( – promoted by Colorado Pols)
If you want to see a really bizarre political drama read this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06…
A justice in State Supreme Court told Democrats and Republicans on Friday morning to talk throughout the weekend to try to resolve the dispute that has paralyzed New York State government since Monday.
Lawyers for the Senate Democrats were in court arguing that the move by Republicans to regain control of the chamber should be stopped and deemed illegitimate.
The justice here who will eventually rule on the matter, Thomas J. McNamara, seemed disinclined to involve himself in the case. Barring an amicable resolution – which seems unlikely at this point – Justice McNamara scheduled another court appearance for both parties at 9:30 Monday morning.
“I’ll be candid,” Justice McNamara said, expressing that it was his desire “to have this matter resolved within the context of the Senate, not within the context of any court.”
He added, “You really have to do this amongst yourselves.”
complete with shifting coalitions of Democrats and Republicans, indicted state senator, secret keys to the legislative chamber, protestors banging on the windows of the state senate chamber in Albany, NY and just an all around nightmare!
will find this is par for the course for Albany. They haven’t had a working government in NY for a long time now.
I’m not familiar with New York state politics except for the infamous Spitzer debacle last year. How do they accomplish anything if this is par for the course?
are on fire over this one. A couple of blogger friends of mine that live and work for the Dem Party in New York have been writing about this all week. It just defies logic. The Party needs an overhaul…or a complete cutting off of funds until they get their shit together and clean house.
and watching NY’s government is like our version of Italy’s parliament–trainwreck and trainwreck.
This is more fun than we’ve had out of Albany for years. I think it even beats out the NY-13 “Vino” Fossella (and replacement selection) saga.
I get a particular kick out of the fact that the power brokers in this are a perennial loser candidate for governor, an indicted Senator, and a soon-to-be-indicted Senator – who the new coalition has agreed to annoint as Temporary President of the Senate.
And then there’s the part about said Temp. President being under investigation for embezzlement, and his supposed “motivating factor” for switching sides was his being turned down by his party’s leadership for a $2m earmark (that’s “member item” in NYSpeak) to a company he apparently founded to funnel state money to himself. And the other guy – the one under indictment for slashing his girlfriend’s face with a broken beer bottle – is rumored to be getting legal defense money from the deal.
Blago is a piker compared to the mess in Albany.
When the Democratic Senate Majority Leader spent an entire meeting on his Blackberry rather than talking to a major contributor who got upset.
A rude Democrat, can you imagine?
The “contributor” in question was Paychex Chair and founder Tom Golisano, who has run for Governor in the state at least three times on the Independence Party ticket. He recently said he was moving to Florida because the Legislature increased taxes on the extremely wealthy to cover some budget issues.
He’s at best a lukewarm friend to Democrats but was tired of nothing getting done (for him) in the Republican-controlled State Senate. So he helped the Dems gain a seat or two last term – theoretically.
I live next door to one. That being said, though, this is way beyond party affiliation. Yeah, it sure looks like the Democrats are either corrupt or lazy. But then you get a coalition together to take power and… apparently the only people available to lead it are even more corrupt? Wow!
Was earlier this week when Democrats turned off the lights in the Senate chamber to prevent the Republicans from convening – and it apparently worked, because nobody knew how to turn the lights back on.
Yesterday, the new “coalition” Senate convened for a while. Before they did that, they had to get the key to the Senate chambers, and only the (Democratic) Sergeant-at-Arms and Secretary had the keys and weren’t giving them up. (No, I don’t know how they finally managed to obtain a key.)
Once they convened, they found they couldn’t open the locked cabinet containing the materials needed to passing legislation. (Apparently there’s a “bill” cabinet.) No-one knew who had the key to that. So they adjourned.
The more I watch this, the more I believe that Sen. Skelos, the supposed Majority Leader, couldn’t figure out how to turn on a light switch in his house. The Republicans had control of the State Senate for the better part of 30 years (at least); how is it that they don’t know the most basic arcane tricks to operate it?
when they took power, anticipating just such a situation?
Which would be hilarious, and therefore I have to believe it’s true.
Considering the Republicans had set up their own private recording studio, had scads of unneeded staff on the payroll, etc. a change of locks was probably in order.
You can head on over to The Albany Project”, a SoapBlox “sister” site.