Albany's Insanity

How many years have they waited for raises? 10 Years…. And it always seems that legislators pay is attached, so when there is no raise for one, the other is left out too. Legislators do not deserve a raise, not in the least. Judges on the other hand do.

wxxi NewsRoom
Chief Judge Threatens Lawsuit Over Pay Issue

ALBANY, NEW YORK (2008-03-31) The state’s judges are disappointed to learn that salary increases for the judiciary will likely be left out of the state budget once again. The state’s Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals, Judith Kaye, is threatening to sue. The pay raise issue is just one of many matters Governor Paterson and state lawmakers are working out as the state budget deadline approaches.

An angry Chief Judge Judith Kaye gave state lawmakers a tongue lashing for what she says is their “shameful, disgraceful” failure to provide pay raises for the state’s judges, who’ve gone ten years without a salary increase.

“We need to put an end to this miserable scenario,” said Kaye.
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Gee, this sounds very familiar doesn’t it…. Raise our tolls with the promise of doing hundreds of millions in repairs and then after all is said and done, very little gets done and virtually nothing has go into repairing our bridges.

Politics in everything, everything in this state and we are the ones who get screwed in the end.

CONGESTION BAIT-AND-SWITCH

New Yorkers are wary of congestion pricing – and they found even more reason to be last week.

No sooner did a poll show New Yorkers guardedly supporting Mayor Bloomberg’s plan to charge $8 for passenger cars driving below 60th Street in Manhattan – if it could be guaranteed that the funds would be targeted toward capital improvements in the city’s mass transit system – than the MTA abruptly announced a halt in solemnly promised plans for such improvements.

New Yorkers were told last year that the fare hike enacted less than a month ago was necessary to pay for millions in capital fixes.
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Somethings gonna hit the fan!!! YaHoo!
I hate it when the state police keep track of public officials. My only regret is that they don’t arrest and prosecute many of them. : )

I hope they expose all the dirty laundry, ALL of it. This may be the only way to get this state under control.

STATE POLICE ‘SMEAR SQUAD’ [NY State]

March 31, 2008 ALBANY – The scandal-scarred State Police is suspected of harboring a renegade unit that for years has secretly compiled personal information on top New York officials – possibly including Gov. Paterson, The Post has learned.

The governor got a whiff of the existence of such an illegal, politically directed operation after being told by several lawmakers that the State Police targeted them for unjustified traffic stops and “interfered in their personal lives,” a senior Paterson aide told The Post yesterday.
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Can you imagine if all of his past had come out prior to a regular election? He would not have succeeded. I really hope he is able to get it together or if not get out and get behind someone that can. If it boiled down to Rudy or Hillary, I hope it’s Rudy. At least he has a proven track record in New York city. Hillary on the other hand has none, not in any type of management capabilities anyway. She’s a lousy senator, what has she done in her 8 years as our junior senator from New York? Nothing. She like the Slaughter of the innocence spends most of their time sucking up to the D.C. political crowd.

Paterson’s Predicament – March 31, 2008 – The New York Sun

It’s been but two weeks since Governor Paterson was sworn, and already insiders at Albany are talking about his administration as if it were an unfortunate footnote in history. Doubts about his capacity to serve out Governor Spitzer’s term have led to ruminations of a special gubernatorial election match-up between Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani this November. Rudy-Hillary ‘08: the Undercard, as one political commentator dubbed it online.

To a degree, Mr. Paterson’s predicament is the result of a condensed vetting by the press. Normally reporters would have had a whole campaign to do the kind of thing they’re now doing in a matter of weeks. They’ve responded admirably in respect of this sudden responsibility. Mr. Paterson’s own disclosures of extramarital disbursements of political and taxpayer money have compounded a growing sense that our new governor is out of his depth.
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What a stupid idea…..
This all depends on convincing state and local officials that the machine is a game of skill rather than a game of chance. It matters legally, but probably not to the people who will get hooked on it.

Sadly, former Erie County Executive Joel Giambra, is pushing his lobbying firm to represent the company that now proposes to bring this new form of gambling to Buffalo and the rest of the state.

Will Buffalo take a chance on the slot-like Moxie Mania game?

Atlanta amusement company hires local firms to sell the prospect of a game of skill

It’s called Moxie Mania, and if an Atlanta amusement company gets approval in Albany for the electronic game, thousands of the flashy machines could appear in bars, taverns and private clubs throughout New York State.
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In South Buffalo a welding and manufacturing plant is building these huge collection units for the Huntley Power Plant in Tonawanda. Former Gov. Pataki dedicated 3 billion for Huntley, Spitzer said he would go after all coal burning plants to buy carbon offsets. Up until he resigned he never acknowledged the money for the plant. Now we have Paterson…. What will he do. If he agrees with the carbon offsets then that will cost Huntley over 60 million a year. In other words they will most likely fold.

Albany Transition A Hurdle For Clean Coal Project Team

Speaking before the seven-member Jamestown Board of Public Utilities in recent days, Rick Victor of Praxair Inc. said the recent resignation of former Gov. Eliot Spitzer would almost certainly delay the proposed coal-fired power plant that both public and private interests hope to use as the epicenter of a regional clean energy research initiative.

According to Victor, the project team has not stopped working with state officials to move the project along and lay the regulatory foundation for the first-ever coal-fired power plant equipped with carbon capture and storage technology.
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The also complained they don’t have enough money to meet their needs.

Have they ever considered we may not have enough money to meet our needs? I do not expect to see any change this year at all. I see no hope for New York until the power structure there is disassembled. What a pity and more people flee to greener pastures south.

Star-Gazette.COM – Local News

New York lawmakers to reconvene today to work out compromises.
ALBANY — Lawmakers worked to hammer out details of a new state budget on Saturday, but they failed to reach agreements on areas such as spending for higher education and reducing medical-malpractice insurance premiums.

The also complained they don’t have enough money to meet their needs.
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So, she wants to ban prepayment penalties (which will have the effect of raising interest rates) and put Greenspan and Rubin, two of the people most responsible for the subprime mess, in charge of “reforming” the mortgage market. What a stunning lack of understanding of the markets. One wonders how much Chelsea’s off shore Hedge fund made during the meltdown of subprime. They actually had a profit, maybe a heads up from liberal deep throats in government and banking.

Clinton campaign head made $200,000 with subprime lender

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign manager, Maggie Williams, earned about $200,000 on the board of a Long Island subprime lender that charged prepayment penalties — a practice that Clinton, a critic of the subprime industry, now seeks to eliminate.

Williams, who took over the reins of Clinton’s campaign in early February, served as a director on the board of the Woodbury-based Delta Financial Corp. from April 2000 until the firm declared bankruptcy in December, according to Securities and Exchange Commission records.
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