I'm not clear on why the primary reporting on the Republican coup that just seized control of the state senate from the Democrats is being reported nearly exclusively as a gay marriage thing. Yes, I understand that this is a blow to gay marriage, but it has a lot of implications for the state on spending, rent control, and any of a number of other issues--you may have hear that they're having something of a financial crisis.
Nor does gay marriage seem to me to have been driving their switch. The two Democrats who crossed over to vote their party out of control are neutral-to-supportive on gay marriage; what they really have in common is that they are both under a legal cloud. Since they both come from safe Democratic districts, the party leadership had no need to stand behind them, and they've been fighting for more support from the leaders for a while. Tom Golisano, who seems to have orchestrated the coup, isn't so much a social conservative as a pro-business guy; he's part of a "good government" coalition that has been building up in Western New York for quite some time, trying to topple the heavy taxation and regulation imposed by downstate, which they believe cripples the upstate economy. Whatever his personal views on gay marriage, I don't see it being his primary motivation.
You've got internicene warfare among a suddenly ascendant party, and a state in chaos. Gay marriage will undoubtedly be affected by this, but it's not obvious to me that it's the main story. So what am I missing?
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It is New York media. You are missing nothing, if not that.
Where do the Chalcedonians stand on this one?
It's the search for a continuing story arc. The NY media has been reporting heavily on the state senate regarding gay marriage, much more than any other topic in the last few weeks. So they're trying to integrate that somehow into a narrative arc of what's happening.
Gays & abortion are the only issues that matter.
I'm sitting here in NYC and I'm not seeing it reported as a "gay marriage" thing. Somebody is spinning where you are.
Here's how it is being reported here, e.g. by Fred Dicker, the best Albany reporter in the city.
Gist: The Albany Democrats in the state senate have been out of power for 43 years and don't know how to actually do a damn thing but posture ... Golisano gave them millions of dollars to fund their takeover in the last election ... They won power in the election by just one vote -- importantly, less than one solid vote, because immediately after the election four dissident Dems threatened to go to the Repubs, which caused them to be bought off with many promises ...
THEN, the Dem senate leadership, clueless as to how to actually manage power, went on a rampage as if they had the FDR majority of 1933. They double-crossed Golisano ... broke their promises to their main backers in general and the four swing defectors in particular ... and on the strength of their shaky one-vote majority fired hundreds of Republican staffers and employees ... sent Republican leaders to former-closet offices in the basement and under the stairwells ... and distributed the senate pork, er, member items, $78 million to Dems and $8 million to Repubs. Etc. etc.
(One might say they demonstrated the keen perception, nuanced judgement and subtle tact of Eliot Spitzer.)
SO ... Golisano, the Repubs, the swing Dems, all got *furious* at them, while they totally lost all sympathy from the Albany "professional political establishment" which has a great deal of influence on its own. (See "Yes, Minister", transfer to this side of the big water.)
Golisano switched sides again and promised the disaffected four that he'd back them with his bucks for their re-election if they went with the Repubs, no matter what the Dems tried to do to them. With that the disaffected parties all got together and worked this out over the last couple months.
AND ... the Dem senate leaders were so politically astute that they **didn't have a clue** any of this was going on. Not until a vote on the distribution of pork, er, member items started shockingly to go against them yesterday. At which point they showed their class by litterally knocking out the phome lines and Internet connections, even turning off the lights (!) to keep word of the vote going against them from being reported. Like a third-world junta tries to suppress all public word of a rising against it.
With the same result.
Do you see "gay marriage" in any of that? Anybody who spins this as "gay marriage, gay marriage" has an agenda.
This is a story of staggering incompetence by a Dem Senate leadership that over 43 years had been selected and bred to do nothing but posture -- and which when given a modicum of actual political power went bat s**t crazy with it.
It's another example of the one saving thing Repubs always have going for them: Democrats.
It's also an example of another fact of two-party politics: big power shifts almost always come not from the challenger successfully challenging but from the incumbents screwing up. (Give Obama andthe national Dems some time.)
BTW, it's not at all clear at this point whether Bloomberg played a role in this or not. He's got a lot more influence with the senate Repubs than Dems ... the Repubs having run the senate for the past 43 years do, for all their faults, know how to pass more than gas ... and the Repubs are a lot more sympathetic to some of his top priorities, like keeping mayoral control of the school system. He's kept a very low profile in discussing these events, and shows no sign of crying over them. We shall see.
And here's an overall lesson to take away: anybody who wants this class of human being to manage national health care or any other similarly grand public ambition is ... not familiar with our real world.
Do not think of nationalized health care and such great public schemes as being designed and run by "the government", wisely and on our behalf -- think of them as being designed and run by politicians, by these guys.
Watching the politicians of the New York State government in Albany in action will make a libertarian out of anybody! If Gus Hall was still alive today, it would make a libertarian out of him.
"Tom Golisano, who seems to have orchestrated the coup, isn't so much a social conservative as a pro-business guy; he's part of a "good government" coalition that has been building up in Western New York for quite some time, trying to topple the heavy taxation and regulation imposed by downstate, which they believe cripples the upstate economy."
Furthermore, it is my opinion that Western New York should secede.
With each passing day I bemoan the South's failure to secede from this damnable union -- a union that originated to secure freedom but which has become a tyrant from which there is no escape. Freedom no longer matters -- only the control of the union by the biggest, baddest bullies. The Republic is dead. America has devolved into the democratic nightmare our Ango-European feared. If only they had the prescience to foresee the far greater threat that darkies posed to their beloved America. If they had, perhaps we would still be free today, instead of oppressed by unitarian political correctness, minority rule by our domestic enemies and anti-constitutional Supreme Court decisions. If they had, perhaps today we could enjoy the uncensored exchange of ideas without enduring insulting admonitions "not to post material that is obscene, harassing, defamatory, or otherwise objectionable." Which we all know is code for: Don't insult those who are NOT white, straight, non-Hispanic and gentile.
With each passing day I bemoan the South's failure to secede from this damnable union -- a union that originated to secure freedom but which has become a tyrant from which there is no escape. Freedom no longer matters -- only the control of the union by the biggest, baddest bullies. The Republic is dead. America has devolved into the democratic nightmare our Ango-European founders feared. If only they had the prescience to foresee the far greater threat that darkies posed to their beloved America. If they had, perhaps we would still be free today, instead of oppressed by unitarian political correctness, minority rule by our domestic enemies and anti-constitutional Supreme Court decisions. If they had, perhaps today we could enjoy the uncensored exchange of ideas without enduring insulting admonitions "not to post material that is obscene, harassing, defamatory, or otherwise objectionable." Which we all know is code for: Don't insult those who are NOT white, straight, non-Hispanic and gentile.