – may thus be more important to our elected officials than your life.

Call us Neo-liberals, New Democrats, Clinton Democrats. Call us Peter Beinart Democrats. We’re in a battle for the soul of our party, with what might be called the “Michael Moore Democrats” or the “Chris Owens Democrats”, and the perception is that we’re losing.

To cop from the dust jacket of Beinart’s recently published “The Good Fight: Why Liberals  – and Only Liberals – Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again”, we believe the that “America must lead the world by persuasion, not command”, George Bush believes the opposite, and American and the world are suffering as a result. By contrast, Michael Moore Democrats believe we should not lead, and when we do, we are invariably a force of evil. Moore not only believed this in Iraq; he believed this in Bosnia and Kosovo as well (apparently, stopping genocide is morally heinous). In contrast, Clinton Democrats, exemplified by Beinart, believe “that liberalism cannot merely define itself against the right, but must fervently oppose the totalitarianism that blighted Europe a half century ago, and which stalks the Islamic world today” and  “an unyielding hostility to totalitarianism – and a recognition that defeating it requires bringing hope to the bleakest corners of the globe. And it means understanding that democracy begins at home, in a nation that does more than merely preach about justice, but become more just itself.”  To Moore Democrats, the one word definition for a Clinton Democrat is: “Republican”.

The results in Connecticut seem to have created a new species in politics – Progressive Yellow Dog Democrats.

The term Yellow Dog Democrats has it’s origin in the states of the old Confederacy where most Whites pledged to never vote for a Republican because of Lincoln winning the Civil War and freeing the slaves. These voters said they’d vote for a “yellow dog” if he were the Democratic candidate.

But now people who would never be considered in any way similar to these Southern racists also seem to be saying similar things regarding Joe Lieberman.

How much more would the federal government have to spend on health care to provide universal health insurance?  How much more would New York State have to provide in state education funding to provide every New York City child with a qualified teacher and an a national average class size?  How much more would the MTA have to borrow to build long promised improvements such as the Second Avenue Subway?  Now imagine you were asking these questions in the early 1990s, when former President Clinton held up a card and promised universal heath care and the Pataki, Silver and Bruno era began in Albany.  What numbers have you arrived at?  Chances are, that much and more has been borrowed and spent since.  But like a football held by Lucy Van Pelt, these benefits have been pulled away at the last moment, and the money has gone elsewhere.

"We’re a left wing Zionist Movement, and we believe Israel has the right to defend itself, We’re not pacifists. Unlike in Gaza and the West Bank, Israel isn’t occupying Lebanese territory or trying to control the lives of Lebanese. The only occupier is Hezbollah, and Israel is trying to defend itself.”

Yariv Oppenheimer, General Secretary-Peace Now

You may have heard that New Jersey Governor John Corzine has called a special session of the New Jersey State legislature to tackle the “intractable” issue of high New Jersey property taxes.  He plans to reduce pensions and benefits for new employees, to offset the cost of the pension enrichment for those cashing in and moving out, and borrowing against the pension funds, passed during the Whitman Administration.  He plans to try to entice, or force, New Jersey’s high-spending school districts to consolidate to cut costs.  And, he plans to raise other taxes, perhaps at the state level, to offset a property tax decline.  Those are tough stands. Compared with the next Governor of New York, however, the fact is Corzine has it easy.

I’m going to stick my neck out here and predict that, ultimately, the continuing saga of the possible computer tampering at the NYC Board of Elections will turn out to be a lot of sound and fury, signifying very little.  Not that  I’m entirely dismissing the concerns expressed by Maurice Gumbs in his 83 part series posted elsewhere on “Room 8”, but a criminal conspiracy seems to me an unlikely scenario. I'd be more scared if I believed that anyone competent worked at the Board (of course, it's also kinda scary that there ain't). The Board is where the County Organizations bury their neediest cases (right up to the Board's Counsel's Office); the best and the brightest go elsewhere. In general, the Board of Elections couldn't organize an orgy at a convention of nymphomaniacs

When I left off on the first part of this column (see Rock Hackshaw’s blogs/Room Eight), I had given you all the story of how Roger Green got his nickname (the Dodger) in 1986.

I also gave a brief history of his subsequent ride downhill. Well, that’s brings us to today, where as of this writing, Roger is still a candidate for Congress in the 10th Congressional District. He is facing both incumbent Ed Towns and insurgent challenger NYC Councilmember Charles Barron.

With four fortnights to the election, Green filed that he had raised around forty thousand dollars, spent all of it plus, owed another twenty thousand or so, and held about four thousand cash on hand. This has led to all kinds of speculation as to why he is even in this race. Everyone knows that to run a credible Assembly race one needs around sixty thousand dollars (and this is a low-ball figure); with that in mind, figure the cost of running a congressional race, where you are tackling about 5 times an Assembly district in size.