It was probably fortunate that I didn't follow the elections returns too closely last night, given the end result. I had a feeling the Republicans were going to get smacked upside the head this time around, considering that, despite having their largest majority since Bush took office, I couldn't think of anything truly useful that they'd gotten done in the last 2 years aside from confirming Bush's two Supreme Court nominees. I am one of those types who votes for Republicans more because they're not Democrats; last night, I think it's fair to say a good number of people voted for Democrats because they're not Republicans.

This six year cycle of Senate seats has not done well for the Republicans since they won in 1994. That year, they won 19 of the 33 seats available; in 2000, they lost 4 of those to drop to 15, and now they have dropped another 6 to hold just 9 of the 33 seats available in this cycle. They had 13 prior to the 1994 sweep to power.

Meanwhile, I can only hope that gridlock will prevent anything too outrageous from getting passed in the next 2 years. With any luck, the Democrats might actually figure out how to bipartisanly share power now that they will be setting the agenda in the House and possibly the Senate. If they instead focus on Bush-bashing on a level that compares with the Clinton obsession by Republicans in the late 1990s, that is likely to blow back in their face come 2008, particularly since Bush isn't running again.

Free advice to the Dems - you finally got Bush in terms of electoral payback in Congress this year. Take the victory and move on.

- Posted by at 2:24 PM

I will make a general prediction that on Tuesday, the number one choice of the voters will be apathy, whether by plurality or majority. I am currently residing in Jefferson County, Ohio, where they are expecting a voter turnout rate of 46% on Tuesday. If accurate, that means 54% will be pulling the lever on "don't care," which will be more than those who opt for anyone with a D or an R following their name.

In New York, even though you may hear gaudy numbers like 70% for Eliot Spitzer or 60% for Hillary Clinton, my bet is the apathetic crowd will still prove to be larger than the number that voted for either one.

I will be voting by absentee ballot for my home district in New York, which admittedly is not likely to have much of an impact. It is somewhat amusing reading the endorsement of the local paper, the Buffalo News. There is only one statewide race in which the paper has endorsed a Republican - the office of State Comptroller - and I strongly suspect the only reason they did so is that the Democratic incumbent is caught in a scandal so toxic that even Eliot Spitzer, who should cruise to victory Tuesday easily, withdrew his endorsement and called for him to resign.

In the 4 local Congressional races, with 2 Republican and 2 Democratic incumbents, the paper endorsed 3 Democrats and declined to endorse anybody in the other. The Republican incumbent's sin in CD-29 seems to be marching "in lock step with the White House." The paper has very little of substance to say about his opponent, citing only military service, ties to Wesley Clark, beating cancer, and being a former Republican. Despite claims that the Democrat brings "a full range of forcefully articulated positions on issues, a passion to reform health care, concern for his district's tax-linked dairy problems and valuable perspective on Iraq," the paper gives absolutely zero details on these claims.

CD-26, held by Tom Reynolds, is the race the paper declined to make an endorsement. Here, the paper at least recognizes that Davis is largely running on an issue that will find no traction anywhere, although the citation of the Mark Foley mess as reason not to endorse Reynolds is particularly questionable, since even they admit they don't know the details of Reynolds' involvement.

In the state legislature, despite the paper's claimed disdain for the lack of genuine 2-party politics there (the Assembly has been Dem for a generation, while the Senate has been Republican for about as long), only once did they opt to endorse a Republican challenger over a Democrat in the Assembly, while they endorsed 2 Democrat challengers over a Republican incumbent. My math might be a bit rusty, but your endorsements would seem to yield a net +1 for the Dems in a chamber you wish were more competitive between the parties.

Locally, the paper has also opted to endorse one Republican over a Democrat for the City Council, but in this case, it's for a 1-year replacement term on a Council that has no elected Republicans.

Summary:

State Office - Dem 2, Rep 1
Congress - Dem 3, Rep 0
Senate - No endorsement noted
State Assembly - Dem +1
State Senate - No change
Locally - 1 Republican non-incumbent

This isn't to say that some endorsements aren't pretty much expected, it just seems that the only time the paper opts to support a Republican pickup is when it feels that the usual partisan makeup isn't shifted too unfavorably to the Dems (i.e. the Republican would be a token win), the Dem is impossible to endorse for some reason, or the Republican is expected to cruise to victory.

- Posted by at 7:47 PM

The absentee ballot's all marked and ready to be mailed back to the local board of elections. It appears that the local board of elections is going with an optical scan ballot for its absentees, and checking the state's website, it appears several optical scan systems are being looked at to replace the older voting machines in the state for regular voters. Personally, I think that's a good system to go with, since it's already used very widely in education, and it has a relatively easy error-correction mechanism - hand-checking the ballot.

Anyway, back to the ballot. There are 11 registered parties in the state, Republican, Democrat, Independence, Conservative, Working Families, Green, Families First, Libertarian, Rent is too High, Socialist Equality, and Socialist Workers. Since the removal of the Right to Life party from the state ballot in 2002 (which coincided with the removal of the Liberal party), the guide I follow is to vote down the Conservative ticket, since trusting New York Republicans on social issues is a dicey issue at best (see George Pataki and Rudy Giuliani).

Voting a straight Conservative ticket in this election means, ironically, voting for 5 Republicans and 4 Democrats in the 9 races in which the party has endorsed a candidate. In the other race, for Congressman, I opted for the Republican, making a total of 6 Republicans and 4 Democrats. The Republican candidates are for Governor, Senator, Representative, Attorney General, Comptroller, and State Assemblyman. The Democratic candidates are for State Senator, State Supreme Court, County Judge, and County Clerk.

As a sidenote, this is where I get to make a mathematical plug to go out and vote. Although for every office, the public at large can favor only one candidate, the only sampling of the public that matters are the ones who actually choose to express those preferences. Assuming voter turnout of approximately 50%, that usually means the winning candidate has the votes of somewhere between 25-30% of the public as a whole. In a 2-party system, usually both candidates, no matter how horrible, register at least 30% support in polls.

What I'm getting at is that the losing candidate in elections often could have won had all of their supporters gone out and voted if the opposition's vote count remained the same, particularly when the election is close (in New York, this rule of thumb does not apply, since a genuinely close election only happens about once every decade or two in any given office).

There is of course the side remark that those who don't vote have no business griping about whatever idiots they get in office for the next 2 years. My personal thought is that whether the Democrats win or lose next Tuesday, the runup to 2008 is going to be filled either with their getting too caught up in paying Bush back or their bitterness and internal feuds over having lost. A sort of damned if you do, damned if you don't sort of thing, since I don't think they can handle either winning or losing in a dignified manner this cycle.

- Posted by at 5:43 PM

Sometimes, caution just isn't enough. You would think, after taking an absentee ballot in person to the student mailroom and double-checking whether it would be post-marked on the same day (the deadline), and receiving assurance that it would be, that would be what actually happens. Instead, it was not postmarked until the following morning. What's annoying is that it was still possible at that point to get it to the main post office, even if it was a big inconvenience to head downtown to do so.

In any case, the result is I cannot vote in the Republican Primary, although fortunately, the application for the General election's absentee ballot was more than in time, so I will be able to vote in November.

- Posted by at 2:25 PM

I wouldn't put too much stock in these things, since I was once mis-cast as a liberal (indeed, the most liberal member of the entire government class of 20 or so), but this quiz seems to have me pretty well cast, at least in the categories listed:

#1: Conservative
#2: Neoconservative
#3: Centrist
#4: Paleoconservative
#5: Libertarian
#6: Paleo-libertarian
#7: Liberal
#8: Third Way
#9: Left-libertarian
#10: Radical

The bottom six definitely deserve to be the bottom six in my case, while the top four do tend to suit me somewhat better.

HT: DD.

- Posted by at 9:59 PM

I'm not sure exactly why Medicare Part D is causing such headaches. My grandmother signed up for it, got an award letter that has her paying no more than a $5 copay on any of her medications (cheaper than before), and there were absolutely no problems at the pharmacy the first time she picked them up under the new plan last week. Everyone involved in the process seemed to know what they were doing, and there was relatively little confusion. This was quite unlike the last time health care changes needed to be made, which was not a fun week or two for anyone.

More impressively, this particular plan not only goes through Medicare, but also through New York's EPIC program and Independent Health. Despite that entanglement, things worked just fine. I'd put my bet on the problem being too many people not being prepared for the start of the plan - everything was set on my grandmother's end before the start of the year, and as a result, she's quite satisfied with the whole thing.

- Posted by at 5:56 PM

Although the federal minimum wage isn't going anywhere, New York is in the process of hiking that wage, which now sits at $6.75 per hour and is set to go up to $7.25 per hour within a year. That means, incidentally, that even the lowest-paid worker in the state now makes more than any student at Franciscan University. $6.75 is also more than I was paid at any of the jobs I held at the University at Buffalo during my 4 years there. Call me crazy, but I expect college students to be adversely affected by New York's move, since we tend to take those positions, and some businesses are already folding up shop because of the higher wages.

I sometimes wonder what the politicians are thinking - if your business happens to rely mostly on jobs near the entry-level, this size hike in wages (31% over federal minimum thus far) is not going to be easy to manage - most businesses do not operate with the profit margin needed to cover that size increase in labor costs, meaning that they have to use some combination of price hikes and job cuts to make it work. Neither of those options are good news for people on the low end of the pay scale who can't afford either to lose work or pay more for products and services.

- Posted by at 11:09 PM

Reading the elections returns from the Ohio Secretary of State, it appears George Soros has mercifully gone 0 for 4 in trying to rig Ohio elections. At the moment, none of Propositions 2 through 5 is polling even 40% support, making it unlikely that any of them will pass.

Current Results:

Prop 2 - 35.7% Yes, 64.3% No
Prop 3 - 32.0% Yes, 68.0% No
Prop 4 - 29.0% Yes, 71.0% No
Prop 5 - 28.9% Yes, 71.1% No

As of 11:00 PM, EST

It's worth pointing out that, for all of Soros' money, the only commercials I have seen on television here in Jefferson County have been from the NO campaign.

- Posted by at 9:55 PM

It figures that of the local area congressmen, the Democratic house members (Higgins and Slaughter) would vote against the Online Freedom of Speech Act while the Republican (Reynolds) would vote for it, fitting the larger pattern of Republican support and Democratic opposition. Do I sense a bit of sour grapes from the left side of the aisle over the blogosphere's influence on last year's election and subsequent activity against their obfuscation?

Anyway, props to the Republicans for standing up for free speech. Democrats, thanks for showing that your commitment to free speech does not extend beyond your own interests.

- Posted by at 12:12 AM

Well, after reading a week's worth of commentary on Harriet Miers, I note a general theme that most people, regardless of position, are arguing for principle over policy. The trouble is, the nomination has revealed fault lines in the Republican party because of a disagreement over the principles involved.

The Republicans, having been more like a tent party in recent years, have two main ideas over who they want as a Supreme Court justice. One group would like someone with a sound, conservative judicial theory, who won't be an activist on the bench. The other side would like someone to overturn Roe v Wade first and foremost and be an ally in the culture wars, but doesn't put as much importance on other legal issues.

Granted, Bush was put in a difficult situation with the nominations. He either had to choose a nominee that managed to satisfy both groups, who would also have a record sure to bring on a fight by Democrats, pick a nominee that appealed to one side and not the other, or pick a nominee that satisfied neither. I do think the appearance of Republican weakness in the Senate, whether or not it was really true, led to the two picks he's made so far. In a way, Roberts was intended to appeal to the conservative judicial theory folks while Miers is an attempt to make the social conservative wing happy. The outcome has been that nobody is really happy because Bush, by trying to make everyone happy, has rather succeeded in doing the opposite.

Provoking all this infighting may well have been a mistake that will set the conservatives back in the short-term. In a way, however, the discussion is healthy to the extent that it shows that the Republican party is not a monolith. Chesterton once said that a thing worth doing was worth doing badly - and that sums up Bush's attempts to sell his nominees to his backers, as well as the response of his supporters to the nominations. The Democrats, make no mistake, would have picked someone and been united behind them all the way to the swearing-in ceremony, smooth as the paved road to hell.

By all means, if the objection to Miers is based on principle, and not merely policy objections, real or feared, stick to the principle. It's not worth selling out principles to get the policy we want, since eventually the abandoned principles will be sorely missed at a later date. But on the other hand, can we try not to act like the Democratic base when we disagree with each other? I've never seen an argument in which anger, nastiness, or anything else personal like cries of betrayal helped the case.

- Posted by at 12:49 PM

Gavin Newsom, the San Francisco mayor who illegally married gay couples in California last year, has arguably sent the concept of civil rights even further into the ground by saying wireless access is a civil rights issue. Excuse me? Since when did access to the internet become a civil right? I would have thought something a little more basic, like perhaps owning a home, would come before internet access in the civil rights arena. Is Newsom planning to push for wireless access across the entire third world, or is this only a civil right for his own constituency?

This puts his gay marriage antics last year more in context. It's not that he's principled, just that he has such a wide concept of civil rights, he'd probably be willing to claim that unfettered access to porn is also a civil right, along with the ability to have stores open 24/7 for the customer's convenience. Where exactly does the runaway train of rights stop?

Can we get back on the page with civil rights and return to the original idea that civil rights only deal with inherent human dignity, and not the whims and pleasures of a rich society gone mad?

- Posted by at 3:29 AM

It's certainly been an interesting day reading reaction to the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court from my usual daily reading. Most reaction has been negative, the notable exceptions being Hugh Hewitt and the Anchoress.

Granted, the woman has never actually been a judge before, which is the biggest problem I have with the selection. The Supreme Court isn't exactly the place to start, although the woman has a legal background and would hopefully be able to manage. I'm not particularly bothered by the donations to Democrats in the late 1980s up through the early 1990s. I was on the Dem side of the aisle much longer than that, and it's pointless to get stuck on issues in the past which might not be relevant any more.

I am encouraged by the fact that Miers belongs to what's described as an evangelical "fundamentalist" church, and has for at least the last 10 years, and is described by her pastor as holding beliefs consistent with that faith. That inspires confidence on social issues, as does some pro-life work done in the legal profession.

It's probably not what conservatives, myself included, were hoping for, but when a President gets elected on the basis of him being the better of two lousy options (or in New York, the best of seven lousy options), this is what results. Make the best of the situation and aim for a better outcome next time around, assuming this is a bad move, which it may well not be. Rome was not built in a day, and correcting the government is NOT going to happen without its ups and downs. Besides, Bush has been very shrewd as President, and I wouldn't put it past him to have done this just because he knew it would tick off half the right, making him and his picks seem more moderate and reasonable by comparison (a potential asset for the next selection).

- Posted by at 9:50 PM

I just took a political quiz, which identified me as a Republican, which isn't terribly surprising. However, the interesting thing I note from the statistical info they're collecting is that, even though Kerry voters outnumber Bush voters by nearly 2 to 1 among quiz takers, and less than 1 in 6 respondents are for the Iraq war, only 44% of all respondents describe themselves as pro-choice (given only the option of for/against legal abortion).

Even though this poll is by no means scientific, Democrats may seriously want to re-think their dogmatic obsession with legal abortion if the actual percentage of pro-choice voters is anywhere close to what's suggested by this. If they can't get a favorable outcome on that position in a poll where they win by 2 to 1, and the respondents are overwhelmingly anti-war, one has to wonder just how badly pro-choice support really is among the electorate.

- Posted by at 2:47 AM

While I can't be sure, not having access to the Buffalo News' back archives, I'm pretty sure that back when President Clinton made recess appointments the News was championing the move as the proper action taken against an uncooperative Republican Senate. Now that the shoe's on the other foot, it's a bad move, even though this time, the obstructing Democrats are the minority party, not the majority as in Clinton's time.

From the News's editorial:

It was a bad move. An appointment to the world body should be viewed as having the backing of the U.S. Senate as the Founding Fathers intended, not simply that of a stubborn president.

I doubt the Founding Fathers would have wanted us to have anything to do with such an institution. In addition, Bolton likely has the backing of the full Senate, just not the undemocratic Democrats who, knowing they'd lose the vote, refused to let it happen. I think the Founding Fathers might have had something rather harsh to say about preventing confirmation votes for political reasons.

What amazes me is how much value the News is placing in the UN. The only major accomplishments of that body in the last 5 years are sucking up money, getting involved in a massive financial scandal, being generally impotent, and otherwise only generating hot air that's contributing to global warming. I seriously think that if the institution were swept out of existence, most people would hardly notice, except for the bureaucrats.

Sad to say, Bush has rarely let bad judgment stop him in the past. With the Bolton appointment, he once again allowed his own mulishness to get the better of him. Lacking broad enough Senate support, Bolton's appointment was not in this country's interests. That was the test. Bush failed it.

Hmm...so "broad enough" Senate support is the benchmark of the country's best interests? Funny how I thought these things were supposed to be decided by simple majorities. While we're on the subject though, ever notice how squeakers that are in favor of liberals are decisions to be hailed, even if the support is narrow or even in the minority, while conservative actions always seem to need some impossibly high super-majority to win a mandate?

Here's one for the News's theory - let's put gay marriage to a vote in the Senate. I think such a thing would fail to find "broad support" in that body. Would they then be consistent and say it's not in the country's best interests to pursue it in mulish fashion by constantly pushing for it, as activists keep doing? I wouldn't put money on it.

- Posted by at 11:06 PM

Well, probably not the light of a higher authority, just the political light. Having chosen not to run again for governor, vetoing a bill allowing over-the-counter sales of the "morning after" pill is pretty much a no-brainer if he has aspirations for national office. I don't imagine he's had any real change in principles here because his objection is mainly based on the fact that the bill offers no protections for minors. His spokesman says he'd sign it if that and certain other flaws are resolved.

Meanwhile, I'm amazed bills like this one have come up at all. It says a lot about society when we have movements to push a pill from the pharmacist to the counter. Shouldn't the FDA be making decisions like this, not politicians? Oh right, who cares about medicine, the activists only care about banning pregnancy, something nature is strongly defying, oddly enough. The words of Jurassic Park are applicable here - "nature will find a way."

I don't know folks, instead of spending billions of dollars on sex, maybe we could spend it on something more useful, like all those third-world projects I keep hearing about.

- Posted by at 11:27 PM

Christopher Dodd, Democratic Senator from Connecticut, had this to say about John Bolton: "He's damaged goods. This is a person who lacks credibility."

Hey, if that were true, Bolton would fit right in with all the other suits over at the UN. I wouldn't trust my wallet with those people for 5 minutes, let alone trust them with other people's well-being. The Oil for Food scandal has pretty much wiped out any trust I had left in the UN. But then again, there's not much to expect from the UN when it's an attempt to form democracy with many dictatorial nations.

Dodd also added that Bolton, "doesn't have the confidence of the Congress," a code phrase which really means that Bolton doesn't have the confidence of the Democrats. Dodd's statement is also a bit of pie in the sky, since Congress has never voted on whether or not to confirm Bolton, a vote I expect he'd win if the Democrats ever had the guts to let that happen.

- Posted by at 11:13 PM

The Buffalo News is taking the expected position in the Roberts nomination to the Supreme Court, today coming out with an editorial saying Democrats "deserve" documents relating to his work as deputy solicitor general. Here's the full text:

Senate Democrats are right to pressure the Bush administration over its reluctance to release U.S. Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr.'s tax returns from the past three years. They should even get exercised over its decision to withhold documents related to Roberts' work as deputy solicitor general.

Of course they do, just as Republican senators did when President Clinton nominated justices. That's part of the system of checks and balances and adversarial parties. If one isn't monitoring the other, the system falls apart.

Much as Republicans may have wanted something to embarrass Clinton's nominees, they didn't exactly go out and demand controversial documents permitting them to go on a fishing expedition in hopes that they'd hit pay dirt.

But the News also seems to be a bit uninformed about the history and rationale behind checks and balances - the framers put them in to check government branches in their general operation, not to have adversarial parties do that work. Adversarial parties were loathesome to several of the framers as it was, and they certainly wouldn't have envisioned such a party refusing to confirm a member of another simply because they didn't like his philosophy, especially if that party was in the minority.

I'll put this simply for the News - the Senate as an institution is a check on the President's Supreme Court nominees, not the minority party, and the President's party presently controls the Senate. If the News doesn't like that fact, they can whine about it all they like, but voters gave Republicans the 55 vote majority last year, and the majority is supposed to decide things in a democracy, not the minority opposition.

If Democrats' purposes for seeking such information are partly political, then Republicans' refusal arises from the same motivation. To be sure, both sides should be prepared to compromise. For example, solicitors general - basically the government's lawyer in Supreme Court cases - from both parties believe their ability to be candid is linked to the confidentiality of their advice. Nonetheless, senators received copies of memos written by previous nominee Robert Bork. Some accommodation ought to be possible.

Compromising on the idea of attorney-client privilege is not a precedent that we ought to consider setting here, particularly if the client doesn't feel like releasing the information. The client, i.e. the United States government, is currently under the Bush administration, and if it doesn't want to release them, it doesn't have to. Unless Democrats are aware of something specific in them that they want to know, they should not be given free reign to pore over documents that ordinarily would not be released.

On Roberts' tax returns, White House resistance is more perplexing. Nominees in recent decades provided the previous three years' tax forms to senators. The Bush administration changed that policy in 2001, allegedly to streamline the process. It doesn't appear that way, though. Instead, the plan to provide only a one-page summary looks manipulative. That's hardly the impression the administration should want to convey on a nominee to the country's highest court.

Of what use is a tax return? I mean really, unless the man isn't paid up (something which can be done with a 1-page summary, I imagine) tax returns have absolutely nothing to do with a nominee's potential fitness for the Supreme Court. My only guess is that Democrats are looking to see if any donations were given to groups they dislike.

- Posted by at 10:52 PM

Via Polipundit comes a link to this article by John Hawkins that clears up some of the more common myths regarding the Iraq war. Useful to share with people who have been spouting some of these, as I believe I heard at least 6 of these in one recent conversation.

- Posted by at 10:17 PM

And shoots itself in the foot at the same time. The Buffalo Teachers Federation recently won a court case which stopped the Buffalo School Board's attempt to save 300 jobs by switching to one health care provider, a savings of some $12 million to the District. Those jobs are now on the cutting block, along with other non-mandated programs. On the TV news, the union's president said that they were "willing to negotiate with the district" over this. My read of that is that the union won't agree to the money-saving plan unless they get some other benefit which reduces the amount of the savings and hence leads to more job cuts on top of several years of heavy staff and program reductions.

Exactly why the union would be opposed is beyond me. Their health insurance coverage is among the most generous out there, and I'd hardly think having it all provided by one company as opposed to several is much of a sacrifice, especially when it saves hundreds of their own jobs. But then, unions aren't much about saving the jobs of their junior members these days so much as they are about looking out for the senior members on top and funneling money into politics.

- Posted by at 11:10 PM

The county has gotten a control board for its finances, and it's scheduled to be around until 2039. It's designed to be a "soft" or advisory one unless the county fails at any one of four things - getting shut out of the bond market, failing to pass a balanced budget on time, running a deficit of more than 1% (approximately $10 million per year), or defaulting on its debt service.

Tomorrow there's a vote on a sales tax hike which may not pass, as one of the retiring legislators has suddenly come out swinging with a plan to cut 25% across the board from all departments and wants it seriously considered before he'll approve an increase. Part of it sounds like sour grapes over not being party to a very small cut package being proposed by the majority leader. Wall Street has more or less warned the county that a failure to pass this measure will lead to junk bond status, which would trigger the "hard" board before we've even got it started. A hard board can cancel union contracts and would have much more control over the purse strings.

Giambra meanwhile seems more deluded than certain idiots comparing Guantanamo Bay to gulags. Wall Street has joined the chorus of people differing with his view of reality, joining a long list of county and state politicians. Joel really is a uniter - he may be the only politician around who can successfully get everyone to unite against him. Now all we need is an anti-Joel and things would be great.

In a way, it's almost too bad the taxpayers get sentenced to up to 34 years of this, with the possibility of parole at some later point, instead of the people in charge.

- Posted by at 11:16 PM

Cue the dream sequence music and the wavy picture that usually follows it:

In the office of Steve Barnes, a prominent local injury attorney...

TAXPAYER: I'd like to sue the County executive and legislature.

BARNES: What for?

T: Mismanaging my money and putting me millions in debt.

B: I don't think I can do that.

T: What? I thought this was the place to come for multi-million dollar settlements!

B: Well, that's for injury lawsuits.

T: Oh, no problem. They're a toxic waste hazard, let's get em on that.

B: Excuse me?

T: Sure, you heard Alan Hevesi. He said they were toxic. They're a hazard in public buildings.

B: He was speaking metaphorically...

T: So what?

B: Politicians aren't a recognized source of toxic waste so...

T: I want them declared mentally incompetent to hold office.

B: There's no precedent for that unless they're actually mentally incompetent.

T: You don't think there's enough evidence to make the case?

B: Clinically, I don't think so. Sorry you...

T: Well, how about a personal injury suit?

B: They've injured you?

T: Sure! Assault and battery!

B: Really? Tell me more.

T: Look at this!

B: ...Your wallet?!

T: Yep. They snuck up behind me and started beating and clubbing the poor thing. Beat it so bad it started bleeding twenties with no end in sight.

B: I'm sorry...

T: So am I. It's been bled dry, see? Think we have a case?

B: I'm afraid not, you see, you've not been assaulted...

T: What do you mean I've not been assaulted? My wallet's a part of me!

B: There's no precedent for that...

T: There's a first time for everything!

B: I don't think I want to make that argument.

T: What? I thought you guys were on the cutting edge of law practice!

B: That's over the edge.

T: Oh come on, you've been over the edge before! Didn't you just get reprimanded for being too edgy?

B: I think we're done here.

T: What a fraud! I'm going to Andrew Cappoccia's law office. I'm sure he'll take my case and get me out of debt. He said so on TV!

End dream sequence.

This dream was inspired by the news that once again, a legislator might throw a wrench into a tax increase by voting against it when it comes up for the crucial third vote next week. If that happens, I fully expect the county's bond rating to be downgraded to junk and the state to step in faster than you can swat a fly.

As far as mental incompetence to hold office goes, I'm not entirely joking there. One way or another, revenues need to be raised and expenses cut if there's to be any hope of balancing the budget in the near future. Somehow, that fact has yet to sink in to these dummies in office, since it's now been roughly 8 months since this crisis first broke on them.

- Posted by at 1:08 PM

The headline above would clearly be quite tantalizing if it involved Republican Congressman Tom Reynolds and Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer, both of New York. However, these two aren't duking it out in a race. Instead, this banner refers to a race for the 12th legislative district in Erie County. The candidates are Robert Reynolds and Dr. Janet Schumer. And, in a reversal, the Schumer in this race is a Republican, while Reynolds is a Democrat. Who says there's no irony in politics?

So, as odd as it may sound, this may be the one time I might have voted for Schumer and not Reynolds in a race.

- Posted by at 11:31 PM

The verdict is in from the state comptroller, and Erie County is projected to have a deficit of $118 million by the end of the fiscal year based on its current budget. This isn't good news, since the fiscal year is already 5 months in progress, meaning any cuts of staff or increases in taxes won't be as effective as they would have been back at the start of the year.

The county executive's still playing Mr. Denial, trying to dispute the state's numbers. Given he has the popularity of a rotting corpse in summer, I doubt anybody's really going to buy into that claim. In somewhat good news, the state's audit was only about $5 million off of the projection of the local comptroller, so at least she wasn't using quack math, though unfortunately, her warnings about the rash fiscal policies in place the last few years have been routinely ignored. A control board is being proposed to help sort all this out, since the political situation has really become almost impossible to work with.

So, it looks like the primary solution to this mess is going to be raising the sales tax and eventually property tax, floating at least $100 million in long-term deficit financing, and probably hoping the exodus of people from the county doesn't make it impossible to rebalance the budget. The county has to move though, since the state legislature will be recessing in only 2 weeks, and their approval is required to float deficit financing bonds. I doubt the county can secure a short-term loan to avoid insolvency in July otherwise, since its bond rating was downgraded again today (now BBB-), and was warned future downgrades could occur if the financial picture doesn't improve soon.

Seriously Joel, stop digging and put down the shovel, the hole in the Rath Building is deep enough. In fact, I'm sure if you just owned up to being a lousy executive, resigned, and announced you were moving to Florida for good, you'd get the biggest going away bash ever. Heck, we might even let you take a county car and pay your chauffeur for the trip down.

- Posted by at 9:17 PM

The Niagara Air Reserve Base is currently scheduled for closure under the Pentagon's current plans. Local leaders have been working pretty hard to change that outcome, and have wondered why this base is scheduled for closure even though it ranked higher than some bases which will be staying open. Well, it turns out there's a perfectly rational reason - most of the aircraft we have here are flown exclusively by reservists, and since they're needed a lot, there's been a bit too much of a callup of the Reserves. So the military's idea is to reduce this problem of overusing the Reserves.

I find this highly ironic because many people locally have been expressing concerns about the overuse of the Reserves. Now that the military has actually heeded that criticism and might close our base to solve that problem, well, now there's an outcry. Since these decisions are usually political, I doubt much capital is available to help here. This state always goes for the Dems, and the only Republican House member whom this really impacts is Tom Reynolds.

Interesting sidenote - this base was also on the 1995 closing list, but I recall that there were some rumors in the Buffalo News that this was in part based on the false premise that the base was in a Republican district when it was really in Democrat John LaFalce's. As the Buffalo News archive is not available online, I really don't know for sure.

- Posted by at 9:43 PM

The Erie County Legislature's future prospects for change are a little bit better, as now 6 of the current 15 members, 4 of the 7 Republicans and 2 of the 8 Democrats, have chosen not to run again. That means only 2 incumbents out of 9 need to be beaten to have a majority of fresh faces, and I'd say odds are pretty good that at least 2 of those trying to get reelected will fall, since the Democrats have been for the most part been trying to raise the sales tax (why any party that supposedly cares about the poor would want to raise an already high regressive tax is beyond me), which has raised the ire of a lot of taxpayers.

There is a movement in place to field challengers to all 9 of those who remain in the hopes of cleaning house. Best of luck to them.

In a more positive development, the New York government is actually, as surprising as it sounds, retiring a sales tax increase that it billed as temporary a few years back. As of midnight, the state's extra quarter penny sales tax will expire, returning the state rate to 4%, and the local rate to 8%.

- Posted by at 10:14 PM

I've pretty much played a waiting game on the so-called Nuclear option to deal with the filibuster on Bush's judicial nominees, as I've not been sure what the right move was here. Personally, my gut said to keep bringing up the issue and force the Democrats to essentially keep filibustering constantly. After all, obstruction cost Republicans in the mid 90s with Clinton, and I didn't see it working any differently this time around with the roles reversed.

I suppose the silver lining of the compromise is that it puts the Democrats on record as backers of the filibuster, which should make it, at least in the court of public opinion, more difficult to remove it later on should the Dems take back the Senate someday. To that end, it may be somewhat phyrric to the Dems, since one can imagine the filibuster coming back to bite them in the rump, assuming at least 41 members of the opposition retain some sort of spine to use it.

Meanwhile, it does get 3 of the blocked nominees out of gridlock, besides establishing a standard of filibusters only coming against extreme candidates. That may work more against the Democrats than they think, as their version of extreme doesn't mesh too well with what the popular notion of an extremist is. If someone like Priscilla Owen comes up again, whose only essential crime against the left is a decision to uphold a parental notification law, Democrats will be hard pressed to convincingly make the extremist label stick, especially with the rise of alternative media helps demolish exaggerations and lies.

Like with most other things in politics, I'll wait and see how this turns out. My gut says this is better than pulling the Nuclear option, but worse than if the Republicans had simply forced the Dems to continue their filibusters.

I know a lot of conservatives are hopping mad, but unfortunately, the best we can do for now is keep voting for the people who are closest to our views. I'd rather have a luke-warm Republican in Congress than most Democrats any day (excepting Zell Miller).

- Posted by at 11:52 PM

How can you tell when fiscal problems in the government are serious? When the local news spends the first 7 minutes of the broadcast covering nothing but that. It's definitely allowing the news teams to shine, because this is a non-partisan story which has plenty of investigative avenues to be followed - even better, the news networks really can't lose, as virtually everyone dislikes how the County Executive has been handling the situation, and substantial majorities dislike how the Legislature's been handling things (as I mentioned some time back).

National laughingstock status will likely be conferred as soon as the the state comptroller's fiscal report comes out in a few weeks. I suspect this will be bad because some members of the state government are already throwing around words like Enron style cooking of the books and the possibility of indictments.

- Posted by at 11:06 PM

Insolvency of the county is potentially looming about two months away, and political shenanigans are still continuing as usual. Any which way the budget numbers are looked at, a deficit of at least $60 million will occur this fiscal year, but that could be as much as double, depending on whether the county executive or the comptroller has the better accounting staff. As it stands, the state comptroller is having his own staff review the books to let us know where we stand on both this year's and last year's deficits.

The cash flow is expected to run out by July if more loans are not floated, and there is the possibility this fiscal black hole could be cut off from that avenue. The cash flow problem is unlikely to be resolved, since the legislature is loath to either cut expenses or raise taxes. Yesterday, they opted to enact cuts of only a tenth of the best-case scenario deficit. And, even though everybody is well aware that we are millions in the hole, the parks are being reopened even though there's not enough revenue to balance the cost of doing so.

A fiscal control board has been floated by several politicians of late, given the sudden severity of the fiscal collapse, although our idiot executive may have made that option much harder by claiming it would make it easier for him to force through his regionalism agenda. That's incredibly arrogant, trying to force through his plans after having fiscally ruined the county. I wouldn't put it past him to have deliberately done this to make enacting his plans easier.

Meanwhile, there remains some hope in the fiscal collapse - a control board might finally force some real reform of the government here.

Sources here, here, here, here, and here.

- Posted by at 8:43 PM

This sounds pretty on target for me. Social issues are definitely the part where the liberal side of the aisle can whistle up a tree as far as I'm concerned. I don't think the crimes position is quite on the mark, but with the questions asked, that's where it came up. I do have some sympathy with their positions on other issues, but by and large, I've been drifting more to the right as time has passed.

- Posted by at 11:06 PM

Despite the fact that Erie County's in a fiscal mess, and will likely be even worse off next year, the legislature decided, in its infinite wisdom, to reopen the county's closed parks, at a cost of $1 million, even though there is no assurance that there is any money available to do so. The response of the majority was that the county executive can figure out how to find the money. Nice job guys, just keep passing the buck around in a continuous circle. Standard and Poor's is not going to look kindly on that kind of fiscal irresponsibility.

The only good news on this front today is that another pair of legislators are calling it quits, meaning that 4 of the 15 will not be back in office next year. 3 of them have not yet made a decision. With any luck at all, we'll vote out all of them who choose to run again.

- Posted by at 11:09 PM

It says a lot about the way the left values life when in response to a bad piece of Texas legislation, they respond by saying there is nothing they could wish on some on the right, saying they're worse than child molesters and murderers. Coupled with the Democratic party's syllogism of the week that Republicans ought to be euthanized (via Howard Dean's saying we're brain dead, coupled with a fair number of the party's base complaining about the efforts to keep the supposedly vegetative Terri Schiavo alive), and it's rather clear that the Democrats don't consider all lives to be equal.

The whole business about the bill Bush signed in Texas while governor which was just recently used to deny care to a young child against the family's wishes is grossly misleading, since the previous law was even worse than the one Bush signed in that regard. I also find it annoying how Bush is repeatedly criticized for not granting much clemency as governor, even though Texas law makes it pretty plain he didn't have the constitutional power to do so, much like no governor has the constitutional power to grant clemency to the unborn due to some rather unjust constitutional interpretations.

If this is all part of Howard Dean's plan to appeal to pro-life voters, it's pretty disingenious. We aren't the sort who buy these "Bush killed people" themes. Besides, the party just showed its stripes again over Terri Schiavo - the most hot-button pro-life issue to come up since Connor Petersen, the constant abortion battle aside - and the party pretty much blew any chance to make inroads by holding up the legislation and having several members speak out against it.

These attempted "gotcha" games won't work with the pro-life side so long as they still directly support over a million murders a year in this country. And if they honestly think that one unintended death from this bad but improved Texas law even begins to equal millions of abortions, they are as clueless as ever.

- Posted by at 9:07 PM

The Washington Times has posted a transcript of a lengthy interview with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. She's been touted as a candidate for President in 2008 for the Republican ticket by Professor Bainbridge and also by Polipundit.

In the interview, the question of abortion comes up. While she's in favor of some pro-life measures, like ending Partial-Birth Abortion and parental notification laws, she doesn't think the federal government should be involved in the matter. She also describes herself as 'mildly pro-choice' which makes me mildly squeamish about supporting any run by her.

To her credit, she says that faith informs her decisions and that it's very important to her. It would be nice to know more about what her faith says about the hot-button moral issues of the day.

At any rate, because the Democrats will probably select someone who will want no restrictions at all on the cult of Satan and its various activities, I'd probably vote for her if she ran, but not with as much enthusiasm as I would if she were completely against abortion.

- Posted by at 9:23 PM

As if things weren't already bad enough, it turns out the county's finances are in serious trouble again. Legislators passed a supposedly balanced budget last week and thought they were done. Enter Comptroller Naples, stage left, to announce there was an unexpected $106 million deficit from last year's budget, which has left the county's reserve funds balance at $0, and possibly looking at insolvency. Somehow, I doubt the bond rating agencies are going to look very favorably on a county that now has nothing in the bank and has a dubious record on managing its finances. And to imagine, just 6 years ago, there was almost $250 million in the bank, plus the tobacco settlement money.

Now, a $106 million gap in a roughly $1 billion budget represents a significant miss. Somebody definitely guessed very badly in their estimates last year, and also very recently. It turns out that this budget gap is at least $40 million higher than the county's budget director was estimating just last month. Even more questionable is the fact that two county officials signed affidavits saying there was no deficit somewhere in the latter half of 2004 to dismiss a lawsuit.

Anyway, the net impact of all this is that the "balanced" budget of last week is now as much as $32 million out of balance, partly due to the complete liquidation of the county's reserves, part of which were supposed to be used to balance this year's budget. The possibility exists the county will not be able to balance this new gap without a tax increase, which is really astounding. One would figure that having already cut over $100 million in expenses, a tax increase could be averted. Finger pointing and accusations are flying everywhere over this revelation, and will more than likely lead to lawsuits again.

In somewhat related news, the county risks losing $21 million in state and federal funds for not opening its new public safety facility. The county hasn't budgeted the $300,000 it would take the public works department to staff the new building with maintainence and security personnel. Seems like a solution only a government could arrive at - save $300,000 but lose $21 million.

Helpful suggestion to the county government - eliminate the Comptroller's office and outsource to professional accountants. You know, people who will actually notice a $106 million runaway freight train of a deficit earlier than two and a half months after the derailment, and who presumably won't have their boss absent a lot campaigning for a House seat as the train is barreling toward disaster.

Source links here, here, and here.

- Posted by at 11:34 PM

Surfing around my blogroll today, I noticed a post over on Polipundit which was promoting the idea of a national sales tax. I'm not exactly sure why so many conservatives seem to like this idea - I'm definitely not sold on the concept, particularly since it's regressive in nature. If we want flat rates, a flat income tax rate would make the most sense.

Besides, sales taxes have a more devious aspect which even the current withholding system does not - for all except those into meticulous accounting, it becomes somewhat easy to lose track of how much tax one is paying. I remember on a visit to Europe some years ago that the sales tax, called the "Value Added Tax" as I remember, was in some regions roughly 30%. However, the tax was never broken down as a separate line item like it is here. The sticker price already had the tax included - it required backing out the tax rate in order to determine how much tax was being paid. As with withholding, it becomes too easy for the government to just raise the tax, since most people won't notice too much of a difference in what in most cases is spare change being added on to every shopping bill. But all of those bills add up.

Now, the sales tax is already bad enough here in Erie County, where the current rate is 8.25% - 4% for the state, and 4.25% for the county. I have no idea exactly how much taxable retail sales we're talking about here, but 8.25 cents per dollar can't pay the local and state expenditures here. The federal government is liable to need considerably more than that to meet its own bills.

Such a plan could also wreak havoc on the patterns of retail shopping. A national tax rate plan could only work if internet transactions were taxed - something which I think the government would have great difficulty in doing, even if it wanted to try. If the internet remained exempt, everyone would flock to online shopping, which would kill brick and mortar businesses, as well as the local governments which rely on the sales taxes. On the other hand, if the tax was imposed on the internet, the states will want in too, which could choke internet sales.

This is in addition to the problem that sales taxes by their design are regressive. Everyone pays the same rate, but those with less end up paying a higher percentage of their available income on the tax. Also, as with income taxes, a lot of items could conceivably be sold under the table, and hence kept from the tax. Unlike income, which is likely to have payroll records on file, retail items generally don't have detailed enough records to link a consumer to an item. The IRS has enough of a time trying to notice tax evasion among income statements - sales of billions of items will provide more holes for those who wish to and have the means to exploit them.

Hopefully sense prevails and this idea will die the death it deserves. Like with most things, this is something in which emulating Europe is not the smartest of ideas.

- Posted by at 11:46 PM

The court thus proclaims itself sole arbiter of our nation's moral standards.

- Antonin Scalia, dissenting from a decision to strike down the death penalty for 16 and 17 year olds.

The man makes a good point about the court, though I disagree with his dissent to the decision. I'm not sure why Scalia thinks the Court is only just now assuming this role, considering it's been in the business for decades, extending well back into the 19th century. The Dredd Scott case would be a classic example of the Court being the sole arbiter of moral standards, vis-a-vis personhood, a matter over which it has opined numerous times, not always correctly.

It's definitely been pretty active in this field since the post-World War II era, beginning with the civil rights cases it heard. Regardless of where one stands with regard to the cases, it is a case of the Court saying to the entire country that certain things were morally unacceptable. Even though I think they were largely right in those cases, it does set precedent for the Court stepping in and overruling popular opinion.

And then of course, there is the Roe decision which stands as the paramount instance of the Court's morality imposition, by essentially waffling with the pathetic excuse that it couldn't say when life started. Even back in those days, I think biologists could have informed them that spontaneous generation of life was an exploded theory from the Middle Ages long since discarded. But nevertheless, such was the decision. The logic is pretty terrible in and of itself - personhood is conferred almost magically as soon as one gets outside the womb alive, leading to the odd paradox of a 22-week old premature infant being a person because born, but a 32-week old in the womb still being something less than human.

And as we are seeing in other cases, courts in general are having no problems interjecting themselves into moral issues of the day. If Scalia is honestly just realizing this now, he apparently hasn't been watching judicial events closely enough the past few years. It's not likely to stop until there is a smackdown ruling that courts in general are not permitted to adjudicate morality - which I believe was the original fear of the founders, though aimed at a different entity. The irony is that it wasn't the men in black from Rome they had to fear - it was the men in black on the federal bench.

Returning to this decision, however, the most curious part about this decision is that it, in conjunction with the decision earlier on the mentally retarded, is logically inconsistent with the Court's Roe decision. If it's cruel and unusual to execute mentally retarded criminals and minors, explain to me again how it's acceptable to execute extremely incapacitated minors whose only apparent crime is that they're unwanted? The Court may not be willing to admit it dropped the ball on that whole personhood thing a generation ago, but it only takes a DNA test to show the infants are humans. After that, one only needs to apply the Court's decisions against executing the retarded and minors to conclude abortion is not possible - after all, we're talking about a human under age 18 whose mental status is still infantile and who most importantly hasn't murdered anybody. It should be an open and shut case, if five particular black robes would quit closing their eyes, minds, and hearts.

- Posted by at 10:55 AM

In the never-ending drama that is the Erie County Budget, the four county departments run by elected officials - Clerk, Sheriff, DA, and Comptroller - have temporarily succeeded in winning an injunction against any cuts in their departments. Three of the departments are run by Republicans, and one by a Democrat. This creates a potential $8 million further gap in the budget, which at this point would look rather difficult to bridge.

In another bit of wackiness, the Comptroller dug up a potential $3 million hidden in the budget which was allocated in the last minute rush last year to pass a budget to a company to try and run an alternative program to incarceration. Something certainly sounds fishy there, and if it's there, it might possibly help mollify those 4 department heads enough to make a budget...this year, anyway. Next year, barring a miracle or serious state aid/reform, I expect Erie County to have to raise taxes by a hefty margin to balance the books, unless it wishes to go insolvent.

- Posted by at 11:03 PM

Well, the legislature succeeded in getting the books balanced by tonight's deadline. How all of this will effect things here is unknown, but here's how things shook out in the end:

- County Parks will be closed for the rest of the year. This includes the very popular Chestnut Ridge near my hometown.

- The sheriff will have to roughly halve road patrols. It's not known how much of an impact this will have, since local and state police are expected to handle much of the difference.

- The three suburban auto bureaus will be shut down. That might make getting my license more bothersome in time, but I really never saw the need to have 4 auto bureaus in the county.

- 2000 county employees, roughly a quarter of those on payroll, will be axed. The numbers aren't known, since the departments have just been given dollar totals to lop off.

Predictably, all the union heads interviewed by any of the local media outlets said their workers had already given up plenty and that enough was enough. I suppose that's why we employ more workers per capita than almost any other county in the state. The gem from tonight's reports was the waste in the public works department. Even though the county's new plows only require one driver, every last one of them always has two people inside, because the union refused to even consider cutting down to one unless they had guarantees that no workers would be fired. The estimated cost of this idiocy is $1.2 million.

It's rather hard to have any sympathy for the unions when they willfully obstruct any efforts to make the county run more cheaply and efficiently just because they want to protect all of their jobs. Vengeance is now being visited upon them by a taxpayer base who have reached their limit. They still don't seem to get it, as evidenced by a union sign at a protest rally which had this brilliant claim on it: "Cutting real jobs won't save tax $$. It's a LIE."

I'm not sure if these people have any clue how this works, but generally speaking, payroll costs money. The public payroll is financed through tax dollars. Their salaries don't grow on trees, or for that matter, out of the politicians' rear ends. Cutting jobs therefore saves tax money - if it didn't, we obviously couldn't balance squat by firing them. Come on folks, get your heads out of the clouds, because like with the city of Buffalo and the Buffalo schools, you can expect this same problem to recur every year, because long-term budgeting is not a strong suit of this region's government.

WGRZ, the local NBC affiliate, has several good video and print articles available on its website, including this and this.

UPDATE: PoliticsWNY has much more coverage on this stuff. Look quick though, because I don't spot any archives on their site.

- Posted by at 11:13 PM

Well, it's official, there's going to be no extra sales tax. So the $108 million gap needs to be plugged by the end of Thursday, otherwise a judge is going to do it for us. So far, they've apparently agreed on the first $54 million of it.

However, they've cheated somewhat in draining $14 million from the county's reserves, which once stood in the hundreds of millions, effectively leaving a $14 million operating deficit which will need to be dealt with next year, along with all the other increases in costs. Haven't we been hypocritical of Giambra for balancing his last several budgets by dipping into the reserves?

Moody's meanwhile has put the county's bond rating on a watch list for further downgrades. That's pretty much to be expected - the county is essentially out of cash, is 6 weeks late on the budget, and has little hope for any real improvement in the near term. Given the size of the hole we've dug, I wouldn't be surprised if junk status or suspension results.

County Executive Giambra's written a little letter to the community which isn't terribly impressive, particularly given his failure to assume any responsiblity for the mess. Joel, if your approval rating really is down to 3% on this mess, quit trying to sound virtuous. With numbers like that, virtually everyone in this region regardless of ideology or party is placing responsibility squarely on you, so face the music and quit whining about how everyone else in the government is responsible for this mess. Have you not been the driving force behind the last 5 budgets? Have you not had competent people looking at the numbers who could have forseen how incredibly idiotic it was to burn reserves and the tobacco settlement faster than a chain-smoker his cigarette? Have you not realized along the way that alienating virtually everyone doesn't produce results? I mean come on, I could cram the people who back what you've done into one of the small r