Politics Now

Business (not) as usual at the State Capitol

In the short-lived John Cleese comedy "Fawlty Towers," the line, "Whatever you do, don't mention the war,'' was among the more memorable.

Albany's version of that in chats these days with the Spitzer administration is, "Whatever you do, don't mention Troopergate.''

Gov. Eliot Spitzer has clearly reached his limits with reporters asking about the scandal his administration has been living through the past couple months since it was revealed top aides used the State Police to monitor the travels of Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, his GOP nemesis.

There was the famous, "Get a life, buddy,'' comment that Spitzer recently said to a Binghamton reporter asking about the matter. And, the other day, Spitzer practically jogged through a hotel lobby to avoid the topic.

For nearly two months, Spitzer has done a disappearing act at the Capitol, at least with the press corps. He's held a couple of events nearby or an hour or so away in recent weeks, but has cut off his public events in the actual seat of government.

So when it appeared on the governor's schedule that he was to be in Albany today but with no public appearances, some reporters were wondering if the governor might also be meeting with investigators from the state Commission on Public Integrity, which is looking into whether any ethics laws were violated. At one point, a rumor spread that he was meeting at the agency's office across the street from the Capitol; that apparently wasn't the case.

Asked if he had testified before the commission, Christine Anderson, a Spitzer spokeswoman, said she was going to stop answering questions about when and if the governor will be meeting with the investigators.

But, we're told, no such sessions were on Spitzer's private schedule today.

-- Tom Precious

Governor, please pass the Riesling

From three-term governor to wine master? So go some of the transition days for former Gov. George Pataki, who this week was heard at a political fundraiser boasting of his one-acre field of grapes that, he vowed, will someday result in award-winning wine.

Pataki played host at his South Farm property along Lake Champlain in Essex County this week for Sandy Treadwell, a congressional candidate and longtime Pataki loyalist, reported the Press Republican newspaper in Plattsburgh.

Treadwell, who also is growing grapes at his nearby farm, and Pataki offered up some aw-shucks farming humor – albeit the gentleman wine grower variety. Treadwell called Pataki a “trash-talking wine grower" after the former governor bragged about his crop.

“Everything (on Pataki’s farm) is perfect, except this one sad little acre," the newspaper reported Treadwell telling the crowd.

The story noted how Pataki and his wife, Libby, saw the property they would buy in 2003 as they sailed the nearby lake on Treadwell’s boat.

“I’ve got to have my chickens, and you’ve got to have your sailboat," Pataki, who perfected the art of Pataki-speak during his three terms in office, said to his wife at the gathering.

It's been an interesting journey for the former governor. A year ago, he was flying around the nation testing the waters for a possible White House bid. That mission has long since been grounded.

-- Tom Precious

Spitzer paints a dark fiscal picture

Gov. Eliot Spitzer today brought his cabinet together to tell them in person that tough fiscal times are upon the state government – and budget cuts are coming.

While one attendee described the session as somber for agency heads trying to put together their policy priorities, Christine Anderson, a Spitzer spokeswoman, insisted, “Doom and gloom wasn’t exactly the mood."

Anderson said the governor stressed several times that he is not looking to make across-the-board agency spending cuts, but is looking for a “more mature’’ response that will give more control to the department bosses to determine their spending priorities. “And which areas are not the priorities and are likely areas for cuts,"Anderson said.

The more than two-hour session featuring the governor, who has not been spending much time at the Capitol the past couple months during the scandal over the use of the State Police to monitor the travels of Spitzer’s chief political foe, came a week after he said the state is facing a $4 billion deficit next year.

Fears of a shaky Wall Street and a slowing real estate market are helping to drive down state tax revenues.

Of course, the budget enacted this year contained enough spending hikes and tax cuts – that roll into future years -- that officials were already estimating a more than $3 billion hole in the 2008-09 budget.

Indeed, while agency heads talk of cuts, it’s not like the overall size of next year’s budget will be cut from this year. The governor’s chief fiscal adviser last week said the administration hopes to keep the overall spending growth below 5.3 percent next year; that’s not triple the inflation rate level of this year’s budget, but few would call it conservative.

-- Tom Precious

Price on MoveOn.org ad a "mistake?"

  The New York Times' public editor, Clark Hoyt, told readers in his Sunday column that the newspaper erred by giving MoveOn.org a preferential price on the organization's ad attacking the integrity of Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander of U.S. ground forces in Iraq.

Hoyt said the advertisement also violated the newspaper's internal prohibitions against publishing personal attacks.

The full page ad, published Sept. 10, the week Petraeus appeared at congressional hearings, media briefings and interviews with talk show hosts, questioned whether he was "General Betray Us."

MoveOn.org paid $64,575, instead of the standard $142,083, for the ad, Hoyt wrote, echoing charges made by Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani.

Giuliani and other Republicans indicated the cut price is evidence of the liberal bias of the Times. The ad's harsh wording embarrassed a number of anti-war Democrats, particularly in the Senate, and may have deprived war opponents of support on a number of key votes on limiting U.S. involvement last week. 

Eli Pariser, MoveOn's executive director, issued a statement Sunday in which he said he believed the lower figure was the Times' normal rate.

Hoyt said FreedomsWatch.org, asked him to investigate. FreedomsWatch is a right wing organization that pushes defense spending based on the war against terrorism. The group said it wasn't offered the rate that Moveon got.

Pariser said the Times has admitted it "made a mistake ... without the knowledge or consent of MoveOn."

"Now that the Times has revealed this mistake for the first time, and while we believe that the $142,083 figure is above the market rate paid by most organizations, out of an abundance of caution we have decided to pay that rate for this ad. We will therefore wire the $77,083 difference to the Times tomorrow, September 24. 

"We call on Mayor Giuliani, who received exactly the same ad deal for the same price, to pay the corrected fee also," Pariser said.

"MoveOn continues, of course, to stand by the content of the advertisement and to urge citizens and their elected representatives in the Congress to focus on the continued dishonesty of the Bush Administration and the American blood and treasure being lost in a war for which the Administration has no exit strategy. Certainly that issue is more worthy of the attention of the electorate and the media than the mistake of an advertising representative or the wording of an advertisement."

Read a report on the issue at this link.

-- Douglas Turner   

        

Bush thinks Hillary's already elected?

President Bush left some journalists with the impression that he believes Clinton "will win the election" and that he "has been thinking about how to turn over the country to her," the Washington Post reported over the weekend.

The topic, the Post reported, "came up when Bush invited a group of morning and evening news anchors and Sunday show hosts to join him in the executive mansion's family dining room a few hours before he delivered his nationally televised address on Iraq last week.

Bush made no explicit election predictions, according to some in the room, but clearly thought Clinton would win the Democratic nomination, and talked in a way that seemed to suggest he expects her to succeed him -- and will continue his Iraq policy if she does."

The journalists "were not allowed to directly quote the president, but they were allowed to allude to his thinking," according to the report.

Clinton apparently has racked up another endorsement, this one by Democrat Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana, often rated as a liberal on reproductive issues but who often sides with Wall Street on economics.

She was grilled hard on Sunday by TV talk show hosts including Tim Russert, moderator of NBC's "Meet the Press." Russert pursued answers to why she so often voted for funding for troops in Iraq, and why she frequently criticized efforts by other Democrats to set a firm date for ending involvement in Iraq as recently as last year.

Clinton told Russert at one point she would never again vote for Iraq war funds, then later modified her answer to that she would never vote for Iraq war funds unless Bush set a date for withdrawal.

ABC's George Stephanopoulos asked her whether she would withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq during a first term as president. 'You know," she replied,  "I'm not going to get into hypotheticals and make pledges, because I don't know what I'm going to inherit, George. I don't know and neither do any of us know what will be the situation in the region." 

  --Douglas Turner

A busy day in Albany

The Senate Republicans today will make clear, again, that they have no intention of dropping their own probe of the Spitzer administration's campaign that used the State Police to track the travels of Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno.

The Senate investigations committee at noon holds another hearing into -- you pick the name -- Troopergate, Spitzergate or Choppergate. It expects to take testimony from the top counsel at the State Police. But not showing up is acting superintendent Preston Felton, who was the agency's point person in getting the travel material on Bruno to aides to Gov. Eliot Spitzer. There are indications, as the New York Post reported this morning, that the Senate will now subpoena Felton to compel his testimony.

Senate Democrats, Spitzer's most loyal allies in Albany, will protest before the hearing that the Republicans should cease its investigations of their fellow Democrat. In the wake of what the GOP is calling a whitewash investigation that was concluded Friday by Albany District Attorney David Soares, that is not going to happen.

Away from the hearings, Bruno will hold court this afternoon over the tattered state Republican Party, which has been left scrambling to re-group following the condition it found itself in following 12 years of reign by former Gov. George Pataki. The Republicans will meet in an organizational session in Albany that Bruno, the titular head of the party now, will use to continue the planning to help him hold onto the Senate next year in the face of a threatened Democratic takeover.

Finally, could there be some light at the end of this political firestorm? Bruno announced today that he and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver have agreed to a special session for Oct. 22 to consider a number of unresolved issues, including property tax breaks for seniors and some economic development plans.

Of course, it should be noted that the announcement made no word of Spitzer. Bruno and Spitzer have not had a conversation of any substance since July.

-- Tom Precious

Peter King: "Too many mosques"

In an interview with a new political Web site, Republican Rep. Peter King of Long Island, said there are "too many mosques in this country."

King, the top Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee and a likely candidate for the U.S. Senate if Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., vacates the post, told Politico.com: "There are too many people sympathetic to radical Islam. We should be looking at them more carefully and finding out how we can infiltrate them."

"I think there's been a lack of full cooperation from too many people in the Muslim community," he said.

The Democratic National Committee reacted quickly with a denunciation of King's remarks.

"Congressman King's comments are deplorable and he should apologize immediately," said DNC Press Secretary Stacie Paxton. She called on GOP presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani to remove King as his campaign's homeland security adviser.

King blinked, saying his comments were "taken entirely out context" by Politico.com. But earlier King had told conservative TV talk show host Sean Hannity that 85 percent of the mosques in the U.S. are controlled by "extremist leadership."

-- Douglas Turner

Schumer caught in the middle?

   Last March, Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., suggested that President Bush replace the embattled attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, with retired federal judge Michael Mukasey of New York City. Mukasey, Schumer has said, is a conservative but places the rule of law above all other considerations.

After nudging Gonzales out the door under Democratic pressure, Bush has nominated Mukasey to become his successor. But Newsday reports that Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy wants to delay confirmation hearings until the White House coughs up more documents dealing with the firings of federal prosecutors last December.

"Our focus now will be on securing the relevant information we need so we can proceed to schedule fair and thorough hearings," Leahy said. "Cooperation from the White House will be essential in determining that schedule."

The White House is unlikely to satisfy Democratic demands for more internal documents from the executive branch.

The Senate's top Republican, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, tossed a taunt at Schumer saying the New Yorker, "has assured us that he and his colleagues would not 'obstruct or impede' someone with (Mukasey's) qualifications." Schumer is a senior member of the Judiciary Committee, ranks third in the majority leadership and runs the Democrats campaign for 2008. Schumer had this to say: "Chairman Leahy has concerns shared by all the members of the Judiciary Committee, that we get these documents.

"The White House has stonewalled and stonewalled and stonewalled when it comes to documents that we're entitled to. But the nomination of Judge Mukasey certainly shows a new attitude in the White House. ... And, therefore, it's  my hope that the White House change in attitude will continue in the area of documents."

-- Douglas Turner

Let the debate begin on Hillary's health plan

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's new health plan, some five years in the making, has won praise from segments of the insurance industry, health care specialists and even some conservative commentators.

The New York Democrat and presidential candidate insists her plan will not create a new bureaucracy, and is driven by a hoped-for consensus among clients, industry and the federal government. But some conservatives are not so sure about that.

Karl Rove, President Bush's key domestic adviser who recently left the White House to return to Texas, said Clinton's plan "is a recipe for making problems worse."

Liberals like Clinton, Rove said, "see the concerns of families as a failure of private insurance, and want the U.S. to move toward a government-run, single-payer model."

The National Review said "Clinton's plan would make this ramshackle system worse. She proposes more regulations on insurers and a mandate on large employers to provide insurance coverage or pay a tax. The regulations will make insurance even more expensive, while the employer mandate would only augment the current senseless system of people getting insurance through their jobs."

The right-leaning Heritage Foundation said Clinton's penchant for "central planning old-fashioned central planning is objectionable on philosophical and practical grounds.

"Moreover," the foundation said, "Sen. Clinton's timing is wrong. Insurance markets differ radically in the states, and innovative state leaders are experimenting with different insurance rules for expanding both consumer choice and competition. Washington did not know best in 1993, and it still doesn't."

A  spokesman for the CATO Institute said,  "Hillary Clinton clearly trusts big government more than she trusts the free market and the American people."

From the left came a criticism from the co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Care System, Dr. David Himmelstein, associate professor of medicine at Harvard.

"Hillary Clinton is combining two failed Massachusetts plans: the [former Gov. Michael] Dukakis plan, which fell apart 20 years ago, and the [Gov. Mitt] Romney plan, which is in the process of falling apart.

    "Clinton is advocating the Marie Antoinette approach to health care: 'Let them buy their own coverage.' She is attempting to force middle class families to buy coverage without making it affordable. Clinton wants to keep the private insurance industry in the middle of the system."

   Despite the criticism, Clinton thinks the proposal is sound politics.

  The Union Leader in New Hampshire reported her campaign "launched a new 30-second television ad in New Hampshire and Iowa today touting her new, $110 billion 'American Health Choices' plan."

According to the conservative newspaper, "Her campaign's new ad tries to turn Clinton's failed attempt to bring government-run health care to the U.S. in 1994 into a positive. A voice-over in her ad says, 'She changed our thinking when she introduced universal health care to America.' The current plan, unlike the first one, Clinton said, is not a government-run system."

--  Douglas Turner

Does Treasury secretary protect China?

A noted University of Maryland economist, Peter Morici, has accused former Wall Street financier, Hank Paulson, of "fear mongering" to discourage Congress from passing legislation dealing with China's manipulation of currency so as to dominate world manufacturing.

   "Since joining the World Trade Organization in 2001, China has failed to honor many commitments to stop subsidizing exports, requiring foreign investors to source products locally, and manipulate its currency," Morici says.

    "To keep its currency undervalued and products cheap on world markets," Morici charges, " China’s central bank prints yuan to purchase, annually, more than $250 billion worth of U.S. and other western currencies. In 2006, China spent 24 percent of its export earnings on currency shenanigans.

   "All together, (China's) protectionism creates at least a 50 percent artificial price advantage for Chinese products competing on world markets. “Artificial” because these advantages are above those Chinese businesses rightfully enjoy from abundant, inexpensive labor. Hence, it is no surprise that since 2001, the U.S. trade deficit with China has jumped from $83 billion to about $250 billion."

    Congress is considering legislation that would permit U.S. industries harmed by subsidized imports to petition for tariffs that would just offset currency subsidies. Such countervailing duties are permitted by the World Trade Organization, because its treaties recognize the destructive consequences of excessive subsidies, and such WTO compliant duties are hardly protectionist.

    Paulson, whose former firm of Goldman, Sachs & Co., is heavily invested in China, claims such laws are protectionist and in violation of WTO codes.

    Morici said that if Paulson "lacks the stomach" to stand up to China, he should get out.

    Should he?

     -- Douglas Turner