Room Eight is closed to new posts. The existing archive will remain up for the immediate future.
If you were a Room Eight writer and would like access to an export of your content, please contact the editor.
This site is not affiliated with or collaborating with any other news or opinion site.
Despite all of my (sometimes nuanced) Rangel bashing, let me now be the contrarian and call upon him to serve out his term.
The choice of Charlie's successor should rightly be made by voters in a Democratic Primary (and, yeah, the general too) and not by a Party Committee (and then ratified in a meaningless, no turnout special election).
Dominick Carter shills for Bloomie (then denies it in the comments thread), saying:
"Bloomberg has the right to appoint Cathleen Black Schools Chancellor. We may not like it, but the appointment of Cathleen P. Black to become Schools Chancellor boils down to an example of how mayoral control works."
I've often complained that everyone just talks about the state pension plans, while New York City pension plans, which cover local government employees working for the City of New York and New York City Transit, are ignored. Well NJ actuary and pension commentator has done all of us a favor, and calculated the bankruptcy data for major city pension plans on the same basis as his calculations for state plans. He finds the New York City pension system goes bust in 2023. Much to my surprise, that isn’t much different than the New York State plans. Which means that since existing workers can’t have their pensions cut (constitutionally) or their pension and health care contributions increased (politically), public services will be completely wiped out throughout the state with the nation’s highest tax burden at about the same time, in order to pay pensions without pension funds. (We may get a downpayment next fiscal year). And it doesn’t matter how much they cut the pensions, pay and benefits of future public employees, because they won’t be able to afford to hire any.
In the United States we have a way of making injured people whole again. It is called the personal injury lawsuit and a value is placed on your injury and awarded to you if you win your case or settle. Meanwhile in Japan an apology is how people are made whole again. Two methods to the same end. You decide which one you favor.
Today's non-news news: people who know nothing about education support Black for Chancellor
Before I go further with my political writings, I need to clear up a few things. After more than five years on these here blogs (mainly Politicker, Daily Gotham and Room Eight New York Politics); after numerous local radio and television appearances; after some of my political columns have been published in a few newspapers, and after some others have appeared in various other media outlets (particularly of the fifth estate variety); I need to openly reflect and/or retrospect.
It is imperative now in this dismal and shattered global economy that Turkey be admitted to the European Union. Turkey is the linchpin to the entire region that surrounds it. Its entry into the EU will bring prosperity to the Caucuses, Eastern Europe, Greece and the Middle East.
The Wall Street Journal has a column on the vote counting in the election for California Attorney General.
Columnist John Fund writes:
The race to determine who will be the attorney general of California is still too close to call. Democrat Kamala Harris, San Francisco's district attorney, leads Republican Steve Cooley, the DA for Los Angeles County, by 31,000 votes out of nearly nine million cast. And there are more than 750,000 ballots left to count.
