It’s probably bad taste to weigh in so soon on this weekend’s terrible shooting in Arizona.  But Congressman Bob Brady’s (D-PA) knee jerk legislative plan announced Sunday compels ridicule.

According to The New York Times:

Representative Bob Brady of Pennsylvania told The Caucus he plans to introduce a bill that would ban symbols like that now-infamous campaign crosshair map.

Asked if he believed the map incited the gunman in Tucson, he replied, “I don’t know what’s in that nut’s head. I would rather be safe than sorry.”

Perhaps Black Labrador’s should have been banned after the Son of Sam shootings (David Berkowitz claimed he was driven to murder by his neighbor’s midnight Lab.)  Maybe astrological signs should have been axed after the Zodiac Killer emerged.  And what about Twinkies, those spongy little bastards that professedly drove Dan White to gun down San Francisco City Supervisor Harvey Milk (recall the “The Twinkie Defense”.) How can those still be on the market?

Or maybe we’re better off ostracizing inveterately reactive politicians, like Brady, who seek to layer law upon law in an effort to control the uncontrollable — and garner headlines in the process.

The nation prays for those wounded and killed in Tucson.

Some truly frightening statistics just came out of the New York City Health Department.  They were quietly released at year’s end, tucked between reams of other health data.

Whether you are pro-choice or pro-life, these numbers have to disturb you:

Forty-one percent of all pregnancies in New York City ended in abortion in 2009 – 48% of pregnancies in the Bronx.  Sixty percent of all pregnancies among black New Yorkers were terminated in ‘09. Sixty percent.

I was privileged to help arrange a news conference this week featuring New York City Catholic Archbishop Timothy Dolan and other religious and civic leaders to alert the public to these statistics.  Much to its credit, the New York City press corps attended in great numbers to report the alarming news.

But these ratios, it turns out, are not unusual.  The rate of aborted pregnancies in New York City has remained well above the national rate of 23% for years (that number startled me, too.).

In the last 10-year period reported, more than 925,000 abortions were performed in New York City.  That’s almost a million abortions in a city of eight million.

Good God.

The news conference, sponsored by the Chiaroscuro Foundation, was intended to seek common ground between the pro-life and pro-choice communities in an effort to reduce the number of aborted pregnancies over time.

Greeting us as we arrived were ready and raucous protesters from the National Organization for Women.

I got a nice note from an old friend last night, a former President of the Log Cabin Republicans. It reminded me to keep an ear open for the gay marriage issue in Governor Cuomo’s State of the State Address today.

There was just a single mention of the issue in a 48-minute speech about the economy, which leads me to believe that gay marriage will become legal in New York State this year or next.  I’ll explain.

A little more than a year ago, in December 2009, gay marriage legislation went down in flames on the floor of the State Senate, by a vote of 38-24.  It was a surprisingly lopsided tally for two reasons: bills that get voted on in Albany never go down – the votes are always pre-arranged – and no Republicans crossed over to support the bill, although several Republicans, it was rumored, were prepared to do so.

The vote was popularly portrayed as a death knell for the marriage issue in the Empire State, but what it really was was an early sign of Governor Paterson’s profound weakness among legislators.  He was unable to line up enough Senate votes to pass the bill — in a then-Democratic chamber — so the vote ended up not being close.  (No Republican on the fence was willing to risk the wrath of the Conservative Party to cast a failed vote. I’ll come back to this later.)

The most interesting thing about that day, and the few leading up to it, was the palpable silence from New Yorkers on the issue.  There were cries of support from advocates and organized lobbying from opponents, but no one spontaneously marched on Albany.  The vote came and the vote went with nary a public glance.  Everybody was focused on the economy.

That got noticed.

Thirteen months later, attention to fiscal issues is absolute.  Witness Governor Cuomo’s speech today.  It was all about jobs, taxes, and the cost of government.  Nothing about crime.  Nothing about terrorism.  Nothing on the litany of issues of which State of the State speeches are typically constructed.  Just 17 words on gay marriage, an issue that started wildfires three years ago.

Governor Cuomo didn’t need to address these issues.  Not enough people want to hear about them right now.  The singular order of the day is: “How can you get us out of this mess?”

All the pressure that is coming to bear in the next 24-months, when New York will face a combined budget deficit of at least $17 billion, will be on the Democrats in the New York State Legislature – the union Democrats, which includes, well, pretty much all of them at this point.

But, as entrenched as they are, and as intractable as they seem, they are in an unenviable position, wedged tightly between that proverbial rock and a hard place.

On one side they face massive public pressure to cut government spending, personified in Andrew Cuomo and buoyed by virtually every editorial board in the state.  On the other they face unyielding union and “progressive” leaders, who want to protect what they have and who have heretofore proven to be the most powerful force in the state. (Democrats in safe districts fear union leader far more than they fear voters. And rightly so. Ask former State Senator Craig Johnson and former Congressman Michael McMahon.)

Something has to give.  And that’s where I think gay marriage comes in.

As distasteful as it may sound to proponents and opponents of a such a serious and emotional issue, gay marriage is a negotiating chip, and it’s going to have to be used to get allowances out of the Democrats.  If they are going to have to wrestle concessions out of the Teacher’s Union or health care workers or the Über left wing Working Families Party, they are going to have to deliver something to the “progressives” in exchange.  Gay marriage – like Don’t Ask Don’t Tell for President Obama – is a big, big prize. And a fiscally neutral one. It could very well become the trade-off for spending reform.

That will require the Republican Senate to allow a vote, however.

I bet they will.

The Republicans need fiscal victories badly – the very life of the Republican Majority depends upon it – and allowing another vote on gay marriage won’t cost them a lot with every day voters.  And I would bet that the five or six Republican votes needed to pass Gay marriage would materialize this time if it resulted in significant budget cuts.

The Conservative Party will not be happy about it – it leads the opposition to Gay marriage – but there is not the same kind of fire on this issue among New York Republicans as there is among New York Conservatives.    (I would argue that gay marriage is an issue on which the two parties would logically diverge – with the Republicans historically serving as the Party of equal rights under the law, and the Conservatives serving as the guardians of our traditions and institutions.)

Hearing so little about gay marriage today convinced me. Expect to see it law in New York within 24 months.

It was nice to hear from you, Chris Taylor.

During the American Civil War, the flag bearer was an instant target for the opposing army’s sharpshooters. Yet, in battle after battle, a felled flag bearer was instantly replaced by another willing soldier, Union and Confederate, who, in hoisting the fallen colors from the ground, knew that a bullet soon would arrive. And yet the soldiers did it. Time and again.

That practice was popularly dramatized in the closing scene of the film Glory, when Matthew Broderick, playing Colonel Robert Gould Shaw of the Massachusetts 54th “Colored” Regiment, places his hand on a shoulder of the flag bearer before the final battle and asks his assembled men, “Should this man fall, who will pick up the flag?” Broderick’s erstwhile childhood friend, brilliantly played by the actor Andre Braugher, steps forward, and, with pitch-perfect solemnity, says…”I will.”

It’s great stuff.

We don’t see that kind of nobility much today. Especially not in American politics.  It’s every man for himself in public life, with self-survival replacing “the cause” as the raison d’être.

The New York Times has a piece today about the pledge made by House Republicans to trim the federal budget by $100 billion.  The Times accurately warns of the political peril those Republicans might face if they cut popular programs.

A Civil War flag bearer might respond, “So what?”

And that’s right. So what?  What’s the worst that can happen?  You lose an election, but you will have done a service to your nation.  Your dignity is intact.

We are beginning to witness glimmers of that attitude emerging.  We see it in New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (R) and in Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino (R), with whom I’ve had the pleasure of working.  And we may very well see it in New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (D) who promises to tackle public service union largesse.

Brave officials — those willing to put everything on the line to do what’s necessary and right — may be rewarded with electoral advancement by an appreciative public.  Or they may be taken down piecemeal by organized constituencies feeding at the public trough. But either way, they will stand tall and command respect.

It’s been a long time since we’ve seen that.

I don’t often weigh in on the culture wars.  But I was floored recently to learn from my two eldest daughters that the terms A.D. (Anno Domini) and B.C. (Before Christ) have quietly been replaced in public school classrooms – at least in Westchester County, NY – with the acronyms C. E. (Common Era)  and B. C .E. (Before Common Era.)

When did that happen?

Well, apparently it’s been going on for some time, but I could not find a single friend who was aware of it, save those who hail from academia.

Apparently A.D. and B.C. are offensive to non-Christians, although I’ve never heard anyone complain about them. Never mind that the Christian Calendar – the one used by several billion people across the globe – is, well, the Christian Calendar.

One wonders if the Chinese Calendar (this is the year 4708) or the Jewish Calendar (it is 5771) also somehow offends.  Or how about the  Hindu–Arabic numeral system, the one that goes: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc.  Just infuriates you. Right?

What most stunned me, however, was how surprised my daughters were by my objection.  They simply accept as fact that B. C. E. and C. E. are proper terminologies.  And why not?  Their teachers told them so, despite 2,000 years of prior history.

I thought my heart would burst when my 12-year-old, hardly a rebel, told me last weekend that she used A.D. in a paper recently. It was marked by the teacher as “old-fashioned usage, but still acceptable.”

But for how long?

If I had another lifetime I’d love to protest this to the ends of the earth.  But there are so many fights and so little time.

Oy vey.

In 1968 a God-awful movie called “Wild in the Streets” was released.  It was great. It depicted a psychedelic national movement of young people against the older generations (reminiscent of Jack Weinberg’s “don’t trust anyone over 30”) that culminated in the battle cry pop song: “14 or Fight!,” demanding that the voting age be reduced to 14  — and with the lacing of the congressional water supply with LSD.  The spoof movie (trailer can be seen here) ran for years as the CBS Late Movie, and I probably saw it a half dozen times as a kid with one eye open, before the National Anthem would come on, announcing that the station had gone off-air for the night.

I haven’t thought of “Wild in the Streets” in 30 years, but today’s New York Times story on Europe’s discontented youth, somehow reminds me of it.  Because at no time since my own youth – I was five when that movie came out – has the rift between generations been so pronounced.

Socialist Europe is strangling its young today by artificially protecting its middle aged and elderly.  It has so tightly regulated jobs and the economy that there simply aren’t any for young people coming out of college.  And far more alarming, demographics are catching up to Europeans and the citizenry of Asian nations like Japan.  Late baby boomers virtually stopped replacing themselves with families – the average Italian couple today has 1.2 children – so fewer and fewer young workers have to support more and more older retired workers, many of whom are legally calling it quits, fat with pension benefits, while still in their fifties.

I thought about this trend a lot during the 2008 Presidential election.  I marveled at how many young Americans flocked to Barack Obama with his promise to deliver in America what European governments have delivered to their people.  But Obama was extraordinarily charismatic and he talked a heck of a game as a candidate.  That is intoxicating to young, idealistic voters.

We are beginning to see large cracks in President Obama’s support among young people, though.  Among voters in their 20’s, President Obama enjoyed a 73-percent approval rating in January 2009.  By the summer of 2010, President Obama was losing to a generic Republican candidate for president among 18-34-year olds.

This is not just about President Obama, of course.  It is about an entire generation of Americans, and their political leaders, who sold future generations down the river to benefit themselves.  We are now only beginning to see the effects of our actions.

Young voters are traditionally more liberal than older voters, especially on social issues.  But one would expect, based on how the world is going, for America’s youth to shift sharply right on economic issues, and to begin confronting its elders on decisions they have made on issues like pensions, debt, social security, and Medicare.  One wonders if that will enhance the Republican Party or drive today’s socially liberal Democratic Party to the economic right, as evidenced by newly inaugurated New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.

In the meantime, as The New York Times reports, there are tens of thousands of super-talented and educated Europeans who can’t find work in their socialist economies.  America should open its doors to them.   At our core, this is still the land of opportunity.

The New York Post’s Fred Dicker pretty much nails it today.  This may, indeed be the last chance for the Empire State.

He writes:

“The proud Empire State that produced such national-class governors as Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, Al Smith, Tom Dewey, Nelson Rockefeller and Hugh Carey became a national laughingstock, and deservedly so.

“New York once stood as a national model of how to deal with pressing social and economic needs, but now stands as an example of what states must avoid.”

Dicker pins our hopes on incoming governor Andrew Cuomo and lays the blame squarely at the feet of the past three governors.  But others are to blame as well, not the least of which is the voters.  Too few have shown interest in state or local government, tuning in only every four years for sexier national elections, and re-electing the same local officials year after year, simply because a name on the ballot is familiar to them.  We live with the results.

The political parties are to blame.  They have relied on gerrymandering rather than ideas to win state legislative elections.  Once an election is won in a heavily gerrymandered district, that official stays there until death or criminal conviction.  In only the rarest occasions – think Pedro Espada – does an elected Democrat or Republican face a primary.

The political industry holds fault.  We spend far more time fabricating public fights and chasing news cycles for short-term gain than in thinking big thoughts or in educating busy voters.

The public service unions are to blame. They have done their job too well. Our elected representatives fear them more than they fear the voters.  And rightly so.

The business community erred in trusting career politicians to keep taxing and spending at a sustainable level.  It went silent for too long.

Dicker is spot on, though.  If New York is to begin turning the corner, Governor-elect Cuomo will be the key. But he will have to put his political career on the line – he’ll have to risk everything — to save this state from insolvency. He will have to confront the unions head-on, and he will have to do it with bought-and-paid-for legislators attempting to trip him up all along the way.

Governor-elect Cuomo’s ace in the hole is the public.  If he can rally the voters – like President Reagan 30 years ago – anything can happen.  The unions, the political parties, the political handlers, and the legislators are no match for 20 million scared and  determined New Yorkers.  They alone have the clout to save this state.

If they don’t show up, though, no one man can stop this downward spiral.  New York State will survive.  But the Empire State will not.

Every New Yorker of good will wishes Governor-elect Cuomo success in the New Year.

Mayor Mike Bloomberg

Mayor Bloomberg can no longer defend himself on the snow emergency story.  Not effectively anyway.  Attempts at self-defense are like quicksand now; they are seized upon by the political hyenas – mediocre career politicians stirring up discontent against one of the most competent mayors New York has ever known – and thrown back into the Mayor’s face.  The more he fights, the deeper he’ll sink.

The stories coming out of the boroughs are awful.  They hurt to read.  A newborn dies in a Crown Heights lobby because paramedics take nine hours to arrive.  A daughter is left with the body of her deceased father for nearly a day because the coroner can’t get through to claim his body. Emergency responses interminably delayed. These are tragedies and all New Yorkers feel them.

No one wants to hear that abandoned cars and buses clogged side streets, blocking access to plows.  But that’s what happened.  That, and nearly two feet of snow fell on the city in fewer than 24 hours. And it happened Christmas weekend, catching citizens off guard.

The recriminations are only beginning.  Once the snow is cleared, the hyenas will line up at City Hall for news conferences.  There will be hearings and community forums and hastily written bills.  And they will all say the same thing:  “It wasn’t me.  It was the Mayor’s fault.”  But no legislation can stop snow from falling again in whatever quantity nature decides.

Meanwhile, the blowhards blow, without a shovel in hand.  I have yet to see a single complaining politician become part of the solution.

New York City Mayor Bloomberg is catching the wrath of cranky New Yorkers, especially from those living in the city’s four outer boroughs.  It seems the streets haven’t been plowed quickly enough of the two feet of snow dumped on Gotham 24-plus-hours ago.

“There was clearly insufficient planning, and New Yorkers are paying too steep a price,” huffs Brooklyn state Senator Carl Kruger (D).  “Someone has to be accountable.”

Particularly galling to many is the fact that Manhattan, the ostensible capital of the world, is mostly up and running while some side streets in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island remain snow-clogged.

One wonders exactly how much snow would need to fall for the Mayor to get a break from the cacophony of complainers.  If, say, 100 feet of snow were to fall, would “someone” have to be held accountable for snow on the ground a day later.  How about four feet?  Or three?  Remnants of two are clearly unacceptable.

If state Senator Kruger really wants to perform a public service, he should get a shovel.