Circus Promoter Tom Golisano

There’s big news about Tom Golisano.

The formerly upstate billionaire (he’s still got the money but he moved to Florida) is dating former tennis star Monica Seles. So reports Page Six. Oh, and the three-time candidate for New York Governor  just loves the circus. How else to explain his recent quarterbacking of the quasi-Republican coup in Albany?

Golisano has always been an odd bird in New York politics. In his three runs for Governor as an independent (94, 98, 02) he always seemed to have it out for Republican George Pataki (who won each time) even though they, at times, seemed to disagree about very little. Golisano’s reform mantle has really been a cover for lowering taxes in the state in which he built his successful payroll company. Nothing wrong with that.

So last fall Golisano put some of his money into Democratic State Senate candidates hoping to hitch a ride on the demographic train that spelled the inevitable end of decades-long Republican rule in Albany’s upper chamber, if not in 2008 than certainly in 2010. When the Dems did in fact win control of the Senate Golisano expected a hearing. Or at least a little courtesy.

Instead we’ve learned he got a fairly rude brush off from the newly-ensconced Majority Leader Malcolm Smith. Golisano says he was pissed after Smith spent an entire meeting with the billionaire fooling around with his Blackberry. Quel suprise!

Smith was incompetent on day one and, as numerous others have written in the last few days, he horribly misunderstood how to govern with a one-seat majority. So Golisano helped convince two Democratic Senators to back Republican Dean Skelos as the new Majority Leader and the coup was on. But if the G man seriously believes this will change anything he is more deluded than his mentor, Ross Perot.

First, the two Dems he lured to the team are both in serious legal trouble and may both end up sent packing before their terms end. Both Pedro Espada (under investigation by Attorney General Andrew Cuomo for using state funds for himself — a charge he went to trial on a few years back and won) and Hiram Monserrate (soon to go on trial for felony assault of his girlfriend) are hardly posterboys for reform. Indeed Espada has shown he will do almost anything to save his political skin. That’s what makes this next part pretty scary: As part of this deal, Espada becomes President Pro Tem of the Senate, meaning he will become Acting Governor the second David Paterson becomes incapacitated or even leaves the state. So now Paterson is a prisoner of New York. Could be worse. Let’s hope he doesn’t get an appendicitis though.

Of course everything is still in flux and it’s Albany so the only thing worth predicting is that this will all end in an unpredictable and highly entertaining way if you’re into dysfunction. And that’s what Golisano has bought for himself and the state he no longer calls home: Even more political dysfunction.

Smith was no leader but he was the Leader of the Senate and with only about a week left for the Senate, Assembly, and Governor to get a whole mess of really important stuff done, this chaos certainly does not serve the people of the Great State of New York. The Republicans agreed to Golisano’s demands for substantial reform in the way the Senate works which, if Skelos and Company really meant it, might actually be worth the turmoil. But Skelos? C’mon Tommy, don’t you listen to The Who? Try track the last track on Who’s Next. You might learn something.

The Senate Republicans proved over their 66 years of (almost) uninterrupted power (Dems were in “control” for nine months in 1965 due to redistricting-mandated multiple elections) to be as venal and corrupt as their Democratic opponents. It’s not for nothing that their former long-time Majority Leader Joe Bruno has been charged with 8 Federal corruption counts.

Golisano is clearly a savvier negotiator in business than in politics since any idiot realizes Republicans would have promised anything to get back in power. Keeping those promises is another story. And Golisano’s reform bona fides have always been a little suspect.

Last fall he promised to take on his fellow billionaire politician Mike Bloomberg over the Mayor’s extension of term limits (allowing MB to run for a third term) but then punted, spending chump change for a tepid last-minute “effort” that failed.

This time around Golisano has done little more than bankroll a new show for the Albany Circus Maximus. I’m sure he’ll enjoy his ringside seats before jetting back to his waterfront abode in Naples, Florida. As for the rest of us? Let ‘em eat popcorn.

NYS Comptroller Tom DiNapoli

Add State Comptroller to the very very long list of people who think the budget agreed to by Albany’s “3 men in a room” sucks. In fact, other than the three men in the room (Governor David Paterson, Senate Majority ‘Leader’ Malcolm Smith, and Assembly Speaker Shelly Silver) and their respective lackeys, the list includes pretty much everybody.

Here’s what Comptroller DiNapoli — himself a former Assembly member who then-Governor Spitzer feared would go too easy on the Albany power trio — has to say:

New York faced an extraordinary challenge to adopt a 2009-10 State Budget in the context of a daunting recession. My preliminary review of the budget indicates it does not adequately respond to today’s economic realities.

The budget is not a long-term solution to New York’s propensity to spend more than the state can afford. While the budget proposes to close an unprecedented gap, it does so by an over reliance on non-recurring federal stimulus funds and new tax revenues projected to materialize at a time of declining tax receipts.

This is essentially a buy-time budget, based on a hope that the economy recovers quickly. It’s a very fragile basket to place all the taxpayers’ eggs in. Instead of using the Federal stimulus to restructure the financial plan and match projected revenues to long term growth in spending, the budget uses stimulus funds as a short-term fix.

The danger is that New York could end up right back where we started, with huge budget gaps and an unsustainable level of spending. I will provide a more detailed review of the enacted budget shortly.

But of course all that matters to the statehouse wrecking crew is, whom if anyone will voters take their anger out on? Since voters almost universally reelect their local legislators who then pick the Senate Leader and the Speaker, Governor Paterson ought to be very worried. He’s the only guy voters can take it out on directly.

Sen. Majority Leader Malcom Smith

For what it’s worth here are a few of my random thoughts and favorite stories on this chilly Monday:

It’s almost doomsday! With the MTA being forced to vote on it’s doomsday budget loaded with big fare hikes and bigger service cuts the responsibility for this rests squarely on the shoulders of Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith who has perfected the art (long-practiced in Albany) of fiddling while Rome burns. He has had an astonishingly inept three months leading the Senate.

While Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Governor David Paterson long ago agreed to sign off on some bridge tolls and tax hikes to rescue the transit system, Smith and his fellow Senate Democrats dickered and (internally) bickered. The result? A completely farcical “plan” to save the MTA with modest tax and fare hikes — a plan that was mathematically flawed — a plan that would not work.

To his credit Paterson rejected it almost immediately. And Smith? There has been no real response. There’s some leadership.

So here’s my question: Which newspaper editorial page will be the first to call for Smith to resign? Maybe the first will wait until after the budget is finished. But sooner or later it will come….

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Gov. David Paterson

Which brings us to Governor Paterson and his woes. A new poll shows his approval rating continues to decline and now resides in the sub-30 range. Ouch. A new report dug up by Liz Benjamin over at the Daily News shows that when he was Senate Minority Leader his leadership was essentially nonexistent. Finally it appears that Paterson has signed off on a Silver-Smith (there are opportunities here for wordsmiths more clever than I) budget plan to spend every dime of the Federal stimulus money on keeping state spending high while also raising $8 billion in taxes over the next two years.

So here’s another question: Which newspaper ed board will be the first to call on Paterson to declare he will NOT seek reelection thereby freeing him to act in the best interest of the state — not his political rehabilitation?

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President Obama’s toxic asset plan has gotten some terrible reviews from some of his biggest fans but Wall Street seems to love it. Of course remember that lots of conservative critics have been quick to point out that the market has dipped a lot since Obama took office and dipped precipitously on certain days when Obama announced certain proposals or Congress passed certain bills (see: Stimulus, for one).

So will the frothers at Fox give Obama credit for coming up with a “good” plan, at least according to the market? I’m going with…”Yeah, right!”

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Speaking of Obama, Nate Silver over at 538 has a great re-analysis of the election results from last fall. Remember that shortly after the election one of the principle bits of analysis was how Obama did better than the previous Democratic nominee John Kerry everywhere except Appalachia. That led to a lot of subtle and not-so-subtle talk about how racist all those poor white folks (rednecks) were.

But Silver went back and looked at how Obama did only among non-black voters figuring that the previous analysis was skewed by the large and almost totally one-sided nature of the vote among African-Americans. What he discovered is that whites in the Deep South were much redder than their Appalachian cousins.

In retrospect that probably shouldn’t surprise anyone considering our history. Still it’s important to set the record straight. Kudos Nate!

Percentage of White Vote (Red=McCain, Blue=Obama)

New York Gov. William Sulzer in 1913

The latest Get Real video is a history lesson that Albany’s Democrats seem never to have learned. Turns out their self-destructive behavior now is eerily similar to what happened in 1913 — the last year (other than one year during the Depression) that the party controlled all three levers of power in state government. Could they be sowing the seeds of their own destruction again?

Get Real: Dem History Forgotten from Jay DeDapper on Vimeo.