Everyone knows that I worked on the re-election campaign of congressman Ed Towns last year; and most of you on the blogging scene also know that I have had a long friendship with him, which has helped shield him from some of my wicked political slap downs.  Although I have taken one or two parting shots at him whenever I felt he wasn’t on the right side of an issue or political race (Ken Evans v. Diane Gordon or Inez Barron /for examples), I have been pretty easy on Ed, when compared to say Charles “Chucky B” Barron, Al Vann-winkle or Darlene Mealy-mouse. In some Brooklyn political circles, I have taken big flack for not going after Ed much harder: and probably rightly so. But there are things I do know that are about to show. I suspect that Ed won’t be around in this seat too much longer. For years now there have been forces wanting to replace him. The forces are gaining momentum folks. 

The Gate/Domestic Partner clan solemnly remembered Memorial Day by helping six-year old Dybbuk construct a diorama memorializing his early childhood walk to the Kane Street Synagogue pre-school, and then drinking far too much at a barbeque attended mostly by natives and foreign stock from Poland, Israel, Sweden, Japan, Korea and Arizona, thrown by the family of Dybbuk‘s fiancé (yes, it is an arranged marriage; Dybbuk arranged it himself.

I posted for the first time on this site three years ago today. During that time I’ve written about 470 posts, generally three to four typewritten pages long, or about three per week, many with extensive spreadsheets based on data I had downloaded, tabulated and analyzed. More recently I’ve been slowing down. At this point, anyone who has read my posts from the beginning should be able to understand how I think, what my values are, and what the information is that informs my opinions on a variety of subjects in great detail. If someone has been reading right along, it should begin to seem repetitious, as a comparison between my first post and this one shows.  It isn't because I don't have an open mind, it is because the same pols backed by the same interests remain in charge in Albany, the therefore same things keep happening. And some things that have and will happen are pre-ordained by irrevocable decisions of the past. More and more in my new posts I summarize, and back link to more detailed posts I have already written. For anyone not familiar with what I have to say and show, on the other hand, I don’t want to leave things out. Particularly things I’m not reading elsewhere, as I explained last year. My Room 8 writings, however, are an extension of a mostly losing battle going back far longer than three years, and that gets discouraging. And thus my offer and request.

The New York Times reports that the budget of individual NYC public schools will be cut 5 percent next year, following a cut of 3 percent last year. Despite the federal government borrowing $trillions our children and grandchildren will have to sacrifice to repay to provide stimulus money to those schools. Despite a huge New York State tax increase for the well off, to be followed by additional state tax increases on everyone else, to increase school state aid. Despite NYC property and sales tax increase, disproportionately directed to the schools. Despite the fact that total spending on the New York City schools, including retirement benefits, will be going up not down, even as the money most New Yorkers earn, and wht they can afford, is going down. Total spending up, spending in schools down. But the Times doesn’t ask the question why.

Recently we read that teachers that no principal wants to take responsibility for, previously paid to do nothing, will be stuck in some children’s classroom. Today the Times reports that Fair Student funding, which would have ended the practice of qualified teachers moving on to the schools of the affluent while the poor get a revolving door of the uncertified and unqualified, will be postponed a year — and probably forever. The teacher’s union is thrilled. Also reported by the Times the schools face “deep cuts in after-school and weekend programs,” the kind that give disadvantaged children a chance. An end to summer school and a return of fiscal social promotion seems certain. That is where the money isn’t going. Where is it going? No one will say. 

Independent Neighborhood Democrats (IND), the local political Club in my area, is currently forming a circular firing squad as it puts itself into civil war footing. At the center of the war is a gregarious but somewhat annoying man I’ve rarely found common cause with who has sometimes behaved despicably, and yet, I find myself feeling that he’s being treated unfairly.

I’m talking about the self-proclaimed Mayor of Carroll Gardens, the Merry Mortician himself, one Salvatore “Buddy” Scotto.

Yesterday, a writer at Daily Gotham who I regard as an ally in this battle made a comment about Buddy which compared him and his followers to the Soprano Family.

Does Mole333 even know that Buddy Scotto stood up against organized crime in Carroll Gardens at a time when doing so was an invitation to a premature funeral (which probably would have been the first mob-related funeral in the Scotto firm’s history–the Wise Guys mostly use Raccuglia, sometimes Cusimano or Guido, but never Scotto), and that Buddy has had, at least once, to go into exile for his efforts?

OBAMA (5/17/09): What bothered the doctor was an entry that my campaign staff had posted on my website — an entry that said I would fight "right-wing ideologues who want to take away a woman's right to choose." The doctor said he had assumed I was a reasonable person, he supported my policy initiatives to help the poor and to lift up our educational system, but that if I truly believed that every pro-life individual was simply an ideologue who wanted to inflict suffering on women, then I was not very reasonable. He wrote, "I do not ask at this point that you oppose abortion, only that you speak about this issue in fair-minded words." Fair-minded words.

After I read the doctor's letter, I wrote back to him and I thanked him. And I didn't change my underlying position, but I did tell my staff to change the words on my website. And I said a prayer that night that I might extend the same presumption of good faith to others that the doctor had extended to me. Because when we do that — when we open up our hearts and our minds to those who may not think precisely like we do or believe precisely what we believe — that's when we discover at least the possibility of common ground.

GATEMOUTH (2/7/09): The New Tolerant Tolerance, evokes…Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin. To cultural conservatives who might otherwise be disposed to our message, we offer R-E-S-P-E-C-T….R-E-S-P-E-C-T means not automatically using the word “bigot” to describe those who have sincere difference of opinion based upon faith, unless and until they have behaved like swine. It means embracing them for the common humanity we share and searching for some common ground.

So rather than require the retired to pay the same taxes on the same income as everyone else (it is their debts, Medicaid costs and pensions that are destroying public services after all), the senior citizens in the New York State Legislature chose to raise New York’s already high taxes on wages to bail out the MTA. But, according to the legislature and councilmember Lew Fidler, who first came up with the idea, businesses will pay the 0.34% payroll tax, not workers. The New York City Partnership, which represents large businesses, was in favor out of the goodness of its heart. Or was it?

For the benefit of the hack attorneys who are running our governments into the ground, I have braved the dust to pull out Public Finance In Theory and Practice, a textbook from my student past. Tax levies, the book (and common sense) informs us, impose “burdens which the individual taxpayer will try to avoid or pass onto others. To determine who pays, we must thus look beyond the tax statutes and the pattern of statutory incidence, i.e., beyond those on whom the legal liability rests.” So who will be paying the MTA payroll tax? I’ll bet it isn’t those who ran up the debts and retiree obligations it will be going to pay for.

The As, Bs, Cs and Ds of this year’s mayoral race: talking about (Anthony) Weiner, (Anthony) Avella, (Anthony) Soprano, (Billy) Thompson, Michael (Bloomberg), (Barack) Obama, Hilary (Clinton), good old Charlie (Charles “Chucky Bee” Barron), and (Derek) Coleman.

Okay; it’s confession time: this column is dedicated to Norman Siegel -the ardent civil rights attorney and political activist. You see, I want Norman to scratch his head and figure out how I am going to write a column with a headline like this one (before he reads it). As they say in Espanol (Spanish): “vamos a ver (let’s see)”. Okay; so this is an inside joke meant for an esoteric group: go figure. 

With the cynicism that has been beaten into me over 25 years of observing New York public policy, I find myself agreeing with the New York Post as to what our state government probably wants the next MTA head to do: cover up the problems, run up the debts, cut back on maintenance and reinvestment, protect vested interests in the present while destroying the common future, and take the blame. In other words, more of the same. I might add there is one thing no one in Albany wants the next MTA head to do: make a fair accounting of how we got into this mess and who benefitted, since those in power are and represent the beneficiaries.

The MTA, however, is something I happen to know a lot about. So for interest’s sake if nothing else, I have decided to write down a series of exercises and analyses the next MTA head should undertake and publish — to help improve, or at least raise real understanding of, the agency. These are briefly listed below; I’ve decided to pass on writing multiple posts on the details of who each analysis ought to be conducted.

Domestic Partner: I am getting tired of everyone asking what it is I could possibly see in Gatemouth. His athletic physique? His sweet disposition? His good manners and sense of fashion? His tolerance for the failings of others?

Since the answer is not immediately apparent, everyone jumps to the same conclusion, but sad to say, they are wrong; being one is not the same as having one.

But please, do not think that I am with Gatemouth because of a mental deficiency; there are other reasons as well. Though I may be appear to be a simple agrarian working on my second graduate degree, I assure you that I am not a country pumpkin; I am witty and irrelevant. Yes, English is not my first language, only my fifth, but do not underestimate me . While it is true that I am beautiful and stylish, I am also very smart. I do have my reasons, even if I’ve long ago forgotten them. Besides, Gatemouth is a person of unparalleled generosity–when he has an opinion, he always makes sure to share it with everyone.