TheBlackberryAlarmclock.com

Thingish Things

The Temptation of Gov. Cuomo

Who would’ve thought that the Liberal Party candidate for governor in 2002 would be the last line of defense against the public employee unions and catastrophic overspending in New York in 2012? But that’s exactly what Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo is today — the last grown-up standing in Albany, if the Republicans in the State […]

Read the rest of this entry »

Frack the Middle East

A liberal, the poet Robert Frost once said, is a man too broad-minded to take his own side in a quarrel. That seems to be what Mitt Romney was going for this week when he criticized the Obama State Department for trying to placate protesters in Cairo. Where it might have demanded from the wide […]

Read the rest of this entry »

Quote of the Day, Gov. Cuomo

“Large quantities of alcohol late at night with multiple lawmakers.” — New York Governor Andrew Cuomo quip on the secret of his legislative success in Albany. (Full story.) 

Read the rest of this entry »

A Glimpse of Bad Andrew

    Not a stellar morning for Governor Cuomo.  Ben Smith of Buzzfeed reports that his office has compiled a hit dossier on at least one of New York State’s top  political reporters, Liz Benjamin of YNN. Mr. Cuomo’s office reportedly brought the document to Ms. Benjamin’s bosses, not in a good way presumably. Mr. Cuomo’s press […]

Read the rest of this entry »

Mr. Cuomo’s Party

New York State senator Jeff Klein (D-Bronx) correctly observed yesterday what everyone but  those on the hard left recognizes: Andrew Cuomo is improving the brand of the Democratic Party. He is bringing an image of competence and centrism to an organization that had spun out of control in New York just a couple of years back. […]

Read the rest of this entry »

Great Job, Governor

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (D) drove through a major and critical first step toward necessary pension reform last night in Albany. The bill, which passed in the wee hours of the morning, will save New York City taxpayers $22 billion over 30 years and state taxpayers $50 billion. More needs to be done, but Governor […]

Read the rest of this entry »

The Not-for-Profit Conversation

There are more than three million not-for-profit corporations in America, and a heck of a lot of them receive government funding. Free money — as it has been for years — is awfully hard to resist, and non-profit programs have twisted themselves into pretzels to fit the guidelines of federal, state, and local funding streams. More than […]

Read the rest of this entry »

Gov. Cuomo Succumbs to Class War Fever

The class war in America spreads. Its latest front is New York, where Governor Andrew Cuomo (D) has succumbed to pressure from the public employee unions to hike taxes on higher-income families. That’s bad enough — New York has a spending problem, not a revenue problem — but the second part of the Cuomo tax […]

Read the rest of this entry »

Pre-Op Medicaid Redesign

You’ve got to be kidding me… New York State’s Medicaid Redesign Team is recommending to Governor Cuomo that transgender surgeries be paid for by Empire State taxpayers, according to a story today by intrepid New York Post scribe Carl Campanile. Governor Cuomo has not yet said what he will do about the proposal.  This comes from the […]

Read the rest of this entry »

New York as a Role Model?

Indiana, Wisconsin, and — yes, even New York — are cited as national bi-partisan roll models in this Chicago Tribune editorial today about Illinois’ reluctance to enact needed fiscal reforms. Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels — who a lot of people, including me, were hoping would run for president — gets glowing reviews for his work.  He has actually engineered a surplus in the […]

Read the rest of this entry »