Room Eight is closed to new posts. The existing archive will remain up for the immediate future.
If you were a Room Eight writer and would like access to an export of your content, please contact the editor.
This site is not affiliated with or collaborating with any other news or opinion site.
I’ll be going on modified High-Holy-hiatus until 9/25, although I reserve the right to come back and comment on anything that interests me and won’t keep until then. When I come back, it is my intent to provide extremely nasty, unrelentingly partisan pro-Democratic commentary until the election.
Nuance and thoughtfulness will not go out the window, because, when deployed properly, they are extremely effective techniques. But the goals should be clear:
I know that there are fifty days left to the general election, and I know that many would say that it is way too early to make an endorsement; but here I go. I am going to endorse Jeanine Pirro for Attorney General. I am going to vote for her and I am also going to try to get everyone I know to vote for her.
Why endorse Pirro? The answer is simple: she is much better qualified for this job than Andrew Cuomo. Case closed. And yet it’s more than that. We have never had a woman as AG in New York’s history; and here we have a highly qualified, highly successful, and very articulate woman, so let’s make history. In this male-dominated world (state) we don’t know when next we will get this opportunity. So let’s do it now.
While I think I know much more about politics than the average voter, I admit I’m as clueless as anyone as to who is qualified to be a judge. So I have never and never will say X is more qualified than Y.
The editorial writers at the Daily News are not as humble.
In Monday’s edition, they attacked Brooklyn County Leader Vito Lopez for supporting for Supreme Court “an attorney whose chief qualifications include being the brother of Lopez’s girlfriend”
When I told everyone that Charles Barron will win the “black” vote from Ed Towns, most thought that I was on crack. Now many ask me how I made that call. It was a simple call to make really (maybe at another time I will get deeper). Observe that I never endorsed anyone in that race. Observe also, that I predicted Ed Towns as the winner. When I endorsed Hiram Monserratte for the 13th Senatorial, many called and said that I was really losing it here. I went a step further; I predicted that he would win. On election night Hiram was a couple hundred votes behind. I still predicted that he would win. Now they are counting. I am predicting that when it’s over Hiram will win.
I recently wrote a series of essays on what I consider to be phony or exaggerated economic issues in New York State. Now I’m going to write a series of essays on the real problems, as I see them. For New York City, perhaps the biggest problem is the low share of its adults who work, or look for work. The support of the non-working is a burden the working have to carry, and to the extent that burden is concentrated on those who live in their proximity, it is a particular burden in New York. But that liability is small compared with the impact of the absence of employment on the non-employed themselves. It is one of several ways New York’s poor are less well off now than in the 1950s – though, as we shall see, better off than in the mid-1990s.
I recently wrote a series of essays on what I consider to be phony or exaggerated economic issues in New York State. Now I’m going to write a series of essays on the real problems, as I see them. For New York City, perhaps the biggest problem is the low share of its adults who work, or look for work. The support of the non-working is a burden the working have to carry, and to the extent that burden is concentrated on those who live in their proximity, it is a particular burden in New York. But that liability is small compared with the impact of the absence of employment on the non-employed themselves. It is one of several ways New York’s poor are less well off now than in the 1950s – though, as we shall see, better off than in the mid-1990s.
I recently wrote a series of essays on what I consider to be phony or exaggerated economic issues in New York State. Now I’m going to write a series of essays on the real problems, as I see them. For New York City, perhaps the biggest problem is the low share of its adults who work, or look for work. The support of the non-working is a burden the working have to carry, and to the extent that burden is concentrated on those who live in their proximity, it is a particular burden in New York. But that liability is small compared with the impact of the absence of employment on the non-employed themselves. It is one of several ways New York’s poor are less well off now than in the 1950s – though, as we shall see, better off than in the mid-1990s.
I recently wrote a series of essays on what I consider to be phony or exaggerated economic issues in New York State. Now I’m going to write a series of essays on the real problems, as I see them. For New York City, perhaps the biggest problem is the low share of its adults who work, or look for work. The support of the non-working is a burden the working have to carry, and to the extent that burden is concentrated on those who live in their proximity, it is a particular burden in New York. But that liability is small compared with the impact of the absence of employment on the non-employed themselves. It is one of several ways New York’s poor are less well off now than in the 1950s – though, as we shall see, better off than in the mid-1990s.
The saga of the cash cow known as the Independence Party (IP), which I’ve religiously documented here and here continued on primary day when a number of votes important to the party took place.
In the 13th Congressional District (Staten Island/Brooklyn), the party forfeited its one opportunity for usefulness, when it rejected its homegrown lunatic, Anita Lerman, and re-nominated the repugnant Vito Fossella, who shares with both factions of the IP leadership a predilection for spending taxpayers’ money in manners inappropriate, whether it be on matters small (photos for his campaign literature) or large (the war in Iraq).
“One of the real issues in the campaign (on the Brooklyn side of the district) is the proposed construction of luxury housing in Brooklyn Bridge Park (BBP). Connor's for it. Diamondstone's against — and so is the community. It's not Atlantic Yards. Call this story "on the waterfront." But this primary election is shaping up as a referendum on an issue. And isn't that what they're supposed to be about.”
Alex Navarro – Working Families Party (WFP) Blog (9/6/06)
Although Marty Connor beat Ken Diamondstone 55/45, these numbers are deceiving. About 65% of the the 25th Senatorial District is in Manhattan, about 10% in Williamsburg/Greenpoint; Connor won those areas handily; although a 36 year resident of Brooklyn Heights, with 28 years representing the area in the State Senate, Connor lost the Brownstone Brooklyn area by a resounding margin, taking less 40% of the vote. While there were other issues, Mr. Navarro is exactly right. Atlantic Yards, which Mr. Navarro and the WFP support, is not in the 25th SD, and the intensity of opposition to it drops exponentially with every block. The proposed park is at the edge of the prosperous areas of Brooklyn Heights and Cobble Hill, and has inspired intense, albeit uninformed, opposition. If this was a referendum on the Park, and I think it was, the Park lost.