Author: admin

Charles Manson died this past week at the age of eighty-three.

He was the leader of a cult called the Manson family in California during the latter half of the 1960’s.

On August 9th and 10th in 1969, he and some of his followers slaughtered seven innocent people in two homes in Los Angeles.

The ostensible reason Manson gave for the murders was to provoke a race war from which his “family” would survive and lead the victorious African-Americans because they would be unable to govern themselves.

All of the participants were convicted of the murders they committed and were sentenced to death.

When California did away with the death penalty the sentences were changed to life imprisonment and they became parole eligible.

Manson was denied parole a dozen times and died in prison.

As the news of Manson’s impending death was reported, I hoped that he would not be the subject of an extensive obituary by the New York Times.

I am a daily reader of the Times. I view it as America’s newspaper of record and trust the accuracy of the facts it reports.

My feeling was and is that while the news of his death merited being reported, an extensive recounting of his life in an obituary did not.

Bruce Weber, who retired from the New York Times last year, described the process for how a New York Times obituary is decided and written.

He reported that the decision whether to write an obituary was an editorial one made at the highest level of the newspaper.

The decision, the research and writing often occur long before the subject’s death.

Sometimes, the subject of the future obituary is contacted for an interview about their life and it has led to the occasional inquiry by the subject about whether an obituary is being prepared.

Weber reported that often, when family and friends are contacted after a death, they perceive that an obituary in the New York Times is a kind of honor and “is going to give validity to the person they lost.”

In the course of his eight year stint writing obituaries, Weber reported that only a dozen of his may have ran on the front page.

Thus the placement on the front page of the New York Times is an additional “honor” above and beyond the obituary itself.

I therefore, was singularly disappointed to pick up the Thursday, November 21st edition of the New York Times and see a front page obituary of Charles Manson.

The author of the piece was Margalit Fox, whose biography disclosed she was under the age of ten when Manson and his fellow murderers went on their homicidal rampage.

Perhaps because she was too young to have appreciated the gruesome horror of the crimes and what was revealed in the trials that followed, she went in search of meaning in Manson’s life.

She posited Manson as an “enigma,” wondering whether he was “a paranoid schizophrenic,” or a “sociopath devoid of human feeling” or “a charismatic guru as his followers once believed and his fans still do?”

To be fair, she also offered whether “…was he simply flotsam, a man whose life, The New York Times wrote in 1970 stands as a monument to parental neglect and the future of the public correctional system?”

Ms. Fox credited him with actually “espousing a philosophy that was idiosyncratic mix of scientology, hippie anti-authoritarianism, Beatles lyrics, the Book of Revelation and the writings of Hitler.”

Anyone who has ever watched or listened to the ravings of Charles Manson during an interview, knows that Ms. Fox owes an apology to philosophers everywhere.

Additional space was allotted to describing Manson’s musical talent in singing and songwriting despite the fact that the scene of the first night’s murders was chosen because the record producer, Terry Melcher, who had found Manson’s talent lacking, lived there.

The New York Times has memorialized many deserving figures in death through its penetrating and detailed recounting of their lives.

Almost all of them have made significant contributions to the world in whatever field they endeavored.

I can’t help but feel that devoting almost two full pages, beginning on the front page, to Charles Manson by portraying him as some kind of cultural icon, cheapens that recognition.

If the Times felt compelled to sum up Manson’s passing rather than simply report his death, they could have done it in five short words.

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

It’s time that we discussed Roy Moore.

Moore is the Republican candidate for a United States Senate seat, formerly held by Attorney-General Jeff Sessions that will be filled in a special election on December twelfth.

Moore came by the nomination by defeating the Republican appointee in the republican primary, named Luther Strange.

I have to say that the loss of a “Senator Strange” was something of a disappointment for me.

The only consolation was that Roy Moore was even stranger.

Moore was elected twice and removed twice as the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court.

The first time he was removed in2003 was due to his refusal to remove a 5,280 pound granite sculpture of the Ten Commandments that he had placed in the lobby of the rotunda at the Alabama Supreme Court.

Moore sought the Republican nomination for Governor in the Republican primaries in 2006 and 2010 but was defeated both times.

He was elected Chief Justice again in 2013 but was suspended in May 2016 for ordering state probate justices not to issue marriage licenses to same sex couples despite the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges upholding their right to marry.

He resigned from the Court in April 2017 in order to run for the Senate seat being vacated by Sessions.
Moore is avowedly anti-Muslim, anti-Gay and has ties to neo-Confederate and white nationalist groups.

He was a proponent of the “birther” movement that President Obama was not born in this country.

He espouses the belief that Christianity supersedes public laws.

His Democratic opponent is former United States Attorney, Doug Jones, who successfully prosecuted the Ku Klux Klan members that committed the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, in which four little girls were murdered, almost forty years after the crime was committed.

While the wisdom in making a choice in this race would seem readily apparent, until this week, Moore was winning.

That came to a halt when a woman disclosed that Moore molested her when she was fourteen and he was a thirty-four year old assistant district attorney.

Her disclosure was corroborated by family and friends to whom she confided at the time it occurred.

Several other women also disclosed that Moore tried to establish a relationship with them when they were teenagers and he was in his thirties.

Moore denies all of the allegations and claims it is a “political hit job” designed by the Clintons, the Washington Post and the Washington, D.C. establishment.

The reaction to these disclosures is, to say the least, interesting.

A number of Moore’s fellow evangelicals have compared Moore’s interests in teenage girls to Joseph and Mary.

What they seem to forget is that Jesus was the product of a virgin birth not pedophilia.

Moreover, I can’t recall anyone comparing Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky to Joseph and Mary.

Which leads us, to the issue of whether this is a political hit job orchestrated by the Clintons.

I want to say right up front that, as the father of two daughters, I have never defended, justified or tried to explain or rationalize Bill Clinton’s sexual conduct.

Call me naïve, but it would seem to me that the last thing the Clintons would want to devise is a political hit job scenario involving a public official and a young girl that would dredge up the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal again.

Nor do I see what gain there is in the Clinton’s trying to discredit Roy Moore since both are out of office and unlikely to seek office again.

The other reaction is thee repeated refrain from Moore and his defenders of “Why now?”

You would have to be living in a cave to have missed the titanic wave of accusations and disclosures about inappropriate sexual conduct, beginning with Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, Roger Ailes, Bill O’Reilly and, now, Al Franken, that have rocked Hollywood, Washington, D.C. and a multitude of state capitals.

As each woman has found the courage to come forward and disclose this abuse, it has clearly empowered other victims to do the same.

Roy Moore’s victims are no different.

The other observation that I can offer, after almost two decades sitting on a criminal court bench, is that women don’t fabricate these experiences.

Roy Moore’s conduct fits the same pattern as Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby and a certain public official whose boasts were caught on an Access Hollywood tape.

Moore has a prototype for his victims and a pattern of victimizing them that amounts to serial abuse.

Almost a quarter of a century ago, Daniel Patrick Moynihan published an article in the American Educator entitled “Defining Deviance Down” in which he assailed the redefining of behavior, formerly considered abnormal to acceptable.

I have been heartened by the outrage almost universally expressed at the conduct of Weinstein, Cosby and their ilk but I also offer this sobering observation.

If Roy Moore is elected to the United States Senate, after we have learned what he has done, than we haven’t hit bottom yet.

This past Tuesday was Election Day.

While it was an “off year” election, one which had no Presidential or Congressional races, the offices being filled were nevertheless important.

Syracuse chose its fifty-fourth Mayor from a field of four candidates.

It also selected three new members to the nine member Common Council. Two were the result of term limits and the other because the incumbent declined to seek re-election.

Despite the importance of these offices to city residents, only thirty-five percent of city voters eligible to vote exercised their franchise.

It was the second worst turnout in the City’s history.

In 2013 the turnout was a measly twenty-four percent but, to be fair to voters, it should be noted that there was no Republican candidate on the ballot.

During the Democratic primary election to choose the candidate for Mayor only twenty-one percent of the Democratic voters turned out despite a field of three possible choices.

This was significantly lower than the forty-one percent that voted in the 1993 Democratic primary in which I was a candidate for Mayor.

I am proud to have been a candidate that achieved that turnout –even if I was disappointed at the result.

The 24,174 votes cast in this general election is far cry from the 97,000 votes cast in the mayoral race in 1949, the year I was born.

There are a multitude of reasons for this low turnout.

At the outset, it has to be noted that the population of Syracuse has shrunk.

In 1950, Syracuse ranked forty-seventh in size with a population of 220,583 people.

Today, it ranks one-hundred and eighty-third with a population of 143,378.

Some of this decline is attributable to the suburban sprawl that central New York experienced.

The manufacturing and industrial decline that hit the region as large employers closed and moved their operations to other parts of the country and overseas is another factor.

Another factor, although difficult to measure, is how city residents get their news.

In 1949 and earlier there were two newspapers and even more at the turn of that century.

These newspapers published several times per day and there was always fresh information in each succeeding edition.

The current newspaper, the Syracuse-Post Standard, is delivered to subscribers on only three days per week.

The Syracuse.com website is free but one can only speculate whether the poor and the elderly have computers and internet access.

One can also purchase a daily edition but the price is one dollar and twenty-five cents and the Sunday edition is three dollars.

It seems doubtful that people living in poverty or on fixed incomes will build that weekly expense into their budget.

That leaves a fully informed city electorate wanting.

There are, of course, other reasons that people don’t turn out to vote.

We just elected a President of the United States that spent over a year proclaiming that the system is “rigged.”

Although he hasn’t made that claim since he won, the message lives on.

The United States Supreme Court has turned the electoral process into a cesspool with its idiotic ruling that unlimited amounts of money can be spent because it amounts to “Free Speech.”

Add to that, the tax laws allow for the creation of entities that not only can spend unlimited amounts of money but can also shroud the donors in secrecy, and it’s not hard to see why voters are turned off and don’t trust the system.

We also don’t make it easy to vote.

Some states engage in outright voter suppression by limiting or eliminating early voting.

Others impose onerous identification requirements that hit the poor particularly hard.

Even our own state has fairly stringent residency requirements that must be met which discourage student voting and the transient population at the lower end of the economic ladder.

Contrast that with Oregon, which allows voting by mail and has a participation level in the eightieth percentile.

Finally, there are a significant number of people, especially here in New York, who believe it doesn’t make any difference who they vote for, that all politicians are corrupt and reform is impossible.

When one considers the number of public officials at the state and local level that are convicted of felonies related to their office, it’s hard to dispel the corruption notion.

The best evidence of the public’s cynicism was displayed in the election results this past week.

A proposition that would require public officials to forfeit their pensions if convicted of a felony related to their office was on the ballot.

Never mind the fact that it was a watered down version which contained plenty of exceptions and wiggle room that would allow these convicted felon to collect their pensions while in prison.

It passed overwhelmingly.

At the same time a measure that would have called for a constitutional convention, at which many reform measures could have been proposed, failed miserably.

The reason?

Voters believed that the delegates to the constitutional convention would be the same officials that are already in office.

Unless we find a way to address the issues that breed this public cynicism and despair, we can look forward to seeing an ever increasing shrinkage in voter turnout and participation.

That would be a shame because we are, after all, as Abraham Lincoln said in the dark days of the Civil War, “the last best hope on earth.”

This past week, State Comptroller, Tom DiNapoli, reported in a mid-fiscal year update that tax collections are three-hundred seventy-one million dollars below the expected personal income tax collections projected by the State Budget Division.

DiNapoli predicts that if this trend continues, the four billion dollar state budget shortfall currently projected will grow.

Add to this, potential reductions in federal funding for various state programs and the state could be facing catastrophe.

Whenever we get this news, I cannot help but re-examine the wisdom of our state officials and the decisions they make when times appear to be flush.

In 2015, New York received 714 million dollars from a class action brought against the largest tobacco companies.

Earlier this year, the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle reported that New York State, in recent years, had been the recipient of over nine billion dollars in settlement money from Wall Street settlements with twenty-two different entities.

One would have thought those funds would have been held in reserve to meet whatever budget crisis that might materialize.

And if one didn’t materialize?

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, New York has a debt amounting to $ 137, 369, 089, 000 amounting to $ 6,956.00 per person.

We rank second in indebtedness only behind the State of California.

Faced with this sea of red ink, our state leaders decide to spend the settlement windfalls and kick the can of debt down the road for future legislators and generations to deal with.

As I once heard an official in Albany describe it, “it doesn’t make any difference if you drown in six inches of water or six feet of water, so you might as well go in deep.”

So, what did our state officials spend these latest windfalls on?

Well, some of the tobacco settlement money went towards a $ 700,000 sprinkler system at a public golf course in Niagara County.

Another $ 24,000,000 was used to build a new county jail and office building.

Despite the fact that the tobacco settlement would have provided 206 billion dollars over twenty-five years to the states that were part of the class action, New York, because its officials were anxious to use the money, was one of the states that issued bonds against its future payments.

This money grab means the state traded its future payments for immediate payment for pennies on the dollar.

Moreover, the bonds they issued are capital appreciation bonds which defer all interest payments for fifty years when the interest and principal come due together.

The nine states and three other entities issued 22.6 billion dollars in bonds in exchange for payment in the amount of 573.2 million dollars. When the bonds mature they will owe 67.1 billion to the bond holders.

Talk about kicking the can down the road.

The most recent ten billion dollar settlements are being used for one time state budget relief rather than capital improvements according to DiNapoli.

Funds are also being committed to Cuomo’s vaunted “buffalo Billion.”

A cynic would be tempted to ask whether the program has produced more jobs or indictments?

In western New York, the preferred developer, L.P. Ciminelli is under indictment charged with bribery, bid rigging and assorted other crimes in connection with the projects touted to boost the economy there.

Here, in central New York, COR, the preferred developer finds itself in the same situation.

Other defendants include the former founder and President of SUNY Polytech Institute in Albany which was to oversee the projects and the Governor’s closest confidante, once described as “Mario Cuomo’s third son” by the Governor.

Despite Cuomo’s claim that the “buffalo Billion” was a national success story, economically the region lags behind the nation and the rest of the state in job growth, downtown office vacancies rose last year and the poverty rate in both Buffalo and Rochester is climbing.

Locally, we have a fifteen million dollar film hub that sits empty while COR and SUNY Polytech fight over unpaid rent in court.

One of the criticisms the State Comptroller leveled was that if these windfall were going to be utilized, it could best used to fund public infrastructure projects.

Locally, we have a water system that was constructed almost one-hundred and twenty-five years ago.

Water began flowing through it in 1894.

It consists of nineteen miles of thirty inch pipe flowing from Skaneateles lake to Woodland Reservoir on the City’s west side and into five-hundred miles of water mains throughout the city.

Due to its age, the system suffers hundreds of leaks and breaks each year.

Repairing the pipes would have provided the kind of infrastructure project that would have insured long term employment for many central New York residents and stanched the loss of thousands of gallons of water each year.

Two years ago Cuomo was asked whether spending fifty million dollars at the State Fair might not be better spent on repairing Syracuse’s water system.

In response, he told us, “Fix your own pipes.”

Ten days ago, Cuomo announced that he was using one million dollars from Empire State Clean Water Fund to buy water filtration systems.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is that the filtration systems are for Puerto Rico.

Now there is a wise use of state taxpayer dollars.

And I thought he was starting to see the light.

To hear Trump proclaim it, it will be the “biggest tax cut in U.S. history.”

I don’t know how he managed to leave “amazing” out of the sentence but it is that too.

Trump was speaking of the still unveiled tax cut that he hopes to enact if he can hold his two vote Republican majority in line in the Senate.

The budget bill which passed by the Senate contains some pretty draconian cuts to Medicare and Medicaid and imperils those programs in the years to come.

Ignoring the fact that the baby boomer generation is retiring in increasing numbers and accessing Medicare, the budget plan would cut Medicare funding by four-hundred seventy-three billion dollars over the next ten years.

Add to that cuts in Medicaid funding over the same time period in the amount of one trillion dollars and you can see the pain that will be inflicted on the poor, children and seniors, particularly those confined to nursing homes.

Typically, an advanced and modern society provides for its elderly, particularly when they have worked all their lives and are expecting to enjoy the fruits of the programs that they have funded during their working years, but I guess we didn’t count on having Lewis Carroll in the White House.

On Thursday, the budget barely passed the House of Representatives as representatives from high tax states cringed at the prospect that the deduction for state and local taxes may be eliminated.

If one likes to read tea leaves to guess what will happen on this particular issue, the fact that House leaders canceled a meeting to discuss a compromise position, once they had secured the votes to pass the budget does not portend a favorable resolution of the deduction.

Another “revenue raiser” is the prospect that the deduction for 401-k retirement contributions may be scaled back.

While Trump contends that this last deduction will not be altered, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman, Kevin Brady and Senate Finance Committee Chair Orrin Hatch contend that they are not wedded to this position and open to changing the deduction.

Now that Trump and his Party have identified the 1.5 trillion dollars in spending cuts they need to finance his tax cut, they need to work out what the specific will be.

As usual, the devil is in the details.

The tax cut is generally predicated on the “Laffer Curve,” a theory that holds that if you cut taxes it will stimulate the economy and lead to more jobs which will produce more revenue.

It served as the basis for Reagan’s tax cut in 1986 and George W. Bush’s tax cut in 2000.

In practice, it has proven to have no more basis in reality than the theory that the world is actually flat.

Still, it gives the GOP talking points and allows them to proclaim that they are the champions of the middle class.

Trump and the GOP leaders seem wedded to cutting the corporate tax rate from thirty-five percent to twenty percent, reducing the number of tax brackets from seven to three and eliminating the estate tax and the alternative minimum tax.

How any of this benefits the middle class remains to be seen.

Tax experts that have examined these proposals have concluded that those in the top one percent earning $ 900,000 per year or more would see a tax cut averaging $ 234,050 in 2027.

Those in the middle class, making $ 50,000 to $90,000 would see a tax cut averaging $ 660.00 and one middle class house hold in four would be paying more taxes.

Another rationale for passing a tax cut in the guise of tax reform is the mantra that it will make the tax code simpler and allow people to file their tax returns on a “postcard.”

That usually means that they are going to simplify it by eliminating deductions, like the ones discussed above.

It’s also possible that they might cut taxes and make no unpopular changes to the deductions and blow a hole in the deficit.

That would, undoubtedly, enrage the “Freedom Caucus,” doom the whole “tax reform” effort and deny Trump, McConnell and Ryan the legislative “win” they so desperately crave.

I must say that I remain mystified by self-proclaimed deficit hawks who advocate tax cuts that will increase the deficit on the spurious claim that the demonstrably false Laffer curve will produce revenues that will cure this defect.

After watching the failed repeal of the Affordable Care Act, because its replacement was so unpopular, I am perplexed that Trump, McConnell, Ryan and company would wed themselves to an equally unpopular tax measure in the belief that it will provide them with a “win.”

My sense is that if the health care markets collapse and people lose coverage because Congress and Trump undermined them and suddenly find that they are paying more in taxes because Republicans wanted to post a win for the wealthy, retribution at the polls on Election Day 2018 will be coming.

At the same time, if you’re in the middle class and this legislation passes under the guise of “reform,” you might take solace in being able to file your tax return on a post card because a stamp is all you’re going to be able to afford.
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Is there any subject that Trump won’t try to turn into a competition with President Obama’s legacy?

He has withdrawn from the Paris Accords concerning climate change that was negotiated on Obama’s watch.

He is trying to tear up the six party nuclear arms deal negotiated with Iran, while at the same time playing a dangerous game of nuclear chicken with the North Koreans.

He is trashing the health care provided to Americans under the Affordable Care Act.

He has ended the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and put the burden on Congress to find a solution.

He reminds me of a petulant child who breaks his toys on Christmas morning because he doesn’t like the gift giver.

His attempted obliteration of anything that President Obama accomplished is reminiscent of the random destruction that the Taliban and Islamic State engaged in to any cultural artifacts they encountered during their occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq.

It has become the mission of his Administration.

His Attorney General rolls back legal protections for LGBT citizens.

That’s what you expect when you appoint a cracker to run the Justice Department.

His EPA Director nullifies any clean air or climate regulations designed to prevent pollution.

That’s what you get when you designate a shill for the oil and gas industry for that position.

It makes no difference what the prior administration produced or accomplished.

It makes no difference whether it is health care for the vulnerable, clean air and water safeguards, consumer and banking protection, or anti-nuclear proliferation treaties .If it bears Obama’s signature, it must be destroyed.

Although painful to watch, I’ve become somewhat numb to the anger it used to produce.

That was, until Trump declared that he has done more to comfort the families and honor the sacrifice of soldiers killed on his watch than Presidents Bush and Obama did during their terms.

I didn’t serve in the military.

Neither did Donald Trump.

We both would have been draft eligible during the Vietnam War.

We both had student deferments and he was additionally deferred because he suffered from “heel spurs.”

Fifty years later I can vividly recall the body bags that were coming home from Vietnam with guys my age in them, at the rate of five-hundred per week.

I can still feel the agonizing pain and loss I witnessed attending the funerals of friends and classmates who were sacrificed during that war.

So, despite being jaded at the daily diatribes Trump launches on Twitter as he degrades and demeans those he decides to target, I must confess to being stunned at his politicization of honoring the dead of war.

Like most of his claims, this one is untrue.

Alternative facts, fake news, call it what you will.

Aides to both President Bush and Obama have recounted the emotional toll that both men endured in their trips to Dover Air force base to meet the caskets of those that were killed, of visiting the wounded at Walter Reed Hospital and the private meetings they held with their families.

Trump’s lack of empathy for anyone is exemplified by his claim that President Obama did not reach out to General John Kelly, his current chief of staff, after Kelly’s son was killed in Afghanistan.

Never mind the fact that Michelle Obama was seated with the General and his wife at a luncheon that the Obamas hosted to honor Gold Star families in the wake of their son’s death.

Ripping the scab off of General Kelly’s painful wound is of little moment to him if it serves as a defense of his own fake news and alternative facts.

Kelly is being badly used by a White House that is repeatedly sending him to the podium in the White House Press Room to defend the indefensible.

If it continues, it will damage his good reputation, tarnish the General’s legacy and turn him into another broken toy.

In retrospect, we probably shouldn’t be surprised by this after witnessing his attack on the Gold Star parents of Captain Kahn who was killed in Iraq or his denigration of John McCain’s torture as a prisoner of war that lasted seven years.

This latest revelatory glimpse that we get into Trump’s soul resulted from his being questioned about why it took him twelve days to comment on the death of four green berets in Niger.

The New York Post reports that the four green berets were ambushed and killed on October 4th.

Their bodies arrived at Dover Air force base on October 7th.

Instead of being there to meet the caskets, Trump was playing golf.

The explanation for the twelve day silence about the killings has yet to be forthcoming, a period when Trump was burning up his twitter feed on a host of other topics.

When he did reach out to the family of Sergeant La David T. Johnson, he offered the touching observation that, “He knew what he was signing up for, but I guess it hurts anyway.”

Maybe we’re better off that he plays golf rather than consoling the families fallen heroes.

Maybe we would all be better off, if those that voted for him, had known what we were signing up for too.

Throughout the past decade and a half we have battled Al-Qaeda and ISIS in Iraq and then Syria.

We have had one reliable ally in this regional war and that is the Peshmerga forces of the autonomous region of Iraqi-Kurdistan.

The Peshmerga are the military force that provides security to the region known as Iraqi Kurdistan.

Once we “liberated” Iraq, President Bush’s envoy to Iraq, made the brilliant decision to disband the Iraqi Army and the insurgency was born.

The Army was probably the only stable institution in post-Sadaam Hussein Iraq and once it was disbanded under the policy of de-Baathification (the cleansing of Baath party members from all participation in Iraqi government and civic affairs) the largely Sunni forces reconstituted into Al Queada in Iraq.

In the 2003 Iraq war, the Peshmerga are credited to playing a key role in the capture of Saddam Hussein.

The following year they captured a key Al Qaeda figure who revealed the identity of Osama Bin Laden’s messenger that set in motion the events that led to his death in Pakistan in 2011.

As the Islamic State swept across Iraq and Syria decimating the Iraqi armed forces, the Peshmerga together with Kurdish troops from other countries repelled them.

Iraq has always been an unworkable, unmanageable puzzle since its creation.

It was carved out by the League of Nations following World War I and placed under the authority of Britain. Established as a monarchy, it gained its independence in 1932.

In 1958 the monarchy was overthrown and the Hussein regime ruled it through the Baathist Party until 2003.

Although the regime was made up of the minority Sunni sect, it succeeded in imposing brutal repression on the Shia majority until the overthrow of Saddam in 2003.

Since then, the country has experienced one weak and chaotic attempt at coalition government after another while having to contend with Iranian backed Shia malitias.

Since launching Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003, the United States has experienced 4,424 deaths and almost 32,000 wounded in its ongoing futile attempt to bring order to the country.

In 2005 former Vice-President, Joe Biden, was the Chairman of the United States Senate foreign relations Committee.

In a New York Times Opinion piece, he proposed that each sect, Shia, Sunni and Kurds, be allowed to establish a separate state under a central Baghdad government. While he would later contend that he did not advocate “partitioning “Iraq, he clearly recognized that establishing a homogenous democracy was proving to be impossible.

On September28th the Kurds held a referendum on declaring their independence from Iraq against the wishes of every nation in the region.

The result was that ninety-seven percent of the population voted to be free.

Neighboring Turkey, which has always been hostile to the Kurds despite their military successes against the Islamic State, has threatened to cut off its oil pipeline to starve the province of needed revenues. The Turkish government fears that the outcome will fuel a similar referendum among its own Kurdish population.

Iran, which is overwhelmingly Shia, also fearing unrest among its Kurdish population, has demanded the referendum be annulled.

Both countries have joined with Baghdad in conducting military exercises on the borders they share with Kurdistan.

The Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad also opposes Kurdish independence.

The continued resistance the Kurds maintain in the face of this retaliation has now led the Baghdad government to issue arrest warrants for the leaders of the Kurdish government.

The United States has refused to recognize the outcome of the referendum and Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, has urged the Kurds to stay focused on fighting the Islamic State.

When one considers that the rise of the Islamic State and other terrorist groups in Iraq is a direct outgrowth of our disastrous mismanagement of that country after the fall of Saddam Hussein that position borders on hypocrisy in the face of the Kurdish contribution in this fight.

To be sure, the existing Kurdish government, a pseudo- monarchy is far from a democracy along with a variety of other flaws it possesses.

Whether it could establish an enduring, self-sustaining state is an open question.

Nevertheless, when one considers the enormous contributions that the Kurds have made in thwarting Islamic terrorists and oppressive regimes like Bashar-al-Assad, it is easy to see why the Kurds might now view themselves as America’s pawn rather than ally.

I remember when I was a kid, that we played a game in which one person would give a direction to all the other players about how many steps you could take and if you didn’t ask, “ Mother may I ?” you had to return to the starting line and begin playing the game again.

It seems that game has made a comeback in the Nation’s capital.

Last Sunday, fifty-nine people were shot and killed by a gunman at a concert in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Over five-hundred more were wounded or injured.

When White House Press Secretary, Sarah Huckabee-Sanders, was asked whether this might prompt legislation concerning gun sales, she said, “Now was not the time to talk about it.”

Last month, after hurricanes destroyed Houston, Texas and much of the State of Florida, Environmental Protection Agency Director, Scott Pruitt, said it was not the time or place to talk about climate change.

So, I have to ask the question, when is it time to talk about these issues?

The gunman who massacred so many innocent people in Las Vegas had a cache of twenty-three firearms in his hotel room. It consisted of sixteen assault rifles and seven handguns.

Police report that one of them was a fully automatic AK-47 type rifle with a stand to steady it while firing it.

One need only listen to the audio tape of the attack to conclude that the weapon being fired is on automatic fire.

It allowed the gunman to fire two-hundred and eighty rounds into the concertgoers in thirty-one seconds.

At this writing it is unclear whether he used a semi-automatic weapon with a bump stock or it was modified to automatic by using a conversion kit.

Both, at the present time, are legal.

Searches of homes that he owned revealed that he owned a total of forty-three firearms. All of them appear to have been purchased legally.

I have no faith that this tragedy will lead to the enactment of any common-sense restrictions concerning the sale and possession of firearms.

None were enacted after twenty children and six adults were murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut almost five years ago by a gunman wielding an assault rifle.

If anything, we have gone backwards.

In February, Trump signed legislation that made it easier for people with a history of mental illness to purchase firearms including assault weapons.

The latest National Rifle Association proposal is to allow the legalization of silencers.

It’s being portrayed as a health measure and called the “Hearing Protection Act.”

Silencers have been banned since the 1930’s because of their use by gangsters.

Needless to say, that if the gunman in Las Vegas had a silencer, none of the concertgoers would have been able to hear the sound of the automatic gunfire recorded on the films of the shooting and thee police would have had far more difficulty in locating him, increasing the carnage.

The same legislative package would also allow the legalization of armor piercing bullets.

It doesn’t get any healthier than that.

In the days following the destruction of Houston and Florida not a word was heard from the Trump Administration about climate change.

In the wake of the destruction and devastation of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, the silence has been deafening.

It’s not surprising.

Since taking office Pruitt has met almost exclusively with coal, oil and gas executives and their lobbyists.

He had no time for environmental advocates or public health groups.

He has spent all of his effort undoing the regulations and championing the cause of the climate change deniers.

I remember a time when a hurricane was a rare weather event.

Sometimes years would pass before a major one hit.

In the past month we’ve had three hurricanes, Harvey, Irma and Maria devastate parts of Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

At this writing, a fourth, Nate is scheduled to make landfall in Louisiana, striking the areas ravaged by Katrina.

During the past half century, thirty-nine of the fifty most destructive hurricanes have occurred since the turn of the century.

There can be little doubt that the increase in their frequency and power is the result of the waters of the ocean becoming warmer as the result of greenhouse gases that trigger global warming.

Oops!

I forgot that now is not the time to talk about climate change.

Several years ago I was talking to a group of law students in San Francisco and the subject of political corruption came up.

They insisted that the California State Legislature was the most corrupt in the United States.

I responded by telling them that when the Legislature convenes in New York, the crime rate in Albany goes up.

I wasn’t being entirely facetious.

During the past fourteen years twenty-nine state legislators including Sheldon Silver and Dean Skelos have been convicted of felonies.

The convictions haven’t all been for official corruption.

Some have been for physically and sexually assaulting staff members.

It seems that when the “three men in a room” are cutting deals, the other legislators waiting to be told of the deals have too much idle time on their hands.

Reigning in corruption in Albany has proven to be a fool’s errand.

Cuomo announced the creation of a Moreland Commission to examine the issue but then closed it down when the scrutiny got too close to him.

When the Commission’s files were obtained by the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara, the indictment and conviction of Assembly Speaker, Sheldon Silver and State Senate Majority Leader, Dean Skelos for official corruption soon followed.

Three months ago Silver’s convictions were revered by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

This past week Skelos convictions were reversed by the same court.

The Second Circuit was constrained to follow a United States Supreme Court ruling in United States v. McDonnell.

McDonnell was the Governor of Virginia who accepted thousands of dollars in gifts from a major contributor who sought his help in arranging meetings with Virginia state officials his business needed approvals from.

In reversing his convictions, the Supreme Cour narrowed the definition of what constitutes an official act that could be considered as evidence of a corrupt bargain, opening the door for corrupt politicians to claim that pay-to-play meetings arranged by them were merely routine constituent service.

This isn’t the first harebrained decision by the Court affecting the electoral process.

The Citizens United decision, in which the Court ruled that campaign finance restrictions were a violation of the First Amendment right to freedom of speech, allows unregulated spending, turning the electoral process into a cesspool.

During Supreme Court confirmation hearings, days are spent poring over the nominees qualifications to insure the most qualified are sitting on the Court.

When I consider the consequences of these two decisions I’m reminded of what former Speaker of the House, Sam Rayburn, once remarked, when told that John F. Kennedy’s cabinet were the “best and brightest” that America had to offer, he said, “that may be so but I wish one of them had run for sheriff once.”

Asked to comment on the Skelos reversals, Andrew Cuomo said, “Fighting corruption is right, I did it as attorney general. I think it is an ongoing process. There is no doubt that we could do more in Albany. There is no doubt that we could do more in New York City. There is no doubt that we could more federally. But you have to do it legally.”

That, from the guy who prematurely shut down the Moreland Commission, has balked at closing the LLC loophole that allows individuals to contribute unlimited amounts of money to his campaigns and whose closest associate and executive deputy secretary , Joseph Percoco (“Mario Cuomo’s third son”) is awaiting trial for political corruption along with other administration officials and campaign donors caught up on bribery, bid rigging and extortion charges emanating from his “Buffalo Billion” program.

Congressman Thomas Suozzi from long Island has introduced legislation to expand the definition of “official act” to close the loophole created by the Supreme Court in the McDonell decision. While it has bipartisan support, it remains to be seen whether it will be enacted. Politicians are not known for closing loopholes that protect them from criminal liability.

In the meantime, the acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District, Joon Kim, has vowed to reprosecute both Skelos and Silver.

Today, disgraced former congressman and convicted felon, Michael Grimm from Staten Island, announced that he would seek re-election and challenge Republican Daniel Donovan, now that he has completed a seven month prison sentence for falsifying tax returns.

It seems that there is no amount of shame or hubris that acts as a deterrent to these types of politicians, once they’ve fed at the public trough.

If Michael Grimm prevails, it will only encourage Skelos and Silver to try and rejoin Cuomo in the “three men in a room” form of governance.

Who knows ?

Maybe, someday, we could see a Governor Percoco.

On September 18, following Bill DeBlasio’s resounding win in the New York City Democratic Primary, Governor Andrew Cuomo endorsed him for re-election.

Sort of.

The topic of the endorsement came up during an interview with Cuomo on WNYC when Brian Lehrer specifically asked Cuomo if he would make an endorsement.

Cuomo’s response was that, “I am a Democrat. I support Democrats, and I’ll be support Mayor DE Blasio in the general.”

Lehrer found this to be less that overwhelming and followed up with a question, “Only because he’s a Democrat in that general kind of way? Nothing more enthusiastic than that?”

Cuomo doubled down on his anemic endorsement, replying, “No, I think in this contest, life is options, they say, right? I think in this contest, he is the better person to serve the city of New York as Mayor. Period.”

Earlier in September, Cuomo declined to endorse DeBlasio, because he isn’t a resident of the city and lives in Westchester.

He didn’t let that consideration stop him from making endorsements in other New York City races.

I will say, up front, that I find Bill DeBlasio completely underwhelming as Mayor of New York City.

I marvel at his tone deafness when it comes to crisis that occurs on his watch.

I was flabbergasted at his decision to fly off to Germany to give a speech to protesters at the G-20 summit despite the simaltaneous murder of a New York City police officer.

Still, Cuomo’s antipathy for DeBlasio is strange, considering that DeBlasio was responsible for the Working Families Party endorsing Cuomo in his re-election bid in 2015.

DeBlasio’s efforts then, forestalled a third party candidacy by Zephyr Teachout, who had garnered almost forty-percent of the Democratic primary that year without any financing.

In exchange for this designation, Cuomo pledged to work for the end of the Independent Democratic Conference, the eight elected Democratic State Senators who caucus with Republicans and restore Democratic leadership in the State Senate along with other measures.

Like most promises Cuomo makes, the statute of limitations ran out once it passed his lips.

State Senator, Jeffrey Klein, who leads the faction has described Cuomo as a “fantastic leader.”

To appreciate how little loyalty Cuomo has, all you have to do is recall the demise of the New York State Liberal Party.

The party was founded in 1940 and supported Franklin Roosevelt for President in 1944 and Harry Truman in 1948. In subsequent elections it endorsed both Democrats and Republicans alike, as well as some independent candidates, like 1980 presidential candidate John Anderson.

It provided ballot lines for Jacob Javits, Charles Goodell, John Lindsey and Rudy Giuliani.

Lindsay won a second term as Mayor of New York appearing only on the Liberal line.
It provided a ballot line for Mario Cuomo in the 1977 race for Mayor of New York, following his defeat in the Democratic primary by Ed Koch. Cuomo, like Lindsay, vigorously campaigned and turned in a credible performance.

The Party’s demise came in 2002 when it gave its endorsement to Andrew Cuomo in his challenge to Democratic Party designee, Carl McCall in the primary for Governor.

When it became apparent that Cuomo was going to lose badly, he discontinued his primary campaign.

Unlike his father and Lindsay who honored their commitment to the Liberal Party, Cuomo did not campaign and the Party fell short of the 50,000 votes required for it to have an automatic place on the ballot. It closed its offices and has never been a force in state politics again.

At this writing a host of Cuomo insiders await trial on corruption charges in the United States district Court in New York City.

Among them are Todd Howe, Joseph Percoco, assorted former state officials and large contributors to Cuomo’s campaigns.

Howe has pled guilty and is cooperating with the government in the probe.

Percoco, the lead defendant in the case, was Cuomo’s closest confidant and the man that Cuomo described as “Mario Cuomo’s third son and the one he liked best.”

When the arrests were announced, Cuomo tried to distance himself from Howe saying, “I wouldn’t call us close friends. He worked for the State for a number of years, but I had no knowledge of his personal situation.”

Howe served on both Cuomos staffs, rising to Andrew Cuomo’s chief of staff during the period that he served as Secretary of HUD in the Clinton Administration, where he recruited Percoco to work for Cuomo.

Cuomo has been silent on the subject of Percoco, venturing only that his arrest would have “broken” Mario Cuomo’s heart and offering a generic condemnation about political corruption.

I suppose that neither of those reactions should surprise anyone.

Andrew Cuomo has demonstrated, time after time, that he is only loyal to himself.