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Water Supply of 18,000 Threatened by Government with No Pride
By Michael Boyajian
The Town of Fishkill established a Master Building plan a few years back that called for maximum building in the town over a three year period. The problem is that the plan did not take into account threats it posed to the pure water supply enjoyed by 18,000, perhaps even 55,000, people in the area going beyond Fishkill into nearby Philipstown and East Fishkill.
The New York Times reported today that New York City’s jail population is way down. “Among the 50 jurisdictions in the country with the greatest number of inmates, including larger cities and urban counties, New York ranks 47th in the average number of inmates jailed on any given day relative to its total population, according to a survey by the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Philadelphia Research Initiative.”
That’s strange because when I tabulated local government corrections employment per 100,000 residents using employment and payroll data from the 2007 Census of Governments, I found that New York City’s average of 160 was nearly double the U.S. average of 86. The data is in the spreadsheet attached to the post. The figure is 74 for Los Angeles County, 110 for Cook County (Chicago), and 97 for Harris County (Houston). The only places that seem to be similar to NYC is older cities co-terminus (or nearly so) with county boundaries, such as San Francisco (172), Washington DC (215), Suffolk County Mass (Boston) 151, and Philadelphia County (168). Some of these places have more crime than New York, but the amount of inmates doesn’t seem to be what is driving corrections employment here.
For those who think things can't get any worse in Albany. Monserrate Circulating Petitions For Peralta’s Old Seat capitaltonight.com
Is there anyone who believes that Dean "The Dog" Skelos is against the budget extender because he wants deeper cuts in health care spending? As I've said before, mention 1199 to Senate Republicans, and they'll bid you up to 1200.
Border Crossings
By Michael Boyajian
All this anti immigrant sentiment spawned by Arizona’s draconian immigration law has nothing to do with illegal aliens but is just fodder for opportunist politicians who want to appeal to the growing base of ignorant American bigots, while providing cover for corporate political donors.
HUGO CHAVEZ (in 2005): “The World has enough for everybody, but some minorities, the descendants of the same people that crucified Christ, and of those that expelled Bolívar from here and in their own way crucified him, have taken ownership of the riches of the world, a minority has taken ownership of the gold of the world, the silver, the minerals, water, the good lands, petrol, well, the riches, and they have concentrated the riches in a small number of hands.”
Nevada GOP Senate front runner Sue Lowden takes the idea that chicken soup is penicillin a bridge too far and the chickens come home to roost, and low and behold, the cure is worse than the disease. Sharron Angle And Party Suicide | The New Republic www.tnr.com
I'd vote for a yellow dog or even Lindsay Graham against Jim DeMint, but this guy I'm not so sure about S.C. Dem winner faces felony charge – Jessica Taylor – POLITICO.com www.politico.com
The City of Baltimore, heading for bankruptcy, is trying to retroactively reduce the pensions of police and firefighters with 15 or fewer years on the job. Their unions have fought back with a lawsuit that claims "officials 'knowingly underfunded' their pension plan over the past decade."
"Knowingly." Now there is a word that could be used more often as we head for an institutional collapse. After all, public employee unions knowingly lied about the future consequences of all the retroactive pension enhancements they got in backroom deals with their pols over the past 15 years. They often approved underfunding the pensions as part of the same deals. Those pols also knowingly ran up debts that would obviously lead to a combination of massive tax cuts and service cuts in the future. They knowingly ran up off the books debts by not setting aside any money for the retire health care benefits they had promised, and made those promises unlimited, since they themselves would benefit. And they knowingly failed to reinvest in the public infrastucture enough to keep it from declining, while borrowing a lot for it by overpaying for the work that was done.
Embracing reform is the first refuge of a scoundrel; part one. Skelos On The Coupniversary: They Wanted Power; We Wanted Reform capitaltonight.com
Embracing reform is the first refuge of a scoundrel: game, set and match point. Espada: Coup Sparked ‘Quantum Leap’ in Reform; More Needed | The New York Observer www.observer.com
If he sees an “opening”, Mayor Michael Bloomberg may decide to run for President.
Bloomberg flirted with running as an independent in the 2008 race, and to me, it has become increasingly clear that Bloomberg is itching for a new challenge.
Sure enough, my thoughts were confirmed over lunch recently with a top NY political consultant on Team Bloomberg who said “Bloomberg wants to run.”
Of course under normal circumstances an independent candidacy wouldn’t have much of a chance at all, but these are not normal times, and you already know the rest of the sentence, Bloomberg is not a normal politician.
A Game of Who Is Going To Put the Bell on the Cat
By Michael Boyajian
The New York Times reports that Russia and Turkey met with Iran days before scheduled U.S. led sanction debates at the United Nations. A void has been created in world affairs by the shift in U.S. foreign policy away from militaristic action towards diplomatic solutions.