The Hayseeds blog, No. 181 for the week starting October 29, 2006.
October 15, 2006
Hayseeds No. 180
October 29, 2006
Hayseeds No. 181
November 4, 2006
Hayseeds No. 181
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It looks like the TU is reporting that Hevesi didn't document his wife's free rides at state expensive, and didn't intend to pay back the state until he get caught.
The reality is he still is in good shape for re-election and despite not paying for his driver (a bad thing), the state pension fund is in good shape. He's been very critical of state spending in the past, and done whatever is in his constiutional power to control it (not much). A man who oversees close to $120 billion in the pension fund and done a good job, and used $83 thousand for a driver and failed to pay that back promptly still is a pretty good man if you look at the vast amount of money he has overseen.
I need not say more.
The AP polling suggests that this year we might have a divided US Senate back at 50-50 meaning the VP will get to cast the tie breaking vote for the Republicans, although it will make it a lot easier for Democrats to either get things passed and block things by just needing one Republican to defect.
People who have been following Driving Ms. Hevesi are having some second thoughts on the guy who signs all the state paychecks after the Ethics' Commission report, and that could be good for the bow-tie wearing man who also drives an old 1998 Honda Civic.
The New York Sun endorsed Chris Callaghan.
In a move that would effectively move more population downstate, cause a loss of at least one Assembly district, and cut back on some of the excess funds being sent upstate, Spitzer is taking on the tough one of proposing to change how we district representation in relation to those in state prison.
In one way, Spitzer is right about prisoners artifically inflating the upstate population, particularly in rural places like Danemora, Lyon Mountain, or Altona in the North Country. On the other hand, those people are living up here, and like it or not they are consuming some services in the local area (like the needs of roads to haul prisoners their, and waste to get rid of), even if they are divided from the rest of the population by a massive wall.
Many of these areas that have prisons in them need all the revenue they can get. I drove up to Moorers Forks / the Candian border on Sunday, I struck by the poverty particularly in Altona without even particularly decent farm land to make a few bucks on farming. There simply is very few jobs up here outside of what the government provides, and the people are pretty desolate.
Alan had his little debate yesterday with Chris Callaghan, and he's continuing to prove to be a real headache for Democrats who don't seem to know what to do with him particularly in light of the ethics commision report that says he was repeatly warned against using state resources to chouffer his wife around.
They've been dragging out Iraq vetrans on both sides with really touching stories—including this one:
He's been running TV ads on that theme lately, and most recently has celebrated the fact he was ranked 71st in house members for power. That's nice while your in the majority, though it seems that it's very likely that we will have a Democratic House in the near future, and you will be somewheres ranked next to dog shit when it comes to power after that—and your district will fall off the map if your remain their Congressperson.
As you might guess the Minority Leader in the Assembly wants to see the Assembly called back into session to impeach Hevesi before election day, so to help out Chris Callaghan's floundering campaign. It's not going to happen as we all know that legislators sure all hell don't want to be stuck in Albany days before the election.
Should Hevesi be removed after election day after winning re-election (which could happen), I predict that Spitzer will get to appoint his replacement in early 2007. Still, you have to wonder how far this will go after the elections over and people are ready to move on. Republicans think this is a good dirt against the Democrats, but it seems to have gained little traction outside of Albany insiders and Republicans at that.
Now that I figured out how to link Youtube videos to NYC code I have to include this really neat video to my collection:
This is a really great campaign commerical, one of the most moving this year. It also shows how serious Spitzer and his folks are at winning back the State Senate.
