Ray's Annual July 4th Rant

[captainsblog]

This one's a blend.... something old and ranty, something new and ranty.

Old, because I wrote it almost five years ago, not for the 4th of July but a few weeks after that, as a potential letter/My View/somethingorother piece for the local paper. It aged and mellowed for a few more weeks, and then came 9/11, when those priorities suddenly seemed less important. Now, five years of tyranny later, the priorities seem even more important than ever.

New, because it came to mind when a cool new Friend here ::waves at luckycee:: mentioned this effort to take a day in October to protest Bush. I replied we might be better off taking a day in November- Election Day- and protest with our lever-pulling fingers. That brought this back to mind, and since I don't think I've ever posted it here (it isn't on any of my many "rant"-tagged postings), I thought I'd subject you to it now.



A recent Buffalo News letter writer made a powerful point, which had occurred to me on more than one occasion. Here we are in midsummer, with yet another state budget morass upon us, and the editorial pages of this paper (and others) decry the lack of true leadership in Albany. And yet, every other October, those same editorial pages of this paper (and the same pages in others) encourage us, again and again, to re-elect almost every one of those same leadership-lacking officials to yet another term in state office.

I may have finally figured out what explains this seeming inconsistency. I believe the high-minded visionaries of these editorial boards are convinced that “our” local leaders, warts and all, are not the cause of the State’s perpetual gridlock. No, it’s not “our” good men and women who are contributing to the delays and the malaise that infect the Capital District from January to October. It’s the leaders from the other parts of the state. In “their” cases, we condemn their intransigence, their love of lobbyists and their lusts for power- those are all bad things. But in the hands of “our” leaders, these same qualities are spun as being “seniority” and “connections” and “experience”-- and we dare not turn them out for fear of losing these same supposedly good things.

To borrow a concept from the realm of zoning and environmental law: opponents of growth and development are often portrayed as hypocrites for opposing projects, some of which they benefit directly from, and which they would not oppose if only they were located elsewhere. From this has come the catchphrase “not in my backyard” and even its recognized abbreviation, NIMBY. I think the same sentiment is at play in these contradictory indications from the press. The troubles with our hopelessly (and, you’d think, permanently) divided state political system would go away if only the voters elsewhere would turn out their bad legislators. But please, not ours. Each member of our delegation deserves appropriate accolade for his or her accomplishments and deserves to stay. For, each would tell you, the problems of the state lie elsewhere, Not In My Really Outstanding District.

That’s right. NIMROD.

In our current system, no challenger dares call a NIMROD a NIMROD and point out this flaming hypocrisy. His or her party would never allow it. Each has its own Albany fiefdom, each presided over by an iron-fisted leader who dispenses spoils to his members and indifference (at best) and unbridled punishment (at worst) to those who cannot or will not support his (and I do mean his) party line. Biannually, the two major parties put up token opposition to each others’ candidates, at times even mounting a serious challenge to a particularly weak incumbent (never in numbers that would threaten true disruption of the Albany status quo), but in my 25 years of voting, done in four very different regions of this state, I have never heard one state legislator campaign on a platform of unifying power in one party. Too many well-funded NIMRODS on both sides of the Capitol, I guess.

Every ten years (and this year begins the process based on the 2000 census results), the feeding frenzy gets even worse. Each of the two fiefdoms gets to divide the lines separating NIMROD from NIMROD for the next decade. Despite the exponential increase in computer capabilities since the last go-round after the 1990 census, it is unthinkable in NIMRODland to divide the population into 151 assembly districts and 60 senate districts on the basis of objective criteria such as “where do they live?” Preservation of as many status quos as possible is the primary goal and perhaps the only one.

So here we go again. No doubt the NIMRODS will be on their best behavior next spring, as they were two years ago when they came close to passing an on-time budget. Will the editorial boards be fooled again into supporting two more years of the same legislative system and agenda (coupled this time with a four-year commitment at the executive level)? Or will a cry come from the wilderness and suggest the unsuggestable?

“We have interviewed all of the candidates, done our research, spoken with community leaders, and we urge you to cast your November vote for the X party’s candidates for Governor, Assembly and Senate. After a quarter century of fractured and fractious government, we believe that the X’s provide the best answers to the issues facing us, and the two-to-four year X agenda will do the most good for the most New Yorkers. And if we’re wrong, we’ll admit it and encourage you to vote for the Y party when the time comes.”

I really don’t care who turns out to be X and who turns out to be Y. Either alternative beats what we have now. And if this cause were to be taken up by the editorial boards of our leading newspapers and the heads of our good-government organizations, there’s a chance for true change, perhaps only once in our political lifetimes.

I’ll celebrate that change in January, when the Bills win the Super Bowl.

Comments

[luckycee.livejournal.com]

*waves back*

I'll root for Buffalo witcha, too.