Public Servants on Parade: Hillary, Mike, and Shelly

Posted by Roy Edroso at 12:58 PM, August 15, 2008

Hillary Clinton will get a big role, and a big roll call vote, at the Democratic Convention, and some observers claim she has thus pwn3d Obama, and even hint that she may seize the nomination. But onetime Hillary challenger Jonathan Tasini says in a New York Daily News Op-Ed that Hillary has only pwn3d herself. Tasini says he opposed Hillary Clinton in the 2005 primary race to "to challenge Clinton's support for the Iraq war" and promote "a debate about the war." Clinton did everything she could to duck that debate, Tasini says, and while that served her short-term interests, it gave Obama, whose opposition to the war was more in tune with Democrats across the country, his opening and his victory.

To show his solidarity with working New Yorkers, Mayor Bloomberg has let it be known that he takes the subway -- after being driven to it, of course, in an SUV. Yesterday he encountered a busker on the 4 train, reports the New York Post, and instead of ordering the minstrel arrested as an example to quality-of-life offenders everywhere, Bloomberg asked for a song and gave the man, identified as Daniel Scott, a tip. Scott lavished praised the Mayor, advising the riders to "give him four more years." New York magazine's Intelligencer is skeptical: "Did anyone get a good look at the busker? Because it's a good bet you would have recognized him from in a bit part on Law & Order..."

Explore the softer side of Shelly. To Albany and on his official page, he's Sheldon Silver, Assembly Speaker and pre-eminent political fixer. To the folks back home, he's simply Shelly, "our Assemblyman, always there for you." The site has many pictures of Silver making nice with the old, the young, the drivers of buses, and a Google map pinpointing the sites of his many recent achievements and endeavors, which you can click for details. The stretch by the Williamsburg Bridge which, our own Tom Robbins has reported, Silver has kept a desolate blight for decades, is represented by "A new traffic light to make street crossing safer."

Super Troopers: By "Secret Rule," Smokeys Shadow Gov

Posted by Roy Edroso at 10:58 AM, August 15, 2008

The New York Post reveals a "secret new rule" that prevents Governor Paterson from abandoning his security detail of state troopers "unless they have a signed order from him instructing them otherwise." (Paterson also increased the size of his security detail.)

The Post of course makes the most of former Governor Spitzer's hooker and Joe Bruno surveillance problems, which are assumed to be the cause of all this. But we have to ask: who made this "rule"? We see nothing about it at the New York State Assembly page, so it can't be part of some legislation, unless they're really burying it good.

And though Runnin' Scared obviously doesn't have much of a research budget, we can find no state agencies who can make rules for the Governor that don't apply to everyone else (though if there is such an agency, we hope they will make more entertaining rules for him, such as one that requires him to wave his arms over his head and shout "Is everybody happy?" at least once during every press conference).

Presumably by "rule" they just mean that the Governor has so stipulated. But that invites a sort of Young Frankenstein situation: No matter what I say, don't open that door! What if they Gov decides he doesn't want to do it anymore? Do the troopers then have the authority to seize the Governor for non-compliance?

We recall the quick revelation Paterson made, when he unexpectedly became Governor, of his past cocaine use. He said he only tried it "a couple of times," but no one, so far as we know, has checked that out. Maybe the Governor lowballed it. Suppose he had been a total cocaine cowboy for years: who would have been paying attention, back when he was just Basil Paterson's kid? A blind hereditary politician who is maybe going to serve on a few boards after his Lieutenant Governorship (an office so innocuous that they once gave it to Betsy McCaughey Ross) -- who knew?

Now that he's Governor, though, maybe someone thinks he needs a little extra supervision. We note with interest that when Paterson appointed Colonel Harry Corbitt as State Police Superintendent in March, he called it his "most important appointment," per Capital 9 News. It seemed at the time like an odd thing to say, but maybe there's more power in that job than we thought. Earlier this month Paterson vetoed a bill that sought to override the state cops' ban on trooper plea-bargaining in traffic cases. That's an odd battleground on which to fight the Legislature, unless you figure it's better to piss off Shelly Silver than the boys in the barracks.

We don't like to get too deep into permanent-government speculations, but if we were running this show and we had a guy in office we weren't sure would play along, we'd surround him with minders, too.

Who's Zoomin' Who? City Not Paying Its Share of MTA Bills

Posted by Roy Edroso at 8:55 AM, August 15, 2008

2nd Avenue Sagas points out that, while we tend to blame the MTA for its current budget crisis -- particularly with another fare hike in the offing -- some of the blame really belongs elsewhere. Quoting a recent dispatch from the City's Independent Budget Office, 2nd Avenue Sagas notes that "state and city subsidies to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority have remained largely flat since 1990."

You can't say that about many governmental agencies, much less one that is serving more citizens than ever before. But why is the City, never mind the state, underfunding the MTA? The answer should be obvious: every dollar they can avoid giving to the MTA, they get to keep for themselves, pet projects, and more powerful government figures.

The IBO suggests that Bloomberg routinely overestimates the City's effective contribution to the MTA to make it look like he's doing more for it than he is. For example, prior to the 1995 consolidation of the Transit Police into the NYPD, "the city reimbursed New York City Transit for the cost of running its police division and the division was only responsible for policing the subways."

Since 1995, the Mayor can do whatever he wants with the combined force, so "the cost of the transit bureau may not always correspond to the cost of policing the transit system." (By the way, this also helped Giuliani inflate for political purposes the numbers of cops he added to the force when he was Mayor.)

The City doesn't reimburse the MTA for reduced student fares, either. And some of the money City Hall counts as "subsidies" to the MTA is actually owed on funds the MTA fronted the City during the Giuliani Administration. The State finds its own ways to dun the agency, as it has done to City institutions since time immemorial.

The inevitable result, says 2nd Avenue Sagas: "As the city and state -— two financially-strapped institutions in their own rights —- bicker over funding, the MTA will turn to its one steady source of revenue: fare hikes."

This put us in mind of something we read at Room Eight. Larry Littlefield put the lie once and for all to the popular fiction that the City's school system is massively overfunded, and related charges that school advocates just want to "throw money" at the system's problems.

Littlefield shows that, outside of teacher salaries, New York City schools get far less to work with than communities in other parts of New York State. We have a worse teacher-to-student ratio, lower "non-instructional spending" per student, etc.

During the Pataki Administration, the State slashed its contribution to City schools "and cut the city’s state assistance in other categories to pay for 'tax relief' aid to the rest of the state," says Littlefield. Because few City advocates with any authority have been trying hard to get that money back for us (here Littlefield clears his throat and looks at Sheldon Silver), there's no reason why Albany should.

It's understandable to feel as if we're getting ripped off by the MTA and the City school system. Haven't they got enough of our money? Well, someone does. Scratch that -- it's never enough.

Democracy Dot Com: The Left Shoots Back

Posted by Harkavy at 9:44 AM, June 16, 2008

New report on talk video spells doom for talk radio's influence.

Video's killing the rock-ribbed-conservative stars, if a new survey on the Internet and politics is true.

YouTube, in other words, is sending Rush Limbaugh down the tubes.

Right-wingers dominated the air waves for decades and were the early users of the Internet, compared with lefties, as I noted nearly a decade ago in the Voice in "Left Behind".

Now the left has overtaken the right. Also endangered are the establishment's talking-head TV shows, like the one Tim Russert hosted.

Click here for the Bush Beat post and read on . . .

Illinois Passes Presidential National Popular Vote Bill

Posted by John DeSio at 6:15 PM, April 9, 2008

Though a bill that would bind New York’s votes in the Electoral College to the winner of the presidential popular vote has not moved in Albany, Illinois is the latest state to embrace an idea that has the potential to reshape the way we choose our president.

Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich signed a law earlier this week that will require Illinois to elect the president using the National Popular Vote. The move, which has won approval in New Jersey and Maryland, would prevent a repeat of the 2000 presidential election should it be approved in all 50 states.

Illinois is the 16th state to pass such a bill. In 2000 George W. Bush, despite his defeat in the popular vote to Al Gore by roughly 500,000 votes, was victorious after having won enough states through the Electoral College, including a hotly contested Florida race, to clinch the presidency.

“It is rare that we see such a sweeping reform move so swiftly,” said Common Cause President Bob Edgar, whose organization is a driving force behind the legislation. “Legislators are clearly picking up that citizens want every vote to count equally for president and that the candidate who gets the most votes should win.”

Supreme Court Backs NY's System of Picking Judges

Posted by Michael Clancy at 5:36 PM, January 16, 2008

If anyone's going to repair the broken way New York City selects its judges, it will have to be the Legislature, the Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday. And since it would take fixing the broken Legislature before that august body could actually accomplish something worthwhile, such as reforming the judicial selection process, it looks like New York will be stuck with its current system of judges being anointed by the Democratic party bosses.

From the Associated Press:

The Supreme Court unanimously upheld New York's unique system of choosing trial judges Wednesday, setting aside critics' concerns that political party bosses control the system.

"A political party has a First Amendment right to limit its membership as it wishes and to choose a candidate-selection process that will in its view produce the nominee who best represents its political platform," Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the court.

In New York, primary voters elect convention delegates who choose candidates for the judgeships. Once nominated, those candidates run on the general election ballot. In practice, they frequently have no opposition.

Unsuccessful candidates for judgeships and a watchdog group filed a lawsuit challenging the system. A federal district judge and the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed that it is very difficult for candidates to get on the ballot if they don't have support of the party leaders.

In striking down the system, the two federal courts said judgeship candidates who are not the choice of the party leaders are excluded from elections by an onerous process that violates their First Amendment rights.

The high court on Wednesday reversed the lower courts.

But since this whole case was set into motion when Margarita Lopez Torres defied party bosses and refused to fill a patronage job with the right person, it seems unlikely that the state party bosses and the legislators will work that hard at reforming the system.

Tom Robbins wrote about López Torres in 2003:

López Torres, 52, would have moved up to Supreme Court long ago had she not run afoul of party leader Norman. She did this by declining to accept the party's choices to serve as her law secretary, an otherwise routine, if little-talked-about, transaction conducted by the Democratic organization. After picking the judges, the party then recommends assistants—whose $50,000-a-year jobs include scant heavy lifting, since the writing of most legal decisions is handled by a small pool of qualified aides in the court's legal department.

One of the party's choices was the fresh-out-of-law-school daughter of Brooklyn assemblyman Vito Lopez. Assemblyman Lopez is no relation to the judge, but he commands major clout within the party for the strength of his Bushwick clubhouse and his access to Albany patronage. The message relayed to the judge by the assemblyman's allies was that if she hired his daughter, she would have a good shot at a prized Supreme Court candidacy. This is the way things work on Brooklyn's bench.

López Torres, however, declined. Another judge was not as choosy and, soon after hiring the daughter, he won the party's nod for the higher bench and was swiftly elected.

Draft Bloomberg Campaign Seeks To Raise Cash

Posted by John DeSio at 1:34 PM, January 16, 2008

The official “Draft Bloomberg” organization is here, vowing to raise money for the potential campaign of a man whose principal appeal is that he does not need anyone’s money but his own.

The new organization, founded jointly by Unity’08 deserters Republican Doug Bailey, a former GOP consultant and Hotline founder, and Democrat Gerald Rafshoon, a former White House communications director in the Jimmy Carter administration, will look to raise money to raise awareness about Bloomberg, explaining to America just why he’s the right person for the White House.

A large focus of Unity’08 was to deliver an independent candidate ballot access in all 50 states. Draft Bloomberg will not go down that road, providing instead an online petition users can sign to urge the mayor into the race.

A major appeal of Bloomberg’s past runs for office has been his ability to self finance, yet Bailey and Rafshoon are seeking to raise money for a candidate who would never raise money for himself. Bailey saw nothing odd in that fact, stating that his group’s money would be used to beg Bloomberg to spend his own on the presidential race.

“One of the reasons that everybody ought to want Mike Bloomberg to run for president is that if he is elected he won’t owe nothing to anybody. He won’t owe anything to us,” said Bailey, adding that none of the money raised by his group would ever touch Bloomberg’s hands.

Bloomberg has repeatedly denied that he will run for president, and Bailey insists that the mayor has nothing to do with his efforts. He and Rafshoon did speak with Bloomberg advisor Kevin Sheekey (who is also the biggest Bloomberg 2008 booster there is) about the new group, simply to let him know it was coming. This is no front group, said Bailey, but the seeds of the grassroots.

“There is no coordination, there is not back and forth discussion,” said Bailey. “Nothing like that.”

Talking the Youth Vote with the Director of '18 in '08'

Posted by Michael Clancy at 8:40 AM, December 19, 2007

In “18 in 08,” 19-year old filmmaker David Burstein makes his directorial debut with an examination of America’s youth vote, what young voters seek in their candidates, and just how politicians can motivate his peers to the polls. He spoke with the Village Voice about his generation's involvement in the political process and his motivation for making the film.

Interview by John DeSio

VV: What inspired you to take on this project?

DB: Well, for me, it was sort of looking around me at my peers sort of in the wake of the 2004 elections, and just realizing that although I had a small group of friends who were very passionate about issues and about politics that there were really this large number of people around me in my generation who I didn’t see as interested and engaged in the political process. And I said I wanted to do something about that, I want to create something that will help to engage people in the political process. And looking at film as a really powerful medium for that, I decided wouldn’t it be great if I made a film talking about these issues and encouraging people to vote.

VV: In the beginning of the movie Rep. Christopher Shays (R-CT) says that it was a mistake to lower the voting age from 21 to 18 in 1971. Do you agree with that?

DB: I don’t agree with him, but I sort of understand a little bit of his perspective, which is that politicians in the 1970’s made a major effort to create a constitutional amendment allowing people between 18 and 21 to vote, and it’s not something that has been fully taken advantage of. One of the things that we have to be aware of is that’s the reason some politicians are not reaching out to young people as much, because they feel like they went through all this trouble to create an opportunity for young people to participate in the process by allowing more young people to vote, and that young people haven’t fully taken advantage of that. I think the voting age absolutely should have been lowered to 18, but I think we need to show politicians more that we can participate in larger numbers. Then no one will think it was a mistake.

VV: Another point that is made in the film is that youth voters need to give politicians more of a reason to pay attention to them. How are young voters going to do that?

DB: The best way they can do it is by showing up in larger numbers during this upcoming election. It’s sort of a two-way cycle, in that if we don’t show politicians we’re engaged they’re not going to try and engage us, and if politicians aren’t talking about our issues and aren’t talking to us we’re not going to engage with them. So it think it’s important that young people just take the first step, and I think that can really happen in 2008. And then politicians will see these young people are a reliable voting bloc, and they’re people who we can count on to vote, and then they’ll start paying more attention to us.

VV: One of the traditional ways politicians have courted the youth vote has been to quote a rap song, or put a hat on backwards, or make some other awkward grab and looking young and cool. Do you think some of mildly offensive, that it reeks with insincerity?

DB: Absolutely. A lot of that stuff really turns young people off, particularly going to a college campus and saying something like, “I know you all want to hear about lowering the drinking age.” Or doing something like putting a hat on backwards, or saying, “I like Beyoncé.” I think sometimes these candidates don’t really know how to reach out to young people, so they have an advisor who tells them this is how you reach out to young people. Obviously that’s someone they shouldn’t have as an advisor anymore.

I think young people just really want to be talked to about the issues that politicians talk to everyone about. They want to be talked to about the war in Iraq, they want to be talked to about healthcare, they want to be talked to about jobs, they want to be talked to about the economy. Young people just want to be talked to like they’re any other voter, and I think when politicians try and say, “Hey, I’m really cool,” I think it does offend young people’s intelligence and sense of participation. I think that, in many ways, can turn people off because they feel like they’re not being treated like a legitimate, responsible voter.

VV: In the film the issue is raised that absentee ballots can make it difficult for college students to participate in the voting process because they can be so hard to get. Is that a legitimate concern, or would a motivated voter find a way to move heaven and earth and get their absentee ballot?

DB: I think that the motivated voter will always find a way to vote. But making the absentee ballot process easier makes it much easier for people who aren’t as motivated to vote. There are always going to be young people who are really motivated to vote. I went around like crazy trying to get my absentee ballot for the local elections in Connecticut back in November. But other people, who aren’t as engaged in the process, the absentee ballot process and its complexity hurts. It’s not well publicized, if you’re in college in another state. I’m not saying that people shouldn’t take that initiative, but there are definitely some ways we can make it easier for young people to have access to that process.

VV: In the last presidential election Howard Dean really galvanized the Internet, he became the youth candidate, and then he finished third in Iowa and his campaign floundered from there. Do you think that was disheartening for younger voters?

DB: Yes. I think that a lot of young people were really excited about Howard Dean, and one of the things that young people get really excited about is candidates, not so much specific issues. And it’s much easier to attach to a personality. I think what people saw in Howard Dean was someone who was authentic, fresh, off the cuff, not politics as usual. I think that appealed to a lot of people. Although [youth voter turnout] did go up in 2004, one of the reasons it was not anywhere near where it could have been I think was because there were a lot of people that did get engaged in the process with Dean, and then didn’t go over to [John] Kerry because they didn’t find him inspiring and exciting.

VV: Who is the current candidate inspiring young voters? Is it Barack Obama?

DB: Yes, I think the obvious answer is Obama. I think the youth are getting behind him for a lot of the same reasons they got behind Howard Dean. He seems to be authentic, and I think one of the biggest things about Obama is simply that he looks young. And I think that appeals especially when you put him on a stage with people like Chris Dodd and Joe Biden and John McCain, he looks more like us than anyone else who is running. So I think that really helps, and his campaign has done a really good job of reaching out to young people. I think right now he’s the candidate whose staff is really reaching out to youth.

VV: How does the level of partisanship in Washington effect young voters? Does it keep them from getting involved?

DB: I think it turns them off. Everybody is frustrated with the partisanship and the polarization in Washington. But I think it’s more frustrating to young people who might be getting involved for the first time. You look at the declining level of civility and real discussion of the issues, and the name-calling, and you’re looking at politics for the first time, and this is not something you look at and say “Oh, great, I really want to be involved with this.” It doesn’t look like it’s about substance, it looks like it’s about partisanship and going back and forth, so I think that does turn a lot of young people off. Politics is not very appealing on the surface to young people.

VV: What are the issues that are going to move young people to the polls in 2008?

DB: I think it’s going to be things like the Iraq war, I think it’s going to be healthcare, I think it’s going to be global warming. I think those are three of the big issues that young people will be looking at. College tuition is a smaller issue, but very present.

VV: Will youth voter turnout go up or down in 2008?

DB: It’s definitely going to go up in 2008. I think we’ll see 60 percent, at least.

A Better Way of Contacting Congress by Phone

Posted by Michael Clancy at 9:00 AM, December 18, 2007

Committee Caller will automatically dial the phone numbers of each member of a House or Senate Committee or subcommittee for you.

An NYU student has launched CommitteeCaller.com, a Web site that makes it easier for taxpayers to get in touch with their elected representatives. What a great use of technology in the furtherance of Democracy.

This site works like this:

CommitteeCaller.com is a site that allows one person to target an entire congressional committee over the phone. The web application utilizes the open source Asterisk PBX system to connect you to every senator or house member on a particular committee. No more digging around the 'net entering zip-codes to retrieve phone numbers of representatives—CommitteeCaller.com automates the tedium of repetitively dialing your favorite politicians.

Select a committee, enter in your phone number and click "Put me in touch with democracy!" and you'll be called by our system and sequentially patched through to the front office of each member on that committee. You can even rate how each call went—information that will enable us to rank representatives on how accountable and responsive they are to their constituents.

Here's the backstory on the site from its creator:

Committee Caller was born out of frustration at trying to partake in the American political process. After spending hours dialing every member on the Education and Labor committee, I realized that contacting particular committee members individually should not have to be so laborious. Indeed, the act of repetitively dialing phone numbers into my phone seemed one that I ought to be able to automate.