Category: News and Opinion

I've noted more than once that I rarely discuss the Second Amendment with my friends, because I have the somewhat controversial opinion that the plain meaning of words is exactly that, so the regrettable Second Amendment means people can own guns, subject to regulation. I don't particularly care for that, but I don't like equal representation in the US Senate either, and that's in the text as well.

Now that the latest education finance data is out, I’m prepared to write a post on the near and intermediate term future of education in NYC (and perhaps elsewhere). Thanks to a couple of decades of retroactive pension enhancements, pension underfunding, and inflating the problem by sweeping it under the rug, it is not a future of “reform” or “improvement” no matter how anyone chooses to define it and no matter what one’s education politics. It is a future of degradation, one I have already described in detail in this post, one that is well worth a read.

Basically, you cannot have one year in retirement for each year worked without getting it at someone else’s expense. Huge if funded over a career, the cost of that kind of retirement becomes devastating if granted retroactively, and that is what the United Federation of Teachers has achieved twice. New York City’s public schools are going back to the 1970s, and this time they won’t be alone, because the same sort of irresponsibility has occurred in much of the country. Although elsewhere, taxpayer underfunding of promised pensions, rather than retroactive increases in those pensions, account for more of the damage. Underfunding, that is, by past taxpayers with future taxpayers holding the bag. So now what? 

The member of the Weiner household with a future that involves something other than diapers or stand up takes center stage.

By now, most of us know he's one of Mitt Romney's top surrogates, John Sununu, and Sununu said on Tuesday that he wished "this president would learn how to be an American," before stating he had misspoke during a conference call organized by the campaign designed to cast the president as a corrupt politician who is out of touch with small businesses.

After 8 summers writing about politics on these here blogs (websites), my fans are encountering my least productive season. Some of them have reached out to me for the reasons why, and I have facilitated with genuine answers: a combination of dealing with quite a few adverse personal issues; plus the fact that politics has started to become boring to me: after a lifetime of community involvement, political activism and academic pursuit in this area (mainly but not entirely).  

Don't put too much stock in the fact that Shelly Silver called Democratic control of the State Senate is “enticing;” he probably thinks lobster is enticing too, but you won't catch him putting it on his menu.  In both cases, Shelly thinks they are traife.

Mitt Romney has some problems this election season eventhough he continues to run strong in the polls against President Obama.

As I pointed out over a year ago, visual or taped evidence makes a big difference. No one has ever survived it. All those complaining about the difference between Weiner and David Vitter don't get it. You wanna know the difference?