Attention, New Yorkers: This is an emergency. Your government is collapsing.
Just when it seemed the most dysfunctional state capital couldn’t get any worse, it has. Albany is melting, going broke financially and ethically.
What, you haven’t noticed? No surprise. It’s another case of “defining deviancy down.”
Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s famous description of New Yorkers casually accepting the rise of crime — and thereby getting more of it — now applies to everything happening in Albany.
We foolishly tolerate a government that long ago forfeited all trust. It is corrupt beyond measure, and getting worse because we allow it.
Yet few taxpayers see the train wreck because most gave up expecting anything better. We conditioned ourselves to accept as “normal” a government routinely robbing the public to serve itself and its friends.
It’s a psychological trick that allows us to tune out the problem. The result is even more deviant behavior, yet our senses are so dulled, we’re not shocked or outraged.
We should be. And we should do something about it.
It begins with facing the truth about Gov. Paterson.
Any hope he could do the job has been dashed. His bizarre behavior of recent weeks is both inexcusable and intolerable.
Instead of rising to the enormous challenges, he is shrinking. Bad enough the Legislature is a gaggle of clowns and thieves.
It’s infinitely worse when the governor looks like he’s reverting to the irresponsible habits of the Legislature, where he spent 20 unremarkable years before inheriting this job.
He started promisingly enough, but that’s ancient history now. He talks a good game but inevitably folds at crunch time. He has failed to get the Legislature to do anything about the tsunami of red ink or anything else.
His promise to hold the line on taxes last year turned into added hikes and fees of more than $8 billion. Already this year he’s back with $1 billion more and the bidding hasn’t even started. Billions in stimulus money were wasted.
The final straw is his pathetic squirming over the contract to install and manage video slots at Aqueduct Racetrack. Suspicion that the outcome was rigged to favor a group that included the Rev. Floyd Flake, a former congressman from Queens, is taking on an air of certainty.
The Post reports the initial vetting process rejected the Flake bid. Losing companies with more experience offered more money, yet got turned down in a process where the rules were never clear. “The goalpost kept changing on us,” an exec of one firm complained.
Like the rules, Paterson’s response has shifted by the day and sometimes by the hour. First he said he intervened to break a deadlock. Then he said he favored one of the losing companies. Then he said the winner was the unanimous choice of himself and legislative leaders.
Meanwhile, he met with Flake to talk about his support in the campaign. That makes the contract smell to high heaven.
Enough.
Oddly, the one thing Paterson is right about is that Andrew Cuomo needs to step up now. It’s hardly a secret the attorney general will challenge Paterson in a Democratic primary.
But Cuomo is biding his time and ducking the hot issues. He said nothing about the stupid White House plan to put the 9/11 plotters on trial in lower Manhattan or the backbreaking taxes and spending turning New York into a second-class state.
He can’t be a slave to the political calendar. If Cuomo wants to lead the state, he must respond to the emergency. Not when it’s convenient, but now, when New York desperately needs every available hand.
The way things are going, later will be too late.
Piercing through the fog of war
During my trip to Israel last week, I visited a new Israeli Army base near the Gaza Strip, built partly with donations from Americans, and chatted with a handful of soldiers. They engage in frequent skirmishes with terrorists trying to cross the border with explosives and weapons, so I wanted their reactions to the UN report that accuses the military of war crimes in the Gaza invasion last year.
The inflammatory report was written by Richard Goldstone, a former South African judge who is Jewish. It is part of what many Israelis see — correctly, I believe — as an attempt to delegitimize Israel and turn it into even more of a pariah state, much as South Africa was ostracized during its apartheid years.
Any comparison to South Africa is ridiculous, as is the very notion that Israel alone is to blame for the Mideast’s problems. It has a thriving democracy and an innovative economy in a neighborhood of despots and thugs.
The dozen or so soldiers I met were selected by their commanders, but our small group was free to ask any questions we wanted.
“Goldstone doesn’t understand the fog of war. It’s a lot more complicated than just whether you shoot or don’t shoot,” said Danny, an American volunteer from Virginia.
James, a Brit from outside London who also volunteered to defend Israel, had only contempt for the second-guessing of soldiers facing life-and-death situations, especially when the enemy hides among civilians and doesn’t wear a uniform. “So what’s the right thing to do? Just stand there and do nothing?”
Isaac, a 29-year-old Californian, was blunt in expressing a point I heard frequently, and not just in the army.
“I think what the UN did was to look for a Jew who would write that kind of a report,” he said. “Goldstone doesn’t know anything about Israel. It’s so one-sided, it’s obvious.”
Amen.
Seems Mike no longer gets it
Mayor Bloomberg tried hearing aids the other day, but hearing isn’t his biggest ailment. Symptoms suggest he’s suffering third term-itis.
It’s a disease marked by a closing of the mind and a sluggishness in recognizing a problem.
Take his handling of the Carole Post case. The technology commissioner and her husband got tax breaks in Florida and New York by claiming both their West Palm Beach mansion and their Manhattan apartment as their primary residence.
Post also voted in Florida several years ago and has a driving license there — all while working full-time for the city.
Something’s not right. City officials file sworn disclosure statements covering various personal information aimed at ferreting out conflicts and inconsistencies.
How did it escape attention that Post claimed to live in Florida? Did she pay New York city and state taxes?
So far, Mayor Mike seems uninterested. He ought to stir himself enough to demand the truth.
Honorable no-mention
Did you notice — a whole page without my mentioning what’s-his- name? You know, the guy in the White House who is bank rupting the country and giving terrorists constitutional rights. That guy!