{"id":1318,"date":"2009-11-17T16:34:00","date_gmt":"2009-11-17T20:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2009\/11\/17\/a-confederacy-of-dunces-in-albany\/"},"modified":"2009-11-17T16:34:00","modified_gmt":"2009-11-17T20:34:00","slug":"a-confederacy-of-dunces-in-albany","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2009\/11\/17\/a-confederacy-of-dunces-in-albany\/","title":{"rendered":"A confederacy of dunces in Albany"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Fools can be dangerous enough &#8212; and rogues, too &#8212; so what do you do when roguish fools rule the roost?<\/p>\n<p>The Observer&#8217;s Jimmy Vielkind <a href=\"http:\/\/www.observer.com\/2009\/politics\/carl-kruger-obstacle\">paints a devastating (and pretty entertaining)  portrait<\/a> today of a Democratic Senate caucus absolutely paralyzed by its own incompetence and venality. <\/p>\n<p>With Governor David Paterson pushing for substantive deficit reductions, his Democratic colleagues continue to trot out some of the weariest Albany theatrics. <\/p>\n<p>No one believes that any of this junk will work.  It&#8217;s not even good theater anymore.<\/p>\n<p>The latest canard?  If we just collect tobacco taxes from native reservations all our problems will be solved! <\/p>\n<p>Sigh.<\/p>\n<p>Invisible here but implied is an equally ineffective Republican caucus, which has declined to partner with Paterson. <\/p>\n<p>Presumably the GOP hopes to salvage a majority from the Democratic rubble in 2010.<\/p>\n<p>But with the increasingly unseemly Joe Bruno trial also unfolding the last few weeks, and former Governor Pataki responsible for much of the overspending, it&#8217;s hard to imagine voters looking across the aisle for salvation.<\/p>\n<p>If you can handle a taste of Albany&#8217;s Kafkaesque buffoonery, read Jimmy&#8217;s piece.  Here&#8217;s the best bit.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>&#8220;The problem with the Senate is they&#8217;re all a bunch of clowns who don&#8217;t know what the #*@&amp; they&#8217;re doing, and don&#8217;t have the votes to pass anything; it&#8217;s been like this all year,&#8221; one Democratic assemblyman said of the Senate Democrats.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>A noble institution this democracy of ours.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fools can be dangerous enough &#8212; and rogues, too &#8212; so what do you do [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1318"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1318\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}