This article I wrote appeared on the Newsmax.com web site on Friday, June 17, 2022.
No Winners in War on Western Civilization – By George J. Marlin
Posted June 18, 2022 by streetcornerconservativeCategories: Articles/Essays/Op-Ed, Newsmax
Gov. Hochul — Cuomo Redux – By George J. Marlin
Posted June 14, 2022 by streetcornerconservativeCategories: Articles/Essays/Op-Ed, Blank Slate Media, Kathy Hochul
The following appeared on Monday, June 13, 2022, in the Blank Slate Media newspaper chain and on its website, theisland360.com:
In her quest to win this year’s gubernatorial election, Gov. Kathy Hochul has been adhering to the key precept in the Andrew Cuomo campaign playbook: “Take the money.”
Like Cuomo, the governor has taken money from every conceivable special interest group. Numerous real estate developers, government employee unions, and corporate giants have donated the maximum amount permissible under law, $69,700.
Employees of Ostroff Associates, a noted Albany lobbying firm, have given her the maximum so far. And a firm that represents banks and automotive dealers has contributed $25,000.
Crypto currency miners have also opened up their checkbooks. The CEO of one such company, Coinmint, has donated $40,000.
Will such contributions affect her decision to approve or reject legislation on her desk that curtail bitcoin mining operations utilizing carbon-based power sources? We will see.
Then there are the real estate developers. One player, who was very close to Andrew Cuomo, Scott Rechler, and his wife, have given the Hochul campaign the maximum as of the last filing with the state.
The chairman of Tishman Speyer, Jerry Speyer, wrote checks totaling $50,000.
The owner of Madison Square Garden, James Dolan, who has a major interest in the future of the area around his midtown real estate, has donated $69,700.
Lest we forget, Hochul, like her predecessor, has endorsed the revitalization of the Pennsylvania Station area that will include 10 new buildings. The governor made the commitment despite The New York Times reporting that “New York City’s Independent Budget Office has raised serious questions about the financial viability of the development, the state’s role in it and the possibility that taxpayers would have to foot the bill if the revenue its boosters are expecting fails to materialize.”
Hochul has also been placating another group of generous donors—government employee unions.
There’s the rollback of pension reforms; reduction of vesting periods to five years from 10 years, and the cutback of some pension contribution rates.
The Medicaid budget which soared by 11% in fiscal 2021-2022 and is expected to jump another 11% in the 2022-2023 state fiscal year, takes care of unionized health care workers. Gov. Hochul’s spending increases, the Empire Center for Public Policy has reported, “included across-the- board increases in Medicaid fees for providers, extra funding for financially distressed hospitals and nursing homes, one-time bonuses for front-line health workers, and a $3 hike in the minimum hourly wage for home health aides.”
Hochul has also boosted state spending for education by 7.2%, or $2 billion, to make nice to the teacher unions. This increase is on the top of the $9 billion of “emergency” aid from President Biden’s American Rescue Plan.
Spending on New York teacher salaries and benefits will top $18,000, about 120% above the national average.
To further placate teacher unions, the state Legislature and the governor are throwing Mayor Eric Adams under the school bus.
The extension of the mayoral control of public schools is for only two years. Provisions in the new law not only weaken Adam’s authority but impose increased spending that could cost as much as $1.5 billion.
Worse yet, the United Federation of Teachers will be granted a power they have sought for years: control over class size.
The legislation states that reducing the number of students in the classroom “shall be developed in collaboration with the collective bargaining units representing teachers and the principals and signed off on by the chancellor and the presidents of each bargaining unit.”
The “collective bargaining units” have to be overjoyed by this development. For the first time they will have a veto power over class size, and their membership rolls will swell as more teachers are hired to teach fewer children.
It also means more union dues to contribute to Hochul’s campaign treasury.
Gov. Hochul learned a lot from her mentor, Andrew Cuomo. He must be proud that his star pupil excels at fiscal “sleight of hand” of the worst sort: convincing the public that she is a responsible executive—all the while pandering to special interests by increasing spending and pork and building a fund-raising machine that is outperforming Cuomo’s operation when he was at the peak of his power.
Archbishop Ends Pelosi’s Masquerading as a Catholic – By George J. Marlin
Posted June 3, 2022 by streetcornerconservativeCategories: Articles/Essays/Op-Ed, Newsmax, Religion and Politics-SCC
This article I wrote appeared on the Newsmax.com web site on Friday, June 3, 2022.
Dems lose NY Gerrymandering Game – By George J. Marlin
Posted May 31, 2022 by streetcornerconservativeCategories: Articles/Essays/Op-Ed, Blank Slate Media, Political Issues
The following appeared on Monday, May 30, 2022, in the Blank Slate Media newspaper chain and on its website, theisland360.com:
In late 2021, Albany Democrats thought they were in the cat bird’s seat when the process began to redraw congressional lines based on the new census figures.
To determine the outcome, they made sure the Independent Redistricting Commission, which was evenly split between Democrat and Republican commissioners, deadlocked.
This occurred when the panel members were unable to agree on a bipartisan plan and came up with competing maps.
Due to that impasse, the Democratic-controlled state Legislature quickly exercised its authority to design and approve districts.
The lines they drew were anything but fair or neutral and failed to reflect “communities of interest.” Four of the eight Republican seats were essentially eliminated.
For example, the Staten Island-based congressional district, held by New York City’s lone GOP member, Nicole Malliotakis, was sliced and diced. South Brooklyn, a conservative leaning area, was cut out and replaced with a portion of the 100% Democratic South Bronx.
To ensure that Long Island’s North Shore’s 3rd C.D., held by retiring Congressman Tom Suozzi, remained in Democratic hands, the lines were stretched to include, believe it or not—the Bronx.
The gerrymandering in upstate New York was just as bad.
The only GOP seat that remained safe in that region was the 21st C.D. held by Elise Stefanik, which covers the northern most regions of the state.
To defeat the chair of the House Republican Conference, the Democrats would have had to include parts of Canada in her district.
Despite cries from good government groups that the new maps were egregious and discarded all pretenses of objectivity, Gov. Kathy Hochul signed the recommendations into law.
But mirabile dictu, a Steuben County Supreme Court Judge, Patrick McAllister, struck down the congressional maps as unconstitutional on March 31. He ordered the Legislature “to go back to the drawing board and resubmit maps with sufficient bipartisan support by April 11.”
He also warned that if the Legislature failed to act, he would appoint a “neutral expert at state expense to prepare said maps.”
Outraged Democrats appealed the decisions and, to their shock and dismay, lost in both the Appellate Division and in the Court of Appeals—even though members of their party dominated those judicial forums.
On April 22, New York’s highest court directed McAllister to appoint an expert to assist in creating new maps. The court concluded that “judicial oversight is required to facilitate the expeditious creation of constitutionally conforming maps for use in the 2022 election to safeguard the constitutionally protected right of New Yorkers to a fair election.”
On May 22, McAlister released the revised congressional map proffered by the special master. The judge declared that the new districts are “almost perfectly neutral.” He added that “neither the court nor the special master received any information concerning where any candidate or potential candidate lives.”
While most seats in New York City will remain in Democratic hands, the lines threaten the careers of long-term incumbents.
In Manhattan, 15-term Congressman, Jerry Nadler, will have to face off with 15-term Congresswoman, Carolyn Maloney.
The fact that there are now eight of 26 New York districts up for grabs doesn’t matter to Democrats.
They are outraged because they didn’t get their way.
Democrats accused the judiciary—the very system they have turned to time and again to impose their will when they lost at the ballot box or lost a legislative vote—of “hijacking” redistricting.
An exacerbated congressman, Hakeem Jeffries, went so far as to make the ludicrous claim that the court’s new map is “enough to make Jim Crow blush.”
Gerrymandering has been condemned by New York Democrats as evil for decades—especially when Republicans controlled the state capital. But when they are in charge, the rules of fairness and equity do not apply to them.
It is their way or the highway.
Fortunately, the courts knew better and ruled judiciously that Democratic gerrymandered maps were “in violation of a 2014 constitutional amendment designed to rout out political gamesmanship in redistricting.”
Gov. Hochul’s budget giveaways – By George J. Marlin
Posted May 17, 2022 by streetcornerconservativeCategories: Articles/Essays/Op-Ed, Kathy Hochul
The following appeared on Monday, May 16, 2022, in the Blank Slate Media newspaper chain and on its website, theisland360.com:
When Kathy Hochul was sworn in as governor in August 2021, she told New Yorkers that she would govern differently than Cuomo.
And so she has….
Unlike Cuomo, who fought tooth and nail with state legislators, Hochul has rolled over to their demands in order to get $600 million for the new Buffalo Bills stadium.
To secure that funding, she resurrected—what Cuomo had buried—pork spending for legislators known as “members items.”
On top of that, Hochul has kept alive Cuomo’s Regional Economic Development programs that replaced “members items” and served as Cuomo’s personal pork barrel spending for local projects that have often been dubious in nature or were rewards to supporters in the form of capital grants or tax credits.
Ed McMahon, of The Empire Center for Public Policy, has noted that the more than $12 billion committed to RED projects in recent years “is in classic terms almost Marxist. This is the state owning the means of production. It’s corporate welfare on steroids.”
Many corporations that received grants failed or the payback promised never materialized. Cuomo’s “Buffalo Billion,” for example, which included the Solar City factory, employed only about 20% of the 3,000 jobs projected.
Another flop, the Central New York film, hub cost taxpayers $90 million.
And let’s not forget that several of Cuomo’s economic development shenanigans led to the conviction in 2018 of two of his political cronies, Joe Percoco and Alain Kaloyeros.
Which brings me back to Gov. Hochul. Did she learn anything from the Cuomo-era regional spending boondoggles?
Apparently not.
To get a budget passed, “…she managed to make everybody happy on something,” Kathryn S. Wilde, president of the Partnership for New York City, told The New York Times.
The deputy senate majority leader, Democrat Michael Gianaris (whom I’m guessing is getting his share of pork for his district), likened Hochul to Cuomo “in terms of looking out for corporate interests and her ideological positioning.”
The state comptroller’s analysis of the 2022-2023 budget pointed out that “several new discretionary lump sum capital appropriations were added, with little detail regarding intended purposes…” In other words, political swag. These appropriations include:
• $800 million for “the New York State Regional Economic and Community Assistance Program”—also known as corporate welfare.
• $385 million for the Community Resilience Sustainability and Technology Program to support “projects intended to improve the quality of life of the residents of the state … through investment in facilities which support arts, cultural, athletic, housing, childcare, education, parks and recreational … tourism, community development … and other civic activities.” These are pork grants that state legislators could dole out to 501(c)(3)s, and community groups in their home district.
• $350 million for the Long Island Investment Fund to support “manufacturing, agriculture, business parks, community anchor facilities … and main street revitalizations.”
This is more corporate welfare with few strings attached.
• $185 million for the Local Community Assistance Program to “support community development or redevelopment, revitalization, economic development, economic sustainability … and local infrastructure improvement or enhancement.” Even more corporate welfare.
Here’s a tiny sampling from a “members items” list compiled by Newsday’s Albany reporter Michael Gormley:
• $5 million for a Rochester soccer stadium.
• $108 million to redevelop the Bronx Kingsbridge Amory.
• $8 million for a parking garage in Rochester.
• $20 million for Syracuse University’s basketball team Carrier Dome.
• $8.5 million for a Syracuse “Landmark Theatre.”
• $1 million for Old Fort Niagara.
There are hundreds of millions of dollars of such pork barrel projects.
Blair Horner, the executive director of the N.Y. Public Interest Research Group, stated that these funds “are used to bolster the image of elected officials in an effort to curry favor with voters.”
“Big lump sums,” like the $350 million coming to Long Island, Blair added, “limit public accountability and have been abused in the past.”
Yes, several legislators have gone to jail for abusing these grants by taking care of friends, relatives and donors.
Giving away the store may help Hochul get over the finish line in November, but it will not help taxpayers who will be stuck paying the tab for Albany’s unsatiable spending appetite.
streetcornerconservative.com 