Some time back now ....

In the early days of this forum ...

Mr. A.B. ...

Who is a generation older than I am ....

Ran a thread for a time entitled "The Silence of the Lambs" ....

And in that thread, the point that Mr. A.B. was trying to make ...

Or the point that I took from it, anyway ,...

Is that a bunch of just talk ...

About how bad or inept or incompetent government might be ...

Is absolutely worthless ....

If all you do is say it to yourself ....

And so ...

I am myself and have been since Viet Nam a strong believer in that philosophy ....

So when I am afforded an opportunity to speak out to a newspaper ....

In this case the New York Times ....

On an issue of what I perceive to be public importance ....

I follow Mr. A.B.'s advice ....

And I make the most of that opportunity ....

To be educational ...

And so ....

NY TIMES

February 23, 2007, 10:41 am

"Comment Zone: Spitzer and Borglum"

By Patrick LaForge

While other Empire Zone readers continue to aim fire at the legislature over the comptroller selection, Shirley Engel of Kendell Park, N.J., was troubled.

She sent along this observation by e-mail:

Although I have not lived in New York for 17 years, I spent most of my life there, so still am interested in what happens there.

I was pleased when Eliot Spitzer was elected, but to follow his conflicts, arguments, and general behavior since he took office reminds me of a book I read a while ago called “Six Wars At A Time” by Howard Shaff and Audrey Karl Shaff.

The book details “The life and times of Gutzon Borglum.”

Gutzon Borglum — not exactly a household name — is responsible for sculpting the four presidents on Mount Rushmore.

A very talented artist, but … as the title indicates his personality was caustic and many of his works were not completed due to his on-going difficulties with the patrons.

He was an admitted anti-semite, a critic of public policy and a lot more.

I don’t mean to say that Spitzer is any of these things, but his constant bickering with the legislature as a whole and finger-pointing at individuals is not a great way to start his term.

I hope his diplomatic genes kick in soon.

There were signs of cooling off this week, but we get the impression some Zone readers would prefer that Mr. Sptizer keep the heat on.

Here’s an open thread if you feel like talking about that, or anything else political.

7 comments so far...

1.February 23rd,
2007
11:39 am Eliot Spitzer for President!!!!! he is a cut above the rest of the wanna-bee’s ..join the revolution here…… http://spitzerdayone.blogspot.com/ andy

— Posted by andy zito

2.February 23rd,
2007

1:43 pm As someone also outraged by the Comptroller selection, I think this is a valid point.

However, Spitzer should do everything he can to keep his electoral momentum going.

Voters were compelled to vote for him because of his “go for the jugular” rightousness.

If he can become the fist in the velvet glove, New York will be better for it.

— Posted by SimonTnyc

3.February 23rd,
2007

2:39 pm For many years, NY governors had decided it was easier to work with the party bosses rather than take them on.

It’s refreshing that Governor Spitzer believes in good government enough to confront the ongoing rottenness in Albany.

The vote for comptroller was an ideal place to start.

In a single act — a clear power grab — the legislature managed to create a record of which of its members are in the pockets of the bosses.

Now the voters need to target for defeat all 150 of them who claim that Thomas DiNapoli was the most qualified person to be the state’s fiscal watchdog.

If Spitzer can help us break the party bosses’ grib on power, his administration will be a success, regardless of whatever else he accomplishes.

Hopefully, The Times and other news media will continue to follow the events in Albany — and keep a close eye on DiNapoli.

Voters won’t get a chance to send him packing for another four years.

— Posted by Jeff

4.February 23rd,
2007

3:37 pm On a personal level, I find Elliot Spitzer quite distasteful with, as Charley Rangel said, his clear opinion that he’s the smartest guy in the room and his bullying tactics.

Nonetheless, I enthusiastically voted for him because I think it’s quite clear that Albany has become both corrupt and disfunctional and is being run, to an extreme extent, for the office holders and their cronies.

I thought, and continue to hope, that Spitzer might have the combination of obnoxiousness, brains and political savvy to get the state back on track.

With the comptroller dust up, he, probably deliberately, made Shelly Silver and his gang look terrible to the public, but transformed the Assembly from being wary of him to being angry at him.

We’ll see if he’s as smart and skillful as I thought; he’s clearly as obnoxious as I thought.

— Posted by Jerry

5.February 23rd,
2007

11:12 pm thomas dinapoli will make a fine comptroller.

he is honest, experienced in private sector management and in government finances.

if you look at the resumes of the prior comptrollers, his stacks up with all of them.

i think its a disgrace what spitzer did to his repuation and that of hte office, just to win a political point.

— Posted by helen

6.February 24th,
2007

8:47 am If one gets past all the emoting …

Which is becoming excessive in the case of newly-elected Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli …

And IF one takes a hard look at the New York State Constitution, which is the ORGANIC LAW here in the State of New York ….

Which applies to us ALL …

What one will find, in section 1 of Article V, in plain and quite simple language, easy to understand, even if you have no education at all, is that THE SOLE QUALIFICATIONS for New York State Comptroller are the same as those for GOVERNOR - to wit, that the candidate be of the age of not less than thirty years, and who shall have been five years next preceding the election a resident of this state …..

Given that plain Constitutional language, Thomas DiNapoli is just as qualified to be New York State comptroller as self-professed “STEAMROLLER” Eliot Spitzer is qualified to be GOVERNOR ….

SO …..

LET’S GET OFF ALL THE HYPE, FOLKS ….

PURSUANT TO OUR CONSTITUTION, SECTION 3 OF ARTICLE IV - THE JOB OF THE GOVERNOR, AND THIS INCLUDES THE “STEAMROLLER” is as follows:

“The governor shall expedite all such measures as may be resolved upon by the legislature, and shall take care that the laws are faithfully executed” ….

THAT IS WHAT ELIOT SPITZER SIGNED ON FOR, WHEN HE RAN FOR GOVERNOR …

AND THAT IS ALL HE GETS NOW THAT HE HAS BEEN ELECTED ….

OUR CONSTITUTION DOES NOT PROVIDE FOR “STEAMROLLERS OF OUR LEGISLATURE” IN THE OFFICE OF GOVERNOR …

WHICH IS WHAT WE HAD BACK IN THE DAYS OF ROYAL GOVERNORS HERE LIKE CORNBURY AND HIS ILK …

And so …

— Posted by Livyjr

7.February 24th,
2007

11:20 am So let me see his reform agenda - put lobbyists as the head of agencies like the PSC, stick his person in as Comptroller, call out the National Guard several days after the snow is blowing like mad in upstate, go after good dems like Magnarelli by talking up Timmy Green a republican scab who’s mentor is Destiny’s developer, try and squeeze out the excess capacity in hospitals which is a great idea especially in a state in which we could have a major terrorist attack and not have enough beds, etc. etc.

Yeah its a new day in Albany –

— Posted by nypocho

http://empirezone.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/0...er-and-borglum/

CORNBURY

Viscount Cornbury was the son of Henry Hyde, the second Earl of Clarendon.

He came from a long line of reputable descendents including; his important father, a king as his uncle, a profitable marriage to Katherine, daughter of Lord O'Brien, and perhaps most beneficially, his cousin was Queen Anne.

These connections provided him with a good education in Geneva and a seat in Parliament in 1685.

His prospects sparkled, yet his reputation did not.

Cornbury was noted as being "a spendthrift, a grafter, a bigoted oppressor and a drunken vain fool."

He encountered many problems while in England, including a scuffle with James II.

As an Anglican, Hyde became one of the first army officers to desert James II, integrating himself with the victorious William and Mary.

Many of his burdens were financial, and were eventually the reason he made his move to the American colonies.

Because Cornbury often overindulged in his lavish tastes, he overspent a considerable amount of his income and found himself being pursued by numerous creditors.

In an attempt to escape from his problems, Cornbury fled to the colonies with Queen Anne's blessing.

Immediately upon his arrival in New York in 1701, Anne appointed Cornbury as governor of New York.

Only one year later, in 1702, the Queen added the title of governor of New Jersey to Cornbury's list of duties.

The populace of both New York and New Jersey would learn that Cornbury was not a fit governor, as he was unruly and for the most part indifferent to the needs of the people.

When he first arrived in New Jersey in 1703 the colony was rife with factional and political tension.

In what had earlier been a proprietorship of East and West Jersey, a group of political parties sought Hyde's favor as they fought with each other over such things as land, money, power and religion.

Cornbury was indifferent to these issues, but he saw the possibility for personal gain, hence his poor reputation began.

Hyde gathered a group of politicians who shared his political sentiments, and they called themselves the "Cornbury Ring."

Instead of simply allying himself with an existing faction, he created the Cornbury Ring.

It engaged in such corrupt activities as grabbing land and looting public funds.

Hyde and the Ring had an especially large grievance with the Quaker population, which dominated West Jersey politics.

The Ring tried to disenfranchise the Quakers, attempting to seize control of the assembly.

These unlawful tactics which Hyde resorted to were not successful, and the Cornbury Ring failed to control the assembly.

The Ring passed a number of bills that were designed to enhance Hyde's fortunes, both financially and politically.

It pushed through a militia bill that included a fine on all those who refused to serve and allowed militia officers to levy taxes for the support of their forces.

This severely hurt the Quakers, whose property was confiscated by the militia when they refused to pay.

While this was a direct blow to the Quakers, the Cornbury Ring greatly benefited from the practice, gaining 1,000 pounds a year.

Looking at Viscount Cornbury's governorship in New York, it is apparent that he was equally as corrupt as he was in his New Jersey legislation.

In New York, Hyde allied himself with the Anti-Leislerian party to secure gifts and a revenue.

He twice dismissed uncooperative assemblies, who were largely uncooperative because of his impossible demands.

And he even embezzled a large part of the money raised for the defense of the colony during Queen Anne's War.

An example of his unfair reign as governor of New York is when Hyde illegally seized a Presbyterian parsonage and a church in Jamaica, New York.

He unjustly prosecuted the minister, Francis Makemie, for preaching without a license.

This type of political tyranny, religious oppression, graft and theft were only the beginning of his soiled reputation.

Perhaps the most infamous characteristic of Edward Hyde is not his status as a corrupt politician, but rather that of a cross dresser.

Numerous rumors have circulated that Viscount Cornbury liked to dress in women's clothes in order to have a likeness near to his cousin, Queen Anne.

A painting hangs in the New York Historical Society whose description reads, "Viscount Cornbury, governor of New York and New Jersey (1702-1708)."

The painting is a portrait of a man wearing a woman's clothes, and it was identified as being Cornbury in 1796, seventy-three years after his death.

This painting is a piece of evidence that supports historians' uniform depiction of Hyde as a cross dresser.

There have been many stories told throughout history of his escapades as a transvestite.

One was told by Horace Walpole in a conversation with his friend George James Williams.

Walpole recounted, "He was a clever man."

"His great insanity was dressing himself as a woman."

"Lord Orford [Walpole] says that when Governor in America he opened the Assembly dressed in that fashion."

"When some of those about him remonstrated, his reply was, 'You are very stupid not to see the propriety of it.'"

"'In this place and particularly on this occasion I represent a woman (Queen Anne) and ought in all respects to represent her as faithfully as I can.'"

At this point in the conversation, Williams reacted, saying that his own father "told him that he has done business with Cornbury in woman's clothes."

"He used to sit at the open window so dressed, to the great amusement of the neighbors."

"He employed always the most fashionable milliner, shoemaker, stay maker, etc."

"Mr. Williams has seen a picture of him at Sir Herbert Packington's in Worcestershire, in a gown, stays, tucker, long ruffles, cap, etc."

A letter was written in 1714 by the German diplomat Baron von Bothmer to Hanover relaying the rumor that when in the Indies Cornbury thought "it was necessary for him, in order to represent her Majesty, to dress himself as a woman."

This image was not one that the colony of either New York or New Jersey wanted to portray, and in 1707 an effort began to oust Hyde.

The New Jersey assembly acted first, opening up an investigation of Hyde's conduct and drawing up a list of grievances.

The assembly sent a copy of this list to the Board of Trade, asking the body to "relieve them from the oppressions they groan under by the arbitrary and illegal practices of his excellency."

New York followed suit in 1708, unanimously adopting resolutions condemning Cornbury's illegal activities in the colony.

This double whammy perturbed Queen Anne, who dismissed Hyde of his duties in December of 1708, saying, "his near relation to [her] should not protect him in oppressing [her] subjects."

Upon his dismissal, Cornbury was arrested by the sheriff of New York for his debt.

He stayed in a New York jail until the death of his father, when his inheritance enabled him to pay his debts and return to England.

At the time of his death in 1723, Cornbury had become a symbol of despotism in America.

The immoral character of Viscount Cornbury, both in the public eye and within his personal life, has given him a disreputable name.

If it had not been for this, he may have been known as the pre-founder of King's College.

He is known more for his outrageous personality than for his political influence in the colonies.

Many people who knew Cornbury shared Lewis Morris' assessment of him, which was as "a wretch who by the whole conduct of his life has evidenced he has no regard for honor or virtue."

http://cuhistory3057.tripod.com/hyde/id1.html

"STEAMROLLER" SPITZER FOR PRESIDENT!

"STEAMROLLER" SPITZER FOR PRESIDENT!

That was the DRUMBEAT once again this morning ....

On the Dr. Alan Chartock Show ( http://www.alanchartock.com/ ) on WBKK FM up here ( http://www.wmht.org/radio/wbkk.php ) ....

And this time ...

The DRUM was being beaten by New York State Senator Neil Breslin ( http://www.congress.org/congressorg/bio/?i...L&chamber=S ) .....

A New York State Senator from Albany County in the State of New York ....

Who made the prediction ....

That the "STEAMROLLER" ....

Was only going to be in Albany for a short while ....

Before moving on to the White House down there in Washington, D.C. ...

Which then prompted Dr. Alan Chartock to ask Senator Breslin the obvious question ...

"WHAT ABOUT HILLARY CLINTON?" .....

And while Senator Breslin kind of hemmed and hawed in his response ....

Still ...

It was clear ...

At least to me ...

That he doesn't see Hillary Clinton as being a real viable presidential candidate ....

BECAUSE SHE IS A DIVIDER ....

And she is not truthful ....

And so ....

This thread started ....

In part ...

Because Eliot Spitzer is doing what we call up here, a "BLOW THROUGH" ....

Run for president by first taking over a STATE HOUSE ....

And more specifically ...

A STATE BUDGET ...

With which to BUY yourself the necessary level of support ...

To run a presidential campaign ....

And in this specific case ....

The funding for that SPITZER PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN ....

Would likely have come out of .......

Funds in the New York State Pension System Account ....

OF WHICH THE NEW YORK STATE COMPTROLLER ...

IS THE SOLE TRUSTEE ....

And so .....

By making Thomas DiNapoli COMPTROLLER ....

Instead of Martha Stark ....

From New York City ....

Who was Spitzer's HAND-PICKED CHOICE ....

The New York State Legislature ...

HAS KEPT THOSE PENSION FUNDS ....

IF ONLY FOR THE MOMENT .....

OUT OF THE AVARICIOUS HANDS ....

OF "STEAMROLLER" SPITZER FOR PRESIDENT ....

AND HIS TEAM OF PORKOLOGISTS, PORKMEISTERS and PORK DISPENSERS ....

WHO WILL USE OUR STATE TREASURY ....

TO BUY SUPPORT ...

FOR "STEAMROLLER" SPITZER FOR PRESIDENT

And so ...

Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP and Affiliates
Headquarters New York, N.Y.
# of Offices 22
# of Attorneys 1,915
# of Employees about 4,500
Major Practice Areas General practice
Revenue $1.61 billion USD (2005) [1]
Date Founded April 1, 1948
Founder Marshall Skadden, John Slate, and Les Arps
Company Type Limited liability partnership

Website www.skadden.com

Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP and Affiliates (a.k.a. "Skadden, Arps", "Skadden", or "SASM&F"), founded in 1948, is one of the largest and wealthiest law firms in the world.

Its headquarters are in New York City.

In most jurisdictions, the firm is organized as a limited liability partnership (LLP).

The firm's better-known alumni include New York State Governor Eliot Spitzer. [2]

Size

Skadden has approximately 1,915 attorneys[3] in 22 offices.

The total number of employees is nearly 4,500.

With US$1.61 billion in annual revenue, Skadden is the largest law firm in the U.S. in terms of revenue.[1]

The firm has held this position for nine years running and in 1999 became the first law firm to exceed US$1 billion in annual revenue.

Its revenue also makes Skadden the third largest law firm in the world, behind two U.K. firms.[1]

In terms of the number of attorneys, Skadden is the largest law firm in the state of New York,[4] the fifth largest in the United States,[3] and the eighth largest in the world.

Skadden ranks 216th on Forbes's list of the largest U.S.-based private companies.[5]

Despite its size, Skadden has been distinguished by its refusal to expand by mergers or large acquisitions.

The firm has never acquired a practice group larger than six attorneys, in sharp contrast with rivals such as Baker & McKenzie, which has repeatedly absorbed local practices, or DLA Piper and Clifford Chance, which are the products of large mergers (often across national and continental borders).

Consequently, charges of varying quality between offices of comparable-sized firms have been countered by Skadden's assertion that it has controlled the selection and training of its attorneys to match its domestic reputation.

Skadden's ranking on Forbes's list of America's Largest Private Companies consistently increased between 1995 and 2003 but fell in 2004 and 2005.

2005 — 216th[5]
2004 — 205th[6]
2003 — 194th[7]
2002 — 200th[8]
2001 — 224th[9]
2000 — 230th[10]
1999 — 245th[11]
1998 — 269th[12]
1997 — 297th[13]
1996 — 310th[14]
1995 — 335th[14]

Reputation & Prestige

In addition to its headquarters in New York — the largest single law office in the U.S. — Skadden's domestic practice is particularly renowned in its Los Angeles, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., offices.

Internationally, the firm also has particularly high-profile overseas practices in London, Frankfurt, Munich, Tokyo, and Hong Kong.

It is ranked the 4th most prestigious American law firm by Vault behind Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz; Cravath, Swaine & Moore; and Sullivan & Cromwell.[15]

Starting salaries for new associates in the New York office is set at $160,000.

Famed for pioneering mergers and acquisitions (and hostile takeovers) in the American corporate environment, Skadden has played a significant role in U.S. and international business despite being far younger than many competing white shoe firms.

Arguably the most recognizable law firm outside the legal industry, the firm is considered one of the most prestigious in the world, consistently ranking in the top five of Vault's annual list of the top law firms in the U.S. and boasting highly competitive foreign practices.

The Skadden Fellowship, funded by the firm, is considered the most prestigious public-interest grant in the U.S. and is greatly sought-after by graduates of top law schools.

Among Skadden's main practice areas are mergers and acquisitions (M&A), litigation, securities law, and bankruptcy representation.

The firm has counted a majority of the Fortune 500's top 50 companies as clients.

Skadden has been selected for each of the past six years as the best corporate law firm in the U.S. according to a survey of 1,390 directors and 279 general counsel of publicly traded companies by Corporate Board Member magazine and FTI Consulting.[16]

Key people

Partners

As of November 2006, there are 424 partners at Skadden.[17]

Unlike some firms which have introduced two-tier partnerships with equity and non-equity partners, Skadden maintains a one-tier partnership.[18]

Among the more notable partners are:

Joseph H. Flom became the firm's first associate in 1948 and is the only living "name partner."

He is recognized as a pioneer in the field of mergers and acquisitions.[19]

Robert C. Sheehan has held the position of Executive Partner, equivalent to a chief executive officer (CEO) in a corporation, since 1994.[20]

The firm has had only one other executive partner, Peter Mullen.

Roger S. Aaron is the senior partner in charge of all of the firm's corporate practice areas.[21]

William P. Frank is the firm's national litigation legal practice leader.[22]

Robert S. Bennett has been called "One of the top white-collar criminal and corporate defense attorneys in the country" in a National Law Journal article titled "The 100 most influential lawyers in America".[23]

Bennett's clients have included Bill Clinton in the Paula Jones case and New York Times reporter Judith Miller in the CIA leak investigation.

Sheila Birnbaum is considered one of the nation's leading experts on toxic tort law.

She has been named by Fortune magazine as one of the "50 Most Powerful Women in Business"[24] and by the National Law Journal as one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America.[23]

Bruce Buck, a partner based in London who oversees all European offices, is chairman of the Chelsea Football Club.[25]

Preeta D. Bansal, former New York State Solicitor General and current member of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, heads the firm's appellate litigation and complex legal issues practice.[26]

Of Counsel

"Of counsel" are retired partners who maintain professional ties with the firm.

As of November 2006, the firm has 23 of counsel,[17] including:

Peter P. Mullen served as the firm's Executive Partner from 1981 to 1994.[27]

Non-attorneys

Earle Yaffa is the Managing Director (the highest-ranking non-partner), a position he has held since 1980.[28]

Carol A. Sawdye is a Senior Director.

Laurel E. Henschel is a Senior Director and Chief Administrative Officer.

Noah J. Puntus is the Finance Director.

Harris Z. Tilevitz is Chief Technology Officer.

Peter E. Lesser is Director of Global Technology.

Jodie R. Garfinkel is the Associate Development Director.

Sally J. Feldman is the Director of Marketing and Business Development.

History

1948 — The firm was founded in New York by Marshall Skadden, John Slate and Les Arps.
1954 — Flom became a partner.
1959 — Bill Meagher joined the firm. Elizabeth Head, the firm's first female attorney, was hired.
1961 — The firm's name became Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom.
1973 — The firm opened its Boston office, the firm's second.
1981 — Peggy Kerr became the first female partner.
1985 — Skadden became one of the U.S.'s three largest law firms.
1987 — The firm opened its first international office in Tokyo.
1988 — The firm founded the Skadden Fellowship Foundation.
2000 — New York City headquarters moved to Four Times Square, also called the Condé Nast Building.

Locations

Skadden has 22 offices.

The number in parentheses indicates the year the office opened.[18]

North America

United States of America

New York, New York (1948)
Boston, Massachusetts (1973)
Chicago, Illinois (1984)
Houston, Texas (1993)
Los Angeles, California (1983)
Palo Alto, California (1998)
San Francisco, California (1987)
Washington, D.C. (1975)
Wilmington, Delaware (1979)
White Plains, New York (non-legal staff only; no attorneys)

Canada

Toronto, Ontario (1990)

Europe

Brussels, Belgium (1990)
Frankfurt, Germany (1990)
London, England (1988)—officially, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom (UK) LLP
Moscow, Russia (1992)
Munich, Germany (2004)[29]
Paris, France (1990)
Vienna, Austria (2001)—officially, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom (Europe) LLP

Asia/Pacific

Beijing, China (1991)
Hong Kong, China (1989)—general partnership, not LLP
Singapore (1996)—general partnership, not LLP
Sydney, Australia (1989)—general partnership, not LLP
Tokyo, Japan (1987)—Skadden Arps Gaikokuho Jimu Bengoshi Jimusho; Skadden Arps Law Office; Skadden Arps Foreign Law Office (Registered Associated Offices)

Closed offices

Former firm offices no longer in operation include

Newark, New Jersey, United States—closed June 2004
Reston, Virginia, United States—2002–October 2003

Practice areas

The firm specializes in the following areas of law:

Alternative dispute resolution
Antitrust
Appellate litigation and legal issues
Asia
Australia and New Zealand
Banking and institutional investing
Brazil
Canada
China
Communications
Complex mass torts and insurance litigation
Consumer financial services enforcement and litigation
Corporate
Corporation compliance programs
Corporate finance
Corporate governance
Corporate restructuring
Derivative financial products, commodities and futures
Employee benefits and executive compensation
Energy project finance and development
Energy regulatory
Environmental
Environmental (international)
Environmental litigation
Europe
European Union/International Competition
Financial institutions
Financial services
Gaming
Government contract disputes
Government enforcement litigation
Health care
Health care enforcement and litigation
Health care fraud and abuse
Hong Kong law
India
Information technology and e-commerce
Insurance
Intellectual property and technology
International arbitration
International law and policy
International tax
International trade
Investment management
Israel
Italy
Japan
Labor and employment law
Latin America
Lease financing
Life sciences
Litigation
Mergers and acquisitions
Outsourcing
Patent and technology litigation, litigation and counseling
Pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical device licensing
Political law
Private equity
Private investment funds
Pro bono
Public policy
Real estate
Real estate investment trusts
Russia and CIS
Securities enforcement and compliance
Sports
Structured finance
Tax
Tax controversy and litigation
Trademark, copyright, and advertising litigation and counseling
Trusts and estates
UCC and secured transactions
Utilities mergers and acquisitions
White collar crime

Notable deals and cases

The firm participated in the RJR Nabisco buyout, orchestrated by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. the largest such deal in history, adjusted for inflation.

Partner Peter Atkins led the Skadden team, which advised the RJR board of directors as to the financial soundness of the respective bids.

Skadden's fee at the time was reported to be $25 million.

Scott Simpson leads the European M&A division from London and has represented Gucci Group and Arcelor during their attempts to repel high-profile hostile takeovers.

Jay Kasner and Preeta D. Bansal represented Merrill Lynch before the Supreme Court in Merrill Lynch v. Dabit.

Tokyo partner Nobuhisa Ishizuka represented the U.S. side of the merger between Squaresoft and Enix, the largest in the Japanese electronic gaming industry.

Gregory Miao and Jon Christianson of the Hong Kong office led the IPO of the China Construction Bank, the largest of 2005.

The firm currently represents XM Satellite Radio Holdings, Inc., in its approximately $13 billion tax-free merger-of-equals with Sirius Satellite Radio, Inc.

Recognition and rankings

Chambers and Partners selected Skadden as the Global Corporate law Firm of the Year for 2006.[30]

In 2006, Corporate Board Member Magazine named Skadden the top corporate law firm in America, according as selected by 1,390 directors of publicly traded companies.

Skadden has held the top slot for six years.[16]

Vault, Inc. ranked Skadden fourth on its "Top 100 Most Prestigious Firms – 2007", a survey which asked law firm associates to rank the prestige of various firms.

The Vault survey also ranked eight of Skadden's individual practice areas among the nation's ten best: Antitrust (tie, 8th); Bankruptcy (2nd); Corporate (3rd); Litigation (5th); Mergers & Acquisitions (2nd); Real Estate (4th); Securities (3rd); Tax (2nd). [15]

For 2007, Skadden was ranked #9 on the Avery Index list of the Best Prestigious Law Firms to Work For. [31]

In the 2006 edition of Chambers USA, 147 Skadden attorneys are highlighted as leading lawyers - more attorneys than at any other firm.

According to Thomson Financial's third-quarter 2006 M&A Legal league tables, Skadden ranked first by value for worldwide announced deals.

Skadden was named "Global Law Firm of the Year" and "USA Corporate/M&A Law Firm of the Year" at the Chambers and Partners annual dinner on May 19 in London.

Skadden ranked first by volume and deal count representing issuers of U.S. High Yield Offerings with 10 deals worth US$5 billion, according to Bloomberg's Q3 2006 Legal Adviser League Tables published in October 2006.

Notable alumni
In addition to numerous professors and partners, both at Skadden and other firms, some of the more notable former Skadden attorneys include:

Eliot Spitzer, Governor of the State of New York,[2] and his wife, Silda Wall Spitzer[33]
Leo Strine, Vice Chancellor, Delaware Court of Chancery
Mark Weldon, Chief Executive Officer, NZX - the New Zealand Stock Exchange
Laura Ingraham, conservative talk radio host
Chad S. Johnson, former President of the Stonewall Democrats
Faryar Shirzad, Director of International Public Policy and Vice President at Goldman Sachs

Trivia
"Meagher" is pronounced "mar", not "mee-gur".

The salary for a first-year associate (i.e., fresh out of law school) is reported to be $160,000, not including the annual discretionary bonus.[34].

Prominent lawyers at the firm endorsed and financially supported John Kerry in his campaign to become president of the United States in 2004.[35][36]

See also

Thomson Financial League Tables

Further reading

Caplan, Lincoln (1993). Skadden: Power, Money, and the Rise of a Legal Empire. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux. ISBN 0-374-26566-6.
"How Skadden Does It", Andrew Longstreth, The American Lawyer, May 2006.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skadden%2C_Arps%2C_Slate%2C_Meagher_%26_Flom"

"Spitzer missed chance to cut budget"

By JAMES TEDISCO

Albany, New York Times Union

First published: Sunday, February 25, 2007

Teddy Roosevelt, a former president and New York governor, once famously stated, "Speak softly and carry a big stick."

Our new governor, who counts himself as a fan and has a large portrait of Roosevelt adorning his Capitol office, has put a new twist on the century-old adage --

"Speak loudly and carry a really big stick."

In the first 50 days of his administration, a handy marker that has just passed, Gov. Eliot Spitzer's adherence to this motto has yielded considerable results, for which he deserves credit.

We have passed budget reforms that seek to guarantee on-time budgets.

We have passed member-item reforms that seek to increase transparency in the process by which grants of the governor and legislators are doled out.

We have passed an ethics reform bill that increases penalties for ethics violations, prohibits all gifts from lobbyists to elected officials of more than nominal value, prohibits former legislative employees from lobbying the Legislature for two years and creates a new State Commission on Public Integrity with broad authority to enforce ethics and lobbying laws.

Assembly Republicans supported these measures, as we have for years.

The fact that we are Republicans and the governor wielding the "big stick" is a Democrat makes no difference.

Reform is an orphan who seeks love and adoption, and cares not what political affiliation its parents may have.

During the contentious state comptroller vote, the majority of Assembly Republicans stood with the governor and voted for Martha Stark -- one of three candidates recommended by the expert panel.

By contrast, 105 out of 107 Assembly Democrats voted for one of their own, Tom DiNapoli, who was not one of the three.

This is indicative of the "interesting" alliances I promised observers would find when "Day 1" rolled around.

Governor Spitzer has correctly focused heavily on reform, and I applaud that.

However, there is more to do.

First, we must break the "three men in a room" culture that dominates decision-making in Albany.

I represent 42 members who represent 5.5 million New Yorkers.

They and the millions of constituents that the Senate Democratic minority represents deserve a seat at the decision-making table and to have their voices heard.

There has been some progress, and I speak with the governor often.

But much more is needed.

We're not asking for minority rule; we're asking for meaningful minority participation.

While we like the reforms that we helped pass, we tried to make good reforms stronger.

For example, we offered an amendment that would have stripped the pension from any elected official convicted of a felony for defrauding the taxpayers.

That was voted down, even though we had support from a few Democrats.

Finally, there are many things to like in the governor's first budget proposal: increased accountability measures for additional education dollars; the "patients-first" concept for health care delivery; and substantial property tax relief.

But I was disappointed by a missed opportunity.

Governor Spitzer had a huge mandate for change, and we hoped he would use it in his first budget proposal, just as he did with reform.

But he didn't.

He promised in his State of the State message that he would "rein in spending," but he didn't.

State government spending in New York has skyrocketed by 42 percent in the past six years.

Now, Governor Spitzer proposes to increase it by 6.3 percent -- twice the rate of inflation.

We are now looking at a record $120 billion budget.

New York's population is only 6 percent larger than Florida's, yet we spend 60 percent more.

Is it any coincidence that Florida has no income tax and a booming economy?

Higher spending leads to higher taxes, which lead to more citizens leaving the state.

The Republican conference will fight to hold the line on spending during budget negotiations.

We will also fight to ensure that the $6 billion in promised property tax relief over three years goes directly to homeowners as rebate checks.

As proposed, the relief will pass through school districts instead.

Done this way, there is no guarantee that the full relief will reach the taxpayer.

We will work to correct this and deliver mandate relief and other measures to ensure the property tax relief is lasting.

We'll also work to include some business tax cuts.

There are none in the proposed budget proposal; in fact, businesses would face nearly $500 million more in taxes.

Not the best incentive for a business to stay in New York and create jobs.

And we'll work to include debt reform and debt reduction in the budget.

Governor Spitzer has had a good first 50 days.

I would certainly give him an "A" for effort.

During the next 30 days, my conference will work with the governor and the rest of the Legislature to pass further reforms and to make sure that the final budget represents a similar tone of reform -- with less spending, less debt and lower taxes.

Tedisco of Schenectady is the Assembly Republican minority leader.

end quotes

And it is indeed interesting ....

TO SEE ...

STALWART REPUBLICAN JAMES TEDISCO ......

GO ABSOLUTELY SILENT ....

On all of these "SECRET SLUSH FUNDS" ....

That he informed us about above here ...

"SECRET SLUSH FUNDS" ...

That he says ...

TOTAL NEARLY $3.4 BILLION ......

WHY HAS MR. TEDISCO GONE SILENT ON THIS MATTER?

WE DON'T KNOW ....

AND BECAUSE HIS SILENCE ....

IS NOW SO DEAFENING ....

IN HIS APPLAUSE OF THE "STEAMROLLER" .....

WHO MAY JUST HAVE MR. TEDISCO IN HIS POCKET ....

WAVING A LITTLE SIGN ....

THAT SAYS, "ME, TOO" .....

IT IS LIKELY ....

THAT WE WILL NOW NEVER KNOW ....

SINCE SILENCE LIKE MR. TEDISCO'S UP HERE IN CORRUPT ALBANY ....

IS GENERALLY BOUGHT ...

AND PAID FOR ....

WITH THE PROMISE ....

OF A PERSONAL SLUSH FUND ....

FOR HIM ...

SOME "CANDY" ...

"FOR THE BABY" ....

AS THE WAGS IN THE KNOW UP HERE SAY ....

TO KEEP HIM QUIET ....

SO THE STATUS QUO .....

CAN REMAIN ....

THE ONLY GAME IN TOWN ....

And so ....

NY TIMES

February 21, 2007, 6:42 pm

"Spitzer Plays Nice (by His standards)"

By Danny Hakim

Gov. Eliot Spitzer took his “Bringing Home the Budget” tour to Niagara Falls this afternoon, and our stringer David Staba reports that the governor did not call out any of the local legislators by name over their votes for comptroller earlier this month.

While he did continue to generally bash the legislature over the comptroller vote, his appearance qualifies as a continued downshifting from the governor’s open and personal attacks on fellow Democrats in Syracuse and Westchester County in recent weeks.

Not that he was warm and cuddly, of course.

“I think I’ve been pretty clear in expressing my dissatisfaction with the way many votes were cast two weeks ago,” he said.

“I was disappointed in the fact that many people who said they were for reform and stood by my side, and I stood by their side, when I campaigned and they campaigned on a culture of reform and then when we got to a moment where it was tested and they didn’t cast a vote that I thought was the appropriate vote, I’ve expressed my disappointment in that and will continue to do so.”

5 comments so far...

1. February 21st, 2007

8:31 pm How come The Times has not covered the Spitzer secret slush fund uncovered by the New York Sun?

Secretly funding pork barrel projects for friendly Senate Dems doesn’t sound much like reform to me.

— Posted by Capt. Clean

2. February 21st, 2007

8:50 pm It’s commendable that Governor Spitzer is willing to take on the legislature for its inexcusable vote for one its own cronies as the new State Comptroller.

But it’s not the first time a new governor has crossed swords with party bosses — and it remains to be seen whether he’ll be any more successful than his predecessors.

Teddy Roosevelt was elected governor with the support of Republican-party bosses in 1898, but he soon broke with them and tried to defy their power.

Boss Platt bested Roosevelt, and got him nominated (and elected) as the new Vice President on the Republican ticket with William McKinley, effectively removing Roosevelt from New York, and giving the governorship back to the party machine.

Little did Platt expect that McKinley would get killed — in New York, no less — and Roosevelt would become President in 1901.

As President, Roosevelt took strong charge over NY politics, and pushed for the nomination of Charles Evans Hughes as governor.

When reform-minded Hughes won in 1906 — taking office exactly 100 years ago, in 1907 — it appeared at last that Roosevelt would break the control of party bosses in Albany.

While Hughes managed to pass many reform measures, he failed to push through a a key bill, calling for direct primary elections.

That would have prevented the party machine from controlling the nomination of candidates.

Just months later, in 1910, Hughes was nominated to the Supreme Court by President Taft, who wanted to remove a potential rival from political life.

Once again, the Republican-party machine regained control of the governorship.

By 1912, the Democratic machine, led by Tammany Hall, got their own party hack elected.

But Governor William Sulzer soon proved more difficult to control than expected.

He refused to appoint party cronies to key positions, and he came out in favor of the direct primary.

That’s when Democratic machine began to the most shocking power grab in New York history — the party impeached its own governor.

After just 10 months in office in 1913, Sulzer was removed from the governorship, on charges that he misappropriated campaign funds.

But it was clear that he was impeached not because of anything that he did, but because of what he didn’t do — follow the party machine.

The message in Albany was clear: defy the party bosses and they’ll stop at nothing to toss you out of Albany.

Leading the charge in the State Assembly was Tammany man Al Smith, who later became governor himself.

The following year, in 1914, former governor and president Teddy Roosevelt publicly charged that Albany was run by bosses of both parties (Republican William Barnes and Democrat Charles Murphy) and that they conspired to maintain control.

Barnes wanted to silence Roosevelt, so he brought a $50,000 libel action (big bucks in those days) against Roosevelt.

The case was brought in Albany, where most potential jurors had at least one family memeber who owed their job to the party machine.

That was a serious threat to Roosevelt, but he managed to get a change in venue, and the case was removed to Syracuse.

The trial took a month, in April 1915.

Roosevelt sought the testimony of members of the legislature to support his defense that the bosses really ran the government.

But few people would help him, fearing retribution.

After all, nothing was going to change in Albany, regardless of the outcome of Roosevelt’s trial.

But Roosevelt got key support, not from a fellow Republican, but from a Democrat — his distant cousin, Franklin Roosevelt, who was also married to Teddy Roosevelt’s favorite niece.

FDR had been a Democratic State Senator from 1910 to 1913.

He left to join the Wilson administration as the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, the same post previously held by his political idol, Teddy Roosevelt.

FDR’s testimony was a success.

He described how Albany really worked.

And TR’s own testimony also captivated the jury.

After a week of deliberations, the jury ruled in favor of Roosevelt, essentially believing his claim that the state government as undemocratic and run by a few all-powerful party bosses.

In dramatic fashion, Boss Barnes’ lawyer, the former Republican party candidate for NYC mayor in 1905, died just weeks after the end of the trial.

But TR was vindicated, and FDR became well-known, since the press closely followed his testimony.

FDR would later become governor himself.

Despite all of these efforts by Eliot Spitzer’s predecessors, they failed to break the grip on power by the party bosses.

And little has changed since then.

A few months ago, the Democratic-controlled state legislature threatened to impeach one of its own, Democrat Alan Hevesi, for misuse of state funds, if he did not resign.

The legislature high-mindedly spoke in terms of protecting the public, but this was really the first step in the biggest power grab since Governor Sulzer was impeached in 1913.

The goal was to place own of their own in the comptroller’s office, eliminating the position’s independence.

No one should be surprised they were successful in making Thomas DiNapoli, widely viewed as unqualified, the new comptroller.

One hundred years after Charles Evans Hughes, a highly regarded independent reformer, came to Albany, Spitzer himself has similar credentials and similar objectives.

But if history is any guide, he has a long uphill battle in bringing real democracy to Albany.

— Posted by Jeff

3. February 21st, 2007

9:19 pm Focusing on Governor Spitzer’s feud with the state legislature over the selection of new Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli diverts attention from the danger posed by DiNapoli apparently intending to continue, if not expand, the costly speculative pension fund management policies of predecessor Alan Hevesi.

DiNapoli recently announced that he “wants to use New York’s gigantic pension fund aggressively to protect the environment, create more affordable housing and promote business development in economically depressed regions.”.

Hevesi pursued a similar course of action and it proved very expensive to the New York State and Local Government Budgets.

If DiNapoli manages the pension fund similarly, the number of “economically depressed regions” may expand geometrically.

New York State, as a matter of course, will be contributing more money to the pension system to pay retiree benefits and will, consequently, have fewer funds available for aid to counties, towns and school districts.

Local Government (Town, Village, County and School District) pension expenses should likewise increase placing added pressure on real estate taxes, which by necessity often accompanies reduced services particularly at the public school level.

Hevesi, like DiNapoli, was a great exponent of using the pension fund for social purposes.

The fallout was disastrous..

In 2002, before Hevesi took office, New York state and local government contributions to the pension fund amounted to only $263.8 million.

Thanks to Hevesi’s pension fund management practices, something apparently never questioned by any oversight from either Governor Pataki or the dysfunctional state legislature, by 2006 payments increased more than tenfold to a shocking $2,782.1 million (nearly $2.8 billion).

Governor Spitzer possesses a significant tool for compelling new Comptroller DiNapoli to cease and desist from harmful investment practices.

The $142.6 billion pension fund assets as of March 31, 2006 could easily have sufficed to pay the $6.15 billion in current annual retiree benefits if invested in good safe bonds paying an average of 4.28% interest per year.

A modest annual contribution of matching funds by the government and employees would be more than enough to cover anticipated increases in benefit payment obligations averaging in recent years in the neighborhood of $400 million.

The Governor has it in his power to reduce state and local government contributions to the pension fund ($2,782.1 million in 2006) to the same substantially lesser and certainly fairer amount as government employees ($241.2 million in 2006).

This would force Comptroller DiNapoli to cease imitating Hevesi’s risky speculations with the $142.6 billion pension fund assets.

Potential benefits of equalizing the contribution level include reduced real estate taxes for county, city, and town governments.

Furthermore, there would be more money available in the State budget enabling the Governor and the Legislature to spend, if they so desire, on the social purposes advocated by DiNapoli, who should have enough on his plate learning about the Comptroller function something he demonstrated limited interest in as a member of the Assembly Ways and Means Committee.

— Posted by George N. Spitz

4. February 22nd, 2007

1:09 pm Spitzer’s ego led him to believe his reputation alone would scare the “gang” in Albany.

But, they merely let him know him what they have continuously showed the public for years - they don’t care.

By not removing Silver, Spitzer gave the first clue he didn’t know what he was doing.

The next was the watered down “ethics reform” leaving the same oversight on the legislature they had before.

Now, not only are Bruno and Silver still firmly in control, Silver has even more power with his unqualified hack installed as Comptroller.

Change?

— Posted by JC

5. February 25th, 2007

3:10 pm If Eliot Spitzer …..

Known upstate as Lord Cornbury ….

The ROYAL GOVERNOR ….

Up from New York City ….

To view his possessions and holdings ….

In upstate New York …..

Including the colonial legislature …..

Presided over by the “IRON DUKE” Joe Bruno ….

And Sheldon Silvers …..

Were to have been governor …..

Back when Teddy Roosevelt was the New York State Assembly MINORITY LEADER ….

OR ….

If Teddy Roosevelt were to be New York State Assembly MINORITY LEADER today …..

Instead of that Jim Tedisco who is in there now …..

And “LORD CORNBURY” Spitzer ….

Were to make that “I’M A ****ING STEAMROLLER, BABY, AND I’LL ROLL ALL OVER YOU” comment to old Teddy Roosevelt …..

It is my thought ….

And my bet ….

That unlike Jim Tedisco ….

Old Teddy Roosevelt would have looked at his watch …..

And said to LORD CORNBURY THE “STEAMROLLER” …..

“YOU KNOW WHAT, I’VE GOT SOME FREE TIME ON MY HANDS, SO I THINK I’LL JUST SIGN UP FOR A BLOCK OF INSTRUCTION ON SOME OF THAT STEAMROLLER STUFF YOU’RE SELLING …”

And then ….

Old Teddy Roosevelt would have waded right on into “LORD CORNBURY” ….

And old Teddy Roosevelt would given “STEAMROLLER” Spitzer some “what for”, alright ….

That would have left “THE STEAMROLLER” whimpering in a heap ….

And old Teddy Roosevelt saying, “STEAMROLLER, MY *** ….”

As he walked away …..

A TRUE PROTECTOR …..

OF GOVERNMENT ….

OF ….

BY ….

AND FOR ….

THE PEOPLE ….

AS OUR NEW YORK STATE CONSTITUTION INTENDED …..

And so ….

— Posted by Livyjr

http://empirezone.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/0...-his-standards/

"State officials don't deserve re-election"

Letters to the Editor, Albany, New York Times Union

First published: Sunday, February 25, 2007

I find it astonishing that the state Legislature doesn't understand the meaning of the last election.

Yes, the majority voted for Alan Hevesi, being assured he would be replaced.

Then, we were assured by the agreement between the legislative and executive branches that a distinguished panel would vet the candidates and the choice would come from their selections.

The panel did its job.

If the rest of the voters of this state are as incensed as I am, no one who failed to live up to this agreement will be left in office after the next election.

FRANK V.

Newtonville

http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story...sdate=2/25/2007

And continuing on in here ...

With our look ...

At the CONFUSED STATE OF AFFAIRS ....

That persists ....

In government ...

AT ALL LEVELS ...

In New York State today ....

A CONFUSED STATE OF AFFAIRS .....

That drives people away from New York State ....

AND WITH GOOD REASON ....

FOR WHO WANTS TO LIVE IN A HACK-O-CRACY?

WHO WANTS TO TRY AND MAKE A LIFE ...

IN A PLACE ...

WITH A CHRONICALLY UNSTABLE ...

AND INEPT GOVERNMENT ....

THAT JUST SUCKS THE LIFEBLOOD RIGHT OUT OF A PERSON UP HERE ....

IN THE FORM OF HIGHER AND HIGHER TAXES ....

THAT PURCHASE LESS AND LESS REAL SERVICE ....

AND MORE AND MORE INCOMPETENCE ....

AT THE SAME TIME ...

And so ...

From just across the Hudson River ....

From the capital in Albany, New York ...

We have ...

MORE OF THE USUAL CRAP FROM INEPT AND INCOMPETENT GOVERNMENT UP HERE ....

And so ...

"Troy, county at odds over 911 - City hasn't paid for dispatch services since contract expired in 2005"

By KENNETH C. CROWE II, Staff writer, Albany, New York Times Union

First published: Monday, February 26, 2007

TROY -- The city has not paid Rensselaer County to dispatch its police and fire departments in 14 months, forcing the county to tell Troy it will end the communications service unless there's a new contract.

Police, fire and ambulance calls in Troy account for nearly half the county dispatch center's activity, according to county statistics.

The city paid $285,000 annually to the county under a 10-year contract for dispatch services that expired on Dec. 31, 2005.

The costs for the public safety service should be the main topic when county and city officials sit down this week to negotiate a new deal.

Both governments have heard from their constituents that they don't want higher property taxes.

Both leaders want funds to pay for the services they provide.

"If the city continues to not pay for this service, this is a cost I would have to pass on to the property taxpayers."

"They have made it pretty clear they want less taxes, not more taxes," County Executive Kathy Jimino said.

Mayor Harry Tutunjian said he's just looking out for his taxpayers who are paying both county and city property taxes.

He said the city has money for the county dispatch services set aside in its 2006 and 2007 budgets.

"Certainly the residents of Troy pay a lot in county taxes and do not receive the amount of services that residents in the county do," Tutunjian said.

"We are ready to negotiate a successor agreement for 2007."

Jimino said previous efforts to get a new contract with the city have been fruitless.

She said that since a meeting in September 2006, there had been no response from the city.

Jimino wrote Tutunjian on Feb. 9 telling him it appeared the city did not want to continue the county dispatching service and her staff would begin planning for the city to assume its own dispatching on Jan. 1, 2008.

Instead, they will resume negotiations this week.

The county budgeted $2,965,505 to operate its dispatch center in 2007.

The $285,000 paid by Troy under the expired contract accounts for less than 10 percent of the dispatch center budget.

Tutunjian said times are different than when the contract with the county was signed.

"They assumed this role from the city in 1995."

"Now, 10 or 11 years later we want to take a closer look in what our residents are paying in surcharges," Tutunjian said.

"The entire landscape has changed."

The city provides services to the county for which it is not compensated, Tutunjian said, like the transportation of prisoners between City Court and the county jail; the city Fire Department's role as the county's hazardous materials response unit; and providing services to county offices.

Tutunjian expects the city and county to continue the dispatching contract.

"I'm hopeful we will be able to reach a mutually beneficial agreement," the mayor said.

Jimino said the city is getting a good deal:

"It's considerably less than what the city would have to pay if the city set up their own dispatch center."

"That's the beauty of sharing services."

"That's what we're trying to do more of," Jimino said.

"To walk away from this shared service arrangement would seem counterproductive to the idea of reducing the burden on property taxpayers."

C. Crowe II can be reached at 454-5084 or by e-mail at kcrowe@timesunion.com.

Calling for help

About half the calls to the Rensselaer County dispatch center in recent years have come from Troy.

Here's a breakdown:

YEARS TOTAL CALLS % FROM TROY

2006 108,448 49.9

2005 108,010 48.6

2004 97,279 53.9

Times Union chart

end quotes

"Certainly the residents of Troy pay a lot in county taxes and do not receive the amount of services that residents in the county do," Tutunjian said .......

AND, OF COURSE ....

BASED ON REALITY ....

WHICH IS OUTSIDE THE PURVIEW OF THE POLITICIANS UP HERE ...

POLITICALLY-INBRED AS THEY ARE UP HERE ....

"IDEOLOGY-DROOLERS", THEY ARE CALLED ...

THAT IS A RIDICULOUS COMMENT BY THE REPUBLICAN MAYOR OF TROY .....

PEOPLE IN RENSSELAER COUNTY OUTSIDE OF TROY GET THE COUNTY ROADS PLOWED BY THE COUNTY IN THE WINTER ....

AND THAT IS ABOUT IT ....

THE COUNTY BUDGET KEEPS CLIMBING HIGHER AND HIGHER ....

AND IN THE NEWSPAPERS EVERY YEAR ....

IT IS MADE PLAIN AS DAY ....

BY REPUBLICAN KATHLEEN JIMINO ....

WHO IS A PART OF THE "BIG JOE" BRUNO POLITICAL MACHINE ...

HERE IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK .....

JUST AS IS TROY MAYOR HARRY TUTUNJIAN ...

THAT MORE AND MORE COUNTY SERVICES ARE BEING CUT BY MS. JIMINO ...

SO ..

THIS COMMENT BY REPUBLICAN TUTUNJIAN IS JUST PLAIN HYPE ....

DEVOID OF SUBSTANCE ....

AS ARE SO MANY POLITICAL SPEECHES HERE IN OUR AMERICA TODAY ...

And so ....

NY TIMES

"Bruno’s Business Touch Wasn’t Always Golden"

By MIKE McINTIRE

Published: February 26, 2007

It is an oft-told tale that has become part of Albany lore.

Long before he became the State Senate majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno borrowed $5,000 to start a telephone equipment company, built it into a profitable business and sold it for $23 million in 1990.

Born into poverty, Mr. Bruno became a millionaire.

A review of records and interviews with his former partners showed that while Mr. Bruno indeed built his publicly traded firm, Coradian Corporation, from scratch, its sale did not make him a millionaire.

In fact, the company had been steadily losing money, and Mr. Bruno made less than $400,000 from the transaction.

As a result, Mr. Bruno began to pursue other sources of money, and those pursuits are now the subject of a federal investigation.

Some of Mr. Bruno’s other business ventures, before and after he sold Coradian, did poorly.

In one case, he lost about $150,000 on a real estate project that dragged on for 17 years, a former partner said.

And in the past six years, he has lost at least $50,000 on investments in high-tech companies, according to financial disclosure records and interviews with his aides.

Mr. Bruno’s mixed success as a businessman might have important implications for a federal grand jury investigation into his financial dealings.

Soon after selling Coradian, Mr. Bruno — who has for years complained that being in office has hurt his ability to make money — opened a consulting business out of his home.

That business is now the focus of the federal investigation into whether Mr. Bruno provided government favors to his consulting clients, people who have been briefed about the inquiry have said.

Records show that the consulting business has been a consistently reliable stream of income for Mr. Bruno. '

Yet the firm does not advertise or have a published telephone number and Mr. Bruno has refused to publicly identify its clients, describing them only as “substantial and important business people.”

Mr. Bruno, who declined to be interviewed for this article, has consistently defended his right to remain a businessman while serving in the Legislature, asserting that he has never used his power to enrich himself or his business associates.

It is impossible to know the full extent of Mr. Bruno’s wealth because he is not required to provide details about his income or assets on disclosure forms made available to the public.

There are no indications that he is in financial trouble; he lives on a sprawling farm in Rensselaer County, owns thoroughbred horses and earns $121,000 as majority leader.

But interviews and documents suggested that Mr. Bruno, 77, has remained an active consultant and aggressive investor in part because he felt he needed the money.

He suggested as much in an interview with The New York Times in December.

“Nobody wants to hear it, but my being in office has cost me a fortune — millions, literally millions,” he said.

"“I’m worth a hell of a lot less today than I was 30 years ago."

"That’s kind of sad."

"I’m worth a hell of a lot less now than I was 10 years ago.”

By his own account, Mr. Bruno overcame humble origins in upstate poverty by selling ice and frozen food, obtaining an undergraduate degree in business administration and, in the 1950s, teaming with an older businessman, Stanley B. Ringel, to sell insurance and mutual funds.

In the late 1960s, Mr. Ringel and Mr. Bruno began selling office telephone equipment, forming what would become Coradian.

Mr. Bruno, who associates said was a gifted salesman, handled the marketing side and pursued a second career in politics, while Mr. Ringel, the chief executive, managed the day-to-day operations.

By 1981, Coradian had revenues of $35 million and employed about 500 people.

But a major supplier dropped its contract, profits dried up, workers were let go, and an ailing Mr. Ringel stepped aside as chief executive, allowing Mr. Bruno to take over.

In the years after Mr. Bruno was elected to the State Senate in 1976, questions were raised about possible ethical conflicts, since Coradian received $1.5 million in state contracts from 1983 to 1988, according to The Times Union of Albany.

The State Commission on Government Integrity investigated Coradian’s contracts with state and local government agencies in 1988, but reported no evidence of wrongdoing.

By 1989, with Coradian hemorrhaging cash and unable to pay its debts, the company was put up for sale.

It hired a consultant to interview 24 prospective buyers, but 19 expressed no interest, securities filings showed.

Mitel, a Canadian firm that was a major equipment supplier to Coradian, eventually agreed to buy it, paying $10 million in cash and assuming $13 million in debt.

Numerous newspaper accounts since then, including in The Times, have stated or implied that the $23 million sale price resulted in a windfall for Mr. Bruno worth millions of dollars.

In reality, Mr. Bruno owned only enough shares to earn at most $383,000 from the sale, according to the securities filings, and he agreed to remain with the newly merged company for a couple of years at his old salary of $110,000.

George L. Benson, Coradian’s president at the time of the sale, recalled recently that “nobody made a lot of money out of it, I can tell you that."

"It was a graceful exit."

"That was all it was.”

Even before leaving Coradian, Mr. Bruno began pursuing other ways to make money, an effort that intensified after the sale of the company.

One of the earliest was a partnership called First Grafton that he created in 1987, along with his brother and some friends, to purchase and develop a large tract of forest into home sites, a project that seemed vexed from the start and would not be completed until just a few years ago.

After two of his original partners bowed out, Mr. Bruno’s solution — to replace them with two lawyer-lobbyists he knew from his work at Coradian and the state capital — inflamed old charges of ethical carelessness that had begun to dog his Senate career.

The ensuing uproar forced Mr. Bruno to place his interest in First Grafton into a blind trust.

One of the lobbyists, James D. Featherstonhaugh, has represented dozens of special interest groups, including banks, insurance companies, the horse racing industry and labor unions.

In December, the federal grand jury investigating Mr. Bruno sent a subpoena to Mr. Featherstonhaugh for First Grafton’s records.

Mr. Featherstonhaugh said everyone involved in First Grafton had lost money, and he estimated Mr. Bruno’s losses totaled about $150,000 over the 17 years that the project dragged on.

Despite that, he said Mr. Bruno “never seemed to be in financial stress.”

The senator, he said, tended to be frugal.

“He has never struck me as either outrageously wealthy or poor,” Mr. Featherstonhaugh said.

“He just seemed to me to be kind of O.K.”

Mr. Bruno’s willingness to mix public and private interests was apparent in another real estate deal he entered into in 1999, when he and his son Joseph bought a small apartment house in Troy from Russell C. Ball, a state contractor whose wife, Dori Evans, served as finance director for the Senate Republican campaign committee, which Mr. Bruno controls.

Mr. Ball’s Brooklyn-based company, which does underground utility work, has had contracts on several major state projects, and a couple of years ago he created a nonprofit group that purchased full-page newspaper ads saluting Mr. Bruno.

An official familiar with the investigation said the F.B.I. has questioned people about Mr. Ball’s relationship with Mr. Bruno.

Mr. Ball had no comment.

Not long after buying the building, Mr. Bruno’s son decided he wanted out, and Mr. Bruno tapped a friend and neighbor, Joseph L. Magno, to step in and replace his son in the investment and on a $235,000 loan used to buy the property.

“He literally said, ‘Will you please help me out,’ ” said Mr. Magno, who is now a lobbyist.

He said that he lost as much as $30,000 on the investment, and that Mr. Bruno lost money as well.

Mr. Magno was not just a friend, but also an investor in high-tech companies.

In 2000, Mr. Magno agreed to help Mr. Bruno, the senator secured $150,000 in state money to start a statewide trade association of technology firms headed by Mr. Magno.

The same year, an Internet company called Go2pay, whose directors included Mr. Magno, received $250,000 in state economic development funds, at a ceremony presided over by Mr. Bruno and Gov. George E. Pataki.

Mr. Bruno did not lose money on all his ventures.

His financial disclosure statements showed that he seemed to have earned money, on a regular basis, from the consulting business he started, Capital Business Consultants L.L.C.

In a news conference in December when he revealed the F.B.I. inquiry, Mr. Bruno said he provided advice on marketing and business development to lawyers and businesspeople.

He declined to release information about his fees or the names of his clients, though some have been identified as a result of the investigation.

One of his first clients was McGinn Smith, an Albany investment firm.

Mr. Bruno has invested both personal and campaign funds in companies controlled by McGinn Smith’s chairman, Timothy M. McGinn.

In 1999, Mr. Bruno reported making an undisclosed amount of money on the sale of stock in Pointe Financial, a bank holding company of which Mr. McGinn was chairman.

It was one of Mr. Bruno’s few profitable stock investments in recent years.

Another consulting client was Jared Abbruzzese, a businessman and friend who has flown Mr. Bruno around on private jets and who, until recently, was part of a group competing for a statewide horse racing franchise.

From 2002 to 2004, Mr. Bruno decided to award $500,000 in discretionary state grants to a company in which Mr. Abbruzzese was a major investor, Evident Technologies.

The F.B.I. is now investigating Mr. Bruno’s dealings with both McGinn Smith and Mr. Abbruzzese, people who have been briefed about the inquiry said.

Mr. Bruno has defended his use of state money to support Evident and other businesses, saying his only goal was to create jobs.

His aides have also shrugged off questions about his overlapping personal and public interests, saying that Mr. Bruno has been in business and politics so long that interaction with people in both spheres was unavoidable.

To old friends and supporters, some of whom have benefited from the millions in public money that Mr. Bruno has directed to projects over the years, the senator’s current predicament is heartbreaking.

Mr. Benson, who was once Mr. Bruno’s partner at Coradian, said he recently heard about the F.B.I. investigation while listening to the radio and immediately called Mr. Bruno.

“Joe called me back and left a message, saying he was O.K., that he had been re-elected majority leader and that everything was under control,” Mr. Benson said from his home in Wisconsin.

“But I have to say, he didn’t sound all that good.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/26/nyregion...mp;ref=nyregion

end quotes

FROM MY OWN PERSONAL EXPERIENCE WITH IT ....

"BIG JOE" BRUNO'S CORADIAN EQUIPMENT "SOLD" TO RENSSELAER COUNTY IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK ....

WAS JUNK ....

A PIECE OF CRAP ....

WHICH IS WHY THAT BID-NESS OF "BIG JOE'S" WENT BELLY-UP ....

AND IF THE NEW YORK TIMES WOULD CHECK ITS FACTS BETTER ....

IT WOULD FIND THAT IN 1988 ....

"BIG JOE" BRUNO HAD "HOOKED UP" WITH NEW YORK CITY MONEY ....

TO BUILD "WINDFIELD ESTATES" ON LAND OWNED BY "BIG JOE" IN BRUNSWICK, NEW YORK ....

A PROJECT THAT "BIG JOE" WAS ADVERTISING FOR SALE ....

DEPSITE HAVING NO HEALTH DEPARTMENT APPROVALS ....

AS IS REQUIRED BY NEW YORK STATE LAW ....

AND WHEN THE LOCAL HEALTH OFFICER CALLED "BIG JOE" OUT ON THAT ....

"BIG JOE" CRUSHED HIM LIKE A COORS BEER CAN ...

AND WHEN THE FBI CAME SNIFFING AROUND IN EARLY-1989 ....

ACCORDING TO MY SOURCES ....

WHICH INCLUDES THE FBI SPECIAL AGENT DOING THE INVESTIGATION ....

"BIG JOE" HAD THAT INVESTIGATION STOPPED SHORT ....

AND THE FBI SPECIAL AGENT GOT HIS *** "SCORCHED" FOR DIGGING INTO "BIG JOE'S" PERSONAL AFFAIRS ...

AND TODAY ....

THE ONLY "PRODUCT" ....

THAT THE "IRON DUKE" ....

"BIG JOE" BRUNO .....

HAS TO "SELL" ....

OR "MARKET" .....

IS HIS POWER ....

POWER THAT HE IS NOT AT ALL AFRAID TO WIELD ....

AS HAS BEEN PROVED TO US COMMON CITIZENS UP HERE ....

FIRST-HAND ....

WHICH IS WHY "BIG JOE" BRUNO ....

IS CALLED THE "IRON DUKE" ....

BECAUSE HE IS NOT AFRAID TO CRUSH PEOPLE ....

WITH HIS "FIST OF IRON" .....

A "FIST OF IRON" ....

THAT IS AVAILABLE ....

FOR YOUR USE ....

IF YOU HAVE THE COST OF ADMISSION ...

TO THE ONLY GAME IN TOWN ...

WHICH IS THE "IRON DUKE'S' GAME ...

And so ...

"Don't slam Spitzer, Cuomo for idealism"

Albany, New York Times Union

First published: Monday, February 26, 2007

Usually Fred LeBrun's column evokes some tangible agreement on whatever topic he is musing on at the time.

Not so this time.

I believe what Eliot Spitzer and Andrew Cuomo are really being taken to task for is being too passionate in their idealism.

What are their ideals?

Clean, honest and open government.

I, for one, would rather have a little too strong intensity in that department instead of the status quo.

DAVE R.

Saranac Lake

http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story...sdate=2/26/2007

"In state politics, there's no tiebreaker"

By BENNETT LIEBMAN

Albany, New York Times Union

First published: Monday, February 26, 2007

Much of the "inside the Northway" chatter the about the state Senate involves the potential for a Democratic takeover.

With a Democratic win in the Feb. 6 special election for a vacant Senate seat in Nassau County, the tally in the Senate now stands at 33 Republicans and 29 Democrats.

There is the widespread belief that if the Democratic leadership can somehow convince two Republicans to defect, then the Senate will effectively be in Democratic control.

The belief is that with a 31-31 tie, Lt. Gov. David Paterson, would cast all the decisive votes, much as the vice president can break ties in the U.S. Senate.

That belief is not totally valid.

The state constitution does provide that the lieutenant governor "shall be the president of the senate but shall have only a casting vote therein."

The notion of a casting vote is that the lieutenant governor would have the right to break ties.

It would probably not give the lieutenant governor the right to vote to force a tie.

Nonetheless, the Constitution in describing the manner in which a bill becomes a law provides the following:

"Nor shall any bill be passed or become a law, except by the assent of a majority of the members elected to each branch of the legislature."

This provision means a bill can be passed only when the majority of the members of each house vote for the bill.

The lieutenant governor is not a member of the state Senate.

With 62 members, the affirmative votes of 32 members are needed to pass a bill.

If a vote on a bill is 31-31, it does not pass, and the lieutenant governor is not authorized by the Constitution to vote on the bill.

These are not inadvertent or unknown provisions.

Charles Lincoln's authoritative history of the state Constitution notes that the lieutenant governor's casting vote must be read with the provision "which requires the assent of a majority of each branch of the legislature on the passage of a bill."

"It is obvious that the majority cannot be made up by the addition of the lieutenant governor's vote."

"He is not a member of the senate and legislative power is not vested in him, but in the senate and the assembly."

A similar observation was made by the Temporary State Commission on the Constitutional Convention, which was formed to help educate the State Constitutional Convention of 1967.

The commission advised that the lieutenant governor had enjoyed a casting vote in the Senate since the first State Constitution in 1777.

Nonetheless, "since Section 14 of Article III provides that no bill is to become law 'except by the assent of the members elected to each branch of the legislature,' the Lieutenant Governor's casting vote may only be exercised in matters of legislative procedure."

This, of course, does not mean the lieutenant governor is powerless in the event Senate is deadlocked.

If the number of Republican and Democratic legislators is equal, the lieutenant governor could break ties on matters such as confirmation of gubernatorial appointees, legislative rules, resolutions, adjournments, and the selection of Senate officers.

That would make the Senate Democrats the majority party, able to choose the majority leader, for example.

But on legislation, David Paterson is no Dick Cheney.

The state Constitution gives the lieutenant governor no say on legislation.

If the Senate is equally divided between Democrats and Republicans and senators vote strictly along party lines, no bills pass.

In the matter of New York state legislation, a tie is a tie, is a tie.

Bennett Liebman is coordinator of the Racing and Gaming Law Program at Albany Law School's Government Law Center.

The First Constitution, 1777.

The first Constitution of any free people possesses a peculiar interest; especially is this true when, as in the case of New York, the Constitution is the outgrowth and culmination of more than a century of struggle for popular liberty.

Our first Constitution also excites additional interest from the circumstances surrounding its preparation; for it was not framed, as most of the later state Constitutions were framed, to accomplish a peaceful transition from a territorial condition to statehood, and where the authors, with research and deliberation, worked out a plan of government based on the best models.

The framers of our first Constitution worked in the stress of war and revolution and without a model, except as they may possibly have derived assistance from Constitutions of other states, recently adopted, but under which there had been little, if any, actual experience.

Neither was it framed by experienced men of mature years, but by young men reared in luxury, and who had not enjoyed the opportunities of public service and acquaintance with details of public affairs.

John Jay, who is understood to have been the chief author of the Constitution, was only thirty years of age, Robert R. Livingston, one of his colleagues, was only twenty-nine, and Gouverneur Morris, the other, was only twenty-four, when they were appointed on the committee to frame a form of government; yet these wise young patriots exercised a controlling influence in preparing a Constitution which was the fundamental law of the state for forty-five years, and many of whose provisions have been continued without change in all subsequent Constitutions.

The first Constitution was framed, adopted, and put in operation by a congress, or convention, chosen by the people of the colony, and which, after three intermediate congresses, was the successor of the colonial legislature.

The last Colonial Assembly was chosen under writs of election issued January 14, 1769, and returnable February 14.

The assembly met for its first session April 4, 1769.

It continued in session at different times until April 3, 1775, when it was prorogued until May 3, 1775.

It was prorogued at different times afterwards until March 11, 1776, and then again till April 17, 1776, but it did not meet at that time, and never met after April 3, 1775.

Events developing the Revolution were crowding each other rapidly during this period, and, in the absence of an assembly authorized to exercise legislative powers and attend to the affairs of the colony, the people assumed control, and at first by committees, and later through elected congresses, gradually worked out a plan of local administration of the colony, culminating in constitutional government * * *

On the 1st of May, [1775, the] * * * Provisional War Committee * * * requested the people of the several counties of the colony to elect delegates to a Provincial Congress, to meet in New York on the 22d of May, 1775, "to deliberate upon, and from time to time to direct, such measures as may be expedient for our common safety."

This congress met at the time appointed at the Exchange in the city of New York.

It is known as the First Provincial Congress, and it became substantially the successor of the Colonial Assembly, which had met for the last time on the 3d of the preceding April.

This congress, on the 18th of October, ordered an election of delegates by ballot, to constitute a new Provincial Congress, to meet November 14, 1775.

The first congress adjourned on the 4th of November.

The second congress was organized on the 6th of December, and continued its sessions at different times until its final adjournment May 13, 1776.

In April, 1776, an election was held for delegates to constitute a new Provincial Congress, to meet on the 14th of May.

The Third Provincial Congress, owing to the failure of a sufficient number of members to attend, was not actually organized until May 22, 1776.

It continued in session until June 30, 1776.

These congresses had no constitutional sanction, but were expedients resorted to by the people in a great emergency.

The Colonial Assembly, which had existed as a component and essential part of colonial government for nearly a century, had been dissolved.

Government by the people, in the manner so positively asserted in the Charter of Liberties, had apparently ceased, and the rights of the people had reverted to the people themselves.

It should be noted as a significant fact, evincing the deepest patriotism and the most conservative self-poise, that in all this trying period, from the failure of real representative government in the old assembly to the institution of a regular form of government under the new state, there was no attempt by any committee or body of patriots to usurp the recognized rights of the people; but in all cases each delegation to the Continental Congress, and each Provincial Congress, was composed of men chosen, either directly by the people, or by representatives of the people elected for that specific purpose: and the government and administration of colonial affairs exercised by the several Provincial Congresses were strictly representative, and recognized to the fullest extent the right of popular self-government * * *

On the 31st of May the Third Provincial Congress, then sitting in New York, adopted the following preamble and resolutions:

"AND WHEREAS, Doubts have arisen whether this Congress are invested with sufficient power and authority to deliberate and determine on so important a subject as the necessity of erecting and constituting a new form of government and internal police, to the exclusion of all foreign jurisdiction, dominion, and control whatever:"

"AND WHEREAS, It appertains, of right, solely to the people of this colony to determine the said doubt: Therefore"

"Resolved, That it be recommended to the electors of the several counties in this colony, by election in the manner and form prescribed for the election of the present congress, either to authorize (in addition to the powers vested in this congress) their present deputies, or others in the stead of their present deputies, or either of them, to take into consideration the necessity and propriety of instituting such new government as in and by the said resolution of the Continental Congress is described and recommended."

"And if the majority of the counties by their deputies in Provincial Congress shall be of the opinion that such new government ought to be instituted and established, then to institute and establish such a government as they shall deem best calculated to secure the rights, liberties, and happiness of the good people of this colony, and to continue in force till a future peace with Great Britain shall render the same unnecessary."

And

"Resolved, That the said elections in the several counties ought to be on such a day, and at such place or places, as by the committee of each county respectively shall be determined."

"And it is recommended to the said committees to fix such early days for the elections as that all the deputies to be elected have sufficient time to repair to the city of New York by the second Monday in July next, on which day all the said deputies ought punctually to give their attendance."

"AND WHEREAS, The object of the foregoing resolutions is of the utmost importance to the good people of this colony:"

"Resolved, That it be, and it is, hereby earnestly recommended to the committees, freeholders, and other electors in the different counties of this colony, diligently to carry the same into execution."

"Ordered, That the foregoing resolutions be published in all public newspapers in this colony, and in handbills to be distributed in the counties."

http://www.courts.state.ny.us/history/elec...lincoln/pg9.htm

NY TIMES

February 26, 2007, 6:16 pm

"The Operative Word: ‘Was’"

By Nicholas Confessore

Joseph L. Bruno, the Republican majority leader, had some unkind words today for David Grandeau, the executive director of the soon-to-expire state lobbying commission and a onetime F.O.B. (Friend of Bruno).

Mr. Grandeau has been hoping for a position with the soon-to-be-created new ethics commission, which will replace, in part, the lobbying commission.

Mr. Bruno did not seem exactly in love with the idea.

Chatting with reporters this morning, Mr. Bruno was asked if Mr. Grandeau was still his man.

“‘Was’ is the operative word, in that I guess I gave him his first real job, back in the private sector, and helped him when he was city manager of Troy, and I guess recommended him for this position,” said Mr. Bruno.

“He has to make his own judgments on how he leads his life."

"And I’m afraid that some people, when they get into a powerful position, that power does things to their capacity and capability to make decisions that are just straightforward and not biased.”

Mr. Grandeau has been relatively active in rooting out violations of the state’s lobbying laws, and has tried to get closed some loopholes in said laws — actions that have not endeared him to the Legislature.

Or Mr. Bruno, it seems.

http://empirezone.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/0...ative-word-was/

NY TIMES

February 26, 2007, 3:52 pm

"A New Sheriff in Town"

By Michael Cooper

Albany, which has sometimes been said to have a whiff of the Wild West about it when it comes to issues of ethics, has a new Sheriff.

Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo just named Ellen Nachtigall Biben as a special deputy attorney general for public integrity, where she will be charged with overseeing “landmark initiatives to fight government corruption.’’

Ms. Biben, who prosecuted organized crime and public corruption cases in the Manhattan district attorney’s office, will have her work cut out for her.

The announcement says that her brief will “include a thorough review of approximately 6,000 legislative budget member items, a multi-layered legality review of any further proposed items, and “Project Sunlight,” a statewide Internet database where New Yorkers can examine links between elected officials, campaign donations, lobbyists, special interests, and/or state contracts.’’

2 comments so far...

1.February 26th, 2007 7:14 pm

With respect to young Andrew Cuomo’s alleged “landmark initiatives to fight government corruption” in the State of New York in 2007 …

I myself recall in 1986 his father, then-Governor Mario Cuomo, stating in a Governor’s Approval memorandum for ARTICLE 460 of the New York State Penal Law, which memorandum can be found in the New York State Legislative Annual -1986, at p.236, as follows:

“TEN YEARS AGO, a study by the Joint House-Senate Subcommittee on Investigations estimated the costs of white-collar crime at MORE THAN forty-four BILLION dollars”.

“The incidence of white-collar crime has not abated in the last decade; instead, it has spiraled ever-upward as economic crime has become increasingly profitable and sophisticated!”

“The effects of major economic crime can be devastating: THE WHOLE SOCIETY suffers as crimes against business become crimes against consumers.”

“GREEDY, WHITE-COLLAR PROFITEERS WILL NOT BE STOPPED until we adopt strong measures to stop them!”

And with respect to ARTICLE 460 of the New York State Penal Law, which is entitled ENTERPRISE CORRUPTION, that ARTICLE OF LAW being a part of TITLE X of the New York State Penal Law ….

Entitled ORGANIZED CRIME CONTROL ACT ….

The relevant part of that state law which pertains directly to this discussion in here ….

Is as follows:

S 460.00 Legislative findings.

The legislature (of the State of New York) finds and determines as follows:

Organized crime in New York state involves highly sophisticated, complex and widespread forms of criminal activity.

The diversified illegal conduct engaged in by organized crime, rooted in the illegal use of force, fraud, and corruption, constitutes a major drain upon the state’s economy, costs citizens and businesses of the state billions of dollars each year, and threatens the peace, security and general welfare of the people of the state.

Organized crime continues to expand its corrosive influence in the state through illegal enterprises engaged in such criminal endeavors as the theft and fencing of property, the importation and distribution of narcotics and other dangerous drugs, arson for profit, hijacking, labor racketeering, loansharking, extortion and bribery, the illegal disposal of hazardous wastes, syndicated gambling, trafficking in stolen securities, insurance and investment frauds, and other forms of economic and social exploitation.

The money and power derived by organized crime through its illegal enterprises and endeavors is increasingly being used to infiltrate and corrupt businesses, unions and other legitimate enterprises and to corrupt our democratic processes.

As to how this now-20-year-old law applies directly to CORRUPTION of OUR state government here in New York, a quick perusal of S 460.10 of the New York State Penal Law provides as follows in the “Definitions”:

The following definitions are applicable to this article.

2. “Enterprise” means either an enterprise as defined in subdivision one of section 175.00 of this chapter or criminal enterprise as defined in subdivision three of this section.

Going over to Section 175 of the New York State Penal Law, we have:

ARTICLE 175 OFFENSES INVOLVING FALSE WRITTEN STATEMENTS

S 175.00 Definitions of terms.

The following definitions are applicable to this article:

1. “Enterprise” means any entity of one or more persons, corporate or otherwise, public or private, engaged in business, commercial, professional, industrial, eleemosynary, social, political or governmental activity.

SO ….

IF an “enterprise” in the State of New York means “any entity” of one or more persons, engaged in “POLITICAL or GOVERNMENTAL ACTIVITY”, it would certainly appear that back in 1986, then-New York State Governor Mario Cuomo gave his son Andrew all the tools that Andrew Cuomo can now use to clean this corruption out of OUR government that was identified by the New York State Legislature way back in 1976 ……

Being Governor Cuomo’s son, surely young Andrew Cuomo must be aware of this legacy that his father left to the PEOPLE of the State of New York in the form of this law, and hopefully, young Andrew will have the gumption to overcome some 20 years of inertia here in the state by starting to finally enforce this law against those who are corrupting our government in New York State ….

One can hope, anyway …

— Posted by Livyjr

2.February 26th, 2007 7:42 pm

*** Calls for Investigation ***

Ms. Ellen Nachtigall Biben
Deputy Attorney General for Public Integrity
The Capitol
Albany, NY 12224-0341

Dear Ms. Biben,

We call upon the New York State Deputy Attorney General for Public Integrity to conduct an investigation into the use and miss-use of funds and various political favors benefiting the Westchester Independence Party and the Westchester Independence Club that is chaired and headed by Giulio Cavallo.

The place to start is with the Financial Disclosures of the Party and the Club filed at the Westchester County Board of Elections.

The Independence Club has amassed considerable amounts of money, with none going towards any candidate, and expenditures that appear to be suspect at best.

They do not support Independence candidates!

We have discovered many contributions from candidates from both democrats and republicans alike, but the most glaring and significant ones are the two (2) contributions in October 2004 from the New York State Republican Senate Committee totaling $42,000 to the Independence Club, not the Party.

We also found an expense that included $27,000.00 to North Fork Bank and it was marked “housekeeping”.

The disclosure is filled with American Express bills as well, and all of these expenditures need to be investigated.

This year GOP State Senator Serafin Maltise from Queens has added Giulio Cavallo to his payroll for an estimated $50,000 a year as a part-time consultant for medical and Italian issues.

This only bolsters the fact that the New York State Republican Committee is again attempting to acquire the Independence Party’s endorsement of Senator Nick Spano, a Republican.

How can he be a consultant for medical issues if he is not a licensed medical doctor, or is this a no-show job to curry political favor?

Mr. Cavallo for several years now has used his power and influence to negotiate deals for not only judicial candidates wishing to seek his party’s endorsement for Supreme and County Court other candidates in the county of Westchester.

Mr. Cavallo does this by frequently throwing lavish fundraisers, expecting all candidates, incumbents and otherwise, to not only buy one or two tickets, but at times tables as well.

All the funds raised by these fundraisers go to the Independence Club, not the party.

It is clear that Giulio Cavallo has been acting with dual roles in the Party and the Club.

He also calls himself a medical doctor.

We have contacted the NYS Dept of Education and confirmed that he is not licensed or registered as a medical doctor.

We will ask that the NYS Education Dept conduct an investigation as well.

Respectfully,

THE WESTCHESTER INTEGRITY COMMITTEE

http://empirezone.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/0...-town/#comments

NY TIMES

February 27, 2007, 10:43 am

"Workers Comp Deal Expected"

By Danny Hakim

Gov. Eliot Spitzer, legislative leaders and representatives from the business and labor community are holding a press conference at 1 p.m. and are expected to announce a deal to overhaul the workers compensation system.

This is an issue that Albany has tried to address before, but the governor made it an early priority of his administration.

Two days after the election, he met with Denis M. Hughes, the president of the New York State A.F.L.-C.I.O., and Kenneth Adams, the president of the Business Council of New York State, in a bid to foster dialogue on issues such as workers compensation.

While a recent study by the Fiscal Policy Institute, a liberal policy group, found that businesses were shortchanging the system by $500 million to $1 billion a year, the business community has argued that New York’s workers comp system is more expensive than other states.

6 comments so far...

1. February 27th, 2007 2:36 pm

We should probably expect some sort of cap on the length of continuing benefits to injured employees in exchange for a raise in the weekly loss of income benefits: higher weekly payments for a shorter durtation.

We should also expect a negative reaction from New York unions and organizations representing injured workers as well as a guarded reaction from pro business elements.

— Posted by John D. Grzedzicki

2. February 27th, 2007 3:29 pm

Oh!

— Posted by mark sharkey

3. February 27th, 2007 4:06 pm

it’s about time we get some reform in this arena.

too many people exploit and abuse this system.

There definitely need to be a time limit on the duration of payments made.

There should not be any payments for life and only for exceptional cases, such as incapacitation.

Too many people use this as a retirement but are able bodied and can work.

I am glad Spitzer has seen the deficiency and is addressing it.

There needs to be a serious overhaul which i’m afraid will go far beyond spitzers time.

— Posted by Nadine

4. February 27th, 2007 4:25 pm

How about eliminating WC completely and using the funds to pay for universal health insurance.

Loss of earnings can be administered through the unemployment system.

— Posted by Howard

5. February 27th, 2007 4:37 pm

Deal?

Deal?

What is this-three men in a room again?

I guess some deals are ok and others cry for reform.

Or perhaps the governor now understands the benefits of negotiation vs. confrontation.

— Posted by Capt Clean

6. February 27th, 2007 7:07 pm

On September 21, 2006, Eliot Spitzer met with the New York State Business Council at posh Bolton Landing on Lake George, and this is what he said that night to the members of the Business Council with regard to Worker’s Compensation in the State of New York, which incidentally is guaranteed by the BILL OF RIGHTS of OUR New York State Constitution, section 18 of Article I, and so cannot just be willy-nilly eliminated by popular whim:

“Ken, I look forward to working with you to make New York the best place to do business in the world.”

“Over the past six months, I have been laying out a comprehensive plan for economic revitalization.”

“But today, I want to speak about what I believe should be our first priority, and that is making New York companies more competitive by improving our business climate.”

“Now let me just cite some of the other areas in which New York State needs to become more competitive.”

“Workers’ compensation premiums in our state are the eighth highest in the nation, even as the maximum benefit to workers ranks 49th nationally as a percentage of average weekly income.”

“Well, I have a message for you: If I am elected Governor, on Day One of next year we are going to begin to implement an aggressive strategy to reduce the cost of doing business in New York and make New York the best place to do business in the world.”

“We will reform our workers’ compensation system to reduce the burden of high premiums while increasing benefits for most workers.”

“Second, we must break the political gridlock that is preventing reform of our broken and dysfunctional workers’ compensation system.”

“What was meant to be an insurance system that provided medical care and simple compensation to injured workers has become a morass that is seen by many workers as putting up unfair obstacles to receiving fair compensation for lost wages, and by many businesses as an increasingly burdensome cost that is forcing employers to leave the state.”

“The maximum benefit under workers’ comp has not been increased since 1994.”

“Both because it is the right thing to do and because it is necessary to build the coalition to achieve real reform, we will increase benefits to most injured workers.”

“But I want to be clear that the end result of our workers comp reforms must be to meaningfully reduce premiums.”

“In order to increase benefits for most injured workers while reducing premiums, our workers’ comp reforms must be bold and far reaching.”

“To really bring our workers’ comp costs in line with other states, we must confront the challenge of reforming our system of Permanent Partial Disability payments.”

“These payments make up less than 12 percent of claims, but they account for almost 75 percent of all costs.”

“All ideas, including caps on benefits for all but the most serious injuries, must be on the table as we bring our program into line with other states.”

“These changes should be accompanied by aggressive rehabilitation and retraining programs, so that workers can get back in the work force.”

“As Governor, I will immediately go to work to build the coalition we need to get this problem solved so that we can once and for all fix this enormous drag on the competitiveness of New York’s businesses.”

http://www.spitzerpaterson.com/main.cfm?ac...&s=spitzer3

That was on September 26, 2006, BEFORE Eliot Spitzer was elected Governor ….

Clearly, five months ago, Eliot Spitzer’s mind was already made up as to what he was going to do to appease the members of the New York State Business Council with respect to Worker’s Compensation ….

AND WHAT ELIOT SPITZER INTENDS ON BEHALF OF THE NEW YORK STATE BUSINESS COUNCIL WITH RESPECT TO REDUCING WORKER’S COMPENSATION BENEFITS FOR PERMANENTLY DISABLED WORKERS IS OF ABSOLUTELY NO BENEFIT WHATSOEVER TO THE EMPLOYEES WHO DO SUFFER PERMAMENT DISABILITIES AT THE HANDS OF THE MEMBERS OF THE NEW YORK STATE BUSINESS COUNCIL …

VICTIMS WHO ELIOT SPITZER INTENDS STRIP OF BENEFITS GUARANTEED BY THE BILL OF RIGHTS OF THE NEW YORK STATE CONSTITUTION WITHOUT THEM HAVING A VOICE IN THE MATTER ….

And then, curiously on Thursday, February 22, 2007, in an article entitled “Spitzer adds $18 million in funding to budget plan”, the Associated Press reported that “STEAMROLLER” Spitzer was adding $1 million to his budget to “coordinate research and talks to reform the worker’s compensation system” …..

Now that is indeed odd, adding this one million to the state budget on February 22nd of this year to “COORDINATE RESEARCH AND TALKS TO REFORM THE NEW YORK STATE WORKER’S COMPENSATION SYSTEM” when five months ago, Eliot Spitzer was making it quite clear to the New York State Business Council that his mind was already made up on what to do with Worker’s Compensation ….

Which would imply that by September 21, 2006, Eliot Spitzer had already done the necessary RESEARCH to substantiate his plan ….

SO?

Hhhhmmmm….

Where’s the cool million going then?

Into research on how many people are allegedly gaming the system?

In which case, it would seem that the system itself was CORRUPT, and there is where the real savings would come from, cleaning out the CORRUPTION from the Worker’s Compensation system itself, which is what Teddy Roosevelt would have done ….

But then, Teddy Roosevelt was not courting the favors of the New York State Business Council ….

And so …

— Posted by Livyjr

http://empirezone.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/0...ected/#comments

"Workers' compensation reform measure introduced"

By JAMES M. ODATO, Capitol bureau, Albany, New York Times Union

Last updated: 3:21 p.m., Tuesday, February 27, 2007

ALBANY -- Gov. Eliot Spitzer and legislative leaders joined labor and business lobbyists -- historically opposing voices in Albany -- to hail a new workers' compensation reform package that will increase benefits for injured employees and lower insurance rates for employers.

The "win/win'' for New Yorkers, as described by Assembly Minority Leader James Tedisco and Spitzer, will come at the expense of people who would normally qualify for permanent partial disability payments.

Such workers now get compensation checks virtually forever for such things as bad backs, neck pain or shoulder irritations.

The reform caps the period of time that partially disabled people can collect coverage checks.

"This is a vital first step to reducing costs to businesses in New York State,'' said Business Council of New York State President Kenneth Adams.

He said the Business Council, officials with the AFL-CIO, legislative staffs and Spitzer's aides have worked privately since Dec. 1 to put the deal together.

It should save employers up to 15 percent in rates with substantial savings starting this summer, according to Peter Pope, Spitzer's policy advisor.

Workers would get a new maximum weekly benefit of $500, up from $400, and a new minimum of $100, up from $40.

The reforms and increases are the first since 1996.

Maximums will continue rise over time to $550 in the second year and $600 in the third year, eventually reaching two-thirds of the average weekly wage in New York, about $700.

After that, the benefit will rise with the cost of living.

The reform also includes anti-fraud measures that are expected to save $100 million a year by forcing more employers to pay into the system and prosecuting fraudulent claims.

Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver said the legislation for the package will pass soon.

And of course .....

That ONE MILLION DOLLARS ....

Is going into someone's pocket ....

TO SEAL THIS DEAL .....

I.e. "Gov. Eliot Spitzer and legislative leaders joined labor and business lobbyists ...."

Which benefits the NEW YORK STATE BUSINESS COUNCIL AND MILLIONAIRE ELIOT SPITZER ...

At the expense of New York State's working class ...

AND THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK WHO ARE THEMSELVES WITHOUT LOBBYISTS ....

TO BUY UP SOME LEGISLATORS FOR THEM ....

AND HENCE ....

HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO REPRESENTATION AT ALL IN OUR GOVERNMENT UP HERE ....

WHERE THE NEW YORK STATE LEGISLATURE IS FOR SALE TO THE HIGHEST BIDDERS ....

AND EVERYONE ELSE GETS TO SIT BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD, POUNDING SAND ......

AND THAT IS THE WAY THINGS HAVE BEEN IN THIS STATE FOR FAR TOO LONG NOW ...

WHICH IS WHY PEOPLE ARE LEAVING ....

AND THIS THREAD IS NOW RUNNING .....

And so ....

Tuning in on the latest ...

AS TO WHERE THAT MILLION DOLLARS MAY HAVE GONE ....

WE HAVE ....

SOME SMILING FACES ....

And so ...

"Spring Thaw?"

February 27, 2007 at 2:17 pm by Elizabeth Benjamin

Legislative leaders and Gov. Eliot Spitzer were full of praise for each other at this afternoon’s Red Room press conference to announce reform of the workers compensation system - a priority of Spitzer’s on which he began working the day after he was elected.

The deal ends lifetime permanent partial disability benefits for injured workers, which accounts for nearly half the cost of the system but is generated by a very small percentage of claims.

It also as much as doubles benefits to workers in some cases while reducing premiums for employers.

Former Gov. George Pataki tried for years to get a deal on workers comp, but to no avail.

Business leaders complained New York had the highest premiums of any state, which they said was prohibitive to setting up shop here, while labor leaders complained about the nation’s lowest benefits for workers hurt on the job.

Spitzer tapped Ken Adams of the state Business Council and Denis Hughes of the state AFL-CIO to join the negotiations over this seemingly intractable issue, leading to a process in which, according to Adams, “facts and data trumped” ideology and partisanship.

“This is functional Albany,” Adams said.

“This is effective government.”

Spitzer praised the labor and business communities as well as the Legislature for their “remarkabe level of cooperation.”

“My hope is that this will set an example for the resolution of other issues that have languished in Albany for far too long,” the governor said.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, D-Manhattan, who hasn’t exactly been seeing eye-to-eye with Spitzer recently, said the “key piece” missing from past negotiations was “leadership.

He credited Spitzer for bringing that to the table.

Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, R-Brunswick, whose conference is under political siege by Spitzer and his Democratic allies, thanked the governor for “helping to bring this together,” and said he has “done a tremendous service to this state.”

Bruno then delivered a mini-stemwinder, saying that the agreement had come because all sides “worked diligently.”

“Not by drawing a line in the sand, not by threatening, but by negotiating in good faith, and compromising,” Bruno continued.

“The process works."

"Balance works."

"Checks and balances work, and when people negotiate in good faith and understand that it can’t all be one way, and you compromise…”

At this point, Spitzer, who was laughing, broke in, saying:

“This is my room, don’t forget that.”

Bruno responded by jokingly putting his fingers in his ears, and said:

“I look forward to working with the governor, the speaker, my colleagues, with this same togetherness, congeniality, to get us an on-time budget with all the adjustments that have to be made.”

Asked later whether all this joviality and complimentary talk was a sign that he no longer has qualms about working with legislative leaders, Spitzer replied that he planned to continue to articulate his views “with clarity on every issue,” adding:

“Let me say this, as I said throughout, from the very first moment, whether Jan. 1 or any date thereafter, the people’s business will get done …"

"We will get it done.”

http://blogs.timesunion.com/capitol/

end quotes

EXCEPT .....

THAT WAS NOT THE "PEOPLE'S BUSINESS" THAT JUST GOT DONE HERE ....

THAT WAS A BUSINESS DEAL ....

OF, BY, AND FOR A SPECIAL INTEREST GROUP .....

BY ELIOT SPITZER, JOE BRUNO, JAMES TEDISCO AND SHELDON SILVERS ....

ON BEHALF OF THE NEW YORK STATE BUSINESS COUNCIL ....

WHICH DOES NOT REPRESENT THE "PEOPLE" OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK ....

IN ANY WAY, SHAPE OR MANNER ....

WHICH AGAIN RAISES THE QUESTION OF WHERE THAT ONE MILLION DOLLARS THAT ELIOT SPITZER PUT INTO A SUPPLEMENTAL BUDGET IS REALLY GOING ....

INTO WHOSE POCKETS WILL IT LAND?

AND WHAT WILL IT BUY FOR ELIOT SPITZER WHEN IT DOES ....

WHICH ARE QUESTIONS THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA NEVER ADDRESSES ....

OR EVEN QUESTIONS ...

NOTWITHSTANDING THAT IT WAS THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA THAT INTRODUCED THE ISSUE IN THE FIRST PLACE ...

BY REPORTING ON THE MYSTERIOUS MILLION DOLLARS GOING INTO THE STATE BUDGET ...

FOR A "DEAL" THAT WAS ALREADY DONE ....

AGAIN ACCORDING TO THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA .....

And so ...

And there really is not a lot of mystery there, either ....

As to what BENEFIT Eliot Spitzer is getting ....

BY KOWTOWING AND BOWING AND SCRAPING TO THE POWERFUL NEW YORK STATE BUSINESS COUNCIL ....

FOR WHOM "THE STEAMROLLER" JUST DID A BIG FAVOR ....

And so ....

IT'S NOT ABOUT "THE PEOPLE" ....

OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK ....

IT'S ABOUT ELIOT SPITZER ....

AND HIS AMBITIONS ....

PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK, BE DAMNED ....

And so .....

"The Spitzer Primary"

The Spitzer for President chatter, which I touched on here, gets a bit of new life at the tail end of this article in the Sun about why the governor is undecided about moving up New York's presidential primaries.

Mr. Spitzer could be waiting for other large states to make their move before he proceeds.

By keeping his options open, he also preserves a bargaining chip that could come in handy in his dealings with the national Democratic Party.

Mr. Spitzer, who is widely believed to harbor presidential ambitions, also must be considering the impact an earlier date would have on his own chances in six or 10 years.

"It's not just about Hillary," said a Democratic political consultant, Hank Sheinkopf, who was an adviser to President Clinton's 1996 re-election campaign and also worked for Mr. Spitzer's first successful bid for attorney general in 1998.

"To presume that's how he's thinking about it is wrong."

"He's thinking about it in a larger context."

-- Azi Paybarah

http://thepoliticker.observer.com/2007/02/...er-primary.html

THE NEW YORK DISABILITY LAW BLOG

"Insight on Spitzer's New York Workers' Compensation Reform Agreement"

Posted on February 27, 2007 by Troy Rosasco

Over the past few months, you may have noticed a precipitous drop in the number of posts to the New York Disability Lawyer Blog.

However, as Co-Chair of the New York Workers' Compensation Alliance, I've been doing the Albany shuffle along with some of my dedicated colleagues in an attempt to protect injured workers from any disastrous workers' comp reform.

Well - we're in the ninth inning now given Governor Spitzer's press conference today announcing a workers' compensation reform agreement between all the major players at the bargaining table.

It's been a long but hopefully worthwhile fight.

Give New York Governor Eliot Spitzer credit - he played his cards in the workers' compensation reform deal brilliantly and in the process has undone one of the pillars of the original law that was on the books for nearly 100 years - the permanent partial disability pension.

That's not to say that this pillar was not crumbling of it's own weight and didn't need some reforming.

After all, it had been around since the assassination of Prince Archduke Francis Ferdinand!

But like a historic neighborhood that is indelibly disturbed by the need for a three lane highway, it was rather sad to watch, especially for those of us who are a bit nostalgic when it comes to labor history.

The price of progress!

So, who are the winners and losers in the new reform deal?

Aside from the obvious political winners - Governor Spitzer, Assembly Speaker Silver and Senate Majority Leader Bruno - who all seemed to be playing nicely in the rose garden, the winners are as follows:

Injured workers earning over $600 per week, who will now see an immediate potential benefit increase;

Injured workers who will have greater access to real job retraining and rehabilitation;

Injured workers whose authorization for appropriate medical care will be sped up;

Injured workers whose claims will be resolved quicker due to the implementation of the new "Rocket Docket" proposed by the Workers' Compensation Alliance;

Employers who should see a 10-15% decrease in workers' comp premiums;

Honest employers who will no longer subsidize cheating employers due to new criminal employer fraud penalties;

Doctors who often waited months for authorization for much needed surgeries for their patients.

Now, as in any hard fought compromise, the inevitable losers:

Injured workers with permanent partial disabilities who cannot be rehabilitated for other work (i.e. the 58 year old carpenter with no high school degree, among others);

Injured workers earning less than $600 per week;

Dishonest employers who will now face felony criminal charges;

The New York Compensation Rating Board, which will be abolished;

The "Second Injury Fund", which will be phased out of existence;

Any others that we discover once the actual written bill details are released.

Teddy Roosevelt - excuse me... Eliot Spitzer! - chocks up one more win on the scorched earth reform path.

http://www.disabledworkerlaw.com/2007/02/a...form-agreement/

"Deal reforms 'broken' workers' comp system - Spitzer, Legislature unveil changes to boost benefits, cut costs for businesses"

By JAMES M. ODATO, Capitol bureau, Albany, New York Times Union

First published: Wednesday, February 28, 2007

ALBANY -- Gov. Eliot Spitzer and legislative leaders Tuesday joined labor and business lobbyists -- historically opposing voices in Albany -- to hail a new workers' compensation reform plan that will increase benefits for injured employees and lower insurance rates for employers.

The "win/win" for New Yorkers, as described by Assembly Minority Leader James Tedisco and Spitzer, will come at the expense of people who would normally qualify for payments for their "permanent partial disability."

Such workers now get compensation checks virtually forever for such things as bad backs, neck pain or shoulder irritations.

The reform caps the period of time that partially disabled people will be able to collect coverage checks.

Spitzer said the law will be applied prospectively to allow current recipients to continue receiving compensation.

Further, partially disabled people will continue to receive lifetime medical services and get training to help them return to work.

The state could also intervene to be reclassify such people as hardship cases.

"This is a vital first step to reducing costs to businesses in New York state," said Business Council of New York State President Kenneth Adams.

He said the savings could be enormous, particularly by reducing the years of benefits to partially disabled people.

They make up 11 percent of the 76,000 annual workers' compensation cases each year, but represent 75 percent of the costs to the system, said Elliott Shaw, the Business Council's government affairs director.

Adams said the Business Council, officials with the AFL-CIO, legislative staffs and Spitzer's aides worked privately since Dec. 1 to put the deal together.

It should save employers up to 15 percent in rates, with substantial savings starting this summer, according to Peter Pope, Spitzer's policy director.

Workers would get a new maximum weekly benefit of $500, up from $400, and a new minimum of $100, up from $40.

The reforms are the first since 1996, while the benefit increases are the first since 1992.

"The last increase I got was 1992 when my payment went from $180 in 1991 to $215 in 1992 and it's been at that since," said Frederick Curtis, 62, a former New York City correction officer.

Spitzer said the weekly benefit for injured workers will increase significantly, although the formula for each class of worker will be spelled out in legislation.

"That's very, very positive."

"It's what I'm looking for so much."

"That's fantastic," said Curtis.

He said he suffers from post traumatic stress disorder stemming from an assault at Rikers Island in 1978 by an inmate.

He said he moved to Norfolk, Va., because it's more affordable on his fixed income.

Maximum payments will continue to rise over time -- to $550 in the second year and $600 in the third year.

In year four, two-thirds of the average weekly wage in New York will be the maximum.

That equates to about $700 currently.

After that, the benefit will rise with the cost of living.

Legislative leaders and AFL-CIO officials said the deal will improve New York's business climate while helping those who get hurt on the job.

Tedisco, R-Schenectady, said he was so impressed with the reform deal that he characterized Spitzer's first two months of office as an amazing success.

"Gov. Spitzer deserves a lot of credit for bringing together disparate groups and leaders to agree on a truly significant ... reform," he said.

Bruno, R-Brunswick, said the achievement this "reform" illustrates what can happen if the governor is willing to partner and compromise with the Legislature.

"This agreement is about jobs ..."

"More jobs, more opportunities," said Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, D-Manhattan.

The reform also includes anti-fraud measures that are expected to save $100 million a year by forcing more employers to pay into the system and prosecuting fraudulent claims.

Bruno and Silver said the legislation for the package will pass soon.

The last reform, banged out by Gov. George Pataki more than a decade ago, could not be followed up by the Republican governor despite great demand by employers.

"This is a demonstration of functional Albany," said Adams.

The legislation includes new programs to get workers prompt medical treatment to prepare them to return to work and measures to allow the state to shut down and penalize employers who lack workers' compensation insurance.

The state insurance superintendent will be required to make sure insurers pass on savings and reduce premiums, starting in July.

Spitzer is also directing Insurance Superintendent Eric Dinallo to improve data collection, design a smoother hearing process to cut down on lawsuits and hasten treatment for injured workers, and create better medical guidelines and law judge training.

"This agreement not only addresses some of the most pressing needs and concerns of injured workers, but immeasurably improves a system long believed to be broken beyond repair," said Denis Hughes, president of the AFL-CIO.

James M. Odato can be reached at 454-5083 or by e-mail at jodato@timesunion.com.

end quotes

IT IS INDEED INTERESTING ....

THAT NO QUESTIONS ARE BEING RAISED ....

ABOUT THE "EMPLOYMENT PRACTICES" IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK ....

THAT ARE CAUSING PEOPLE TO BE PERMANENTLY DISABLED AS A RESULT .....

TO MAKE NEW YORK STATE THE "BEST PLACE TO DO BUSINESS IN ALL THE WORLD" ....

NEW YORK STATE GOVERNOR ELIOT SPITZER AND THE NEW YORK STATE BUSINESS COUNCIL .....

HAVE SUCH MODELS TO DRAW UPON ....

FOR "WORKER'S RIGHTS" ....

AS MEXICO ....

SAIPAN IN THE MARIANAS ISLANDS ....

SRI LANKA ....

MYNMAR ....

INDONESIA ....

CHINA ....

All of whom Spitzer intends to match ....

When it comes to BID-NESS interests in the State of New York ....

WHERE THE COMMON PEOPLE HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO VOICE AT ALL ....

SINCE THEY CANNOT AFFORD TO BUY ONE ....

AS THE NEW YORK STATE BUSINESS COUNCIL MEMBERS CAN ....

WHICH IS HOW IT SHOULD BE ....

ACCORDING TO "STEAMROLLER" SPITZER ....

AND THE NEW YORK STATE BUSINESS COUNCIL ....

TO WHOM THE "STEAMROLLER" BOWS AND SCRAPES ....

BECAUSE HE NEEDS THEM LATER ON ...

WHEN HE MAKES HIS BID FOR PRESIDENT OF AMERICA ....

AND GOD HELP US COMMON FOLKS HERE IN OUR AMERICA THEN ...

And so ....

When we up-state folks hear New York State Governor Eliot Spitzer talk about .....

"Reform of our broken and dysfunctional workers’ compensation system ...."

Or when we hear Denis Hughes, president of the AFL-CIO .....

Talk about ....

"A system long believed to be broken beyond repair ...."

Our attention is immediately drawn ....

To a thick file in the public records up here in Joe Bruno's personal fiefdom of Rensselaer County in the State of New York ....

A thick file of public records in the Matter of Rensselaer County Associate Public Health Engineer v. Rensselaer County Department of Health in Worker's Compensation Court right here in the State of New York ....

A case which the Rensselaer County Associate Public Health Engineer won .....

By stipulation ....

For permanent partial disability .....

After the New York State Worker's Compensation Review Board in New York City ruled in his favor on August 14, 1991 ....

Based upon the BEDROCK LAW in the State of New York that:

"The combination of a GENERALLY OPPRESSIVE WORK ENVIRONMENT and a specific triggering event causing psychiatric disability HAS LONG BEEN RECOGNIZED AS A SUFFICIENT BASIS FOR A FINDING OF ACCIDENT UNDER THE (NEW YORK STATE) WORKER'S COMPENSATION LAW ....."

The permanent partial disability in question stemming directly from an assault on the Rensselaer County Associate Public Health Engineer by a back-hoe operator in the Town of Sand Lake in Rensselaer County on 07/29/88 .....

That almost decapitated the Rensselaer County Associate Public Health Engineer ....

And resulted in a rapid decline in his health that has caused him to never work again in the capacity of an associate public health engineer in the State of New York ....

For which permanently-disabling injuries suffered at the hands of the County of Rensselaer, which is Joe Bruno's COUNTY, the Rensselaer County Associate Public Health Engineer was finally awarded Worker's Compensation benefits of $150 per week in or about 1991, after being out of work without an income due to this rapid decline in health after October 12, 1988 .....

A period of some three years ....

Without any income ....

Because of an assault .....

On his person, as the local health officer in Rensselaer County, enforcing the provisions of the New York State Public Health Law ....

And as there is one document in that file in particular which speaks directly to what New York State Gover Eliot Spitzer is referring to when he calls the New York State Worker's Compensation Court system "broken and dysfunctional" ...

I find it instructive at this point in this discussion to quote directly from that letter .....

ESPECIALLY AS ANY RESEARCH ....

That New York State Governor Eliot Spitzer, or Joe Bruno, or James Tedisco or Sheldon Silver or Ken Adams of the New York State Business Council or Denis Hughes, president of the AFL-CIO .....

Might have done ...

Into the question of HOW the New York State Worker's Compensation court system is DYSFUNCTIONAL ....

Would have had to consider the points raised in this very document ....

WHICH IS AN OFFICIAL RECORD OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK ....

AND WHEN YOU ARE READING THIS LETTER ....

KEEP IN MIND THE FACT ....

BEYOND THE FACT THAT THE AUTHOR OF THIS LETTER WAS SUCCESSFUL IN PROSECUTING THIS CASE ....

OF PERMANENT DISABILITY DUE OF A CAMPAIGN OF PSYCHOLOGICAL HARASSMENT AGAINST HIM ....

BY THE COUNTY OF RENSSELAER ....

THAT RESULTED IN THE BACK-HOE ASSAULT ....

THAT IT IS THIS "CLASS OF PERSON" .....

THAT ELIOT SPITZER AND JOE BRUNO AND JAMES TEDISCO AND SHELDON SILVER AND KEN ADAMS AND DENIS HUGHES ....

HAVE CUT OUT OF HAVING ANY ELIGIBILITY FOR WORKER'S COMPENSATION BENEFITS ....

IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK ...

UNDER ELIOT SPITZER'S NEW SCHEME OF THINGS ...

And so ....

Without further ado ....

Worker's Compensation Board
180 Livingston Street
Brooklyn, New York 11248

ATTN: REVIEW BOARD

RE: Rebuttal of Carrier's Correspondence; April 2, 1991
Rensselaer County Associate Public Health Engineer V. Rensselaer County Health Department

Gentlemen:

I am the CLAIMANT in the above-captioned Worker's Compensation case.

Please accept this letter as the CLAIMANT'S response to the carrier's (Lawyers for the insurance carrier for the Rensselaer County Department of Health) letter of April 2, 1991 CONCLUDING THE THE ABOVE-CAPTIONED WORKER'S COMPENSATION CASE SHOULD REMAIN CLOSED.

THE CARRIER'S CONCLUSION THAT THE CASE SHOULD REMAIN CLOSED IS MADE IN ERROR, AND IN LIGHT OF THE FACTS IN THE RECORD IN THE INSTANT MATTER, THE CONCLUSION IS UNFOUNDED.

As the carrier notes, there were in fact several hearings scheduled in the matter.

However, while the hearing dates were set, a REVIEW OF THE RECORD will reveal that on three separate occasions, there was no actual opportunity for a hearing afforded to myself.

Further, the carrier is in error in stating that THREE SEPARATE ADMINISTRATIVE LAW JUDGES were of the opinion that no evidence had been proffered to allow the case to go forward.

At the initial hearing on or about April 4, 1990, I appeared pro se before Administrative Law Judge Mary Elizabeth Dunne.

At that time, Judge Dunne advised me that the initial paperwork filed in support of my claim would need to be buttressed with additional medical evidence to establish a prima facie case PURSUANT TO WORKER'S COMPENSATION LAW.

At the second hearing on or about May 20, 1990 I was still acting pro se.

At that time, I presented Judge Dunne with a letter from Dr. Lawrence Kolb.

CONTRARY TO THE CARRIER'S ASSERTIONS, AND DESPITE THEIR QUITE VOCIFEROUS AND VOCAL OBJECTIONS, JUDGE DUNNE RULED THAT THE LETTER FROM DR. KOLB, WHEN TAKEN TOGETHER WITH THE OCTOBER 12, 1988 MEMORANDUM FROM RENSSELAER COUNTY PUBLIC HEALTH DIRECTOR KENNETH VAN PRAAG TO RENSSELAER COUNTY EXECUTIVE JOHN L. BUONO REFERENCING MR. VAN PRAAG'S CONCERNS FOR MY HEALTH, AND THE OCTOBER 13, 1988 LETTER FROM MR. VAN PRAAG TO NEW YORK STATE REGIONAL PUBLIC HEALTH DIRECTOR DR. IAN LOUDON REFERENCING THE FACT THAT MR. VAN PRAAG HAD AFFORDED ME A LEAVE FOR HEALTH REASONS DID IN FACT CONSTITUTE PRIMA FACIE EVIDENCE PURSUANT TO PROVISIONS OF THE WORKER'S COMPENSATION LAW; AND JUDGE DUNNE RULED FURTHER THAT IT WAS A CASE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL HARASSMENT.

AFTER JUDGE DUNNE MADE THOSE DECISIONS, SHE WAS REMOVED FROM MY CASE FOR REASONS THAT WERE NEVER MADE CLEAR TO ME.

THE CASE WAS THEN ALLEGEDLY TRANSFERRED TO ADMINISTRATIVE LAW JUDGE KIRIN MOLLOY.

On or about July 9, 1990, I was scheduled to appear before Judge Molloy to begin giving my testimony.

WHAT TOOK PLACE INSTEAD WAS A NEGOTIATING SESSION BETWEEN THE CARRIER AND THE JUDGE WHEREIN IT WAS AGREED THAT MY CASE WOULD BE DISMISSED.

At that point, I interjected and requested an opportunity to speak to the issue.

I pointed out to Judge Molloy that pursuant to Public Health Law section 10, the October 13, 1988 letter from Rensselaer County Director of Public Health Kenneth Van Praag to New York State Regional Public Health Director Dr. Ian Loudon was PRESUMPTIVE EVIDENCE of what was contained therein in ALL courts and places.

I pointed out further to Judge Molloy that the October 12, 1988 communication from Mr. Van Praag to Rensselaer County Executive John L. Buono WAS AN OFFICIAL PUBLIC RECORD, and would also be PRESUMPTIVE EVIDENCE given the provisions of CPLR 4520.

I REQUESTED OF JUDGE MOLLOY AN EXPLANATION AS TO HOW HE COULD SIMPLY DISMISS OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT RECORDS WHEN THOSE RECORDS BECAME INCONVENIENT, SUCH AS IN CASES LIKE MINE.

AT THAT POINT, JUDGE MOLLOY LITERALLY THREW HIS HANDS IN THE AIR, AND DISMISSED HIMSELF ON THE SPOT, STATING THAT HE WAS INVOLVED IN POLITICS IN RENSSELAER COUNTY AND DID NOT WANT TO GET INVOLVED.

THE CARRIER'S CONTENTION THAT JUDGE MOLLOY RULED AGAINST MY CLAIM IS SIMPLY NOT TRUE.

Subsequent to the recusal of Judge Molloy, the matter was transferred to Judge Meader.

A hearing was scheduled for August 13, 1990.

The hearing notice furnished to myself clearly noted the purpose of the hearing as "FURTHER DEVELOPMENT OF THE RECORD."

On August 12, 1990 I received a telephone call from the Worker's Compensation Bureau in Menands requesting me to come into a conference with Judge Meader on that day, as opposed to August 13, 1990.

I arranged transportation down to Menands and was informed upon arriving by Judge Meader himself that due to some unfortunate error, I wasn't able to be afforded an opportunity to testify as originally scheduled, and I would have to wait for another opportunity.

The next scheduled date for me to testify wasn't until October 5, 1990.

I arrived early for my 10:30 A.M. appointment AND I SAT IN THE FOYER UNTIL APPROXIMATELY 12:20 P.M., at which time Judge Meader apologized profusely to me about scheduling errors, and such things, and again I was informed that I would have to wait for another appointment.

The next appointment was scheduled for December 13, 1990.

The purpose of the hearing as listed on the EC-16 form that I received in the mail is clearly indicated as "TESTIMONY OF CLAIMANT".

WHEN I ARRIVED AT THE SCHEDULED TIME, IMMEDIATELY JUDGE MEADER ATTEMPTED TO CANCEL THE HEARING, AND HAVE IT RESCHEDULED FOR ANOTHER LATER DATE.

At that time, my attorney, Mr. Brendan Quinn, strenuously objected on the record, stating that the hearing was scheduled, and I was, and had been for some time, fully prepared to testify as to the facts in the case.

THE CARRIER THEN LOUDLY BEGAN TO PROTEST ABOUT THE INJUSTICES THAT WOULD COME ABOUT AS A RESULT OF MY TESTIMONY, AND REMAINED INSISTENT THAT JUDGE MEADER MUST AT ALL COSTS NOT ALLOW ME TO TESTIFY.

AT THAT POINT IN THE PROCEEDING, JUDGE MEADER THREW HIS HANDS IN THE AIR, CRYING "YOU LEAVE ME NO CHOICE", AND WITH THAT, HE DISMISSED MY CASE.

FOR THESE REASONS, THIS CASE SHOULD BE RE-OPENED.

CONCLUSION

THIS CASE SHOULD BE RE-OPENED ON A FINDING OF PRIMA FACIE MEDICAL EVIDENCE.

Respectfully submitted,

"State perk called illegal - Cuomo says health insurance giveaway by two housing agencies shows need for reform"

By JAMES M. ODATO, Capitol bureau, Albany, New York Times Union

First published: Thursday, March 1, 2007

ALBANY -- Two public agencies have been illegally paying for health care benefits of directors who are supposed to serve the state without compensation, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said Wednesday.

In a legal opinion that could have wide ramifications, the first-term Democrat said in a 10-page letter that the agencies have no legal right to pick up the premiums for board members and that the deals are null and void.

He determined that contracts entered into by the State of New York Mortgage Agency and the New York State Housing Finance Agency violated civil service law.

Cuomo said the boards went beyond their authority in reimbursing retired board members for personal and family insurance policies and paying premiums for current board members.

Although the opinion is specific to the two housing agencies, it could also affect other public authorities that are paying for members' health insurance.

At least one other, the Power Authority of the State of New York, is believed to be paying premiums for board members, said a state official who did not want to be identified.

A spokesman for the Power Authority did not return a call.

Cuomo's aides said he would have to examine each agency's enacting legislation to be sure that any such deals are also illegal but added that all were created under similar terms.

His aides said he is reviewing the practices of all public authorities and views the new ruling as a springboard for a statewide application of the opinion.

Cuomo's review arose after the Times Union reported in January that the two housing agencies' board members voted to provide themselves lifetime health insurance.

The vote, first taken in 2005 and reaffirmed in 2006, followed a practice the boards embraced in 1998 of providing current board members life insurance coverage.

The two authorities, Cuomo said, not only broke the law, but misinterpreted a law against compensating board members.

"New Yorkers are demanding reform, integrity and accountability from government agencies across the board," Cuomo said.

"This is another example of why we need to bring openness and accountability to public authorities."

The letter went to Justin E. Driscoll, the counsel for the two public authorities.

Driscoll advised the boards it was appropriate to have their insurance premiums picked up by the state agencies.

He did not return a call.

His new boss, Priscilla Almodovar, who was appointed by Gov. Eliot Spitzer to run the agencies charged with providing housing for low- and moderate-income New Yorkers, said she sought the ruling from Cuomo and is pleased at his prompt response.

"The practice will now end," she said.

"All the other authorities are on notice."

Former Sen. Howard Nolan, one of the SONYMA directors who voted for the lifetime health insurance, said the votes came after lawyers for former Gov. George Pataki and the housing agency provided guidance.

"Our counsel and the previous governor's counsel said it was legal," Nolan said.

"It was a situation where Gov. Pataki essentially cleared this."

Almodovar did not know exactly how many members have been getting health insurance or the cost to the agencies.

She said she thought it was three retirees and three current members.

The retirees' premiums came due in February and she put a stop to their payment beforehand, she said.

Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, D-Westchester County, chairman of his chamber's oversight committee on public authorities, said he is looking at several local authorities "which may have run afoul of related legal restrictions."

"We are doing a review of all the authorities," he said.

M. Odato can be reached at 454-5083 or by e-mail at jodato@timesunion.com.

end quotes

It would not be surprising if George Pataki allowed a state agency to violate state law .....

It would not be surprising at all ...

Because that is the essence of politics up here ....

One hand ....

In this case Pataki ....

Washing another ....

Those members of these boards who will not serve ...

Without the "TOUCH OF THE HAT" ....

Politics is about being owed favors, after all ...

A lot like it was in kindergarten ....

For the rest of us ....

Who grew up .....

When we got out of high school ....

Unlike the politicians ....

Who keep kindergarten there with them, forever ....

And so ...

NY TIMES

"Spitzer Cuts Budget Request by Panel That Polices Judges"

By WILLIAM GLABERSON

Published: February 28, 2007

There is growing agreement in Albany that New York State’s town and village courts are in need of help after decades of neglect, meager financing and inadequate training of the justices, many of whom do not even have a high-school diploma.

There also is widespread agreement that one bright spot has been the State Commission on Judicial Conduct.

Despite years of budget cuts, the commission has provided the only meaningful oversight for the state’s 2,000 town and village justices, disciplining or removing them when they ignore the law or violate people’s rights.

So some state officials were startled to discover that Gov. Eliot Spitzer, in his first budget proposal, had rejected a commission request for a substantial increase in financing.

“They need more attorneys, and they need more investigators,” said Helene E. Weinstein, the Brooklyn Democrat who is chairwoman of the Assembly’s Judiciary Committee.

Her Republican counterpart on the State Senate Judiciary Committee, John A. DeFrancisco of Syracuse, said he had proposed that the Legislature provide a big increase in the commission’s budget.

The judicial conduct commission, which investigates complaints against all state judges, handles twice as many cases as it did when it was created in 1978.

Yet its current staff of 28 is fewer than half the 63 it had at the start.

Last year, the agency’s eight lawyers handled 1,500 complaints across the state.

Rejecting the commission’s request for a $2.2 million increase in its $2.8 million annual budget, Governor Spitzer’s proposal would add just $22,000 for the next fiscal year.

The commission says that is not enough to cover rising rent and other costs.

“We’ve initiated a dialogue with them to determine their funding needs,” said Jennifer Givner, a spokeswoman for the governor, though she acknowledged that the time allotted for the governor to alter his proposal ended last week.

The Legislature could grant the judicial conduct commission’s request, though it could get lost among multibillion-dollar battles over issues like health care and education financing.

In most years, the commission has not fared well with the Legislature, in part because there is no strong lobby for increasing the policing of the state’s judges.

But even the State Magistrates Association, made up of town and village justices, has said the state may need to examine whether the commission has enough financing.

“The commission is the check and balance,” said Edward G. Van Der Water, a justice in Van Buren, N.Y., who is a vice president of the association.

Concern over town and village courts, or justice courts, has mounted in the past year as news articles and state investigations have turned up evidence of ill-trained justices and ill-equipped courts.

The state’s chief judge, Judith S. Kaye, has asked the Legislature for $50 million over the next five years to upgrade the courts, and a commission she appointed is studying the system.

The Commission on Judicial Conduct says that its backlog of disciplinary cases is growing and that it is having difficulty investigating all the complaints it receives.

The commission’s seven investigators spend much of their time proofreading legal transcripts because the money to hire stenographers disappeared long ago.

Robert H. Tembeckjian, the commission’s administrator, said cases against judges at all levels were taking longer to resolve because of staff shortages.

Most of the commission’s time, he said, is spent reviewing complaints against town and village justices.

Many of those investigations have led to serious accusations, and 130 town and village justices have been removed from office or resigned while facing disciplinary charges during the commission’s 29-year history.

“Without adequate resources to deal with all the legitimate complaints against town and villages justices,” Mr. Tembeckjian said, “there isn’t as effective oversight as there should be.”

In response to questions from a reporter, an official in the Spitzer administration suggested that the governor’s aides had not been persuaded that the commission needed more resources.

“We are awaiting justification to show that the need is there,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Mr. Tembeckjian said he was surprised by that response because he had provided extensive documentation to budget officials and had not been asked for more.

“I have been advised by the governor’s office that I should turn my attention to the Legislature,” he said.

Some of those who had urged Governor Spitzer to grant the commission’s request said growing concerns about the fairness of the justice courts made it essential to increase the agency’s resources.

Victor A. Kovner, chairman of the Committee for Modern Courts, an independent group that lobbies for improvements in New York’s judicial system, said it was important for the credibility of the entire court system that the judicial monitoring agency receive adequate money.

With increased questions about the town and village courts, he said, it is critical that New Yorkers have a strong agency to monitor those courts.

“Among the things that are important to address shortcomings in the town and village courts,” Mr. Kovner said, “is an adequate system of review of complaints.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/28/nyregion...amp;oref=slogin

end quotes

As this thread has shown, however ....

A KEY TO ELIOT SPITZER'S POLITICAL POWER ....

IS HAVING JUDGES AT HIS BECK AND CALL ....

WHO WILL BEND AND TWIST THE LAW ....

AND WHO DON'T HAVE ANY COMPUNCTIONS ....

ABOUT TOSSING OUR RIGHTS ....

RIGHT INTO THE TRASH CAN ....

And so ....

AFTER FOLLOWING THIS THREAD FOR THE LAST TWO YEARS ....

http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/for...mp;#entry693012

WHO OUT THERE ....

WOULD BE SURPRISED ....

THAT ELIOT SPITZER ....

IS STRANGLING THE REVIEW OF MISCONDUCT BY JUDGES ....

HERE IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK ....

WHERE THE ESSENCE OF POLITICAL POWER ...

IS BEING OWED FAVORS ....

BY THOSE WHO ARE BEHOLDEN TO YOU ....

ESPECIALLY JUDGES ....

WITH THE POWER OVER OUR LIVES ....

THAT THEY NOW HOLD ....

THANKS TO ELIOT SPITZER ....

AND THE UNLAWFUL "PSYCHIATRIC TAKEDOWN" ....

THAT ALLOWS ELIOT SPITZER ....

TO "REMOVE FROM SOCIETY" .....

ANYONE AT ALL ....

AT ANY TIME ...

WITH JUST THE FLICK OF HIS FINGERS ....

IF HE PERCEIVES THEM TO BE ...

A "THREAT" ....

TO HIS "POWER" ....

And so ...

February 28, 2007

"Pawn to king four"

With Democrats threatening to snatch the majority in the state Senate for the first time since the 1960s, embattled GOP Leader Joe Bruno has just made a very provocative decision -- appointing Brooklyn Dem Carl Kruger as chairman of the Social Services Committee.

Bruno has repeatedly "flipped" Democrats to his party in recent years, and has reportedly tried to woo Kruger in the past.

But Kruger immediately declared that he would not change parties or sit with the Republican conference.

And, in a joint press conference with Senate Democratic Leader Malcolm Smith, said he still wants to see Smith ascend to majority leader "sooner rather than later."

Apart from the higher stipend that goes with the chairmanship, Kruger denied receiving any inducements from Bruno.

"There was no quid pro quo," he said.

"I made, nor was I asked to make any commitments."

"... I'm a Democrat."

"... We're going to do everything we can to achieve a majority, whether it's now or in 2008."

Bruno boasted that his cross-party appointment was a historical first and portrayed it as a gesture of bipartisanship and reform.

"The politics are over and we are governing," he said.

He said he hoped others would "stop playing games, stop daydreaming, stop hallucinating and govern."

This was a veiled reference to efforts by Smith and Gov. Spitzer to put Democrats in charge of the Senate -- by getting Republicans to either switch parties, take jobs in the Spitzer administration or retire.

But Smith insisted that Bruno "is about to lose his leadership."

"We're playing a little chess game, here," Smith said.

Bruno "made a move and we're going to make our moves as well."

"... As much as he's saying this is about dreaming, reality starts as a dream."

http://blogs.nydailynews.com/dailypolitics..._to_king_fo.php

"Owning up to health perks - Two agencies acknowledge providing coverage to board members despite state rules"

By JAMES M. ODATO, Capitol bureau, Albany, New York Times Union

First published: Friday, March 2, 2007

ALBANY -- The state Power Authority and Thruway Authority acknowledged Thursday the public is paying tens of thousands of dollars a year for health insurance for current and former board members who are supposed to serve without compensation.

The revelation came the day after Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said it's illegal for authorities to reward uncompensated directors with such perks.

His analysis focused on the New York Housing Finance Agency and the State of New York Mortgage Agency, which provided active board members dental and health coverage.

Last year, they also added retirees with 10 years of service, but halted the payments after a Times Union story in January.

Priscilla Almodovar, the head of the two housing authorities, said she stopped the perk for active board members, too, as a result of Cuomo's legal opinion.

Cuomo's aides suspected the ruling would apply to most public authorities, although a review of other agencies is incomplete.

Spokespersons for the Power Authority and Thruway Authority said their executives are trying to figure out if Cuomo's determination applies to their boards.

Betsy Graham, of the Thruway Authority and Canal Corp., said three of the seven board members of the combined Thruway/Canal Corp. board make use of the perk, for family coverage: Chairman John Buono, Nancy Carey Cassidy and Jeffrey Williams.

One retiree, John Riedman, who left in December after serving since 1999, uses it.

Graham did not know the cost.

Brian Vattimo, of the Power Authority, said one of the six board members uses the health coverage benefit, at a cost of $12,000 annually for the family coverage.

One retiree's health insurance is picked up, Vattimo said.

He would not release the names, saying the information is private.

The benefits, he said, could date to 1957.

He and Graham said the authorities believed the practice was allowed under a 1999 state Ethics Commission ruling.

The costs can add up.

HFA and SONYMA say they've paid $630,000 since 1998 for health and dental coverage for eight of the 15 current board members.

NY TIMES

"Deal Reached on New York Workers Compensation"

By DANNY HAKIM and STEVEN GREENHOUSE

Published: February 27, 2007

ALBANY, Feb. 27 — Gov. Eliot Spitzer and legislative leaders announced a deal today to overhaul the state’s workers compensation system, forging consensus in an area that had eluded Gov. George E. Pataki’s efforts for years.

Mr. Spitzer said the deal, which he reached with legislative, business and labor leaders, would improve New York’s business climate by reducing the cost of the system to business.

Some manufacturers complain that premiums cost them more than $2 an hour for each worker.

The deal would impose a new limit on the number of years that some injured workers receive weekly benefits, and by creating a fee schedule for drugs, laboratory tests and prosthetic devices used in workers compensation cases.

]Mr. Spitzer said the cost savings from these and other changes would allow premiums to be reduced by 10 to 15 percent, saving businesses several hundred million dollars a year.

At the same time, the maximum weekly payment to injured workers, which have not been increased in more than a decade, would roughly double within four years, to roughly $800, or two-thirds of the average weekly wage.

The ceiling now is $400 a week.

The changes are meant to repair a system that is among the most expensive in the nation, but which pays some of the lowest benefits.

And they represent a significant victory for the governor, who gained a substantial deal despite his frequently contentious relations with the Legislature during his first two months in office.

Mr. Spitzer announced the agreement in Albany today after intensive talks with representatives of Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, the State Business Council and the State A.F.L.-C.I.O.

“This is a remarkable win-win situation for both workers and employers,” Mr. Spitzer told reporters today.

“The whole system has become ossified and unresponsive, and despite the dissatisfaction with which it is viewed by all sides, gridlock has prevailed until today.”

The overhaul plan will almost certainly become law because it has the support of both legislative leaders and the governor.

“This agreement not only addresses some of the most pressing needs and concerns of injured workers, but immeasurably improves a system long believed to be broken beyond repair,” said Denis Hughes, the president of the union organization said in a statement.

Kenneth Adams, president of the business council, said the deal “is a big win for improving our economic climate, especially upstate.”

New York’s workers compensation system has been called an unfathomable mess for years because its benefits were so meager — replacing less than half the average weekly wage — despite its high cost.

The goal in most states is to replace two-thirds of a worker’s earnings before injury.

To reduce fraud, New York State officials will be given the power to halt construction projects and shutter businesses where workers compensation coverage is not provided for all employees, and will make the intentional misclassification of workers as independent contractors to avoid paying premiums a felony.

The size of the anti-fraud squad in the workers compensation system is to be doubled.

Legislative leaders hailed Mr. Spitzer’s leadership in getting the deal done so quickly.

“Over the years, reforming the workers compensation system has been an increasingly difficult puzzle to solve, because we were missing a key piece of that puzzle, leadership,” said Mr. Silver, who has already bitterly feuded with Mr. Spitzer over how to fill the vacant post of comptroller.

“Now we have the leadership we need, leadership from the governor, leadership from labor, leadership from the business community,” Mr. Spitzer said.

James Tedisco, the Republican minority leader of the Assembly, said, “When you have good leadership, and you have leadership that says, ‘We want everybody’s ideas, opinions, we’ll return to your calls, we’ll listen to your ideas’ — boy, you’re going to have big success.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/27/nyregion...amp;oref=slogin

NY TIMES

March 2nd, 2007 7:37 am

With respect to the “BIG” Worker’s Comp deal just “STEAMROLLED” through OUR legislature by Eliot Spitzer and the New York State Business Council ….

It would seem that your comment ….

“At the same time, the maximum weekly payment to injured workers, which have not been increased in more than a decade, would roughly double within four years, to roughly $800, or two-thirds of the average weekly wage ….”

Is a bit premature and is actually unsubstantiated by any underlying facts to support it ….

And in support of my statement, I refer to a story by James Odato in the Albany, New York Times Union for Wednesday, February 28, 2007, entitled “Deal reforms ‘broken’ workers’ comp system - Spitzer, Legislature unveil changes to boost benefits, cut costs for businesses” ....

Where “STEAMROLLER” Spitzer is quoted as follows:

“Spitzer said the weekly benefit for injured workers will increase significantly, although the formula for each class of worker will be spelled out in legislation.”

As you word-smiths likely know, “WILL BE” implies something “not yet done” ….

And in this case, Eliot Spitzer makes it incandescently clear that in the ACTUAL CASE of what any individual employee in the State of New York might get from Worker’s Compensation in the future …

IS PRESENTLY AN UNKNOWN ….

THAT WILL DEPEND UPON WHAT “CLASS” THAT WORKER IS PUT INTO BY THE NEW YORK STATE LEGISLATURE ….

When it finally comes up with the actual legislation that is being touted by “STEAMROLLER” Spitzer and the New York State Business Council as a “done deal” ….

For them …

And this comment is buttressed by a similar comment in the New York State Disability Law BLOG in an article entitled “Insight on Spitzer’s New York Workers’ Compensation Reform Agreement” at ....

http://www.disabledworkerlaw.com/2007/02/a...form-agreement/

Where the author makes the clear and unequivocal statement as follows with respect to who the ACTUAL LOSERS in the working class are going to be, once that legislation is actually written at some future time, WITHOUT ANY INPUT WHATSOEVER from the victims of industrial accidents and diseases and other workplace injuries:

“Any others that we discover once the actual written bill details are released.”

Call me old-fashioned, which I am, but I think a lot less HYPE and a little more factual reporting on what is actually going on in OUR government here in New York State would be a lot more beneficial in the long run to us citizens out here who do rely upon newspapers like this for some of our information, anyway ….

That portion of it that seems not to be based upon actual fact ….

But instead …

Upon PROPAGANDIZING for CULT FIGURES like Eliot “STEAMROLLER” Spitzer ....

Or as he is known up here in the countryside, LORD CORNBURY up from New York City to view his possessions and holdings, including the colonial assembly ….

Which is his to do with as he pleases …

PROVISIONS OF OUR NEW YORK STATE CONSTITUTION TO THE CONTRARY BE DAMNED ….

And so …

— Posted by Livyjr

http://empirezone.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/0...kers-comp-deal/

Amendments to the First Constitution

The Convention of 1801.

The Constitutional Convention of 1801 had its origin in differences of opinion concerning the proper construction of 23 of the Constitution, which provided for a Council of Appointment.

The section is as follows:

"That all officers other than those who, by this Constitution, are directed to be otherwise appointed, shall be appointed in the manner following, to wit:

The assembly shall, once in every year, openly nominate and appoint one of the senators from each great district, which senators shall form a council for the appointment of the said officers, of which the governor for the time being, or the lieutenant governor, or the president of the senate (when they shall respectively administer the government), shall be president, and have a casting voice, but no other vote; and, with the advice and consent of the said council, shall appoint all the said officers; and that a majority of the said council be a quorum; and further, the said senators shall not be eligible to the said council for two years successively."

This council was an important part of the state government until abolished by the Constitution of 1821, which took effect on the 31st of December, 1822.

The council, therefore, existed more than forty-five years; and while it has gone into history, probably never to return as a feature of our constitutional machinery, it played such an important part in the early history of the state, especially its political history, that it should receive here more than a passing notice.

The first constitution-makers had not gone very far in the direction of choosing officers by popular election.

Most of the officers were chosen by appointment; and we shall see, as we note the development of our constitutional system, how slowly the theory of elections by the people made its way.

The framers of the first Constitution treated this subject from the point of view of their own experience, and also in accordance with the custom of that time.

GOVERNOR JAY'S SPECIAL MESSAGE.

Governor Jay sent a special message to the assembly on the 26th of February, 1801, and the same message to the senate on the 27th, in relation to the Council of Appointment, reciting the differences which had existed between the council and Governor, not only during his own term, but during the term of his predecessor, Governor Clinton.

Governor Jay claimed that under the Constitution the governor had the exclusive right of nomination.

Some members of the Council of Appointment claimed a concurrent right of nomination.

This the Governor denied, and in this message he recommends that it be settled in some way, either by a declaratory act of the legislature, or by judgment of law.

CONVENTION RECOMMENDED.

On the 6th of April the legislature passed an act recommending a convention for the purpose of considering the question of the construction of 23 of the Constitution, and also that part of the Constitution relating to the number of members of the senate and assembly.

The first Constitution did not contain any provision for its own amendment, nor for calling future constitutional conventions.

The legislature of 1801 could not absolutely direct that a convention be held, but passed a law recommending a convention for the purposes therein mentioned.

This act, chapter 159, authorized and proposed the election of delegates to a convention to consider two features of the Constitution ....

Namely, that relating to the number of members of the senate and assembly, and the section relating to the Council of Appointment.

It will be observed that the people were not given an opportunity to express their judgment on the question of holding a convention.

While the bill was pending an amendment was once agreed to in the assembly giving this right, but later it was abandoned, and under the law the people were only given power to elect delegates.

The people, who might have objected to such a convention, had no opportunity to express their objection, except by declining to vote for delegates, and this meant nothing, for the persons who received votes as delegates would be entitled to sit, if regularly chosen, even if the majority of the people had been opposed to a convention.

We shall see in the next chapter that a bill passed in 1820 for a convention, without a previous submission of the question to the people, was vetoed by the Council of Revision on objections prepared by Chancellor Kent, then a member of the council.

In this opinion he calls attention to the act of 1801, and distinguishes it from the act then under consideration on the ground that it conferred on the delegates power to determine two questions only; one of which, that relating to the Council of Appointment, was one of construction, and not of amendment; but he expressed the doubt whether a convention called to change the legislature was constitutional unless previously authorized by the people.

Chancellor Kent, then an associate justice of the supreme court, was a member of the Council of Revision in 1801, but he and Chancellor Livingston were both absent when the convention bill was presented to the council, and it does not appear that there was any objection to it.

In addition to the question relating to the construction of § 23, the act conferred on the Convention power to consider that part of the Constitution "respecting the number of senators and members of assembly, and to reduce and limit the number as the Convention may deem proper."

The senate was originally composed of twenty-four members, and the assembly of seventy members, and provision was made for an increase in each branch at stated periods, until the maximum should be reached, which was fixed at one hundred senators and three hundred members of assembly.

The increase in membership had apparently been more rapid than was at first anticipated.

Governor Jay, in his speech to the legislature at the opening of the session, which began November 4, 1800, called attention to this increase, and recommended a convention to consider the question of the number of members of the senate and assembly.

This seems to have been the only recommendation on the subject, and it is probable that a convention would not have been called at that time for the sole purpose of considering the number of members of the legislature; but when a convention seemed necessary to settle the controversy over the Council of Appointment, the subject of the legislature was included.

At that time the senate had increased to forty-three members, and the assembly to one hundred and twenty-six members.

THE CONVENTION.

The Convention at once addressed itself to the task committed to it, and completed its labors on the 27th of October.

The result of its deliberations appears in five paragraphs, four of which relate to the legislature; one, the last, determines the construction of the disputed section relating to the Council of Appointment.

The amendments permanently fixed the number of senators at thirty-two.

The assembly was given one hundred members, and provision was made for a possible increase to one hundred and fifty, by additions to be made after each census.

The principal subject of consideration was the construction to be given to article 23.

A motion for a construction of the article giving the senators the exclusive right of nomination was defeated by a vote of 93 to 6.

A motion to give the Governor the exclusive right of nomination was defeated, but the journal does not give the vote.

The resolution of the Convention as finally adopted declares that under the "true construction" of the article "the right to nominate all officers other than those who, by the Constitution, are directed to be otherwise appointed, is vested concurrently in the person administering the government of this state for the time being, and in each of the members of the Council of Appointment."

This resolution was adopted by a vote of 86 to 14.

Daniel D. Tompkins voted in the negative; and twenty years afterwards, in the Constitutional Convention of 1821, he referred with apparent self-satisfaction to this vote.

The large vote in favor of the resolution is explained by the fact that each of the two great political parties of that day had committed itself in favor of nominations by the members of the council - the Federalist, in the winter of 1794, and the Republicans, in 1801.

It has already been noted that the convention which framed the Constitution had given this provision a different construction, but in the partisan struggle for power at the beginning of the last century the opinions of the authors of the Constitution seem to have been overlooked or ignored.

Under the construction given by this Convention the council became a powerful and sometimes a very objectionable political machine, and at the time of its abolition, twenty-one years later, it wielded a patronage including nearly 15,000 officers, with an aggregate salary list of one million dollars.

It often dispensed patronage with a high hand, making appointments and removals at will; it reduced the dignity and responsibility of the governor, so that, instead of being the chief executive of the state, he had only a casting vote in this appointing body, and only one fifth of the power of making nominations.

The plan of this council, as devised by Mr. Jay, was reasonable; and if it had been administered as intended, it might have continued as a permanent feature in our Constitution.

We have adopted, as a substitute for this plan, the confirmation of the governor's appointments by the state senate, where confirmation is required at all, and have given the governor the absolute power of appointment without confirmation, in a large number of cases.

Mr. Jay's plan contemplated a joint responsibility for appointments, to be shared by the governor and the legislature, by providing a council composed of four senators, distributed geographically through the state, with power only to confirm or reject nominations by the governor.

The whole legislature was charged with a duty and responsibility in the matter by requiring the assembly to choose the council from the senators, thus directly or indirectly bringing both branches of the legislature into cooperation with the governor in making appointments; but the efficiency of the plan was destroyed by the construction given to the article by the Convention of 1801.

The evolution of this council, and its final destruction, without a dissenting vote, by the Convention of 1821, shows that even the cohesive power of patronage as a political force must yield to higher principles of constitutional government when it is discovered that the dispensing of such patronage by an unrestrained and irresponsible body is inimical to the best interests of the state.

[pages 596-612]

The Historical Society of the Courts of the State of New York
140 Grand Street, Suite 701
White Plains, N.Y. 10601
phone: (914) 824-5717

http://www.courts.state.ny.us/history/elec...incoln/pg11.htm

NY TIMES EMPIRE ZONE

March 2nd, 2007 5:11 pm

If one were to come up to the hinterlands of civilization outside of New York City in “IRON DUKE” Joe Bruno’s personal fiefdom of Rensselaer County …

And one were to conduct a sort of “WORD ASSOCIATION” poll by presenting a native up here with three words, in this order, to wit:

“Eliot Spitzer ….”

“STEAMROLLER …”

“Civil Confinement …”

The native would most likely respond by saying “YOU’RE DAMN RIGHT HE WOULD …”

And away they would go …

And the poll would be over ….

Just like that ….

End of conversation ….

And if you were to then describe that scenario to another local, a waitress in a coffee shop, say …

And ask why that was ….

What the waitress would tell you is that the term “CIVIL CONFINEMENT” is a very sensitive subject up this way ….

FORCED INVOLUNTARY PSYCHIATRIC CONFINEMENT ….

Which was used as a “state-sponsored” TOOL OF REPRESSION ….

On August 22, 2001 ….

Right here in “BIG JOE” Bruno’s personal fiefdom of Rensselaer County in the State of New York …

Against a New York State licensed professional engineer …..

Who was getting his nose into the wrong place ….

By conducting an investigation into how a politically-connected engineer from East Greenbush, New York with the local judge as his private attorney was obtaining Rensselaer County Health Department approvals for land in Rensselaer County that did not meet the applicable codes ….

On August 13, 2001, this engineer showed a videotape of the alleged wrongdoing to the Rensselaer County Public Health Director …..

And on August 22, 2001, Rensselaer County officials retaliated by securing a PSYCHIATRIC COMMITMENT ORDER for the engineer from a medical doctor at a local hospital in Troy, New York, SIGHT UNSEEN …..

Which resulted in the engineer being taken into custody as a DANGEROUS MENTALLY-ILL person at the Stratton VA Hospital in Albany, New York ….

Where he was incarcerated in the secure mental facility based upon what was a fraudulent psychiatric commitment order ….

And that was that ….

No more investigation ….

And when this engineer tried to protest this false imprisonment in violation of his civil rights in federal district court for the Northern District of New York ….

“STEAMROLLER” Spitzer was right there in opposition ….

Protecting the doctor who issued the bogus PSYCHIATRIC INVOLUNTARY COMMITMENT ORDER ….

By having this engineer’s suit simply tossed out of court as being groundless ….

AFTER one of Spitzer’s assistant attorney general’s buried some evidence and testimony entered by another of Spitzer’s assistant’s in Rensselaer County Supreme Court in connection with this same matter ….

So when the common folks hear of “STEAMROLLER” Eliot Spitzer “doing deals” up here with people like “IRON DUKE” Joe Bruno, in whose personal fiefdom this PSYCHIATRIC TAKE-DOWN went down ….

They begin to quake and shudder within their boots ….

And with good reason ….

Considering what happened to that engineer ….

And so ….

— Posted by Livyjr

http://empirezone.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/0...nction-no-more/

"Shame on Silver, Bruno for comptroller choice"

Letters to the Editor, Albany, New York Times Union

First published: Saturday, March 3, 2007

Like so many others, I am baffled by the selection of a thoroughly unqualified person to be the new comptroller.

Not only does he have no experience in finance, he has no education in finance, except maybe Accounting 1 and 2.

I went back to school at the age of 37 to get a bachelor's degree in business with a concentration in finance.

Graduating six years later, and more than $70,000 in education debt, I would never be considered for such a position and I am more qualified.

Perhaps we should follow what the Legislature does and do away with the requirement of an education to get a good paying job.

That would certainly eliminate the debt incurred by real professionals in the work force.

Shame on Assembly Speaker Silver and Senate Majority Leader Bruno.

I would not vote for them if I could.

Would they buy my vote?

About $70,000 should do it.

JOHN S.

South Westerlo

http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story...wsdate=3/3/2007

end quotes

A man who would sell his vote ....

For $.70 ......

Or $70,000 ....

Is a man who is himself for sale ....

And so ...

"At last, no means no"

Albany, New York Times Union

First published: Friday, March 2, 2007

Imagine if after years of the usual chorus of good government activists demanding reform of state government, and politicians halfheartedly promising to make it happen, the rules and the culture of Albany really did change.

Imagine someone in power saying, for example, that stipulating that people serving on the boards of public authorities not be compensated meant exactly that.

So goes the transformation in the state capital.

The order by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo for the State of New York Mortgage Agency and the New York State Housing Finance Agency to stop paying for the health insurance benefits of its current and retired directors is a quick and welcome rebuke to a cute deal, hardly atypical of the old ways of Albany, that those boards arranged for themselves in the final years of the Pataki administration.

Mr. Cuomo's revocation of what he determined to be illegal under state civil service law could derail the gravy train at other public authorities as well.

The Power Authority of the State of New York is believed to be providing similar perks to its board members.

The Times Union's James M. Odato reported in January that the mortgage and housing authorities voted in 2005 and again in 2006 to give their directors lifetime health benefits, despite a law stipulating that board members not be compensated.

The cost of that debacle has yet to be calculated.

But now the law actually means something.

Just listen to Mr. Cuomo.

"New Yorkers are demanding reform, integrity and accountability from government agencies across the board," he says, and in utter seriousness yet.

Oh, and he has a warning of sorts as well.

"This is another example of why we need to bring openness and accountability to public authorities."

At least one person is sensibly heeding that warning, too.

Priscilla Almodovar, the new boss at the two authorities that are supposed to be in the business of providing housing for low- and moderate-income New Yorkers, not sweetening the terms of service for their directors, says all the state's public authorities are on notice that no compensation means precisely that.

The excuse offered by former state Sen. Howard Nolan, a mortgage authority director who voted to give himself and his colleagues lifetime health insurance benefits, just doesn't wash any more.

"Our counsel and the previous governor's counsel said it was legal."

"It was a situation where Gov. Pataki essentially cleared this," says Mr. Nolan.

It's a new day in Albany, Mr. Nolan.

You might spread the word.

http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story...wsdate=3/2/2007

end quotes

I don't know about anywhere else, here in OUR America ...

But up here ....

In the CORRUPT EMPIRE of New York ....

Lawyers openly call themselves "RENTED PENCILS" .....

And whatever it is you want ....

They will give their approval ....

FOR THEIR FEE, OF COURSE .....

BECAUSE THEY ARE FOR RENT ....

NOT FOR FREE ....

And so ...

"Playing politics"

Albany, New York Times Union

First published: Friday, March 2, 2007

So the chess game for control of the state Senate continues.

But whether this contest will be good for the public remains to be seen.

The first move, taken by newly elected Gov. Eliot Spitzer, was masterful.

Early in January, he appointed Sen. Michael Balboni, a popular Nassau County Republican, to be his chief of homeland security.

That created an opening that was filled in a special election last month by a Democrat, Craig Johnson, of Port Washington.

One more Democratic dent in a shrinking Republican majority.

And that's not the last of it.

Mr. Spitzer is determined to wrest the Senate from control of the Republicans, who hold a shaky 33-29 majority.

According to reports, the governor is targeting incumbents he views as vulnerable.

Speculation has it that one target is the long-serving Sen. Hugh Farley of Niskayuna.

And Democratic leaders are trying to persuade some Republican senators to switch sides.

But now Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, R-Brunswick, has made a counter move.

On Wednesday, he named a Democratic legislator, Sen. Carl Kruger of Brooklyn, as chairman of the Senate Social Services Committee.

And in remarks that were a not-too-subtle jab at the governor, Mr. Bruno insisted that Sen. Kruger's appointment was made in the spirit of bipartisanship that Gov. Spitzer has advocated.

"We are aware that the dynamics of this state are changing."

"The dynamics have changed," Mr. Bruno said.

Translation: Two can play this game, governor.

To be sure, there is some old-fashioned political payback in all of this, no matter what Mr. Bruno says about the changing dynamics.

Sen. Kruger, after all, is a conservative Democrat who helped Republican Sen. Marty Golden of Brooklyn defeat Democratic incumbent Vincent Gentile in 2002.

And one of Sen. Kruger's staff is the son-in-law of former Rensselaer County Democratic Chairman Romeo Naples, who supported efforts to spare Mr. Bruno a re-election challenge.

Even so, it's highly doubtful that Sen. Kruger's Republican-leaning efforts would have earned him a committee chairmanship if it weren't for the changing dynamics that Mr. Bruno mentioned.

But it's difficult to see those dynamics as a positive force, despite all the talk of a new bipartisan spirit.

How will the public be served?

Senators should be representing the interests of their constituents.

But if they are being wooed with inducements to switch loyalties, will they represents their own personal ambitions instead?

end quotes

Last Sunday morning ....

On the political talk show at 6:30 A.M. EST on WBKK-FM up this way ....

http://www.wmht.org/radio/wbkk.php

New York State Senator Malcolm Smith, the Democrat in charge of the Democrats in the New York State Senate ....

Was being questioned by the press up this way about this CHESS GAME ....

And he did not pull any punches as to what his strategy was in this matter ....

IT IS CALLED "ZOPA" .....

And when the press corps all scratched their heads in wonderment at what "ZOPA" might be ....

Senator Smith, himself a HARVARD MAN .....

Pulled all the press corps into what they call over there in the HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL the "HARVARD HUDDLE" ....

Which is really like a RUGBY SCRUM, of sorts ....

WITH COACH SMITH IN THE MIDDLE ....

AND THE PRESS CORPS ALL AROUND HIM ....

WITH THEIR ARMS AROUND EACH OTHERS SHOULDERS ....

AND PATTING EACH OTHER ON THE BUTT ....

IN A SHOW OF SOLIDARITY FOR THE "TEAM" .....

And then COACH SMITH began his lecture about "ZOPA" ....

Which is a HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL NEGOTIATING TOOL ....

Based on the other person's ZONE OF PERSONAL AVARICE ....

The successful NEGOTIATOR ...

Senator Malcolm Smith, in this case ...

Finds out what the PERSONAL AVARICES of the REPUBLICANS that he wants to FLIP are ....

Which he said he had been doing, quite successfully ....

And then ....

To FLIP those REPUBLICANS ....

What he does ....

As New York State Senate Minority Leader ....

IS TO REWARD THAT AVARICE FROM OUT OF THE PUBLIC TILL ....

And then ....

THOSE REPUBLICANS WILL BECOME DEMOCRATS .....

BECAUSE THE DEMOCRATS CAN FULFILL THEIR AVARICES BETTER THAN THE AGING "IRON DUKE" JOE BRUNO CAN ....

And so ....

HOW ON EARTH ANY OF THAT HIGH SCHOOL HARVARD CRAP .....

IS SUPPOSED TO BENEFIT THE "PUBLIC" ....

SURE DOES BEAT ME ....

But then ....

I'm not a POLITICIAN ON THE MAKE .....

Nor am I AVARICIOUS ....

Being content with what I now have in life ....

Which is not much ....

But what the hey ...

I'm content with it ....

AND THEREFORE ....

AM IMMUNE TO THIS HARVARD "ZOPA" CRAP THAT SENATOR SMITH IS SPEWING ....

DOWN THERE IN CORRUPT ALBANY, NEW YORK ....

THE "CESSPIT" OF POLITICS ....

HERE IN OUR AMERICA ....

And so ....

Livyjr has been doing his homework here and I have not been helping out.

So here is a two-year old interview with Gore Vidal that belongs in this thread:



http://www.citypages.com/databank/26/1268/article13085.asp

The Undoing of America
Gore Vidal on war for oil, politics-free elections, and the late, great U.S. Constitution
by Steve Perry

For the past 40 years or so of Gore Vidal's prolific 59-year literary career, his great project has been the telling of the American story from the country's inception to the present day, unencumbered by the court historian's task of making America's leaders look like good guys at every turn. The saga has unfolded in two ways: through Vidal's series of seven historical novels, beginning with Washington DC in 1967 and concluding with The Golden Age in 2000; and through his ceaseless essay writing and public appearances across the years. Starting around 1970, Vidal began to offer up his own annual State of the Union message, in magazines and on the talk circuit. His words were always well-chosen, provocative, and contentious: "There is not one human problem that could not be solved," he told an interviewer in 1972, "if people would simply do as I advise."

Though it's a dim memory now, Vidal and commentators of a similarly outspoken bent used to be regulars on television news shows. Vidal's most famous TV moment came during the 1968 Democratic Convention, when ABC paired him with William F. Buckley on live television. On the next to last night of the convention, the dialogue turned to the question of some student war protesters raising a Vietcong flag. The following exchange ensued:



Vidal: "As far as I'm concerned, the only sort of proto- or crypto-Nazi I can think of is yourself. Failing that, I'll only say that we can't have--"

Buckley: "Now listen, you queer, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I'll sock you in the goddamn face and you'll stay plastered."


That was TV in the pre-Information Age for you. These days Vidal, who put his Italian villa on the market a few months ago and moved full-time to his home in Los Angeles, speaks mostly through his essay writing about the foreign and stateside adventures of the Bush administration. In the past five years he has published one major nonfiction collection, The Last Empire, and a book about the founding fathers called Inventing a Nation: Washington, Adams, Jefferson. But mainly he has stayed busy producing what he calls his "political pamphlets," a series of short essay collections called Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How We Got to Be So Hated (2002), Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta (2003), and Imperial America: Reflections on the United States of Amnesia (2004). Last month at Duke University, he produced a short run of On the March to the Sea, an older play about the Civil War that he has rewritten entirely.

I spoke to Vidal, who will turn 80 this October, by phone from his home in Los Angeles on March 9.



City Pages: I'll start with the broadest of questions: Why are we in Iraq, and what are our prospects there at this point?

Gore Vidal: Well, let us say that the old American republic is well and truly dead. The institutions that we thought were eternal proved not to be. And that goes for the three departments of government, and it also goes for the Bill of Rights. So we're in uncharted territory. We're governed by public relations. Very little information gets to the people, thanks to the corruption and/or ineptitude of the media. Just look at this bankruptcy thing that went through--everybody in debt to credit cards, which is apparently 90 percent of the country, is in deep trouble. So the people are uninformed about what's being done in their name.

And that's really why we are in Iraq. Iraq is a symptom, not a cause. It's a symptom of the passion we have for oil, which is a declining resource in the world. Alternatives can be found, but they will not be found as long as there's one drop of oil or natural gas to be extracted from other nations, preferably by force by the current junta in charge of our affairs. Iraq will end with our defeat.



CP: You've observed many times in your writing that the United States has elections but has no politics. Could you talk about what you mean by that, and about how so many people have come to accept a purely spectatorial relationship to politics, more like fans (or non-fans) than citizens?

Gore Vidal: Well, you cannot have a political party that is not based upon a class interest. It has been part of the American propaganda machine that we have no class system. Yes, there are rich people; some are richer than others. But there is no class system. We're classless. You could be president tomorrow. So could Michael Jackson, or this one or that one. This isn't true. We have a very strong, very rigid class structure which goes back to the beginning of the country. I will not go into the details of that, but there it is. Whether it's good or bad is something else.

We have not had a political party since that, really, of the New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt, who was a member of the highest class, an aristocrat who had made common cause with the people, who were in the midst of depression, not to mention the Dust Bowl, which had taken so many farms in the '30s. We were a country in deep trouble, and he represented those in deep trouble. He got together great majorities and was elected four times to the presidency. And launched us on empire--somewhat consciously, too. He saw to it that the European colonial empires would break up, and that we would inherit bits and pieces, which we have done.

If we don't have class interests officially, then therefore we have no political parties. What is the Republican Party? Well, it used to be the party of the small-town businessman, generally in the Middle West, generally sort of out of the mainstream. Very conservative. It now represents nothing but the gas and oil business. They own it. And the people who go to Congress are simply bought. They are lawyers who are paid to represent Halliburton, big oil, big banking. So the very rich corporate America has a party for itself, the Republican Party. The Democrats don't have much of anything but a kind of wistful style. They just want everyone to be happy, and politically correct at all times. Do not hurt other people's feelings. They spend so much time on political correctness that they haven't thought of what to do politically about anything. Like say "no" to these preemptive wars, which are against not only the whole world's take on war and peace, but against United States history.

This is something new under the sun--that a president, just because he feels like it, can declare war on anybody. And Congress will go along with him, and the courts will support him. The founding fathers would be mortified if they saw what had happened to their handiwork, which wasn't very great to begin with but is now done for. When you have preemptive wars, and you have ambitious companies like Bechtel who will build up what, let us say, General Electric has helped to destroy with its weaponry--these interests are well-represented.

There is no people's party, and you can't even use the word. "Liberal" has been demonized. A liberal is a commie who's also a pedophile. Being a communist and a pedophile, he's so busy that he hasn't got time to win an election and is odious to boot. So there is no Democratic Party. We hope that something might happen with the governor of Vermont, and maybe something will or maybe it won't. But we are totally censored, and the press just follows this. It observes what those in power want it to observe, and turns the other way when things get dark. Then, when it's too late sometimes, you get some very good reporting. But by then, somebody's playing taps.



CP: Has the media played a role in transforming citizens into spectators of this process?

Vidal: Well, they have been transformed, by design, by corporate America, aided by the media, which belongs to corporate America. They are no longer citizens. They are hardly voters. They are consumers, and they consume those things which are advertised on television. They are made to sound like happy consumers. Listen to TV advertising: This one says, "I had this terrible pain, but when I put on Kool-Aid, I found relief overnight. You must try it too." All we do is hear about little cures for little pains. Nothing important gets said. There used to be all those talk shows back in the '50s and '60s, when I was on television a great deal. People would talk about many important things, and you had some very good talkers. They're not allowed on now. Or they're set loose in the Fox Zoo, in which you have a number of people who pretend to be journalists but are really like animals. Each one has his own noise--there's the donkey who brays, there's the pig who squeals. Each one is a different animal in a zoo, making a characteristic noise. The result is chaos, which is what is intended. They don't want the people to know anything, and the people don't.



CP: You wrote at the end of a 2002 essay that so-called inalienable rights, once alienated, are often lost forever. Can you describe what's changed about America during the Bush years that represent permanent, or at least long-term, legacies that will survive Bush?

Vidal: Well, the Congress has ceded--which it cannot do--but it has ceded its power to declare war. That is written in the Constitution. It's the most important thing in the Constitution, ultimately. And having ceded that to the Executive Branch, he can declare war whenever he finds terrorism. Now, terrorism is a wonderful invention because it doesn't mean anything. It's an abstract noun. You can't have a war against an abstract noun; it's like having a war against dandruff. It's meaningless.

But you can terrify people. The art of government now, the art of control as practiced by the current junta, is: Keep the people frightened. It's exactly what Adolf Hitler and his gang did. Keep them frightened: The Russians are coming. The Poles are killing Germans who live within the borders of Poland. The Czechs are doing the same thing in the Sudetenland. These are evil people. We must go after them. We must save our kin.

Keep everybody frightened, tell them lies--and the bigger the lie, the more they'll believe it. There's nothing the average American now believes (because he's been told it 10,000 times a day) that is true. Now how do you undo so much disinformation? Well, you have to have truth squads at work 24 hours a day every day. And we don't have them.



CP: I'd like to ask you to sketch our political arc from Reagan down to Bush II. It seemed to me that Reagan took a big step down the road to Bush when he was so successful in selling the ideology of the market, the idea that whatever the interests of money and markets dictated was the proper and even the most patriotic course--which was hardly a new idea, but one that had never been embraced openly as a first principle of politics. Is that a fair assessment?

Vidal: He was small-town American Republican, even though he started life as a Democrat. He believed in the values of Main Street. Sinclair Lewis's novels are filled with Ronald Reagans, though Babbitt doesn't get to the White House. But this time Babbitt did. So it was very congenial for Reagan to play that part, not that he had a very clear idea of what his lines were all about. Those who were writing the scenarios certainly knew.

I'd say the downward skid certainly began with Reagan. I came across a comment recently, someone asking why we had gone into both Grenada and Panama, two absolutely nothing little countries who were no danger to us, minding their own business, and we go in and conquer them. Somebody said, well, we did it because we could. That's the attitude of our current rulers.

So they will be forever putting--what they do is put us all at risk. You and I and other civilians are going to be the ones who are killed when the Moslems get really angry and start suicide-bombing American cities because of things the Bush/Cheney junta has done to them. We will be the ones killed. Bush/Cheney will be safe in their bunkers, but we're going to get it. I would have thought that self-interest--since Americans are the most easily terrified people on earth, as recently demonstrated over and over again-- we would be afraid of what was going to befall us. But I think simultaneously we have no imagination, and certainly no sense of cause and effect. If we did have that, we might know that if you keep kicking somebody, he's going to kick you back. So there we stand, ignoring the first rule of physics, which is that there is no action without reaction.



CP: Didn't the previous successes of our economy and our empire, post WWII, condition people to expect that consequences were for other people in other places?

Vidal: Well, wishful thinking, perhaps. I spent three years in World War II, and it was a clear victory for our team. But it was nothing to write Mother about, I'll tell you. Walt Whitman once said, of the Civil War, that it is a lucky thing the people will never know what happened in the war. One can think of a lot of things, one can imagine a lot of things, but...

The sense that there are no consequences--that can happen if you keep the people diverted. Television changed everything. Some 60 or 80 percent of Americans still think Saddam Hussein was a partner of Osama bin Laden. They hated each other, and they had nothing to do with each other. Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11. But if you keep repeating it and repeating it--and Cheney still does; nobody's switched him off, so he just babbles and babbles like a broken toy--how are they to know otherwise? Yes, there are good journals here and there, like The Nation, but they're not easily found. And with our educational system, I don't think the average person can read with any great ease anything that requires thought and the ability to exercise cause-and-effect reasoning: If we do this to them, they will do that to us. We seem to have lost all track of that rather primitive notion that I think people all the way back to chimpanzees have known. But we don't.



CP: In your latest book, Imperial America, you refer to Confucius's admonition to "rectify the language." In that regard I'm wondering about the Clinton years, and about the success of the Clinton/Morris strategy of "triangulation," which mainly consisted of talking to the left and governing to the right. Did that play a role in setting the stage for a figure like Bush, who throws around words like "democracy" and "freedom" when they bear no relation to reality?

Vidal: Well, certainly it did. Clinton represented no opposition to this. He was so busy triangulating that he was enlisting under the colors of the other team, hoping to pick up some votes. I don't think he did, but he got himself reelected by not doing the job of an opposing political party. In other words, the Republican Party as it now is funded, is the party of corporate America, which is no friend to the people of America. Now that's a clear division. The people of America, if you ever run for office, you find out they're very shrewd about figuring out who's getting what money, and who's on their side. But you have to organize them. You have to tell them more things than they get to know from the general media.

Clinton just gave up. Also, to his credit, or rather, to explain him, the Republican Party realized that this was the most attractive politician since Franklin Roosevelt, and that he had a great, great hold over people. They also realized that if he got going, we really would have National Health--we would actually become a civilized country, which we are nowhere near. I mean, we're in the Stone Age again. He was working toward it, and they saw he had to be destroyed. Later they got a cock-sucking interlude to impeach him. If I were he, I would have called out the Army and sent Congress home.



CP: Really.

Vidal: Yes, really. They went beyond anything in the laws of impeachment. They have to do with the exercise of your powers as president, abuses of power as president. He wasn't abusing any powers. He was caught telling a little lie about sex, which you're not supposed to ask him about anyway, and he shouldn't have answered. So they use that: oh, perjury! Oh, it's terrible, a president who lies! Oh, God--how can we live any longer in Sodom and Gomorrah? You can play on the dumb-dumbs morning, noon, and night with stuff like that.



CP: Clearly Bush does represent something radical and new, and there's been an understandable tendency on the part of people who don't like where the country is going to focus their outrage exclusively on Bush and the Republicans. But don't the media and the Democrats come in for a great deal of blame for creating the political vacuum in which he rose?

Vidal: Well, the media is on the other side. The media belongs to the big money, and the big money, their candidates, their party, is the Republican Party as now constituted. So everybody is behaving typically [in media]. What isn't typical is a Democratic Party that has also sold out. There are just as many lobbyists and propagandists there as on the other side. They're never going to regain anything until they remember that they're supposed to represent the people at large, and not the very rich.

But they need the very rich in order to be able to run for office, to buy television time. I'd say if you really want to date the crash of the American system, the American republic, it was in the early '50s, when television suddenly emerged as the central fact of American life. That which was not televised did not exist. And any preacher, because religion is tax-free--I would tax all the religions, by the way--any evangelical who wants to get up there and say, send me millions of dollars and I will cure you of your dandruff, he gets to spend the money any way he likes, and there's no tax on it. So he can have political action groups, which he's not supposed to have but does have. So you have all that religious money, and then you have the enormous cost of campaigning, which means every politician who wants to buy TV time has got to sell his ass to somebody. And corporate America is ready to buy.



CP: Likewise, there's a great tendency among his detractors to call Bush stupid. You've called him "dumb," albeit not as dumb as his dad. But I'm recalling what you wrote about Ronald Reagan years ago in your review of the Ronnie Leamer book about him: that no one who's stupid aces every career test he faces. The same is clearly not true of George W. Bush, who had failed in a lot of things before he entered politics. But he hasn't failed in politics. Do you think Bush possesses a kind of intelligence akin to Reagan's in that regard, or is that giving him too much credit? How do you think his mind works?

Vidal: I should think very oddly. He's dyslexic, which means--it's a problem of incoherence. I have some dyslexia in my family, and they can be reasonably intelligent about most things, but they have problems with words, the structure of language. Not really getting it. There's an inability to study anything. Sometimes they also have an attention deficiency and so on.

I would say that he is undisturbed by these things. His is a mind totally lacking in culture of any kind. I'm not talking about highbrow culture, just knowledge of the American past, and our institutions. He's got rid of due process of law, which is what the United States is based upon. Once you can send somebody off and put them in the brig of a ship in Charleston Harbor and hold them as long as you like uncharged, you have destroyed the United States and its Constitution. He has done those things.



CP: How did so many Americans come to embrace and even celebrate these bullying, anti-democratic displays of authoritarian, censorial governance? There's a palpable sense of mean- spiritedness about a good deal of public sentiment, it seems.

Vidal: I wouldn't call it the public. There are groups that rather like it. And these are the same groups that don't like black people, gay people, Jews, or this or that. You always have that disaffected minority that you can play to. And it helps you in states with small populations. If you get eight of those states, you don't get much of a popular vote, but you can get the Electoral College--a device that our founders made to make sure we never had a democratic government. In other words, I don't blame the public. He's not popular. I've just been reading a report on Conyers's trip to Ohio with his subcommittee's experts. Ohio was stolen. The Republican Congress will never have a hearing on it. But I think attempts are being made to publish the details of what was done there, and elsewhere too in America.

In other words, I put the case that Bush was never elected--not in 2000, and not in 2004. This is a new game in the world. Through the magic of electronic voting, particularly through Mr. Diebold and friends, you can take a non-president and make him president. But how to keep the people, including the opposition who should know better, so silent, this introduces us to a vast landscape of corruption which I dare not enter.



CP: I saw a recent CIA report that referred to the United States as a "declining superpower." To your knowledge, has the government ever said so before?

Vidal: Well, their style is hortatory and alarmist. And I think they say we're declining every day and every minute. We must do this, we must overthrow this government, we must do that, stop China. Why not nuke China? [The American right] was all set to do that at one point, I remember. William F. Buckley Jr. was in favor of a unilateral strike at their nuclear capacity. A whole bunch of people, moderately respectable, were in favor of that. It all comes from propaganda. It all comes from knowing how to use the media to your own ends, and keep the people frightened.

It was very striking--before the inauguration, CNN showed a bunch of inaugural addresses starting with Roosevelt. Roosevelt was a master politician. What theme does he hit first? "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." Well, that's it. He intuited it, having followed the Nazis and knowing how Hitler was putting together his act, which was creating fear in the Germans of everybody else so he could mobilize them and make the SS. Roosevelt was saying that it was this unnameable fear that we had to watch out for. Then we skip over to Harry Truman, a real dunce, but there was a genius behind him in Dean Acheson. We jump over to him, and he is declaring war on communism, all over the world. They're on the march! Wherever you look, there they are, and we must be on our guard!

He instituted loyalty oaths for everybody--for janitors in high schools as well as members of the cabinet. Unthinkable, the distance from Roosevelt to his admittedly despised successor. We've gone from, we must not succumb to fear itself, to the next one saying, oh, there's so much to be afraid of! We must arm! We must militarize America and its economy, which he did.



CP: One theory about the reason the US invaded Iraq concerns currency--the fear that European deals for Iraqi oil might lead to oil's being denominated in euros rather than dollars. Do you think that notion holds any water?

Vidal: I do. Perhaps more oil than water, but yes, that's what it's about--the terror that Europe...Europe, after all, is more populous than the United States, better educated, better quality of life for most of its citizens. And it has actually achieved, here and there, a civilization, which we haven't. There's a lot of nasty response on the part of those Americans who are eager for more oil, more money, more this, more that, to put Europe down, to regard Europe as a rival and perhaps as an enemy. It was America that saw to it that we got a weak dollar, though. The Europeans had nothing to do with it. In fact they were rather appalled, because they own an awful lot of treasury bonds that will be worthless one day.

So yes, it was a power struggle. Ultimately the whole thing is about oil. We should be looking to hydrogen, or whatever is the latest replacement for fossil fuels. All the money we put into these wars in the Middle East, we should have put into that. Then we wouldn't be so desperate at the thought that in 2020, or in 2201 or whenever, there will be no more oil.



CP: Talk a little more about public education's decay in the current scene. Much of the Bush administration's spending on No Child Left Behind is earmarked for private corporate tutors.

Vidal: I don't think Bush himself is particularly relevant to any of this, since he avoided education entirely throughout his life. Which gives him a sort of purity. He was a cheerleader at Andover, where he learned many skills that have been very useful to him since.

The educational system was pretty good once. I never went to a public school, and the private schools here are generally good, though we are also better indoctrinated than the public schools. It certainly got bad around the '50s. Just as we became a global empire, the first thing I was struck by was that they stopped teaching geography in public schools. Now here we are a global power, and nobody knows where anything is. I loved geography when I was a kid. It's really the way to get to know the world. The success of Franklin Roosevelt was that he was a great philatelist. He collected stamps, and he knew where all the countries were and who lived in them. Now we have people who don't know where anything is. I remember a speech Bush gave in which he was reaching out not only to the "Torks" but the "Grecians" at some point. We live in total confusion time.

There is also something in the water--let us hope it was put there by the enemy--that has made Americans contemptuous of intelligence whenever they recognize it, which is not very often. And a hatred of learning, which you don't find in any other country. There is not one hamlet in Italy in which you can fail to find kids desperate to learn. Yes, there are areas where they might be desperate to become members of the Mafia, but that's because they don't have any money. And a country like Italy is not rich, not as rich as we are. But there isn't a kid in Italy who can't quote Dante. There's no one in America now who knows who Shakespeare is, because they stopped teaching him in high schools.

So we are out of it. And no attempt is being made to put us back into it.



CP: When does this current bout of foreign adventurism end? You've said in other interviews that it ends with us going broke. Can you explain?

Vidal: I haven't changed my line. We don't have the money for these adventures. We don't even have the money to operate those prisons which are the delight of Iraq. All we were doing at Abu Ghraib was export what we do to our own people in our own prisons, you know. We are sharing with the rest of the world penology-- in every sense. No, there isn't the money to do it. And the few who are making most of the money are probably investing it elsewhere, preparing islands for themselves to escape to. And then their followers, who are not very many, will be experiencing rapture. They won't be here.



CP: Is there any winning back some semblance of the older republic at this point?

Vidal: You have to have people who want it, and I can't find many people who do.



CP: What can average people do about this state of affairs at present, if anything?

Vidal: Well, some of the internet has been very useful. Radio has been very useful. There are means of getting things across. It's why I write those little books of mine, the pamphlets as I call them. Our first form of politics was pamphleteering in the 18th century. They serve a purpose--more pamphlets, more readers, more this, more that. There's a battle to do an interesting kind of guide to the American centuries, and how we got where we are and how we can get out of it. I'm engaged with some people working on that. Further, deponent sayeth not.

And thank you, jeffmoskin .....

And getting right to what is called ....

"THE BOTTOM LINE" ......

Of all of that .....

I HAVE IT RIGHT IN THESE TWO QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ....

RIGHT ABOVE HERE ....

And yes, jeffmoskin .....

With respect to where that interview finally gets us to, which is these two vital questions and answers ....

It most certainly does belong in here ....

AS A POINT OF FOCUS .....

For what Vidal is really raising as issues and solutions right above here ....

Starting with what the "interviewer" is calling the "old Republic" .....

And Vidal's answer to that ....

"You have to have people who want it, and I can't find many people who do ....."

Here, if I were to have been the interviewer ....

I would have asked Vidal .....

IF HE HAD FOUND ANYBODY IN AMERICA WHO EVEN KNEW WHAT IT WAS ....

And I would be surprised if he didn't say ....

"NOT MORE THAN A HANDFUL ..."

Which has been my own experience of it, myself .....

And there are indeed many reasons for it, I guess ....

Mostly people say that they are too busy out making money ...

To be overly concerned about this "citizenship ****" ......

Since practicing citizenship ....

"DON'T PUT NOTHING IN THEIR POCKET" .....

And so ....

I myself am a disabled combat veteran from the Viet Nam war ....

And so .....

I have time to study this "citizenship ****" ....

As it is called up here in the CORRUPT EMPIRE of New York, anyway .....

And having been in a place where there was no law ....

But the "law of the gun" ....

Well ....

Let's just say that I have the inclination to study this "citizenship ****", as well ....

Since I prefer the possibility ....

Of CIVILIZATION ....

To the REALITY ....

Of life ....

In a combat zone .....

Such as Viet Nam was ....

Or IRAQ now is ....

And so ....

For a long time now, since 1969, anyway ....

When I was in Viet Nam ...

As an infantryman ....

Observing what was going on over there ....

I have been PONDERING ....

This thing of DUAL CITIZENSHIP that WE all have over here ....

Where as section 1 of the FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT OF OUR UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION RECOGNIZES .....

Section. 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

WHEN YOU JOIN THE UNITED STATES MILITARY ....

AS AN AMERICAN CITIZEN ....

YOUR OATH IS TO THE CONSTITUTION OF THE "UNITED STATES" OF AMERICA .....

And not to your own state constitution ....

AT LEAST DIRECTLY ....

I, (NAME), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.

SO ....

WHAT HAPPENS THEN ....

TO OUR STATE CONSTITUTIONS?

WHERE DO THEY GO TO .....

WHEN WE JOIN THE UNITED STATES MILITARY ....

AND TAKE AN OATH TO THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION ...

AND WHY DO WE BOTHER TO HAVE THEM ....

OUR STATE CONSTITUTIONS ....

WHEN WE ARE ALL SUPPOSEDLY AMERICANS ....

WITH ONE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION .....

And it is out of the answer to that question .....

In some great part ....

That this thread arose ....

FOR THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION IS IN FACT ....

THE WEAKER OF THE TWO .....

STATE OF FEDERAL ....

WHEN IT COMES DOWN TO DEFINING .....

AND THEN PROTECTING .....

OUR RIGHTS ...

AND LIBERTIES ....

AS COMMON AMERICAN CITIZENS ....

And so .....

How I would answer this INTERVIEWER OF GORE VIDAL ABOVE HERE ....

OR GORE VIDAL HIMSELF ....

WITH RESPECT TO THE "OLD REPUBLIC" ....

IS THAT TO BRING BACK CONSTITUTIONAL RULE TO THE "UNITED STATES" OF AMERICA ....

AT THE FEDERAL LEVEL ....

THERE MUST FIRST BE CONSTITUTIONAL RULE ....

AT THE STATE LEVEL ....

AND HERE IN NEW YORK ....

THERE IS NOT ....

WHETHER THERE IS OR MIGHT BE CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT ANYWHERE ELSE, HERE IN OUR AMERICA ....

HERE IN THE CORRUPT EMPIRE OF NEW YORK ....

THERE IS NOT ....

ESPECIALLY SINCE ELIOT SPITZER BECAME ATTORNEY GENERAL ....

AND THEN .....

GOVERNOR "STEAMROLLER" CORNBURY ......

AND IF THERE IS NOT CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT AT THE STATE LEVEL ....

IT IS THEN ....

THAT THE VERY CONCEPT ...

OF ....

THE "UNITED STATES" ...

OF AMERICA ....

BEGINS TO FALL APART ....

TO OUR DETRIMENT AS AMERICAN CITIZENS ....

FOR WITHOUT CONSTITUTIONAL RULE IN EACH OF THE STATES .....

THERE IS NO LONGER UNITY ....

OF THE STATES ....

AND IF IT DOESN'T EXIST AT THE STATE LEVEL ....

THEN IT WILL NEVER EXIST AT THE FEDERAL LEVEL ....

FOR IN OUR FORM OF GOVERNMENT ....

IT STARTS AT THE VERY BOTTOM ....

AND WORKS ITS WAY UP ....

AND NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND .....

OR AT LEAST THAT IS HOW I SEE IT ....

IN MY ADMITTEDLY "OLD-FASHIONED" WAY OF SEEING THINGS ...

And so .....

"The spoils system"

Albany, New York Times Union

First published: Sunday, March 4, 2007

Did Assembly Republicans pressure their staff to pony up big dollars for a fundraiser?

That is the allegation, contained in an anonymous letter, that Albany County District Attorney David Soares will have to examine.

And given his credibility in pursuing alleged political corruption, notably his aggressive pursuit of former state Comptroller Alan Hevesi, who resigned rather than face indictment for misusing state drivers to chauffeur his ailing wife, the examination will be a thorough one.

It's not implausible to suggest that Assembly staffers might be under pressure to give to fundraisers.

After all, the staffers know the only job security they really have lies with the re-election of the lawmakers who employ them.

Moreover, many of them owe their jobs to political connections, and thus have an interest in keeping this spoils system going.

Even so, it would be wrong to dictate when and how much staffers give.

That would amount to quid pro quo.

Which is why Bill Sherman, chief of staff for Assembly Minority Leader James Tedisco, R-Schenectady, had this to say:

"We invite staff to a variety of events."

"But that is absolutely not expected as a condition of employment."

"It never has been, and it never will be."

Yet the New York Daily News, which broke the story on the Soares investigation, produced a printed invitation that showed a suggested $125 contribution had been crossed out and replaced with one equal to 1 percent of the recipient's annual salary.

That reads more like an order than an invitation.

It will be up to Mr. Soares to determine if all this warrants further investigation.

And this is where his credibility comes in.

If he decides no investigation is warranted, he can't be accused of whitewashing corruption -- not when he showed such a willingness to pursue Mr. Hevesi.

What a change from earlier eras, when Mr. Soares' Democratic predecessors either showed scant interest in political corruption cases, or selectively chose which ones to pursue, based on political motives.

What a change for the better.

NY TIMES

February 28th, 2007 9:54 am

I keep hoping that Spitzer IS the real deal.

So far, I have yet to be disappointed.

This is another victory for NY.

— Posted by Jessica C.

http://empirezone.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/0...-deal/#comments