"In the 25th State Senate District in Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn, another challenger deserves support. He is Daniel Squadron, an energetic former aide to United States Senator Charles Schumer who is running against Senator Martin Connor. Mr. Connor has been in this seat for three decades and accomplished far too little….Mr. Squadron says he is committed to cleaning up Albany and that serving in the Senate would be his only job. If Mr. Squadron wants to prove his commitment to reform then he still needs to be more forthcoming about his financial holdings. That said, we endorse Mr. Squadron as an enthusiastic new outsider".–NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL (8/22/08)

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2009/07/15/2009-07-15_hirams_12500_reward_dems_give_flipper__chairmanship.html

"See, these are the perks of having the Senate majority, more or less: for the first time in the eight years I've lived here, we got not one, but two mailings from our state senator, Malave Dilan. The cheap mailing is dated June 26th, when the chamber was divided; the expensive, nice, four-color brochure in English and Spanish arrived today, so it was probably sent after the Dems, cough, "returned to power". I'm unaware of any prior outreach by the Senator, and I haven't seen him in the community, either. Ever.

Coincidentally, I think Dilan is probably the incumbent Senator most likely to face a primary. His district has changed so much since he entered politics that he's ripe for a challenge; if, say, the Polish community comes up with a nice, young and attractive bilingual Progressive, someone who can forge an alliance between the Poles and the hipsters in Williamsburg, he's toast.” —MICHAEL BOULDIN ON "THE DAILY GOTHAM” 7/12/09

If I were still allowed to post comments on "The Daily Gotham," I would be posting this there, on Mr. Bouldin’s thread, and not be wasting space in this department. As I am banned from that venue, my only alternative is to respond here, which may cause some to read Mr. Bouldin’s uneducated rant who would have otherwiise avoided it; as such, you all have my sincerest apologies in advance.

As strong as was my condemnation of the manner in which the recent Senate squall was resolved, I’m not about the take the step of naming heroes and villains, or to assert that any other possible resolution, however superior, was easily evolved, or even possible. Despite my earlier and relentless condemnation in their various incarnations of "The Four Horsemen of the Preposterous," "The Three Amigos," the "Aztec Two-Step," or "The Majority of One," I’m not even to prepared to condemn those Democrats (most prominently John Sampson and Marty Dilan) who negotiated with and through them to achieve the final settlement.

I’m not even sure how much I can really condemn the Republican Leader (as of today), Dean “The Dog” Skelos.

Last year Governor Paterson and the state legislature covered up the state's fiscal problems until after the election, by passing a budget that was a fraud. This year, Mayor Bloomberg and the City Council have done the same. It happens over and over, and yet Paterson and Bloomberg are different. In each case, they are barely hiding from anyone who bothers to read the newspaper the fact that their budgets failed to address the facts they are thus hiding. "Make no mistake about it, we're going to have to start right now economizing if we're going to get through 2011," the Daily News reported.

As I wrote previously, there is a dispute among Generation Greed as to how to diminish the quality of life and standard of living of younger generations, and the future of the state, to pay for rich and long retirements they have promised themselves. Some want cut the pay and benefits of new workers relative to those who came before, while presumably allowing all public employees, including those with sweeter deals, to do a less good job in exchange. Others want to defer the cost of all those special pension deals and favors to the future, forcing future taxpayers to pay for them, preferably at a time when Generation Greed is drawing retirement income, which is exempt from state and local income taxes in New York. Simply not paying the cost of the pensions until later is the choice advanced by Comptroller DiNapoli, and it was evidently passed by the New York State Assembly without any public debate about its fairness some time ago. But yesterday there was a surprise.

http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=818312&category=STATE

SD 33: Spare yourself the worry about who’s under indictment; if Pedro Espada is currently free from such worries, it is only a matter of time before he faces them again. It can be argued, in fact, that the legal process is the only option which may improve the quality of this district’s representation. Meanwhile, it is clear that, while incumbent Efrain Gonzalez sometimes rents himself to Republicans, his opponent, Former Senator Espada, is capable of selling himself to them outright; he‘s done so before…Hold your nose and vote for Gonzalez. — Gatemouth (9/8/08)

After the recent elections in Iran, we were subjected to thousands of words written & spoken by scores of politicians and pundits about the fairness or unfairness of those elections. The number of the commentators who had any expertise in Iranian election procedures could probably be counted on one hand. But none of them could admit they don’t really know much about the political preference of the residents of Mashhad (that’s the 2^nd biggest City in Iran. I just looked it up)

Gov. Paterson yesterday put New York on a course to become a banana republic, with an unelected governor (himself), an unelected lieutenant governor (Richard Ravitch) and an unelected state comptroller (Tom DiNapoli), who, under pressure from Paterson, has refused to give elected senators their pay.

Beginning his service on December 19, 1974, Rockefeller was the second person appointed Vice President under the 25th Amendment – the first being Ford himself.