Last week’s votes in the Congress are more evidence that the growing power of Republican moderates is just a wishful thinking by those who are always looking for the thoughtful moderates who will save the day.

On Friday night, the House voted to prohibit all funds for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) and its affiliates. Not funding for abortion but all funds!

The city budget has been released, and no doubt we are going to spend the next few months hearing about all the things the government is no longer going to do for us. Leaders of public employee unions, in particular, may be expected to talk about all the services the people of New York City no longer deserve because they aren’t paying enough. They will demand that we pay more. So you might expect, particularly given the devastation of the financial crisis, that New Yorkers are paying less. But it isn’t so.

The best way to see this is to look at the NYC “Budget Summary” documents from January 2008, with an estimate of FY 2008 spending on page 48, and the just released “Budget Summary” from February 2011, with an estimate of spending for this fiscal year (FY 2011) on page 49 and a proposal for FY 2012 on page 50. To his credit, since Mayor Bloomberg has taken office he has provided a summary of what each agency actually costs, including not only wages but also fringe benefits, contracts, pensions, debt service, and judgments and claims. Most of the pension and fringe benefit data had previously just been lumped together for all agencies combined. With the FY 2008 data, we can look back to Census Bureau data for FY2008, comparing NYC with staffing and pay by function with local governments elsewhere, and public school spending in more detail, to provide background for what has changed since. A discussion follows.

All long-suffering basketball fans of the New York Knickerbockers (aka: N.Y. Knicks), must be quite pleased with how the team has progressed this season: since the signing of free-agent forward/center Amare Stoudemire, in the off-season (last July). After all, it's over a decade since the Knicks last appeared in an NBA finals, and almost 38 years since the team  last won the NBA title (1973).

Attached is video of a remarkable moment on the floor of the House where California Congresswoman Jackie Speier tears Jersey's Christopher Smith a well-deserved new one, while talking about her own late term abortion:

What follows are items about the Special Election in the 54th AD I had added to my last column after it was initially posted (they've since been deleted), plus an item I posted a few days ago.