Michael Goodwin in Sunday’s NY Post thinks he has caught Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver in a hypocritical inconsistency.
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Harvey Wallbanger (Major Correction Added)
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In this piece I’d like to tell the stories of two different Jewish men who served in the public life of the State of New York and what happened on the day they met.
One of the men is D’Amato/Pataki political hatchet man Jeff Wiesenfeld.
I’ve received more than a few comments on my Facebook threads and in my email complaining I’ve been too sympathetic to Wiesenfeld in his CUNY contretemps with playwright Tony Kushner.
Towns Without Pity
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On Wednesday night will come an event that I once saw as having the potential to be the opening gun in a new Brooklyn political war.
It may yet come to that, but I am having my doubts.
When Darryl Towns became the State’s Housing Commissioner, he resigned not only from his Assembly seat, but from the Male Democratic District Leader’s slot in his Assembly District.
The Teacher Evaluation BS
|The UFT has raised some good points on this issue, but the overall reality is hypocrisy. If principals make qualitative determinations, they say, the result is favoritism. So it appears Bloomberg/Klein took the bait and went with an "objective" measure — the change in test scores. Not fair says the UFT — the tests are flawed. There is no means of evaluation the UFT would accept, other a huge increase in the number of administrators sitting in classes — and rotating to get a diversity of views. Of course, any increase in administrative costs cheats the children, they would say. Well, it appears that a huge increase in administrative costs is what Governor Cuomo wants.
"Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Friday proposed tougher criteria to evaluate teachers including greater use of student test scores, more rigorous observation in the classroom." So who would be doing that observation in situation where more and more money is going to the retired? And doesn't this mean that because NYC cannot afford such an observation, it has no right to evaluate teachers.
There Is No City of New York Surplus
|The Governor and the New York City public employee unions are claiming New York City has a surplus. Where have you heard this before? You might remember all those MTA “surpluses,” which purportedly meant the agency didn’t have to raise fares, could hand out wage and pension enhancements, and didn’t need financial support from the state and city, which allowed tax cuts and more spending on other things. If the MTA claimed it didn’t have a surplus, it was said, then it had two sets of books, because there were hidden $billions. Remember that? Well here we go again.
A surplus means you take in more than you spend, and cover your long-term obligations. If those obligations are growing and your debts are rising, your have a deficit, not a surplus. Period. The real second set of books would have shown the MTA was going broke. And now, despite an increase in the sales tax and a payroll tax to fund it, it is broke. And that’s what those seeking their own interests want to do to the City of New York, before they leave for Florida.
The Gateway (Haj Job Edition)
|"72 Virgins Do Islamabad." —Hustler says "I slamma Gooood!" Extensive Porn Stash Reportedly Found in Bin Laden Compound www.foxnews.com
Economic Endgame
|The American standard of living has been inflated by debt, and is going down. But I predict the reduction will be experienced in a higher cost of living, not permanently high unemployment. More competition for scarce resources from developing areas in the rest of the world, given a falling dollar, is one reason. The second is a growing inability to import cheap goods from abroad, requring them to be made in the U.S. at higher prices as described here. If we succeed in inflation our way out of our debt/pension disaster rather than defaulting en-masse, the trend will merely accelerate.
There is, of course, a good side to this as well — more moderate skill jobs could be available in previously declining mid-sized metros, such as those upstate. Warren Buffett's investments in railroads appears smart, given the need to save energy and the possibility of growing domestic production. Unfortunately New York's rail freight system isn't what it was, or could be. In any event read the article, because while the timing may be off, I agree with the premise. And it will run right into labor force shrikage as the baby boom retires. If you really need it, better buy it soon.
The Gateway (Loud Pushy Jews Edition)
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Bullshit Patrol: Mystery Solved.
A Phony Tax Cap Is Worse Than No Tax Cap At All
|Not that it bothers those who are doing it, but it would certainly bother me to be in a situation in which other members of the community had to be deceived for me to avoid being despised. But those who have been getting richer over the past 20 years as everyone else has gotten poorer, as a result of their manipulation of our public and private institutions, have that sort of deception as their stock in trade. So the most likely outcome of the property tax cap debate is to enact a cap that is a fraud, so those who have been taking more and more in exchange for less and less can wail they had sacrificed, while they do nothing of the sort. Kind of like the “sacrifice” made by existing and retired public employees by agreeing to lower pay and benefits for future public employees, followed by the argument that all public employees should do a less good job because they are underpaid. Or the “sacrifice” of layoffs, which unions love, because they provide less in public services in exchange for the same or slightly more money, rather than the same public services in exchange for a lot more money. That is a sacrifice, in their view, compared with less in public services in exchange for a lot more money, which is what they have provided to New York City for the past four years.