If you sneeze during Justin Sullivan’s Paul Newell documentary “Excuse Me. Mr. Speaker,” you will miss the scene at the convention where Paul Newell yells at me in response to a (unheard) question I asked him.

But there's two or so solid minutes of me in the DVD’s bonus footage, although I get not one laugh.

It just didn’t have to end this way.

Governor David Paterson on a farewell tour, counting down his final days in office.

President Obama names Hillary Clinton Secretary of State. What if Paterson had appointed himself as Clinton’s Senate successor? What if Paterson had opened that door?

Over the past near 40 years, the share of the personal income of both Americans and New Yorkers spent by state and local governments on cash assistance for the needy has plunged, a long term look at data from the Governments Division of the U.S. Census Bureau shows, while the share spent on payments to private sector medical care vendors, generally under the Medicaid program, has soared. The data, in the attached spreadsheet, shows that public health and hospital spending has fallen as a share of personal income in New York while rising in the U.S. as a whole, while spending on social services has increased in both areas, though by much less than Medicaid-funded health care vendor payments.

Friday’s Wall Street Journal had a very good story about the State government failing to go after Pedro Espada in 1995.

But for some reason, the story did not list the name of the man who was Governor at the time.

I wonder why.

Hmm, could it be because the Governor wasn’t named Cuomo, Spitzer or Paterson?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703395204576023843352497746.html

I just glanced over this report, and was struck by the chart on page 1, which shows the share of U.S. income taken by the top 1.0% of earners from 1914 to 2006. It shows the share of U.S. income going to the wealthy soared in the 1920s, just before the Great Depression, and in recent years, just before the Great Recession. This is nothing I didn't know. But what struck me was the almost exact match to the total credit market debt to GDP chart, found on this website. Total U.S. debt also soared in the 1920s, fell in the Great Depression, remained low for a while, then soared again in the 1980s and 2000s. Party on!

A week ago I reported on the NYC election results in the “Angry Black Man Primary” between the Freedom Party’s Councilman Charles Barron and the Rent is Too Damn High Party’s Jimmy McMillan.

At the start of every election season in New York, there is much talk among pols and the press about which major Party candidates the minor Parties (Independence, Conservative, Working Families this year, with the Greens joining the fun next year) will cross-endorse in the various contests throughout the state.

I thought of writing something of substance about "No Labels" (talk about an oxymoronic sentence) and then realized I had already done so months ago.

ROSCOE CONWAY: Speaking as someone who lives in a property tax cap state – stupid f'n idea. If school taxes are too high, throw out your school board. Oh, well, in the words of Ron Swanson, “The public is stupid.

Mike says he's not running, but look at his actions