Written on Friday, July 10th, 2009 at 6:47am by Alan Bedenko | 9 Comments

A Metastasizing Cancer Cell in the Center of a Disfiguring Boil

The Failboat makes its first appearance on the new WNYMedia.net

The Failboat makes its first appearance on the new WNYMedia.net

Back when the Senate coup first happened, lots of people smugly asked me here and on Facebook whether I’d change my tune on Espada if he switched back to the Democrats and helped them re-gain the majority.  It presupposes that I’m just a knee-jerk Dem who will lick Espada’s taint if we regain our majority.   And I’m not the only one.  Here’s what Robert Harding says at the Albany Project:

With the news today that Sen. Espada will rejoin the Senate Democratic caucus and as a result, will serve as Senate Majority Leader, it is hard to argue that what the Republicans (along with Espada) did on June 8 and what the Democrats have done (again, with Espada) on July 9 are any different. What the Republicans did was an obvious power grab. What the Democrats have done, along with the Republicans, is hold the state senate hostage until one of them got the result they wanted.

The losers today are the people of New York, who have been put on the back burner in favor of posturing and a disgusting lust for power that has distracted the legislature away from the people’s business for a long time. The people of New York have lost out over the last month with key legislation not being addressed and a group of state senators putting their interests first and the interests of the state last. We deserve better. In fact, we deserve 62 better senators.

But the winners are clear. The winners don’t include either the Senate Republicans or the Senate Democrats. Both are guilty of having a lust for power, but their lust isn’t as great as Pedro Espada’s. Espada might be with the Democrats, but he will receive special perks. He will get to name one of the two co-secretaries of the Senate, with the Senate Democrats picking the other. Espada ally and coup coordinator Steve Pigeon is also getting a job, according to the Times-Union. And if Pigeon is getting a job, that means inside access to the New York State Senate for Florida billionaire Tom Golisano.

So how does this help things? At least now, the Senate will be able to get to work and address key issues. But at what price? The Senate Democrats (the leadership anyway, maybe not each individual senator in the conference) have sold their souls to Espada. In doing so, they should face the same scrutiny that Espada shall face going forward. And that also means that in 2010, we should look at serious primary challenges to those individuals who think that the people’s business is something that can be toyed with.

Many of us, including myself, worked very hard in our efforts to elect a Senate Democratic majority in 2008. I did not work hard to elect a Pedro Espada majority. Pedro Espada represents everything that is wrong with our legislative process and everything that is wrong with politics and governance in New York

Pedro Espada is everything that is wrong with New York State politics.  He is a metastasizing cancer cell in the center of a disfiguring boil.

I would rather he stay with the Republican conference, so they could bleat on about “reform” that they eschewed during their 40 years as the majority in charge of the State Senate.  (And don’t you worry, I’m just as disgusted by the Democratically-run Assembly and its special brand of “leadership”).

This isn’t World War II, and the Republicans aren’t Hitler.  Democrats should prefer to lose with dignity than ally themselves with the scum of the Earth. That they instead chose to welcome him back to the fold with a leadership position solidifies my belief that we don’t need a Senate, but for so long as we have one, we need to overhaul it.

Clearly, it’s extraordinarily difficult to actually hold a genuine ballot box revolution, but that’s what’s needed in the meantime.  Belligerent, simplistic idiots like Volker, do-nothing preeners like Maziarz, and our local Democratic tweedle-dees and tweedle-dums in the State Senate need to be thrown out of there.

Anyone who runs on an “abolish the Senate” platform should win.  It should be a slate.  It should be a minor party line.

I’ve been writing literally for years that Albany is a horrible place where indifferent and ignorant people make horrible decisions. I thought it couldn’t get any worse.  I was wrong.  I also don’t think it’s hit bottom yet.  I agree with Chris’ sentiments regarding Primary Challenge, but that organization has more baggage than a JFK Skycap. I heard Lenny Roberto on Bauerle’s show last week and let’s just say he lost me when he made the Hitler analogy literally 5 minutes in.

Like I said, Albany isn’t Nazi Germany.  Forget Godwin’s Law for a second; it’s just time to stop comparing contemporary political ineptitude and malfeasance with 60 year-old extremist totalitarian doctrines. It’s as lazy as it is inaccurate.

Albany is Albany.  That’s as bad an analogy as I can draw.

9 Comments

  1. Bill Altreuter says:
    July 10, 2009 at 8:48 am

    One of the things that the legislature is supposed to do with every bill introduced is to quantify the projected cost of the legislation. Wouldn’t it be interesting to find out what this adventure cost? The effect that the senate’s paralysis had on local government’s ability to pay their bills, and the interest on those obligations all by itself must be quite substantial.

    I’d like to see those numbers.

  2. LC Scotty says:
    July 10, 2009 at 10:05 am

    Alan,

    You’ve repeatedly called for abolishing the state senate based on these hijinks, and it seems that you have much more faith in the assembly. Am I misunderstanding your position?

    The folks in the assembly are culled from the same political cesspool as the senators. They have the same extra-curricular legal troubles, have abjectly failed to do anything positive in the last 40 years and are just as complicit in the “3 men in a room” syndrome that has destroyed this state.

    So my question is, aside from some savings, what do you hope to accomplish by going unicameral? That simply gets us to 2 men in a room.

  3. Mike Walsh says:
    July 10, 2009 at 11:45 am

    Alan did say he was just as disgusted with the assembly. The whole system is broken beyond repair.

  4. Chris from OP says:
    July 10, 2009 at 11:50 am

    @ LC Scotty, I know this was aimed at Alan but I want to put my $0.02 in too. I hate the Assembly as it exists now, but I want a unicameral legislature that is more like the Assembly than the Senate.

    The major reason is that the districts are smaller, and therefore (theoretically) more representative. It’s pretty reasonable for any regular Joe Blow to circulate petitions to run in an Assembly district, but by design it’s almost impossible to get on the ballot for a Senate seat without a party aparatus backing you. That makes the Senate less democratic and more hack-tacular.

    The other reason I want a unicameral legislature is that people know where the buck stops. Many times in the last few years both houses have passed similar bills but neglected to hammer out the details because “the special interests” didn’t want the legislation passed. That way, your Assemblyman and you Senator got to look good by voting for something they knew would never pass and each house could vilify the other. In a unicameral legislature, you know exactly where the buck stops.

  5. Brian Castner says:
    July 10, 2009 at 9:25 pm

    I have a theory about why things got so bad. NYS was always broke, but not this broke. What changed is the Senate. There was an unspoken truce for DECADES: the Dems get the Assembly, the R’s get the Senate, we swap the Gov, and everyone gets paid. Then the Dems realikz they can have the whole thing, and win in Nov. The unspoken agreement is broken, everyone gets butt hurt, and hilarity ensues.

  6. LC Scotty says:
    July 12, 2009 at 11:44 am

    @Chris,

    Excellent points but here’s what I see as problems. Although the districts are smaller, I would imagine that they are largely just as badly drawn as Louise Slaughter’s congressional district. I also have the gut feeling that even is we did have a unicameral assembly, these guys would not care about where the buck stopped. I have every confidence that instead of houses blaming each other with a nudge and a wink, it would be factions inside our single house playing the same game.

  7. Chris from OP says:
    July 12, 2009 at 12:40 pm

    Sure we’ll have factions, but there is less confusion on who is responsible when there is only one house. As for the districts being badly drawn; that would still be a problem unless there was some other type of reform, like having the districts drawn by a panel of retired judges which is a proposal that I like. That said, the smaller the district, the harder it is to gerrymander it because you have a lot less wiggle room.

    Also, a unicameral legislature is cheaper because there are fewer legislators and staffers to pay.

  8. jack fate says:
    July 13, 2009 at 12:17 am

    Personally, I think a unicameral state legislature is something worth seriously considering.

  9. Ward says:
    July 13, 2009 at 7:57 am

    A suggestion for saving the Senate (and us).
    One senator elected from each county. Allegeny County (think Montana) would be as well represented as Brooklyn (think California). Malcolm Smith might not even be the majority leader in that case. The Federalist Papers discuss strong reasons for establishing the US Senate on this model, and they are the same as the reasons for doing it in New York.

 

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