All Albany Is Missing Is The Circus Tent

It Already Has The Elephants
A More Dysfunctional Government A Billionaire's Money Couldn't Buy

The change in power in the New York State Senate (what's new is old again), has little if anything to do with reform.

After all, reform means a deviation from the status quo, not a return to it.

Its all about power, control, and ego, so hold the cheers and accolades.

And, of course, its all about money, where a disgruntled billionaire, Tom Golisano, not the voter, decides who will run the State Senate, much like that billionaire mayor, lame ducked by a term limit law, as was the will of the voter, who simply decides that popular mandates mean nothing -- at least nothing that money can't buy.

Yes, money. As in pork. As in Senator Pedro Espada wasn't getting enough of it.

Money talks. Albany listens. Taxpayers are left to dig deeper into their pockets. Reform is at hand!

Look for stalemate in Albany. Again. A return to the agenda which brought voters to the crossroads in the first place.

This is not change. This is duplicity.

A more open government? Sure, some of the rules of the game will change, internally and of necessity to appease the likes of Pedro Espada and Hiram Monserrate, two of that Gang of Four, who, between them, have very little in the way of brain function, let alone ethics.

Malcom Smith, himself a numskull of the highest order, is getting what he deserves.

The rest of us, well, we'll likely get what we got before, when the GOP ruled the roost for some forty years -- bubkiss.

"Couldn't be any worse than what the Democrats have given us these past six months," a local GOP stalwart told this blogger (we could see his wide grin even through the e-mail).

True enough. The Dems short but ruinous rein was abysmal, by any standard. The devil we know for the devil we knew. The new dysfunction substituted for the old. Only the names have changed -- or not.

As for Tom Golisano, what does it all matter to him? He's changed his legal residence to Florida, taking his billions with him.

If only the rest of us could cut and run, rather than stay and fight.

The Albany coup was the easy part, folks. Now comes the hard part -- governing New York, and putting the people's business front and center.

Good luck with that!