I am so glad he lost and she won

Posted by noonante on November 16, 2012
Posted in: Political/Social commentary, Politics. Tagged: , , . 1 Comment

I was not going to comment on Mitt Romney after the election, but this remark is so indicative of his world view that I cannot let it go by.  He was talking with donors  –  and why is it that this is the only group with whom he seems to share his actual views  –  about losing the election because President Obama was giving out “gifts” to targeted groups in the electorate.  Here is one example of a “gift:”

You can imagine for somebody making $25,000 or $30,000, or $35,000 a year, being told you’re now going to get free health care, particularly if you don’t have it, getting free health care worth, what, $10,000 per family, in perpetuity, I mean, this is huge.  Likewise with Hispanic voters, free health care was a big plus.

Let’s ignore the fact that the Republican candidate for President in 2012 thinks Hispanic voters have different concerns than other Americans, or that for Mitt Romney, $10,000 is an amount he is willing to bet to win an argument in a debate.  But yes, health care for a family that is barely making more than the federal poverty level ($19,090 for a family of 3 in 2012) is a big deal.  I mistakenly thought that when Romney got his health care reform passed in Massachusetts that he knew that.

So, if you are a guy struggling to support his family or a single mom with two kids, $30,000 a year, or $2,500 per month, may not seem to leave much left over after you pay rent, utilities, food, transportation, and clothing for the kids to go to school, but Mitt Romney apparently thinks you can scrape together $833 for health insurance.  Or, maybe, he thinks you should go without it.

One person who will need health care “in perpetuity” is Tammy Duckworth.  The 44-year old lost both of her legs when the helicopter she was co-piloting in Iraq was shot down by insurgents.  She ran for Congress from Illinois, challenging Joe Walsh, an incumbent whose chief claim to fame appears to be popping off.  Walsh, who did not serve in the military, attacked Duckworth for, according to him, talking about nothing but her vet status.  As he said, “What else has she done? Female, wounded veteran…ehhh.”  (Quote is from Mother Jones.)  Fortunately, it will be Duckworth representing the 8th District starting in January.

Could this be the new face of racing in New York?

Posted by noonante on November 12, 2012
Posted in: Horse Racing, Political/Social commentary, Politics. Tagged: , , . Leave a comment

Could this be the person to run tracks under the Cuomo Administration?

(From genesimmons.com.)

Don’t laugh (or, maybe, you should).

Back in September, a “source with firsthand knowledge” confided to Fred Dicker of The New York Post that the Cuomo Administration planned to bring in a for-profit manager to run the racetracks of New York.  One of the companies identified as having “deep experience” in racing was Santa Anita in California.  At that time, I observed that this was evidence of Cuomo’s and his staff’s lack of knowledge about racing since Frank Stronach, owner of Santa Anita, has a long history of instability among his top management.

So in a piece from BloodHorse.com this weekend, we learned of the latest upheaval for Stronach and California racing.  Mark Verge, hired by Stronach to be the Chief Executive Officer of Santa Anita in March, decided to step down because, according to a source, “he just had too many other things going on.”  Among the notable aspects of Verge’s brief tenure was a nasty incident during the post-position draw party for the Pacific Classic where he traded insults with Jill Baffert, the wife of trainer Bob Baffert.  He also did not want a formal title in his capacity as CEO, desiring to be referred to as “The Guy.”

While this was enough to make one check the calendar to be sure it was not April 1, BloodHorse.com also reported, as a rumor, that Gene Simmons, leader of the band Kiss, was in line to replace Verge.  Amazingly, Santa Anita’s director of publicity did not collapse with laughter at hearing this, but simply responded that he had no information on it.  Simmons has a past history with Stronach, according to BloodHorse.com, having once been tapped to market an energy drink, a Stronach venture that failed.

Stronach may not be available immediately, however, to make his newest appointment.  According to a September 27 article in the bloomberg.com/news, he has launched a new political party in his native Austria, with a goal to become the nation’s Chancellor in the 2013 elections.  His biographer, Wayne Lilley, was quoted in the Bloomberg piece as observing  – in a comment in the running for this year’s understatement awards  –  that Stronach “doesn’t do humility well.”  That would not seem to make him a logical partner for Andrew Cuomo.

I wish I were making up all of this.

This is Mayor Johnson’s idea of charter reform?

Posted by noonante on November 12, 2012
Posted in: Saratoga thoughts. Tagged: , . Leave a comment

Saratoga Springs Mayor Scott Johnson announced his intention to form a charter review committee two days before last week’s election.  Some saw it as a cynical ploy to defuse support for the reform plan that was on the ballot, which ended up being soundly defeated, receiving only 43 per cent of the vote.  For those who thought this was to be a meaningful exercise, the report in yesterday’s Saratogian about Johnson’s ideas must seem like pretty thin gruel.

He appears to only have two ideas.  One is to permit subcontracting of some services such as human resources.  The city already does that.  The other is to require a vote of the City Council in order to approve the budget.  Under the current charter, if there is not a majority, the budget originally proposed by the Commissioner of Finance is approved automatically.  So the Mayor wants to replace a system that guarantees a budget with one where there could be endless gridlock.

While I am sure there are some changes that could make the current charter more effective, the Mayor’s inability to come up with anything more substantive than these two ideas is either appalling if you think that’s the best he can do, or insulting to those who actually relied on his plan for a review commission and accordingly voted against the plan that was on the ballot.

Post-election thoughts

Posted by noonante on November 10, 2012
Posted in: Political/Social commentary, Politics. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment

In 2008, I scoured downtown Boston for a souvenir copy of the New York Times documenting the election of a black man with a strange name to the Presidency.  I wasn’t the only one with that idea and could not find a copy.  This year I had no such problem finding multiple copies of the Times even in late morning.  Although the 2008 election is undeniably historic, this one may turn out to be much more so, and not because the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has now produced the loser in three of the last seven Presidential elections.

Not only did Barack Obama preside over the most difficult economic period in my lifetime (albeit one inherited from his predecessor) and two wars (ditto), but he had to withstand four years of unrelenting attacks questioning his legitimacy.  There were, of course, the silly questions about his being an American, and just the week before this election a campaign by someone who may now be America’s biggest (and richest) nitwit about his college transcript and passport.  But we also had Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the United States Senate (once described  –  in what now seems laughable  –  as the world’s greatest deliberative body), saying his number one priority was to defeat Obama in his reelection bid.  And that was less than halfway into his first term.

With his reeelection, the future of Obamacare  –  a term once used by his opponents as derision, but now one he has embraced  –  seems secure.  There cannot be an effort to repeal it with a Democratically-controlled Senate and a certain veto, but once its benefits start flowing to all those now deprived of health coverage, it becomes a practical impossibility to repeal.  Just as significantly, in an election described as a “big choice” with two “very different visions for America,” Obama prevailed.  One pundit said Obama is the first Democrat to win two elections with more than 50 percent of the vote since FDR.  I found that impressive until I realized that Bill Clinton is the only other Democrat to even be reelected since 1944.  Obama now has the opportunity to leave his mark in ways just as significant as Obamacare.  We need to deal with the deficit, and the decisions made in that debate will affect in a major way who we are as a nation.  I literally slept a lot better Wednesday night knowing that that effort would be led by Barack Obama and not Mitt Romney and his Republican colleagues.

Speaking of the Republicans, what do they now do?  I do not mean immediately, although I hope the knee-jerk obstructionism of the past four years gives way to concern for America as their overriding interest.  The GOP is now a national party that has received fewer votes than the Democrats in a Presidential election in five of the last six elections.  While that is certainly not unprecedented in recent years (see the Nixon-Reagan-GHW Bush years), there are two major considerations that distinguish this period.

There are the demographics.  It is hardly a secret that the Republican Party has become the party of older, white, and primarily male, voters.  Although I am a member of that demographic, I also realize that we are a declining group, both by the forces of nature and increasing numbers of younger and Latino/a voters.  When Mitt Romney conducted a major assault on Rick Perry’s policies on immigration and undocumented residents, he may have ensured his defeat several months down the road, but his views were clearly in sync with Republican primary voters.  There are leading Republicans  –  notably former Florida Governor Jeb Bush  –  who have advocated lessening the rhetoric on dealing with the undocumented and, indeed, doing something positive.

Then there is the steadily diminishing connection with reality that is typical of both GOP politicians and their enablers in the media.  In the last weeks of the campaign, pollsters were criticized heavily for publishing skewed results, purportedly a reflection of their Democratic biases.  Never mind that those same polls showing an uptick for Romney following the first debate were fine.  I dismissed all of the optimistic talk coming from Republican circles as the typical puffery emanating from a campaign, but it now appears they believed it, even though there was no  – you know  –  evidence to support it.  Jan Crawford of CBS News reports that Romney himself was “shell shocked” when he realized he had lost.  Instead of relying on the large number of polls showing a likely Electoral College victory for Obama, he instead relied on his own internal polls that had “unskewed” those polls by diminshing the numbers of Democratic voters.  Talking Points Memo had been running a daily scorecard of the national popular vote percentages and the projected Electoral Vote. The percentages were always close, rarely more than 2 points separating the candidates.  But the forecasted electoral vote was never close.  Most of the time, Romney was at 191 with Obama near 270.  At no point during the months of publishing these numbers did Romney ever lead in the Electoral Vote.  Never.  Remarkably, I did not encounter a single Obama voter who was sure that he would win.  Many were confident, but almost all expressed a high level of anxiety over the result.

Then we had the election night spectacle of Fox News commentator Karl Rove disputing Fox News’ calling of Ohio, and the election for Obama.  Rove was on the phone to Romney headquarters where the disbelief in the Ohio result was such that Rove abandoned any pretense of objectivity.  This led to the indelible image of Fox anchor Megan Kelly marching down to a room where the Fox analysts of data assured her that they were “99.95 per cent” sure that Ohio went for the President.  This is Fox News we are talking about, not MSNBC, yet the parallel universe inhabited by Romney and Rove is such that even a bedrock conservative news operation had to be wrong.

Rove continued to outdo himself when he next appeared on Fox.  This time he attributed Obama’s victory to the Obama campaign’s suppression of voters by running a negative campaign.  That’s right  –  Karl Rove criticizing negative ads as causing voter suppression.  I guess we now know how George Bush won in 2004.  In order to make a statement as ludicrous as that, Rove had to ignore the reality that all of the efforts to change election laws around the country were led by Republican officeholders, with most, if not all, of them being stopped by courts.

Unfortunately, this denial of the reality-based world carries over into areas of significant national import.  After the devastation wreaked on New York and New Jersey, are we going to have a fact-based discussion on climate change or will we continue to let oil companies dictate national policy? Will a discussion of the deficit and tax policy be based on facts, or will Senate Republicans continue to suppress a non-partisan report disputing a central tenet of Republican orthodoxy?  The report by the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress concluded there was “no correlation between top tax rates and economic growth” according to an article in the November 2 New York Times.

Yet there are good reasons to be hopeful.  The highlight of my Election Day was stopping at a supermarket in the Webster Square neighborhood of Worcester late in the afternoon.  It was completely dark outside, yet there was a line of 200 people, almost all of whom were African-American or Latino, many with children, waiting in line to vote.  I sometimes joke that my voting in Presidential elections in Massachusetts doesn’t matter  –  after all, this is the only state to vote for George McGovern against Richard Nixon  –  but these folks obviously had a different view.  It was truly inspirational.

Saratogian spits the bit on reform

Posted by noonante on November 4, 2012
Posted in: Political/Social commentary, Politics, Saratoga thoughts. Tagged: . 1 Comment

Today’s Saratogian opinion page recommended voting “No” on the Charter Reform proposal that will be on Tuesday’s ballot.  The reform proposal would replace today’s “Commission” form of government with a “City Manager” form.  Each version has a five-member part-time City Council, with the Mayor being but one member of the Council.  Under the current system, the other four Council members are Commissioners of city departments who then appoint a full-time deputy who actually runs the department.  Under the Charter Reform, the Council appoints a City Manager who is the chief executive of the city, appointing department heads and making other personnel decisions.

Here is what The Saratogian had to say about the current government structure:

  • Current City Council is a “five-headed monster with no one person in charge of overall city operations;”
  • Current Council members are in charge of their own areas of government, but “because there is no requirement that their staffs work with one another, they often don’t;”
  • The $65,000 per year deputies appointed by current Commissioners “are sometimes a waste of taxpayer money;”
  • The current structure is “undeniably fraught with weaknesses.”

Well, if that is what they say about a system The Saratogian hopes stays in place, what are the shortcomings of the Reform proposal?

  • The proposed Council “could end up being less responsive to the public;”
  • In addition to “possibly” being less responsive, there is “no guarantee that they would be effective big-picture policy makers;”
  • While those responsible for choosing a transition team for the new government are the members of the current City Council, and reform advocates have put forward an undisputed estimate of minimal costs, that “does not preclude the possibility of sticker shock;”
  • Even though the proponents of the change had “numerous well-publicized public meetings” where “[a]nyone could have participated,” they nonetheless “should have applied the concept of extreme collaboration” and brought in “leaders from the business community.”

(All emphases are mine.)  If I may summarize, the Saratogian seems to be saying they would support a reform where those with an opportunity to be involved but chose not to do so, were begged to take part, and then produced a product for a democratically elected government that guaranteed good results.

So, given that the current government, both structurally and operationally, has serious weaknesses according to The Saratogian, what would The Saratogian do?  First, we should pay attention to “Mayor Scott Johnson’s impending creation of a Charter Review Commission … that could prepare a vote for November 2013.”  Even though the Mayor, according to The Saratogian, “has been regrettably slow in getting off the dime on this,”  it’s a “palatable alternative to the proposal at hand.”  Then, the folks running for the Council under the current system “could” stress their citywide objectives rather than “being pigeonholed as the representative” for the department to which they are being elected.  Finally, the public, with help from The Saratogian, should be more demanding about hiring capable people and insisting that Council members work with one another.  (Again, all emphases are mine.)

The Saratogian‘s editorial opposing the Charter Reform takes up an entire page in Sunday’s paper.  It does not say a single positive thing about either the current structure of government or the officials elected to run it.  Not one good thing about the current structure they advocate retaining, but several positive changes that would result from the Charter Reform, including placing someone in charge, eliminating duplicative functions, and allowing the City Council to function as a body with responsibility for the entire city.  The negatives about the proposed Charter reform?  It’s not guaranteed to be better.

While they assign themselves a major role in ensuring a better government for Saratoga Springs, The Saratogian has failed their first test.

Saratoga Springs charter vote

Posted by noonante on October 31, 2012
Posted in: Political/Social commentary, Politics, Saratoga thoughts. Tagged: . Leave a comment

When I first came to Saratoga Springs and started paying attention to our local politics, I was blown away by the make-up of the municipal government.  The mayor was paid $14,500 and was but one member of a five-member City Council that was the legislative body.  The other four Council members headed major city departments.  Having worked in government most of my professional life, I anticipated the legislative process:  “You vote for my 10 new employees and I’ll vote for yours.”  It was little wonder that taxes in the city were significantly higher than in Boston from whence I came.

Then, in 2006, there was an effort to change the city’s Charter, replacing the current structure with a “strong” mayor (i.e., full-time with executive responsibilities).  The ensuing campaign was marked by a remarkable level of vitriol reflective of a debate that clearly had less to do with the merits than with personal politics.  The vote was overwhelming to keep the current system, and I thought the decisive theme  –  apart from the nastiness  –  was that voters did not have enough time to consider the issue.

This time around, a group called Saratoga Citizen organized a seemingly endless series of meetings to develop a new charter revision, taking care of the objection of insufficient time for consideration.  Instead of a strong mayor, the city would be run by a City Manager selected by the five Council members, including the Mayor, all of whom would be elected on a city-wide basis and serving four-year terms.  The City Manager would actually run the government, appointing department heads and hiring and promoting employees.  He or she could be removed by a majority vote of the Council.

I never understood the opposition to what seemed to be a sensible way to run a municipal government, and attended the October 25 forum sponsored by the League of Women Voters, primarily to learn about the reasons for maintaining the status quo.  It turns out there were features of the current system of which I was unaware;  it’s even more bizarre than I thought upon my first exposure to it.  Not only is the mayor a part-time employee being paid $14,500, but so are the four department heads.  After being elected, the department heads then appoint a full-time Deputy Commissioner who actually runs the department on a day-to-day basis.  So what is the purpose of electing a department head who is not actually going to run the department, but instead hire someone else to do it?

What are the arguments advanced by proponents of the current system?  At the LWV forum,  the “Vote No” group was represented by former mayor Ken Klotz and Jane Weihe who chaired the Saratoga Springs Democratic Committee for a number of years.  They seemed to have two basic arguments in support of the current structure.  The first is that Saratoga Springs is an award-winning city, and that the structure of government is responsible for that.  The other centers around accountability and responsiveness, or as their leaflet stated, “no bureaucrats are placed between you and those who are responsible to provide city services.”

While being an award-winning city is certainly nice, I do not think the superficial awards conducted by the likes of Travel & Leisure magazine should be a particularly compelling argument when deciding how one is to be governed. But more significantly, how does the structure of the government contribute to that result?  When asked that question by moderator Dale Willman, the former mayor actually used as an example his getting a phone call from the mayor of Lake Placid asking about the flower program run by the Department of Public Works.  Not only is his response to a question going to the heart of his argument beyond silly, but why would a Public Works head appointed by a City Manager not be equally supportive of such a project?

An argument opposing the change because of reduced accountability or accessibility is a much more compelling one.  The “Vote No” organization, Saratoga SUCCESS, asserts that citizens “can talk with commissioners who are directly responsible for delivering specific services.”  Jane Weihe claimed that in a City Manager government, a citizen could not call a department head.  But there is nothing in the proposed Charter that would lead to such a conclusion.  There is a prohibition on City Council members giving orders to any … officer or employee.  This, of course, makes sense, since any direction on providing services should come from one’s manager, even though SUCCESS believes that “five leaders are better than one.”

Ken Klotz also raises the specter of an “outsider” who does not understand the City being brought in  –  by a City Council composed of residents.  At the LWV forum he even raised the prospect of someone from California or Florida bringing in their own entourage to takes top city jobs.  While I do not understand why those two locales are particularly nefarious, this is yet another argument that is spurious.  If the mayor of New York City can be born elsewhere  –  near Boston, no less  –  what is disqualifying for this city?  Interestingly, one of the panelists supporting the Charter reform was Jason Molino, the City Manager of Batavia.  Molino is a graduate of Saratoga Springs High School.

The proponents of Charter reform, Molino and Brent Wilkes of Saratoga Citizen, were much more compelling.  While Saratoga Citizen seems to be searching for an appropriate metaphor  –  Wilkes brought a rotary phone and smart phone to the forum  –  I thought the most effective one was a restaurant.  According to Wilkes, the city government is like a restaurant where one person runs the kitchen, another the dining room, a third the bar, and a different person for reservations, with no one in charge.

As someone who is not steeped in the political intrigues of Saratoga Springs, here is how I look at the relevant considerations:

  • A system where multiple people are responsible means no one is responsible.  What is an example of a successful organization where responsibility is divided among several people, let alone five?
  • The current system has four of the five elected Council members responsible for separate departments.  They will inevitably protect their turf, fight for resources and make trade-offs with their colleagues that will further their own parochial interests, but not necessarily those of the city as a whole.  Why is a body whose five members are charged with representing the interests of the entire city not a preferable one?
  • There is no need for management bureaucracies in separate departments that could be streamlined and run as a coordinated entity in an organization with one boss.  Do we need separate personnel offices in Public Safety, Public Works, etc., or could one centralized human resources office ensure consistent personnel policies for the entire city?  Is there a need for separate vehicle maintenance facilities in Public Works and Public Safety, or could one operation, with streamlined management, do the job more effectively and efficiently?
  • Whatever the form of government, people are going to contact department heads when there is a problem.  That happens when you have a strong mayor, city manager, or the current Saratoga Springs government.  What is important is responsiveness.  If in today’s government you do not get satisfaction from, say, Public Works, to whom do you appeal?  In the proposed reform, you can call the City Manager, Mayor or each of the four at-large City Councilors.  If you think this lessens your access to government, I think you misapprehend how politics works, whether it is here or New York City.

In my opinion, this is a clear-cut decision.  Yes, Saratoga Springs is a wonderful place to live  –  which is why I am here  –  but the only word I can think of to describe its governing structure is bizarre.  I think the arguments against the Charter reform are wafer-thin, relying on inchoate fears of what could happen should the Charter pass.  The reform presents the possibility of a more professional government with significant opportunities for increased efficiency and effectiveness. If it doesn’t work, we can always go back to the current structure.

Debates are over, let’s get back to abortion

Posted by noonante on October 24, 2012
Posted in: Political/Social commentary, Politics. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

It did not take long after the final debate for yet another Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate to make an outrageous comment on abortion and rape.  Indiana candidate Richard Mourdock said:

…I came to realize that life is that gift from God.  And even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that is something that God intended to happen.

Lest you think a woman’s right to choose will be bolstered if his Democratic opponent Congressman Joe Donnelly wins, Dave Weigel of Slate.com points out that Donnelly was a co-sponsor, along with Paul Ryan and Todd Akin, of the bill to distinguish “forcible rape” from other rapes.

Talking Points Memo yesterday also commented on a statement by Pennsylvania Senate candidate Tom Smith equating his daughter’s out-of-wedlock pregnancy resulting from consensual sex to a pregnancy resulting from rape.  Speaking from the all-important perspective of men, Smith said that as a father he thought the circumstances were similar.  What is odd about TPM‘s “reporting” of this is that Josh Marshall’s blog post describes the Smith comment, and it is only by clicking on the link that you become aware the remarks were made in August.

While such comments are obviously offensive and ignorant, these are the views of today’s Republican Party that has become increasingly theocratic and ideological.  Keep in mind that the 2010 elections brought in a significant number of Tea Party members of Congress.  Despite their lofty rhetoric of reducing the size of government and abiding by the Constitution, one of their first priorities was limiting a woman’s right to control her own body.  The anti-abortion zealots were willing to set aside their supposed convictions when the governmental intrusion was interfering with a woman’s choice to assert a right protected by the Constitution.

If you think the new “Moderate Mitt” on display during the debates will prevent further Congressional interference protecting the right to abortion, think again.  I don’t think Romney cares about this issue any more than he cares about any issue other than advancing laissez faire capitalism.  And in all his years of campaigning for President, he has yet to take a stand on any position that would put him at odds with the GOP’s right-wing extremists.

Romney makes major blunder in final debate

Posted by noonante on October 23, 2012
Posted in: Political/Social commentary, Politics. Tagged: , , , . 1 Comment

The conventional wisdom is that Mitt Romney had but one goal in last night’s debate devoted, in significant part, to foreign policy.  After all, Romney has no background in the area, looked silly on his foreign trip over the summer, and has a tendency to say stupid things.  It’s also an area where President Obama is assumed to have a huge edge.  That one goal was to not make a gaffe.  And he accomplished it if you read much of the mainstream media, as well as numerous on-line sources.  Much of the post-debate commentary has, instead, focused on President Obama’s statement that the military has reduced its reliance on “horses and bayonets.”  It was a memorable line, and an obviously rhetorical response to Romney’s comparing our military readiness today with the number of ships the Navy had a century ago.

Before the debate, moderator Bob Schieffer let both campaign know which general topics he would raise.  Not surprisingly, the Middle East was to be a major focus.  Of course, even if he had not said this, one would expect that Romney’s foreign policy concentration on Israel, Iran and Syria would be much discussed.  (After getting burned on his Libya comments twice in recent weeks, it would be surprising if the Republican candidate would jump into that thicket again.)  So here is how he explained the importance of Syria for America’s foreign policy:

Syria’s an opportunity for us because Syria plays an important role in the Middle East, particularly right now. Syria is Iran’s only ally in the Arab world. It’s their route to the sea. It’s the route for them to arm Hezbollah in Lebanon, which threatens, of course, our ally Israel. And so seeing Syria remove Assad is a very high priority for us.

There are only three problems with Romney’s statement.  The first is that Iran does not border Syria  –  Iraq, a country that has also been in the news in recent years, is between them.  The second is that Iran needs access to the sea only if you don’t consider the Caspian Sea, the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea, “seas.”  But the biggest problem, of course, is that he is predicating a potentially dangerous intervention on that part of the world on clearly erroneous assumptions.

We are talking about a guy who has twice been a candidate for President, has been running for that office for a good nine years, is reputed to be a data-driven leader, and it appears that he has never looked at a map of the area that has been his primary foreign policy focus?  And despite his numerous references to the word “peace” last night, his views before last night strongly suggest that he would not be opposed to yet another war in this part of the world.  At least when Gerald Ford “liberated” Poland in his famous debate, war was not a potential consequence of his mistake.

(I credit Andrew Sullivan’s blog for linking to John Green who has an interesting map of the area in question.)

I think the rest of the debate was less than remarkable, unless you consider the astonishing ability of Romney to deny his positions and past history  –  some would call it lying  –  to clinch the sale to the American people.  He does it with such remarkable ease and fluidity that, in a truly bizarre sense, he appears to be credible.  He spent much of the time during the Republican debates by saying he would do “exactly the opposite” of Obama in foreign policy.  The statement is asinine , of course,  –  he would remove Obama’s sanctions on Iran, for example  –  but saved him from coming up with any actual, you know, policies.  Last night, he agreed with almost all of Obama’s policies.  The big difference, according to Romney, is that he would be a better leader.

President Obama came across as more focused, articulate and confident  –  in other words, the opposite of his first debate performance.  The worrisome aspect of his candidacy, however, is a continuing inability to do the selling job that comes so naturally to his opponent.  In one of his better responses of the night, he answered Romney’s claim that he did not go to Israel during his post-inauguration tour of the Middle East, the stated purpose of which was to reach out to the Muslim world.  Obama responded that in his first trip as a candidate in 2008, he met with U.S. troops, and then went to Israel, where he went without taking donors or attending fundraisers.  They were shots across Romney’s bow, but done so subtly that one not knowing the context  –  Romney’s ignoring service people in his convention speech, and using Israel as a vehicle for fundraising in his panned trip abroad  –  would miss the point.

If you are in one of the so-called battleground states, be prepared for an endless onslaught of ads until election day.  The rest of us get a respite from that;  we just have to keep our fingers crossed constantly.

Isn’t this a major gaffe?

Posted by noonante on October 23, 2012
Posted in: Political/Social commentary, Politics. Tagged: , . 1 Comment

In a debate on foreign policy, the candidates do their upmost to avoid a major gaffe.  In last night’s debate, almost all of which focused on the Middle East, Mitt Romney had this to say:

Syria’s an opportunity for us because Syria plays an important role in the Middle East, particularly right now. Syria is Iran’s only ally in the Arab world. It’s their route to the sea. It’s the route for them to arm Hezbollah in Lebanon, which threatens, of course, our ally Israel. And so seeing Syria remove Assad is a very high priority for us.

The only flaw in Romney’s reasoning is that Iran does not border Syria.  Pesky Iraq is in the way.  And Iran does border two seas.

Given the centrality of both Iran and Syria to not only the foreign policy of the United States, and Romney’s heavy reliance on bashing the Obama Administration on both, isn’t this close to a disqualifying gaffe?  (See Ford, Gerald and Poland.)

I picked this up from Andrew Sullivan’s blog who, in turn, credits John Green.

New NYRA appointments a failure according to Cuomo source?

Posted by noonante on October 21, 2012
Posted in: Horse Racing, Political/Social commentary, Politics. Tagged: , . 1 Comment

When he announced the state’s appointees to the new NYRA Board this past Thursday, Governor Andrew Cuomo said, “we have an enormously accomplished group to assist us in making New York thoroughbred racing the best in the country.”  Back in July, however, a “source with direct knowledge” of the Governor’s plans outlined a dramatically different look for the new Board than the one announced.  “The hope is to bring entirely new blood onto the board, people who perhaps know more about horse racing outside New York rather than the current group that’s been very insular,” said the source according to Fredric U. Dicker writing in the New York Post on July 16.  Dicker is Cuomo’s authorized biographer and a frequent user of unnamed administration sources.  If I were a betting man, I would bet that Dicker’s source is Howard Glaser, Cuomo’s Director of State Operations, and the person identified by Dicker last week as the Governor’s point person on racing.

The source said that Glaser’s office had been “flooded with experienced racing hands interested in being appointed to the board.”  Dicker quoted the source as saying:

We’re getting interest from people around the country, and the selection won’t be limited to New Yorkers. These are people interested in becoming part of the New York family, and it may make sense for us to have expertise from people from other states.

So using these metrics put forth by the Cuomo source in July, how do the appointments stack up?

The Governor named the President of Cornell University, David Skorton, to chair the Board subject to the approval of the remaining members.  Skorton has no experience with racing, although the Governor’s announcement pointed out the there is an equine hospital associated with Cornell.  In what appears to be an effort to make some marquee selections, the Governor also picked Bobby Flay and Jane Rosenthal.  In case you are wondering, Rosenthal is, according to the announcement, an “acclaimed producer and co-founder of the Tribeca Film Festival.”  Unlike Flay, who has been actively involved in racing, Rosenthal has no experience with racing.  Cuomo rounded out his picks with his Budget Director, two with government service during the administration of Mario Cuomo, and two members of the current Board. If you’re counting, not a single appointee is from outside New York, and two of the three with experience in horse racing are already on the “insular” Board.

Senate President Dean Skelos used his choices to select a current member of the Board and Earle Mack, who served on the Board from 1990 to 2004.  Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver added a current Vice-Chair of the Board and Rick Cotton, who has no apparent connection to racing.  Not surprisingly  –  although perhaps it should be  –  the “old” NYRA named five of its current members to the new Board.

So, the final tally shows that the 17-member “new” Board consists of nine current members and one long-time prior Board member.  Of the seven new selections, four have no apparent experience with horse racing.  It does not appear that a single appointee is from outside New York.  Applying the standards articulated by Dicker’s source from the Cuomo Administration, it is hard to view these Board appointments as being anything other than a failure.

I do not know any of the Board members personally, or much about them in any capacity, and have no basis to question the capability of any of the choices.  They may very well be outstanding selections who will lead New York to a new day in racing with vastly improved interest and attendance at New York’s tracks.  I also have no idea as to the role any of the holdover Board members played on the Board in recent years  –  they may well have been voices against the direction of NYRA the Governor seems so intent on changing, although he has yet to articulate his vision for the future of racing in New York.  I do not recall any of the 10 expressing such concerns publicly, however, following Cuomo’s stated intention to take over the Board.

And there are serious questions about the overall composition of this Board.  We are, after all, talking about a Board, most of who are appointed by public officials, consisting of 16 white men and one woman.  When I wrote a post on Friday entitled Cuomo finds woman to appoint to NYRA Board, I felt like I was writing a headline for The Onion.  One of NYRA’s purported shortcomings is the “need for major strategic changes designed to reach new generations of racing fans [as] critical for the future survival of the sport.” That’s according to Robert Megna, Cuomo’s Budget Director, writing in his capacity as Chair of the Franchise Oversight Board in July.  The necessity of attracting new fans is not exactly unique to New York, and is one of the most daunting challenges facing racing throughout the United States.  While any Board of Directors has a fiduciary responsibility to advance the interests of the business, selection of Board members also sends a message.  The inability of any of our political leaders to find a single woman involved with horse racing to serve on the Board speaks volumes about the forward-thinking we can expect from this group.

I think other noteworthy omissions are the lack of a Latino member or a veterinarian.  Anyone who has ever read a racing program or visited a backstretch knows that Latinos constitute a significant percentage of those with the actual hands-on experience working with horses.  Given the recent attention paid to the health and safety of horses at the track, one would think a vet would provide an invaluable perspective to his or her fellow Board members.  And here is an out-of-the box idea.  Why not appoint Dr. Mary Scollay-Ward?  She is the veterinarian from Kentucky who served on the Task Force reviewing the deaths at Aqueduct earlier this year, and would double the number of women on the Board.

There is, however, no shortage on the new Board of those with backgrounds in real estate development, investment banking, the legal profession or connections to the administration of the Governor’s father.  Many of them have connections to horse racing, some with long-standing ties.  But again, a message is being sent.  When you want to take racing in a new direction appealing to a broader spectrum of fans, the Governor apparently thinks you need older white businessman, preferably with ties to the organization you are proposing to reform.

Of course, the truly troublesome concern is that there is no real message or vision for the future.  The Governor has acknowledged that he does not know the industry well.  When he says he wants to make New York racing the best in the country, one has to wonder what state he thinks is better.  In the five months this takeover has been brewing, I think the only positive recommendations to come out are those by the Task Force on health and safety.  There’s been nothing from his Administration other than continual bashing of NYRA.

In the Dicker article cited above, the Cuomo Administration source was quoted as saying, “The Saratoga meet will be the last hurrah for the blue bloods who have controlled the board for so long.”  It’s now looking like one group of privileged white men have been replaced by another group of privileged white men, many of whom are the same.