GOP COUP MAY SPARK REFORM IN ALBANY

WOW, great article! Tells it like it is. Deer in the headlights, dumbfounded? He and they were completely caught off guard and it was the arrogance and egos that caused all of this. I love these quotes.

Now that we have momentum, sign the petition to oust Silver as Speaker of the Assembly. Let’s work and push for true and honest restructuring in Albany before we get worse than California.

Yesterday afternoon, the Democrats in the New York State Senate got poleaxed.

For half a moment they stood like deer in the headlights, not quite realizing their fate. By the time they caught on, and literally ran out the door, trying to shut off the lights in the Senate chamber, it was over.

Somebody called a vote, the hands went up and the heads rolled.

The Democrats lost control of the Senate. More correctly, a little knot of Democrat bigwigs lost control of the Senate. Out in the hallway, the Democrat leader Malcolm Smith stood dumbfounded. After just five months on the job, one of the most incompetent leaders in New York history had been relieved of duty.

While the Democratic leadership was putting the final details on a massive annual spending bill that would have raided the treasury for their pet projects, Republican leaders were talking with a couple of wildcard Democrats.

In the mix was billionaire Tom Golisano, whose money helped the Democrats last November win a majority in the Senate for the first time since 1965. What the Democrat leadership didn’t know is that you don’t double deal Tom Golisano and get away with it. They promised reform, they didn’t deliver, he gutted them.

Yesterday morning the world stood at 32-30, Democrat favor. Yesterday afternoon it was 32-30 voting for a Republican to be in charge. That’s how the state troopers came to be standing outside the majority leader’s office at dinnertime, watching Malcolm Smith carry his things out in a box.

The coup was a response to audacity and arrogance.

After campaigning on reform, and promising to open up New York state government, the Democrats found themselves with not only their traditional stronghold in the Assembly, but also the governor’s mansion and, most cherished of all, the Senate. Hopes were high.

And they were almost immediately dashed.

In one of the most Democratic states in the Union, with any number of vastly capable people in the party, the Democrat governor and the Democrat Senate majority leader proved to be failures. They honestly didn’t begin to have the slightest capability to handle their offices.

Worse than inability, however, was the patent dishonesty of promised reform. Instead of opening up budget deliberations, for example, the governor and legislative leaders closed down the few public meetings that had previously been held.

Claiming that he and the Assembly speaker and Senate leader were all Democrats, and consequently all in agreement, the governor said there was no point in public discussion of the budget.

That produced, in the midst of almost incalculable record budget deficits, a spending plan that was 9 percent bigger than last year’s.

From the legislative standpoint, under complete Democrat control, individual members of the Assembly and Senate found that they had almost no power or input into what was voted on or passed. Ironically, that was also true for rank-and-file Democrat legislators.

In a legislature that’s been dictated to from the top down for a couple of generations, the Democrat sweep only made the abuse worse. Promised cooperation and reform, the “post-partisanship” of the Barack Obama campaign, never materialized.

Further, the pushing of some Democrat special-interest groups’ pet legislation – like gay marriage – didn’t sit well with some, including Democrats.

And yesterday the dam broke.

The Republican Caucus brokered a deal that has a Republican as Senate majority leader and a Democrat as president pro tem. And instead of doing a victory dance last night, most Senate Republicans were saying this wasn’t about party, that it was about reform. They say that this isn’t about them governing, it is about returning the body to its members and, consequently, to their constituents.

It’s about delivering the reform that the Democrats promised and spurned.Here’s hoping they’re sincere and successful.But even if they’re not, hanging up the leadership of the Senate, and kicking a leg out of the Democrat stool, will hold back the flood of incompetence and foolishness that has poured out of Albany so far this year. In a stunning display of going from bad to worse, New Yorkers have been horrified by the other worldly stupidity of the ruling Democratic threesome and the slew of bad decisions they have made.

Thankfully now, one of them is gone.

Hopefully, chastened members of both parties can now try to unravel some of the slavish devotion to party, lobbyists and patronage that choke the legislature. Hopefully the Republicans who were cagey enough yesterday to carjack the Senate will be smart enough to figure out how to get it back on the right track.

via GOP COUP MAY SPARK REFORM IN ALBANY.