New York’s budget hole is huge and growing as Governor Patterson reminded us all on Wednesday but if you want to see how bad things can get, go west.
As the LA Times lays out in painful detail, California’s budget woes are much worse than ours. New York faces a $14 billion gap this coming budget year while California’s deficit is $42 billion over the next 15 months.
Paterson has repeatedly warned that if Albany’s legislative leaders don’t agree to structural spending changes New York “might end up like California.” Here’s what …

Oh he’s so coy, that Andrew Cuomo. He speaks to the Conservative Party (a Cuomo!?!?). He starts to make the rounds of the civic group breakfasts (Citizens Budget Commission Wednesday, Crain’s soon, can ABNY be far behind?). He takes on the greedy Wall Street bums and the Medicaid cheats and the Health Insurance crooks. But he’s not running for Governor. No no no.
As Liz Benjamin gets very right, Cuomo is following the well-worn path of his predecessor Eliot Spitzer who ran for and won the Governor’s race with a very …

Ummm. Haven’t we heard this before? The Treasury needs a ginormous wad of cash to bail out the financial system and it will explain just what it will do with all that money…later.
Yeah it’s deja vu in DC with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner doing his best Hank Paulson imitation while announcing the Obama Administration’s $2.5 trillion plan to save the banks.
Come again? Two-point-five-what? Trillion? As in 1,000,000,000,000? Yes, $2.5 trillion.
The plan is to use the unspent half of the original $700 billion “Bush bailout” and then commit as much as …

Barack is back, baby!
That’s what liberal bloggers are writing about the President’s first prime-time newser where he seemed to get some of his campaign mojo back. With the stimulus bill on it’s way to passing the Senate and then facing a potentially messy time in the sausage factory known as “conference committee” where the House and Senate versions must be meshed, Obama came out firing.
It began during his first road show Monday afternoon in Indiana and continued at the White House: “I’m happy to get good ideas from across the …

While we are often raking the New York Post over the coals here at Get Real for the paper’s habit of ignoring facts inconvenient to the owner’s bias or (especially on the editorial page) just plain making things up, this Monday morning we salute you!
The whole “steroids/performance enhancers in sports story” is one we’ll get to soon — it’s rich in muddled thinking and misleading outrage. And don’t get us started about what’s happening to poor Michael “bong hit” Phelps for doing what the last three (at least!) Presidents have …

It’s February. Americans are losing their jobs at a rate almost none of us have ever seen. The economy is collapsing in a deepening tailspin of fear and gloom. Wallets are shut. Companies are closing. And in Washington, the “debate” over what makes a stimulus bill stimulating drags on.
Republicans have won the spin war hands down. The stimulus bill has been successfully reframed as a pork-filled mess. And as the Senate works today to get something passed Republicans and their media friends continue to pick out specific items in the …

American journalism is dying.
Newspapers are shedding reporters or shutting down entirely. TV stations are dropping correspondents (tell me about it!) and cancelling shows. News web sites have yet to find any way to make enough money to support actual reporting. The wheels have come off and no one knows if there’s even a vehicle on which to put them back on. So what to make of Newsweek Magazine’s attempt at a web-based reality show? How about WTF?
Earlier this week Newsweek launched a new web-only “reality” show called “The District” which …

At first blush it may seem a bit un-American but the news that the Obama Administration will cap the salary of top executives at any firm receiving Federal bailout money at $500,000 was met with applause on both sides of the aisle on Capitol Hill (a rare feat of late).
Obama said the measure was aimed at curbing excess. “We don’t begrudge anybody for achieving success. And we believe that success should be rewarded. But what gets people upset — and rightfully so — are executives being rewarded for failure. Especially …

Having just wrapped up a round of radio interviews with stations around the country it looks like the proverbial “Is the honeymoon over?” story is gaining traction. The cumulative effect of a badly marketed (and some say badly devised) stimulus plan coupled with his nominees’ tax problems is that Barack Obama has used up a fair amount of his political capital in a few short weeks.
Of course Obama started with more political capital than any President since FDR so he’s still got plenty of it and his mea cupla yesterday …

When you’re up and your opponent’s on his back the last thing you do is give him a hand. But that’s just what Barack Obama has done for Republicans.
After wracking up a historic win over John McCain and leading his party to big, increased majorities in the Senate and House, Obama has squandered some of his political mojo on one of the oldest White House stumbling blocks — nominees.
When it was just Bill Richardson and some ongoing, not particularly noteworthy investigation, it was manageable. Richardson withdrew and the storm passed. …