A telephone "push poll" unfairly slamming the legislative record and progressive stance of State Senator David Carlucci is making its rounds in Rockland and Orange Counties. The so-called poll comes from an anonymous source, and the pollsters flippantly misidentify themselves when pressed by residents they reach.
Eleven concerned Rockland County residents, all Democratic Commitee members, contacted Left of the Hudson today to complain about the poll, and several others have responded to an email query sent out by us this afternoon. Several recipients that asked the pollsters who they worked for were told the survey came from a company called either "National Research," or "Central Research."
According to several sources who were called, the poll begins with a live questioner asking respondents if they're satisfied with the direction New York is heading. If they answer "yes," the are promptly thanked for their time, if they answer "no," they're lead into a diatribe masquerading as a poll, which faults Carlucci for reaching across the aisle and then questions his progressive credentials. Worse yet, two people who have received the poll claim that it smacked of race baiting. They claim that questioner asked them if they it bothered them that Carlucci had turned his back on "the most influential African-American leader the State Senate has ever seen."
That was the headline of the LA Times op-ed of December 6th, by a lady with the unusual name of Spike Dolomite Ward, who announced at the top that she had an apology to make to President Obama.
I found out three weeks ago I have cancer. I'm 49 years old, have been married for almost 20 years and have two kids. My husband has his own small computer business, and I run a small nonprofit in the San Fernando Valley. I am also an artist. Money is tight, and we don't spend it frivolously. We're just ordinary, middle-class people, making an honest living, raising great kids and participating in our community, the kids' schools and church.
...
Not having insurance amplifies cancer stress. After the diagnosis, instead of focusing all of my energy on getting well, I was panicked about how we were going to pay for everything. I felt guilty and embarrassed about not being insured. When I went to the diagnostic center to pick up my first reports, I was sent to the financial department, where a woman sat me down to talk about resources for "cash patients" (a polite way of saying "uninsured").
...
Fortunately for me, I've been saved by the federal government's Pre-existing Condition Insurance Plan, something I had never heard of before needing it. It's part of President Obama's healthcare plan, one of the things that has already kicked in, and it guarantees access to insurance for U.S. citizens with preexisting conditions who have been uninsured for at least six months. The application was short, the premiums are affordable, and I have found the people who work in the administration office to be quite compassionate (nothing like the people I have dealt with over the years at other insurance companies.) It's not perfect, of course, and it still leaves many people in need out in the cold. But it's a start, and for me it's been a lifesaver - perhaps literally.
Which brings me to my apology. I was pretty mad at Obama before I learned about this new insurance plan. I had changed my registration from Democrat to Independent, and I had blacked out the top of the "h" on my Obama bumper sticker, so that it read, "Got nope" instead of "got hope." I felt like he had let down the struggling middle class. My son and I had campaigned for him, but since he took office, we felt he had let us down.
So this is my public apology. I'm sorry I didn't do enough of my own research to find out what promises the president has made good on. I'm sorry I didn't realize that he really has stood up for me and my family, and for so many others like us. I'm getting a new bumper sticker to cover the one that says "Got nope." It will say "ObamaCares."
Last night the Legislature and the Governor, in classic three-men-in-a-room fashion, passed a new tax bill complete with a unanimous Senate vote while the pages were still warm and no one had time to read them. You can see the resulting tax brackets here.
It's not precisely the "millionaire's tax" but it's also very different from the pre-2009 rates. Whether taxes on the rich have gone up or down depends on where you start counting from, giving the Murdoch papers and their friends room to complain about tax hikes while everyone else considers it a tax cut.
Might this change have something to do with calls for fairness and a shift away from the "inequality is good for you" models of the past coming from the Occupy movement, including the folks he doesn't want on his doorstep in Albany?
He said the Occupation protests had nothing to do with his change of heart.
"My job as governor is to make the best decisions I can at the time to meet the needs of the state at the time," Cuomo said. "The role of government is to try and help the people of the state, bring a direction for the circumstances of the moment."
Maybe. Meanwhile, one of his predecessors, a ghost I'm less than happy to invoke on this site, is telling a different story:
"Occupy Wall Street has won, not that they achieved changes in policy, but I think that they have had a demonstrable effect on political discourse: What we are talking about, and what the agenda is most like these days," Spitzer said.
Spitzer added that he believed that, before Occupy Wall Street, nobody was paying attention to equity issues, the distribution of income and the inherent unfairness of the current economic structure.
Somehow I think protesting had an impact on the political conversation, even as it makes the very serious people nervous. The Three Men in a Room seem to have noticed that the conversation around them is changing, even if they haven't changed much.
It means Material Safety Data Sheet. It's a safety guide which tells you important facts about materials you may be handling or coming in contact with in your workplace. If you've worked a factory job, you've probably seen them. Sometimes they'll be for something more or less benign. Some of you know that last year I had a temp job at an aluminum foundry, so there were ones there on aluminum. There were also ones on things not so benign, like dangerous solvents, silica sand, welding gases, chemicals used to treat the aluminum, etcetera, many of which were extremely hazardous.
Likewise, many other professions have to deal with things which require an MSDS. Professions like, say, school janitors, who need to deal with cleaning agents, solvents, desiccants, anti-bacterial and anti-viral chemicals, and other things which used improperly could blind, poison, or kill a person. And the sort of things that no sane or rational person would ever suggest be left in the care of a child, let alone that those children be responsible for using those caustic chemicals.
Newly minted front-runner Newt Gingrich spoke before a few hundred tea partiers on Staten Island, the Republican borough of NYC, this afternoon.
The local tea party group, which fancies itself one of the "premier" tea parties in the country, had invited all the GOP primary candidates -- only Newt said yes, though he naturally combined his speech with a book-signing (with Callista!) and a Manhattan fund-raiser.
According to Tom Wrobleski of the Staten Island Advance, Gingrich the historian lectured that 2012 is "the most important election since 1860," after which Southern white conservatives like him became traitors responsible for the Civil War.
Pretty much since the Occupy movement started, I've watched observers criticize it. Part of that, of course, was people opposed to its aims, and that wasn't surprising. There's also been a drumbeat of people at least theoretically in sympathy with it who just couldn't see the point of this particular movement and its tactics.
Camping?
No leaders?
No platform?
No affiliated lobbying or political action group?
Mic check?
It really seems to make some people ache, to take just one recent modest example of many. Especially as we've seen a tide of cities evicting occupiers, how can we possibly expect this to accomplish anything?
I'm marveling at the number of conversations about inequality that have suddenly cropped up, and especially the rapidly growing realization that the "1%" really do live in not just a better world, but a different world.
A lot of people took signs like "The beginning is near" or "This is the beginning of the beginning" to mean that the whole world would transform, but it isn't, yet. That takes years. We're at something more like Berkeley, 1964, when the Free Speech Movement kicked off a conversation that echoed for years.
Can we do better than they did? Accomplish something more permanent? Maybe. It's too soon to tell - the day is just beginning.
The 10 Regional Economic Development Councils tasked with providing ideas for job growth in New York State have published their reports. There are many good ideas in them. I also approve of the general idea of competition-based economic development proposals. But despite the long work done by the members of the councils, they collectively make one big omission: the large job-creating potential that accompanies investments in mass transit.
For example, the Mid-Hudson Regional Economic Development Council recognizes the "transformational potential for the region" when describing the rebuilding of the Tappan Zee Bridge. However the report does not discuss the rebuilding in any detail. Rebuilding the bridge as it was will create many temporary construction jobs and jobs further down the supply chain for the construction. But, as the state recently announced, there won't be any plans for transit on the bridge when the construction begins. Now, while the rebuilding of the bridge itself will cause several of the aforementioned temporary jobs to be created, once the construction is finished, the mid-hudson region will be where it is today: in possession of a functional Hudson crossing for automobiles. The current plans regarding the bridge won't be a major improvement on the status quo.
However, the council failed to notice that Building mass transit on the bridge will not only create jobs during the construction of the bridge, but it will also create jobs when that transit is extended across the I-87 corridor. The Environmental Review Documents regarding the Tappan Zee rebuilding show the extent of potential infrastructure construction across the corridor, be it Commuter Rail or Light Rail. Either scenario conceives of a massive public works project to build rail along the corridor, along with stations and park-and-rides. Imagine how many jobs that would create.
Building transit on this scale would create even more temporary construction jobs than just the bridge replacement. But it would also have the benefit of providing enduring economic benefits to the region; it would add the benefit that commuter rail has roughly 20 times greater movement capacity per line vs that of a highway lane. One commuter rail line in each direction would more than double the transportation capacity of the bridge. And once the rail and stations are built, they would add the benefit of increasing property values along the I-87 corridor. And that would allow for more "smart growth," infill development in the region, which would bring back historic centers of economic activity, the area's downtowns. This would increase the local tax base so property taxes wouldn't have to be so high, and create a virtuous cycle of more economic development. This would provide long-lasting economic benefits to the region, beyond just replacing the current automobile-only bridge with another copy.
Certainly this will cost a lot of money, but with $1 billion allotted to the for the economic councils this year and each year in the foreseeable future, it's a shame that not a dime of that will be spent on this hugely important economic imperative. Just because transit isn't "sexy," doesn't mean it should be ignored.
Swastikas were found in an apartment building elevator on Friday afternoon in Brooklyn's latest antisemitic hate crime. This time, the incident occurred in Williamsburg, a mixed neighborhood with a large Hassidic Jewish population. This incident comes on the heels of the firebombing of cars and antisemitic graffiti in Midwood and graffiti changing a sign at the Avenue J train station to "Avenue Jew" earlier this month. Moreover, this is the second such incident in this particular building this month.
Just days after Take Back the Land Rochester and Occupy Rochester publicly vowed to set up an encampment and blockade at 107 Clay Ave. if the bank came to evict the Steidel family, Freddie Mac called off the controversial eviction slated for this week in order to try to find a permenant settlement between Wells Fargo and Steidel family. This incredible premilinary victory follwed a dramatic turn of events that included a public appeal from the family, invervention by Congresswoman Louise Slaughter, a protest at Wells Fargo, and Freddie Mac announcing that they were banning their notorious law firm, Steven J. Baum (the law firm for the Steidel foreclosure and eviction), from handling their cases.
The Steidels received notice that their home would be foreclosed on in September. Not knowing what else to do, Maria Steidel remembered seeing Take Back the Land Rochester (TBTL) on the news, after the group successfully defended the Lennon Family from eviction earlier this year. She called the news station, and luckily, they gave her contact information that put her in touch with TBTL and, ultimately, Occupy Rochester.
In the past two weeks, numerous protests and actions were organized to support the Steidels in the fight to keep their home. An impromptu press conference was held just as Rochester Mayor Richards appeared, media in tow, to sign an agreement with Occupy Rochester for our right to camp 24 hours a day.
On November 7, 90 people protested outside Wells Fargo's Rochester offices, demanding they negotiate with the family. Three dozen protesters from Occupy Buffalo also demonstrated in front of the Amherst offices of Steven J. Baum PC, denouncing the controversial foreclosure attorney and calling on state authorities to shut down his office, take away his law license and even put him in jail.
Occupy Rochester and publicly announced its intention to set up an encampment on the Steidel's front lawn to prevent the imminent eviction and draw media attention to the case. However, it never came to that. Harold and Maria received word that they had secured at 30-day suspension of the eviction notice. Furthermore, Freddie Mac announced that they were pulling Steven J. Baum's firm off every foreclosure case they had.
The implications of this move on other families and their cases is unclear. However, Baum's firm was one of the largest handlers of foreclosures in upstate New York, and any uncertainty over the company's legal practices and filings could mean a delay on thousands of foreclosure cases.
Following similar victories in San Francisco, Minneapolis and a number of other cities, the Occupy Movement is proving it is willing to fight on the front lines of the war on working people. More importantly, it is proving that it can win.
Having lived in the Buffalo area for six years, I never thought I'd see the day when we'd actually cheer a Western New York business closing its doors.
It's definitely worth a read. Here are just a few major findings from the Executive Summary.
The re-election rate for incumbents from 2002 to 2010 was 96 percent. In 941 races, incumbents lost 38 times.
In 2006, the re-election rate was 100%. You read that right.
Between 1968 and 2010, competition in NY State legislative general election contests diminished greatly, with the average margin of victory increasing from 33 percent to 51 percent.
I guess incumbents do so weel in New York because everyone thinks Albany is awesome, right?
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." - First Amendment, U.S. Constitution, subsequently incorporated by the Fourteenth Amendment to the states.
"I went down to the demonstration, to get my fair share of abuse." - The Rolling Stones, "You Can't Always Get What You Want"
What do the Occupiers want?
Read the signs!
Why are the Occupiers camping, protesting, and otherwise 'occupying'?
What can they possibly accomplish without a clear list of demands that can be negotiated down?
They're re-establishing the long-held but often ignored right to protest publicly. That's "protest", not gather to support the powers that already be.
In the long clauses of the First Amendment, "assemble" and "petition for grievances" are deliberately close to each other, and "petition" has many more meanings than "sign your names to a manifesto." People still remembered the Boston Massacre and Boston Tea Party when they wrote those words. While both of those, especially the Boston Massacre, might be written off today as protesters getting out of line, they were part of the patriotic canon of the late 1700s.
Since then "the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances" has had its ups and downs.
The last twenty years have been especially difficult, as the public spaces traditionally used for such assembly have been treated more and more as "the property of the government" rather than "the property of the public". While the First Amendment has become a shield for wealthy individuals to shell out as much money as they want on behalf of their causes, even anonymously, the rest of the protections seem diminished. Governments can routinely deploy police to arrest protesters for trivial or non-existent offenses, striving to ensure that their voices are silenced, marginalized, and punished with "compliance tools".
With discipline - emphasizing "peaceably assemble" - Occupy can make it all right for people to once again "occupy" their public spaces and share their message. So far, despite a media blitz questioning the right to question, we're seeing more and more people come out of their houses to come together.
In NY's race to the bottom, we hear Gov. Cuomo just agreed to grant $40 million in tax credits over five years to BAE whose Johnson City facilities were damaged by Hurricane Irene flooding. In exchange, BAE will keep about 1,400 jobs in the region.
Cuomo's Facebook announcement celebrated "not losing" the jobs without disclosing that BAE was getting a whopping $28,000 per worker, a tidy reward after threatening to leave the state.
If BAE sounds familiar, they are the UK-based global defense manufacturer whose alleged bribes helped bring down Tony Blair.
Saudi Prince Bandar allegedly received $2 billion in secret kickbacks for defense contracts.
BAE never admitted guilt in funneling the secret payments, but paid almost half a billion in fines to have the UK charges dropped in a first-of-its-kind "plea bargain" modeled after US "settlements" made between large corporations and the Bush DOJ in lieu of prosecution.
It's clear BAE knows how to wheel and deal politicians the world over, but did the NY taxpayer just get hosed or do we need to take these kinds of measure just to keep jobs from going over state lines?
A telephone "push poll" unfairly slamming the legislative record and progressive stance of State Senator David Carlucci is making its rounds in Rockland and Orange Counties. The so-called poll comes from an anonymous source, and the pollsters flippantly misidentify themselves when pressed by residents they reach.
