As I mentioned here, the fact that there are many poor people in New York City is, in some ways, a phony issue.  According to 2005 data from the Census Bureau, the New York Metropolitan Area as a whole had a poverty rate of 12.6%, below the national average of 13.3%.  Poverty is high in New York City because it is the part of the metropolitan area where the poor are permitted to live; taking regional and national economic trends as a given, the more places for the poor to live a municipality provides, the more poverty it will have.  A better focus for public policy is how well the poor live in New York City, and to what extent the city provides an environment their families to advance out of poverty, if not in this generation than in the next.   In my view, the city is a worse place to be poor today than it was 50 years ago.  That is the real issue.

As I mentioned here, the fact that there are many poor people in New York City is, in some ways, a phony issue.  According to 2005 data from the Census Bureau, the New York Metropolitan Area as a whole had a poverty rate of 12.6%, below the national average of 13.3%.  Poverty is high in New York City because it is the part of the metropolitan area where the poor are permitted to live; taking regional and national economic trends as a given, the more places for the poor to live a municipality provides, the more poverty it will have.  A better focus for public policy is how well the poor live in New York City, and to what extent the city provides an environment their families to advance out of poverty, if not in this generation than in the next.   In my view, the city is a worse place to be poor today than it was 50 years ago.  That is the real issue.

While the newspapers and various websites have listed the Primary winners for public office, none that I’m aware of, has listed what happened in the contests for Party office. The fights in the Independence Party are too confusing for me to follow, so I will defer to Gatemouth who has previously commented on them and there were no contests in New York City in the Republican, Conservative & Working Families Parties for Party Office. So here are the winners and losers in Democratic Party races for State Committee and District Leader, with a little commentary in cases where I know something.

I’ll be going on modified High-Holy-hiatus until 9/25, although I reserve the right to come back and comment on anything that interests me and won’t keep until then. When I come back, it is my intent to provide extremely nasty, unrelentingly partisan pro-Democratic commentary until the election.

Nuance and thoughtfulness will not go out the window, because, when deployed properly, they are extremely effective techniques. But the goals should be clear:

I know that there are fifty days left to the general election, and I know that many would say that it is way too early to make an endorsement; but here I go. I am going to endorse Jeanine Pirro for Attorney General. I am going to vote for her and I am also going to try to get everyone I know to vote for her.

Why endorse Pirro? The answer is simple: she is much better qualified for this job than Andrew Cuomo. Case closed. And yet it’s more than that. We have never had a woman as AG in New York’s history; and here we have a highly qualified, highly successful, and very articulate woman, so let’s make history. In this male-dominated world (state) we don’t know when next we will get this opportunity. So let’s do it now.

While I think I know much more about politics than the average voter, I admit I’m as clueless as anyone as to who is qualified to be a judge. So I have never and never will say X is more qualified than Y.

The editorial writers at the Daily News are not as humble.

In Monday’s edition, they attacked Brooklyn County Leader Vito Lopez for supporting for Supreme Court “an attorney whose chief qualifications include being the brother of Lopez’s girlfriend”

When I told everyone that Charles Barron will win the “black” vote from Ed Towns, most thought that I was on crack. Now many ask me how I made that call. It was a simple call to make really (maybe at another time I will get deeper). Observe that I never endorsed anyone in that race. Observe also, that I predicted Ed Towns as the winner. When I endorsed Hiram Monserratte for the 13th Senatorial, many called and said that I was really losing it here. I went a step further; I predicted that he would win. On election night Hiram was a couple hundred votes behind. I still predicted that he would win. Now they are counting. I am predicting that when it’s over Hiram will win.

I recently wrote a series of essays on what I consider to be phony or exaggerated economic issues in New York State. Now I’m going to write a series of essays on the real problems, as I see them. For New York City, perhaps the biggest problem is the low share of its adults who work, or look for work. The support of the non-working is a burden the working have to carry, and to the extent that burden is concentrated on those who live in their proximity, it is a particular burden in New York. But that liability is small compared with the impact of the absence of employment on the non-employed themselves. It is one of several ways New York’s poor are less well off now than in the 1950s – though, as we shall see, better off than in the mid-1990s.

I recently wrote a series of essays on what I consider to be phony or exaggerated economic issues in New York State. Now I’m going to write a series of essays on the real problems, as I see them. For New York City, perhaps the biggest problem is the low share of its adults who work, or look for work. The support of the non-working is a burden the working have to carry, and to the extent that burden is concentrated on those who live in their proximity, it is a particular burden in New York. But that liability is small compared with the impact of the absence of employment on the non-employed themselves. It is one of several ways New York’s poor are less well off now than in the 1950s – though, as we shall see, better off than in the mid-1990s.

I recently wrote a series of essays on what I consider to be phony or exaggerated economic issues in New York State. Now I’m going to write a series of essays on the real problems, as I see them. For New York City, perhaps the biggest problem is the low share of its adults who work, or look for work. The support of the non-working is a burden the working have to carry, and to the extent that burden is concentrated on those who live in their proximity, it is a particular burden in New York. But that liability is small compared with the impact of the absence of employment on the non-employed themselves. It is one of several ways New York’s poor are less well off now than in the 1950s – though, as we shall see, better off than in the mid-1990s.