When Senators Pedro Espada & Hiram Monserrate turned on their fellow Democrats and took part in the coup in Albany, many speculated on the reason why they did it.

Back in 1989, disgusted with Ed Koch’s divisive administration, I sought an alternative.

Michael Kharfen, later to be Director of David Dinkins’ Community Assistance Unit (and my boss therein) told me, “If you don’t vote for David Dinkins, there will be racial discord, riots in the street and the days to day operations of City government in the hands of people like Norman Steisel.”

Damned if he wasn’t correct—I didn’t vote for David Dinkins, and all those things did happen.

The man I voted for had brought the MTA into the 20^th Century and just last year endeavored to bring it into the 21st; his name was and is Richard Ravitch.

From today’s New York Times: “According to the analysis, pension contribution rates for civilian employees in local governments will soar to 30.3 percent by 2015, from 7.4 percent of payroll this year. Contributions to police and fire department retirement plans are expected to increase to 41.1 percent in 2015 from 15.1 percent this year…If there is any silver lining, the trends appear to have somewhat curbed Albany’s appetite for extending pension enhancements to public employees to placate labor unions, which wield enormous clout and lobbying dollars in the capital. ‘I’m alarmed,’ said Assemblyman Peter J. Abbate Jr., a Brooklyn Democrat and the chairman of the Assembly’s Labor Committee, who is one of the capital’s more reliable union allies. ‘Bluntly,’ he said, ‘I’ve spoken to a lot of the union leaders and their lobbyists and said I don’t want to see bills that will cost the counties and the state millions of dollars.’”

Public services are doomed. This discussion doesn’t even include other retiree benefits such as health insurance, or all the debts people like Abbate have foisted on the next generation, future revenues that have been encumbered, costs that have deferred, infrastructure that has not been maintained. This is exactly the combination that produced the 1970s disaster for NYC, but now it will be the 1970s in the whole state. Alarmed? He and his backers, fellow members of Generation Greed, should be celebrating if their goal is to destroy the state. And I don’t want to hear about the “shared sacrifice” of slashing the pay and benefits of future public employees to pay for this, in exchange for having all workers – including those current – do a less good job. I’m not fooled by this. “Bluntly,” in taking and taking and not caring about the resulting harm to others, you any those like have done and are evil. PUT BANKRUPTCY ON THE TABLE.

Earlier this week -and without much fanfare-a city council candidate for this year's elections, went up with a brand new website; that candidate was yours truly. Although the site is a perpetual work in progress, and will be frequently modified and updated until I am fully satisified with it, viewers can still get a comprehensive look at my personal history, my political activism, my record of public service/community involvement, and also my political vision. 

I hope many of you will go up and take a look at my positions on some of the many issues facing this city -and also the district in which I seek public office (again). 

The public sector institutional collapse approaches. With the help of lies by actuaries, Generation Greed is absconding with all the resource we have, and will have. In the future, the vast majority of taxes, extracted from younger generations and exempting those older, will go to past debts, early retirement pensions, other retiree benefits such as health care, and other services for senior citizens. (Until younger generations face old age in the absence of such services for senior citizens).  Other public services and the social safety net will ebb away. Taxes will be paid for nothing, seized with nothing in exchange. And now we have a Democratic State Senator refusing to increase taxes to pay for a government largely operated by taxes, so as not to be associated with the ripoff that it is. After all, his job, pension, his relative’s jobs, and the sinecures of associated people with connections will be the last to go, and his generation’s needs will be taken care of.

The private sector is no different. All our institutions are being drained of all they have, with only IOUs left behind. I suggest reading this article to the end. It is but one example. And there seems to be no stopping it. And no one pays attention until its too late, and at that point they are manipulated to blame other victims.

Back when the Brennan Center was releasing reports showing how undemocratic and phony the New York State legislature is, I recall reading comments from Sheldon Silver and Joe Bruno, its leaders, in the newspaper. They didn’t come right out and say it, but reading between the lines they pretty much implied that if New Yorkers knew what those who grab and perpetually hold sinecures through our non-elections were like, they would be glad there were only three men in the room when anything important was at stake.

I bring this up without comment, other than to point out that decisions to sell out New York’s future (now the present) to free up money to hand out to interest groups in the present (now the past) were generally bi-partisan and had the support of both leaders, and many member of their generations. Is that really worse than what has been going on recently? In any event, credit to Gatemouth, whose history of the last time the Democrats were sort of in charge in the 1960s meant that no one who read it is surprised. I’m never surprised by something bad for ordinary people, particularly those in younger generations, coming out of Albany.

He's good enough, he's smart enough and doggone it, people like him.  

GOVERNOR SANFORD: “I have been doing a lot of soul searching on that front. What I find interesting is the story of David, and the way in which he fell mightily, he fell in very very significant ways. But then picked up the pieces and built from there.”

Maria is my Bo Peep; she is special and unique and fabulous in a whole host of ways that are worth a much longer conversation.. To be continued

She maketh me to lie down to give me magnificently gentle kisses,

She leadeth me beside her tan lines and the curves of her hips and the erotic beauty of her holding herself (or two magnificent parts thereof) in the faded glow of night’s light

Following public policy in New York is like watching the same horror movie over and over again, while knowing that what appears on the screen will eventually happen to you, your children, and/or people you care about. Case in point, the long series of “screw the newbie, flee to Florida” public employee union contracts that both inflate the cost of public services and degrade their quality, while cheating younger generations.

Just 18 months ago, Bloomberg and the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) cut a deal, the state legislature passed it (virtually zero no votes), and then-Governor Eliot Spitzer signed it, to allow existing teachers age 55 and up to walk out the door into retirement up to seven years early, receiving unlimited untaxed health insurance from the city without assistance from federal Medicare for ten years rather than three, without contributing an extra dime. Those just under age 55 would have to pay more for just a few years before retiring seven years early, and receiving pension income free of New York City state and local taxes. Because that deal also cut the take home pay of future teachers by 5 percent for the first ten years of their careers, and because a historically (looking at long term data) impossible rate of return on pension assets was assumed, the undebated, unvetted, unannounced deal was described as costing nothing. Well guess what? This week, for the umpteeth time, we got the first phase of the inevitable second half of that deal – the screw the newbie and the children half.

I really want to like Kevin Parker. Really.

There’s good reason why I should. Of the five Democratic State Senators who‘ve ever been indicted, Kevin is the only who has neither made common cause with the Republicans, nor has even threatened to.

Unlike the other members of that illustrious crew (who I shall refer to only by their nick-names: Embezzlement, Assault, Extortion and Heroin Dealing), Kevin has never been part of the Gang of Four, the Four Horsemen of the Preposterous, Carl and the Passions, The Three Amigos (“we want Amigo money”) or the Aztec Two-Step.

Though also accused of assault, Kevin has the virtue of loyalty, at least in regard to his party.