It’s no secret that I think Andrew Cuomo is one of the worst Democrats out there, and here is some more evidence:
Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who should be using his power to make New York City more hospitable to working-class and middle-class families, has instead slipped a little poison into his executive budget that could cripple the city’s ambitious efforts to build affordable housing.
Housing is the centerpiece of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s agenda. He has promised to build or preserve 200,000 affordable apartments over 10 years — a tough proposition under the best of circumstances. It could be even tougher now that the governor has proposed placing new layers of state control over the city’s use of federal tax-exempt bonds to build and preserve affordable rental apartments. It’s not a stretch to call this sabotage.
Mr. Cuomo says it’s transparency and accountability, but it is more about intrusion and control. It would give the head of the Empire State Development Corporation, a Cuomo appointee, the power to sign off on the flow of tax-exempt bonds to New York City, which uses them almost exclusively for affordable housing. It would also require that every single affordable-housing project in New York City that uses the bonds get the approval of the Public Authorities Control Board, a shadowy entity controlled by the governor and the leaders of the Assembly and Senate.
These are the proverbial “three men in a room” who hold a death grip on policy-making power in New York State government. The phrase evokes the low-minded, chronically corrupt jockeying and deal-making that govern how the Albany game is played. That two of the three — Sheldon Silver and Dean Skelos — were ejected from the room last year, because of federal felony convictions, is about all you need to know.
History buffs- have there ever been a governor of a state and a mayor of a major city in the same state in which the governor, for no reason other than political ambition and spite, has done everything he can to screw the mayor?
At any rate, remember this when Cuomo announces his inevitable run for President down the road. He’s horrible, and should never be allowed to advance.
Ridnik Chrome
Cuomo = Rahm Immanuel, with slightly more brains and slightly fewer scruples (and a famous last name). He’s been trying to kneecap de Blasio since Day One of the de Blasio administration.
Iowa Old Lady
OT: Trump says he’ll sue Cruz over Iowa. I have to admit the man makes me laugh on a regular basis.
kindness
Git a rope!
daveNYC
Eh…. Detroit? Walker in Wisconsin has been pretty crappy towards Madison, though not quite in as directed a way.
NY State trying to get and keep it’s claws in NY City is pretty standard fare unfortunately.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
Guess the apple fell a good long way from the tree with that guy. Maybe it’s good his father isn’t around to see this shit.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@daveNYC:
I could be misreading, but I think he had in mind governors and mayors of the same party.
NR
Chris Christie? I mean, that’s basically what Bridgegate was all about, wasn’t it?
Yutsano
@daveNYC: I recall there always being tensions between Albany and NYC. Regardless of the party affiliation of whomever occupied the head offices of the state/city. Hell didn’t Pataki and Giuliani get into it on several occasions? Must suck to be the major tax base of a state.
It’s (kind of) nice because Washington can’t do this to the Seattle area much because that’s where all the damn voters are.
raven
Illinois-Chicago, many times.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Iowa Old Lady: Saw that. Now utterly convinced that Trump is the living manifestation of Loki, come to wreak a horrific vengeance on the GOP.
Calouste
@Iowa Old Lady: IMO the main goal of Trump is not to get a re-run or anything like that, but to keep the story of Cruz’s underhanded tactics in the news. And to prepare the background story for a third party run.
leeleeFL
I have thought often that neither of the Cuomo sons do justice to their Father’s legacy. A shame, that is. Mario was one of my favorite political people. He might have made a great President.
Iowa Old Lady
@Calouste: You could be right. I can’t begin to fathom what the inside of Trump’s head is like.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
At least this is happy, uplifting news. In all seriousness, I wonder how much sadder and hapless this guy can get. The only way it could have been any worse would have been for his mother to have been there to ask ’em to clap for him.
Mnemosyne
Cuomo is pretty terrified of DeBlasio, isn’t he? I didn’t realize that DeBlasio’s election was going to upset the NY state Democratic applecart quite so much, but I’m enjoying it from the other coast.
Mnemosyne
@Iowa Old Lady:
I still think Trump is going to ragequit at some point. One or two more lost primaries should do it.
p.a.
@Iowa Old Lady:
3 Stooges Theme running on a loop.
SatanicPanic
@daveNYC: I was going to say Flint?
bystander
Proud to say I never voted for Andy or Mario. Despite what everyone says about his old man, his gay baiting [email protected] was sickening.
I’d add the other son stinks on ice, too.
Signed,
Disgruntled New Yorker.
P..S. Sad to read of Bob Elliott’s passing. RIP, Wally Ballou!
p.a.
@Mnemosyne:
Fixt. Don’t lose track of the meme. (BTW I hate that word. Ugly neologism. Theme serves just as well.)
Iowa Old Lady
@Mnemosyne: I look forward to it with glee.
daveNYC
@Yutsano: Been reading some stories of Washington politics recently, don’t you guys get screwed a bit by the various crap that are put up as ballot initiatives (or referendums, whatever the lingo is)? Like there’s always some crazy anti-tax crap that passes and then gets shot down by the courts?
It’s not just being the tax base that does this. NYC isn’t just a revenue producer for the state, it’s also the location of a large number of levers of power that no other city in the state really has. Between the Port Authority, MTA, various other entities, there’s just so much stuff to tempt a governor to get his mitts into things. Plus, it’s far more fun (and easy) to play around with a city that is doing pretty well than it is to try and do something useful for the various smaller upstate towns that aren’t doing so hot.
daveNYC
@SatanicPanic: I ignored Flint, since the mayor there has basically been replaced by the emergency manager guy. Though that might be the case in Detroit too. I forget.
Michigan is one messed up state. People can do ballot initiatives to overturn laws (like say the emergency manager crap) but the legislature can go ahead and re-pass the same laws, but this time attach them as part of any random budget bill, which means that they can’t be overturned at the ballot.
geg6
As if I could ever forget what a piece of crap Andrew Cuomo is. Not to worry, Cole. He’d never get my vote. Under any circumstance. He’s everything the Clinton haters of the left accuse Hillary of and more.
Marko
As a life-long NYer, I’d say animosity between the Gov. & Mayor is fairly common. Mario Cuomo & Ed Koch hated each other. Part of the problem is that prerogatives that would normally be under the purview of a mayor are in the hands of the governor in NY. That said, Andrew is a special class of despicable, in that he actively sets out to hurt working families. Shelly Silver did many things that damaged the middle class in favor of the 1%, but he was just a corrupt common criminal lining his pockets, not someone on a mission to hurt others.
Kropadope
But if he gets the nomination, we HAVE to vote for him, amirite?
Emma
@CONGRATULATIONS!: Gah. No. Loki has a sense of humor — nasty as it might be — and he looks like Tom Hiddleston. He is Erra, the Akkadian plague god.
Linnaeus
@daveNYC:
Not anymore. That ended in December 2014.
This is a loophole that the drafters of Michigan’s revised state constitution probably didn’t anticipate. The idea was to prevent appropriations bills from constantly being subject to referenda and hence blocking the state government from doing, well, anything.
Villago Delenda Est
That high-pitched whirring you’re hearing? Andrew’s dad rolling over in his grave at near-relativistic speeds.
Villago Delenda Est
@daveNYC: Oregon seriously fucked itself over back in the 80’s with a ballot measure that detached property taxes from school financing. A handful of people (as happened with California’s infamous Prop 13) made out like bandits, but the vast majority began to suffer almost immediately.
Paul in KY
@Calouste: Must be for a 3rd party run. Your average Repub, when they figure out what Darth Creepo did, will cackle with glee. That’s just racin!!!
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
Doesn’t this happen all the time when the city is majority black and the State is in the hands of dixiecrats or Republicans? E.g. Detroit, Flint, Atlanta, Milwaukee, St. Louis…
JGabriel
@Kropadope:
No. If we’re going to have someone who acts like a Republican in the White House, then I’d rather it be a Republican so they get the blame. There’s very little I dislike more than my party getting blamed, for shit I never supported, and deserving it.
If Cuomo is ever the Democratic Presidential nominee, that will be the year to vote for the Green Party candidate (or the WFP if they aren’t cross-endorsing).
And I’m a New Yorker, so I know whereof I speak.
Linnaeus
@daveNYC:
Also not anymore. It gets a little complicated here: after the emergency manager is gone (which, in Flint’s case, was at the end of last April), control then moves to a transitional board that is supposed to ensure that the municipality, school district, etc. remains on a sound footing while control is returned to local government.
Right now, Flint is in the middle of that process. Some executive powers have been restored to the mayor, such as executive appointments and such.
raven
@Villago Delenda Est: Check out “Savage Inequalities” by Kozol. It pegs property taxes as a school funding mechanism to “mandatory inequality”.
Villago Delenda Est
@raven: The problem was that no alternate revenue stream was identified. It was left to the legislature to figure it out, and the usual suspects blocked any attempt to address the shortfall. A reliable revenue stream was discarded for a chimera.
SFAW
@bystander:
Shit.
Re: Mario Cuomo: he certainly gave good speech, but I heard he could be kind of a dick at times. Hopefully not as bad as his idiot offspring.
[Hmm, “idiot offspring” in a comment where I mention Bob Elliott? Nice symmetry. (I always liked Bob, even if his kid is about as funny as a bed of kelp.)]
scav
@p.a.: To digress, I don’t think meme and theme are entirely overlapping. meme has the idea of movement between people, of almost being infectious, a little packet of idea-plus. Theme is a bit more amorphous and implies nothing about how the coherency occurred.
SFAW
@Calouste:
What tactics? The “Carson is dropping out” thing? Or was there something else/more?
Ella in New Mexico
@Kropadope:
Well, if you don’t you’ll risk being called an “Eliza-sis” or a “Warrenista”.
daveNYC
@Linnaeus: Which is why you should never implement a constitution without playtesting it with a bunch of rules lawyering D&D types.
I thought that if the the EM resigned early, then a new one could be appointed and that would reset the two year clock. At least that is what I heard is happening with the Detroit school system.
Ridnik Chrome
@Kropadope: The horrible thing is, yeah, we probably would, because whoever the Republicans ran against him would be exponentially worse. I don’t like it any better than you do, but there it is…
Sherparick
One has to wonder at the bubble a guy like Cuomo lives in at the moment. Not even scare given him by Zephyer Teachout seems to have shaken him from his belief that way to the White House is a combination of pro-business, pro-finance and social liberalism. He seems permanently frozen in 1996 politics. Al those golden promises of neo-liberals have come a cropper. Also, it seems like his biggest thrill these days is trying to help Chrs Christie and hurt Bill DeBlasio and the middling people of New York,
raven
@Villago Delenda Est: Yea, that would fuck the deal up.
Iowa Old Lady
@SFAW: Trump’s also complaining about the mailer Cruz sent about voter violations and also that Cruz “lied” about Trump supporting Obamacare.
Schlemazel
@Kropadope:
Only if the Republican was a worse choice . . . like that would ever happen . . .
Calouste
@SFAW: The “Carson is dropping out thing”, which was just underhanded tactics. But there was also a fake mailer, which got a lot closer to actually being fraudulent.
SFAW
@Iowa Old Lady:
OK, thanks.
Anything that drags Cruz down is OK by me, but Trump is still — as the locals hereabouts pronounce it — a LOOZAH!
Mnemosyne
@raven:
What Villago said. Freezing California’s property taxes was an absolute disaster for the state’s schools, because no alternative funding source replaced it. Plus it makes a major contribution to our affordable housing problem.
ThresherK (GPad)
@p.a.: Yakety Sax for me. It’s got more freneticism.
Bobby Thomson
Cuomo is singularly responsible for me taking a fresh look at Hillary after 2008
Schlemazel
@Calouste:
I do love that the goppers are using their standard bullshit tactics on each other now. Of course they whine it is soooooo unfair – when it is done to them. I am sad that so many decided not to go on, it would have been nice to have them all ripping at each other and pulling GOP certified garbage against each other. My hope is that it would damage the brand no matter which loon gets the nod and that it would highlight just exactly how awful these things are even when done to a Dem. I know that last one is a huge stretch, just call me a cockeyed optimist!
Cluttered Mind
As a resident of NYC, I have to say that it’s really frustrating how far Cuomo is willing to go just to screw with De Blasio. De Blasio is the best mayor the city has had in a long, long time, but he can’t do half of what he wants to because he’s actively getting sabotaged by the governor. The fault is 100% Cuomo’s, too. De Blasio has tried to bury the hatchet several times, and each time he just ends up getting screwed over again.
It’s really a terrible situation. I hope that we can primary Cuomo at some point, because if we had a governor who was willing to work with De Blasio instead of kneecapping him, NYC could and would drastically improve.
SFAW
@Calouste:
Thanks for the link. Interesting tactic by The Canadian Christ’s people.
Frankensteinbeck
@Ridnik Chrome:
Fortunately, the Democrats are NOT the Republicans, and allegations that Democratic presidential candidates have been conservative are asinine, so this hypothetical is going down with ‘But what if Republicans WEREN’T racists?’
SFAW
@Cluttered Mind:
Hmmm, where have we heard that before?
Maybe DeBlasio and Obama can commiserate about what it’s like having to work with Rethuglicans.
Iowa Old Lady
@SFAW: Yeah this is the guy who credited God with his win. God’s using some shifty tactics there.
schrodinger's cat
How is his buddy Eva? Both NYT and Snooze Hour recently did stories on her that painted her in not such a wonderful light.
Linnaeus
@Sherparick:
We might be seeing more of this on the Democratic side in the future.
Davis X. Machina
@Sherparick: Cuomo was flavor-of-the-month at the GOS a while back on the strength of his positions on SSM (for) and fracking (against).
His union issues in particular didn’t seem to make much of a dent…though there were people giving vocal reminders.. I suspect that’s all changed in the general leftwards drift of the party…
Original Lee
@Calouste: Co-sign. Gives Trump a lot of room for later, when the rigged electronic voting machines spit out a winner that’s not him.
Barbara
Cuomo is truly reprehensible. Even his “signature” accomplishments are shams. He engineered marriage equality legislation through the New York legislature, but the only reason approval wasn’t a foregone conclusion was because Cuomo had gone out of his way to make sure that the New York Senate stayed gerrymandered in favor of Republicans. And then, when even THAT chicanery to remain top Democratic dog in NY failed, he engineered a special deal whereby a few Democrats agreed to caucus with Rs, so again, Dems would not control both legislative bodies and Andy could call the shots. His efforts to protect Silver and Skelos are proof enough that he thrives on the current corrupt arrangements that prevail in Albany.
Ridnik Chrome
@Frankensteinbeck: It’s like when Lieberman was running for president. in 2004…
Barbara
@Original Lee: Gives him a good basis for claiming that he is not reneging on his bargain not to run as an independent, because he was not give a fair shot to become the candidate, fair and square. That would be my interpretation. Plus, you have to believe that Trump hates Cruz the same way that everybody else hates Cruz.
SFAW
@Iowa Old Lady:
Hey, he’s his father’s kid. What else would you expect?
bystander
@SFAW: Never warmed up to Chris Elliott either.
Just read about how Jason Chaffetz is helping to cover for Governor Snyder by refusing to call him. Elijah Cummings is apoplectic about it.
Original Lee
@daveNYC: Not to mention, the current state legislature has been passing bills and then passing resolutions to make those bills into emergency bills, which means they become effective as soon as the governor signs them. The Democrats can vote no all they like, but there aren’t enough of them to prevent simple passage. There are enough of them to make the GOP do this fakey two-step instead of passing “emergency” legislation outright.
SFAW
@bystander:
Well, it’s not as if Chaffetz isn’t one of the biggest assholes in Congress or anything. (Although, as a Rethug, her certainly has tons of competition.)
Original Lee
@Barbara: Oh, yes, definitely. Also gives him a chance to keep Bloomberg out of the race without actually having to talk about him.
Roger Moore
@raven:
That sounds about right to me, though there’s nothing unique about schools. The general idea that local governments should be funded primarily from local revenues helps to feed inequality. That’s exactly what feeds situations like the one in Ferguson, where the local government resorts to fines as a major source of revenue. They simply can’t raise enough money from property and sales taxes to fund their obligations, so they’re stuck dunning people however they can.
Heavy dependence on local revenues also feeds the way businesses hold local governments up for tax incentives. The businesses can hold a bidding contest to see which local government will give them the most, since the governments are desperate for whatever revenues they don’t give away. That kind of thinking also helped to drive the situation in Ferguson, because they built things with tax increment financing only to have the taxes not show up when the Great Recession hit. We need to switch as many critical local government functions to state-level funding as possible.
Original Lee
@daveNYC: Another thing missing from the state constitution is a requirement that the actual vote count be recorded. The Republicans have been making shit up about the votes. They put in a vote count, because you have to record a vote count, but the vote count has been proven to be imaginary quite a lot of the time (i.e., more votes recorded than people actually in the chamber, etc.). Somebody must have really spent a lot of time thinking about how they would rule the world.
Linnaeus
@Original Lee:
It’s not just the current state legislature. Immediate effect has been a practice for a long time, by both Democratic and Republican majorities. This article covers the issue pretty well.
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
It also exacerbates commuting problems because it discourages people from selling their houses and moving closer to where they work. And it ties our state government to wildly fluctuating (but much more progressive) income tax revenue, so that the state government is in a constant boom and bust cycle.
WarMunchkin
@Cluttered Mind: Also from NYC here. Frankly, literally everyone has been trying to fuck with DeBlasio since he was elected, for what, the crime of eating a pizza with a fork. I remember when Jon Stewart did his schtick about it – it’s surprising how humor becomes something people actually build a grudge over. Or maybe not – it’s frankly just shades of the Kerry campaign. “He’s not like you” is the message I get from things all of the time.
oklahomo
@Iowa Old Lady: An great ape exhibition. One where they’ve gotten overexcited and are tossing stuff through the bars.
goblue72
Andrew Cuomo is a gaping arsehole with vocal chords. He make corporatist Democrats look like Che Guevara. He’d be happier with a Bloomberg at Mayor than an actual liberal like De Blasio. I met Cuomo a long time ago when he was a completely useless HUD Secretary. He was a gaping arsehole then. He’s still a gaping arsehole today.
PJ
@WarMunchkin: Cuomo is a blight, but De Blasio has done plenty on his own to alienate New Yorkers. He routinely ignores local voices when it comes to development projects (re which, he is just as bad or worse than Bloomberg – BdB never met a developer to whom he didn’t want to shovel money) or pretty much anything that doesn’t align with his agenda. It also looks like he spends more time running for President than actually working as Mayor, with numerous overseas trips or speechifying around the country – and what the hell was he doing going door to door for Clinton in Iowa, other than trying to boost his profile for 2024?
goblue72
@PJ: He’s ignoring the screeching NIMBYs on the various community boards, who are a blight on housing affordability. Which is what he should be doing. The dirty secret of Bloomberg’s administration is that he oversaw a significant number of downzoning across the city, including in the boroughs. NYC’s total zoned capacity barely increased over the 12 years of Bloomberg, despite population growth. NYC lacks sufficient zoned capacity to meet its housing demand, which in large part if why housing is so expensive in NYC.
This is not just my opinion. Its the opinion of most land use policy wonks and economists familiar with NYC.
Frankensteinbeck
@Ridnik Chrome:
And did he even get the nomination as presidential candidate? Why, no, he didn’t. The closest he ever got was appointed to a candidacy of a largely ceremonial position by a presidential candidate much, much more liberal than him. Ain’t worried about having to support a Democratic presidential candidate.
PJ
@goblue72: The developments DeBlasio is promoting offer only a promise of some affordable housing somewhere down the road somewhere else – the Atlantic Yards project has been underway for more than 10 years, and there is still no affordable housing there. The finished units for these development projects are mostly money-laundering vehicles and boltholes for foreign oligarchs. There is plenty of real estate for “affordable” housing in New York City (East New York, anyone?) but it is not where the wealthy want to live, thus the pressure from DeBlasio and people like you to sell public assets in desirable locations and build them there.
Gelfling545
I actually disliked Pataki less as governor than I do Cuomo.
goblue72
@PJ: The pushback de Blasio has been getting has not been about selling public assets. Its been about his proposals to up-zone in various parts of NYC, including in the neighborhoods – which is something NYC sorely needs. He has also been met with opposition over his proposals to include mandatory inclusionary units (i.e. below-market rate) as part of the up zones.
I work in the real estate development industry, focusing on multifamily residential. I am quite familiar with what is going on with de Blasio’s proposals. Its not a give-away. Its the first real attempt in many many years to provide two things NYC has long needed – a BMR requirement with some teeth, and materially increasing the city’s zoned capacity in the neighborhoods. It is the most progressive housing policy to come out the mayor’s office in a long time.
And predictably, its being met with opposition from real estate developers who don’t want to provide BMR units and by NIMBY groups (which is what most of the community boards are) who don’t want increased density and some of whom don’t want poor people living next door.
goblue72
@Gelfling545: Not surprising. Pataki was your standard old school boilerplate Northeast Republican. Cuomo is a bleeding arsehole on two legs.
PJ
@goblue72: “Increased density” means destruction of views, lack of light, increased overcrowding of already overcrowded schools, overburdening of transportation, overburdening of sewers, etc. Developers are never required to pay for any of these things, so it’s not surprising that people object when a forty story building housing thousands of people is dropped on their block.
goblue72
@PJ: What you have recited is the usual litany of bullshit complaints from NIMBYs in every city, suburb and town across this country. Which bullshit complaints I applaud de Blasio for attempting to ignore.
Its the usual B.S. that we can’t have any more housing units until my list of impossible demands is met. Its complete NIMBY crap. And its why housing in the most restricted, pro-NIMBY cities – NYC, Boston, San Francisco – is so expensive. While those jurisdictions which mostly – or in part – tell NIMBY’s to shove it, are not seeing the same kinds of housing affordability crises that NYC, Boston and SF are seeing.
mclaren
“Affordable housing” and “New York City” are mutually exclusive. If you want affordable housing, do not go to New York City.
Face facts, folks: New York City is and for about 40 years has been a place for superwealthy billionaires to frolic in their limousines and penthouses. If you won’t take a helicopter to work, you have absolutely no business whatsoever living in New York City.
mclaren
@Mnemosyne:
The first part is the usual belligerently aggressive Mnemosyne lie, and the second part is irrelevant.
First part: documented fact — the state of California now spends 30% of its annual budget on finding K-12 schools to make up for the shortfall from Proposition 13. This is not just a typical Mnemosyne lie, it’s an aggressively stupid and ignorant lie. This is the reason no one likes Mnemosyne — she pollutes the conversation with this kind of aggressively false bullshit, so easily debunked, yet so persistently purveyed.
The real hit to education in California comes not at the K-12 level, which is now well-funded courtesy of the state budget, but higher education, the funding for which has absolutely collapsed. Over the past 50 years, California’s funding priorities for prisons and colleges have exactly switched. In 2015 California spent the same small percentage of its budget on state colleges that in 1965 California spent on its tiny prison system: and in 2015, California spent the same vast percentage of its budget on prisons that in 1965 California used to spend on its once-immense program of college construction, back when California had the finest state college system in the world and was known around the world as “the science state” and “the education state.” But these are entirely a matter of priorities. Stupid ignorant sociopaths like Mnemosyne have eagerly voted to fund an immense statewide gulag system in which one out of every five prison guards now make more than $100,000 per year, so that the prison guard’s union runs California as a wholly owned subsidiary. People like Mnemosyne could change this toxic situation tomorrow by voting down prison appropriations and voting against punitive laws that incarcerate more and more people for less and less important pseudocrimes (like smoking weed), but of course stupid ignorant people like Mnemosyne stubbornly refuse to legalize marijuana or slash the insane punitive laws that have turned California into a vast gulag with a nice beachfront view, and most of all stupid ignorant people like Mnemosyne refuse to vote in propositions that would shut down the power of the prison guards’ union. So the problems with California’s dying collapsing higher education system are entirely laid to the feet of sociopaths like Mnemosyne.
As for the second part of her claim, namely that Proposition 13 somehow brought about unaffordable California housing, that’s a laugh. California housing became unaffordable in the early 1970s and has continued to skyrocket ever since, and it has nothing to do with Proposition 13. What it has to do with is growth. Read the book Cadillac Desert and you’ll realize that when cities like San Diego grow from 573,000 people in 1960 to 1.35 million people in 2015, property values can’t help but skyrocket.
The state of California bloated in population from 15.87 million people in 1960 to 39 million people in 2015, most of them concentrated in Southern California. No single state proposition or law is going to prevent property values from going insane under that kind of crazy growth.
If you want California property values to stop growing, forget about repealing Proposition 13, that won’t do a goddamn thing — what you really need to do is stop the endless stampede of people flooding and rushing and racing and deluging and pouring into the state of California from everywhere else in America.
goblue72
@mclaren: Ok, you started off making sense in terms of how education funding actually works in California – and that indeed, Prop 13 can’t be blamed for it.
Then you run off the rails as usual – in this case, in some zero population growth type rant that is completely divorced from fact.
California’s housing costs are indeed out of control. And yes, indeed, California saw its housing cost started to increased faster than inflation, with the problem starting in the 1970s. But its not because of population growth – the population boom in California started decades earlier. Rather, it can be laid at the feet of California’s land use laws and the anti-growth movement that started in the 1970s. The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) is one of the prime culprits – along with significant anti-growth policies enacted at the local level.
In just one example, Los Angeles today has a LOWER total zoned capacity than it did in the 1950s. Not by a few hundred units of zoned capacity, but by MILLIONS of less units of zoned capacity.
Link to Los Angeles study.
All of this was recently outlined by the the state’s nonpartisan Legislate Analyst’s Office.
Link to LAO report.
PJ
@goblue72: If quality of life is “bullshit”, why don’t you just move to Beijing, or Houston, where zoning is practically non-existent?
PurpleGirl
A problem that has not been addressed nationally is what to do with nuclear waste — not just from reactors but from medical tests and treatments and other uses. Because Mario Cuomo refused to sign a multistate compact, NYS’s various nuclear material users must keep the wastes stored on their grounds in (mostly) lead caskets. Instead of leading the state and explaining to residents the benefits of joining the Northeast Compact, he ran from the issue in the face of lobbyists. So every so often the Indian Point Nuclear complex is noted for having waste on its grounds, making it a terrorist target or a possible accident in the making but the operators can’t send the waste any where. NYS has no waste facility of its own (again, thanks to Cuomo) and it can’t ship it someplace else because under Compact rules, compact facilities only take waste from its members. And NYS isn’t a compact member.
He also refused to back the use of the Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant. It just kept being re-enginered every time there was a problem at another plant. A system would be reconstructed and then torn out again and rebuilt; over and over. He also backed the state and locality charging LILCO taxes on the plant as if it was already “used and useful”. Of course, these two moves made the plant construction costs ever increasing. The taxes meant that LILCO had to keep increasing its rates. The plant was originally sighted at Shoreham because the area was sparsely populated. But as the construction went on and taxes went to local school district and local property taxes were low, people began moving there. Then they began being concerned about nuclear accidents. Cuomo’s big solution was to create the Long Island Power Authority, kill LILCO and change Shoreham to a plant using gas. And Long Island still has among the highest electric rates in the country.
Something else Mario Cuomo did as governor was to play with state employee pensions, creating a tier system and reducing state contributions for a large number of workers. It lowered what people got when they retired.
Mario Cuomo talked a good game and gave a good speech but he wasn’t always a good governor.
JBL72
@Yutsano: Ummm… Seattle’s population is 662,400, which represents a little more than 9% of the total population of Washington State. New York City’s population is 8,491,079, which represents nearly 43% of the total population of New York State.
Paul in KY
@Kropadope: Yes, if your ‘standard’ modern Republican is agin him.
This would certainly be the definition of ‘lesser of 2 evils’.