On Libous

And just like that – the man is gone.

Convicted of a felony, Tom Libous is out of the state senate that he loved so much.

That he loved the senate was evident from the way he continued to serve even as he struggled with spreading cancer. In recent years, his appearance changed dramatically as he underwent various treatments. But he kept coming back. They actually wheeled him in for his last session.

Libous was always someone who fascinated us. He was a fixture in the senate, a respected guy. At his peak, he was probably the best political mind the Republicans had. But think about it – he was different. He was a Lebanese guy in a conference of white establishment types.  Yeah, the conference had people with ethnic backgrounds – Italian, Irish, Greek. But Libous was technically a person of color, though you never would have known it from his politics.

He was very conservative. He voted against same sex marriage. He always led efforts against abortion.  He spoke for “traditional values.” That said, he was friendly and engaging and respectful of everyone, and everyone seemed to like him.

How he was brought down is a story no one has really examined. Reporters covered the trial, but did so with detachment.  And now that he’s gone, reporters are on to different angles: What are the consequences of his departure for control of the Senate? What will happen next?

In this post, we want to revisit the case against him and simply note – with similar detachment – some aspects of this case were really unusual.

It started when the FBI showed up at Libous’ Capitol office unannounced one Monday morning five years ago. Libous was just arriving from “Binghampton.”

The agents were said to be quite cordial. They asked a few questions, took some handwritten notes and then departed. Libous went right to his preparations for the day’s legislative session.   Little did he know that what had just transpired in that 15-minute exchange would eventually bring him down.

Without an attorney present, Libous had said several times in response to questions: “I really don’t recall. I don’t remember exactly what happened. ”

The subsequent case against Libous was that he lied when he said that he didn’t remember.

Digression on memory: To a person in our group, we’re not that good at instant recall. We are much better having some time to reflect. In fact, we’ll do this little memory exercise that involves thinking of the context.  Ask us something about 1996. At first, we’ll draw a blank. And then we’ll remember that it was the year the Yanks won the World Series. It was Jeter’s first year.  And it was Pataki’s second year and Spitzer was AG and McCall Comptroller.  All the memories come back in a rush.

It’s all about context. It’s what gets you to remember, and it’s what sticks in your mind and influences you.

Context works in other ways, too. In this regard, the prosecution was absolutely brilliant in creating context. Around Libous’ simple “I don’t remember,” comment, they created an extraordinary narrative.

It was a narrative less about Libous than his son. But before we get to the portrayal of the son, there’s another relevant point. Prosecutors investigated Libous himself over a seven-year period. They had numerous lines of inquiry. They looked at his real estate dealings in Florida. They looked at his second home on a lake in the Southern Tier. And they poured over his campaign finance holdings and relationships to lobbyists.

They never turned up anything actionable in any of those areas, so they turned to his wife and his son. The review of the wife produced nothing, but the review of the son did.  He was found to have underreported his income by 20k over a three-year period. Normally, this offense would have been met with a directive by the IRS to repay what was owed, plus a penalty. But because Libous’ son is an attorney who should have known better, he’s going to jail.

More on the son: He wasn’t blessed with good looks. Nor is he said to have his father’s interpersonal skills. But Senate staffers who worked with Libous and knew the family well describe the son as a decent person. He was not spoiled, arrogant, abusive, drunk or anything else that might fit the description of yet another 30-something, son of a famous person ne’er do well. A little awkward, yes, but not a failure.  Again, he was a bar-admitted, practicing attorney.

But in court, Matt Libous became a detestable figure. He was portrayed as corrupt, greedy, lazy, and, most importantly, a cad. On this later point, it was said that he got drunk at an office party and hit on his boss’ wife who was in a leg cast at the time.

Digression on plot lines: We are avid aficionados of narrative.  And we have this theory – a well-constructed story always has a detail, seemingly extraneous, that works to establish credibility. The classic example is Spitzer keeping his knee-high socks on in bed with a hooker. Roger Stone has admitted he made that up, but it has really stuck.  Stone said: “It was perfect because it was so creepy.”

Indeed, it’s the creep factor that moves people more than anything else. And in the Libous case, it was hitting on the boss’ wife who was in a leg cast. From that point on, Matt Libous was a creep and Tom Libous was going down.

Again, with detachment, this is what prosecutors in high profile cases do. They work the jury. They pull at strings that influence jurors. And they did it very, very well here. They did it without wire taps, emails or anything other than the testimony of cooperating witnesses. Again, you really have to tip your hat to the prosecutors.

And yet, and yet – how weird it all was and is. What extraordinary effort they made to bring down Libous. Seven years worth of investigation. How bizarre the resolution. How conflated it all seemed with superseding indictments of Skelos and his truly cad-like son occurring at the same time.

It has been suggested to us by some smart people that this just isn’t the time for any Albany pol to have to appear before a jury. The mood of the public is just too ugly. This jury, in fact, took three hours to decide the case. They were home for dinner.

Now Libous is bound for jail for saying that he didn’t remember when he supposedly did.

Going Further Afield

We can’t let go of the honey bee matter. Yes, we know its way afield for most readers. But stay with us as the discussion turns political.

When you research colony collapse disorder, you find that it’s quite real and that scientists know the cause. It’s a group of pesticides called neonicotinoids.

These chemical compounds are extraordinary. A single bee can be exposed and fly back to the hive and kill all the other bees, including the queen.

In nature, there are terrible diseases, pathogens and viruses that can be deadly, but there’s always a certain percentage that survives. Some are exposed and not infected. Some are infected and recover. Pick a plague and this is true.

But with neonicotinoids – not so. It just over. Exposure equals death.

Now consider this: There was never ever a flip side crisis that necessitated the creation of this compound in the 80s.  We didn’t have too many honey bees. In fact, the existence of honey bees was not and could never be a public health threat. What threat? Too much honey? Too much beeswax?

So we didn’t really need this chemical compound then, and we don’t need it now. There are, in fact, dozens of other chemical compounds that serve adequately as pesticides.

So, why not ban neonicotinoids? Why not just say in New York, we like our honey bees and we disallow the use of the specific chemical compound that is killing them.

How hard could it be to do that?

Well, perhaps someone would oppose the action. Perhaps they’d say: Hey, we really need it. And if you ban it, we’ll be harmed.

But who would say that? Farmers?  No, this action is being taken to help farmers. They need honey bees and other pollinators. Fewer bees means reduced propagation and smaller yields.  Farmers are seeing that already. They are concerned. They support efforts to protect bees.

So if there are no institutional opponents to the ban, except maybe the chemical companies, why not do it?  In fact, why hasn’t it been done already? This is the real quandary this post explores.

In this regard, recall what Cuomo said when he banned fracking. He said he had to do it because the risk to the environment was too great.

By the same reasoning, why doesn’t he act now to ban neonicotinoids?  This isn’t a situation in which there is a debatable, potential risk. Instead, there’s ongoing, severe damage to the environment.

And where are the enviros? Why isn’t this a crusade for them?

Back to the risk from fracking. Had it been sanctioned, it would have happened in a narrow band through the Southern Tier. That’s where developable reserves of natural gas exist in New York. And had it been sanctioned  per the approach Cuomo outlined to the Times in 2012, it would have been limited to test wells in very rural areas.

Say that it proceeded and say that the state’s promised, rigorous oversight was a complete bust – what would have happened then? Well, there would have been groundwater contamination in Conklin and Lisle and Big Flats.

That specific prospect – of groundwater problems in some of least populated regions of the state – was enough to mobilize a massive contingent of environmentally-conscious people. Cuomo said it himself – it was the most high charged public policy debate he’d ever seen. It was indeed remarkable and forced him to back off on his plan to join every other state in the nation in engaging in fracking for both economic and environmental benefits. Natural gas is, of course, cleaner than coal and using it instead of coal has helped the US dramatically cut emissions of green house gas.

Now please – somebody is going to think this post is meant to take a rhetorical jab at anti-frackers. In fact, we’re taking our hat off to them. They flat out won the fracking debate. They earned their victory with brilliant, committed political activism. Nobody can deny that.

It’s just that we can’t figure out why they felt that it was imperative to stop fracking with its potential risks, but they are now yawning at the senseless, preventable eradication of bees with much more immediate and dramatic consequences.

With a fraction of the resources and effort, the enviros could force to Cuomo ban neonicotinoids. They could do it tomorrow. And wouldn’t this actually do more to help the environment than banning fracking?

Going Afield

Don’t laugh. Don’t snicker. Don’t roll your eyes. Just read this and reflect on it. Please.

For the last several weeks, we’ve been doing this odd thing: We’ll be driving around and whenever we see a stretch of flowering plants at the side of the road, we’ll stop the car, we’ll get out and we will inspect the blossoms. We’re looking for bees, honey bees, to be exact.

The honey bee is brownish and is to be distinguished from the bumble bee, which is yellowish.  Both are pollinators, which in the natural world have exalted status.

The honey bee is at issue. You’ve probably read something about CCD – colony collapse disorder. It’s when entire bee hives die off. It’s said that honey bee populations have declined by more than a third over the last 10 years. Butterfly populations have declined sharply, as well.

Like you, we are skeptical of what we read in the media. Everything is always hyped. It’s frequently bullshit. And yet the sources cited in these stories and the consistency of what they are saying gives us pause.

Without pollinators, without a robust, healthy population of honey bees, there’s less honey in the world – literally and figuratively. Moreover, crop yields decline and there are a host of other adverse changes in the environment.

It’s a troubling prospect – one you can ignore, or spend a little time looking into.

Start with some informal field research: Look for wildflowers – clover, asters, dandelions or daisies will do nicely, or look for a clump of honeysuckle bushes, or a field of goldenrod. Then, staying as close to the flowers as you can, walk in a straight line counting off twenty paces. By the time you get to the twentieth step, you should have seen 10 honey bees.

We’ve been doing this repeatedly in recent days and we haven’t encountered more than four honeybees in 20 paces. Sometimes we didn’t see any.

We think we remember being children, and we think there were a lot more honey bees then. Of course, that’s subjective as hell. And yet, when you actually go looking for a honey bee and you can’t find one at all, well, that’s alarming.

So, what can be done?

You can plant flowers bees love. Google that.

You can advise anyone you know who is poised to zap a honey bee hive with chemicals to call in a person who “rescues” the hives. It’s free.

Most importantly, you can cut way back on pesticide use.

In the near future, there might be more things individuals and states can do. In this regard, Cuomo recently did a good thing in creating a Pollinator Protection Task Force in New York. It’s supposed to issue a report soon.

In the meantime, check out this website for more info: http://www.pollinator.org/

Life is Sweet

I tell you life is sweet

In spite of the misery

There’s so much more…

Be grateful.

– Natalie Merchant

Liberals are better human beings than conservatives.

Liberals care more about people. They care more about the community, the schools, the environment, the planet.

If there’s injustice, poverty, hardship – the liberal has compassion and wants to do something about it.

Do conservatives care?  They care about their investments, their tax rate and the whiteness of their neighborhood.

Other people and other people’s problems? Hah.

The conservative answer is always the same: Get a job.

Can’t get by on the minimum wage? Get a second job.

Isn’t this all true? Isn’t it totally, ridiculously, undeniably true?

Of course it is, and everybody knows it.

And yet, there are times when you really have to wonder.

For example, there’s a swath of Upstate New York from just east of Binghamton stretching out west toward Olean. It’s an eight-county region where about half a million people live.

Not all of them are white people with guns and anti-Obama bumper stickers on their pickup trucks. Not all are NASCAR fans and Hillary haters. Actually, minorities are a growing percentage. In fact, more than a quarter of the population in the major towns and cities in the region are black and brown. They are all poor. They all live in deteriorating rental housing. They get minimal social services. Their kids go to schools where a sound basic education is in question. And income inequality is a fact of life.

Worst of all, throughout the entire region, there are simply no jobs. In fact, the region has the lowest rate of job growth in the entire nation over the last 20 years.

This snapshot actually doesn’t come close to capturing reality in the region. Outmigration tells the real story. The region has lost half its population over the last 20 years. Half!

So what do liberals with compassion have to say about the situation in the Southern Tier?

They have nothing to say. They act as if the place doesn’t even exist.

But it wasn’t always like that. Not at all. Liberals cared a great deal about the region just last year. In all the nation, the Southern Tier of New York was the most important place to them.

Remember?

Liberal activists were fixated on the Southern Tier. Liberal activists and celebrities came to the region repeatedly to say how truly concerned they were about the health, quality of life and the very future of the people in the Southern Tier.

They told everyone: “Fracking isn’t the answer.  The green economy can and will produce more jobs!”

Those activists, those celebrities, they promised to help. They promised to help.

But what has happened?  Where are those activists now? Where’s Yoko Ono? Where’s Mark Ruffalo? Where’s Matt Damon? Susan Sarandon?  Alec Baldwin? Robert Redford? Where’s Josh Fox?

Has any liberal activist or celebrity said or done a thing to help the people in Southern Tier since the fracking decision?

The answer is no. They’ve done absolutely nothing. They won the debate and then just walked away.

Liberals – who are smarter, more compassionate, more forward looking, more enlightened – couldn’t care less about the people in the Southern Tier of the state.

Natalie Merchant? She drives right through the Southern Tier on the way to visit her family in Jamestown. Does she care that Binghamton has the worst job growth in the northern hemisphere?

Life is sweet, she says.

OK, OK, so we’re being very cynical and snarky here. We’re really kind of liberal ourselves and we’re just trying to make a point here. We’re posturing.

We suppose so, but it truly galls us that nobody on the left has made so much as a charitable contribution to the region. Nobody has thought to hold a benefit concert. Nobody has issued a statement or made a gesture in support of green jobs or any other kind of economic development. None of the foundations and institutes that bankrolled the anti-fracking crusade with millions of dollars has done a thing. Instead, it’s almost as if the activists and celebrities think the people of the region should be grateful for their intervention.

And meanwhile, what have the bad guys, the conservatives done?

Well, there’s one group of conservative business interests trying to create a food and beverage production cluster in the Southern Tier.  There’s still another trying to pull together a medical marijuana growing facility for the region. And another is pushing a gaming facility. Together these conservative interests with actual ties to the region have been writing to Governor Cuomo since last year urging him to focus on the region’s infrastructure and economy.

Tell us again who the “better” people are.

Just one final point:

There’s somebody who predicted with great specificity everything that has happened.

He warned that the liberal celebrities and activists were phonies who didn’t care at about the people in the region.

He said they had no comprehension of life in rural communities and that their interests were completely selfish. He said these people’s talk of preserving the rural character of communities was really a kind of code for preserving the value of their vacation homes.

He said the celebrities and activists had no right to interfere and dictate what happens in other people’s lives and communities.

It was Fred Dicker who said all of this and more, and he was right.

Select Group

It’s a select group. To become part of it, you have to be in the game for a long, long time. You have to be a person who is principled, thoughtful, constructive and – here’s the really distinguishing feature – you have to be indefatigable. (Love that word.)

Call it the Pantheon of Albany. Karen Scharff is in it – by virtue of 30 years of tireless advocacy. You don’t have to agree entirely with her politics, which are far left, but you absolutely have to respect her as a person of intelligence and integrity.

Gerry Benjamin is in it. Who, over the decades, has more faithfully sought to separate personality and partisan politics from the analysis of public policy? Who has tried harder to get the political system to focus on what is objectively in the public interest?

And Bruce Gyory is in it. He has a special place in the Pantheon. It’s a room lined with history books and a table spread with polling crosstabs.

This is an endearingly idiosyncratic fellow who has been around since the Carey days. He was mentored by liberals and has been in business with conservatives. He served with Democrats and advised Republicans.

For a long time, we wondered about the way he seems to mix political threads – championing initiatives like the Dream Act while admonishing pols not to abandon the center.

We also wondered about his public persona: He’s everywhere as a commentator and writer and is rather hard to peg. He gets billed as a Democratic consultant and is often paired with others, such John McArdle, Dave Catalfamo and Bob Bellefiore. Those are powerhouse Rs, pretty rigid in their thinking. Gyory always shines in such settings. He seems to have a better grasp of the details and is more facile, less partisan.

Gyory is not without faults, however. There are times when he’ll really stretch a historical comparison. The Court of Prince Metternich isn’t exactly applicable to Senate Rules Committee. And, he can bury you with polling data:  “These polling results remind me nearly exactly of the situation in ’54 when Jacob Javits was facing FDR Jr. in the Attorney General race. They were separated by just nine points with two weeks remaining and everyone knew that turnout of white Catholics in Little Falls would be the deciding factor…”

And there’s another aspect to him that’s unique. It’s not a fault exactly – but a really unusual sentiment emerges at times. He betrays a feeling, subtly, of disgust for politicians who act in ways that ignore the obvious in polls. There’s an unspoken reproach when he talks about the Republicans failing to see the growth of the Hispanic vote or the Democratic veering left. “This is a Democratic state, not a liberal state,” he insists.

We love the Gyory passion. We love his love of the game. Listen to him on Susan Arbetter – he can be breathless with excitement in talking about some political trend he sees.

But what really separates Gyory in our mind – and the point of this encomium – is his desire to be constructive. And a case in point is his brilliant piece yesterday on De Blasio and La Guardia.

The folks in De Blasio land and Bill himself might have read that and thought Gyory was slapping him around. Anything but. It was a gentle, gentile reminder for the Mayor that substance matters and that he really, really needs to focus on the nuts and bolts of city government.

We’ve been spending a lot of time in New York City lately and we see the city falling apart. We want to scream. But there’s De Blasio planning another international trip – while the homeless ranks swell and cops now let criminals walk away because they don’t want to risk any controversy in arresting them.

De Blasio would do well to read and re-read Gyory’s piece.

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/bruce-gyory-bill-no-fiorello-article-1.2293566

Spitzer vs. Cuomo

Everyone knows about Cuomo’s antagonistic style. We’ve all been aware of it for years.

Think about that moment in 2011 when Steven Cohen uttered his famous line:  “We operate at two speeds around here: Get along…and kill!”

When you heard that, you thought: “Wow, did he really say that?”

And then you thought, “OK, it’s a quip, it’s a joke. But then again, it isn’t, and that’s the cleverness of it …  but is it too clever? Doesn’t it speak to a kind of arrogance and isn’t it going to harden people against them?”

Interestingly, neither Cuomo nor Cohen nor anyone else in the administration ever felt the need to temper, modify or otherwise explain that extraordinary comment. They just let it stand.

In the modern history of state politics and government in New York, there’s probably never been a more candidly in-your-face articulation an administration’s governing approach.

In fact, nothing even compares.  “Day One: Everything Changes” now seems ridiculously tame and trivial.

At the time, almost a decade ago, everyone was talking about Spitzer’s arrogance. People were aghast at his supposed “steamroller” tactics.

But consider Spitzer and Cuomo, and representative actions by each.

Spitzer went to the editorial boards of newspapers in the districts of a handful of lawmakers. His intention was to “let constituents know how their lawmaker voted.”  Everyone professed shock that he would do such a thing – which today seems like a good government exercise.

Spitzer also had the Troopergate scandal.  This is supposed to be the ultimate example of Spitzer’s over-the-top approach. He was said to have “used” the State Police to “smear” Joe Bruno. But remember who framed it that way and who kept the storyline going.  It was Cuomo.

If you set Troopergate aside (and even if you don’t) and you think carefully about who has actually been more confrontational as Governor – Spitzer or Cuomo – there’s really no comparison.

There’s Spitzer disagreeing publically with lawmakers over their vote on the comptroller matter, and there’s Spitzer supposedly generating a negative news story in an upstate paper on Bruno’s questionable use of state aircraft.

And there’s Cuomo creating a Moreland Commission to investigate individual lawmakers. The commission subpoenaed their bank records and other personal information, as well as campaign accounts – a move the legislative leaders decried as unconstitutional.

An interesting nuance is that rather than releasing information, as Spitzer did, Cuomo used what he found for leverage in legislative talks. He didn’t release the information his commission uncovered. In fact, depending on what Preet finds, he may have concealed wrongdoing.

There’s another interesting comparison to be made.

Spitzer can be said to have worked against certain lawmakers – Bruno and his GOP conference, for sure. And he also took on 1199 and some other interest groups.

Cuomo, too, has worked against a bevy of lawmakers and elected officials. Just ask DeBlasio, Minor, Schneiderman, Dinapoli, Gianaris, etc. And he’s also taken on the Progressives.

What’s the key difference? Spitzer did battle with Republicans, while Cuomo, exclusively and gratuitously in the view of many, goes after fellow Democrats.

All of the preceding recollections have been by way of background for repeating and underscoring this New York Times construct from today:

“Confronted with a restive party, Mr. Cuomo, 57, now faces the most consequential political choice of his second term: whether to appease downtrodden Democrats by adjusting his personal style, or to continue relying on a set of hard-edged methods that his supporters call essential to maintaining political order in the state.”

The nub of it is this: Can he adjust his personal style? Is it even possible?

On Mr. B

It is, of course, purely a matter of taste, but there are people who tweet and then there are people who really tweet in an engaging way.

In this regard, Michael Benjamin is somebody we admire. He’s smart, sensitive and articulate, and he has a real contrarian streak, which we love.

There’s something else, too. We have to search for the right word to describe it. The word is … alacrity. Yeah, that’s it. What he writes really sparkles.

Who else does that today?

Our pols? Their tweets are an unending stream of self compliments. It’s like Jan Brady receiving flowers from her imaginary boyfriend. “Love always, signed, George Glass.”

The advocates?  The world is always coming to an end for them, and their twitter feeds are megaphones for their shrieking.

The reporters? They tweet snarkiness, silliness, and snarky silliness. That, and exaggerated praise for each other’s work.

But with Mr. B – whether you like his politics or not – you have to respect the consistent thoughtfulness of his tweeting.

Today he tweeted something totally provocative for us. He wrote: “Man kills 9 black churchgoers, blame Confederate battle flag. Man kills SF woman, blame sanctuary law and gun culture. Myopic.”

The first part of this construct is something we’ve been thinking about for some time, but we didn’t have the gumption to write it. We were afraid we’d be perceived as insensitive and politically incorrect. But now that Mr. B has put it out there, let us opine.

It’s a cliché, but a crisis is, indeed, an opportunity. This is especially true of Charleston. Every decent human being who was sickened by the slaughter of people gathered for a prayer meeting would say: “We’ve got to do something.”

But what? Take down the Stars and Bars? Yes, we get the symbolism, but how will that help? Will Billy Bob and Bobby Ray and all those crackers in the South who are bigots be fazed?  That’s doubtful.

Having said that, we really don’t have a workable alternative. Gun control in the South is a non-starter.

We aren’t off put by those behind the push to take down the flag. Not at all.

In fact, this was a situation that could have erupted into violence. People might have sought revenge and they would have been – again to be honest – justified in seeking it.

In fact, in every other country in the world when one religious site is attacked, another is hit in retribution. (One of our NT2 sons spent two tours in Iraq responding to such incidents.)

But the people leading this effort were better than that. They have sought “reconciliation” and it’s a beautiful thing indeed.

But we can’t help thinking about Mr. B’s construct. What, following a tragedy, is the long-sighted thing to do?

Governor Dick

Warily, we’re warming to the new journalism. We read Alex Pareene on Gawker today (see below) and, at first, we were given pause not by his editorializing, but by the extraordinarily bold language he used in doing so.

Of Cuomo, Pareene said: He has “consistently and petulant undermined” DeBlasio.

He has engaged DeBlasio in way that is “as smarmy and purposely aggravating” as possible.

And, “he is doing this strictly to be a dick.”

We read this and thought that Pareene’s writing was the antithesis of the restrained and “objective” reporting we were taught to respect as the highest form of the calling.

We thought Pareene’s writing was the commentary of a pure partisan, a DeBlasio supporter who was stung and hitting back.

But then we began to analyze and discuss his piece in our group, and it occurred to us that Pareene wasn’t opining so much on the substance of the debate as he was commenting on the nature of the debate. He was saying that Cuomo was being disingenuous with his comments.

And it occurred to us that it’s old-school legit to do that. It serves the traditional journalistic function of helping readers sort out what’s happening. Pareene, despite the snarky verbiage, was doing his job.

Let us put this another way:

Perhaps we actually side with Cuomo on the substance of the argument with DeBlasio. Perhaps we think that DeBlasio’s politics are far-left bullshit.  Perhaps we totally distrust a person who changes his name and uses his kids as props in political campaigns. Perhaps we don’t hold DeBlasio in high regard. Perhaps to all of that.

At the same time, we’re not blind to what Cuomo’s doing. We know he’s not being honest and forthright in this dust up. We know he’s posturing. We know he’s playing DeBlasio, a friend and fellow Dem, and trying to make him look bad.

And how do we look at all of that and not say: “This is how you spend your time as Governor? This is how you use your gifts as a pol? This is how you use your authority?

How do we not invoke Mario Cuomo and say: “Aren’t you a better politician and a better man than this?”

http://justice.gawker.com/andrew-cuomo-twists-the-knife-he-inserted-into-bill-de-1716351990?rev=1436307739887

Being Affirmative

On this 2015 Fourth of July weekend, we can allow ourselves to be affirmative.

Tax receipts are up. The state fisc is solid. Unemployment is at its lowest level since ’06. Crime is down in NYC and statewide.  Our cities aren’t torn apart by racial problems. We’ve avoided floods, droughts and other calamities so far this year. Tourism will set a new record this summer.  And the Yanks are tied for first.

Yeah, our government has petty corruption – most of it without a victim. (Who exactly was harmed in the Malcom Smith matter?)  And yeah, our politics features a lot of in-fighting. (This is what you get with the Dems are in charge.)

But overall, things aren’t bad in our state. Moreover, they might be poised to get better, not worse.

HRC might, indeed, be ascendant, and if she is, she and Bill would split their time between DC and NYC. This is not an insignificant thing. And if she wins and there is a bump for the Dems, Schumer might be Majority Leader, further enhancing the state.

Were this to happen – a president and senate leader both from New York – our state would become a focal point at just the right moment.  We need to explain this, but, first, a digression:

It’s ridiculously popular now to trash Obama. The main thread of it is that he has presided over a decline in the stature of the U.S. on the world stage. With any kind of objectivity, it occurs to you that the notion of the U.S. being a dominant force forever is ridiculous. Yeah, we can invade countries like Bush, and we can blow trillions on defense and pretend that we’re the world’s beacon, but China and other countries would still be focused intently on competing. And nothing a GOP presidential candidate or anyone else will ever say can change this.

The bottom line is that the era of international competition, duh, is upon us. And in this new era, it’s possible that New York stands out and becomes resurgent.

Why? Well, we’re already an international place by virtue of immigration. Notwithstanding Trump, we love immigration here. While everyone else has conniptions over immigrants, we welcome them. We see diversity as a virtue, as a strength.

Beyond that huge plus, we have other advantages. Our schools – we spend more on them than any other state, and although the results aren’t as good as they should be – they actually do the job they are supposed to do. In fact, they do it well for new immigrants, who then join the workforce and have a drive and commitment spoiled white kids just don’t have. Be real about that.

In addition, we have the best universities in the world: Cornell; Columbia, NYU, UR, RPI, RIT, SU and SUNYs Poly, Bing and Stony Brook, which are led by immigrant post-grads. Be real about that, too.

Another digression: It seems absurd to mention it, but we have, drum roll, water. No joke, it matters.  Development is hard capped in the West and South, but not here. We have clean water. Lots of it and it’s completely unpolluted by the scourge of fracking. (That part’s a crock, but we might as well try to take advantage of it.)

You get the point here. New York has some things going for it. You don’t have to reach to come up with some real positives.

Of course, there are still those who want to run down the state, but the reality is that we’re not doing that bad and there are some legit reasons to be affirmative.

Cheers?

In the early 80s, the US invaded the tiny Caribbean nation of Grenada.  The mission was to rescue some American students at a medical school on the island. The backdrop, however, was the Cold War. The Cubans were said to have influence in Grenada, and, by extension, the Soviet Union was said to be involved. President Reagan, taking over for the hapless Jimmy Carter, was going to show American toughness.

The actual military operation was almost comedic. SEAL and Ranger teams led the invasion of the island country, which was known mainly for the production of nutmeg.  US forces went against poorly-trained squads that gave up without firing. Those Grenadians that did fire back and those wearing Cuban military surplus uniforms were “dispatched.”

It was over quickly and in the days that followed there was a lot of celebration back home.  One would have thought the Port Salines beachhead on the east end of the island was Normandy.

Later, Mario Cuomo was one of the very few to be given pause by the whole episode. He said: “We went down there with the greatest military machine in history and we beat up 22 guys in sneakers. And President Reagan is now a hero?”

Dead Grenadian soldiers, a lot more than 22, were lined up in a parking lot in St. George’s, and they were, indeed, wearing sneakers and shorts. Some highly-trained, hard-charging US troops looked down at them and said: “What the fuck did we just do?”

We loved Mario for his remark.  And today, channeling Mario, we have to ask this question:

Is the State Police sergeant who “took down” David Sweat really a hero?

According to the Governor, the sergeant “can go home and tell his daughters that he’s a hero… but knowing teenage daughters, as I do, the credit will last for maybe 24 hours.”

Digression on a digression: Why, lately, is everything about Andrew? Why must it always be brought back to some personal angst he’s feeling?

Back to the sergeant: He shot an unarmed man in the back as he was running away.  Of course, almost definitely he had to shoot Sweat because he wasn’t going to stop running and he couldn’t just let him get away and maybe do something violent later on.

Yeah, the sergeant was doing is job. But is he what Cuomo said?  “A hero who demonstrated remarkable bravery under harrowing circumstances.”

Or how about the border patrol agent who capped Matt? Three head shots from less than 20 yards away. OK, so he didn’t drop the old shotgun he was carrying. Gotta do it, right? Never know what might happen next. And yet, Matt was also said be “dead drunk,”which, maybe, just maybe, might explain him being “not responsive.” Ya think?

But, hey, we got ‘em. Got ‘em both. And, hooray, right? High fives all around.  Like both tabs headlines this morning: “Blood, Sweat and Cheers!”

Cheers?

Forgive us for being Mario-esque, but we don’t think this is the moment for cheers, celebration or exultation in any way.

We feel only sadness. Why?

This concludes a period in which the state corrections system has been embarrassed nationally. We have two scapegoats in Mitchell and Palmer, but we all know that there’s a lot more to it, right? Funding is at issue. The age of the facility is at issue. And one should better hope that giving killers such privileges as they enjoyed will be an issue.

This concludes a period in which the State Police search capabilities have been revealed to be something less than outstanding. Yes, they were working hard in the cold and the rain. Yes, it might have been a dangerous situation with hunting cabins indeed loaded with scores of weapons and ammo. But that said, there was a clueless, bumbling quality to the search, no? And — this is really terrible of us — whatever happened to State Police fitness standards? Almost every trooper we saw on TV in recent days was morbidly obese.

This concludes a period in which the chief executive’s conduct was bizarre, at best. Will the State IG question corrections officials and the state police on whether they thought it was a good idea for the governor to reenact the breakout and then appear on countless national TV shows to give out detailed information on what’s happening? Will the IG ask this simple question: Did that PR stunt aide or set back the investigation in the first 48 hours?

As we say this, we do feel a pang. We’ve been very snarky in this post. We’re doing that Monday morning quarterback thing.

Surely, nobody meant for any of this to happen. And once it did, everybody was probably doing what they thought was right.

We believe that. We do. It’s just that we also believe that a celebration isn’t in order.  No way.