Drug War Backlash

The last thing we need in these economic times is to waste resources putting in jail people who have medical problems and need treatment. It would save money, time, and opportunity cost. New York State is looking to roll back the Rockefeller drug laws that have not made the streets safer and serve only to create a permanent underclass.

The Times reports Sheldon Silver says "the stars are aligned" (translation: the votes are in the bag) for Bill A06085, which would restore judges' discretion in sentencing and allow minor drug offenders to get supervised treatment instead of lengthy prison terms. The vote's today and the state senate will conference tonight; if it goes through, Governor Paterson is expected to sign. When that great day comes, we're gonna run out and score a dime bag to celebrate.

This may not help David Paterson get re-elected, but it would certainly make the world a little better place. Drug offenders in jail only leads to more repeat drug offenders. Drug offenders in treatment can lead to a return to productive society. Between this and the Justice Department stopping the raids of medical marijuana outlets in California, you're finally starting to see a backlash to the drug wars. They haven't worked and need a reboot.

New York Blues. Blue Dogs, That Is

It looks very likely that Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand will be chosen to replace Hillary Clinton in the US Senate. Lots of liberals are upset with Gillibrand's less than sterling record in her short stay in the House.

If Mr. Paterson was hoping to quiet the tumult over the selection process by picking Ms. Gillibrand, there were indications that he may not get his wish. Ms. Gillibrand, who has been endorsed by the National Rifle Association, is controversial among some of the party’s more liberal leaders downstate.

Representative Carolyn McCarthy, a Long Island Democrat and ardent gun control activist, said Thursday that if Ms. Gillibrand got the job, she was prepared to run against her in a primary in 2010. Ms. McCarthy was elected to Congress after her husband was killed in a gunman’s rampage on the Long Island Rail Road in 1993.

Gilibrand is a proud member of the Blue Dog caucus in the House. She describes her record as "one of the most conservative in the state". Wayne Barrett notes:

She opposes any path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, supports renewing the Bush tax cuts for individuals earning up to $1 million annually, and voted for the Bush-backed FISA bill that permits wiretapping of international calls. She was one of four Democratic freshmen in the country, and the only Democrat in the New York delegation, to vote for the Bush administration's bill to extend funding for the Iraq war shortly after she entered congress in 2007. While she now contends that she's always opposed the war and has voted for bills to end it, one upstate paper reported when she first ran for the seat: "She said she supports the war in Iraq." In addition to her vote to extend funding, she also missed a key vote to override a Bush veto of a Democratic bill with Iraq timetables.

Given all this, you would think I would be upset by this turn of events. But really, I'm not. I've been given some back-channel assurances that Gillibrand is more liberal than her conservative upstate district. But even if she isn't, she'll HAVE to vote that way to keep the seat in 2010. New York City contains 55-60% of the Democratic vote. She's going to have to win them over or she'll get a primary. Carolyn McCarthy is already talking about it. Every conservative vote she makes puts a nail in her coffin.

As for losing her district, we have enough Democrats in the House and can easily afford to lose the seat in the short term. After 2010, New York will be redistricted with a Democratic governor and a Democratic legislature. That seat could look very different at that point, so this may be a temporary setback. In the short term, this dilutes the amount of Blue Dog Congresscritters in the House, which is fine with me. The power of the Blue Dogs is in their numbers, and now they're sinking even further behind the Progressive caucus.

As for those who want to blame the netroots for smearing Caroline Kennedy and foisting a Blue Dog on the Senate, that's a curious rendering of "a new era of responsibility" - no responsibility for Caroline Kennedy or anyone she associates with for their actions, but FULL responsibility for random people on the Internet.

And I can't finish a post about a Senate appointment without mentioning that there shouldn't be any Senate appointments.

...and the big shift is already on.

Here's another interesting wrinkle from Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand's (D-NY) imminent promotion to the Senate: She appears to have switched her position on gay marriage from a standard "safe" Democratic stance, to now being a full supporter.

Empire State Pride Agenda has put out a press release saying that Gillibrand has spoken to them, and they are glad to say that New York will have its first Senator who endorses full marriage equality. This is a big change for Gillibrand, who previously had a conventional Democratic position of endorsing civil unions and non-discrimination laws, but not being for gay marriage.

To be sure, Gillibrand's voting record on gay rights was not anything that could be called bad. There weren't too many votes on gay issues in the last two years, but she did vote for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, as well as the hate crimes bill.

She wavered on gun control in her press conference too, vowing to work with Carolyn McCarthy on various issues. New York liberals actually have power in this environment, and Gillibrand knows it.

New York Signs On To Marriage Equality

I don't know if Eliot Spitzer would have done this, but good for David Paterson:

ALBANY — Gov. David A. Paterson has directed all state agencies to begin to revise their policies and regulations to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions, like Massachusetts, California and Canada.

In a directive issued on May 14, the governor’s legal counsel, David Nocenti, instructed the agencies that gay couples married elsewhere “should be afforded the same recognition as any other legally performed union.”

The revisions are most likely to involve as many as 1,300 statutes and regulations in New York governing everything from joint filing of income tax returns to transferring fishing licenses between spouses.

In a videotaped message given to gay community leaders at a dinner on May 17, Mr. Paterson described the move as “a strong step toward marriage equality.” And people on both sides of the issue said it moved the state closer to fully legalizing same-sex unions in this state.

That's about as much as a governor can do without actually legalizing gay marriage inside the state. And DOMA makes this a barrier at the federal level. But we're seeing things move very quickly among some states; in effect, they're catching up with history.

UPDATE: This is awesome:



I've been doing that joke about not reading the entirety of the Bible for years. I don't see evangelicals picketing a Bubba Gump's yelling "GOD HATES SHELLFISH! GOD HATES SHELLFISH!"

Actual Audacity of Hope

Now that the Spitzer nonsense is over (although, in a very important sense, it isn't, more on that below), I have to feel heartened by the swearing in of a blind man in one of the most populous states in the nation to become the governor. From everything I've heard from people in New York, he's a good man and very progressive, who will use a different governing style to achieve similar goals as Spitzer, and who will command respect and admiration for succeeding through his own struggles. Here's a show of support from the New York net/grassroots:

The Progressive community of New York State - activists, bloggers, fundraisers, organizers, ordinary men and women from all walks of life - welcomes our new Governor, David Paterson, as he assumes our state's highest office. We recognize that Governor Paterson is the first person of color to hold the office of Governor of New York and the first legally blind person to ever hold the office of Governor in the history of the United States. We are inspired by his life achievements to date, by his impressive and daring record of reform, and we are supremely confident that he is ready to lead our state.

We understand that Governor Paterson will face challenges and opportunities as he takes office. Our new Governor's long history of working with all stake holders will prove a valuable asset in delivering for New Yorkers. We believe that both houses of our legislature require drastic changes in their operations. Transparency and open government still elude our state, and too often, our citizens are shut out of decisions that affect our lives. The voices of too many New Yorkers still do not get heard in our state Capitol. These things must change. Governor Paterson's distinguished record of reform gives us great confidence that he will be an agent of this change.

The Progressive community of New York State is ready to support our new Governor in bringing about the change New York needs; the change that New Yorkers voted for in the 2006 election. After the trials of the recent past, we believe that New Yorkers want Governor Paterson to step forward with a bold plan for change that returns our government to our people and creates a better future for all New Yorkers. We look forward to working with our new Governor as we build a lasting Progressive majority, in Albany and around the state, conversation by conversation, vote by vote, district by district, until New York is again a beacon of Progressive governance bright enough to illuminate our entire nation.

As for the former Governor, his downfall was his alone and he must own it, but the way in which it was revealed does raise concerns about the extension of the national surveillance state into all walks of life.

These events offer a window into a much larger phenomenon, the National Surveillance State, in which the state increasingly identifies and solves problems of governance through the collection, collation and analysis of information. Governments have always used information, but today's techniques are made more powerful and more prevalent by lower costs of computing and data storage. This story also shows the important role played by private businesses in constructing and implementing the National Surveillance State. The Times report suggests that the banks in question volunteered more than the letter of the law might have required, because the transactions in questions were wire payments rather than coin or currency. The banks erred on the side of caution, seeking to assist the state in its efforts. Moreover, they already had their own pattern recognition systems designed to identify suspicious behavior. (Many people are probably familiar with the programs devised by credit card companies which analyze consumer transactions to calculate the probabilities that a card is being used fraudulently.)

If computing power increases enough, there is no reason why governments might not lower the threshold for reporting of suspicious transactions, or, indeed, require that every transaction over 100 dollars be reported. All this information could later be sifted through by data mining programs, in order to spot patterns of suspicious activity. The only limit is the technology and the manpower that law enforcement is willing to devote to analysis of financial transactions.

Read the whole thing, you'll be nervous by the end. The real problem I have with it is prosecutorial discretion. The NRCC, the campaign arm of House Republicans, had a treasurer who was a thief - he stole over a million dollars over the course of several years and deposited it into personal accounts. Eve Fairbanks gets this right.

...how is it possible that a ten-thousand-dollar Spitzer transfer to a prostitution ring tripped up authorities while the NRCC's treasurer stole one million dollars and nobody noticed anything?

It depends on who's doing the watching, I guess.

P.S. I don't understand why anyone running for Congress would react to this desperation move from the NRCC and give back contributions from Spitzer. If anything, I'd throw it right back in their face and ask every Republican candidate to give back money raised by the NRCC, who has a felon running their books.

The Sad Spitzer Chronicles

It's really upsetting to see such a bright prospect in the Democratic Party, a guy who didn't make friends because he didn't put up with the bullshit, be brought so low. But he was of course a victim of his own hubris. Anyone who prosecuted scum as long as he did to not understand fundamentally how those rackets work and how easy it is to get caught is either stupid or amazingly arrogant.

Spitzer ended up as the subject of an investigation into the prostitution because his bank branch in Manhattan turned him in to the Internal Revenue Service as someone who might be engaged in suspicious currency transactions, according to sources familiar with the investigation.

Agents of the IRS Criminal Investigation Division initially started a probe, fearing that the governor was the victim of some sort of blackmail scheme or that he was being victimized by an impostor, the sources said.

Spitzer last year had wanted to wire transfer more than $10,000 from his branch to what turned out to be the front for the prostitution ring, QAT Consulting Group, which also uses a number of other names, in New Jersey, the sources said.

But Spitzer had the money broken down into several smaller amounts of less than $10,000 each, apparently to avoid federal regulations requiring the reporting of the transfer of $10,000 or more, the sources said. The regulations are aim to help spot possible illegal business activities, such as fraud or drug deals.

Apparently, having second thoughts about even sending the total amount in this manner, Spitzer then asked that the bank take his name off the wires, the sources said.

Bank officials declined, however, saying that it was improper to do so and in any event, it was too late to do so, because the money already had been sent, the sources said.

There's something unseemly about the IRS snooping around in every transaction checking for possible violations, but if anyone knows that's occurring it's the former Attorney General of the State of New York.

I still think there are some unanswered questions about how fast this got to the press and why the government is wiretapping prostitution rings and how Spitzer was so quickly burned for this, but clearly he needs to resign as is likely, though the New York Times is more noncommital, even suggesting that his wife wants him to stay in office.

Finally, it was nice to see Tucker Carlson end his ignominious run as a TV host with such class, simultaneously decrying the peering by Big Government into private consensual activity and also having Moonlight Bunny Ranch owner Dennis Hof on his show to speculate about all the deviant behaviors Spitzer might have engaged in, like whips and ball gags. He's really a superb human being. And how exactly does he know Dennis, anyway? It's irresponsible not to speculate.

Movement Building

Looks like the New York State Senate just got one more Democrat, in a rural upstate seat that has been Republican for OVER A CENTURY.

The Republicans have controlled the State Senate in New York for 40 years, and their margin is now one seat.

Something's going on out there. The Albany Project has more.

Toward A Demonization-Free Politics

It's sad that we can't have a conversation about public safety in this country without it degenerating into an expression of xenophobia.

Gov. Eliot Spitzer formally announced today that he would abandon his plan to give driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, conceding that his best efforts to sell New Yorkers on the merits of his proposal had clearly failed.

The decision ends a bitter seven-week battle over the proposed policy that battered Mr. Spitzer and his fellow Democrats and drew national attention from critics of illegal immigration.

“It does not take a stethoscope to hear the pulse of New Yorkers on this topic,” Mr. Spitzer said, standing with a half-dozen members of New York’s Congressional delegation who had supported his original move to give licenses to illegal immigrants.

In acknowledging one of his first major reversals as governor, Mr. Spitzer hit a few familiarly pugilistic notes, lashing into critics who, Mr. Spitzer said, “equated minimum-wage, undocumented dishwashers with Osama bin Laden.” He also said he still believed his proposal would have benefited New Yorkers, citizens and immigrants alike, and lit into federal officials for failing to fix the nation’s immigration system at the national level.

Spitzer's doing the right thing by listening to the concerns of New Yorkers. Unfortunately, immigrant-bashers and "anti-amnesty" activists drowned out the needs to reasonably keep the roads safe. Unlicensed drivers are not a good thing. There's no way to track them and measure their ability to follow traffic laws. I've heard many law enforcement officials, responding to criticism that this would give terrorists legal ID, say that "if a terrorist wants to give us fingerprints and a photo and a current address, go ahead." It's shocking that we allow xenophobes to get away with equating immigrants to terrorists in such a cavalier fashion.

The governor was trying to make a solution in the midst of chaos, and he was absolutely justified in doing so. The federal government's immigration policy has failed. Just focusing on the border, when fully half of all the undocumented in this country overstay tourist visas, will fail. A comprehensive solution is all that will succeed.

Arnold Does The Right Thing On SCHIP

I've said a number of times that if the Governor was serious about health care reform, he needed to follow the lead of other Governors and demand that the President reverse his decision to both veto S-CHIP expansion and make it nearly impossible for states to help provide health care to as many children as possible by putting onerous new eligibility requirements on the states. I'm pleased to say that he has followed through on one of these goals, and today Schwarzenegger and Gov. Spitzer of New York write to the President.

The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is proposing new rules that will set Medicaid and state programs back forty years. These rules, which are being promulgated without proper review, impose eligibility standards that would both deny health care to vulnerable children and pregnant women and greatly restrict the flexibility of states to reach your administration’s stated goals of efficiently providing coverage. The rules must be withdrawn [...]

California and New York cover more than 1.4 million children and pregnant women using State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) funds – nearly one out of every four SCHIP recipients in the country. We have a long and productive relationship with CMS in leveraging SCHIP to innovatively provide maximum benefit with minimum resources.

We agree with your push for states to be a force for change in the delivery of health care to tens of millions of our fellow Americans who remain without meaningful coverage. But as you rally governors to do more to help fix our broken health care system, your administration has repeatedly modified existing Medicaid and SCHIP rules, harming states’ capacity to help you achieve our shared objectives.

The recently proposed SCHIP rules will reverse longstanding agreements with the states and reduce the number of children who receive health care. We strongly urge you to reconsider these recent policy changes, which simply diminish state flexibility.

Caring for children really isn't a Democratic or Republican issue. The Bush Administration wants to have it both ways, shirking the responsibility for health care onto the states while making it impossible for the states to carry out such a mission. The White House has an ideological obsession with not allowing this successful program to be expanded; then people might think they can actually receive health care from a government program they pay for in taxes. The horrors! Good for the Governor on this one.

Wave of the Future

I'm going to try and blog a little bit here for leaving for San Diego.

In a generation, this won't be a story anymore, but with New Hampshire's vote for civil unions yesterday, now all of New England has some version of civil unions, domestic partnerships, or gay marriage. And Eliot Spitzer is planning to introduce a gay marriage bill in New York, suggesting that there's movement downward into the states below New England on the issue. Eventually, the law will change as a more tolerant generation grows up. A party that tries to scare its constituents by stoking the fear of the gay is on the wrong side of history. And I'm not surprised to see Eliot Spitzer on the right side, and with the courage to be an early mover. I believe he's a future star of the party.

I'm looking forward to the time when I see a couple headlines like this and think, "So what?"