Very interesting evening with DFNYC, featuring Jim Dean of Democracy for America, Congressman Charles Rangel and freshman Congresswoman Carol-Shea Porter of New Hampshire. A small observation: Charlie Rangel doesn't need to show up at these things. He's the Chairman of Ways and Means, probably the most powerful Member of the House after the Speaker and the Majority Leader, and there's the living legend aspect of the man. That said, this is the second time in as many weeks that I've run into him at a Congressional fundraiser. If all Democrats worked as hard as Congressman Rangel does, we could keep the republicans to a double-digit caucus.

The beneficiary of tonight's event was Congresswoman Shea-Porter, the grassroots come-out-of-nowhere 2006 victor in the First District of New Hampshire. Well, no, rephrase that: she received the funds garnered; the beneficiaries of the event itself and of her re-election efforts are we, the American people. Carol is an outspoken Progressive in a libertarian state with strong, if fading, republican leanings. She's not a member of the Defeatocrat caucus, the members of which seem not to have grasped that the republicans are in the toilet, and that people want to vote for Democrats.

So if you're thusly inclined, send Carol some love.

According to The Albany Project, Kathy Konst will not run for Congress, but will instead run for State Senate.

The only question now is, how long will it take for her to change her website yet again?

UPDATE: The question is open; her site is back to its old tricks.

Many think it's kind of a shame that we elect our judges in a way that means they have to raise money and campaign like every other office, but that's the system we have, so, as with every other office, it is up to us to help out the good candidates. (Adapted from a snail mail invitation):

A coalition of three local, community-oriented Democratic clubs, Lambda Independent Democrats (LID), Independent Neighborhood Democrats (IND, where I'm on the board), and Central Brooklyn Independent Democrats (CBID, where my wife is an officer), join together to invite you to a summer garden party fundraiser of Devin Cohen, our endorsed candidate for Civil Court, 1st district:

Wed. July 9, 2008
6:30-8:30 PM
at the home of Harley Diamond and Jonathan Lovett
363 Washington Ave., Clinton Hill, Brooiklyn

Compare and contrast the two candidates:

DEVIN COHEN:
*Strong supporter and friend of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community and equality
*Lifelong reform Democrat who has only supported and worked for Democratic candidates and causes
*Appeared before and endorsed by Lambda Independent Democrats  read more »

Jimmy Dahroug picks up two good endorsements in his bid to turn the State Senate blue. Remember, Jimmy was one of two Democrats who came closest to picking up a State Senate seat in 2006 and has a better shot this year thanks to a better organized campaign and an earlier start. From Jimmy Dahroug's campaign:

Legislator Ricardo Montano, Islip Dem Chair Ivan Young Endorse Dahroug

Today Dahroug for Senate campaign received two major endorsements. Suffolk County Legislator Ricardo Montano, (9th L.D.) representing Brentwood, Central Islip and Islandia, and Islip Town Democratic Chairman Ivan Young officially endorsed Jimmy Dahroug's campaign for New York State Senate (S.D. 3).

While Legislator Montano moved to suspend his bid for the State Senate, he has decided to put his full support behind Jimmy Dahroug. In a letter to Democratic Party Committee Members, Montano stated, "I believe that with hard work and the right candidate we Democrats will win the 3rd Senate District and the State Senate this November. That is why I am endorsing Jimmy Dahroug for State Senate.  read more »

This past Saturday, I accompanied Jimmy Dahroug as he stumped for signatures. It was an eye-opening experience that all those (especially at the state party & senate campaign committee) who may be on the fence about Jimmy should have.

We were ringing doorbells for about three and a half hours. In all that time, there was one, and only one, registered Democrat who wouldn't sign Jimmy's petition. She did give her blessing to her 18-year-old son, however, when he wanted to sign it, so it was clear that she never signs anything. Several others were reluctant to sign at first, until they heard Jimmy talk about his campaign and his issues, and read the literature he brought.  read more »

Do you recall John McCain’s war-loving-lyrical response to the challenge of getting along with Iran? (See also this Moveon Youtube.)

Well, a more pressing question might be whether George Bush & his allies in Israel will pull an “October surprise” on our election process. Imagine if you will, some “Gulf of Tonkin” incident, some “Weapons of Mass Distraction” science fiction, some “supporters of cross-border terrorism” lies. Would the Republican Party benefit from such an attack? Would McBush-Cain strategists think so? Certainly McCain’s only hole-card is his claim to being tough on terrorists.

July 1, Update Having so consistently lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, would you think the liar-in-chief or his servants would be truthful about Iran? Tuesday's Washington Post reports the CIA ignored facts and analyses which showed Iran long ago suspended its nuclear weapons program

A former CIA operative who says he tried to warn the agency about faulty intelligence on Iraqi weapons programs now contends that CIA officials also ignored evidence that Iran had suspended work on a nuclear bomb. The onetime undercover agent, who has been barred by the CIA from using his real name, filed a motion in federal court late Friday asking the government to declassify legal documents describing what he says was a deliberate suppression of findings on Iran that were contrary to agency views at the time.

Laura Rozen at Mother Jones collects snippets of expert observers' views which are really worth reading. Their take-away? Most of them think military action against Iran is unlikely. But –

Seymour Hersh has another blockbuster in The New Yorker. Cross-border terrorist George W. Bush has sent US forces to fight Iran. Hersh’s must-read essay which appears in this coming week’s issue points out that the clandestine US actions against Iran “are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership. The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations. They also include gathering intelligence about Iran’s suspected nuclear-weapons program.”  read more »

According to the Union of Concerned Scientists recent newsletter, the antibiotic resistant strain of Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) that has been an increasing problem in hospitals around the world is now infecting apparently healthy schoolkids outside of hospitals. This is a major development. Up until now anti-biotic resistance was only occasionally a problem outside of hospitals (so-called community-acquired" cases). This may be changing. According to the Centers for Disease Control, MRSA was responsible for almost 19,000 US deaths in 2005.

Another part of this development is also important. Evidence from Europe indicate that the community-acquired cases of MRSA are often associated with livestock operations. This is yet further evidence that the idiotic practice of pouring massive amounts of antibiotics into the feed of healthy animals is contributing to the public health risk of antibiotic resistant bacteria that treatens our children and people with a compromised immune system.  read more »

Been awhile since I've done a restaurant review, but feel inspired today to write one of a restaurant we have been to a couple of times in the Murray Hill area.

Indo Munch on Lexington near 31st St.
182,Lexington Avenue,
NY, NY - 10016
Ph:212-545-0010, 212-545-0017

Took me awhile to try the new fusion Indian/Chinese cuisine that hit Lexington last year. First stuff I tried was some ready made Indian/Chinese food I bought from a company in India that sells in bulk those packaged prepared Indian food. Good stuff, but not speectacular. Hadn't tried any restaurants until recently. But we started trying a couple of places in the last few months and have quite liked it. The mixing of Chinese and Indian flavors works very nicely, though often individual dishes will lean quite a bit towards one or the other cuisine. Many dishes are served either "dry" or in "gravy." I think the dry is slightly better, but both are good.

Here is a sampling of what we have tried:  read more »

Via email from the Steve Harrison campaign:

For Immediate Release June 27 2008

Democratic Congressional Candidate Steve Harrison names former Deutsche Bank director Greg Collett campaign manager

(Staten Island/Brooklyn) Democratic Congressional Candidate Steve Harrison (NY 13 CD Staten Island/Southwest Brooklyn) has named former Deutsche Bank director Greg Collett campaign manager. Collett, a George Washington University Law School grad, recently stepped down as a director at Deutsche Bank, where he developed and managed the Bank’s exchange traded commodity fund business. Collett replaces Laura Sword, who stepped down from the campaign earlier this week.

Before his work at Deutsche Bank, Mr. Collett had experience as a legislative aide to a New Jersey State Senator and on various campaigns.

In 2006, Harrison against long time incumbent Vito Fossella, received a higher percentage of the vote than any Democrat ever, under NY‘s 13th Congressional District’s current configuration. A scandal ridden Fossella has declined to seek re-election in 2008.

"Greg first contacted me last year looking for a volunteer position on the campaign after hearing our message," said Harrison. “I was humbled to have someone with Greg’s credentials, so we included him in the campaign in a fund raising capacity."

"In light of Greg’s ample organizational and communication skills, when he became available this week, the choice became obvious," continued Harrison. He has the skill set, drive, and dedication to be successful. He has an infectious winning attitude that should inspire our many volunteers. I’m thrilled to work with Greg. He will be a fresh presence in the district with a fresh perspective on the race.”  read more »

This comes from the Jewish Heritage E-Report (June 27, 2008)
World News about Jewish Art, Architecture & Historic sites from the International Survey of Jewish Monuments (ISJM)
Edited by Samuel D. Gruber / Contact and send news items to
samuelgruber_at_gmail.com

Jamaica: Documentation of 18th Jewish Cemetery at Hunt's Bay
(Ainsley Henriques, Rachel Frankel, Anne Hersh and Samuel Gruber contributed to this article)  read more »

Per The New York Times, the Council and Mayor have agreed on a $59.1B budget for the new fiscal year just ahead of the July 1st deadline. The budget shifts funding away from infrastructure and towards taxpayers and consumers of City services.

During the news conference, Mr. Bloomberg and Ms. Quinn offered a few of the highlights. The New York City Housing Authority would receive $18 million more than Mr. Bloomberg proposed in May. Libraries would continue to be open six days a week and not five as was originally suggested.

The city’s capital budget would be trimmed by 20 percent. All agencies would absorb across-the-board cuts in operating expenses. And financing for City Council-sponsored programs, now at the heart of a federal investigation, was cut by 38 percent. There would also be less money to pay for security guards at cultural institutions, and a chess program for schools was cut.

A City of this size, complexity and age can get away with cutting capital spending for a year or two; beyond that, due to the age of our infrastructure, deferred maintenance inevitably results in higher costs down the road.

This is, in short, a classic election-year budget. Voters don't see the capital budget in the same way and with the same immediacy as they see their local library branch staying open for an extra day a week.

I declare a caption contest.

Liz Benjamin picks up an editorial from Outlook Long Island, which talks about Brian Foley's refusal to answer questions on marriage equality.

The fact is, it isn't enough to have 32 Democrats in the state Senate. If too many of them are against decent, progressive values, then we won't get the changes we need. Brian Foley is one of those who will get in the way of progress and change.

Tort Reforms have been an important part of the Bush agenda. According to President Bush, the Congress needs to protect America’s patients, doctors, and hospitals from the staggering costs of out-of-control lawsuits by passing important medical liability reforms. He has pointed out that most of the doctors have abandoned Pennsylvania because of the high cost of medical insurance. This is mainly due to the unnecessary law suits.
The cost of malpractice insurance threatens the very survival of adequate medical care. Medical malpractice insurance premiums are substantially higher in certain states like West Virginia than they are in other surrounding states. For some specialists, the premiums in these regions are more than double what the premiums are for the same coverage in the neighboring states. The result is doctors leaving that region in search of greener pastures. Medical students and residents being trained in medical schools of areas with higher premiums are becoming more likely to leave those regions to start their professional careers in other states.  read more »

Board of Education Chancellor Joel Klein spoke last night at the Citizens Union annual meeting. It was a great speech. Unfortunately, his actions over the past six years have been diametrically opposed to last night’s words.

I’ll list three examples:

He started by talking about the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education. Later, he returned to that decision. His words seemed to indicate that he felt it was a great decision. But recently, his new zoning and variance regulations and have led to more segregation in our schools, not less.

That’s right – this past year’s kindergarten classes were more segregated, thanks to Joel Klein. One prime example is P.S. 199 in Manhattan, a school where the older grades have a mix of minority students. The five kindergarten classes, however, contained not one African-American child among them, and few, if any, Hispanics.  read more »

For the past couple of months, I've been working on an economic essay, designed to rebut 30 years of right-wing propaganda. The idea is that after all that time most people meekly accept the right-wing line (cutting taxes raises revenue, for instance), and somebody needs to step up and challenge it.

In my essay, I endeavor to debunk the following right-wing economic postulates:

1. Entrepreneurs, and the venture capitalists who back them, create jobs.
2. Lowering tax rates results in more revenue for the government.
3. Reducing restrictions on business activities is good for business.
4. Free trade agreements increase economic activity and raise the standard of living.
5. Government cannot do anything domestically to increase economic activity.
6. A flat tax is fair.

I like to think I've done a pretty good job, but feel free to decide for yourself. It's too long to post here; the essay is available on my website. Just click on #173, "Right-Wing Economics vs. Reality" on the right-hand column, and enjoy. (Note: At the end is a link to an 11-page PDF version.)  read more »

You can't make this shit up: the Supreme Court just struck down the millionaires amendment as being too restrictive to millionaires trying to wage a campaign for public office.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court has struck down the "millionaire's amendment" as an unfair way to help opponents of wealthy candidates who spend from their personal fortunes.

The law allows candidates to receive larger contributions when their wealthy opponents spend heavily from their personal fortunes.

The court says by a 5-4 vote that the law violates the First Amendment.

The law was challenged by Jack Davis, a New York Democrat who has so far spent nearly $4 million of his own money in two losing campaigns for Congress and says he will spend another $3 million this year.

Davis says the law unfairly rewards his opponents by allowing them to exceed campaign fundraising limits simply because Davis has chosen to dip into his personal funds.

In other news, you now have a constitutional right to own a handgun. Quick, guess what the majority in those decisions looked like.

Do an experiment today: ask any New Yorker whom you know or meet randomly on the street who their state representatives are. The odds are very good that they won't know. This is because that knowledge makes little pertinent difference in their lives.

The ramifications of that simple fact are laid out in two Daily News pieces today that should make you cringe. One is headlined Ex-staffer says top Shelly aide raped her and Silver did nothing about it, the other, New York burns while Albany fiddles.

The first piece deals with an alleged rape incident in the State Assembly.

[Alleged rape victim Elizabth] Crothers, 32, was a young staffer for an upstate Republican assemblyman when she brought an internal complaint in 2001 with the Assembly that she was raped by Silver's then-counsel Michael Boxley.

Crothers and her boss met directly with Silver, who she said was callously eating pretzels as she recounted her story.

Boxley later in an unrelated incident pled guilty to misdemeanor sexual assault.  read more »

Global warming is hitting us already. It is no coincidence that some of the biggest storms and an unexpected number of storms are hitting us now. Nor are food shortages coincidence...nor are they caused primarily by biofuels. Extreme weather, an expected part of global warming, is hitting us hard, damaging crops around the world. Crops are established based on a particular climate. That climate has changed and it will take time for agriculture to adapt and infrastructure to be put into place. Time and money.

Global warming isn't our future. It is our now.  read more »

Michael Goodwin’s Op-Ed in today’s Daily News “Keep Albany a two-party town”, presents a perfect way to end the legislative session with some mindless summer fun. Yes, the session must truly be over, and things must be slowing down, for only two parties makes for a very slow night indeed in that Babylon north of the Bear Mountain Bridge.

The article regurgitated the flatulent gasbag conventional wisdom that we are better off with divided government than one-party control. Michael Bouldin at “The Daily Gotham” and Phil Anderson at “The Albany Project” gave terse responses most notable for their dismissive brevity.

Doubtless, the article’s contents are not really worth much more, but the fact is that the viewpoint expressed within is widely held, and not just amongst the bagmen of the Albany chattering classes and their admiring chroniclers, who most resemble piano players in a brothel (although every once in a while they get a sudden urge to take a side gig in a local Salvation Army band until the latest scandal blows over). Most importantly, polls indicate it is a viewpoint with some salience among the general populace.  read more »

Okay, this is funny. Check out the web site of Kathy Konst, running for Congress in the primary in NY-26.

That site is here.

Now check out the site for Paul Tonko, running for Congress in a primary in the 21st district.

That site would be here.

Notice something?

Hello, campaigns: if you paid for a custom site, you just got screwed. And if you think it's enough to have the exact same site as someone else, newsflash: it's not.

Okay, I'm excited: the netroots buzz around Don Barber, a Democrat running in the 51st SD, has been building for a while. Last night, some of we bloggers decided to take a look at the man himself at an event.

Wait, this is him.

Very impressive, for several reasons. First of all, he's a nice guy, who I'm pretty confident isn't going to turn into an aloof elected aristocrat like some of the GOP senators one might care to mention.

Then, there's his platform: Don is running on a really simple idea that's gotten short shrift in New York for a while: that we're all in this together, that jobs matter, that the yawning gap between rich and poor in this state is scandalous, that we need to take better care of each other and the world we live in. As he says, he grew up on a farm, and it shows: the man is steeped in the values of a small, close-knit community that exercises stewardship of the land. Yes, that matters.

Here's what's really compelling: Don isn't the kind of person that's supposed to be running. He's doing this in a district that is tailored to make running more difficult; it stretches from roughly the geographic center of the state north to Saint Lawrence, west to Tompkins, and south to Dutchess. He also started out with no money, and has filled his coffers with a grassroots surge.  read more »

Contrary to false rumors (read that as outright lies) spread by the Vito Lopez machine (in the long tradition of the Brooklyn machine at least from Clarence Norman on), Steve Harrison has announced he is in the primary for the NY-13 race to the end. He also tells me he has had over 450 contributions online alone in the past 2 days.

Let me take this opportunity to reiterate that in every Brooklyn primary I have been a part of I have heard lies about people dropping out. In most cases it hasn't been true. These lies are spread by people on blogs, on the street while petitioning, through email, etc. It is a tactic, Occasionally I have seen anti-machine people use it, but generally it is the machine using it. This is just one more case of the operation of a political machine that has no interest in truth, governance or even, in most cases, beating Republicans. It is a political machine whose one and only goal is the maintenance of their own power.

And to the individual who has in another thread been spreading such rumors and accusing me of ignorance, I have this to say: Bite me.