The English Encarta Dictionary (North America) defines a “Don Quixote” type as “an impractical idealist who loves to champion hopeless causes”; I thought of this when I watched Charles Barron last Wednesday, as he tried to make his case for becoming Speaker on the New York City Council. It was the first stated meeting of the newly elected city council. Barron was pleading his case before this semi-august body, which will be 357 years old on February 2nd, 2010.

Late last year, when I first came upon the news item that NYC Councilmember Charles Barron (#42) was challenging Speaker Christine Quinn’s re-election, I thought to myself that this was a tremendous opportunity for Barron to publicly lay out his arguments for reform within this legislative body. I even went to some length to convey this to him in person.

Even if you don’t care much about the business end of television, you must have noticed that NBC is moving Jay Leno from 10 PM to his old time of 11:35.

NBC is admitting that the low ratings means that Leno at 10 was such was a momentous flop that they are willing to upend their lineup in mid-season to fix the problem.

To those pundits who waste ink and bandwidth yapping about the political power of Glenn Beck, I invite you to compare the number of people who actually watch “flop” Leno and those who watch “popular” Beck.

I’m sure that most of you have wondered about why Fox News was so hostile to Barack Obama during his campaign and since he’s taken  office.

After all, Fox has always given such favorable coverage to polticians like him – African-American Democrats.

But I’m glad to learn the answer to why Fox is not a friend to Obama from Sunday’s New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/business/media/10ailes.html?hp

Roger Ailes, Fox News’s boss says he opposed Obama, not because of his positions on foreign policy, on taxes or abortion or the environment but because as Ailes told the Times –

Politically speaking, the year 2009 was rather elliptical. It started out with tremendous promise (Obama) and ended up somewhat unsatisfying. If I were to describe it in one word, I would say priapic (as in priapism).  To all my grad students who regularly read my column, I could only say this: go look up some of these words/lol.

There were a few highs and far too many lows last year; and for me, getting the opportunity to peregrinate the 40th council district while campaigning for its city council seat was a political high that words could only deflate.  Many people who went up to my website (www.rockhackshaw.com) in order to view my platform, contacted me to say that they were impressed with my thinking through some of the many issues facing us here in the Big Apple.  That was quite encouraging during some very tough days last summer.

My bad, he’s a Dem. I ought to stick to what I know. I do think it’s telling, however, that all these pols keep showing up from out of state. I think they sense the shortage.

that the deadline to make certain changes to New York State educational policies (such as liberalizing restrictions on Charter Schools) in order to qualify for federal funds is a phony deadline. Just like the deadline to enact congestion pricing. And for some in the media to repeat that assertion with a straight face.

If you want to know the reason why the New York State legislature, controlled by the public services producer interests and hostile to the needs of public services consumers, will not make the changes being demanded by the Obama Administration, re-read this post. And remember, it was written before the take home pay of future teachers in NYC schools was cut by 5 percent (for starters). No one could have seen that one coming, right?

In a piece in the New York Times Magazine, Roger Lowenstein, author of several books on financial issues, argues underwater homeowners should walk away from their mortgages, and not feel guilty about it. After all the wealthy and their financial institutions make similar strategic, self-interested decisions all the time. "Morgan Stanley recently decided to stop making payments on five San Francisco office buildings. A Morgan Stanley fund purchased the buildings at the height of the boom, and their value has plunged. Nobody has said Morgan Stanley is immoral — perhaps because no one assumed it was moral to begin with." In some cases homeowners are trapped because they also purchased at inflated prices at the height of the boom. In other cases they had previously purchased at fair prices, but borrowed against their home equity to live large, spending the proceeds of loans they now can't pay back.

Lowenstein is also the author of While America Aged, about the coming public employee pension disaster, a good read. The question I have for him is this. Why should younger generations sacrifice (higher taxes, diminished public services, lower pay and benefits as future public employees) to pay the unfunded portions of those pensions, and other public debts, to ensure older generations get benefits they promised themselves but didn't pay for, and that younger generations will never see, based on decisions younger generations never made?

So the UFT filed a lawsuit demanding that more teachers be hired to reduce class size, which is what some state aid has allocated for. I’ve got some news for everyone not paying attention. Thanks in large part to the power of the UFT, that money, all available money, was shifted by the state legislature from having more teachers teach in smaller classes, to having more teachers retired for more years. That irrevocable decision passed in early 2008, when the retirement age for teachers was retroactively cut from 62 to 55, with those qualifying immediately not putting in an extra dime and those near retirement contributing little.

So how does the UFT have the gall to sue the Mayor. Because he was in on the deal too, for reasons the rest of us can merely guess at. School spending is through the roof, as I have shown here as a matter of data, but administrative spending is low in NYC relative to other places. Come on Bloomberg, you’re re-elected now; tell the truth about where the money is going.

So I have my complaints about Generation Greed, and believe we are heading for an institutional collapse, as discussed once again in my previous post. But is it the case that in the whole range of public policies, there are none that provide myself and my family with unearned and unfair privileges? No, I wouldn’t say that. And isn’t it the case that I have been relatively fortunate in my life? I have. So what am I willing to give up? For state and local government, since my epiphany at the moment that Eliot Spitzer signed the 25/55 pension plan for New York City teachers dooming the schools, the easy answer is nothing. That was proof positive that the more people put in, the more existing interests will go to Albany and take out, leaving things (after a period of cost deferral) worse than before.

But I don’t think that makes me a hypocrite, just a disappointed and increasingly cynical idealist. Looking to what I had said before that date, and to the federal government where the Obama Administration for the moment gives me a little bit of weakening hope, I have called (among other places on this blog) for the following: