This could have been the time for changing New York’s incumbent protection election system. During the last council election in 2005, almost two thirds (28 out of 34) of the incumbents running had no primary. Four of the other six incumbents being challenged won with more than 80% of the vote. The controversial term limits vote is the only opportunity to negotiate with enough councilmember to get the votes needed for Charter change that will insure real competitive elections in this one party town. It is a failure of the Citizen Union and other good government groups as well as the newspaper editorial boards and the reform clubs of this city not to demand changes that could have been used as a bargaining chip by both sides in this forced debate.

Changes needed to give challenges a better chance against incumbents include: a reduction in the number of petition signatures required to get on the ballot; non partisan redistricting; reductions in constituent mailings and office staff; equal time on the city’s cable TV stations and council web sites for challengers and opposition voices and an end to member items.

Petitions

Councilman Domenic M. Recchia told the New York Times on October 7th that he favors the extension of term limits, “A lot of us Council members feel that passing it through legislation is giving ample opportunity to the voters of the city to voice their opinions.” He added: “If the voters don’t like their council member, they can vote him out of office. And if they don’t like the mayor, they can get rid of him too.”

Reuters published a handy summary of Paulson's bail out proposal along with the counterproposals by Democrats :

• Would allow up to $700 billion in mortgage assets to be held by Treasury at any one time.
• Allows the Treasury to buy any mortgage-related assets, both residential and commercial, for a two-year period. The plan does not detail the types of mortgage assets this could cover and or how long the government could hold them, and does not establish how they would be valued. However, if deemed needed to promote financial market stability, any type of financial instrument could be bought.
• Assets must have been originated or issued before September 17, 2008, by a financial institution having "significant operations" in the United States. This provision could also be waived if deemed needed to promote financial stability.
  

Frontpaged, and welcome. - Bouldin

Just about a year ago when I began volunteering with a political campaign for the first time, my candidate was considered a long shot at best. That candidate was facing the full weight of an overwhelming political establishment. Opinion makers quickly dismissed the upstart candidate as too young and too inexperienced, noting the primary would be nothing more than a formality or procedural obstacle on the way to the front runner's inevitable coronation [1].

(crossposted to dailykos)

Of course, that "incumbent" candidate was Hillary Clinton; Barack Obama, my candidate, the one pundits expected to implode into a cloud of inexperience under the crushing weight of the establishment with an audible 'poof', is now our Democratic nominee. There's still a great deal of work to be done before Barack Obama becomes our 44th President, but he's out of the gate with a strong lead, even with the wounds of our the long, contentious primary campaign still slowly mending.

New to politics a year ago, I entered the fray with only a passing familiarity with the candidates various policy proposals. Despite my indifference and apathy at the time, Barack Obama's commitment to good government policies -- specifically campaign finance reform, government transparency and ethics reform -- drew me into the campaign, and eventually into Democratic politics for good. I could go on and on about my admiration for Obama's dedication to these issues, how good-government, campaign finance, and increased transparency are the prerequisites for lasting change, but I imagine there's little need to trumpet Obama in a progressive place like DG (for the record, this post was originally written for a broader audience at dailykos -- I hope I my relative ignorance of state issues compared to the average DG reader doesn't spoil the message).

Well, once again I'm rooting for the reformer-underdog. Still, despite the overwhelming weight of New York's establishment machine bearing down on Paul Newell campaign, I'm more convinced than ever that Obama-style bottom-up Change is precisely what NY state so desperately needs.

NEWELLNYC.ORG

David Saltonstall of the Daily News has a very interesting piece on the unusually, shall we say, sanitary condition of Rudy Giuliani's mayoral archives. Seems Rudy's people snapped up over 2,000 boxes of records from City Hall when he left office, with the promise that the newly-ex-mayor would personally pay to have them privately archived.

And he did. Only, the files were returned without a detailed index -- which makes it extremely difficult to search them. What's more, based on what reporters have found so far, history seems to have decided to be somewhat kinder to Rudy since his people borrowed the records:

A file labeled "Private Life/Divorce" offers nothing more than a few old press clippings about his breakup with Donna Hanover, as well as a transcript from the May 2000 press conference where he described his then-girlfriend and now-wife, Judith Nathan, as "a very good friend."

Meanwhile, Hanover's papers as First Lady have been all but erased. "This subgroup was not filmed," is all the archive says.

Documents from the historic weeks after 9/11 seem similarly scant. Instead of memos detailing concerns about air quality or coordination among agencies, the record consists of a few dry reports that sketch efforts to restore the city bureaucracy. [...]

Can you get free from the burdens of work and seder preparation on Monday morning? The Drum Major Institute is sponsoring a most-of-the-day talk-fest on New York City and the Middle-class.

Featured speakers include form Gov. Mario Cuomo, Mayoral-possibles Rep. Anthony Weiner and Comptroller William Thompson, Just-re-elected UFT President Randi Weingarten and NYC Finance Commissioner Martha Stark and Bronx Beep Adolfo Carrion Jr. You can read more about it here.

I personally had to move heaven and earth to clear the morning and will have to seder-prep all weekend, but I'm going.

Monday April 2, 2007 8:00 a.m.-2:00 p.m.
Baruch College Conference Center, Newman Vertical Campus
55 Lexington Avenue at 24th Street, 14th Floor

Try calling, emailing DMI to RSVP.
See you there.

If you wanted to buy some land to develop for your own profit, would you expect taxpayers to pay the entire bill for you? Well, if you are a law school buddy of Pataki, that is exactly the sweet deal you could get while Pataki was Governor...and the exact deal Bruce Ratner seems to have gotten with you and me footing the bill.

This comes via Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn.

According to the March 9th 2007 Daily News New York City is spending $100 million to buy the property on or near the 22-acre Atlantic Yards site for developer Forest City Ratner.

Of the $205 million proposed to support the project in the Mayor's preliminary budget, $100 million is slated for land acquisition costs and $105 million for roads, utilities and other infrastructure needs, according to EDC officials.

The state is chipping in an additional $100 million.

David Yassky was pretty angry upon hearing this:

"There's no justification to spend public money like this," said Councilman David Yassky (D-Brooklyn Heights). "Government money should be spent on transportation infrastructure, schools and traffic calming - not subsidies for a private company.

- - - Recent Council Legislation - - - -

On Wednesday, February 28th the City Council passed a number of pieces of legislation that impact a wide spectrum of issues affecting New Yorkers. This included a package of bills to make nightlife safer in New York City through:
- Enabling the City to shut down businesses selling or making fake ID's;
- Requiring the installation of security cameras at club entrances and exits; and
- Establishing an independent monitoring program for clubs with serious or repeat violations.

Additionally, the Council passed bills to:
- License and regulate pedicabs;
- Require tax preparation companies to provide clients with a customer bill of rights;
- Approve a budget modification to recognize $2.2 billion more in City revenues; and
- Extend the life of the Wetlands Task Force.

Finally, the Council passed resolutions to:
- Call upon the State Legislature and State Liquor Authority to modify the use of bottle services in nightlife establishments; and
- Call for a symbolic moratorium on use of the 'N' word in New York City.

For more, see the City Council Home page at http://www.nyccouncil.info

Contact Council Speaker Quinn at:
http://www.nyccouncil.info/rightnow/contactspkr.cfm

Does sloppy bookkeeping and oversight encourage confidence? Not in my mind. Yet the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) continues its shoddy oversight of Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yard's project. Keep in mind that the ESDC has up to now been nothing but a rubber stamp for everything the Axis of crony capitalism (Ratner and his political pawns) has wanted. Now they file an inadequate and incomplete financial projection for Ratner's overdevelopment plan that basically tells the taxpayers very little about what it will actually cost them in the long run. This comes from the number one organization that has been fighting Ratner's corrupt plan from the start, DDDB:

Financial projections released today by the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) purporting to show Forest City Ratner's (FCRC) projected profit for the proposed "Atlantic Yards" project appear to raise more questions than they answer - and to severely understate the developer's profit.

The financial documents, which were released only after State Assemblyman Jim Brennan and State Senator Velmanette Montgomery sued the ESDC for the information, fail to provide sufficient details or underlying assumptions, including information on "sources and uses" typically provided for a project receiving significant amounts of public funding. In some cases, the documents omit information altogether, for example, assigning no projected value to the project's planned hotel. The true value of the assets, once built, would appear to be much higher than the values outlined; several elements of the plan appear to be estimated below market value, let alone future value.

Affordable housing in NYC is becoming almost as endangered a species as the mountain gorilla or the whooping crane. And way too often when someone advocates "affordable housing" it is no such thing but rather an excuse to give developers like Ratner a free pass to tread on personal property rights and destroy entire NYC communities. But the Mitchell-Lama housing program seems like something that NYC would be stupid to abandon.

This comes from Assemblyman Jonathan Bing's newsletter: