Items by Larry Littlefield

• Desperate Times, Heretical Thoughts in Michigan

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  Michigan is a state much like our own. For years it has been run by and for those who have, let’s say, a very good deal as a result of their political and market power, to the detriment of the future and everyone else. Enough was taken out, and little [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: December 15, 2009, 4:44pm EST
  by Larry Littlefield

• Taxpayer Funded Campaign Staff for Incumbent State Legislators

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  I couldn't let a recent Daily News article pass without comment. Earlier we heard that many of those collecting signatures to get incumbent state legislators on the ballot were either staff members employed by those legislators, or employees of non-profits primarily or exclusively funded via grants from those legislators. [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: December 14, 2009, 3:48pm EST
  by Larry Littlefield

• MTA Student Passes: Time To Cut the Cord?

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  It was only about a decade ago that former Governor George Pataki and MTA head Virgil Conway, who were loading the agency with billions in debt so their generation could have things they didn’t have to pay for (with some getting more than others), generously decided that the half fare [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: December 13, 2009, 9:47am EST
  by Larry Littlefield

• The Word "Reform" Should Be Banned from Albany

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  "Governor David A. Paterson today signed into law pension reform legislation that will provide more than $35 billion in long-term savings to New York taxpayers over the next thirty years." So cutting the pay of future public employees is described as a reform. But enriching the pay, after the past, [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: December 11, 2009, 9:50am EST
  by Larry Littlefield

• Generation Greed Tells the Big Lie

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  Capital Confidential is reporting that people can watch live footage of Tier V being signed, with much cheering. I hope that some honest TV news organization will pair this footage with file footage of George Pataki signing the massive pension enhancement bill in 2000. And report that the latter [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: December 10, 2009, 11:54am EST
  by Larry Littlefield

• Joe Bruno: A Reaction

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  I have two responses to the conviction of Joe Bruno on two counts for petty corruption. First, if Joe Bruno is guilty they all are (or rather since Joe Bruno is guilty they all are). And second, considering what this generation of state legislators have done to the common future [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: December 07, 2009, 6:20pm EST
  by Larry Littlefield

• Generation Greed's Last Chance for Redemption

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  New York's retired and near-retired public employees, who (like top corporate executives) have been among the few people becoming better off over the past two decades, just decided to make future generations of public employees worse off to pay for what they have seized for themselves by enacting a Tier [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: December 06, 2009, 8:19am EST
  by Larry Littlefield

• Another Question No One Will Ask or Answer

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  From the Assembly press release on Tier V: "Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Governmental Employees Committee Chair Peter J. Abbate today announced the passage of legislation they sponsored (Extraordinary Session Bill A.26) that would enact a new and cost efficient tier of pension benefits for public employees which could [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: December 03, 2009, 9:14am EST
  by Larry Littlefield

• The Reason For Gay Marriage is Tier V

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  There is certain to be at least a vote on Gay Marriage today. How do I know? So that all the State Senators, and all the Assembly Members, and the Governor, can talk about Gay Marriage, and only Gay Marriage, and explain why people should support them because of their [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: December 02, 2009, 12:52pm EST
  by Larry Littlefield

• Sucking Money from the Future: Albany Does It Again

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  Now that I have realized that public services and benefits face years if not decades of decline, the biggest issue in public finance, the one that concerns me personally and I think about every day, is whether the NYC public schools will begin their downward spiral to the 1970s in [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 25, 2009, 9:37am EST
  by Larry Littlefield

• America’s Debts: Past and Present Views

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  Suddenly, there is a great deal of concern about America’s federal debt, not only among the Chinese to whom a great deal of it is owed, but also among older generations of Americans, who worry that growing debts will hurt the federal government’s ability to provide them with everything they [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 22, 2009, 1:10pm EST
  by Larry Littlefield

• A Decent Interlude?

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  So it turns out that "unexpectedly," the city and state budgets are not balanced and we will have to accept some combination of paying more, getting less -- or having the problem swept under the rug and paying more and getting less later with interest. Word came out after Election [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 21, 2009, 8:46pm EST
  by Larry Littlefield

• We Demand A Salary Cap

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  Once the wealthy have earned (or at least gotten) their net worth into the nine-figure league, a question arises as to what to do with it. Some turn to philanthropy, and some to purchasing or funding the arts, but many try to relive their boyhood by buying professional sports teams. [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 14, 2009, 9:59am EST
  by Larry Littlefield

• Pew Or Not New York Stinks

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  Some Vampire (not Empire) State apologists are crowing about a ranking of state fiscal distress by the Pew Charitable Trust that purports to show that there are states in worse shape than New York, based on the size of their budget gaps and cuts. What that organization failed to consider, [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 12, 2009, 12:21pm EST
  by Larry Littlefield

• "Health Care Reform Is Happening Anyway.”

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  I can’t find the quote, but I remember a health care executive saying it after cost cutting followed anyway in the wake of the health care reform defeat under Clinton. The health care industry, including the Greater New York Hospital Association and Local 1199, worked to defeat reform. The industry, [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 07, 2009, 9:40am EST
  by Larry Littlefield

• One Win in Nine Tries

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  The post-election recriminations and spins are underway, with some spinning Bloomberg weakness in a narrow victory and some decrying Democratic divisions in a narrow defeat. My question is simply this: does the Democratic establishment in this city have any capacity for self-examination? In a city where the vast majority of [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 05, 2009, 8:57pm EST
  by Larry Littlefield

• More Light Bulbs Coming On Over People's Heads

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  From the blog of a Harvard University law professor, citing an investment adviser report: "Barring some sort of miraculous boom in the economy and pension fund investment returns, state and local governments are headed for insolvency and default."  Thanks once again to Pension Tsunami for calling this to [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 04, 2009, 7:40pm EST
  by Larry Littlefield

• Turnout Impression

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  In 2008, I showed up a 6 a.m. at PS 154 Windsor Terrace to cast a vote I knew wouldn't matter, because everyone knew Obama would take New York. There was already a line around the corner.

  Today, I grudgingly rolled down to the same location at 7:30 am. There' [...]

  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 03, 2009, 9:26am EST
  by Larry Littlefield

• Department of No Stone Unturned

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  So it has come down to this. I check out The Housing Bubble Blog to look over today links and street level comments on the real estate collapse, and who has purchased the banner ad? You guessed it, Mike Bloomberg. Aside from myself, how many NYC residents are likely [...]

  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 02, 2009, 7:24pm EST
  by Larry Littlefield

• An Innovative Idea for Governor Patterson

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  With the State of New York approaching bankruptcy, members of the state legislature are calling for "innovative ideas" to prevent the interests that have backed them over the years from having to give anything up. By innovation, they mean deferring costs to the future, spending future revenues today, and making [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: October 30, 2009, 1:14pm EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• The Pension Rate of Return Swindle

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  There are any number of ways that Generation Greed has financed its lifestyle demands by sucking resources out of the future and away from those who will live in it, with many listed and described here.  (If you haven’t read that post, please do so). The generational inequity most [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: October 27, 2009, 1:16pm EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• Bonuses For What?

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  It looks like the Monsters of the Universe are raking in big bucks for their Wall Street firms, and rewarding each other with massive bonuses once again, despite the ongoing recession in the economy. And how are those saints, heroes and geniuses doing this? By making sound loans to U.S. [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: October 20, 2009, 8:48pm EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• The Bloomberg Administration: A Review Part III -- Public Policy

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  If the Bloomberg or Thompson campaigns have bothered to read my prior two posts in this series, I can imagine what they think of them. Who is this nobody to critique our leadership, when the one organization he has ever led was the Park Slope-Windsor Terrace babysitting co-op, and even [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: October 17, 2009, 3:41pm EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• The Race to 100% of GDP

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  I got a call from Alma Mater last night, and once again offered to substantially increase our modest contribution if it would only hold its cost increase to the rate of inflation. Yes costs are going up less this year, but that is because inflation is zero, and they are [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: October 13, 2009, 2:21pm EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• The Bloomberg Administration: A Review Part II -- Leadership

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  This is the second post of my review of the Bloomberg Administration. The first post was on its management of the City of New York as a $60 billion per year multi-function enterprise. This post is on leadership. By leadership, I mean the ability to give direction and inspire community [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: October 10, 2009, 4:27pm EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• More From Governing Magazine on Pensions

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  I generally try to avoid simply discussing other people's information rather than creating my own, but there is a need for fair, non-ideological discussion of the most important issue in public finance and services, and I feel the need to call attention to it. From an honest actuary (how [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: October 09, 2009, 10:41am EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• The Bloomberg Administration: A Review, Part I

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  With the Mayoral election nearly upon us, it is time to review what the Bloomberg Administration has done, and what (based on limited information) a Thompson administration might do. (Forget the campaign literature and promises: it’s misleading nonsense). The review is in three parts because the Mayoralty is in reality [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: October 04, 2009, 2:01pm EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• Governing Magazine on Pensions

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  Any honest actuary, any honest observer, will say the same thing -- public services are about to be destroyed by the many years of work-free living older generations have promised themselves but decided younger generations, who will be much poorer, will have to pay for. And the debts older generations [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: October 02, 2009, 10:39am EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• Tier V: Part of The Universal Conspiracy on Pensions

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  Do we actually have different political parties, different factions within those parties, and different politicians with different points of view? In the past two years, the City and State of New York have decided -- at a time of financial crisis, at a time when most Americans have no choice [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: September 27, 2009, 10:21am EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• New York City’s Non-Employers

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  Enclosure: [download]

  Data on non-employers is out from the 2007 Economic Censuses, conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. I’ve briefly summarized a few findings for New York City as compared with the United States in the attached spreadsheet; one can download the spreadsheet if interested in particular industries. The data shows that [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: September 26, 2009, 4:34pm EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• WHat Did David Paterson Do To Deserve All This?

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  Not much as Governor or Lieutenant Governor, as far as I am concerned. There his alleged sins and errors have been mostly within the political world, which doesn't matter much to me at all. And it is within the political world that he is being sinned against.

  Getting back to Government,' [...]

  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: September 23, 2009, 7:36am EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• NYC Comptroller: The Candidates Are Silent on What Really Matters

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  A quick glance through the campaign sites of the candidates for NYC Comptroller shows that all of them avoid talking about the two most important questions in state and local public finance, the questions whose answers determine how much worse off people will be in the future than today (as [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: September 11, 2009, 11:19am EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• The City Council Elections: The Big Issue Is What’s Left of Democracy

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  In the City Council district where I live there is a rare event going on: a contested election for a legislative office in New York City. The election is being contested because the seat is open, and the seat is open because its current occupant – Councilmember Bill DeBlasio – [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: September 08, 2009, 7:20am EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• A Different Kind of Gateway To New York

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  I read recently that federal officials are creating a new management plan for Gateway National Recreation Area, a National Park Service area located mostly at scattered locations in New York City. With a series on America’s National Parks set to air on PBS, I thought I would make a [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: September 07, 2009, 7:15am EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• Two Mistakes New York Didn't Make

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  Sometimes incompetent government has its advantages. I was asked to research the convention center situation while at City Planning in the 1990s, and found out pretty quickly that the problem wasn't the size of the Javits Convention Center. It was the number, cost and availability of hotel rooms and the [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: August 24, 2009, 8:14pm EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• The Signature Collectors

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  The current city elections have brought the usual tales of candidates who wanted to run for office, but were kept off the ballot by New York State’s ballot access laws. As someone who once became fed up enough to run against my state legislator myself, I can tell you that [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: August 23, 2009, 9:38pm EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• Does Governor Paterson Believe His Children Will Live In New York State?

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  Or would he advise them to live elsewhere? That isn't a liberal or conservative question. I'm open to argument on whether everyone should pay more into the community and get more out, or pay less in and expect less -- although I'm more and more leaning toward the latter, moving' [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: August 22, 2009, 4:04pm EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• The Truthful Actuaries On Pensions

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  Is everyone reading Pension Tsunami?  Then you know enough about what is coming that you don’t have to hear it from me. But let me summarize a few articles from one of the places being hit first, so others who haven’t been reading can be prepared to face what [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: August 20, 2009, 8:55am EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• The Democrats on Energy: A Possible Disgrace

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  Enclosure: [download]

  The route to power in the era of Generation Greed has been to promise something for nothing, and to provide handy rationalizations to feed the entitlement of those receiving it. So Republicans have handed out tax breaks and promised to cut “spending,” but in fact have increased spending on everyone [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: August 15, 2009, 11:12am EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• The Waterfront Commission: Beware the Backwater

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  As a shorthand, when describing why data on local governments has to be aggregated at the county level to be comparable, I generally note that whereas in other locations a single county may have a county government, municipalities and townships, school districts, and other special districts, New York City only [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: August 12, 2009, 9:05pm EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• Special Tax Deals: A Little Good News

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  One of New York’s cycles of ever-increasing unearned privilege and injustice is the granting of special tax exemptions, exclusions, and benefits every time the economy is up (when doing so doesn’t require immediate and thus obvious sacrifices by those who don’t matter), and increasing tax rates every time the economy [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: August 08, 2009, 1:22pm EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• 359 Hours in 365 Days

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  It’s my birthday, and the end of my second year of commuting to work by bicycle, sometimes three but generally four times each week. This year I had one of those bicycle speedometer/odometer/clocks, and it showed me something surprising. In 365 days I’ve ridden on the bicycle for 359 hours, [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: August 03, 2009, 6:24am EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• The Health Care Reform Problem: Interests Not Ideology

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  Enclosure: [download]

  I have now heard and read all over the media that Congress is having difficulty passing a health care reform measure because Republicans and Democrats have become more ideologically cohesive internally, and therefore in greater conflict with each other, making bi-partisan cooperation more difficult. I do not believe for a [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: July 31, 2009, 11:45am EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• Fiscal 2007 Education Finance Data from the Census Bureau

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  Enclosure: [download]

  The U.S. Census Bureau has released elementary and secondary school finance data for fiscal year 2007, and I’m pleased to see one publication has already covered it and done a computation or two.  My contribution is summarized in the attached three spreadsheets. The numbers are available, and anyone [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: July 28, 2009, 7:57pm EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• Spreading Disappointment in the Wake of Generation Greed

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  Let me call your attention to a post on The Housing Bubble Blog and a comment made in response. A 30-something person is dismayed when a couple in their 50s/60s buys a house, rents it out, keeps the rent and stops making mortgage payments, leaving their tenants at [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: July 26, 2009, 11:00am EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• The Manhattan Bridge Redux

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  The Manhattan Bridge opened for subway service in 1915, and from that point to the early 1980s carried more Brooklynites to work in Manhattan than any other piece of infrastructure. In the 1950s, engineers recommended that tunnels be built to take the subway trains off the bridge and eliminate the [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: July 25, 2009, 7:53pm EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• New York's Medicaid Fraud Settlement: Somebody's Getting Cheated

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  It was widely reported today that New York State and New York City have agreed to pay the federal government $332 million and $100 million respectively, to give back money fraudulently billed to Medicaid for school health services. By billing Medicaid, the school districts involved saved money, because the [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: July 22, 2009, 8:34pm EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• Putting Two and Two Together

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  Does anyone out there have any doubt that the United Federation of Teachers wants every last dime of our ever rising tax burden to go the early retired, leaving the school system to collapse, that the New York State legislature is on their side, and that Mayor Bloomberg is going [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: July 20, 2009, 8:38pm EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• Hank Paulson on the Moment of Decision

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  There are those who might have read my little thought experiment on what would have happened if the federal government had allowed the free market to work itself during the recent financial crisis, and concluded I have lost my mind. As reported by the Wall Street Journal, however, former [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: July 20, 2009, 10:42am EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• If They All But Announce They Are Lying Is It Still Lying?

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  Last year Governor Paterson and the state legislature covered up the state's fiscal problems until after the election, by passing a budget that was a fraud. This year, Mayor Bloomberg and the City Council have done the same. It happens over and over, and yet Paterson and Bloomberg are different. [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: July 12, 2009, 7:11pm EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• The Evil Do Good By Accident

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  As I wrote previously, there is a dispute among Generation Greed as to how to diminish the quality of life and standard of living of younger generations, and the future of the state, to pay for rich and long retirements they have promised themselves. Some want cut the pay and [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: July 11, 2009, 10:29am EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• It’s Too Late You SOB

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  From today’s New York Times: “According to the analysis, pension contribution rates for civilian employees in local governments will soar to 30.3 percent by 2015, from 7.4 percent of payroll this year. Contributions to police and fire department retirement plans are expected to increase to 41.1 percent in 2015 from [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: July 08, 2009, 7:42am EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• Read It To The End

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  The public sector institutional collapse approaches. With the help of lies by actuaries, Generation Greed is absconding with all the resource we have, and will have. In the future, the vast majority of taxes, extracted from younger generations and exempting those older, will go to past debts, early retirement pensions, [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: July 01, 2009, 9:57am EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• Silver and Bruno's Excuse

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  Back when the Brennan Center was releasing reports showing how undemocratic and phony the New York State legislature is, I recall reading comments from Sheldon Silver and Joe Bruno, its leaders, in the newspaper. They didn't come right out and say it, but reading between the lines they pretty much' [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: June 30, 2009, 8:42pm EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• Generation Greed Strikes Again Via Bloomberg and the UFT

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  Following public policy in New York is like watching the same horror movie over and over again, while knowing that what appears on the screen will eventually happen to you, your children, and/or people you care about. Case in point, the long series of “screw the newbie, flee to Florida” [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: June 28, 2009, 3:13pm EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• Public Employee Pensions in 2007: Data from the Census of Governments

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  Enclosure: [download]

  The U.S. Census Bureau has released 2007 data on the financial status of state and local government pension plans in the U.S. The data is at the state level, and is at present separate from data from the rest of the finance phase of the 2007 Census of Governments, so [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: June 17, 2009, 7:40pm EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• They Awarded Each Other Dynastic Wealth And Gave Savers This?

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  Back in the mid-1990s, after we had purchased and fixed up our home, we had a little savings left and decided to set it aside for the next big expense, the education of our children, toddlers at the time. With a long time horizon, and willing to settle for whatever [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: June 13, 2009, 1:26pm EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• Whose Guys Are These II?

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  Loyal Democrats and Republicans would prefer to look at the goings on in Albany these days as an aberration, one that doesn’t reflect the deeply held values of their particular tribe. I don’t see it that way.

  
  

  read more

  [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: June 11, 2009, 6:12pm EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• FTA 2007 Operating Cost Data: The Subway is Cost Effective But Will Have to Be More So, or Die With the Rest of the MTA

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  Enclosure: [download]

  The attached spreadsheets compress National Transit Database data for 2007 operating costs into two three-page tables. The first shows operating costs per each hour a revenue vehicle (bus or rail car) is operated in revenue service, per unlinked trip, per passenger mile and per employee work hour. The second shows [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: June 09, 2009, 4:51pm EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• Want To Get Revenge on the New York City Transit By Cutting Its Funding? Too Late: Everyone Already Has

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  Enclosure: [download]

  The National Transit database is out for 2007, and this time there is data that is either new or at least new to me. For selected items, time series data is presented for each year from 1991 to 2007, showing how the MTA (and perhaps other transit agencies) got into [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: June 07, 2009, 8:12pm EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• The Coming Political War City Residents Get To Sit Out

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  What will happen to all those excess McMansions built in recent years across suburban and exurban America, as energy costs rise and household sizes and incomes continue to shrink? From the American Planning Association comes a report with a suggestion -- why not covert these houses, built for the [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: June 04, 2009, 8:22pm EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• The Paterson vs. DiNapoli Pension “Disagreement”

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  Those who follow the news might have read of a report by the State Comptroller, Thomas DiNapoli, that the state pension plans have lost lots of money over the past year. In 2011 (after the current members of the state legislature have been re-elected) local governments will have to pay [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: May 30, 2009, 2:45pm EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• Residency Requirements: Something Else Unsaid

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  At one time all localities in New York State were allowed to limit their desirable local government jobs to local residents. Beginning in the late 1950s, however, a series of state laws have gradually prohibited New York City from excluding suburban residents from taking city local government jobs, while continuing [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: May 27, 2009, 7:37pm EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• Three Years On Room Eight: An Offer and Request

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  I posted for the first time on this site three years ago today. During that time I’ve written about 470 posts, generally three to four typewritten pages long, or about three per week, many with extensive spreadsheets based on data I had downloaded, tabulated and analyzed. More recently I’ve [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: May 22, 2009, 6:16pm EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• Conspiracy of Silence on the NYC Public Schools

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  The New York Times reports that the budget of individual NYC public schools will be cut 5 percent next year, following a cut of 3 percent last year. Despite the federal government borrowing $trillions our children and grandchildren will have to sacrifice to repay to provide stimulus money to [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: May 20, 2009, 9:12pm EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• Tax Incidence and the MTA

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  So rather than require the retired to pay the same taxes on the same income as everyone else (it is their debts, Medicaid costs and pensions that are destroying public services after all), the senior citizens in the New York State Legislature chose to raise New York’s already high taxes [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: May 18, 2009, 8:36pm EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• MTA Analyses That Should But Won’t Happen

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  With the cynicism that has been beaten into me over 25 years of observing New York public policy, I find myself agreeing with the New York Post as to what our state government probably wants the next MTA head to do: cover up the problems, run up the [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: May 17, 2009, 10:57am EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• Generation Greed and Secession

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  You may be wondering why Staten Island wants to secede from New York City, Rockland, Orange and Duchess counties want to secede from the MTA region, Long Island wants to secede from New York State, and Texas wants to secede from the United States. It is because they want to [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: May 15, 2009, 10:06am EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• The Newspaper Bailout

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  In matters of information and culture, governments in the United States have generally provided financial support only to those sources and styles that no longer appeal to popular audiences but still appeal to elite tastes, even if the elites are more affluent than those who get their information and culture [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: May 11, 2009, 8:52pm EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• Generation Greed Ponders Their Retirement, and Yours

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  “Key lawmakers from both parties (but one generation) have held tentative talks about overhauling the Social Security system,” the Washington Post reported. A likely plan would “include lower benefits for wealthy Americans, a higher retirement age and additional revenues.” Action is needed because “projections show that the system, which [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: May 09, 2009, 12:57pm EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• George Pataki, Man of (Some of the) People and Exemplar of Generation Greed

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  The most telling chart in the Mayor’s budget presentation does not concern public policy or government finance. It is the chart on page nine that shows the U.S. personal savings rate. And it shows that the generations recently retired and now in their peak earning years, unlike the [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: May 03, 2009, 11:17am EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• What No One Dates to Say

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  No sooner had Mayor Bloomberg released his budget than objections were raised by those who, like Bloomberg, cannot bring themselves to challenge the most privileged of the privileged interests. Reported The Daily Politics, Comptroller Bill Thompson, released a statement opposing a proposed sales tax increase as “regressive,” which is [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: May 02, 2009, 8:09am EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• The MTA and Malcolm Smith

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  Yes I'm disgusted with Mr. Smith and the rest of the State Senate. But remember, HE JUST GOT THERE, and is trying to convince people to vote and act like grown ups and allocate pain after 15 years in which others handed out benefits and shifted the cost to a' [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: April 30, 2009, 10:23am EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• Affordable Housing: The Possible Good News

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  Those who read my posts are certainly aware of my view that as a result of the future-selling and institution-milking decisions of the past 30 years, across the whole range of our institutions from families to businesses to governments, and in every area of policy from debt to pensions to [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: April 29, 2009, 8:17pm EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• Local Area Personal Income Data for 2007: Killing Off the State’s Tax Base

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  Enclosure: [download]

  The Bureau of Economic Analysis has released Local Area Personal Income data for 2007. I might look into it more deeply once it is available in disk form, allowing more detailed information for more places to be downloaded in one shot. But the most important finding hasn’t changed -- New [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: April 27, 2009, 7:53pm EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• Boards, Trustees and Actuaries

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  Here's an interesting take on the looting of New Jersey's pension funds, and who is to blame. Despite all the past beneficiaries of current costs, the author blames the pension fund trustees -- which is the equivalent of blaming the MTA's board for the MTA’s current financial problems. I'm [...]

  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: April 23, 2009, 11:24am EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• Vacant Storefronts: Don’t Believe the Hype

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  Enclosure: [download]

  Nearly 20 years ago I proposed that the U.S. Census Bureau conduct a Census of Non-Residential Real Estate by adding a couple of questions to the economic censuses, which are taken every five years. The way it conducts a Census of Housing by adding a few questions to its Census [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: April 19, 2009, 11:01am EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• What Has Happened and Will Happen: New York Government History Lessons from the Current Employment Survey

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  Enclosure: [download]

  The Current Employment survey data has been rebenchmarked for this year, and the annual average data for 2008 has been released. Meanwhile with a recession underway and public money increasingly tight, politicians and lobbyists are once again spewing nonsense about where our tax dollars go, talking about anything and everything [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: April 13, 2009, 8:02pm EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• Behind the Charter School Freakout

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  If anyone is wondering why the previously-tolerant United Federation of Teachers (UFT) is suddenly desperate to sink charter schools, you need to remember what has been the most important decision about the New York City schools in the past decade, the one that has sealed the fate of the city’s [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: April 09, 2009, 8:58pm EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• The Consequences Arrive, and Generation Greed Politicians Look At Social Security, Pensions, Taxes and the MTA

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  For those of you who missed it, there was a rare matter of fact statement of fact in the Washington Post last week. As a result of the recession Social Security payroll tax revenue is falling, and “the trust fund's annual surplus is forecast to all but vanish [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: April 04, 2009, 1:11pm EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• America Rebenchmarked

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  Enclosure: [download]

  The U.S. monthly employment and unemployment totals have been in the news in recent months, mostly for startling declines in the former. The employment numbers are compiled by state departments of labor, based on surveys of businesses, and then aggregated by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. They are based [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: March 30, 2009, 8:45pm EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• The Serfs Get Angry; The Predators Point Fingers At Each Other

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  I was asked yesterday why there is suddenly so much talk, in publications like the Wall Street Journal, about the unearned privileges and exploitations of the “political class?” And why there is so much populist posturing by Washington Democrats against executives at companies such as AIG, from which they were [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: March 29, 2009, 2:21pm EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• Connecticut Worried About Losing the Young

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  While no New York elected official can get through any public statement without using the words “senior citizen,” other states are very concerned with keeping and attracting the young. Connecticut for example, based on this article in the Hartford Courant: “State Has To Reverse Aging.” Is the Courant concerned [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: March 28, 2009, 11:57pm EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• The MTA And the Past

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  According to an article in Newsday, the current MTA funding crisis is the result of decisions made nine years ago, when the state legislature passed the 2000 to 2004 MTA Capital Plan. “Nine years ago, in collaboration with state officials, the mighty investment company Bear Stearns played a special [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: March 21, 2009, 5:11pm EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• Beating Dead Horses

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  As Albany goes around and around, looking for a way to seize more from the future to offset the damage they did to the present in the past, you may ask “what should they do” about the MTA meltdown. Take a time machine back and undo what they have done [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: March 18, 2009, 8:14pm EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• Since the Future Is Now the Past, It’s OK in Backward-Looking New York

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  The New York Observer is reporting that New York City will propose a relaxation of regulations that limit the opening of new supermarkets in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods. Leading the charge is City Planning director Amanda Burden. “With land use rule changes a centerpiece of the plan, Ms. Burden’s [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: March 14, 2009, 3:19pm EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• Wen Jiabao Should Be Worried

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  For those of you wondering how I can see stuff coming, all that is required is that you pay attention. One might have noticed, for example, Secretary of State Clinton imploring the Chinese government to keep buy U.S. Treasury bills, notes and bonds -- in effect a poorer than [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: March 14, 2009, 10:57am EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• Universal Health Care Fixed

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  For those of you wondering why I believe a universal health care financing system would be a major stimulus to the economy, I have fixed the hypertext error on this post so you can read the whole thing. Included as an attachment is a complete overview of the problems, [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: March 13, 2009, 9:44am EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• Universal Health Care Should Be the Economic Stimulus

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  Enclosure: [download]

  As the health care debate ramps up, I’m not entirely pleased with what I read coming out of Washington and in the press. It seems that too much deference is being given to a broken system by those who are afraid to take on vested interests, and too much money [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: March 09, 2009, 8:48pm EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• State Comptroller DiNapoli Asks the Easy Questions and Gets the Unimportant Answers

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  You might have read about the results of school district audits conducted by the staff of New York State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli over the past year. In a state with the highest public school spending relative to its residents’ incomes, and therefore the highest state and local taxes as a [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: March 08, 2009, 11:20am EDT
  by Larry Littlefield

• The Regional Bus Authority: Probably Not Good for NYC

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  As part of the rescue package designed to put off the collapse of our transit system for five years, the State of New York proposes the creation of a single regional bus authority for the entire MTA region. The proposal would supposedly create operating efficiencies, by merging administrative functions, and [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: March 03, 2009, 7:13pm EST
  by Larry Littlefield

• Perhaps SF Isn't So Great After All

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  In my prior post, I pointed out that because San Francisco requires a public referendum for pension changes, the types of deal-in-the-dark pension privileges that have been handed out, in New York and elsewhere, hadn't happened there. But a tip came from the Pension Tsunami folks that perhaps San [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: March 02, 2009, 10:23pm EST
  by Larry Littlefield

• One Place Without A Pension Disaster

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  I've probably written about this before, but in case you missed it, the place without a pension disaster is the City of San Francisco. And the reason it doesn't have a pension disaster is that all pension changes in that city are subject to a public referendum, and have been [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: March 01, 2009, 9:11am EST
  by Larry Littlefield

• Spare Change

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  It generally doesn't make sense to talk about budgets until the actual spending and revenues have been recorded and verified, let alone before the budget has even been passed. But it sounds to me like we are about to get $1 trillion in new taxes without univeral health insurance. Just' [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: February 26, 2009, 6:10pm EST
  by Larry Littlefield

• Taxes and Intra-Generational Equity: Not all Seniors are Equally Privileged

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  For the past three years I’ve tried to call attention to the inequities in the tax code at the expense of younger generations. But it seems no one who matters really cares about younger generations. There are, however, also tax inequities among older generations. And to see what those inequities [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: February 21, 2009, 1:54pm EST
  by Larry Littlefield

• More On Transportation in Boston

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  I've been asked by an acquaintance in Boston to comment on the plan by the Governor of Massachusetts to solve the state's transportation problems. And since the issues are the same here and there, I thought I’d post and expand on my response on Room Eight as well. My [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: February 21, 2009, 10:50am EST
  by Larry Littlefield

• Who Says It's Dysfunctional?

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  The New York State legislature is frequently called dysfunctional, but that assumes its function is to make the people of the state better off. In fact, the goal of the state's Republicans has been to force most New Yorkers to accept less in public services and benefits, and the goal [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: February 21, 2009, 9:12am EST
  by Larry Littlefield

• Pataki, Bruno and Silver (or people like them) in Boston

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  As it turns out, our transit authority isn’t the only one going down the tubes, and for many of the same reasons that the future of the MTA, and those who depend on it, is troubled. A local NYC weatherman, MIT executive and fellow transit fan sends word of the [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: February 16, 2009, 12:24pm EST
  by Larry Littlefield

• Executive Pay: They Should Go Much Farther

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  There are howls of protest over limits on pay and bonuses for companies receiving government bailout subsidies, with one version limiting guaranteed pay to $500,000 per year. The protest is that these top executives ought to receive whatever their talents command in the free market for labor, and if their [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: February 16, 2009, 10:38am EST
  by Larry Littlefield

• Bankruptcy: Governor Paterson Gives Me Hope

  —Room Eight - New York Politics

  Enclosure: [download]

  Finally some good news out of Albany. The Binghamton Press-Connect reports that according to Governor Paterson, without a change to the “orgy of self-interest” in state government, which will not happen, New York will be bankrupt in 18 months. “I'd say without a reversal of the traditional process of delaying [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: February 12, 2009, 9:04pm EST
  by Larry Littlefield