In New York Politics, it’s never too early to talk about the Race for Mayor.

The last contest was only five months ago, but that’s not stopping us from looking ahead to 2013.

A recent Marist Poll, with its excellent director of polling Dr. Lee M. Miringoff, had some very interesting numbers.

I was shocked to see despite the very strong finish of former City Comptroller Bill Thompson to Mayor Bloomberg, and another way to state this, Thompson’s much closer than expected loss—that Thompson in the Marist Poll is actually trailing Congressman Anthony Weiner.

The Crossroads of America:   A Family History

By Michael Boyajian

There is a great deal of talk about immigration as of late but what does it mean to be an American?  I have been recording an oral history of my extended family for some time now.  I have learned that my family represents a cross section of global civilization all of whom settled in America at one time or another.

As we await final, detailed data from the 2007 Census of Governments, the U.S. Census Bureau has released pension system finance data for FY 2008. There is no need for me to keep endlessly repeating myself, so if you want a detailed look at New York’s pensions over time read this post, and compared with other parts of the country read this post, downloading the attached spreadsheet. I’ll go into even more detail when the 2007 finance data comes out.

I did do a couple of couple of calculations with the 2008 data, which are shown in the spreadsheet attached to this post. In addition to the points I made in the two posts above, which one ought to read if one hasn’t already, what jumps out at me about 2008? New York City pension plan payments drained 9.1% of their total assets that year, compared with a national average of 6.1%. These payments are for work done in the past, which was supposed to be paid for in the past, when taxpayers benefitted from the work. There is supposed to be enough money in the pension plans that if the City of New York disappeared, all vested benefits could be paid. New York’s public employees, however, spend 25 to 40 years in retirement on average, after working for just 20 to 25 years. And yet at the FY 2008 rate of drain, before the big financial hits in the fall of that year, its public employee pension plans were sinking so fast the money would be gone in just eleven years. Only Rhode Island, West Virginia and Connecticut were worse off. California and New Jersey, which have been and will be very much in the news on the pension issue, were better off.

Suburban Chic and Teabagging the Teabaggers

By Michael Boyajian

When we first moved from Brooklyn to our new home in the Hudson River Valley the first thing we noticed was that our neighbors had reflector rods planted on their front lawns where they border the road.  The thinking was that this would keep cars from parking on the lawn because there was no sidewalk.

Well here’s something you don’t see every day. According to the Albany Times Union, “New York Gov. David Paterson has signed a bill cracking the code of silence at public authorities that run New York City's mass transit system, the state Thruway, and many other major services…The newest statute makes it illegal for a public authority to prevent employees from disclosing anything about their work, except in certain cases when the information is kept confidential by law.” According to Richard Brodsky “the public authorities long operated without proper scrutiny even though they collectively handle billions of dollars.” So what is it that they didn’t know over the past 20 years? That if you make some people better off by borrowing $billions today, other people are going to be worse off when it has to be paid back tomorrow?

As it happens, I have in my possession a spreadsheet that I obtained as an MTA employee, covered by the confidentiality rules I was under at a time – that you cannot publicly release information that you only knew because you were an employee. The rules were in the MTA policies, and I thought them reasonable at the time. The spreadsheet is a table of the age of the signal system for each stretch of track, along with past replacement projects. It shows which parts of the city will have their transit service collapse first, as the MTA’s resources shift to debt service as a result of past borrowing for ongoing normal replacement (maintenance not capital as far as I’m concerned), once ongoing normal replacement stops. So, Paterson and Brodsky, would it be ethical for me to attach that table (and some others) to this post under the new law? I know my fellow transit buffs would love to see it.

Middle East Union and Ensuing Peace

By Michael Boyajian

Turmoil in the Middle East threatens peace there and elsewhere with no real solution in sight.  Much of the problem goes back to the partitions made after World War I by the European powers.  These powers created artificial nations not based on historical basis but on the convenience of these powers.

The Burning Bush of Same Sex Marriage

By Michael Boyajian

I heard a very interesting baptismal sermon by Father Richard Visconti of the Caroline Church on Long Island this past weekend.  He spoke of the risks we take in life.  There is monetary risk, recreational risk like bungee jumping, occupational risk like being a fireman, and there is ideological risk which he specified by mentioning same sex marriage.

The New York Times has an article today on the possible damage that New York's high taxes on real estate transfers, on both sellers and the recording of mortgages, is doing to a possible real estate recovery. "The combined New York State and city transfer taxes, levied whenever a property changes hands, are 3.025 percent, among the highest in the country. In a rising market the taxes are seen as incidental, but when profit margins contract the tax looms larger, and lenders and borrowers are grappling with who will pay it."

There is another side to this issue, however. Perhaps the sky-high taxes on each new mortgage and sale is one reason there was less idiotic flipping and cash-out refinancing in New York than in other places to begin with, as people on housing bubble blogs seem to believe. An owner-occupied residence is a place to live, not an investment, whose actual return is the rent you don't have to pay net of the expenses you do. Unless you are planning to stay a long time — possibly long enough to pay off the mortgage and live rent free — it doesn't pay to buy to begin with.

Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding.

In this corner— an increasingly frustrated press corps.

And in the other corner— Andrew Cuomo. The in all-likelihood next governor of New York State himself.

The New York Times recently had an interesting piece on Cuomo titled: “Behind the Curtain, Cuomo Runs His Own P.R. Machine,” which focused on the fact that most—if not all of the interaction between Cuomo and members of the media are done by conference call.

This race is certainly his to lose…but Cuomo is about to face a major test.

There is no skirting the issue, no direct ducking or limiting possible damage via conference call—-Cuomo will have to do something he hasn’t done in well, four years….and that is face the media— face tough questions. To borrow my signature phrase I used 20 years ago in radio, he’s going to have to do it “live and direct.”

DEAD KENNEDYS: Went to a party
I danced all night
I drank 16 beers
And I started up a fight

I'm too drunk to fuck…