The Cost of Bad Government

Last week, the Empire Center for New York State Policy released their annual report on NY legislative spending and posted it on their government transparency website, SeeThroughNY.  I didn’t see much of any coverage of the release, so I wanted to get this out in front of our readers.

What is the cost of State Sen. Dale Volker?  Well, that’s a tough question seeing as how he has influenced state policy since 1975.  However, between April 1, 2008 and March 31, 2009, Sen. Dale Volker spent $1,082,884 of our tax dollars on staff, rent, travel, telephone service, office supplies and other expenditures.  This news would not be complete without the monthly posting of my Dale Volker meme.

Evidently, Dale is not the only member of our local delegation who has been feasting at the trough.  You might remember “favorite son of the tax cutting tea party group”, Sen. George Maziarz.  He spent $906,831 of your dollars on staff expenditures between April 1, 2008 and March 31, 2009.  #1 toxic asset indeed…

While 19 of the top 20 spenders on the list are Republicans (undercutting their current demands to cut spending and transfer power back to them), our local Democratic State Senators finished about middle of the pack on expenditures.  State Senator Bill Stachowski edged his way into the Top 40 with a total of $561,817 and State Senator Antoine Thompson finished at #44 and rising with a total of $548, 236.  I’m sure their numbers will be much higher in next year’s report after the Democrats transition into the majority with its higher allocations for staff expenditures.

In case you were thinking it was just the State Senate that has been chowing down on taxpayer dollars, our State Assembly members have been just as hungry.  Assy. Robin Schimminger finished as the sixth biggest spender in the State Assembly with a grand total of $290,919 spent on staff expenditures.  He finished just $2,000 behind everyone’s favorite bad government bogeyman, Shelly Silver.  Assy. Sam Hoyt comes in at 29th on the list with a total of $219, 435.

Is it really any wonder that our population drain continues unabated?

From 2000 to 2008, in both absolute and relative terms, New York experienced the nation’s largest loss of residents to other states—a net domestic migration outflow of over 1.5 million, or 8 percent of its population at the start of the decade.

It’s not just the cost or the taxes, it’s that people feel hopeless and disconnected from power.  Their senators and assembly representatives act with impunity and arrogance, no longer functioning as our representatives, doing the people’s work.  The only action many NY residents feel they have left at their disposal is to simply move to another state.

Each year we go to the polls, elect these same individuals and expect different results.  The problem is YOUR State Senator and YOUR State Assemblyperson.  It’s not the “other guy” or those “vampires legislators downstate”, it’s your representative.  Don’t be fooled when your Senator or Assemblyperson shows up with a four foot check for your volunteer fire department, they’re buying you.  They’re spending a truckload of money to do very little in Albany and the dole out fat lists of member items in order to stay in office.  If there is a viable primary opponent this year, donate to him/her.  Support that candidate with your time and effort, and then hold them accountable while they are in Albany.

The only way things will change is if we make them change.

We deserve better.

Worst Politician Ever?

In the Illinois Lieutenant Governor’s race, I think we may have found the absolute worst person ever to run for office.

Scott Lee Cohen, allegedly abused anabolic steroids, displayed fits of rage and forced himself sexually on his wife before their divorce, court documents reviewed by the Chicago Sun-Times show.

Cohen also allegedly skipped child-support payments at the same time he was investing his own money — a total of more than $2 million — in his successful bid to become the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor. His ex-wife, Debra York-Cohen, alleged just two months ago that he owed her nine months worth of back child support totaling $54,000 for their four children.

York-Cohen described life with the millionaire pawnbroker as “pretty unbearable” and said she lived “in constant fear of him,” according to a May 2005 order of protection she filed in the divorce case.

BUT WAIT! There’s more!

Cohen can’t adequately explain the circumstances surrounding an October 2005 domestic-battery arrest that the Sun-Times revealed new details about Tuesday night.

In that case, a prostitute with whom Cohen was living alleged he held a knife to her throat. He said his former live-in girlfriend called police in retaliation for him having her arrested on a property-damage charge for destroying his apartment months earlier.

“I never knew her as a prostitute. She was a massage therapist,” Cohen said on WTTW-Channel 11’s “Chicago Tonight.” “She may have had marks, but if there were, they were done by her. And if we can find her, we will have her [explain that].”

This is the prostitute massage therapist in question:

It might be best to just let Mr. Cohen explain himself…

Just a day after promising that he wouldn’t step down, Cohen held a resignation press conference at a Northeast Chicago bar that crossed the line into epic.  Yes, that’s his son sprawled on the table, bawling for the cameras.

The reason I’m posting about this?  Well, as a former resident and political op in Chicago, I still follow this stuff.  Corruption and FAIL in Chicago politics makes our tedious little turf battles seem so small and mindless.

Also, this is incredible theater and speaks to a fundamental lack of accountability when running for office if the media is asleep at the wheel.  Cohen sold himself as a “green entrepreneur” who was essentially self-funding his own race, but the media didn’t really vet him until after he won the primary.  Turns out he was a deadbeat dad and a pawnbroker with limited success in a separate enterprise as a “green entrepreneur”.  Sure, there were some details about his past which were detailed in the media, but they were never really investigated until this past week, after he won his primary election.  A massive failure of the fourth estate, new media outlets and ultimately, the voters.

My absolute favorite part of all of this?  the “ethics” section on Scott Lee Cohen’s website.

It is not enough to continue sending Illinois politicians to jail: clearly, the allure of cash and power is more compelling than the deterrent of jail time. Therefore, Scott proposes ethical reforms that will help elect trustworthy candidates and ensure that a betrayal of public trust is discovered quickly, should it ever occur.

1. Have each candidate take a “Character Test,” drafted by a panel of judges and ethicists, for the purpose of evaluating the character of each candidate. The test must be submitted as a candidacy filing document in Springfield, Illinois and immediately made available to the public on the Internet

I wonder how Cohen would fare on his own “character test”?

Related articles by Zemanta

• Cohen Quits Race in Illinois (politicalwire.com)
• Scott Lee Cohen (en.wikipedia.org)
• Hooker-Beating, Wife-Raping, Roid-Raging, Oh My! Illinois Dems Pick Another Winner [Politics] (gawker.com)

RIP, Buffalo FAILsign

For years, visitors to the Buffalo Niagara Convention Center have been welcomed to our fair city by this non-working embarrassment of a civic marquee.

Yesterday, during the third Erie County Legislature session of the year, a bond resolution was passed which included funding for continued renovations at the Buffalo Niagara Convention Center.  Part of those proposed renovations?  The replacement of FAILsign with a shiny new marquee to be placed on the front of the convention center.  The line item totaled $1MM and work will begin this year.  We may see this replacement marquee sometime this year.

Aside from the FAILsign, the only controversial item in the bond resolution was the $3MM requested to plan the demolition of 120/134 West Eagle Street, the current home of the Erie County Board of Elections.  County Executive Chris Collins requested the monies in order to begin the process of expanding the current holding center.

The project is the first phase of a multi-phased design and construction project to rehabilitate and expand or construct a new jail facility.  This phase will fund, but not be limited to, the design for demolition of 120/134 West Eagle Street buildings, design and construction documents for an expanded or new building and any necessary environmental reviews associated with the project.

The idea was first proposed back in 1998 and several issues with either building a new facility or expanding the current one using the properties on Eagle Street were noted in this Buffalo News story.

Architect E.B. Green designed the 64-year-old original section of the Erie County Holding Center, and this may present a problem to the planners trying to choose a site for a 400-bed expansion.

“Both buildings are considered contributing structures to the Joseph Ellicott Historical District,” said architect Joseph J. Lenihan of Kideney Architects, who is supervising the site study. “Obviously, a building by E.B. Green is more significant than one that isn’t.”

The Republican minority wanted this item included in the consolidated bond resolution, while the Democrats wanted it taken out for further study and to be financed separately.   Before the start of session, negotiations were frantic as votes for the consolidated bond resolution were being whipped.

Prior to the vote on the bond resolution, the legislature adjourned for a ten minute recess (which turned into a near two hour recess) to negotiate in the  backroom about the jail funding line item.  There are other issues at play on future spending which influenced and informed the negotiations, but most of the discussions focused on the jail funding.

Ultimately, the Republicans voted against the amendment to remove the line item from the combined resolution, followed by a unanimous vote in favor of adopting the consolidated resolution.

As an additional note, Legislature Chairwoman Barbara Miller-Williams started session late, let the recess go on too long, and seems to not have a handle on parliamentary procedures which leads to a deterioration of decorum.  Seriously, Yakety Sax should be the soundtrack of this legislature as they attempt to make motions or tally votes.  It’s painful to watch, hopefully she gets better at this whole legislating thing.

Overall, a typical day at the Erie County Legislature.  Some high school drama, some personal bickering, some backroom negotiating and some incremental governance.

High Speed FAIL

You might remember when last week, Rep. Louise Slaughter announced that $151MM of federal monies would be spent on a New York’s proposed High Speed Rail line.  You might also remember WNYMedia’s Brian Castner saying, WTF?

You wouldn’t know it from the grand-standing and glad-handing reported in today’s Buffalo News, but New York just got screwed.

$2.5 billion, a down payment on $45 billion, to Nancy Pelosi’s California.

$1.25 billion to connect  Tampa and  Orlando, 4.7 million people, in swing state Florida.

$1 billion to connect  Chicago and  St Louis, 12.5 million people, in the President’s home state of Illinois.

$400 million to connect Columbus and Cleveland, 4.6 million people, in swing state Ohio.

$151 million to connect 22 million people in New York.

Every once in a while, an article comes around that paints a full picture about everything that is wrong in New York State.  I’ve been working on for a week to answer Brian’s question, but Jerry Zremski of The Buffalo News wrote the story and beat me to it.  So, I’ll scrap mine and link to Jerry’s article.

“I think the money we gave New York reflects what we thought about their application,” Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood told reporters Wednesday.

Here’s a video of California’s plan, for the sake of comparison:

As they say in the world of politics, “oof”.  So, what was wrong with New York’s application?

LaHood said, “This is not complicated. If people get their act together, if they have a good plan, if people are working together, they’re going to benefit.”

Both Florida and California have completed environmental impact statements for their high-speed rail plans, while New York has not. In addition, California has set aside $10 billion in bond funding for its project.

In contrast, New York has lagged for years on comparatively minor projects such as building a second track between Albany and Schenectady, said Ross B. Capon, president and chief executive officer of the National Association of Railroad Passengers. The state only now is undertaking such projects with its new high-speed rail money.

“They’ve been screwing around for years,” Capon said of New York State officials. “There was just not a level of action commensurate with the potential. Their plan was not equal to that of other states.”

Wait, it gets better!

New York did go a bit too far when it applied for nearly $12 billion in high-speed rail funding when only $8 billion was to be available under the stimulus bill

So, we didn’t have a coordinated plan, complete required environmental impact studies, line up bond financing or have ANY appreciable organized effort whatsoever, yet we had the frigging balls to ask for $4BN more than was to be allotted for the entire nation?  Incredible.

New York State is the Veruca Salt of national politics.

A petulant pre-teen ignorant of reality and real world costs, demanding their wishes be granted immediately.

Mommy – “Newyork, I have $100 to spend on new school clothes for the year, what would you like to buy?”

Newyork – “Mommy, I want $3,000 worth of iPods and a bag of smack and I WANT IT NOW!#!#!”

Louise Slaughter ends up looking like the co-dependent mother of her drug addled teenager.  Trying to tell all who will listen, that this time, he’s clean, he’s really clean.

Oy vey, what a FAILtrain.

Obama’s Moment

It’s like the media wasn’t listening to a word President Obama said during his respectful and compelling dialogue with the House Republican Caucus yesterday.  Immediately, MSNBC, DailyKos, Huffington Post, and the left-of-center blogs began bleating about the President slaying lions and eviscerating his critics and taking it to the Republicans.  The right wing chatter (aside from RNC Sponsored Fox News) seemed to be shockingly open minded about the whole affair, including right wing demagogue Michelle Malkin.

What happened yesterday mattered and not just a little bit.  It mattered because it was not only great political theater, but because it was the first honest dialogue we’ve had about our national issues in quite some time.  It was the manifestation of what Andrew Sullivan wrote about Obama and his potential Presidency in December of 2007.

Obama’s candidacy in this sense is a potentially transformational one. Unlike any of the other candidates, he could take America—finally—past the debilitating, self-perpetuating family quarrel of the Baby Boom generation that has long engulfed all of us. So much has happened in America in the past seven years, let alone the past 40, that we can be forgiven for focusing on the present and the immediate future.

At its best, the Obama candidacy is about ending a war—not so much the war in Iraq, which now has a mo­mentum that will propel the occupation into the next decade—but the war within America that has prevailed since Vietnam and that shows dangerous signs of intensifying, a nonviolent civil war that has crippled America at the very time the world needs it most. It is a war about war—and about culture and about religion and about race. And in that war, Obama—and Obama alone—offers the possibility of a truce.

Obama’s constant efforts towards bipartisanship can be intensely frustrating for liberals to watch.  I often want him to govern from the left and stop with his pandering to the center or his outreach to Conservatives who simply slap his hand away.  However, Obama seems to sense that further dividing ourselves along deeply partisan lines will only destabilize our republic beyond repair.  Perhaps he is right.  Maybe we need to change the tone of the debate to get to a point where we can have real discussions about left and right politics.

What he is right about is that this nation is in desperate need of serious discussion about issues of import.  We no longer have the luxury of the extreme in our government.  We need respectable debate about our national defense, economic system, long term entitlement costs and our general national priorities.

As in the SOTU, he addressed partisan political statements with his own, but then asked to change the tone.  Obama was trying to coach the Republicans to be more careful with their tone as they are backing themselves into a corner from which it is almost impossible to govern.  If they tell their constituents that Obama is dangerous and essentially out to destroy America, how can they then explain that they decided to support an idea Obama advanced that might be centrist and practical?  They can’t.

We’ve got to be careful about what we say about each other sometimes, because it boxes us in in ways that makes it difficult for us to work together, because our constituents start believing us.

Based on Obama’s actions in the past couple of weeks, it seems like he might have finally gotten around to reading The Art of War.  I’m intrigued by many of the parallels in his current strategy with themes from Sun Tzu’s tome…especially these ones, keep them in mind when you think of the State of The Union address, his meeting with the Republican Caucus and what will surely unfold in the coming weeks:

To a surrounded enemy you must leave a way of escape

Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.

and most importantly…

For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.

We’ll see if Obama can continue with his efforts to improve the debate and smarten up our politics.  Hopefully, he’ll also make a visit to the Progressive Caucus and make this interaction a semi-annual affair.

RIP Gabrielle Bouliane

There is an old proverb which reads, “Death cancels everything but truth.”   Gabrielle, a passionate artist and Buffalo expat, has passed after a battle with cancer.  She left some words of wisdom behind for us to remember.

Truth

Spitzer Comes Clean

At first, I didn’t like Eliot Spitzer.  I liked Tom Suozzi until Spitzer inevitably kicked his ass in the primary.  Then, I gave Spitzer another look.

I had hopes that Eliot Spitzer, the politician, would match up to Eliot Spitzer, the candidate.

Turns out, he wasn’t the politician or the man we thought he was.

Spitzer is a flawed guy, but he’s still a smart analyst and a damn good interview.  Now that he has nothing to gain nor anything to lose, he’s much more interesting to me than he was in those slick Jimmy Siegel campaign commercials back in 2006.  My favorite of those ads?  This one:

I digress…

In an introspective and compelling interview, Spitzer talks about the financial meltdown, “too big to fail”, Kirsten Gillibrand, David Paterson, advice for Democrats, his own failings and whether he wears socks while banging hookers.  If you can hang with the lengthy interview, it’s worth it.

I’ll be straight, if he ran for Governor in 2010, I’d vote for him.  Yes, our other options are that bad.

Lynn Marinelli Interview

As part of our ongoing interview series with Erie County Legislators, Marc and I turned our camera on Legislator Lynn Marinelli.  We spent about an hour with her and covered dozens of topics ranging from the “reform coalition” to the pending budget crisis in Erie County.

We’re asking each legislator the same basic set of questions and we hope through this interview series, you can juxtapose the responses from each and get a feeling for what’s important to them and get a perspective on their ideas for governance and politicking.

After we got through the basic set of questions about the “reform coalition”, reductions in urban-centric service programs, urban/suburban divide issues, regional planning/coordination, and general politics, we went with a few additional questions about the ECIDA, Collins for Governor and the upcoming decision to maintain or repeal the municipal share of the additional sales tax levied in 2005.

There was a lot of ground covered and it was pretty tough to edit the interview down to under 10 minutes, but I think we got most of the important topics covered.

We’re scheduling an interview with Legislator Kozub later this week and we hope to hear back soon from Legislators Hardwick and Rath.  If you have questions you’d like us to look into, let us know in the comments section.

Bad Politics 101

Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com posted a fascinating chart about public support for healthcare reform.  It paints a picture of a political party outwitted at ever turn by a screaming throng of morons (begging the question as to who the morons really are).

That screaming throng of morons has informed the debate on healthcare to an alarming level.  I like to call it the triumph of the dumb.

The following table combines two sets of questions from the Kaiser survey, each of which ask people about the individual components of the bill. One set of questions asks people whether they believe that the bill contains each provision; the other set, which I’ve tabulated on a net basis, asks them whether they’d be more or less likely to support a bill if it contained such a provision.

What we see is that most individual components of the bill are popular — in some cases, quite popular. But awareness lags behind. Only 61 percent are aware that the bill bans denials of coverage for pre-existing conditions. Only 42 percent know that it bans lifetime coverage limits. Only 58 percent are aware that it set up insurance exchanges. Just 44 percent know that it closes the Medicare donut hole — and so on and so forth.

“Awareness”, by the way, might be a forgiving term in this context. For the most part in Kaiser’s survey, when the respondent doesn’t affirm that the bill contains a particular provision, he actually believes that the bills don’t include that provision. 29 percent, for instance, say the bill does not contain a provision requiring insurers to cover those with pre-existing conditions; 20 percent think it does not expand subsidies.

How would public opinion change if people were fully informed about the content of the bills? It’s hard to say for sure, but on average, the individual components of the bill are favored by a net of +22 points. An NBC poll in August also found that support went from a -6 net to a +10 when people were actually provided with a description of the bill.

What you see here is the result of a massive misinformation campaign launched by industry lobbyists, astroturf activists and monied interests.  People who were sketchy on the idea of government led healthcare reform were completely swayed without an intellectually honest discussion about the merits of the bill.  This chart shows the inability of this President to communicate his agenda clearly and for the Democrats to effectively legislate this vital and central piece of their agenda.  FAIL all around.

Change Congress Now

Yesterday, in a 5-4 decision (Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission), the US Supreme Court eliminated restrictions on corporate spending that went into effect with the McCain-Feingold legislation passed in 2002.

U.S. Supreme Court Campaign-Finance Ruling

There is a lot of teeth gnashing and worry floating in the country about what this decision means not just for our elections, but for our republic. It is a sea change in the way we elect our leaders, but there is an effort underway to fundamentally change that process. It’s simply a new wrinkle to an old problem.

Corporate money and influence clouds our government at a very fundamental level. Politicians, regardless of party, are recipients of campaign finance largesse courtesy of the lobbying organizations organized to influence those politicians and in turn, the legislation they create. It is an economy of opportunity that lobbying groups have created which distracts from intelligent and reasoned discussion about policy which effects us all.

It is exceptionally clear to me that our legislative system is fundamentally broken. Our Representatives and Senators are not able to properly and logically address significant problems facing our nation due to the influence of money in politics. Until we can trust that our representatives are making the right decisions, for the right reasons, sensible legislation is impossible and the public trust compromised.

It’s time to publicly fund state and federal elections. Eliminating the dependence on lobbying money and focusing our legislators on the tasks at hand is a necessity if this country is to prosper. It was an idea first proposed by Teddy Roosevelt nearly 100 years ago and it’s time that it be considered once again.

Limiting campaign donations to an amount between $100-$250 with built in increases (tied to inflation) over time and allowing for access to public funding once a certain level of electable credibility is achieved through petition signatures and measured support is where we begin.

It will not be an easy job to build a new system, but it is the only way in which we can return sanity to our government. We will also need to address and perhaps limit the power of incumbency to avoid franking abuses and influence gained through seniority. We now have professional legislators who are simply waiting for the opportunity to become professional lobbyists and trade on the influence accrued while in office. At the state level, we have hangers-on like Steve Pigeon who can bring to bear the financial resources of one man to essentially throw an entire city, county or state into gridlock. Is this the way we want to be governed?

It should be clear to all, right or left, that the system is fundamentally handicapped. Monetary influence from unions, corporations, industry associations, PAC’s and other niche lobbies are crippling our ability to tackle the most significant economic downturn since the Great Depression. Corporate donations and industry authored legislation inhibits the proper measurement of costs and consequences when we attempt to address long term deficits, military largesse, foreign policy, climate change, infrastructure, urban planning or skyrocketing healthcare costs. Considering yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling, the problem has never been so obvious.

This video is about the economy of influence and the trust gap between Americans and Congress. It’s worth the time, please watch it.

Finally, this is Lessig’s response to the Citizens United decision. He’ll have more detail to come, but this message does highlight the need to act now, while the momentum is behind the idea.

Do you agree with this idea to change the system? If so, head over to Change Congress and voice your support.

You should also call your Representative and Senator to let them know you support the Fair Elections Now Act which would establish citizen funded elections.

In WNY, Reps. Slaughter, Massa and Maffei are co-sponsors of H.R.1826 and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand is a co-sponsor of the Senate version of the bill, S. 752. Rep. Higgins has voiced support for the bill in previous interviews and I will call his office tomorrow to confirm his support, the same goes for Sen. Schumer. Rep. Lee has not signed on nor has he voiced support for the bill.