Kirsten Mortensen's blog

Spitzer’s backed off his licenses-for-illegals plan, sort of.

From the Albany Times Union:

In a major change to what has become his most controversial proposal since taking office, Gov. Eliot Spitzer on Saturday struck something of a compromise on issuing driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants.

The governor said New York will now offer a three-track plan that will provide separate licenses for citizens but will allow illegal immigrants to get licenses, too.

(Spitzer told the Times Union “There is already evidence of enormous support for this.” Translation: people loathed my last idea so much, logically they’ll love any alternative!)

According to the NY Times, the licenses for people unable to prove citizenship

would have a lower fee than the other licenses, would be demarcated “not valid for federal purposes,” or some similar designation, and could not be used to board planes or cross borders.

That still doesn’t address the knotty question of whether the license violates federal immigration law, but at least it suggests non-residents won’t be able to register to vote.

But I still have a question, for which I have found no answer in the half-dozen or so articles I’ve read on this since Spitzer’s press conference yesterday.

What will this cost?

Not the cost of the licenses themselves; I mean, what administrative overhead will this add to our state’s already cumbersome government procedures?

Is this going to make New York State a cheaper place to live, or a more expensive place to live?

The Real-ID federal scheme will add $20 to the cost of legal residents getting driver’s licenses–no surprise there.

But what interests me are the hidden costs of making the process even more complicated. The numbers of forms that will need to be created, printed, and stored will now be tripled, presumably. That alone will add to overhead costs, right?

How much?

I’d like to know.

Technorati Tags: Eliot Spitzer, drivers licenses, New York State

As I’ve already speculated, one possible motive for giving drivers licenses to illegal immigrants is that once they have licenses, it’s easy for them to register to vote.

I’m not the only one who suspects that might be true.

Here’s a piece from an Upstate NY paper, The Troy Record, reporting state Republicans’ claims on the matter.

The Republican-controlled State Legislature has directed the state Boards of Elections to ask people for their Social Security numbers “if there is any suspicion that the person is in the country illegally.”

Edward McDonough, the Democratic Board of Elections commissioner, has responded claiming the directive is a political stunt.

Okay. That’s to be expected.

But bear in mind — as the article points out — that in 2008, New York State may become a battleground state for a Hillary-Rudy presidential ticket.

Unfortunately the formatting in the article, at least in my browser, is horrible — there are no paragraph breaks — so you really have to slog to get to this little tidbit:

Rensselaer County Clerk Frank Merola, who filed a lawsuit Monday against the state Department of Motor Vehicles and its commissioner seeking to prevent the issuance of licenses to illegal immigrants, said he realized the potential for voter fraud when he received a directive from the DMV on Oct. 19.

The directive said the DMV removed a firewall in the computer system for processing “motor-voter” registrations, in which applicants for driver’s licenses can also register to vote, allowing a clerk to access “motor-voter” registration before an applicant’s Social Security number is confirmed, said Merola.

“The protection that was there is gone. It’s gone,” he said. “So now all we can do is register everybody that comes into the office.”

The story has also been picked up by The Buffalo News, which frames the motor voter registration change this way:

The state last week overturned a recent policy that required Social Security numbers to be shown for DMV clerks to register applicants to vote under the state’s Motor Voter Law.

Whatever else you can say about this, Spitzer sure doesn’t come across as squeaky clean.

Technorati Tags: Eliot Spitzer, drivers licenses, motor voter law

Via Megan McArdle, Robert Reich has proposed a “new tax policy” on his blog.

He begins the title of his post “The Logic of Taxing the Rich” and tries to head off criticism from the right by stating up front that “taxing the super-rich is not about class envy.”

But he also keeps using the word “fair,” not only in his blog post . . .

What’s fair? I’d say a 50 percent marginal tax rate on the very rich (earning over $500,000 a year). Plus an annual wealth tax of one half of one percent on net worth of people holding more than $5 million in total assets….If the Democrats stand for anything, it’s a fair allocation of the responsibility for paying the costs of maintaining this nation.

But also in a comment me left on McArdle’s blog:

If you consider (as the writer of this [McArdle's] blog wishes to do) state sales taxes (which are highly regressive), state income taxes (usually flat and therefore also regressive), sin taxes on cigarettes and liquor (regressive as well), and payroll taxes (regressive because they only hit the first $97K or so of income), then my argument is, I believe, even stronger.

Mankew, for his part, assumes deadweight losses that any tax system creates, and disregards not only the reality of new revenues — deadweight notwithstanding — but also considerations of simple fairness.

Interesting.

Why invoke “fairness” if the argument is based in logic?

No reason that I can see. On the contrary: appealing to “fairness” is obviously an ethical argument, not a logical one.

In fact, the elephant in the room of any tax debate is really an ethical question.

It’s a question with two pieces.

First, are wealthy people obligated, ethically, to shoulder a greater burden proportionally of the costs of running a country?

And second, do we accept a priori that our government has an ethical mandate to serve as arbiter of what that burden should be?

Proponents of “progressive” taxation answer yes to both questions — and so our politicians become the modern day priestly class, endowed with the moral authority to mete out compensation to the wronged — endowed with the moral authority to make the “unfair” “fair.”

What bothers me is that we — and by “we” I mean our nation as a whole — got here without really reconciling ourselves to it. Sure, the ethics of progressive taxation were raised at the time. Here’s Teddy Roosevelt in 1906, for instance:

It is important to this people to grapple with the problems connected with the amassing of enormous fortunes, and the use of those fortunes, both corporate and individual, in business. We should discriminate in the sharpest way between fortunes well-won and fortunes ill-won; between those gained as an incident to performing great services to the community as a whole, and those gained in evil fashion by keeping just within the limits of mere law-honesty.

Of course no amount of charity in spending such fortunes in any way compensates for misconduct in making them. As a matter of personal conviction, and without pretending to discuss the details or formulate the system, I feel that we shall ultimately have to consider the adoption of some such scheme as that of a progressive tax on all fortunes, beyond a certain amount either given in life or devised or bequeathed upon death to any individual — a tax so framed as to put it out of the power of the owner of one of these enormous fortunes to hand on more than a certain amount to any one individual; the tax, of course, to be imposed by the National and not the State Government.

To paraphrase: some rich people got so by being unscrupulous; we can’t really tell who they are, so we should tax all the rich to make sure the bad apples are separated from their ill-gotten gains. It’s only fair!

How many people, today, would agree with this “logic”?

I wonder. Clearly there is residual unease with the whole notion of progressive taxation, which suggests to me we didn’t really tackle it for what it is, head on and honestly. And so we were left with the lingering sense that it was foisted upon us, somehow — that our politicians were overly opportunistic in how they pulled the whole thing off.

I mean, think about it. Within a generation — a generation — of the passage of the 16th Amendment we had a federal income tax rate which — at the lowest income bracket — had increased by a factor of 20.

That’s a stunning leap.

The assumption of a social services agenda by the federal government was every bit as swift. One minute you have FDR outlining, in a Fireside Chat, the ethical basis for social security (and sounding at times an awful lot like his cousin 28 years before):

. . . the primary concern of any Government dominated by the humane ideals of democracy is the simple principle that in a land of vast resources no one should be permitted to starve. Relief was and continues to be our first consideration. It calls for large expenditures and will continue in modified form to do so for a long time to come. We may as well recognize that fact. It comes from the paralysis that arose as the after-effect of that unfortunate decade characterized by a mad chase for unearned riches and an unwillingness of leaders in almost every walk of life to look beyond their own schemes and speculations.

And then, within a quarter of a century, the New Deal — a notion that arose during a period of international upheaval — had given birth to The Great Society, and from there . . . well. According to this Social Security Administration data, between 1960 and 1995 federal spending on “social welfare expenditures” had risen, as a percentage of GDP, from 4.9 percent to 12.4 percent. More than doubled.

We have, in other words, a National Tithe.

Charity — even more broadly, charity to strangers — is a deep-seated Western value. Old Testament scripture is full of exhortations that we should give to the poor — that being kind to the needy honors God.

It’s in our cultural blood; we are reconciled to it. This is why even the most secular of us will likely agree that we’re morally obligated to be charitable.

What is new is the notion that the government ought to be the intermediary.

And that, I believe, is where the unease creeps in — and rightly so.

First, a private, spiritual virtue has been rendered a public, social obligation.

Where’s the redemption in that? Am I a better person for having a Federal Withholding deducted from my paycheck? Put another way: when the sacrifice my “charity” represents was not made by my own free will, does it have the same moral stature as it otherwise would?

And then there’s the potential for corruption, which happens on multiple levels. Here’s one: our politicians buy votes with social programs — that can’t be disputed; it’s woven into every politician’s platform (have you heard any serious political contender advocate repealing social security? I thought not) — but how can we view their naked self-interest for what it is?

We can’t, because it’s clocked in the language of an ethical mandate.

Or this: the huge temptation created by pooling so much money in one place, and so far from home. How many people make a living by administering our public social programs? It’s an industry unto itself. How well is it policed? How efficient is it? How selfless are these people? Some are, I’m sure — but others are assuredly not. Is that — any bleeding off of this money for less-than-charitable uses — not another corruption?

Step back and look at federal spending as a whole. Compare total federal spending as a percent of GDP in 1940 to today. It’s doubled, from just under 10 percent to about 20 percent. How much of that rise is, honestly, justified? Were there other ways to fund the things we’ve funded? Would our foreign policy now be different had we not handed over so much of our money to our government?

How much corruption have we funded?

There’s no way to know. We’ve ceded control. All we know is that our “needs” as our politicians define them have magically kept pace with the amount of money available.

Or how about this. People who advocate progressive taxation can’t part “the super rich” from their money unaided. They know they can’t. They need help. They need . . . politicians.

And so you have one group of Americans turning to the government — a source of Power — to force another group of people to contribute more to the national budget.

When “conservatives” suggest that progressive taxes are a form of communism, this is the crux of their complaint: that a centralized government has been made the vehicle for parting citizens with their money. And it’s at bottom an ethical objection, because while this may be couched in terms of leveling the difference between the powerful and the weak, it is also an act of overriding the powerful with the yet-more-powerful.

Is that fair?

The whole issue feels muddy to me. It cries out to be argued, as I alluded to at the beginning of this post, honestly: in terms of the ethics that underpin it — not falsely; not as if the ethical questions have all been answered, because they haven’t.

If they even can be answered. Perhaps they can’t be. Perhaps we’re too secularized, too unmoored from the old fashioned truisms that we once used to settle ethical questions.

But in that case we can at least be honest in another way, and admit that what we’re really doing is jostling for power, jostling for control over the pot of money the Roosevelts caused to be set aside by the richest country in the world . . . and that “fairness” has nothing to do with it.

Technorati Tags: progressive taxation, social security, federal spending

Polls typically show that aside from the Iraq war, the top issues of concern to voters are usually jobs/the economy, and healthcare.

See for instance this CBS news poll from a month ago which asked the open-ended question “What do you think is the most important problem facing this country today?”

I’d sure like to see pork barrel spending displace a couple of those issues.

I mean, think about it. You have an out-of-control Congress treating taxpayer dollars like personal re-election funds.

It’s terribly poor stewardship of our nation’s economic resources. And it also invites corruption.

Argue if you want that the government should be managing the economy, creating jobs, paying for our healthcare. But you have to admit those are huge, complicated problems that require huge, complicated solutions.

Whereas pork barrel spending is very straightforward. It’s within politicians’ control. If we voters could muster enough outrage, it could be reined in pretty quickly.

Robert Novak has a column taking up the latter issue. It starts by describing a $1 million earmark in a Senate healthc care and education bill to fund a Woodstock museum.

Writes Novak, this “typifies the earmark epidemic because political insiders are often found pushing pork.”

The museum is funded principally by billionaire Alan Gerry’s foundation, which has annual investment income of $24 million. Federal Election Commission records show that Gerry has donated at least $229,000 to political campaigns, and his wife, Sandra, has contributed $90,000 over the past 10 years (including $26,000 in the last election cycle to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, headed by Schumer). On June 30, the Gerrys gave the maximum $9,200 to Clinton’s presidential campaign, three days after the two New York senators put the Bethel earmark into the Labor-HHS bill.

This is unconscionable.

So what are we waiting for?

Or have we become too corrupted ourselves to fight this thing? We don’t want to piss on a museum in Woodstock because we want money to come back to our hometowns for our little pet projects, our rowboats and parades?

Have we all been bought?

Technorati Tags: pork barrel spending

I wonder how many other people, like me, are starting to pay closer attention to the way our state is governed as a consequence of the drivers licenses for illegals debacle?

I’ve learned, for instance, that our state government sets aside discretionary funds — called “member items” or local grants. They’re controlled by the heads of various state agencies. And are used to twist arms during political fights.

It’s an issue now because Spitzer has apparently changed his mind about how $100,000 from one such fund, under the control of the state health commissioner, is going to be spent.

A little over a month ago, an email from Spitzer’s administration seemed to promise that the money would go to a health clinic for the poor in a Republican-controlled state district outside of Schenectady.

Now, in the wake of the Republican rebellion against the drivers license scheme, the money has been pulled.

Here’s a thorough article article about it from the Albany Times-Union.

In past years, the health clinic got money from a discretionary fund controlled by the state health commissioner. But as part of what he said was an effort to make spending more transparent, Spitzer, who took office in January, did away with these multimillion-dollar pots of money controlled by agency heads and put them in the state budget as line items.

The governor said he would use money left over from 2006 to fund some requests from local lawmakers, which is what Tedisco sought in August, after he realized the clinic’s traditional funding source no longer existed.

Assembly Minority Leader James Tedisco claims the funds were cut to retaliate against Republicans who oppose drivers licenses for illegals. And he’s produced a Sept. 6 email from Spitzer’s office that states “we’re prepared to process this project along with the other items.”

So what have we learned here?

First, Eliot “Steamroller” Spitzer is busy punishing people who disagree with him on the license for illegals issue — despite the fact that it’s Spitzer who is out of step with the majority of New Yorkers.

Which is fine. All’s fair in love & politics etc. etc.

But what doesn’t sit so well is that it appears Spitzer’s been caught in a lie:

Spitzer officials said they told Tedisco earlier this year that his district wouldn’t receive additional funding for new projects and the Republican had an opportunity to designate money for the cause if he wanted to.

“There was no effort to retaliate against Mr. Tedisco,” said Spitzer spokeswoman Christine Anderson.

Suuuuure there wasn’t.

That isn’t going to prop Spitzer’s standing any.

The other thing we’ve learned here is that the government of the heaviest-taxed state in the US plays budget games to hide its pork spending.

It’s one thing for the health commissioner to budget money to a clinic — a clinic staffed by retired physician volunteers btw. But here are some other tidbits about these member items, from the Times-Union piece:

The other items included additional grants requested by Tedisco, including $90,000 for a bicentennial celebration in Ballston Spa; $10,000 to buy boats for the Scotia Glenville Rowing Association; and $50,000 toward an elevator at the Italian American Heritage Association. None of the items, totaling $482,548, was approved for funding.

Isn’t it nice to know that the money sent to Albany by the most heavily taxed citizens in the country are going to fund rowboats and parades?

I’m pleased that Spitzer moved these funds items to the state budget. And I’m not terribly sympathetic to pols who find themselves vulnerable, now, to having their 2006 money cut.

They put themselves in that position when they latched onto the teat in the first place.

But I also have to wonder how eager Spitzer will be to give up this political weapon now that he’s had need to use it.

I, for one, will be paying close attention.

Technorati Tags: New York State pork barrel spending

I wouldn’t want anyone to think I reserve all my political disgust for Eliot Spitzer. I don’t. My scorn for NY State politicians is abundantly bi-partisan.

So for your enjoyment, here’s an AP photograph taken by Mark Groll at a recent memorial service for fallen NY State firefighters, which I found on gothamist:

The fellow on the left is New York senate leader Joe Bruno. A Republican. Drawing on political skills he learned as a five-year-old.

Bruno is mad ‘cuz Spitzer’s administration is using some (mildish) dirty tricks to discredit him.

Which is apparently far more important, in Bruno’s childish little world, than showing respect for people who lost their lives trying to save the lives of others.

It speaks volume about what he really thinks about “public service,” doesn’t it.

Spitzer’s no angel, of course, and I’m not sorry to see his fake halo dislodged. But Bruno’s self-righteous anger is a big fat sham as well:

While it’s common for elected officials to dip into their campaign committees for an occasional personal meal or other perk, the filings for Bruno’s three committees suggest that he may never pick up his own tab. In 2006 and the first six months of 2007, the committees have spent more than $92,000 on restaurant and country-club bills for “meetings” or “meals,” not including any expenses that are listed for “fundraising” purposes. Calls to some of the restaurants confirm that Bruno eats there regularly, often with guests. It’s not at all uncommon for multiple meals to be billed for the same day, or for the committee to cover virtually an entire week of dinners (including the weekend), usually in restaurants near the capitol and his home. It is possible that some of these meals are for staff, but one committee has no full-time staff, and it’s the one with $38,000 in restaurant billings alone.

In addition, the committees have spent an astounding $18,225 at the track, including expenses virtually every other day during the 36-day summer season at Saratoga, where horseman Bruno reigns as a local potentate. He also appears to take at least a yearly “fundraising” junket to Florida, where he has spent $55,000 in the last year and a half—far more than he’s ever raised there.

As extraordinary as these totals are, there’s also the $211,381 attributed on the Bruno filings to “Cardmember Services,” an affiliate of the World Perks Visa Card; $55,621 to “Commercial Card Solutions,” an affiliate of J.P. Morgan Chase; and $26,000 to a third credit-card company. These entities, which are cumulatively listed at five addresses on Bruno reports, “consolidate transactions” and “help manage travel and other miscellaneous expenses” for small businesses. In addition, the committees report $36,507 in “unitemized expenses,” often listed by the thousands at the end of a reporting period. The law requires that any expenditure over $50 be specified. Ironically, while two of the committees serve the senate majority, the third—which has spent $4.5 million since 2000—is in business purely to re-elect Bruno himself, in a district where he hasn’t faced a real opponent (and sometimes no Democrat at all) in a decade.

That’s Wayne Barrett reporting in the Village Voice — and he’s only warming up. The article goes on & on for three pages, detailing how Bruno and his associates live fat, abuse their positions, and deliberately obfuscate their activities from anyone who might be critical of them.

Our state’s political class is a joke, and our residents are paying the price. Laughing yet?

Technorati Tags: Eliot Spitzer, Joe Bruno, New York State politics

In the past week or so, the reason Spitzer has given for his licenses-for-illegals plan is that it will improve safety.

But before he realized he’d run into a political buzzsaw, his message wasn’t honed to quote that same point.

He’s on record as claiming his policy is “morally” and “ethically” right.

His early October statements suggest he wants to make our state a nicer place for illegal immigrants to live:

I want people who are driving to have a license so that I know who they are, I don’t want them to be forced into a context where they’re getting forged licenses, forged social security numbers, living in an underground economy in the shadows.

He’s quoted as saying he wants to make it easier for illegal immigrants to participate in the NYS economy.

When he spoke to the NYS Democratic Committee on October 1, he said, “The immigrant community of New York State deserves to have the opportunity to have drivers licenses.”

Well, okay. But guess what. It’s against federal law to “encourage” illegal aliens to reside in the United States. Under Sec. 274 of 8 U.S.C. 13240 of the Federal Immigration and Nationality Act, anyone who

encourages or induces an alien to come to, enter, or reside in the United States, knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that such coming to, entry, or residence is or will be in violation of law

is subject to fines and/or imprisonment of up to 10 years.

I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to suggest that making it easier for illegals to live and do business in New York encourages them to stay.

That law, of course, was devised to criminalize the actions of private citizens — including people whose transgressions seem rather petty compared to what Eliot’s doing. Family members who sneak relatives into the country, employers who hire illegals.

Apparently Spitzer doesn’t have to follow the same laws the rest of us do. He can, in a single gesture, encourage a million illegal aliens to live here without having to fear the next day’s knock on the door.

Technorati Tags: Eliot Spitzer, drivers licenses

New poll finds Spitzer’s justification for giving licenses to illegal immigrants isn’t winning converts.

On the contrary. The percentage against, statewide, was 68 percent a few days ago.

Uh oh spagetti-o’s!

Spitzer’s approval rating is also down to 54 percent, from 75 percent when he took office in January — but part of that is due, no doubt, to the provincial scandalettes that have been tying up so much of NYS lawmakers’ time these days . . .

Still, that’s an awful lot of political capital to have squandered in only 9 months.

UPDATE: Correction — the percentage against was 58 percent, not 68 percent — that was on October 5.

Technorati Tags: Eliot Spitzer, drivers licenses

More fallout piling up at the feet of Eliot “politics had nothing to do with it” Spitzer — who is touring Upstate New York to drum up support for upcoming local elections:

Few Democrats will publicly criticize the governor, but many here and elsewhere in the state are questioning whether Spitzer has turned into a liability during this campaign season.

“The nervousness among local party chairs is palpable,” said one statewide Democratic activist who is following the situation. “He started a fight right in the middle of the local campaign season that nobody was prepared for.”

A Democratic consultant said Spitzer never seemed to calculate the damage that the license order is wreaking among candidates, especially upstate.

“Could the timing on this issue be any worse for upstate Democrats?” he asked.

[John] Zogby [of Zogby Internationl], who for two days last week surveyed 400 Erie County residents who are likely to vote, said he finds the order “a loser everywhere” throughout the state. He noted that grass-roots candidates such as those running for county clerk know their politics and that most of them have turned against it.

He’d be smart to find a face-saving way to back out of this — the sooner, the better.

I’m sure he and his aides are beginning to think that too, no matter what he states publicly.

Technorati Tags: Eliot Spitzer, drivers licenses

That’s Spitzer responding to a reporter’s question about whether there’s any room for compromise on the driver’s license for illegal immigrants business.

This is what happens when a member of the political/financial elite wins an uncontested election to executive office. He has no intention of listening to what people have to say. Why should he? Nobody can stop him from doing what he wants to do.

Here’s the whole quote.

No, no compromise. We’re right. The governor sets this policy, this isn’t a subject of debate from people, who are, Jim Tedisco who’s out there saying silly things quite frankly.

Sounds like he’s trying to temper his rhetoric a bit — qualifying “people” mid-sentence by singling out Tedisco (a state Assembly Republican who has introduced an act to indemnify county clerks who refuse to follow Spitzer’s edict).

Rather than painting everyone who opposes this measure as a raving right winger.

Well, that’s a start.

Technorati Tags: Eliot Spitzer, drivers license