Tag: State Assembly

Assemblyman Says Cuomo is like Hitler, Mussolini

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Assemblyman Steve McLaughlin likens Governor Cuomo’s use of “messages of necessity” to Hitler and Mussolini.

Under Article III, Section 14 of the New York State Constitution, a bill must be printed and on members’ desks in final form at least three (3) legislative days before it can be voted on for passage, unless the governor issues what is called a “message of necessity”. To do so, the governor certifies that an immediate vote is necessary on the bill once it reaches members’ desks in final form. No amendments are allowed, and a vote is to take place immediately.

In 2011, McLaughlin voted 17 times in favor of bills sent up as messages of necessity. In 2012, he did so on four of the five messages sent up by Cuomo, including the Tier VI pension plan, redistricting and an expanded DNA database for criminals.

In 2011, Cuomo issued 29 messages of necessity and used it five times last year, according to NYPIRG—the fewest number of times in recent history.

Nothing about the message of necessity takes away the legislature’s right to act, to debate, or to vote as a representative, deliberative body on the bill. The Brennan Center has targeted unnecessary messages of necessity as being ripe for criticism, noting that between 1997 – 2001, almost 30% of bills received one.

However, criticizing an overused constitutional provision for the fact that legislators have inadequate time to review and amend bills is one thing. Likening that to the horrors of National Socialism and fascism is a completely different thing, altogether.

Watch this, and note WNY Assemblywoman Jane Corwin’s reaction.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAyi6No42io]

How many messages of necessity did Hitler sign, anyway?

Perhaps not as dumb as he seems, McLaughlin apologized later in the day.

Winners & Losers: On to November

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Darkness Looms

Courtesy Flickr user july_01_2010

To my mind, last night’s primary election was a repudiation of some ugly things. 

1. Homophobia:

SD-62: Even Maziarz, who voted against same sex marriage in 2011, was a victim of an online whisper campaign that was as vicious as it was clumsy. The people associated with it are so inept at good messaging and classic electoral persuasion that they just figured they’d call the guy a queer and see if they could get away with it. But in the end, they couldn’t even muster up the balls to do that. No balls, no win for their selected candidate, Johnny Destino, who lost without Maziarz even breaking a sweat. Maziarz will face Democrat Amy Hope Witryol, who won a primary for the Working Families Party line last night against a Maziarz placeholder. 

SD-60: The Republicans of the district didn’t fall for the poor opposition from perennial candidate Kevin Stocker. Stocker’s alliance with local embarrassment Matt Ricchiazzi hurt him in the end – the only free media Stocker ever got during this race involved him having to disavow some simply awful homophobic trash that Ricchiazzi produced and emailed around the country.  Ricchiazzi and Stocker were too clever by half, and the whole effort blew up in their faces. Also, no one was buying the tall tales about Grisanti’s supposed bad acts during that Niagara Falls bar fight – no one every produced any proof. Finally, the Stocker campaign’s central theme was that Grisanti lied – he promised to do the wrong thing, but did the right thing instead. That’s not a persuasive line. 

On the Democratic side, Pigeon concocted a three-way race to make sure that Chuck Swanick’s path to electoral victory was as smooth as possible. Al Coppola did what Al Coppola does – he lets himself be run to distract the Italian vote in the district and help Pigeon’s guy’s path easier. Coppola got 11%, but more importantly Swanick – who famously received big donations from the horrible, homophobic, anti-equality “National Organization for Marriage” – lost handily to medical malpractice attorney, Democrat Mike Amodeo. Pigeon and homophobia were handily defeated last night. 

I’ll note as an aside that I know of several prominent gay men who are aligned with Pigeon and work in City Hall actually circulated petitions and voted for homophobe Chuck Swanick. This is astonishing to me – it’s not unlike a middle-class person voting against his own interests by backing Mitt Romney. Is your own identity and are your own interests so easily shunted aside to do what your bosses tell you to do? That’s sort of disgusting to me. 

2. Steve Pigeon

SD-60: Pigeon: it’s what’s for dinner. As noted above, local political scheissmeister Pigeon concocted a race to try and get Swanick to the State Senate, and it failed. Pigeon was riding high when he was Pedro Espada’s patronage hire, navigating the Senate coup where breakaway Democrats, including Espada and under the direction of Floridian billionaire Tom Golisano, permitted the Republicans to take the majority, de facto.  It was not dissimilar from what he concocted in the County Legislature back in 2010 where some breakaway Democrats aligned themselves with Chris Collins, and the place became a chaotic joke of a hellhole.

Disgraced through his connection with the coup and its plotters – especially convicted felon Pedro Espada – Pigeon is trying desperately to get back to some sort of position of influence in the State Senate. I think the state can do without that sort of thing, don’t you? Why would we want a guy to mess with the will of the people and to single-handedly play dirty tricks for his own self-aggrandizement again? 

3. Carl Paladino, Rus Thompson

As I noted above, they both embarrassed themselves going after Maziarz the way they did, but they did manage to get David DiPietro the nod – barely – to run against Christina Abt in Assembly 147. Abt won her primary on the Independence Party line.  

Frankly, DiPietro’s win is a repudiation of Jim Ostrowski’s campaign management skills. Every time DiPietro has run for something as a tea party candidate, Ostrowski has been behind it, and DiPietro lost in a sea of tea party nonsense. This race, he had the help of someone who actually knows how to win elections and handle messaging and GOTV – fellow East Auroran Michael Caputo. 

Other races: 

SD-63: Kennedy is also a Pigeon ally, and he was at the forefront of the 2010 legislature coup I noted above. He barely won last night. This was a fun race to watch last night as Betty Jean Grant came up from an 80/20 deficit to take the lead for a brief time. In the end, Tim Kennedy appears to have won in a squeaker, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this ends up in court for some time – the margin of victory is less than 300 votes. This new district includes a great deal of Buffalo’s east side, and as those precincts reported last night, Betty Jean surged unexpectedly. 

A-149: Sean Ryan handily defeated Kevin Gaughan. Gaughan really deserves to be given a chance to be elected to something because he’s smart and has great ideas. His problem is that he has a small constituency that isn’t as politically active and astute as Ryan’s entire Hoyt machine. This isn’t even about money, it’s about organization. 

UPDATE: Ralph Lorigo lost his bid to be elected to the Conservative Party’s state committee. (HT to TonyinTonawanda in comments)

Christopher Scanlon easily fended off three challengers to keep his South District seat in the Common Council. 

Olate Dogs defeated comedian Tom Cotter to win America’s Got Talent. A total disappointment. 

Here Comes Honey Boo Boo is one of the most popular television shows in America. Shh! It’s a Wig.

Winners & Losers: On to November

12 comments
Darkness Looms

Courtesy Flickr user july_01_2010

To my mind, last night’s primary election was a repudiation of some ugly things. 

1. Homophobia:

SD-62: Even Maziarz, who voted against same sex marriage in 2011, was a victim of an online whisper campaign that was as vicious as it was clumsy. The people associated with it are so inept at good messaging and classic electoral persuasion that they just figured they’d call the guy a queer and see if they could get away with it. But in the end, they couldn’t even muster up the balls to do that. No balls, no win for their selected candidate, Johnny Destino, who lost without Maziarz even breaking a sweat. Maziarz will face Democrat Amy Hope Witryol, who won a primary for the Working Families Party line last night against a Maziarz placeholder. 

SD-60: The Republicans of the district didn’t fall for the poor opposition from perennial candidate Kevin Stocker. Stocker’s alliance with local embarrassment Matt Ricchiazzi hurt him in the end – the only free media Stocker ever got during this race involved him having to disavow some simply awful homophobic trash that Ricchiazzi produced and emailed around the country.  Ricchiazzi and Stocker were too clever by half, and the whole effort blew up in their faces. Also, no one was buying the tall tales about Grisanti’s supposed bad acts during that Niagara Falls bar fight – no one every produced any proof. Finally, the Stocker campaign’s central theme was that Grisanti lied – he promised to do the wrong thing, but did the right thing instead. That’s not a persuasive line. 

On the Democratic side, Pigeon concocted a three-way race to make sure that Chuck Swanick’s path to electoral victory was as smooth as possible. Al Coppola did what Al Coppola does – he lets himself be run to distract the Italian vote in the district and help Pigeon’s guy’s path easier. Coppola got 11%, but more importantly Swanick – who famously received big donations from the horrible, homophobic, anti-equality “National Organization for Marriage” – lost handily to medical malpractice attorney, Democrat Mike Amodeo. Pigeon and homophobia were handily defeated last night. 

I’ll note as an aside that I know of several prominent gay men who are aligned with Pigeon and work in City Hall actually circulated petitions and voted for homophobe Chuck Swanick. This is astonishing to me – it’s not unlike a middle-class person voting against his own interests by backing Mitt Romney. Is your own identity and are your own interests so easily shunted aside to do what your bosses tell you to do? That’s sort of disgusting to me. 

2. Steve Pigeon

SD-60: Pigeon: it’s what’s for dinner. As noted above, local political scheissmeister Pigeon concocted a race to try and get Swanick to the State Senate, and it failed. Pigeon was riding high when he was Pedro Espada’s patronage hire, navigating the Senate coup where breakaway Democrats, including Espada and under the direction of Floridian billionaire Tom Golisano, permitted the Republicans to take the majority, de facto.  It was not dissimilar from what he concocted in the County Legislature back in 2010 where some breakaway Democrats aligned themselves with Chris Collins, and the place became a chaotic joke of a hellhole.

Disgraced through his connection with the coup and its plotters – especially convicted felon Pedro Espada – Pigeon is trying desperately to get back to some sort of position of influence in the State Senate. I think the state can do without that sort of thing, don’t you? Why would we want a guy to mess with the will of the people and to single-handedly play dirty tricks for his own self-aggrandizement again? 

3. Carl Paladino, Rus Thompson

As I noted above, they both embarrassed themselves going after Maziarz the way they did, but they did manage to get David DiPietro the nod – barely – to run against Christina Abt in Assembly 147. Abt won her primary on the Independence Party line.  

Frankly, DiPietro’s win is a repudiation of Jim Ostrowski’s campaign management skills. Every time DiPietro has run for something as a tea party candidate, Ostrowski has been behind it, and DiPietro lost in a sea of tea party nonsense. This race, he had the help of someone who actually knows how to win elections and handle messaging and GOTV – fellow East Auroran Michael Caputo. 

Other races: 

SD-63: Kennedy is also a Pigeon ally, and he was at the forefront of the 2010 legislature coup I noted above. He barely won last night. This was a fun race to watch last night as Betty Jean Grant came up from an 80/20 deficit to take the lead for a brief time. In the end, Tim Kennedy appears to have won in a squeaker, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this ends up in court for some time – the margin of victory is less than 300 votes. This new district includes a great deal of Buffalo’s east side, and as those precincts reported last night, Betty Jean surged unexpectedly. 

A-149: Sean Ryan handily defeated Kevin Gaughan. Gaughan really deserves to be given a chance to be elected to something because he’s smart and has great ideas. His problem is that he has a small constituency that isn’t as politically active and astute as Ryan’s entire Hoyt machine. This isn’t even about money, it’s about organization. 

UPDATE: Ralph Lorigo lost his bid to be elected to the Conservative Party’s state committee. (HT to TonyinTonawanda in comments)

Christopher Scanlon easily fended off three challengers to keep his South District seat in the Common Council. 

Olate Dogs defeated comedian Tom Cotter to win America’s Got Talent. A total disappointment. 

Here Comes Honey Boo Boo is one of the most popular television shows in America. Shh! It’s a Wig.

Kearns Defeats Fahey in A-145

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Kearns, LoCurto, Rivera

Photo by Flickr user Whitney Arlene

Mickey Kearns? Really? 

The 15% of the electorate who turned out elected a Democrat running as a Republican whose only recognizable platform plank was to do battle with Shelly Silver?  Kearns has said he’ll caucus with the Democrats – so Republican efforts to spin this as a victory will ring particularly hollow. 

The New York State Assembly is a particularly malignant and useless construct. On the one hand, you have majority leader Sheldon Silver, who rules his Democratic caucus with an iron fist. On the other hand, you have a collection of the most useless political castrati – the Assembly Republicans. To call the Assembly a legislature is an insult to the notion of democratic representative lawmaking. To call a member “independent” is synonymous with “impotent”. 

That’s why, when I have in the past advocated for a nonpartisan unicameral legislature, I’ve made it clear that we can’t just abolish the Senate and supplant it with the Assembly. Each redundant body is dysfunctional in its own way. 

Yesterday I posted a perfectly benign reminder that an election was taking place and that people who live in that district should go out and vote. I didn’t endorse or attack either candidate, except to say that Kearns’ run as a “Republican” was, to me, inexplicable. Of course, I had some knuckle-dragging Republican attack me for that, and longtime commenter Starbuck, who is quite reasonable although I disagree with him, pointed out that it was “quite explicable” because of party bosses and giving people a choice and Sheldon Silver and Len Lenihan. 

Yes, I understand that Kearns’ ambition would not be stopped by such trivial matters such as party loyalty or ideological consistency. Such is the nature of politics and politicians – win at all costs, even if you jettison your principles.

(By the way, if Carl Paladino and his insult billboardatorium really want to be rid of Sheldon Silver, perhaps he could help find, fund, and support a challenger to Sheldon Silver down in Manhattan. That might actually work.) 

Chris Fahey isn’t a Higgins puppet despite his ties to Higgins’ office, and so what if he was? Brian Higgins is – and has been – among the best representatives of Buffalo and Western New York throughout his political career. While not perfect, he has done tremendous good especially when it comes to waterfront revitalization. Fahey is a bright guy and he’ll do great things – he’s a well-respected and thoughtful behind-the-scenes policy researcher and formulator – a wonk’s wonk. 

Much was made of Kearns’ ties to Carl Paladino, but that support amounted to a few thousand dollars and a Palinesque Facebook post here and there. 

The winner here isn’t Paladino, it’s Byron Brown, who has rid himself of another troublesome common councilmember. Kearns’ vacancy will be filled by the other councilmembers – and the council is now made up primarily of Brown allies, so Brown has an opportunity to further consolidate his control of the city’s policies. Probably one of those unintended circumstances we often read about.  I suppose this indirectly benefits any Republican running in a countywide race, thanks to the longstanding, well-known but denied agreement between Brown and the GOP that no Republican challenger will come to the plate in November, thus suppressing city turnout.

Funny how similar it is to write about Erie County politics as it is to write about, say, organized crime. 

The coverage of this contest was a ridiculous recitation of who’s ahead, who’s behind in the horserace. Aside from his rejection of Sheldon Silver, what’s Mickey Kearns going to do in Albany? Aside from his ties to Brian Higgins, what would Fahey have done there? Well, Fahey outlined a few plans he has to make the environment better for creating jobs. These guys deserved pointed questions about reform, Albany dysfunction, the Cuomo agenda, abolishing authorities, reduction of state corruption, etc. Instead, we got questions about party labels and who was whose puppet. 

Being a maverick isn’t policy – it’s politics. 

Congratulations to Mickey Kearns. I look forward to the analysis of his almost-inevitable rapprochement with Shelly Silver, or his switch to the Republican Party (one of these is going to have to happen if Kearns is going to accomplish much else besides becoming a master Sudoku player.)

Now, let’s see whom Paladino recruits to run against Higgins himself this November.