I have to admit I’m not comfortable with a billionaire having this much influence, or that we welcomed two of the scummiest democrats in the state into our open arms to get the 32-30 majority, but anything is better than Paterson, Silver and Smith sitting in a locked room deciding everything for the state.
Even a lot of my democrat friends have said giving the democrats both houses and the governor’s mansion was probably a bad idea after seeing how the budget and union negotiations have gone.
Ugh, these two guys are the scum of the earth. They’ll both be indicted within the next year for various things, they might as well be EA scammers.
I think this sucks. The budget process was a mess this year, but I think that’s more a result of the budget process itself in this state (3 guys get all the power) than what party is in control of the Senate. Golisano didn’t see the change he wanted? Cry me a river, all he wanted was tax cuts for the rich. We were finally getting stuff done on the social values side of things, ditching the useless Rockefeller drug laws and about to get gay marraige through, and these assholes fuck it up. Ah well, back to fucking gridlock til the next election.
EDIT: I know this is from a left-leaning site, so i’ll disclaimer it so as not to be like Blue Eyes, but read a little about these assholes.
All shit that is far less important that the massive deficit the state is facing and the crushing weight being placed on various counties by bloated Medicaid, union costs, unfunded mandates and fees on top of fees. Waste your time and gay marriage and drug laws when the state isn’t about to go bankrupt while one company after another relocate to the south.
PS… where was all the outrage from the Democrats about Espada and Monserrate when they were voting with their fellow Democrats? Oh yeah, I forgot, their moral displeasure can be swept under the rug as long as they’re voting down the party line. :rolljerk:
This is just going to put things back to the way they’ve always been though. Anything originating in the Assembly will die in the Senate. Anything originating in the Senate will die in the Assembly. Then there’s a massive shortfall at the end of the year and they leave it to the governor to raise taxes to cover the hole. At least with one party rule there’s accountability and no question who’s at fault if they fuck up. Now it’s just going to be both sides blaming the other again.
The difference being some of the rule changes that the new majority immediately passed. Things will go to a vote now and people will actually have to sign their names to it. Hopefully when people actually see where the people they keep electing stand on issues we can get some change.
There is a real revolt starting to grow in NY. Paterson’s utter incompetence and the disgust people felt in how those new big 3 handled the budget and recent union $20k retirement parachutes may be NY’s version of “Bush/Cheney” for the next election. I’ve certainly heard a lot of Democrats saying they are not happy at all with how their new majority turned out.
Actually I never heard of those two guys until this. They didn’t really have any power, suddenly they decided to become turncoats so they can play big dog for awhile. If I would have, I’d call it like I see it, just like I did on William Jefferson’s freezer full of cash and Blago.
People forget so quickly that “3 men in a room” was exactly the same under Bruno. I suppose my ideal situation is that all of the reforms to the process pass to make the membership actually matter, and then we retake the Senate in the next election.
2010 will be a referendum on the economy everywhere. The R’s are staking their claim on Obama’s plans failing nationwide. Either they start to work and the D’s expand their majorities everywhere, or we’re still stagnant and we prob see a red movement in several states.
Of course there’s always exceptions, like NY governor, where either Paterson gets smoked by any Republican, or any Republican gets smoked by Cuomo.
I’m not making any predictions outside of NY, but here in NY I see a lot of people with buyer’s remorse for casting, “democrats have to be better” votes in the last election. The budget process was a real eye opener for a lot of people in NY about what each party stands for.
It will be real interesting if this new collation does pass some of the reforms they’re talking about. Most of it is stuff Paterson pledged support of knowing full well it was safe to do politically because with democrats in both houses it would never happen. The cap on state spending, the cap on school taxes and the star rebate checks.
If these get passed the governor will be in a tough spot having to side with republican’s who’s idea’s he agrees with or sticking to the party line, confirming that he’s a lying pile of shit.
A missed point of this also is that Espada is now acting lieutenant governor. If paterson walks off a cliff or something or gets assassinated, next in line is soon to be a convicted felon. And we thought Spitzer was bad.
So what? It’s not like NY doesn’t know how to remove a governor. Hell, the books on the procedures probably haven’t even collected any dust since Spitzer.
