Shining a Serious Light on Albany
Bouldin has already linked to it, but I want to put in a special word for the TAPopedia. The folks over at the Albany Project have come up with such a good idea here, but the whole point is that it needs input from all of us.
Let's face it: there's woefully little out there in the way of systematic explanation of how Albany works and who its players are. TAPopedia gives us the opportunity to use open-source knowledge to explore every nut and bolt in the sausage factory, and to track every single legislator down to the most obscure freshman Assemblymember. Since so much of Albany's dysfunction results from its opacity, a tool like TAPopedia holds a lot of promise in the struggle to achieve transparency.
But it needs you! What do you know? Go and build!
Knowing more about legislators is a good
in and of itself. But have you considered the possibility that the dysfunction in Albany is about three of the men in the room not just two of them? Have you noticed that so far, TAP focuses its criticism only on legislators? Is one of the men in the room an angel?
It seems to me posssible that one reasons that Senators and Assembly members have allowed for the concentration of power in the hands of the speaker and majority leader is as a counterweight to the vast powers of the Governor.
have you considered that
one of the men now "in the room" has been on the job for a week? have you also considered that that man was swept into office on a pretty persuasive reform agenda? have you considered that i have called spitzer out, even before he took the oath? did you consider that I took some heat for it, too? Have you considered that there are no such things as angels?
we could get into a discussion about the structural problems that pervert and distort the processes of governance, or lack thereof, in albany. i'm perfectly willing to do so. we could discuss the urgent need for a new constitutional convention to address your concerns about executive power in new york. but, let's keep in mind that the two legislators of which you speak are known quantities as lawmakers and have been their positions for far too long. they are a "target rich" set, those two, and they are ripe for ridicule. so i do. mercilessly.
TAP, much like TDG, is a community site. if you find our product lacking, you could always do whatever you like to change that. anyone can post. or you could critique. from afar. over here.
whatever floats your boat.
wait. what did this have to do with the wiki again?
man, i'm cranky. maybe it's my coffee.
it's time: the albany project