What a maroon. What do you think?
UPDATE (by David, at 10:10 am): As far as I can tell, Spitzer’s resignation is expected today, but is not yet official, and the situation remains, as they say, “fluid.”
FURTHER UPDATE: Spitzer is scheduled to speak at 11:30 am.
Please share widely!
It’s about time! BTW what’s up with the clock on this server? Or are you able to post in the future, Bob?
have powers that you cannot begin to understand. MMMMMWAAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
All BMG posts are made about 10 minutes in the future. It accounts for our political prescience, I guess.
What do Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles, and the Governor of New York have in common?
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p>Nothing now, but ask me again at 5:00.
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p>By all accounts, Lt. Governor David Paterson, a legally blind African-American, is someone widely respected and admired in Albany. Besides being the first legally blind governor in history, he has a sharp memory, a great sense of humor, and is just the right person to heal this mess.
$80,000. He was just stimulating the … economy.
Perhaps my skepticism srises from looking st politicians with a jaundiced eye and questioning his/her motivation for public office.
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p>Just an observation—perhaps I am way off base, but——-
IMHO “progressives” are the glass is half full crowd. They immediately look at the clean, crisp, new wrapper and see the next Messiah. Perhaps it is youth, perhaps it is the boundless energy that youth brings with it, perhaps it is the need for inspiration and direction and innocence. Whatever.
But in reading postings here re Deval Patrick, Barack Obama, Elliot Spitzer. It’s all the same. The “progressive candidate” will crush the evil corrupt republicans. Their guy gives them “hope”, “change”, etc. When you get to my age, you see the same character flaws different faces. You see politicians who enter office with the best of intentions and then they are introduced to the “system”. You see politicians that talk the talk but forget about walking the walk. Politicians who look good on paper but in reality are essentially clueless. We have politicians who seem to be honest people but in reality are evil.
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p>Point being—look for inspiration but be skeptical. Don’t swallow the politicians line hook, line and sinker. Question motivation. “What’s in it for him/her? What are the nuts and bolts plan to arrive at the promised goal. Is it feasible or is it pipe dreams.
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p>Always, always——–remember that the world outside your front door is a very dangerous place. The further you venture from that front door, the world becomes increasingly more dangerous. Human beings are by nature dangerous. There is no need to be a shrinking violet or a paranoid, but use caution. You will never quiet the aggression in humanity—you learn to adapt and adjust.
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p>This election cycle is another stinker. McCain wants to welcome the third world to America, uninvited and unwelcomed by the current inhabitants, B. Obama is a carbon copy of D. Patrick, rich in rhetoric but clueless, and Hillary is a vicious, vindictive, grasping shrew. And of course we have the current nitwit Pennsylvania Ave.
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p>I guess we are all looking for the “perfect” person who doesn’t exist. Odd that the the “real good” folks just don’t want the job.
There’s truth to that, and that’s why it’s important to have a system of government in which the power of an individual, such as the President, is limited by the law. Henry Waxman and John Conyers are doing good work by investigating Bush’s Administration, and handing out contempt citations to Miers and Rove for refusing to testify before Congress, and the public who’ve paid for their salaries and pensions and healthcare benefits.
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p>While Spitzer’s hypocrisy on prostitution would ham-string any further reform laws he tried to push through the NY lege, his actions as Attorney General did much to preserve the integrity of business and the market in America. Some people on Wall Street, like AIG, who overstated earnings by $3.5 billion, think there’s no harm in deceiving investors. But there is harm, because then honest businesses lose out on investment dollars that would have gone to them. Some government officials like the Bush-Cheney acolytes think government should subsidize political donors (see also, Blackwater and Halliburton), and then there are other government officials who don’t think it’s right for corporations to distort the market, but these officials get intimidated by the corporations & their ability to donate to campaigns. Warren Buffet is a master at intimidating governments into doing things like letting him defer his taxes interest-free for sixty years. (Yeah, you read that right: American’s richest man doesn’t have to pay his taxes right now–he has permission to wait a while.)
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p>Eliot Spitzer was not intimidated. He faced down AIG with a good case, and discouraged other executives from lying to investors. When he was AG, he made the adversarial system of the judiciary work for the free market and for the people.
His utility company charges people for its federal taxes, and people pay those bills, but then his company is going to hold the money for a long, long time, until inflation makes those taxes cost the company less. Buffett’s happy to use the courts to protect his business interests but he doesn’t want to chip in to pay the bill for those courts that the government provides.
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p>Link.
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p>While we don’t need more hypocrisy from government officials, we do need officials who aren’t intimidated by powerful businessmen.
If someone here cops to young, hopeful and naive will you admit being old, bitter and downtrodden?
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p>I don’t think anyone here is ready to swallow anything whole. But they are passionate about the things they believe in. And they are looking for groups of peole to join them in pushing that agenda. Supporting a candidate–even strongly–doesn’t mean you feel they carry the torch like a messiah.
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p>I admit the liquid doesn’t go all the way to the rim. But do you even recognize there’s moisture in the glass at all?
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p>The perfect person doesn’t exist. Many of the real good people don’t want the job and the headaches that go along with it. But democracy and politics is about choosing the best available options.
I for one don’t see the glass as either half-full OR half empty.
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p>It’s just twice as big as it needs to be. đŸ™‚
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p>And how do you get away with a post headline here that states he’s resigned – when that is not yet the case?
The tragedy of all this is that up until now, Spitzer had been delivering on his nuts and bolts. I really liked David’s Spitzpatrick series from awhile back. This fiasco has set progress back a long, long way because people will become cynical about progressives who do have the right message and plans to change our states and country.
Granted there are different investigators and prosecutors, but this piranha swarm around this particular arrogant rich guy is badly out of balance. NY Republicans immediately call for impeachment, plus the seemingly ubiquitous joy at Spitzer’s hypocrisy…oh, the irony (tee hee) are understandable.
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p>However, this is more proof of the pervasiveness of right-wing morality. We have no comparable nationwide outrage against Bush, Cheney, Rove and their minions who lied us into war with thousands of American (and many tens of thousands of other) deaths, trillions of debt, and a parallel destruction of our Constitutional rights.
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p>A super-rich guy had on-going adulterous relations with prostitutes. Yup, that’s illegal (not too much though) and bad (particularly with his alleged moral stances). Yet, what does it say about us?
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p>Do we whine that he’s what we can get, that impeaching and charging the Bush administration is too, too hard? It stinks and does not speak well of us.
but the editors and producers at the Washington Post, NY Times, NBC, ABC, CBS don’t want that sentiment publicized.
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p>Bush’s approval rating is in Nixon levels. His disapproval rating is like 77%.
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p>But op-ed pages get filled with silliness and sexism, like Charlotte Allen or Maureen Dowd. People who are wrong, wrong, wrong like Bill Kristol get to be printed there weekly.
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p>Why is it so? That’s a long post, but don’t fret, massmarrier, the outrage is there. It’s just not fashionable enough for the media to mention it.
and that is the problem. there is plenty of public outrage, but not enough members of congress willing to respond to it. we are hogtied regarding bush et al. but spitzer is a very simple case, because he’s not insulated by the NY legislature.
I wish I could agree to the level of outrage. It’s fairly confined.
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p>To my original, where are the GOP moralists and Constitutional types on the Bush admin? Why are the calls for impeachment and prosecution scattered and few?
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p>Those who are outraged (including me) are very much so. There are far, far more apologists who let Bush do what he wants, so long as he pretends to fight terrorists. If the outrage were loud and strong, it would affect far more than the popularity of the President.
And I think it’s well worth mentioning. Of course, Spitzer should have resigned and what he’s done (especially the laundering), if he’s convicted of it, will be deserving of stiff penalties.
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p>That said, the media has never given this much attention to George Bush’s constitutional blunders of mass proportions. Why aren’t they giving this kind of coverage to the Tel-Co amnesty? Or the Judy Miller business? etc. Certainly, they’ve covered these stories in brief blips… but a democratic governor who hires hookers, now there’s a story! It’s ridiculous.