Albany's Insanity

Taxes aren’t that high? $12,000 a year is not that high?
How sad this is that due to the excessive taxes in this state the elderly have to resort to this just to pay taxes. Isn’t 7 bucks an hour under minimum wage? Do they get taxed on this income? Doesn’t earning a certain amount of money cut into the amount they get from social security? Now wait? How do the unions feel about this? Isn’t it cutting into their jobs? Now they’ll have to be unionized and pay into their pension system, then they can’t be let go, fired, layed off etc….. What a can of worms.

So many questions, so few answers. This whole thing stinks and should be criminal.

“Taxes aren’t that high out here, so even at $7 an hour people can burn off their county taxes pretty quickly,” Halpin said.

Plan would let seniors work to pay taxes – Yahoo! News

GREENBURGH, N.Y. – Audrey Davison lives alone, gets a $620 Social Security check each month and worries about the sharply rising taxes on her four-bedroom house. Davison, 76, raised her family there and after 43 years, she really doesn’t want to leave Greenburgh.

Greenburgh doesn’t want her to leave, either.

The town is pushing a program that would let seniors work part-time, for $7 an hour, to help pay off some of their property taxes.

“People shouldn’t have to sell their house, move away to a place with less taxes, leave behind their family and friends,” said Town Supervisor Paul Feiner.
(more…)

There should not be a compromise, each one pointing fingers at the other is the perfect way to drag this out longer. I stand by my statement during the campaign to represent this district, a simple blood test will tell if the children over there are being affected. Radon testers and a test of the ground water will give them a definitive answer. When and if the tests come back positive we know the cleanup must be started and the people protected immediately.

Political grandstanding does nothing. Notice the silence from the politicos since they won re-election. It’s all political to them and they will only do what makes them look good. It’s disgusting.

Tonawanda Landfill and its contents concern city residents

No. 9 story of the year: State DEC, Corps of Engineers can’t come to a compromise on cleanup.

The Town of Tonawanda landfill that runs along Hackett Drive in the city has been in the news dozens of times throughout the year. And yet, as residents of that area can attest, nothing tangible seems to have happened.

The stalemate is the result of a back-and-forth dispute between the state Department of Environmental Conservation and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, with each agency saying the other is responsible for remediating the landfill.

Meanwhile, hundreds of city residents — including employees and parents of the children who attend nearby Riverview Elementary School — are left to wonder two things: whether the radioactive material in the landfill truly is harmful, and who is going to clean it up, if anyone at all.
(more…)

The Birth of Jesus Christ

var sc_project=1609654; var sc_invisible=0; var sc_partition=15; var sc_security=”26e26d49″;

Once again Silver will be a roadblock to raises for judges, if he does take any action we know he will be demanding raises for his inept colleagues and band of thieves.

Silver the last holdout in judicial pay flap

As 2007 quickly draws to a close, there remains an item of unfinished legislative business that for the first time requires only one person to act. That is Sheldon Silver, speaker of the Assembly.

The Senate has now passed two versions of a judicial salary bill for judges, S5313 and S6550. The first is a pay raise for judges that establishes a commission for the purpose of determining the salaries of judicial, legislative and certain executive branch members. The second is a pay raise for judges that only affects judges and the determination of judicial salaries in the future. Both bills have been forwarded to the Assembly, where the speaker has refused to take action on either.
(more…)

Great editorial and it really bring up the question, how much more “pay to play” exists in Albany. Not just in the pension system but in every aspect of Albany politics.

Even so, one agent caused DiNapoli problems. The New York Post reported that the fund had done two deals using a firm with ties to Hank Morris, a Hevesi consultant. DiNapoli says the deals were approved before his office knew of the Morris connection, and now his office will avoid future deals with the firm.

Getting the bugs out of New York’s pension system

What would you do without that monthly pension check from the state’s retirement system? Even if you haven’t retired yet, what if you learned the system had made some disastrous investments and lost its shirt – and therefore yours?

Got your attention, didn’t we?
(more…)

So they are just completing kindergarten and are entering first grade, isn’t that special. We pay for their ineptness and refusal to work and play with others.

We will suffer for the next few years unless things change but don’t hold your breath waiting for things to change.

Paterson: Spitzer Learning To ‘Play In The Sandbox’ Of Albany

Perhaps one of the books the governor has been reading of late, along with biographies of his predecessors like Charles Evans Hughes and Alfred E. Smith, is “All I Really Need to Know I Learned In Kindergarten.”

LG David Paterson, in an interview with WNBC’s Gabe Pressman that will air this Sunday morning, said Gov. Eliot Spitzer and members of his administration are making a concerted effort to make nice and share toys with his fellow elected officials, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno (especially Joe Bruno).
(more…)

We need openness with all our legislators, it’s conflicts like this that have an appearance of impropriety that is wrong. If there is a question about conflicts then severe ties, set the example, don’t try to cover things up. That goes for all of them. Full time legislators? No, I don’t think so they do enough damage as part timers.

Bruno cuts ties to firm

Senate majority leader quits consulting work for investment company amid questions about conflict of interest

ALBANY — Almost exactly a year after revealing the FBI was looking into some of his “outside business interests,” Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno severed one of those relationships this week.

Bruno also recommended a serious debate about lawmakers’ becoming full-time employees of the state.
(more…)

We go the wrong direction in all the reforms in this state, we cannot continue to dump money into failing policies like hospitals and schools. Structural reforms are needed but god forbid we do any of that, the labor unions and all the rest come out of the woodwork and paint the bleak picture and we buy it.

NY’S BLOATED HOSPITALS

December 20, 2007 — EVEN as the ‘08 presidential candidates stress the need to reform health care, New York state is leading the way – backward.

A year after the landmark Berger Commission report called for modest cuts in New York’s excess hospital capacity, the state has lost ground.

Thanks to years of unwise government intervention, New York has long had one of the nation’s most expensive state health-care systems. Starting in the early ’80s, it began a misguided effort to control costs by fixing the price of every procedure performed at every hospital in the state. But that “reform” also tried to help to help financially troubled hospitals, as well as those with excess capacity, by letting them charge higher rates – in other words, it rewarded hospitals with failed management at the expense of successful ones. So the system grew even more bloated and expensive.
(more…)

At the current rate of speed this investigation will never be done.

It’s time to call in the feds

Albany is buzzing. The district attorney has issued a broad subpoena to Gov. Spitzer’s office. The Public Integrity Commission has hired a new lawyer. The moves suggest the probes into Troopergate are entering a dynamic new phase.

Yes and no. For each step forward they represent, the moves also prove that the incestuous nature of Albany politics will never permit the truth. It’s time to stop kidding ourselves. It’s time to call in the feds.
(more…)