This from The Gothamist website:
With Albany crippled by ethics scandals and general political inaction, former Mayor Ed Koch told the Times it's his duty to shake things up.
"Everybody I talked to over the past year has been saying, 'Ugh, it's so awful,'" said Koch. "I finally said to myself, somebody's got to do something ... And if no one else does anything, notwithstanding the fact I'm 85 years old, I'm going to throw myself into it."
Koch is planning on bringing together a coalition of civic groups that will work together to unseat incumbents who aren't committed to reform.
"The key must be the defeat of those incumbents, regardless of party, who are responsible for this odious situation, and the election of new candidates, committed to a reform agenda, to take their place,"
he wrote in a letter, along with the leaders of the good government groups Citizens Union and New York Civic.
It's unclear exactly which state politicians he'll target, but Koch——told the paper:
"I don't believe the good ones are good enough,
and the bad ones are evil."
Now, I, for one, believe that a lot could be made of that statement.
In its Biblical overtones it touches on the truth precisely and demands a recognition of the magnitude of the problem and the candor and courage many of us are going to have to show, if Reform is going to be achieved. Koch, as a prophet might, has put it all on the line. Even at 85 he's willing to be a lightening rod for reform. It is amazing that this Greenwich Village reformer is carrying the banner of Reform into a new battle at the end of his public life, too. And importantly, he's enlisted the help of Henry Stern.
If Koch is to gain traction, if Reform is to gain traction, it will require a kind of brutal honesty that makes political enemies. It will also require of its supporters that they welcome everyone to the effort, not just the Left and not just the Right, but anyone who has the vision to see how damaging a damaged government can be.
Didn't our Founders teach the nations of Europe that when government goes bad it is up to the citizens living under that government to speak up and create something better? Today our institutions of government are guided by rules that have no moral basis, and which not informed by so much as a truncated notion of Stewardship. It is as if we awoke to a world where no one takes personal responsibility for anything.
It didn't just happen to us, it happened by us.
I hope that Urban Elephants' and their members consider signing on with Koch and Stern. Coalitions that are doing the right thing will attract people who have never worked together before. There is no Right wing or Left wing way to stop borrowing. It just has to stop. Similarly, spending has to be limited to a smaller percentage of state GDP. And if common sense is still persuasive, we will reduce taxes enough to encourage business development.
No matter what you think of his record or his schtick, Koch has offered up his time, a precious commodity at his age, and his intellect to a noble undertaking.
Good luck, Mr. Mayor, and yes, you're doin real good.
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written by Quickjustice , March 08, 2010
New York Civic is Henry Stern, who's a close friend of Koch's. I've followed the goo-goo's efforts at governmental reform in Albany for the past ten years. The problem is that their proposals for reform are procedural, not substantive. In effect, they're tinkering around the margins. Many of their proposals for reform, such as campaign financing, will make things worse. nnNew York has a massive welfare state with constituencies that control the legislature. The only way to get real reform is to break the power of the public employee unions by outlawing them. That should be done in conjunction with ending the gerrymandering that ensures re-election of incumbents, plus term limits for all state elected officials.nnThe only way to reform Albany is to restore the connection between elected officials and their constituents. Replacing the welfare state that is the cash cow funding the constituent groups that corrupt the legislature also would help.
written by insider , March 08, 2010
No one would disagree with the particulars of your program of specific reforms. Each are sorely needed and justifiable on any number of grounds.
Enacting your ideas, which is the important half of the equation, cannot happen until other changes occur. You have to lay the groundwork. The unions can't be outlawed, but it might be possible to break their strangle-hold on government.
They'll be no good news for NYS until it is made to run on a fiscally responsible basis. And one that, by law, cannot be circumvented.
Doing that alone would result in a government more nearly of a size that our people can afford. Cut a little more in order to pay down the debt, and more still, so you can begin to make taxes more nearly the level of the average state, and you will have a foundation for a responsibly operated government.
To many New Yorkers, this will seem like ordinary common sense. It will be their job to convince the rest.
Making government fiscally responsible is the first step in a long journey toward making it a desirable place to move into or start a business, but it has to begin somewhere.
We need to recognize that the rest of the nation thinks that anyone still living here is to be pitied. They see our political class as pathetic slaves to pedestrian passions, and our legal community as unwilling to bring the law to bear on the abuses.
They think our populations, from the ghetto to the school districts on Long Island, are addicted to the dole (and so they are, in one form or another). And they see no bright future for average people of ambition in our cities or towns. We have made a mess of it.
But on a practical, political plane, the answer lies in a political attack on the people who lead and who benefit from the status quo. In this, Koch is right, too.
There is no other (legal) way to change government than to win at the ballot box.
written by Quickjustice , March 08, 2010
I applaud your sentiments, but you're an incrementalist. I don't think we have time for incremental change. It's like attacking an iceberg with an ice pick.
You're right that what we do must be done within the law. That probably means a constitutional amendment accomplishing what I propose.
We also must confront the substantive issue of replacing the welfare state. It has created the underclass, and stripped the underclass of its incentives to move up the ladder of opportunity. It has ravaged minority communities, who are addicted to it. Child on child murders in Chicago? Thanks to the welfare state, our children are becoming monsters. We can do much better.
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