Madman Paladino got crushed.  Yeah, looks like the Senate swung over to the GOP (errr…the GLOP?) but no matter–Shelly Silver and his Dem buddies et al still run the show 2-1 over at Assembly.  The cork remains in the reform bottle!  Rub it and Shelly pops out!  He’s been a genie for unions since he became Assembly Speaker in 1994–16 years ago!  Cars wear out in 16 years!   Silver has represented tiny District #64 (c. 125,000 souls in lower East Side Manhattan) since 1977.  That’s 34 years and counting — longer than the average human lifespan in ancient Rome!  What’s more, Silver’s 2010 race was uncontested.  The pissed-off Republicans couldn’t even mount a challenge to the state’s mightiest legislator. 

Roaring voter anger and resentment meowed like a pussy cat when it reached the ballot box.  Even the tea got cold!  Voters returned a staggering 122 out of 129 incumbents to the Assembly (95%).  All those who have been doing such a bang-up job at keeping our finances and bureaucracy in order.  Twenty-one incumbents did “retire” however; those spots went about evenly to Republicans (11 seats) and Democrats (10 seats).

If we voters can’t knock out the union genie at our Apex of Wrath…if we re-elect 95% of Assembly incumbents after screaming “throw ‘em all out” at the tops of our lungs…then, seriously, how can we expect to reform anything in Albany?

The ONLY way to reform is to change the rules these people play by.  Cuomo’s “Plan” includes hurrying-up a NYS Constitutional Convention.  Let’s hold his feet to the fire on this.  We need an on-time  balanced budget each year.  A cap on statewide spending.  A cap on property tax growth.  Term limits (come on, people, 34 years in office for an assemblyman?).  An end to the gerrymander (partisan re-districting).  Reining in of “off-budget” statewide authorities.

If this election’s result is the best we angry voters can do — well — as Einstein told us, doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is the definition of insanity.

Stop the insanity in the only way possible.  Fight fire with fire!  Send us $$ to mount a $2 million PR campaign to help force a 2013 People’s Convention!  There is simply no other way.

There’s just one solution.  We must supercede the pols–all the pols.  Go over their ostrich heads by compelling the Legislature to permit an NYS constitutional convention way before 2018. 

Change the players  all you want–if we don’t change the rules, it won’t matter. 

The single best litmus question you can ask any state-level candidate this year is:  Will you promise to support a citizen-led constitutional convention ASAP?

Be wise.  Don’t play their angry, huffy game.  Change the game.  Channel your anger.  Focus it like a laser on changing the rules our elected officials play by.  Use a constitiutional convention to install:  Term limits.  Spending caps.  Tax caps.  Borrowing caps.  Full transparency of money.

Use your anger wisely.  Don’t waste it on personalities.

Only YOU can say “Off with their heads!”  It takes action, not just thinking about it.  Check out this nonsense video.  Send it to your friends.  Let’s make the People’s Convention our new reality.

If you like this little movie please comment.

http://www.rbj.net/article.asp?aID=184216

 Then put your money (and petition signature) where your sentiment is:  Click on this site’s secure PayPal as a guest and donate $10 (or more) to our cause. 

Merely hoping and wishing won’t make a convention happen.  A loud citizen voice perhaps can.

http://www.rbj.net/article.asp?aID=184216

The current legislators are BP.  Arrogant.  Unrepentant.  Overmatched by the task.

Andrew Cuomo aspires to be Fixer in Chief.  His “New NY Agenda: A Plan for Action” is a smart comprehensive liturgy of New York’s massive public ailments, replete with diagnoses and suggested cures.  He is jockeying, of course, to harvest broad civic unrest in the form of votes.

His key platform plank, for us, starts on page 28 of his 250-page tome.  http://www.andrewcuomo.com/system/storage/6/34/9/378/acbookfinal.pdf

Here, Cuomo fils calls for a constitutional convention “to enact into law important reforms.”  He knows he can not obtain major reforms from a sitting NYS Legislature conducting business as usual.

This call is the most vital “position” taken in all 250 pages.  Everything hinges on an energized public loudly demanding a constitutional convention and demanding reform.

His brand name is strong and Cuomo will win the governorship going away unless he pulls a Tiger.  Or a Spitzer.  But this non=partisan citizen’s group does not support or endorse Cuomo or any candidates.

We support the only actions that will actually work to restructure the state’s diseased governance regardless of the comings or goings of particular leaders and their promises:  A) a constitutional convention ASAP; B) formed of uncompromised citizen delegates; C) well-prepared in advance by a thorough non-partisan commission to tackle the major issues; D) with the broad support of the citizenry to counterbalance and fend off furious, scurrilous special interest campaigns when it comes time to vote on proposed constitutional amendments.

We — You! — must make supporting a people’s constitutional convention THE single most important query you pose to every candidate you meet this year.

Join us if you haven’t.  Send $10 (or more).  Sign the online petition to build our clout.  Then talk it up…ask two friends to join this cause.  Lift a finger, send an email link.  Be a player not just a watcher.

Our money and affluent population are pouring away.  A true citizen-conducted Constitutional Convention could finally override the elected officials who perpetuate our state’s unsustainable financial morass–the legislative and executive branches.  Support People’s Convention 2013!

Or if you are registered and have forgotten your password, no problem.  Simply continue as a guest.  It’s easy.

• Click Take Action button at top, above
• Click Donate page
• Click “Donate” button (you will now get Paypal page)
• Enter a $$ amount and click “Update”
• If you are NOT a Paypal user or forgot password, simply click on the word “Continue” at lower left side of page.  It lets you securely use your credit card as you would for any reputable online purchase.

OR send us a check by U.S. mail, the address is on the Contact Page.  If you have any concerns call Floyd Rayburn at 585-394-1301 or Paul Hudson (me) at 585-325-600.

That’s the HOW to donate.  Here, again, is a reader’s digest version of the WHY:

• We need smaller, more ethical, more responsive government that is working on the right things for the future (creating jobs, adding low cost energy capacity, weeding out fraud and redundancies)
• As a cudgel we need to institute a cap or limit state budgets, increases, and state spending.  We must cap tax increases or growth at every level, state and local
• As a circuit breaker for when the legislature is chronically deaf, dumb, or unresponsive we need to obtain the right to Voter Initiative (with enough signatures voter groups can bring propositions at election time)

There’s lots more to worry about and change, of course.  But here’s the thing.  For $10 and your name on our petition, you can have a voice toward making New York a livable, viable state instead of a declining, dysfunctional mess. Chances are you are taking stronger action by supporting this effort than when voting for yet another partisan candidate who simply can’t do it alone.

Getting on board with us can help turn our state’s silent majority into a special interest group — that interest being our children and grandchildren.

If just 2% of our citizens speak up — we will be heard loud and clear and we can engineer grand scale changes that beholden legislators can’t accomplish.  A people’s constitutional convention can help cause tremendous positive change.

Forgot about individual senators and assemblymen.  Let’s elect the People for a year and see what they can do!

How then can we make the Legislature listen to the everyday common citizen?  It’s NOT “vote them out.” Although termination by voter works for the individual–we don’t do it!  Despite years of taxpayer anger incumbents in NYS win 98.7% of the time!   Well more than 90% will win again this fall despite citizen rage.  Bet on it.

Besides–we could vote out half the legislature BUT we will still suffer from obstructionist, preservationist, iron-fisted control-freak partisan LEADERS who will still adhere to the old partisan strident Albany ways.  Tell me a time when it was different!

Legislative leaders are not required to listen to anyone.  They do as they please (what is most beneficial to them in terms of buying votes with public funds) and trust that a) unions will support them come election time; and b) taxpayer anger will evaporate when it comes to voting out “their” local guy.

The ONLY WAY to make legislators and legislatures listen is to change the state constitution. The people CAN cap state spending and borrowing.  The people CAN require term limits and nonpartisan resdistricting.  The people CAN see to it that ethics trump self-aggrandizement.

The people CAN — if they will.  That’s what winning a People’s Convention 2013 is all about.  A true upstate/downstate reform convention to do the hard nonpartisan work that partisan legislatures won’t deliver.  We need reform that benefits the goose that lays the golden eggs–taxpayers.

Two hundred thousand voices can swing this thing.  Two hundred thousand people at $10+ each and the guts to email their friends with the simple plea that it is about time for the people to be heard.  That’s $2 million in a PR kitty to drive for a reform convention.

Be part of the solution.  Support People’s Convention 2013.  Talk it up.  Require candidates to support it, too.  Send $10 and pass this along with your blessing to your friends.  Call me personally at 585-325-6000 if you have any concerns as to legitimacy.

Paul Hudson

Mushrooms grow best in the dark on a pile of well-rotted manure

Former NYC mayor, fiesty Ed Koch, just formed New York Uprising (with support from Mario Cuomo and Rudi Giuliani) to wrassle gubernatorial candidates into promising they will support nonpartisan voter redictricting via independent commission.  http://www.thealbanyproject.com/diary/8064/ed-koch-the-new-york-uprising-begins

A new group formed in January, Reinvent Albany, produces live stream video “Albany On-The-Record” where they ask top NYS politicos exactly how they will work to “create a state government that is fair, and trustworthy, and which benefits everyone, upstate, downstate, rich, poor, and in-between.”

Another new Long Island/upstate group wants to “throw all the bums out of the Senate” and start over:  Reboot New York. Check them out at http://www.rebootny.org/

The Albany Project has been around for a while and “seeks to return New York State to its rightful owners–the people.”  Don’t miss it.  Its scope, contacts, and assassin reporters turn out indecent truffles daily. http://www.thealbanyproject.com/

The NYC-centric Citizens Unionhttp://www.citizensunion.org/home; Rochester’s Citizens for Better Government http://www.cbgny.org/; and western NY’s Unshackle Upstate http://www.unshackleupstate.com/ are all well worth visiting and supporting.

It’s impossible to keep track of all the good government groups, let alone support them all.  Citizens for a People’s Convention — this site — seeks to link as many as possible and knit their supporters into a formidable, focused public voice– one powerful enough to force a convention where the citizenry (not the career politicians and lobbyists) can do battle on the crucial issues of our state dysfunction.

And actually accomplish something.

1812 Massachusetts political cartoon

The New York State map has long been bespotted with voter districts shaped like insects, amoebas, and salamanders–but not pretty geographic rectangles and not connected, cohesive communities.  The sole purpose of “gerrymandered” voter districts is of course to protect legislative majorities.  The districts get redrawn after each new census (ours happens 2012). 

But far from supporting bipartisan or, better yet, nonpartisan redistricting, current Democrat leaders in Albany vow to redistrict “Republicans into oblivion,” said Senate Leader Malcolm Smith. 

Other states employ bipartisan or non-partisan commissions to ensure competition at the polls.  NYS could too…but we won’t.  Partisan memories are too long, partisan fervor too strong.  

It will take a People’s Convention 2013 to force fair, independent redestricting of voters and curb the democracy-smothering trend toward incumbent victories that perpetuate career politicians.

Newspapers and good government organizations around the state agree.  Check these links.

http://www.thealbanyproject.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=8064

http://www.nypirg.org/goodgov/reformny/redist.html

http://blog.syracuse.com/opinion/2010/05/redistricting_reform_independe.html