July 2, 2009--Freedonia

In the Marx Brother's movie Duck Soup, the tiny country of Freedonia ("Land of the Spree, and Home of the Knave") is suffering from severe financial problems, and government leaders request a loan from wealthy widow Mrs. Teasdale to keep things afloat. The widow agrees on the condition that Rufus T. Firefly played of course by Groucho, take control and run the country. In the musical number that accompanies his first day in office, he lets us know how things will turn out, singing, "If you think this country's bad off now just wait till I get through with it."

The State of New York is Freedonia come to life. It used to be that we New Yorkers looked to New Jersey and every other state in the union as our Freedonia, but now the entire country is looking east to find our Rufus Firefly, David Patterson, ensconced in the governor's mansion and our parliament, the state senate, in the hands of, how shall I put this, well, clowns.

Here's the story, one that would be good for laughs if it weren't for some very serious consequences.

Governor Paterson has been cruelly but, excluding the blind jokes, accurately caricatured on Saturday Night Live, so I will let that suffice. Except to say that when he took over from the previous governor, Elliot Spitzer, who was forced to resign after he, as Client Number 9, was caught at the Emperor’s VIP Club with his pants almost literally down, Paterson, with his wife at his side, spent his first day in office talking publicly and at length about all the women he had slept with. Thus, the jokes began.

But then our esteemed state senate took center stage. I’ll try to keep this simple.

The senate has 62 seats and until July 8th had been briefly controlled by Democrats—32 to 30. This after decades of GOP majorities. But then two Democrats from New York City walked across the aisle and joined the Republicans who immediately claimed that they now controlled the senate. They quickly voted for new leadership and shut down all legislative business. Including dealing with the budget, which is by law supposed to be approved by July 1st.

There has been a daily circus of activity. The Democrats claim that what happened is totally illegal and that they still control the senate. Since they have the literal keys to the doors of the senate chamber they for a time did not allowed the Republicans to enter and attempted to carry on business on their own in the absence of their rivals. Not to be deterred, Republicans, with their two new allies, met on their own an attempted to carry on the so-called business of the state. At times two versions of senate meeting were held at the same time—there were two leaders, two chambers, and two gavels. Needless to say, nothing transpired. The press, on the other hand, loved every minute of it.

The two who moved to the Republican side of the aisle were likely influenced to do so for at least two reasons—first, a behind-the-scenes kingmaker billionaire Tom Golisano, an upstate businessman, who has been meddling in New York politics for years, “encouraged” them to switch. Among other means of encouragement, since he is quite liberal with his money, spreading it around within one party and then the other (depending on which one is more likely to do his bidding), one can only imagine the blandishments he offered to the two renegades.

But perhaps, in this case, even more potent than money, one of the senators, Pedro Espada from the Bronx, is being investigated by the state attorney general for potential criminal activity at a healthcare agency he ran back in his district; and Hiram Monserrate from Queens, was indicted in March on felony assault charges stemming from his allegedly attacking and injuring his girlfriend with a broken glass bottle. Two pieces of work who might benefit from having friends in high places.

The other day the legislative logjam broke. At least for a few minutes. You see, while I wasn’t paying attention, one of the two renegade senators, I think it was Monserrate, switched back to the Democrats and this then resulted in there being an even 31-31 spilt in the senate. The now 31 Democrats were meeting on their own in the chamber when they allegedly spotted one Republican senator hanging out in the back of the room. He then disappeared. But by his very presence, limited though it was, the purported senate leader declared that a quorum of 32 was present, and within minutes the senate passed dozens of pending bills by unanimous consent. (See attached New York Times article for the details.)

When Senator Frank Padavan learned about this he flew into a rage, claiming that he was simply passing through the senate chamber on his way to get a cup of coffee and thus should not have been counted as present. When he got wind of this legislative sleight of hand, Governor Firefly, sorry, Paterson, in an act of uncommon statesmanship, declared that he would not sign any bills that were passed this nefarious way. One, by the way, allowed New York City to retain the current structure of its public school system.

This is where matters rest.

Sorry, one more thing. To set the record completely straight, knowing that politicians have the reputation for not telling the truth, Senator Padavan yesterday tried to correct the record—he said, contrary to reports and Democrat claims, that he was not going for coffee but rather a Coke. Or was it a tuna sandwich? He wasn’t certain, but he insisted it wasn’t coffee. Now that’s my kind of senator.