Just a brief note on what we publish, how, and why, seems in order.

First of all, we're a part of the Progressive netroots. As the oldest and largest statewide Progressive blog, that's clear. Most of the time, by choice or default, we'll support the netroots position or candidate. In New York especially, with its cynical and deeply corrupt political culture, enmeshed in our state's version of the Washington Beltway, saturated with dysfunction and insider/outsider narratives, the netroots are a breath of fresh air in a very stagnant smoke-filled room filled with jaded, bitter, and old practitioners of the conventional wisdom.

That said, there is no one single editorial line. We are a forum for debate. We are not, contrary to what some might say, shills. Our support, if its to be extended, is conditional. Some of our writers may indeed be rather more critical than you'd expect.

It is a mixed blessing for me to be not just a writer but a web developer. If I didn't have a life with two children, I would have already posted the littany of articles I have dealing with political issues and opinions on policy that I have on queue at moment. Alas, there are so many hours in a day for a working mom like.

Please consider sponsoring our effort.

This Friday 27th of April I will be taking The Daily Gotham offline at 10:30pm to work on the site's system upgrade.

After much discussion and deliberation I am upgrading the site from a now almost defunct CivicSpace distribution of Drupal to a custom culturekitchen distribution based on Drupal 4.7, along with a cleaner and easier to use interface based on Michael Bouldin's DailyGotham design.

How can you help?

Please consider sponsoring our effort.

Your sponsorship not only help towards paying for our time and effort, but all sponsors will be acknowledged on a special sponsors post, email annoucement and blogroll.

I had no idea why people were having such a hard time getting to the blogging features. Well, f*&^K that's because the navigation box went missing during the redesign.

Sigh.

I apologize for any confusion this might have caused.

Anything else in need of tweaking?

I have no idea how it got fixed, but y'all should be able to take the poll, blog, update the calendar, open a forum debate, write articles and leave comments without a hitch.

Carry on.

The system is hicupping. When I post a blog, I get a blank page. The system is still posting, but for some reason it's not refreshing and going to the posted view.

So if you are posting anything on our site today, make sure you just go to the front page after a post. If you hit refresh, it will duplicate the post.

Thanks.

[UPDATE by Liza Sabater : 6 October 2006]
Comments are back on.

Given the severity of the attacks (I deleted yesterday close to 5k spam comments) I may be forced to allow comments from registered users only. This does not mean you have to out yourself if you are an anonymous blogger or commenter --did you hear that Gatemouth?

It means you need to have a valid email address to fill out our registration form. That's it. Nothing more.

So to those who have not registered with us, I would strongly suggest you do so today.

To those who don't want to, could you please tell me WHY!?!

[5 October 2006]

This site is currently under attack by porn-pushing spambots; the above is a screenshot of my inbox (you get an alert email every time someone posts a comment on a thread you authored or commented on).

And just for the record, I don't like "amatuer porn". Doesn't do it for me.

There are really only two options for anonymous users of our site:

1. Comments
2. Voting on polls

That's it --and precariously so. I may not allow any anonymous commenting at all given the onslaught of trolls we've been getting.

If you want to do more on our site, you need to get a login and become a member.

Deregulation Affecting the Small Business

“Electricity Deregulation”. This term has been spreading through the business community for the last eight years. What is it and how does it affect you? Can you save money? Is there a connection between deregulation and Con Edison’s power outage? The whole concept of deregulation seems overwhelming. However, deregulation is not new; you probably remember the deregulation of airline travel and long distance telephone service.
Deregulation had no impact on the power outage. In fact, Con Edison no longer owns the large power plants in New York City. They were required to sell them when deregulation began. So, just like a third party supplier, Con Edison must buy electricity to sell to their customers.
What deregulation allows you to do is to purchase electricity from a third party supplier other than Con Edison. How does this work? The third party supplier will bill the customer for their actual electricity usage. Con Edison will bill the customer for delivering that electricity. Savings from this “two-bill” system are likely; Con-Ed’s portion of the bill is no longer taxable because Con Ed is not providing electricity, just transporting it. Since tax rates in New York City are as high as 8.375%, commercial customers gain true savings. One option is SmartChoice energy which guarantees savings.

I was wondering just now why is it that more people don't post blogs, forum threads, or comments. Then, when fixing one member's permission I just noticed that all member's permissions were set at "authenticated user" --a set back for many people who had front page privileges.

I apologize for this faux pas. All members' permissions must have been reset when I did the upgrade. Now I have to go through 300+ user files and set them back to what they were.

So please take a moment and write here in the comments what kind of posting permissions you had on our site. If you did not have front-page permissions and want them, this is the place to plead your case.

I am still working on the new posting rules. Basically, if you are not a front-page contributor, you still can have your forum posts, article entries and events voted to the front page by the community. More details on this will follow.

I do want to warn people that I will be disappearing to my mother's home for ten days starting on Thursday. Yes people, this boricua is going home to Puerto Rico for a quicky vacation with her spawnage. So make sure you make your requests between now and Wednesday if you want me to upgrade your permissions sooner than later. If not, y'all have to wait until after I come back from la isla del encanto.