Saturday, October 30, 2010
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Beware a Newspaper that Deceives
With breathtaking dishonesty the Democrat and Chronicle deployed this morning an editorial ostensibly warning about political candidates who seek to deceive, but whose obvious purpose is to protect one of the deceivers.
Democrat-masquerading-as-Republican Mary Wilmot was found by all the Democrats and all the Republicans on the Fair Election Practices Committee to have lied on a campaign mailing.
Wilmot claimed Senator Jim Alesi owned a company engaged in questionable practices.
New York State corporation records proved that someone else owns the company. Not Alesi. Alesi has no ties to it.
You don't need a "Fair Elections Committee" or any other committee to know that Wilmot's mailing was untruthful. She said Alesi owns the company and State records proved that he doesn't. Mary Wilmot lied.
Yet under the guise of warning about "deceit," this morning's editorial seeks to protect deceitful Mary Wilmot.
Clearly anticipating the Alesi campaign publicizing the verdict of Wilmot's dishonesty, the D&C repeats political transvestite Joe Morelle's lie about the impartiality of the Fair Election Practices Committee. It does so even though the paper's own story, by reporter Jill Terrieri, recounted that the guilty verdict for Wilmot was unanimous -- like all other decisions of the Fair Campaign Committee this year. Meaning that all Democrats as well as all Republicans on the panel found Wilmot guilty of lying in her campaign ad!
The D&C editorialists know this full well. They ignore it, however, in this shabby editorial intended to cause readers to question the fairness of the Fair Campaign Committee's finding about Wilmot.
Expect the D&C to deploy more dirty tricks in the last five days of the campaign. Deceitful politicians, even as dishonest as Mary Wilmot, are pikers compared to the masters of deceit at the Democrat and Chronicle.
Power corrupts. That includes the power of the press.
Republican headquarters should have had a press conference by now, pointing out that the unanimous decisions of the Fair Campaign Committee prove the Morelle/D&C claims questioning its impartiality are completely false. Why haven't they?
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Enemies of Truth
All 2010 Fair Election Practices Committee Decisions have been Unanimous -- its Democratic Members Supported Every Ruling
Democrat-pretending-to-be-Republican Mary Wilmot was found guilty by the Fair Election Practices Committee of lying in a campaign mailing. She accused Senator Jim Alesi of owning a company that had questionable contracts with a local college.Alesi doesn't own the company and has no ties to it. New York State corporation records proved it.
Mary Wilmot lied. She broke the Fair Campaign Pledge she signed. The FEPC called her out.
So Democratic Boss Joe Morelle, like an enraged helicopter parent screaming "Fix!" when his kid loses the spelling bee, says the Fair Election Practices Committee is biased against Democrats.
Right. That's the same Fair Election Practices Committee created by the League of Women Voters and the Interfaith Alliance, two groups whose impeccable liberal credentials are beyond reproach.
It shows that a seasoned fraud like Morelle still has his game. How do you knock from the front page an inevitable negative story about Wilmot's dishonesty? Fake an accusation about the Fair Campaign Committee itself!
No need to mention that all of the Democratic members of the FEPC found Wilmot guilty. The verdict against her was unanimous.
With a complicit Democrat and Chronicle engaged fully as an arm of the Democratic election campaign, Morelle's diversionary attack on the Fair Campaign Committee throws the story on Wilmot's guilty verdict off the front page.
Desperate local Democrats have resorted this year to dishonest campaign advertising to an extent unusual even for them. That's why they've lost 4 of the 5 Fair Campaign hearings this year. Hearings in which all Democratic members of the hearing panel supported the outcome!
Morelle's claim to be "pulling out" of the Fair Campaign pledge is mere diversionary posturing. Candidates can't pull out.
We researched the FEPC during the 2007 elections. Any candidate who signs the Fair Campaign Pledge is entitled to bring a campaign violation charge against his opponent. The candidate is entitled to a hearing. If the accused candidate "pulls out" or refuses to participate, the hearing goes on anyway.
So Morelle knows he can't do what he's claiming to do. It's just a stunt to divert attention from the Wilmot story.
In a fundamental sense, Mary Wilmot's entire campaign is a lie. Second only to Morelle himself as this season's most flamboyant political cross-dresser, Democrat Wilmot, who headed the local Senate Democratic office, campaigns as a pretend-reformer and pretend-Republican. This in order to get elected and prevent Republicans from re-taking the State Senate. And thereby preventing any chance of real reform in New York.
In campaigning, as in criticizing as "biased" a Fair Campaign Committee whose Democratic members have joined all its rulings, Wilmot joins her mentor Morelle as an enemy of the truth.
Anything goes if they think it can fool the rubes long enough to get them elected. Anything -- anything -- to make themselves and their campaigns appear to be something other than what they really are.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
All In the Family
This just in ... just notified ...
Last year we brought you the story of Margaret Trevett, Democratic candidate for Penfield Supervisor who didn't know when the Town Administration adopts the annual Town budget.
This year it's Ms. Trevett's spouse, Tom Trevett, who's a Democratic candidate for Penfield Town Council.
Today the Fair Election Practices Committee found Mr. Trevett guilty of violating the Fair Campaign Pledge. The Committee is the creation of the Interfaith Alliance of Rochester and the League of Women Voters.
In an essay published recently in the Democrat and Chronicle, Trevett said of his opponent, Penfield Councilman Rob Quinn, that Quinn "only just completed his education in June."
In fact, Quinn received his Bachelor's degree in 2003 and his Masters in 2007. Why such a reckless deception by candidate Trevett, when it's so easily found out?
Are the Trevett candidacies the best Penfield's Democrats can do?
Update - Wednesday
It was a unanimous decision, too. Meaning that all Democratic members of the Fair Elections Committee supported the finding.
So forget Morelle's nonsense about the Committee being stacked against his party's candidates.
-- Philbrick
Monday, October 25, 2010
How About a Fox News Pledge Week
Compounding lies with more lies, National Public Radio now takes the tack that it was right to fire Juan Williams, but it was just done badly.
FOX News should institute a pledge week each spring and fall, to coincide with the NPR pledge weeks. It would be nice to see how that would affect public radio fundraising.
At least one public radio station has promised contributors that no pledges it receives will go to National Public Radio!
Until NPR explains convincingly why it keeps Nina Totenberg after this, but fired Juan Williams, its stations don't deserve a penny. NPR won't listen to the public, but will listen to its stations.
No more membership renewal with WXXI for me, unless I see the station publicly demanding an answer to why Williams went but Totenberg stays.
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Friday, October 22, 2010
No Question: Re-Elect Our Republican State Senators
I started this as a comment to our contributor Steve Zodiac's posting of last night, criticizing my piece on Tuesday about the Democrat and Chronicle's endorsements of state legislative candidates. However, I think it's expanded to full posting status.
Steve, I think you read more into my posting than I had intended, but reading it again I understand why. I should have concluded the piece with the reasons why we need to return our Republican State Senators to office in this year's election. You've now supplied what I left out.
Admittedly, I think the Democrat and Chronicle asked a seriously reform-oriented question, about the Triborough Amendment. In the view of most advocates of reform, the Senators have been on the wrong side of that issue. So have all the Democratic incumbents in the Assembly.
Yet there's a gigantic substantive difference between the GOP State Senators whom the newspaper chided for not being sufficiently reform-minded, and the Democratic Assembly members it criticized on the same grounds. The former have tolerated some bad policies like Triborough, when the circumstances of the time make changing it a practical impossibility; when a serious effort to change it would accomplish nothing other than bringing the state's richest and most powerful special interest, the public employee unions, down on their heads.
Contrast that to the incumbent Democratic Assembly members, who actively promote, instigate, expand, aid and abet, either themselves or through supporting an Assembly leadership headed by Sheldon Silver, the toxic brew of policies that hold the state back and unfairly burden its people.
I couldn't agree more with Steve's statement that "Any hope we have of meaningful change in New York begins with Republicans winning back the State Senate majority." Even our commenter, Anonymous 10/22 9:40am, who hit the Senators pretty hard, said he's going to vote for his Republican State Senator over his liberal Democratic opponent.
There's a new, healthier, climate in the country and the state, where people finally are paying attention to what's really going on in government. This makes it possible to consider seriously, for the first time in decades, reforming the policy failures that wreak havoc on New York. For all the reasons Steve discussed in his piece last night, that's all out the window if the Democrats keep the State Senate.
I'll be voting enthusiastically for my Republican State Senator on election day.
Double Standard at NPR
National Public Radio correspondent Nina Totenberg said she hoped then-U.S. Senator Jesse Helms would get AIDS, or his grandchildren would. That was in 1995. NPR hasn't gotten around to firing her yet.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Support Our Republican State Senators!
I hate to disagree with our intrepid Editor-in-Chief, Philbrick. However, he's dead wrong in implying that we should cut our Republican State Senators loose because they don't live up to his ideal of 100% Republican purity.
Let's not ruin our own cause the way voters did who nominated Christine O'Donnell and Carl Paladino (sorry, but it's true).
Any hope we have of meaningful change in New York begins with Republicans winning back the State Senate majority.
Re-electing Senators Maziarz, Alesi, Nozzolio and Robach is therefore critical to real reform.
If Democrats keep the Senate majority, next year they will gerrymander out of political existence every Republican state senator they can. Among other undesirable things, that means a completely Downstate-dominated state government for at least the next 10 or 20 years.
Such a regime would never let a proposal for reform in any of the key areas that need changing see the light of day, much less get enacted. It means total domination of the state's agenda by downstate. I love New York City and the area, but most people there don't even know where Rochester is, let alone anything about this region's problems, or what it will take to fix them.
Although you'd never know it from reading the Democrat and Chronicle, nearly the entire Democratic leadership of the New York State Senate is either under indictment or investigation.
Just this morning The New York Times reported that Democratic Majority Leader John Sampson and Democratic Senate President Malcolm Smith engaged in bid-rigging for the Aqueduct casino project in Queens:
State Senate leaders manipulated the choice of who would build New York City’s first casino, leaking information and showing favoritism to a troubled bidder that was donating to Democratic candidates and had ties to key political figures, the state inspector general said Thursday.So when the Democrat and Chronicle trashes our local Republican state senators in the name of "reform" or "changing Albany" they want you to keep the State Senate in the hands of criminals.
Citing possible violations of laws governing public officials by John L. Sampson, the Senate Democratic leader from Brooklyn; Malcolm A. Smith, the Senate president from Queens; and Angelo Aponte, the appointed Senate secretary, the inspector general’s office said it was referring its findings to federal and state prosecutors ...
They mean keeping it in the hands of a Democratic wrecking crew more extravagantly corrupt than anything we've seen in Albany before, and that's really saying something. A crew that's accomplished nothing in the 2 years they've had the Senate and would never allow on the floor any meaningful reform of business regulation, cost of government or tax containment.
Philbrick has been taken in (sorry, buddy) by the D&C's sleight of hand: make sure nothing Democrats don't ever want to change -- which means most of the laws that have destroyed the State's economy and have made our taxes the nation's highest -- ever changes. The paper seeks to accomplish this by defeating our Republican state senators -- in the name of reform!
Unless you're planning to leave the State soon, the most important vote you'll cast this year will be for State Senator. If the people of New York are going to have any hope and future, it begins with you, voting for State Senators Jim Alesi, Joe Robach, George Maziarz and Mike Nozzolio.
Mark Scuderi Event Tonight
Support Republican Assembly Candidate Mark Scuderi in his campaign against political drag queen Joe Morelle.
Mark has a fundraiser tonight at the Wintonaire; $30 gets you in.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Bubble of Media Protection
What will it take to get The NY Times to report on a senior New York Congressman who physically assaulted a member of the press who was asking tough questions about possible conflicts of interest in federal funding of a project?Read the whole thing.
How about this. Let's pretend Maurice Hinchey had Tea Party support. Page One above the fold, here we come.
I Want Your Money
Just saw this. A must see. Should be shown in the schools!
Now showing at Regal Eastview, Pittsford Plaza and Tinseltown in Gates.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
OK. They Really Are Fed Up
We were wrong. (So what else is new?) The editorialists of the Democrat and Chronicle really mean it when they say they're fed up with Albany.
The first indication came Saturday. The Editorial Board had asked state legislative candidates to answer three questions. One went right to the heart of one of the key policy disasters that makes government in New York the most expensive in the country: "Do you favor repeal of the Triborough Amendments?"
Wow. Little known beyond Albany insiders and policy wonks, the Triborough Amendments represent a bright-line litmus test to show who's serious about reforming Albany and who's faking it.
A Rockefeller-era change to state labor law, Triborough was eagerly sought by the public employee unions. Normally when a union contract expires, negotiations for a new contract start at zero. Everything's on the table, and the union risks losing benefits its members had under the old contract. Triborough changed that. Now, if a municipality's contract with a public employee union expires and the parties can't agree to a new one, the provisions of the old contract continue.
This deprives the local government, representing the taxpayers, of their main means of leverage in negotiating with a union. The union has nothing to lose. It's guaranteed at least everything it already has. And so, absent unusual circumstances, the cost of government rachets up with every contract, never down.
We'll have more to say in an upcoming post about the candidates' responses to the paper's Triborough question. For now it's enough to note that this was an incisive, separate-the-wheat-from-the-chaff question on a issue central to New York's recovery.
Then came Sunday's endorsements.
We can accord the Democrat and Chronicle no higher praise than this: their take on the candidates is the same as ours. They called out incumbents who have "failed New York" and whose "go-along to get along approach ... is a big part of the Albany problem." Amen.
Local Republican State Senators haven't done a thing to reform a broken system, even when they had the majority. They do one thing consistently and well: ensure their own re-election. Beyond that, it's just go-along, get-along and preserve a rotten system.
Maziarz has "no concrete suggestions on how to balance [the State's] budget." Alesi's had 14 years to change things and has changed nothing. Nozzolio "epitomizes the career politician interested in protecting special interests."
Joe Robach, Alesi and Maziarz all said they want to keep the offending parts of the Triborough Amendments. Nozzolio gave a mealy-mouthed non-answer. All get substantial contributions from public employee unions.
Nor is the paper taken in by Joe Morelle's flamboyant political cross-dressing for election season: He "has become the quintessential Albany insider [who] refuses to hold Sheldon Silver accountable." "Morelle has proven he's a pro at the Albany game [but] at this juncture the people of New York need individuals ready to change the game."
David Gantt "too often has aligned himself with Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver" and his "voice has too often been mute amid calls for desperately needed legislative reforms."
David Koon's heart is in the right place on certain issues, but he can't get anything done. "He's been unable to build a coalition of reform-minded Assembly members, and consequently, he has become part of the problem." A cipher marking time to a state pension.
Wow.
We never doubted the D&C's understanding of the policy-level problems that beset the state. Yet we expected that, as the election drew closer, their sense of being fed up with Albany would yield to their customary political predispositions.
That didn't happen.
With clarity and intellectual integrity, the Democrat and Chronicle called it like it is. A shining moment of lucidity.
Then this morning they fell of the wagon and endorsed an unqualified judicial candidate for no reason other than the color of her skin. And all the incumbents they criticized are going to be re-elected. Still, on Sunday the D&C showed that it can muster at least a glimmer of integrity once in a while.
Monday, October 18, 2010
Best Lines of the "Debate"
"Career politicians in Albany are the biggest whores in this state."
--Kristin Davis, Anti-Prohibition Party candidate
"I'm not your typical candidate for Governor of New York. I've never been caught with a prostitute. My Dad wasn't governor. I've never been convicted of a crime."
--Warren Redlich, Libertarian Party candidate
Danger: Artist at Work
Whatever you might call what Carl Paladino's doing, it is not a "campaign" in any discernible sense. At this point it is best understood, we think, as an elaborate piece of performance art. As Henry Miller said, "The artist is the opposite of the politically-minded individual."
Our home-grown artiste's latest move, presumably designed to reveal how utterly to destroy a major party candidate's chances to win, was to request that all minor party candidates participate in tonight's debate with Andrew Cuomo.
As other great masters work in clay or marble, Paladino works in his chosen medium of political malpractice. Tonight's debate offered the last, best chance Paladino would have had to get out his message, unimpeded by his string of gaffes and missteps. The last chance to connect with voters, to credibly call out Cuomo as a pretend-reformer, not a real one.
By including the minor candidates, Paladino has forsaken 80% of the time he would have had to make his points in the debate; 80% of his opportunity to draw the contrast between true reform in New York and Cuomo's phony sloganeering. Instead, for most of the debate we'll hear from people like the candidate of the "Rent is Too Damned High" party, and the proprietress of the call-girl ring favored by Elliot Spitzer.
Of course this is exactly what Andrew Cuomo wants: to appear as a willing participant in a debate where he'll only be on the hook for a few questions, with no opportunity for serious follow up to his answers.
Behold the true artist at work! And, as with all great art, creating it in ways that baffle mere laymen.
After drafting this post, while researching the minor candidates further we came across a reference to Rachel Maddow opining last week that Paladino "may be a performance art project." Credit to Ms. Maddow for coming up with it before us; that we did so independently merely underscores what Paladino has made of his candidacy.
Losing It
In more ways than one, that is. Desperate Democratic congressional candidates seem to be hitting their breaking points -- or maybe revealing their true character? -- and resorting to physical violence.
First we have New York Representative Maurice Hinchey hitting and grabbing the throat of a reporter after a press conference last week, as reported by YNN. That was after the Congressman told the reporter, on camera, to "Shut up!" when the questions weren't to Hinchey's liking:
Then Colorado Congressman Ed Perlmutter slaps his Republican challenger Ryan Frazier on the hand as they argue over the Health Care law:
Then, of course, there was South Carolina Democratic Congressman Bob Etheridge assaulting a student in response to the student asking Etheridge whether he supports the policies of President Obama:
All the mainstream media carping about Tea Party "violence" that never happened, and now a pattern of Democratic Congressmen physically abusing people who ask them questions, or question their positions! But somehow this doesn't make the evening news, nor generate high-minded editorial calls for "civility."
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Strange Bedfellows
An old trick of the legacy media is to engage a fringe or clueless representative of the "right" on a panel, as an ostensible display of "balance."
Thus, this morning, ABC's This Week rolled out 26-year old idiotbimbo Meghan McCain to accompany George Will as the conservative side of its morning round table.
Why not pair off Nelson Mandela and Liza Minelli for your next panel?
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Friday, October 15, 2010
Poll Shows Buerkle Pulling Ahead of Maffei
A new McLaughlin poll of likely voters in the 25th Congressional District shows a 3 point increase for Ann Marie Buerkle since mid-summer and a 7 point drop for incumbent Democrat Dan Maffei.
Among likely voters Buerkle receives 40% and Maffei 39%, with 21% undecided. Maffei still has not broken the 50% approval benchmark.
More details here.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
The Ongoing War Against the Jews
Showing the same strength of character with which he runs Fox News: Rupert Murdoch's speech last night to the Anti-Defamation League. Must reading.
We live in a world where there is an ongoing war against the Jews. ...
Now the war has entered a new phase. This is the soft war that seeks to isolate Israel by delegitimizing it. The battleground is everywhere: the media … multinational organizations … NGOs. In this war, the aim is to make Israel a pariah.
The result is the curious situation we have today: Israel becomes increasingly ostracized, while Iran –- a nation that has made no secret of wishing Israel’s destruction –- pursues nuclear weapons loudly, proudly, and without apparent fear of rebuke.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Tea Partiers: Political Heirs of the Hippies
If you read only one political article this week, read this one: The Electric Tea Party Acid Test.
The Tea Party is the one social movement in contemporary America that can rightfully claim to be the ideological heir to the original hippie movement that started in the mid-’60s.Unlike most analyses, it accounts for a distinction more important than the familiar big government-versus-small government dichotomy: people’s beliefs about human nature; the difference between those who think it's innate and unchangeable and those who think it's changeable:
Tea Partiers are the true heirs to the hippie ethos. ... The Tea Party and the hippie movement share four fundamental core values:
• A craving for independence;
• A celebration of individualism;
• Joy in the freedom offered by self-sufficiency;
• And an acceptance of the natural order of things.
Artificially constructed collectivist utopias require that human nature be altered for any new society to work, because elements of existing human nature — greed, jealousy, lust for power, a need for privacy, and so on — would render the system unfeasible. So utopian collectivists necessarily believe that humans must be changed and can be changed (for the better, of course). This may seem like a minor detail to the collectivist program, but actually it’s the main sticking point, one which the collectivists have never been able to solve (because, as any sane person knows, it’s unsolvable; human nature can’t be changed). But that hasn’t stopped them from trying, again and again, with ever-increasing levels of coercion, to mold the human spirit into the desired shape.Read carefully. It will be on our final exam.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Earth to Paladino
Dear Carl,
You've already blown the election. You didn't need to make the rubble bounce. So why the unnecessary and irrelevant comments out of the blue about gay people?
Was there no one to tell you it could only cause trouble? That you'd alienate the many gay Republicans and conservatives out there? Or that the only thing you should be talking about are the one or two points about how you'll rescue the state and its taxpayers?
You see, Carl, all the people who had hoped you'd be a successful agent for change would gladly vote for an openly gay candidate for governor, who promised an all-gay administration, if they thought that candidate could change the state policies that have wrecked New York and that drive taxes higher.
The only thing that made sense in your televised catastrophe last Thursday was your comment, "I'm not a politician." The problem is that you're running against someone who is. That's how he knows to say things like "No new taxes." What clever liberal needs new taxes in a state that already taxes bagel-slicing?
If you were a politician yourself, you'd be savvy enough to ask him, "But what about increases in all the existing taxes?"
But you haven't had time to make that point, because you're too busy trying to prove that you don't hate gays.
So what's next? Did you give a Columbus Day speech to a Native American group? Will you recount to the NAACP fond memories of eating Aunt Jemimah pancakes while watching Amos 'n Andy? Will you give a speech to the Larchmont Country Club in that comic Thurston Howell III voice that gets a big laugh at the Bada Bing?
In the Austin Powers movies, Dr. Evil asks in moments of frustration, "Why must I be surrounded by idiots?" You need a similar moment of clarity. You're not an idiot. But you're surrounded by them. And they're doing a brilliant job of making you look like one.
Monday, October 11, 2010
White House Admits: No Evidence for "Foreign Money" Attack Ad
From The Baltimore Sun:
When CBS newsman Bob Schieffer Sunday asked senior Obama advisor David Axelrod if there is any proof for the claim in Democratic attack ads, that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is taking money from foreign interests, the senior Obama aide says they don't need proof -- it's up to the Chamber of Commerce to prove it isn't true. (!)
More from the New York Times:
The Democrats have offered no evidence that the chamber is using foreign money to influence the elections. The chamber has overseas affiliates that pay dues to the main organization but says it has a process to segregate those funds from any used for electioneering.Looks like they're getting desperate. As CBS's Bob Schieffer said in response to Axelrod's statement: "three weeks out ... is that the best you can do?"
The Democratic committee’s spokesman, Hari Sevugan, likewise offered no evidence ...
The chamber is hardly the only organization playing a role in the campaign that has international affiliations and gets money from foreign institutions. Among others are groups on the political left like the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and the Sierra Club. The law requires them to isolate foreign money from any domestic political activity.
CBS News posted video of the encounter under the caption "Schieffer Smacks Down Axelrod's Foreign Money Accusation." CBS!
Why Monroe Property Taxes Are So High
Buffalo News editorial, Friday, October 8:
New Yorkers' property taxes are out of line with the rest of the nation. That's not a problem with local officials in a few counties overspending. It's something that each of these counties has in common and that something is this: They exist in the spendthrift state of New York.
New York pours unfunded mandates onto local governments the way a wino pours Muscatel -- recklessly.
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Friday, October 8, 2010
ENCORE - Video from that Liberal D.C. Rally
My favorite post this week! -- The "One (Socialist) Nation" Rally
Thank heaven for the moderate, mainstream citizens who came together at the D.C. rally this past weekend. Folks who seek bipartisanship, not polarization. Because we're all in this together! A desperately-needed antidote to those extremist, out-of-the-mainstream Tea Party radicals.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Urgent Memo to Carl Paladino: FIRE YOUR HANDLERS IMMEDIATELY
Dear Carl,
After the cringing embarrassment of your television message this evening, it's probably too late to save your campaign for Governor. Your handlers and advisers are destroying your campaign and your reputation. If you want to at least try to retrieve a chance to win, however slim it may be at this stage, FIRE THEM. IMMEDIATELY.
Remember that first poll after the election, showing you within six points of Cuomo? It showed that you have promise. The reason you're faring so much worse now is because you're listening to the thugs you're surrounded with. They've portrayed you to the public as someone as stable and trustworthy as one of Tony Soprano's capos.
New Yorkers don't care a bit that you'll work for a dollar a year, or that you're challenging Cuomo yet again to debate. They want to hear you talk coherently about the issues: state taxes, spending and regulations that make New York the worst state in the country to do business. They want to hear the two or three key points you propose as a way to address these problems. That's what political professionals call your "message."
And they need to hear about how Cuomo is the candidate of all of the special interests behind the toxic policies that have brought the state to ruin. How those interests don't want any of it to change, which is why they're backing Status Cuomo.
Did you really have to remind people all over again about the illegitimate offspring by your erstwhile mistress? This election's happening in New York, not Paris or Milan, where that kind of thing is considered fashionable.
Not a good idea to rehash that encounter with the Post reporter -- the performance by which you defined yourself, and badly, to a large segment of the electorate who were considering you seriously. The incident that drove your poll numbers from 6 points behind to 16 points behind. You need urgently to get past that, not to dwell on it and recall for voters the single most damaging thing you've done to yourself so far.
The only thing missing was, "I am not a witch."
If you had professional advisers who knew something about politics, they'd never have let you turn in a disaster of a performance like tonight's, where you came across as a clueless whiner. They'd have taught you one of the first rules of politics: Never complain; never explain.
You owe something to yourself, to your family. To all the people who supported you as an agent of real change, as a defense against turning the state over to fake-reformer Andrew Cuomo for four more years of decay and decline. You owe them a decent, credible campaign. You have at least to try, however badly your advisers have steered you to this point.
Your heart's in the right place. But you need to fire your advisers and get new ones.
Ask state Chairman Cox, or ask a prominent County Chairman like Monroe's Bill Reilich, who's racked up a consistent string of wins against adverse odds, to recommend new high-level campaign staff. They work with the best. They can help you retrieve your dignity, and maybe even the election.
Do it now. You can start by removing tonight's video abomination from your website. Immediately.
If you won't, the County Republican Chairmen across the state need to bring you in for an intervention this weekend.
Yours in acute anxiety,
Philbrick and the Mustard Street crew
No Character Attacks Necessary
Republican congressional candidate Jill Rowland says her campaign is planning no character attacks on her opponent, public nuisance Louise Slaughter. "I think her public record speaks for itself," says Rowland. And how.
After all, what possible outrage could Louise Slaughter commit in private life that would be a bigger disgrace than her voting record?
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Readers Comment on Unshackle and the RBA
And the comments still keep coming in about endorsements by the Rochester Business Alliance and "Unshackle Upstate" and Unshackle's report cards for state legislators.
Check out the latest.
Analysis coming of Unshackle's endorsements, announced today.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Businesspeople Don't (Usually) Get Politics
Watching Carl Paladino blowing it royally in his interview this morning with Matt Lauer just reminded me again of a sad, and in some ways counterintuitive, reality: businesspeople don't get it when it comes to politics. Their hearts are usually in the right place on the issues, but when it comes to running for office they flame out.
Not once did Paladino use his few minutes on The Today Show to make points such as: I'll be a governor not beholden to anybody; I'm in it for one term only, then out; I'm not in it as a stepping stone to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, like Cuomo.
Instead, because of what has to be terribly inept advice and coaching from his handlers, he let Lauer keep him on the defensive the whole time. So Carl spent the interview defending himself from his own recent stupid mistakes.
Partly this is attributable to advice Paladino must be receiving from thuggish campaign spokesman Michael Caputo, who we understand hails from the operation of Roger Stone, who has a reputation as a campaign maven even though everything he touches turns to garbage.
But that alone wouldn't hurt Paladino were it not for the Businessman-in-Politics syndrome. Paladino's emerging as another self-made multimillionaire who's not willing to accept criticism or to listen to advice that starts with telling him he's not doing it right.
Just like Golisano, who still can't understand why the ability to make money doesn't translate into votes.
Paladino's in a different league now, a league where he's a zero unless he gets some competent political advice. Yet that's merely another frequent manifestation of the Businessman-in-Politics syndrome -- a homing pigeon's instinct for finding the most questionable political advisers, in this case the odious Stone.
A competent adviser would have given Paladino pointers such as: "Don't answer the question the interviewer asks; answer the question you wanted to be asked," and "Your core campaign message should be the answer to every question."
On a different level, the Businessman-in-Politics syndrome explains why the hapless businessfolk who bankroll the Rochester Business Alliance let themselves get talked into endorsing politicians who stick it to them every chance they get.
Many amateurs do well in politics. But the person from a business background who can pull it off is rare. Interestingly, the level of business success seems inversely proportional to how they do in politics. Those who have been the most successful in business do the worst in getting elected. Does anyone remember Dick Kaplan's comical race against Louise Slaughter some years back? Brilliant entrepreneur; a true genius. Lousy politician.
Unfortunately, Paladino suffers from the same problem. Manifested differently than usual, but in the long tradition of other business people who have made a hash of running for office.
Carl: get yourself some decent political advisers.
Monday, October 4, 2010
Bad News for Paladino
On Friday, Staten Island Borough President James P. Molinaro, a Conservative, endorsed Andrew Cuomo for governor.
Staten Island is a must win for Paladino if he's to have any chance, so we view this as a serious blow. Would the Borough President have taken this step if Paladino hadn't gone overboard in that encounter with NY Post reporter Fred Dicker? We'll never know, but it sure couldn't have helped.
Video from That Liberal D.C. Rally
Thank heaven for the moderate, mainstream citizens who came together at the D.C. rally this past weekend. Folks who seek bipartisanship, not polarization. Because we're all in this together! A desperately-needed antidote to those extremist, out-of-the-mainstream Tea Party radicals.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Friday, October 1, 2010
No More Panels. No More Czars.
So political drag queen Andrew Cuomo pledges, if elected, to appoint Robert Duffy, who would then be Lieutenant Governor, to head a panel for improving the Upstate economy.
Great.
How many more upstate economic panels or "czars" are we going to have, all of which end up accomplishing bupkis? Can you even remember the name of the most recent "upstate economic czar?"
Mullen?
Gunderson?
What have they accomplished? What policy have they changed that has made even one of the costs of doing business in NY -- taxes, insurance, labor, electric power, regulatory compliance or anything else -- as inexpensive as it is in any of the Free States?
What have they changed? Nothing! Not one of the state policies that drive business and jobs out of state. Umpteen czars and panels later, reform has not even begun, and we're nowhere close to it.
Stop sugar-coating New York's reality. Stop trying to placate New York's hapless serfs with another do-nothing panel.
We don't need another panel to travel about the state talking about the problems, when the real issues are job-killing taxes and anti-business policies.
The serfs are restless. We want state government to do the real work to change dysfunctional policies -- not the meaningless busywork of another "panel."
