NextGenDems

Turnstiles of the Rich and Famous

Everybody's got their own rich-and-famous posterboy New Yorker who's left the state and moved to Florida.  For some like Tom Golisano, it's Tom Golisano.  For others like the Empire Center, it's probably Rush Limbaugh. 

For NGD, our guy is Joey Calco, who took his skills, talent and earnings to Florida. This guy was in such a hurry to quit paying taxes here, he even changed his name to Joey Milano. 

And here's small business owner Joey on the job in the Sunshine State:

Hey, maybe Steve Pigeon and Tom Golisano can lure Joey back to New York with a fat job at Responsible New York. As an in-house calzone-maker/receptionist. Maybe even let Joey loose on the Erie County Board of Elections. If not, Joey can get a spot as a speechwriter for Chris Collins--because not even Joey's that much of a freggin' stronzo.

BTW: Here's some very simple math for the hysterically disingenuous folks at the Empire Center and New York Post (no link to Andy Soltis' piece yesterday) who lament the fact that so many low-tax-paying immigrants have found homes in New York--especially in New York City:

D=NY-I

(Detroit = New York - Immigrants.)

Reality Bites Update

This week this blog examines another quick-fix canard: That pension fund boards like California's are inherently superior to solely administered pension funds like New York's.

And to ascertain how much and how so--just like with initiative and referendum, term limits and tax caps--California again leads the way. So the next time the New York Post writes that New York's morphing into California, bloggers like NGD get to write that as long as we stay away from term limits, tax caps, referendum-on-demand--and now pension boards--New York should be OK.

At any rate, here's what the Wall Street Journal writes last week on California's pension fund management by board:

America's largest public-pension fund, Calpers, revealed that a former board member had reaped more than $50 million in fees for arranging investments that could saddle state taxpayers with hundreds of millions of dollars in losses.

The disclosure deepens concerns that alleged conflicts of interest are undermining state retirement funds.

The California Public Employees' Retirement System said it is launching a "special review" into payments by money managers -- including billionaire Leon Black's Apollo Management LP -- to firms including Arvco Financial Ventures LLC. Arvco is headed by Al Villalobos, who served on Calpers's board from 1993 to 1995.

To think that this problem with pension fund boards is somehow limited to California is equally unaware. Or even confined to pay-to-play issues.

The question New Yorkers should as themselves is this: Has the current state comptroller has been anything other than a model of probity and rectitude in administering New York's common retirement fund?

No, I didn't think so. 

But if he has--or does a crappy investing job--we get to vote him the hell out of office next year.

Look, just because Eliot Spitzer was a spittle-spewing lunatic doesn't mean some new kind of dispersed decision-making contraption should now run the state.

The problem with Spitzer and Hevesi is/was the person in the office and not the office itself.

Reality Bites

Reality bites. Again.  As in jumping up and biting in the ass of those making a living out of New York dying.

NGD has done this kind of thing before, so this is more or less an update. This blog would like to say that it doesn't enjoy rubbing this crowd's nose in what has become a constant and relentless repudiation of their self-serving world view that New York is the most dysfunctional political entity in the US. Or the worst the worst state in the US to live.  (Or that authentic, hard-core political dysfunction like this simply doesn't exist.  At least not for the AP.)

Here's a very interesting item from 'dysfunctional' California:

The chief justice of the California Supreme Court criticized the state's reliance on the referendum process Saturday, saying it has "rendered our state government dysfunctional."

The widespread use of referendums to change state laws and constitutions hampers legislators, gives special interests too much power and burdens the judicial branch, Chief Justice Ronald M. George said in a speech delivered in Cambridge, Mass.

"The court over which I preside frequently is called upon to resolve legal challenges to voter initiatives," George said. "Needless to say, we incur the displeasure of the voting public when, in the course of performing our constitutional duties as judges, we are compelled to invalidate such a measure."

Wow. Sure sounds like more-direct-democracy isn't working out for the Golden State. Here's a thought: The next time somebody like Rudy Giuliani, Rick Lazio or the Brennan Center starts with their specious power-to-the-people shtick, ask them how they'd solve California's evident conundrum with initiative and referendum gone wild. Then ask them about how initiative and referendum in conjunction with term limits and property tax caps in California have compelled that state to navigate the Great Recession by descending into a Hobbsian state of political nature. All because, basically, they get to rewrite the state's constitution whenever they feel like it out in California.  Just like the 'reformers' around here want to do.

What should be the scary part--but won't be-- to New York's reformers is that there's no way for California to walk itself back from all this. The fact is, a lot of people--just like the aforementioned chief justice--argue that it is precisely things like I&R, term limits and tax caps that have torn the achilles heel off a functioning state government.  

Not for nothing, the state's investors sure seem to know that I&R, term limits and tax caps have little in common with a stable and functioning state government.

The bottom line is that there's no such thing as tooth fairies, free lunches or shrink-wrapped reform packages that miraculously 'fix' local and state governments just as soon as the instructions are downloaded.  The world just doesn't work that way. 

But on the subject of asking big experts small questions, why not ask itinerant-billionaire Tom Golisano about this finding from Harris:

New York City tops the list of cities that people would most like to live in or near, followed by Denver and San Francisco.

These are some of the results of The Harris Poll^®of 2,498 U.S. adults surveyed online between August 10 and 18, 2009 by Harris Interactive^®.

The Harris Poll has asked these questions almost every year since 1997. Florida topped the list of the most popular states every year from 1997 to 2001. California jumped to the number one position in 2002 and has remained there ever since.

After California and Florida, the states where the largest number of Americans would like to live are Hawaii (#3), Texas (#4), and Colorado (#5). Next came three states tied for 6^th place: Arizona, North Carolina and Washington state.

Filling out the rest of the top 15 states are Tennessee (#9), Oregon (#10), New York (#11), South Carolina and Massachusetts (both equal #12), Georgia (#14), and Montana (#15).

New York City is numero uno and New York state is number 11.  How's this happen when New York City's the highest taxed and regulated entity in the land, antagonistic to small business and small children? And New York State just got through overlaying a millionaires tax upon a statewide grid of extortionate property taxes, crumbling infrastructure and decimated upstate regions? 

Hmm. Sound like a question for EJ McMahon of the New York Post.  Maybe EJ can explain all this with less than 60,000 words of walk-back.  Kind of like how the New York Post walk-backed New York from being singularly lousy (unlike 'good' California)--to plain-vanilla lousy, as in danger of becoming the next (now singularly lousy) California.

Or maybe the people Harris polled aren't hip to the Brennan Center, Tom Golisano or the New York Post editorial page? Or maybe they just don't count because they're not billionaires like Golisano?

Ultimately, there's two possibilities here. Either these professional 'New York sucks' people are opportunistic, intellectually-depraved jerks or recalcitrant, socially-promoted meatheads.  (Is it possible to be both?)

 

The Liar, The Lunatic, and The Idiot

Betsy McCaughey, Greg Ball and Jimmy Tedisco would really do Dostoevsky proud.  Better yet, it's some kind of collective GOP incarnation of Waiting for Godot. Except that today, instead of two, we've got these three awaiting their GOP savior to deliver them from the roadside of abject irrelevance.

So what do they talk about as they wait?

The Liar.

In today's New York Post we can read an op-ed from Betsy McCaughey, George Pataki's former Lt. Governor and one-time Democratic gubernatorial candidate (the NY Post doesn't tell us that in her blurb. But maybe that's because her name was Betsy McCaughey-Ross at the time.)  It's called "The 'Kill Granny' Bill."  This thing is so feckless and contrived, I'm not even going to link to it. But here's how it ends:

In any case, the health-reformers' plan to cut spending on patients 65 and older won't simply reduce end-of-life care, it will also eliminate care for patients who are perfectly capable of surviving their illness and going on with life.

Of course, McCaughey's incandescent logic is the same that supplying toilet paper to the Pentagon's restrooms leads to nuclear annihilation.

The Lunatic.

His name is Greg Ball.  In these parts we call him "Ball Boy." Or "Ball Boy from Hell." This is because he stalks old girlfriends and political opponents, gets butchered goats delivered to his front lawn, and like Betsy, makes ridiculously grandstanding statements on any manner of subject. And fortunately or unfortunately, the proverbial blind, toothless watchdog has again been summoned from its slumber.

The Idiot. (Or as they say on the street, "a real chooch.")

Like McCaughey and Ball, Tedisco will say or do anything to get a rise from a town hall meeting or just see his name in print. Anything. Anything all.  Today, it happens to be another blog project.

Fortunately for Democrats everywhere, Darwin's Law is still in effect and Jimbo's blogging daze are numbered.  Kinda like Tedisco's Take. Affectionately known to NGD readers as Tedisco's Toke. Remember that brain-fart blog of Jimbo's?  The one where Jimbo adamantly refused to answer email and censured all comments.  The same one that was last updated in January?

This raises an interesting question: Will the Times Union also censor user comments to Jimbo's posts?  We hope not. We hope not because we're guessing Jimbo can't handle two way traffic. And that he'll spontaneously combust.

And speaking of blogs and comments, boy, would we ever like to show you some of the comments Jimbo and/or his staffers posted in our comments section. 

But that's all irrelevant now that Jimbo's dumb mouth and dumber moves (plus karma) put him on the bottom rung of a broken step ladder he and his using to scale the Empire State Building.

Oops. Looks like another rung just busted.  The reason this guy's leaving the Tedisco-engineered permanent minority?

"The Republican Party in the Assembly stood for nothing."