Tom Friedman: The Times’s Robert Mackey reported that in Tehran “chants of ‘Death to America’ ” at rallies for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last week were answered by chants of “Death to the Taliban — in Kabul and Tehran” at a rally for his opponent, Mir Hussein Moussavi.

Encouraging, yes. And to some extent, a message to the skeptics (myself, to some extent, included) that the Cairo speech, warts and all, may pay real dividends.

This week in Time, another Peter Beinart Democrat (Peter Beinart), also expressed his approval of the new direction in Mid East politics (which, in regard to Israeli settlements, isn‘t really new–it‘s been the same since 1967).

As was once again proven this week, there is nothing more destructive to the New York State political process than a billionaire scorned. In fact, this may be the single best argument for Mike Bloomberg’s re-election.

In 1989, for reasons too petty to be worth discussing, Al D’Amato filled his billionaire buddy Ron Lauder’s head full of visions of dancing sugarplums, and convinced him to run for Mayor, the better to sabotage the hopes of his former protégé, Rudy Giuliani, who had shown him insufficiently gratitude and fealty.

Lauder, not realizing his own campaign was a sick joke, got his clocked cleaned, and went into shock. Finally realizing his political career was dead, Lauder undertook Kubler-Ross’ stages of grief, but never got beyond anger, which he decided to visit upon the entire New York City political establishment, by finally hiring some competent people and putting on the ballot and passing an initiative instituting term limits for City offices, thereby putting an end date to Rudy’s term in public office before it had even started.

Back in the mid-1990s, after we had purchased and fixed up our home, we had a little savings left and decided to set it aside for the next big expense, the education of our children, toddlers at the time. With a long time horizon, and willing to settle for whatever the average U.S. stock would return, we put it in a Total Stock Market index fund with a low-cost mutual fund company. With college looming we removed the money from that fund last week, and so I have a pretty good idea what savers who invested in stocks, on average, have received over the past 13 years. Despite reinvesting dividends (such as they were), dividends on which we paid taxes from other funds, despite not putting money in at one of the bubble peaks, and despite the low fees charged by our mutual fund company, we merely got the same amount of money back. Money that is now worth 25% less based on overall inflation, and far less relative to the cost of higher education, which is a whole additional discussion in itself.

I bring this up on Room Eight not to complain about my return, because you pay your money and take your chances. I mention this to show that the excuse used to justify the soaring share of national wealth paid to top executives over the past 15 years, the purported need to attract the greatest superstars to enhance shareholder value, has been a fraud. Because the average team of corporate executives has delivered zero shareholder value over the long term — or far less, adjusted for inflation and taxes — while being richly rewarded for it. They took everything for nothing.

The race for the 40th City Council District: Rock Hackshaw gets the endorsement of the Independence Party. Is this an epic of things to come? 

By now most of you know that I am running for the New York City Council, in the 40th District. That’s one of many reasons why I haven’t been writing much here lately. I have been so busy with this race -and the requirements of campaigning, etc. – that I have been writing very few columns lately. And yet -despite my busy schedule- I hope to intermittently keep you up to date on my campaign and other political developments. So do stay tuned-in folks. 

In a piece I posted yesterday, I outlined the sad facts of life for the State Senate Democrats, as well as for all New Yorkers, who are facing the prospect of Pedro Espada one heartbeat away from the Governorship.

Efforts for the Democrats to hang onto the 32 votes needed to pass legislation in the State Senate appear to be doomed. At best, the Democrats still have a shot at winning back the vote of Hiram Monserrate. If the Democrats can both win back Monserrate, and obtain a ruling voiding Monday’s vote changing the Senate Leadership, then the leadership of the Senate, and the concomitant control over office space, lulus, leadership positions and other internal resources will remain in their hands, although, without 32 votes, they will still lose their power to pass legislation. 

Loyal Democrats and Republicans would prefer to look at the goings on in Albany these days as an aberration, one that doesn’t reflect the deeply held values of their particular tribe. I don’t see it that way.

Paul Newell thinks the only sane person in Albany may be Sheldon Silver. And this frightens him.

On his Facebook Page 6/9/09

On 10/22/2007 I posted a piece called The Joe Bruno Democrats, for which I took a lot of abuse at the time. In part, I made the following observations, which were adapted from remarks I first posted in a thread on another blog back in May 2007:

The Senate Republican majority is doomed in the long-term unless they find a way to corral some non-Republicans into either switching parties or voting with them to organize. This has now been their long-range strategy for many years. They find "Democrats In Name Only" and run them in prohibitively Democratic districts, so they can hold them in reserve in case the Dems ever take the majority.

In my two previous pieces detailing the intrigues afoot in the New York State Senate, I was puzzled by the vehemence of the State Senate Democrats in mindlessly and repeatedly chanting their mantra insisting that the Republican attempt to stage a coup had failed, because the vote had been illegal.

What if it were true? Unless one could manage to come up with 32 votes, the Republicans would eventually take over anyway.

The 2009 printed edition of Prime News, Prime New York’s annual compilation of New York City election results has been mailed.