Category: News and Opinion

It’s over 90 degrees as I sit here, and I’m thinking about energy, the environment, and leadership.  If you read my prior post on the subject, you know that I believe leaders are those who can convince people to cooperate toward a common goal, trusting that their goodwill will not be abused by those who are just out for themselves.  I said there was no leadership on energy.

We don’t have air conditioning because in this climate, unless you have it and become dependent on it, you only really miss it a few days a year a few years a decade.  And on those days, you are begged not to use it.  With energy scarce and the environment only capable of holding so much carbon, with with so many billions living in multiple dwellings without cross ventilation, with so many people who are old and without health problems, I’ve decided air conditioning is one amenity we can live without.  But somewhere in the west, I’m sure Dick Cheney, who considers conservation a “personal virtue,” has an air conditioned dog house.

Residency requirement rules vary from office to office; there is no one-size-fit-all standard. Rule of thumb is that you move into the district at least one year before the primary; this however doesn’t insulate you from charges of being a “carpetbagger”. Voters usually like to support those who have lengthy connections to the area they seek to represent, and as such incumbents often try to bring the residency of insurgents into play when looking for an edge or a knockout. In the current 11th Congressional race in Brooklyn, David Yassky’s residency has come up for scrutiny within the imbroglio. However, there is another race in Brooklyn where the residency factor may actually be more decisive than the voter’s choices. This race may be won or lost in the courthouse and not in the voting booth.

Thanks to the efforts of the great Azi Paybarah at 51^st State (WILL SOMEBODY PLEASE READ THIS POOR MAN’S BLOG!!!), we’ve learned that, ostensibly to ensure his party’s ideological purity, Independence Party Chair Frank McKay attempted to question party members concerning their relationship with the egregious anti-Semitic cult leaders “Doctors” Lenora Fulani and Fred Newman, with the goal of dis-enrolling those who failed McKay’s litmus test for being in sympathy with the party’s “principles”.

Wednesday is the first day of hearings on petitions at the New York City Board of Elections. In honor of that, I thought it would be good to point out some truths about the petition process in New York.

*A few candidates will be thrown off the ballots because of “technicalities” that no objective person should believe should remove a candidate from the ballot.

*These “technicalities” will NOT be using the wrong color, writing St. instead of street or leaving out a middle initial in a voter’s name.

The NY Sun has an editorial today about the shooting at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle.

The gist of the editorial is that officials are too quick to declare attacks on Jews in the US by  Muslims to be that a lone gunman. The Sun points to previous incidents including NYC. I quote from the Sun –

When, on February 24, 1997, Ali Abu Kamal, a Palestinian Arab, opened fire on the observation deck of the Empire State Building, killing one and wounding six, the New York Times reported, "the Mayor said the gunman’s motive was unknown, and he cautioned against drawing any conclusions about terrorism or the man’s Palestinian background."

1997 – Who was the Mayor then?

In my prior post, I pointed out that although New York City’s poverty rate is 55% higher than the national average, its private, mostly non-profit employment in the Social Assistance sub-sector relative to population is 154% higher than the national average — 2 ½ times that average.  Yet, despite all these people hired, at first glance, to tend to their well being, advocates and analysts say the city’s poor are not well off compared with poor people elsewhere.  Disaggregating 2004 annual average employment relative to population for this sub-sector into specific industries, on finds a complex picture that raises many issues, but let’s put the headline up front.  Excluding one industry, one finds that New York City employment in the rest of the Social Assistance sector relative to population is just 54% higher than the national average, dead on what one would expect given the city’s higher poverty rate.  On a net basis, therefore, that one industry can explain all the additional Social Assistance employment in excess of what one would expect given the city’s higher poverty rate.  In that industry, New York City’s employment per 100,000 residents is seven times the national average, a greater disproportion than for just about any other sector.  That industry is…

Eliot Spitzer has pulled off a neat trick. In a party seemingly more and more driven by its most ideological activists, he has been embraced wholeheartedly by the party’s left wing, even though all evidence indicates he’s a Bill Clinton type, neo-liberal, new Democrat. Part of this success stems from the perception that his primary opponent, Tom Suozzi, is consistently to his right on social issues.

But is it really so? 

To the extent that the positions of the candidates would result in substantive differences in public policy as actually implemented, the answers range from “not very true” to “almost exactly the opposite is actually the case”. But, put on the defensive, Suozzi was unwilling or unable to convey the truth to the party base, especially the liberals most likely to respond to his message of “reform”. Having been seen as failing to pass the litmus tests required for admission to consideration, Suozzi’s campaign was doomed from the start. Since the ability to communicate one’s agenda (or, when necessary, to obscure it) is a political skill of considerable value to a Governor, perhaps this alone justifies the drubbing Suozzi is about to suffer.

By now, most of you who read my columns here, probably know a few things about me, and about who I am, who I try to be, and where I come from. Plus, you can always click on my profile here on Room Eight if you are more curious. I was born into politics; my father was a left-wing activist. Somewhere around the mid-point of the 20th century (around 1953/I think), Iran’s democratically elected government was overthrown. The Prime Minister (Mossadegh) was ousted. History widely accepts that the United States was involved through the use of its Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.). The Shah of Iran was then re-installed as head of that country. He was later viewed as an American puppet who ruled with an iron-fist. Even then it was about OIL.

Is New York City the best place to be poor?  If the measure of quality of life for the poor and troubled is the number of people hired to provide them with services, it certainly appears, at first glance, to be one of the best places.   Or at least it should be.

In 2004, according to data from the Governments Division of the U.S. Census Bureau attached to a prior post here, the City of New York employed 278 persons in “public welfare” agencies for every 100,000 residents.  The national average was 93; the rest of New York State averaged 231 and New Jersey averaged 121.  Much of the social service work in the city, however, is actually done by private, mostly non-profit agencies in the Social Assistance sub-sector which, according to the current industry classification system, “provide a wide variety of social assistance services directly to their clients.”  According to covered employment (ES202) data for the second quarter of 2005, New York City had 1,857 people employed in this sub-sector for every 100,000 residents.  The national average was 708; the rest of the New York State averaged 1,048 and New Jersey averaged 730.

My father is a retired investor who’s spent his entire life as a resident of either Texas or Louisiana, and currently splits his time between the two; he can, if pressed, tell you who occupies the third slot on the slate of either Likud, Labor or Kadima, but cannot, for the life of him, name the Attorney General of either of his home states, even though they are elected positions. But, he can tell you who Eliot Spitzer is. Eliot Spitzer is probably the only State AG whose support is worth any votes in the American Heartland (each state’s own AG may or may not be a possible exception), which is pretty amazing for a New Yorker, given that the support in such places by either of our very well known US Senators “ain’t”, in the words of Mr. Garner, “worth a bucket of warm piss”.