Myopia Is An Island

The Machine That Helped Create Suburbia Will, In The End, Destroy Community

Congestion pricing, as a means of reducing traffic, clearing the air, and raising much-needed revenues for mass transit, died in Albany last night.

No surprises. Never mind that congestion pricing works. Let it work somewhere else!

Sheldon Silver, the one man show that thinks and speaks for the Assembly, wouldn't let the issue -- a matter of home rule, really, but who cares what they want back home? -- come to the floor for a vote.
Democrats opposed it. [So much for their concerns about the environment.] Republicans opposed it. [Where were the advocates of mass transit as an alternative to reliance on the automobile?] Suburbanites -- and even those in the outer boroughs -- opposed it, calling congestion pricing no more than a regressive tax (which, in essence, it is), unable, or simply unwilling, to see short-term pain (at $8 a pop) as long-term-gain (millions, initially, and billions, ultimately, for public transportation, cleaner air, and a more sustainable city).

Environmental groups (damn liberals) and mass transit advocates (never learned how to drive) favored congestion pricing. Maybe they saw the forest for the trees. Or perhaps they saw a future, where the streets are impassable, the parking impossible, and the air unbreakable -- a landscape upon which there will be no trees.

Long Islanders, for their part, were either critical of the plan -- as they are of most initiatives calling for even the slightest change to the status quo -- or ambivalent -- as they often are when they are not saying no to everything else.

You can't even blame what happened in Albany -- or what did not happen -- on legislative dysfunction alone, or on an autocracy where three men (four, if the Senate's Minority Leader is invited into the room) decide all. After all, the sense among the general populace was that the price to be paid -- and the hassle of leaving the car at home -- was simply too high.

Legislators heard the voices of the people. Sure, NOW they listen to their constituents!

Look, none of us -- this blogger included -- likes to pay more or to be inconvenienced, but it is woefully -- and dangerously -- shortsighted to do nothing, and, in the not so long run, decidedly more costly.

And its not only the environment and mass transit that are the losers in this game. True, today the feds begin handing out that $450+ million in mass transit money to other metropolitan regions, as New York's carbon footprint grows larger and more encompassing. Suffer not only the city, however, but that very sense of community that was the consummate vision of suburbia.

Instead of raging against the machine -- in this case, the car, the idol (idle?) of the suburbs -- we've embraced it (and let those tree huggers go to hell).

The almighty automobile, creator of suburban life; enabler of a day at the beach and an evening at the mall.

Suburbanites -- and Long Islanders in particular -- love their cars. Everyone in the family has one. Sometimes two or three.

To banish the automobile would be akin to pulling out our hearts, for if we can't drive there, we needn't go there.

Take the train? A bus? Call for light rail? Are you crazy?

No, we'd rather burn that fossil fuel, no matter how many dollars per gallon, feeding our addiction to automania as we line the pockets of terrorist-friendly foreign potentates.

We don't want to be among the masses, elbow to elbow with our fellow suburbanites. Such proximity may give rise, after all, to discourse, or, perish the thought, actual give and take with our neighbors.

Uh, uh. Give us the insular isolation of the automobile, where we feel empowered by that V-8 under the hood, and safe from the world at large behind a ton of steel and impenetrable safety glass.

Like the old Simon & Garfunkel tune, we are a rock, we are an island. We touch no one, and no one touches us.

Instead of raging against this machine that pumps every last dollar out of our wallets, puts huge holes in the ozone layer, and segregates us -- literally -- from humanity itself, we embrace the automobile, clinging to it as a Polio victim would to an iron lung.

What makes community community is the ability to interact, to exchange thoughts (other than road rage), to develop a bond that can only be shared by neighbors.

The automobile, for all of its virtues, has taken all of this away. We are left alone -- as hermit crabs on the sandy beach -- to "enjoy" the solitude.

Change, although inevitable, comes slowly, if at all, to our Long Island.

We are resistant, adopting as our credo, "Just Say No!" to anything which might have the potential to usher in progress. Nancy Reagan would be proud.

It is a resounding NO to congestion pricing. So what if its been a boon to other urban centers, such as most of western Europe. NO.

It is NO to consolidation of water districts, school districts, or dare we say, fire districts that cover areas no larger than a single square mile. If one can do it well, many, if inherently more wasteful and unwieldy, can certainly do it better -- or, at least, at greater cost to the taxpayer.

It is NO to reasonable measures that would lower the property tax, end the proliferation of illegal accessory apartments, and bring affordable workforce housing to downtown.

NO. NO. NO. Whatever it may be, count on LIers to be against it.

While even the lowly virus changes, altering its form, adapting to survive, here on Long Island, we are of the mindset that form triumphs over substance, and that change or transformation, of any kind, can't possibly be for the better.

Best to put off the challenges -- to defeat them by avoidance -- rather than to meet them head on.

No, the problem, whether on the matter of congestion pricing, or any other concern that impacts upon our quality of life, is not solely one of legislative dysfunction -- or hubris. Our failures to gain any significant ground, seemingly in any area of community resolve, is not entirely the result of the foibles of others.

As the comic strip character Pogo put it, "We have met the enemy, and he is us."

Pogo was right on the money. We wonder what he would say about congestion pricing.

"Nassau County Is In A State Of Repair"

Or Is It, Disrepair?

"Repair" signifies that things -- like roads along Main Street, the infrastructure that is the foundation of our local economy, the tax base, long-eroding, the deficit -- are getting fixed.

Unfortunately, there is little, beyond the hollow rhetoric from both sides of the aisle, to indicate that Nassau County is on the road to recovery, let alone that the road is in the process of being repaved.

County Executive Ed Mangano is quick to point out the problems (and to blame most if not all of them on his predecessor), but falls short of offering real solutions. [Someone needs to clue us in on the numbers, too. If Mangano, as per his TV spot, turned a $133 million deficit into a surplus, how is it that we now have a $176 million deficit in Nassau County? We need more smoke to cover the mirrors here!]

The loyal opposition, meanwhile, is swift with its condemnation, telling us what we do not need -- a casino, for instance -- but offering little  more than homage to what we do need -- next-generation housing, among them -- without providing a roadmap (potholes sold seperately) showing how to get there.

State and Nassau County Democratic Chair, Jay Jacobs, calls Mangano's governance, "bumbling." With hindsight, it becomes all too clear that leadership during the Democrats' tenure wasn't all that much better.

So what's the problem and who's to blame? The old borrow and spend, hallmarks of both sides of the political spectrum, the stuff that county, town and school districts alike are made of, creating huge deficits and, ultimately, gargantuan paybacks, as in taxes, fees and rate hikes.

Who's to blame? Not Ed Mangano (he said so himself). Not Jay Jacobs. Not the Dems or the GOP. Heck, they've simply tried to give us, their constituents, exactly what we want. More of this. More of that. And then a bit of these and those to go along with them.

Never mind the cost. We'll worry about that later.

Well, folks, "later" is suddenly upon us. [Actually, it was upon us more than a decade ago, when Nassau County, in boom times, was at the brink of the financial precipice. We changed administrations, but every one of us wanted the good times to continue to roll.]

We can't blame the elected. After all, they are merely a reflection of our own sordid desires, and our unwillingness to pay the pipers for the tunes we demanded they play. And imperfect as they are in implementing our wishes, our representatives, bumbling and blithering, term after term, have given us what we have asked for -- sort of. A great colossus of government-induced spending for which there appears no end (nor cap) in sight.

Whom did we expect to bear the burden of paying for 56 separate school districts in Nassau County alone? What about those 200-plus special taxing districts, each emptying our wallets into their coffers? In a good economy -- make that a great economy -- Nassau floundered. And now, with markets wallowing, fiscal cupboards bare, NIFA barking at our heels, and inflation on the horizon? Exactly what did we expect?

Generation Next is fleeing. Seniors are struggling. The middle class is shrinking. The infrastructure -- much of it still mired, by the inertia of local government, in the 1950s -- is crumbling.

The mindset of the electorate here on Long Island? Apparently, doing nothing remains a viable option.

Perhaps Ed Mangano said it best (though not quite eloquently): "We're doing what the people are looking for..."

The cartoon character, Pogo, may not have been entirely off the mark when he said, "We have met the enemy and he is us!" Indeed, we have only ourselves to blame, really, for this awful mess we're in.
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From the cyberpages of patch.com:



The Democratic Response:

Nassau Dem Chair Responds to State of the County

Nassau Democratic Chair Jay Jacobs offers the following response to the State of the County.

It was hard to watch County Executive Ed Mangano stand before every resident of Nassau County and twist the truth about the situation we're in.

Mangano campaigned on a promise to improve our county’s finances, but his tenure as county executive has been marked by incompetence and fiscal irresponsibility.

The economy is struggling. There’s no argument about that. Too many of our neighbors can’t find jobs. Too many of our kids are leaving Long Island to seek their fortunes elsewhere – and why should they stay here? Our county executive has done nothing to help our communities weather this storm.

Mangano and the Republican majority in the county legislature promised to fix our county’s broken property tax assessment system, which overcharges homeowners by a total of $100 million every year. Their idea of a fix, however, was to make schools responsible for providing refunds to homeowners who pay too much.

The recession has forced school districts across Nassau to cut programs, fire teachers and raise taxes. Now that Mangano has made them responsible for doling out property tax refunds, they will be forced to make more cuts and increase their share of your property tax bill.

I want to emphasize this point: Ed Mangano wants us to believe that his budget doesn’t raise taxes, but he isn't telling the truth.

Mangano has also levied a new tax on nonprofit organizations, although he insists the new tax is a “fee.” This new tax charges nonprofits like hospitals and universities for using the county’s sewer system. To pay it, these nonprofits will have to raise tuition rates and levy fees of their own. Whatever you call this new burden, it amounts to more money out of your pocket.

Mangano needs to be honest with the people of Nassau County. He hasn’t fixed our broken assessment system. He simply shifted the burden away from the county. He didn’t pass a no-tax budget. He is forcing other entities to charge you for the costs of his policies. Our county executive can't keep treating the county budget like a shell game.

Under Mangano’s bumbling tenure, the state has had to take over the county budget. Simply put, our current county executive isn’t up to the challenge of governing during these difficult times. We need leaders who will make smart cuts and pursue real reform of our county’s assessment system, rather than passing the cost of the problem onto our schools. We need leaders who will support smart growth.

We don’t need a casino. We don’t need the traffic it would bring. We need next-generation housing. We need places for our kids to move when they get their first jobs. We need places for young people to congregate and socialize and form the bonds that hold communities together. With well-designed neighborhoods come new residents, who pay taxes and help our county invest in its future. We need a place for a new generation of Long Islanders to settle and grow.

We’re all in this together. That’s why we have to be careful about the cuts and investments we make in hard times – and Ed Mangano isn’t thinking in anyone’s future but his own. That’s why he slashed funding to Long Island Bus. That’s why he is imposing a new tax on hospitals and colleges. That’s why he wants to build a casino instead of a neighborhood. These proposals all sound good the way he spins them, but underneath his rhetoric, they are bad policies that will leave Nassau worse off in the long run.

Jay Jacobs is the chairman of the Nassau County Democratic Committee as well as the New York State Democratic Committee.

California Town Has $300,000 Water Meters

So What? Long Island Town Has Million Dollar Sanitary District Supervisor

As human interest stories go, the New York Times article on the $300,000 water meter for sale in the quintessential 1960s burb of Bolinas, California can be rated as cutesy. The saga of a little town just north of San Francisco whose residents hope to restrict the intrusions of sprawl and overdevelopment through creative zoning -- viz, charging $300,000 for a water meter (because you can't build anything in town without one).

To most readers, the Bolinas water meter caper would bring but a passing grin. To those who frequent the blogosphere to read our blogposts, a certain grimace marks the expression, and a pang below the belt, in the area of the wallet, when a one-time charge of $300,000 for a water meter is juxtaposed against $1,000,000 paid annually to a Sanitation Supervisor in the Town of Hempstead's Oceanside Sanitary District. [READ, Million Dollar Garbage.]

While the town folk in Bolinas seem perfectly content to keep things the way they are in their little town -- the quirk in the zoning law actually working to the benefit of residents, who, with the help of $300,000 water meters, have been able to maintain the hamlet's quality of life, albeit circa 1960, taxpayers of America's largest town continue to pay unseemly sums, not as a means to improve quality of life (or even the collection of trash), but rather, to maintain the lavish lifestyles of the few and the privileged who, like the leeches they are, suck every last dollar out of taxpayers' bank accounts through the medieval fiefdoms known as special districts.

Oh, we, the people, have the authority now to dissolve and/or consolidate these self-serving vestiges of the 1950s, created to sustain a political power base under the guise of local control, but will we use it? And when we use it, as in Gordon Heights, will the powers that be concede that the day of the money-grubbing special taxing district is over, or will they fight, as in Brookhaven, to the bitter end to hold onto a past that threatens to bankrupt us all?

A million dollars a year for a Sanitary District supervisor. What would readers of the New York Times, let alone residents of Bolinas, California, think about that?

Then again, where's the public outcry right here on Long Island? Where's the indignation? Where's the outrage over paying "twice as much," and then some, for essential services, nickeled and dimed (if only it was nickels and dimes) to debt by water districts, fire districts, sanitary districts, lighting districts, parking districts, you name 'em? Where the heck are those Tea Party activists mad as hell over the special district taxes we pay in Nassau and Suffolk counties?

Perhaps, in some bizarre way, Nassau County Comptroller George Maragos is correct when he says that the viability of the special taxing districts should be judged by the local communities these districts are alleged to serve.

Taxpaying residents, under the State's new law permitting the petition for the redress -- and ultimate dissolution -- of this most egregious grievance can now, in fact, be the judge.

If government, through our elected officials, can't or won't get the job done, shame on them.

And if we, the people, can't or won't take on the special taxing districts and their million dollar supervisors, well, then, shame on the very folks who pick up the tab for government waste and inefficiency. Pogo would have been right all along. We have met the enemy, and he is us!

Or maybe, to paraphrase the Times article on Bolinas, "Long Island is a nice place to be whoever you want to be, as long as you can be a Sanitary District supervisor."
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From The New York Times:

The Price for Building a Home in This Town: $300,000 Water Meter 
 By FRED A. BERNSTEIN

BOLINAS, Calif. — Marc Dwaileebe would like to build a house for his family on land he owns in this bucolic town just 20 miles north of San Francisco. But he cannot hook up to the water main that runs right past his property unless he has a water meter. And a water meter, in Bolinas, could cost more than $300,000.

That is the minimum bid for a meter being auctioned off through Friday. The auction is the unlikely result of a water meter moratorium imposed by antidevelopment forces here in 1971.

For most of the last 39 years, “the only way a water meter came free was when a house burnt down, or fell off a cliff,” said Barbara Rothwell, a longtime Bolinas resident.

The meter moratorium has survived, even through protracted litigation, with the support of residents who like this isolated town the way it is.

The meter being auctioned belonged to a lot in the center of town that came on the market last year. The civic-minded community rushed to buy the property and maintain it as a park, with $1.5 million donated by a billionaire venture capitalist. That freed up the meter, which is being sold by the park authority. The meter — and with it the chance to build a house — can be transferred to almost any lot in town, which makes it so valuable: a plumbing fixture as holy grail. Sealed bids for the meter are being accepted until Friday.

When a water meter was auctioned in 2005, a stonemason paid $310,000. This meter could bring far more.
As long as the moratorium remains, “they’ll just get more and more valuable,” said James Kirkham, who has been spending time in Bolinas since the 1950s. Mr. Kirkham thinks the water meter may be undervalued.
If it does not bring big money, some residents may be secretly relieved, taking it as a sign that the relentless development pressures of the last decade have receded.

The seaside town is a 1960s time capsule. Outside the Bolinas People’s Store, used clothes are left for the taking in a shed known as the Free Box (the actress Frances McDormand has been known to stop by to fold items, many of them tie-dyed).

A lot near the People’s Store became vacant back in 1974, when a restaurant called Tarantino’s burned to the ground. Typically for Bolinas, nothing was built in its place, and the lot evolved into a lawn that locals call Burnt Park.

When the owners of the lot decided to put it on the market last year, Michael Moritz, who helped finance start-ups like Google, YouTube and PayPal, gave the park authority the money. It was one Bolinas organization that had not given him a hard time during his struggle to build a house on the outskirts of town — an approval process more tortuous than the roads that connect Bolinas to the outside world. The money from the meter auction (which is being conducted by a local real estate broker, Flower Fraser) will go toward landscaping the new park with plants that — naturally — will not require irrigation.

The people who need the meter most might not be able to afford it. At least one local resident has been tapping into a neighbor’s hookup, an arrangement that has been an open secret for years. Mr. Dwaileebe does not have $300,000 for a meter, said his lawyer, Riley Hurd. Instead, Mr. Dwaileebe is trying to convert an agricultural well on his property to domestic use, a process fraught with its own legal complications.
Outsiders are welcome to bid on the meter — if they can find Bolinas. For years, residents were famous for taking down signs pointing to the town, until the state relented and stopped putting up new ones. Even now, a sign that should say “Entering Bolinas” says, “Entering a socially acknowledged nature-loving town.”

The water meter moratorium was imposed under an interpretation of state law that allows for restrictions on water hookups in an emergency. In 1971, an oil spill offshore left thousands of native birds coated in oil. Outsiders came to help with the cleanup — and in many cases stayed in the idyllic town. The newcomers gained a majority on the public utility board and imposed the moratorium on their first day in office, freezing the number of water meters at precisely 580.

But was there ever really a water emergency? In 1982, the Pacific Legal Foundation in Sacramento filed suit, claiming the moratorium on meters was simply an effort to keep outsiders from building. The suit dragged on for years, and cost this town of 1,500 almost $2 million to defend.

When people hear about the shortage of water meters, “they often think it’s a ruse,” said Jack Siedman, a 33-year resident and a member of the public utility community board, who sports a graying ponytail under his straw hat.

“It’s not a ruse, man,” Mr. Siedman said. “We’re hurting.”

To prove his point, he escorted a reporter on a hike to the city’s water source, a narrow creek known as Arroyo Hondo. A tiny dam holds back the creek, from which the town’s water enters a pipe no wider than a coffee mug.

“That’s it,” he says, pointing to the creek and the pipe. “The entire water supply for Bolinas.”

Mr. Kirkham, enjoying breakfast recently at the town’s one restaurant, the Coast Cafe, says he is a conservative who still feels comfortable in Bolinas, where tie-dyes and dreadlocks are practically de rigueur.

“It’s a nice place to be whoever you want to be,” he said.

He added, “As long as you can get a water meter.”

Cue The White Picket Fences

Slicing And Dicing At The Town Of Hempstead

Put away the Popiel Veg-A-Matic, folks. Kate Murray has taken a hacksaw to Charles Wang's Lighthouse plan, offering up a vision of Nassau County's future that harkens back to Levittown, circa 1950.

SEE Hempstead Town plan cuts Lighthouse Project in half.

Yes, when Nassau was but a sleepy bedroom community, and all of Suffolk a potato farm, the quaint notions of smaller is better, all must be contained within the confines of that white picket fence, defined suburbia.

Fast forward to the 21st Century, where Nassau is now part and parcel of a burgeoning metropolis -- or at least adjacent to it -- and Mineola is no longer the vacation spot of the likes of Edward G. Robinson, and the white picket fence theory all but implodes.

Forget that "small" (as in small minds, small ideas, small, immeasurable steps, unless you count the ones we take backwards) scale, the lilliputianesque myopia that mires Long Island in yesteryear. In terms of economic gain alone, the Town of Hempstead plan -- or should we call it, Murray Minutia -- does little to raise much-needed revenues, something which Town Supervisor Kate Murray all but concedes she did not consider.

A quarter of the housing units (now down to a mere 500) as first proposed for the Lighthouse. Far less density, despite Kate's myriad references to Smart Growth, which principles include higher density. More a portended Grand Avenue in Baldwin (or what a thriving downtown Main Street should look like) than an inviting, imaginative, sustainable (simply invoking the word does not make it so) grand centerpiece of a reinvigorated Nassau.

And what about the Coliseum? Oh yeah. Kate thinks that should be included in the scaled-down plan too. Somewhere. Somehow. WATCH Murray Minutia on YouTube.

And we wonder why our children, our seniors, our workforce, our businesses and our middle class are leaving Long Island in droves?

Even Nassau County Executive, Kate Murray's fellow GOPer, Ed Mangano, has trashed the Town's plan, calling it "economically unviable."

Then again, Ed Mangano, of the Mondello-D'Amato tribe, is of the mindset that a casino at the Coliseum is the salve to solve all of Nassau's woes, economic and otherwise. We wouldn't bet on it.

A casino at the Coliseum is madness. Murray Minutia is mindless.

Nassau needs to rekindle that grand vision of a glorious future, stepping out of the shadows of what the suburban landscape held dear for the likes of Levitt and Moses (that's Robert, not the other fella whose vision was of more biblical proportions).

We know. Let's compromise. Let There Be Light(house). Ten years ago, it seemed like a good idea. Today, it's an even better one.

One thing is certain. There is no more time to lose. The clock has run out. The vuvuzela has blown its last. Whatever is decided, let's get it started. And let's get it done, before the next decade is out. The world around us is not standing still. Nassau County can ill afford to remain mesmerized by 20th Century suburban lore, stagnating amidst the blight, the brownfields, and the asphalt wastelands that have become the Town of Hempstead.

When all is said, if not far from done, this is a heck of alot more than just about hockey on Long Island. This is about life on Long Island. Ours, and our children's. We need to sieze that grand vision. Build it, and they will stay!
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Epitaph or Intermezzo?

Have we reached the end of the line at Nassau's hub, or is this merely an interlude, of sorts? Another stop along the Town of Hempstead's twisted, potmarked biways that lead, invariably, to the Twilight Zone?

To the casual observer, Kate Murray's plan actually rings true. A measured, almost well-reasoned, ode to suburbia, with the opportunity for developers to build within the newly-created "alternative development" zone's somewhat tight and conspicuously restrictive constraints.

To the informed and enlightened, about the only things missing from this disingenuous attempt to stave off urbanization are the Victorian-style streetlamps.

The real problem with Kate Murray's "plan" is, as with almost everything else she does (or doesn't do): it is too little (emphasis on "little"), too late.

Had this "vision" appeared before her, say, a decade ago, residents, from Elmont to Wantagh, would have chomped at the bit to put shovel to dirt. It is, after all, quintessential suburbia, with a touch of swank and a dab of smart.

As for the lament of the Lighthouse supporters, 2 to 1 means nothing on the blogs, in the print media, or at rallies. There's only one place such numbers count -- that's at the polls. In that respect, as Pogo once said, "We have seen the enemy, and he is us."

So there you have it. Another $255,049 of TOH taxpayer money (paid to consultants Frederick P. Clarke) down the tubes. [Money that, come to think of it, could have been spent on elaborate, four-page, full-color Murraygrams.] Progress cheated under guise of "protecting the suburban character." A meaningful, if not monumental project, a shot at renewal for America's first suburb, thwarted again. The future of Nassau County, nay, all of Long Island, delayed, if not denied in its entirety.

Yes, you still can fool most of the people all of the time. In thinking, on our part, that words alone will, in the end, speak louder than actions, we continue to fool only ourselves!

Et Tu, Honduras?

When Coup Becomes All The Rage

Last we looked, Pedro Espada hadn't been elected to lead the junta in Honduras, nor has Dean Skelos tried to seize power -- and hold onto it for dear life, forsaking all else -- in the capital city of Tegucigalpa.

No, the darlings of the NYS Senate have stayed put in Albany, persistent of mind -- and mindlessness -- that they are in control.

Control of what, you may ask? Well, let's not be bored with the silly little details.

Suffice it to say that what has now become the lawless gang of 62, dubbed by the Governor as "the do nothing Senate," (we at The Community Alliance blog gave the Senators this dubious distinction weeks ago), has ceased being of service to the people of New York, and it would appear that no one can -- or will -- do anything about it.

Governor Paterson remains just this side of wimpdom.

Were we to stage a coup, deposing the Gov from office, we'd direct the State Police to arrest each and every State Senator, escorting them to chambers, handcuffing them to their wooden desks, where they shall remain until every last piece of legislation is given a thumbs up or a thumbs down.

Not within the Governor's power, you say? So, sue us.

The courts appear hog-tied, as well, as concerns efforts to get the albatrosses of Albany back to work. "Settle this among yourselves."

Democrats. Republicans. It matters not. They may not have left the building, in body, but as a whole, and individually -- cowards all -- they have abandoned their posts and their duties to the citizens of New York.

Shameful, to put it mildly.

And will we remember this bad turn come November 2010, when next we have the opportunity to throw the bums out? Doubtful. Short of a Constitutional amendment giving New Yorkers the right of recall, where a vote of no confidence sends the infidels home for good, our recollections of these sordid days in the Capitol will likely fade in a year's time (presuming the Senate ever gets back to business), and we will simply swallow hard, sending the Bozos back to Albany for yet another term.

Maybe we're the wimps, eh? Certainly, we are being played for fools on a daily basis.

Perhaps rather than to try in vain to get State government to work (remember, it was dysfunctional before the coup), we should simply allow the Senate to remain in gridlock, and learn to get along without.

After all, if they can't legislate, they can't spend, something they've been prone to do, in excess, for the past forty years. Why, they can't even borrow.

In a scene straight out of Life After People, downtown Albany would become a desolate place (you mean it isn't already?). No money for roads and bridges. No money for mass transit. No money to feed the coffers of those bloated State agencies and so-called public authorities.

Our roads and bridges crumbling? Mass transit grinding to a halt? Would anyone notice the difference?

Think about it. With no money being appropriated out of Albany, our State income taxes, 75% of which we never see back locally, could be redistributed -- locally -- to build and maintain the infrastructure; to create and improve public transportation; to operate and elevate our public schools.

100 cents on every single dollar staying here at home, paying for the services we need, and not for the pork that our State Legislators want.

Okay. So maybe no State government is an unrealistic goal. For the moment.

Still, it gives us plenty of food for thought, and perhaps, just perhaps, the impetus to do something more, as citizens, to assure that we have a government, not of bobble heads and egotists, but, as it was so memorialized, of the people, by the people, and for the people.

Now, wouldn't that be nice, for a change?
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We are fortunate to have with us, as a regular reader of The Community Alliance blog, Richard Cooper, former Chairman of the Libertarian Party of New York.

He recently penned a piece in which he opines that this gridlock in Albany could be a good thing.

Would Libertarians, who espouse "smaller government, lower taxes, and more freedom" (didn't that used to be the credo of the Republicans?), behave any differently than their Democratic or GOP counterparts once in power? Power corrupts, after all. Absolutely!

Could be anarchy is our thing here in New York.

One thing is for sure. Unless New Yorkers seize the day and take back control of government, on all levels, it is not the likes of government officials we must fear, but rather, our own incapacity, or is it sheer unwillingness, to govern ourselves.

How about a new declaration for independence from the citizens of New York, on this, the 233 anniversary of the Declaration of Independence?

Could it be that Pogo was right all along?
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The Albany Legislative Struggle: Gridlock Is Good!
by Richard Cooper

The New York State Senate has been in an uproar for weeks after two Democrats from the majority (32 versus 30 Republicans) elected in November 2008 defected to support former Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos as Majority Leader. One of these Democrat defectors (Pedro Espada, Jr. from the Bronx) became President Pro Tem, presiding over the Senate deliberations. The other defector, Hiram Monserrate, has since returned to the Democrats in the organization of the Senate. Tied at 31 to 31, with no Lieutenant Governor to break ties since David Paterson was elevated to replace Governor Spitzer after his resignation in a prostitution scandal last year.

As a an admirer of the writing of H. L. Mencken, I can only wish he were here to comment on this. Currently unavailable due to death, Mr. Mencken will not be able to handle this task.

Therefore, I will have to press on myself.

The media reports that this so-called "coup" was brought about by billionaire Tom Golisano, who founded the Independence Party and ran for governor unsuccessfully.

When Espada and Monserrate were still voting for former (?) Senate Majority Leader Malcom Smith (D-Queens), the Republicans pointed out their tarnished records. Former policeman Monserrate was indicted for slashing his girlfriend with glass, while Espada is under investigation for operations of a non-profit organization he controls, his residency and failure to file campaign financial disclosure reports. Suddenly after they voted to install Skelos as Majority Leader, the Democrats had a problem with them. Now that Monserrate is back he is in their good graces.

Democrats, the Working Families and others in their orbit call this a coup and wave signs proclaiming "The Senate Isn't For Sale." I don't recall them saying this when Golisano's political action committee backed Democrats for the Senate races. Golisano's money helped obtain the Democrats a majority in the Senate in 2008. http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2008/08/golisano_gives.php

Do Democrats complain about "coups" when Republicans defect to give working control of a legislative body? No, of course not. Republicans and Democrats are hypocrites.

The Senate's session was supposed to end on Monday, June 22nd. Governor Paterson called the Senate into special session to consider emergency bills. Why is a cigarette tax hike in Nassau and Suffolk Counties an emergency?

While reforms to lessen the opacity, size, scope and expense of government in New York are vitally necessary they are simply not to be expected. I do not care which of the two gangs of statist parasites and predators that call themselves Republicans and Democrats controls the New York legislature. They both stand for legalized theft.

Given the current makeup of both houses of legislature, let these be our watchwords until we have a Libertarian governor and legislature. "Gridlock is good."

Richard Cooper is an international trade executive with a manufacturing firm on Long Island, New York, USA. He is active in the Libertarian Party on eminent domain and other issues. He was chair of the Libertarian Party of New York www.ny.lp.org.