THE DAILY BLADE: Empire State Repubs Rise Again
It took NY Dems 40 years to gain control of the State Senate, and just five months to become the minority party in Albany once more. The New York Times reports:
Two dissident Democrats, who had been secretly strategizing with Republicans for weeks, bucked their party’s leaders and joined with 30 Republican senators to form what they said would be a bipartisan power-sharing deal. But the arrangement effectively re-establishes Republican control. …
Democratic leaders were caught off guard as the Republicans and the two Democratic dissidents, Pedro Espada Jr. of the Bronx and Hiram Monserrate of Queens, moved to topple them, and became so flustered as it unfolded that they turned out the lights in the Senate chamber to try to prevent Republicans from installing new leaders. …
Gov. David A. Paterson called the move “an outrage,” at a news conference Monday evening and said Albany had become a “dysfunctional wreck.” The governor also said “I will not allow this,” but then conceded that there was nothing he could do to stop it.
The unseen hand behind the coup: Erstwhile gubernatorial candidate and billionaire Tom Golisano, who is protesting the state’s “tax-the-rich” budget plan by moving his legal residence to FL.
Allegation That There Are Jobs “Americans Won’t Do” Being Examined
It took the national unemployment rate to soar to a 25-year high before someone decided to test the shibboleth that there are jobs that Americans won’t do. To that end, the Obama administration is convening a bipartisan summit, reports Chicago Tribune:
Are the estimated 11.6 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. taking jobs from Americans? And how would providing them with lawful status help or hurt the nation's struggling economy?
A stream of commissioned reports and opinion essays has emerged in recent weeks, part of a strategy by immigrant advocates to win over an American public painfully aware of the thousands of jobs lost every week. It is a concern that the Obama administration has noted as it treads lightly around the issue. …
Pro-immigrant advocates say that is a perception they would like to counter. Among their recent arguments is that the Midwest needs undocumented workers to gain legal status in order to stabilize the region's economy. They also argue that a widening national workforce gap left by retiring Baby Boomers needs replenishing through legalization and new immigrants.
The other side in the debate, in favor of tougher Immigration enforcement, has noted the burden on government programs by low-income immigrants and argues for gearing legal entry toward skilled workers.
Obama Swine Flu Plan Weakens Nation’s Bioterror Preparedness: Bipartisan WMD Panel
President Barack Hussein Obama's contingency plan to divert funds set aside to develop defenses against biological attacks into swine flu vaccine production would undercut our ability to respond to terrorism, according to the bipartisan Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism, reports The Washington Post:
The White House asked Congress on Tuesday for authority to spend up to $9 billion more for an H1N1 flu vaccine and other preparations against the novel flu strain that first appeared in April.
Of the total, the administration asked Congress to provide $2 billion in "contingent" funding. Another $3 billion could come from the Project BioShield Special Reserve Fund, created in 2004 to field countermeasures against nuclear, biological or chemical threats; $3.1 billion from stimulus funds appropriated to spur economic recovery; and $800 million from the Department of Health and Human Services.
"Using BioShield funds for flu preparedness will severely diminish the nation's efforts to prepare for WMD events and will leave the nation less, not more, prepared," the commission's chairman, former senator Bob Graham (D-Fla.), and vice chairman, former senator James M. Talent (R-Mo.), wrote to Obama in a letter sent yesterday and in another dated Wednesday to his budget director, Peter Orszag.
Raiding BioShield would weaken the ability of private firms to raise credit and sustain long-term research and development on drugs to respond to bioterror threats, for which there is no private market, industry officials said.
In its analysis, “World At Risk,” the Congressional commission warns: “Unless the world community acts decisively and with great urgency, it is more likely than not that a weapon of mass destruction will be used in a terrorist attack somewhere in the world by the end of 2013.”
Comments