Archive for August 3rd, 2006
While surfing around the blogoshere this evening, I ran across the following information courtesy of ReformNY, the Brennan Center blog. The folowing is the original info from the Times Union Blog.
Maloney Connects The Energy Dots
August 3, 2006 at 3:21 pm by Elizabeth BenjaminIn the wake of recent heat-related power outages, Democratic AG candidate Sean Patrick Maloney, from whom we haven’t heard a whole lot lately, called today for increased oversight of the Public Service Commission and said it isn’t doing its job because it’s larded with patronage appointees.
Maloney noted three of the four PSC commissioners (paid $109,800) and PSC Chairman Bill Flynn (paid $127,000) are Republican donors. The most recently appointed commissioner - Cheryl Buley - is married to lobbyist Jeff Buley, whose business partner is Al Pirro, husband of Republican AG candidate Jeanine Pirro.
Maloney alleged that Cheryl Buley, a former PR executive and one-time state Racing and Wagering Board member, doesn’t have the experience to be a PSC commissioner, and called her “New York’s Mike Brown” (the disgraced former FEMA head who became the poster child of the botched federal response to Hurricane Katrina.
“The Public Service Commission’s cronyism and incompetence hurts ordinary New Yorkers,” said Maloney, adding that he plans to attend a PSC hearing in Queens tonight.
Maloney’s list of who gave what to whom follows:
Follow the “original info link” for the rest of the article.
My question, after reading this, is - If this information is being uncovered by Sean Maloney, candidate for State Attorney General, why hasn’t Eliot Spitzer found the time to investigate this type of stuff? These are the things that affect NY more negatively than anything else.
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Sidney Blumenthal has written an article on Salon.com outling Bush’s plan to expand the war in the Mid-East to include Syria and Iran. Follow the link for the whole article.
The neocons’ next war
By secretly providing NSA intelligence to Israel and undermining the hapless Condi Rice, hardliners in the Bush administration are trying to widen the Middle East conflict to Iran and Syria, not stop it.
By Sidney BlumenthalAug. 03, 2006 | The National Security Agency is providing signal intelligence to Israel to monitor whether Syria and Iran are supplying new armaments to Hezbollah as it fires hundreds of missiles into northern Israel, according to a national security official with direct knowledge of the operation. President Bush has approved the secret program.
Inside the administration, neoconservatives on Vice President Dick Cheney’s national security staff and Elliott Abrams, the neoconservative senior director for the Near East on the National Security Council, are prime movers behind sharing NSA intelligence with Israel, and they have discussed Syrian and Iranian supply activities as a potential pretext for Israeli bombing of both countries, the source privy to conversations about the program says. (Intelligence, including that gathered by the NSA, has been provided to Israel in the past for various purposes.) The neoconservatives are described as enthusiastic about the possibility of using NSA intelligence as a lever to widen the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah and Israel and Hamas into a four-front war.
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Tom Suozzi spoke to a packed house in West Seneca yesterday evening. About 90 to 100 people listened to Suozzi for 35 minutes at the Carriagers Social Club. Mr. Suozzi opened up the floor to questions from the audience for the final 30 minutes of his appearance. The focus of his talk was to answer the question “why vote for Suozzi instead of Eliot Spitzer, the front-runner?”
Suozzi started out by reminding us why people are leaving New York State. The reasons are taxation, out of control government and the poor business climate. He then talked about the differences in his experience as a County Executive and Eliot Spitzer’s as State Attorney General. Tom Suozzi was elected to the County Executive position in Nassau County, a county that was in dire financial condition. He not only managed to stop the bleeding, but completely turned the county around. He accomplished this by standing up to the status quo politicians and special interests that were the root cause of the problems. He vows to do the same thing for New York State as Governor. It is not a problem caused by Democrats or Republicans, it is a problem caused by a corrupt system. He mentioned the politics of Bruno and Silver as prime causes of our economic woes.
Eliot Spitzer, on the other hand, has been Attorney General for 7 ½ years. In that time he has had more than enough opportunities to go after corruption in government. Instead, he chose to be the “Sheriff of Wall Street” and go after businesses in the financial and insurance industries. These businesses are not the reason people are fleeing the State. Instead of tackling government reform, Eliot Spitzer was more concerned with generating headlines and enhancing his political future instead of doing real good for the people of New York.
Tom Suozzi elaborated on the status quo. He pointed out that the same special interests and lobbyists who support Pataki, Silver and Bruno are the same groups supporting Eliot Spitzer. These people want Eliot Spitzer in the Governor’s mansion so they can continue business as usual in New York State. Tom Suozzi’s plan will make business as usual a thing of the past. His plan will attract businesses to New York, not just the City, but Upstate as well. When the businesses come, it is only natural that people will follow.
Suozzi said that a typical turnout in the primary, about 17% (700,000) would result in a Spitzer victory. A turnout of 1.2 million would result in a Suozzi victory. The action, or lack of, from the voters on primary day will determine the path for Western New York and the rest of the State.
A special thank you goes out to Cynthia Locklear for organizing the public meeting with Mr. Suozzi.
The future of our economic well being clearly rests with you, the voters. If 83% of the registered democrats sit back on primary day the special interests and the status quo will have a victory.
For more information read other accounts of Tom Suozzi’s visit from Cindy Locklear and Buffalo Geek.
Last night I was editing photos when the storm started to move in. I always like a good storm and pulled up the weather radar to get an idea if it would be heading right through North Buffalo. As I determined that I was right in the path of it, the thunder was getting noticeably louder. I ran out to my car to get my tripod. I never made a serious attempt before to capture shots of lightning. While I was setting up my camera a large bolt hit nearby and I lost power at home. It was out for a couple of hours. I quickly lit a couple of candles so I could see what I was doing. Shooting lighting involves a large degree of luck. My method involved using a long exposure (15 seconds) couple with an aperture setting of f/11. Once I made my best guesstimate of the camera settings necessary, I just kept shooting, hoping to catch a good shot. I took about 20 photos and managed to get lucky on the fifth one. The result is shown below.
