New York Budget Deficit Grows Due to State Senate Republican Block, Say Democrats

(New York, NY) $6 billion in debt, Senate Republicans are costing the state $1 million a day due to their unwillingness to accept an agreement reached between the state and Buffalo-based Delaware North to operate the Video Lottery Terminal franchise at Aqueduct. Even after instructions by Governor Paterson to cut the state's budget to address the fiscal crisis, Senate Republicans are throwing away money that could be used to repair the crumbling economy and bolster Upstate New York.

State Senate Democrats have launched a daily calculator to track how much the Senate Republicans are costing the state due to their failure of leadership."

So how much is a million dollars a day? Enough to buy healthcare for a year for 104 New York families, for example. Over the course of a year, that's over 38,000 families. Meanwhile, however, that money is quietly floating out the window, because, drumroll please, Dean Skelos and his caucus can't get their act together.

New York Budget Deficit Grows Due to State Senate Republican Block, Say Democrats

(New York, NY) $6 billion in debt, Senate Republicans are costing the state $1 million a day due to their unwillingness to accept an agreement reached between the state and Buffalo-based Delaware North to operate the Video Lottery Terminal franchise at Aqueduct. Even after instructions by Governor Paterson to cut the state's budget to address the fiscal crisis, Senate Republicans are throwing away money that could be used to repair the crumbling economy and bolster Upstate New York.

State Senate Democrats have launched a daily calculator to track how much the Senate Republicans are costing the state due to their failure of leadership."

The possible disability fraud involving LIRR retirees, as uncovered by the New York Times recently and now the subject of state and Federal investigations, unsurprisingly casts republican leader Dean Skelos in an unflattering light, reports Spin Cycle.

Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos (R-Rockville Centre) has long been the state lawmaker most involved with the Long Island Rail Road, with cordial union ties and a hand in its capital funding. Asked Thursday about state and U.S. probes into a federal board’s suspiciously routine granting of disability pensions, he said: “If somebody’s creating a crime, they’re creating a crime, and they should be punished for it.” He said his house's investigation committee could look into it but indicated that such a decision would likely await the outcome of work by state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, who has in effect been deputized by Gov. David Paterson for the probe.

Roy Simon, Skelos’ Democratic challenger, said the situation “smacks of someone asleep at the wheel in the Bush Administration's regulatory bureaucracy.”

In short, no Senate investigation, because, you know, that would rock the boat, and that's not something you can afford when you're clinging to your crumbling majority for dear life. Just one more example of where divided state government leads.

An anonymous tipster emailed over a spreadsheet - I love that, by the way, more, please - with the SRCC expenditures on various races this cycle.

What's fun about is that Dean Skelos, who we're just going to call Vendetta Dean from now on, is throwing millions of dollars out the window in wide, joyous arcs, pretty much with nothing to show for it.

Case in point: Craig Johnson. It's well known that Vendetta Dean hates Johnson with a passion, because the freshman Senator broke open the republican stranglehold on the Long Island delegation. For that reason, Skelos recruited a Sarah-Palin-wannabe, one Barbara Donno, to run against Johnson. Skelos sunk $604,789 into that race; however, in today's Siena poll, Johnson leads Donno by a margin of two to one. Say what you will about personal animosity, but maybe it's not the best way to allocate six-figure sums.

Another target of Vendetta Dean, apparently, is freshman Darrel Aubertine in the North Country; he had $656,949 spent on bringing him down, and leads his challenger by twenty points, in a district republicans held, literally, for a hundred years.

If I were a republican Senator anxious about my re-election, I'd have some unkind thoughts about Vendetta Dean. Pissing away over $1.3 million on offense, when your defense is crumbling around the state, is kinda stupid.

Here's the infamous, ghoulish video that ran during the Republican National Convention. This is republicans ripping the remains of the victims of the 9/11 terror attacks from their graves and rubbing them in the faces of the electorate in their desperate plea to stay relevant.

Dead Americans, dead New Yorkers, used, dishonored, exploited. It's shameful. Republicans think they died to give them dramatic footage.

They weren't murdered in their thousands, on the watch of a republican administration, to be a tool of sleazy republican operatives. On 9/11 itself, it didn't matter what your party affiliation was; not to the hijackers of the planes, not to the victims in the towers, not to the police officers and firemen who died trying to save lives.

It shouldn't matter now. So what to do?

The best way to stop republicans from dishonoring our dead is to hold them to account. Call them, and demand that they repudiate their nominee's sickeningly cynical exploitation of dead Americans. Contact info for New York City republican Senators and Majority Leader Skelos is over the fold.  read more »