The Knicks should not be 3-8. There is a better balance of talent than in recent years, though not enough to offset those nights when the shots do not fall. They need to play better defense and go hard to the hoop.
Washington debates tax cuts for people making more than $250,000 a year, while far too many struggle at the other end of the economic spectrum. Can you say skewed priorities?
Charles Rangel was found guilty by his colleagues in the House of Repesentatives of violating ethics rules — which would be huge news if it wasn’t likely to result in just a slap on the wrist.
Rangel was found guilty Tuesday “of 11 counts of ethical violations,” The New York Times said. The House committee ruled “that his failure to pay taxes, improper solicitation of fund-raising donations and failure to accurately report his personal income had brought dishonor on the House.”
House Ethics Committee Chairwoman Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat from California, said the investigation was “difficult and time consuming” and that a punishment was likely to be announced this week. That punishment, however, is likely not to be very satisfying. Expulsion, one of the possible punishments, is unlikely, the Times reports, and Rangel “is more likely to face a letter of reprimand or a formal censure.”
I’m not advocating for expulsion, necessarily, but the fact that it is off the table — or appears to be off the table — is an indictment of a system that protects incumbency. And while the GOP has tried to make hay out of this, it is pretty clear from their own actions while in the majority that they would act no differently (the list of Republican miscreants is pretty long).
It’s convention time for the state’s municipal officials, and they plan to focus their attention on Gov. Chris Christie’s so-called tax reform “tool kit.”
The convention — the League’s 95th — comes as Republican Gov. Chris Christie and Democratic leaders of the Legislature fight over how towns can meet the cap.
Christie has been pressuring the Legislature to pass his “tool kit” bills, the most important of which would allow towns to opt out of civil service rules and put a cap on arbitration awards. Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester) said he’ll get to that before the end of the year, but that the governor has not proposed legislation that would push towns to share more services.
Elizabeth Mayor J. Christian Bollwage said he and other mayors will use the convention to tell lawmakers and members of the Christie administration to stop fighting and get to work on property tax solutions. He said more drastic steps are needed than what’s included in the “tool kit.”
“The rhetoric, the chess playing has to stop and there needs to be some bills passed that will get us to meet this two percent cap,” he said.
The problem, however, is the cap itself. The cap is nothing more than an arbitrary imposition, one that bears no relation to the reality of running local government. The cap, like so many of the other reform proposals on the table will only go so far and fail to address the real issues facing local government.
We need to stop making distinctions among different types of government spending and different taxes and start thinking about the role of government in the state in a more unified way. That will mean consolidation of some communities and school districts, elimination of fire districts (fire and first-aid spending should be a municipal or county-level responsibility) and other special taxing districts. This will allow streamlining — fewer police chiefs, fewer school superintendents, etc. — which should save money on the spending side.
Plus, we need to alter our thinking on taxes, begin to think of the tax pool as a larger single entity made up of smaller components — income, corporate, sales, property, gas, etc. We can then assess their fairness and make the most efficient use of them for collecting revenue and distributing funding according to need.
There is something strange about watching Jon Stewart, a deft political satirist, fall prey to the false god of reasonableness.
Paul Rosenberg explains the danger of Stewart’s stance, reminding us that it lets the bad guys off the hook. As Rosenberg says, Stewart’s objection to calling Bush a war criminal or pointing out the racism in the Tea Party movement (which in no way undercuts the movement’s legitimate rage at our national decay) is logically flawed. Calling Bush a war criminal makes him seem like Pol Pot, Stewart says, which seems extreme. But
If we want our presidents to not be war criminals, we need to make it sound like a bad thing. No, make that a really bad thing.
It’s a conversation-stopper, not a conversation-starter, Stewart explained. Not a problem, I say. Arrest first, then converse. You see, Jon, It really wasn’t cable news that started the Iraq War. It was George Bush & the neocons. They’re the ones we should take of first. There are laws you know?
Just as importantly, Stewart’s argument is based on the notion of motive. If Bush believed his approval of torture, rendition and a misguided and unnecessary war was in the best interest of the country, was done to protect Americans, then he was not a bad guy. Remember, Pol Pot thought he was right, too. It is not about the motivation, but about the action. Bush and his cronies shredded the Constitution in numerous ways and lied us into war — there is no doubt about that, though Stewart suddenly refuses to see that. The former president should be held accountable for this.
If this makes me seem unreasonable, then so be it.
