Thursday, June 26, 2008
New Yorkers rate politicians, historians rate Presidents
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
Now that the political leaderships have stabilized, it becomes interesting how the attitudes of New Yorkers have changed, or have they?
The Siena Research Institute’s monthly NY Poll of 820 registered voters has a good record of identifying voter opinions, favorable vs. unfavorable, and the June 9 ratings are revealing.
From the top: if Presidential elections were today, the June 2008 "Obama/McCain/don’t know" percentage of vote projection would be 51/33/17. vs. May 2008 49/38/14, with a steady 45/40/15 range going back to Jan. 2007 (the total does not always add to 100% because of rounding).
In the "favorable/not favorable opinion" categories, Obama was 58/30 in June 2008, up from a 55/34 in May, rising from 48 to a sometime 60 since Nov. 2006. Clinton’s favorable/unfavorable in June was 56/38, vs. 55/34 in May, starting with an unbeatable 60+ in 2005/6. dropping to steady series of 50s in 2007. McCain’s favorable/unfavorable in June was 42/47 vs. 49/39 in May, down from a 56 in Nov. 2006 to a subsequent steady 40s.
For Governor, Paterson has a favorable/unfavorable rating of 57/17 in June, 48/17 in May. His executive leadership for June is 75, combining excellent, good and fair ratings of 6, 38, 31, vs. 68 in May (5, 35, and 28). For the 2010 Gubernatorial election, his June favorable/unfavorable rating is 33/30 vs. 30/25 in May; running against Bloomberg he would lose 34/45 and 36/45, while winning against Cuomo 43/31 and 42/29. In general, Bloomberg’s f/nf numbers, steady for the past 12 months, is 58/30 and 65/19, while Cuomo’s run to 54/22, with job performance 54/32, his best ever.
On the complex issue of same sex marriage, the favorable/unfavorable rating was 46/40. Divided by voter groups, the affirmatives came from Democrats, the 18-34 year-olds, and Jewish voters, with predominant negatives from Republicans, Catholics, Protestants, African –Americans and the 55+ year-olds. On choice, 35% were for marriage, 40 for civil union and 19 for non-recognition, with only 6 undecided. The Governor’s ruling to recognize same-sex marriages performed legally outside NYS received a f/nf of 55/37. Overall, three quarters of New Yorkers want some form of recognition of same-sex couples.
On the question of whether New York State is "on the right track/wrong direction" the poll numbers are negative, 30/46 for June, 32/43 for May. The Spitzer numbers were mostly positive, Nov. 2006 to Oct. 2007, 40s/30s, turning negative thereafter. The Pataki numbers 2005 through 2006 were mostly negative, 30s/40s. The only groups that saw NYS as being on the right track were the Jewish and African- American voters.
A big issue, particularly in areas with predominantly single-family residences, was property tax. Property tax cap for people who received 7% or higher increases in each of past 5 years was given a f/nf 76/14 overall rating: 55’22 in NYC, 80/12 in the suburbs and 79/12 upstate. There were subsets, e.g. a taxable income based cap, and school tax considerations, with the seniors and teachers having different horses in the race.
Finally, control of the NYS Senate, with 48% favoring Democrats, vs. 41% for Republicans. That’s in a state with 47% registered Democratic voters. Vs 27% GOP. One would guess that we don’t like one-party control. Draw your own conclusions.
Since 1982 Siena also been collecting ratings of US Presidents, most recently by several hundred scholars. Herewith its 2002 ratings of recent Presidents, juxtaposed with Wall Street Journal 2006 scores: Kennedy 14/15, Johnson 15/18, Nixon 26/32, Ford 28/28, Carter 25/34, Reagan 16/6, Bush 22/21, Clinton 18/22, Bush 23/19 (the Siena score was shortly after 9/11). Despite avowed political equalization of balance between scholars, biases cannot be avoided, as shown in the Reagan, Carter and Nixon ratings.
The 1982 Murray-Blessing rating of 10 Best Presidents by 846 historians shows remarkable consistency between Liberal and Conservative scholars, with 9 of 10 appearing on both sides – Lincoln, F. D. Roosevelt, Washington, Jefferson, T. Roosevelt, Wilson, Jackson, Truman, John Adams – the single inconsistency being L. B. Johnson on the Left and Eisenhower on the Right. Subsequent lists have more differences, with Reagan added in nearly all cases. As for more up-to-date readings of G. W. Bush, a 2006 Siena poll of 744 scholars asking for a rating after 5 years of Presidency, he gets a 2% Good, 5% Nearly Good, 11% Average, 24% Below Average and 58% Failure score. A 2008 History News Network poll of self selected scholars gave him a 98% Failure and a 61% Worst in History rating.
Murray-Blessing also has the Seven Worst Presidents, with six names appearing consistently for both Liberals and Conservatives – Pierce, Andrew Johnson, Buchanan, Grant, Nixon and Harding at the bottom, with Coolidge and Carter the alternates on the left and right. Nixon is a changeling, in four of eight scholarly ratings he escapes the Seven Worst rank, with Liberals for his environmentalist record, with Conservatives as a foreign policy doer.
Wally Dobelis thanks SRI and Prof. Alan Chartock
Now that the political leaderships have stabilized, it becomes interesting how the attitudes of New Yorkers have changed, or have they?
The Siena Research Institute’s monthly NY Poll of 820 registered voters has a good record of identifying voter opinions, favorable vs. unfavorable, and the June 9 ratings are revealing.
From the top: if Presidential elections were today, the June 2008 "Obama/McCain/don’t know" percentage of vote projection would be 51/33/17. vs. May 2008 49/38/14, with a steady 45/40/15 range going back to Jan. 2007 (the total does not always add to 100% because of rounding).
In the "favorable/not favorable opinion" categories, Obama was 58/30 in June 2008, up from a 55/34 in May, rising from 48 to a sometime 60 since Nov. 2006. Clinton’s favorable/unfavorable in June was 56/38, vs. 55/34 in May, starting with an unbeatable 60+ in 2005/6. dropping to steady series of 50s in 2007. McCain’s favorable/unfavorable in June was 42/47 vs. 49/39 in May, down from a 56 in Nov. 2006 to a subsequent steady 40s.
For Governor, Paterson has a favorable/unfavorable rating of 57/17 in June, 48/17 in May. His executive leadership for June is 75, combining excellent, good and fair ratings of 6, 38, 31, vs. 68 in May (5, 35, and 28). For the 2010 Gubernatorial election, his June favorable/unfavorable rating is 33/30 vs. 30/25 in May; running against Bloomberg he would lose 34/45 and 36/45, while winning against Cuomo 43/31 and 42/29. In general, Bloomberg’s f/nf numbers, steady for the past 12 months, is 58/30 and 65/19, while Cuomo’s run to 54/22, with job performance 54/32, his best ever.
On the complex issue of same sex marriage, the favorable/unfavorable rating was 46/40. Divided by voter groups, the affirmatives came from Democrats, the 18-34 year-olds, and Jewish voters, with predominant negatives from Republicans, Catholics, Protestants, African –Americans and the 55+ year-olds. On choice, 35% were for marriage, 40 for civil union and 19 for non-recognition, with only 6 undecided. The Governor’s ruling to recognize same-sex marriages performed legally outside NYS received a f/nf of 55/37. Overall, three quarters of New Yorkers want some form of recognition of same-sex couples.
On the question of whether New York State is "on the right track/wrong direction" the poll numbers are negative, 30/46 for June, 32/43 for May. The Spitzer numbers were mostly positive, Nov. 2006 to Oct. 2007, 40s/30s, turning negative thereafter. The Pataki numbers 2005 through 2006 were mostly negative, 30s/40s. The only groups that saw NYS as being on the right track were the Jewish and African- American voters.
A big issue, particularly in areas with predominantly single-family residences, was property tax. Property tax cap for people who received 7% or higher increases in each of past 5 years was given a f/nf 76/14 overall rating: 55’22 in NYC, 80/12 in the suburbs and 79/12 upstate. There were subsets, e.g. a taxable income based cap, and school tax considerations, with the seniors and teachers having different horses in the race.
Finally, control of the NYS Senate, with 48% favoring Democrats, vs. 41% for Republicans. That’s in a state with 47% registered Democratic voters. Vs 27% GOP. One would guess that we don’t like one-party control. Draw your own conclusions.
Since 1982 Siena also been collecting ratings of US Presidents, most recently by several hundred scholars. Herewith its 2002 ratings of recent Presidents, juxtaposed with Wall Street Journal 2006 scores: Kennedy 14/15, Johnson 15/18, Nixon 26/32, Ford 28/28, Carter 25/34, Reagan 16/6, Bush 22/21, Clinton 18/22, Bush 23/19 (the Siena score was shortly after 9/11). Despite avowed political equalization of balance between scholars, biases cannot be avoided, as shown in the Reagan, Carter and Nixon ratings.
The 1982 Murray-Blessing rating of 10 Best Presidents by 846 historians shows remarkable consistency between Liberal and Conservative scholars, with 9 of 10 appearing on both sides – Lincoln, F. D. Roosevelt, Washington, Jefferson, T. Roosevelt, Wilson, Jackson, Truman, John Adams – the single inconsistency being L. B. Johnson on the Left and Eisenhower on the Right. Subsequent lists have more differences, with Reagan added in nearly all cases. As for more up-to-date readings of G. W. Bush, a 2006 Siena poll of 744 scholars asking for a rating after 5 years of Presidency, he gets a 2% Good, 5% Nearly Good, 11% Average, 24% Below Average and 58% Failure score. A 2008 History News Network poll of self selected scholars gave him a 98% Failure and a 61% Worst in History rating.
Murray-Blessing also has the Seven Worst Presidents, with six names appearing consistently for both Liberals and Conservatives – Pierce, Andrew Johnson, Buchanan, Grant, Nixon and Harding at the bottom, with Coolidge and Carter the alternates on the left and right. Nixon is a changeling, in four of eight scholarly ratings he escapes the Seven Worst rank, with Liberals for his environmentalist record, with Conservatives as a foreign policy doer.
Wally Dobelis thanks SRI and Prof. Alan Chartock
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Stuyvesant Square Park celebrates Spring
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
Visiting the West Park is a joy for the soul. The bushes are green, and although the crab apple, weeping cherry (there’s one near the 2nd Ave entrance), red bud, hawthorn, dogwood (a magnificent one at South entrance) and pear trees might be past their bloom (sorry, my spring alert was late this year), they are full of foliage. The aura of peonies, roses, rhododendrons (white and purple). irises (nearly finished), calibrachoa (small purple petunia, and newly planted lobelia, pot wine and impatience smoothes the spirits of the day that plague us. Come visit, and sit for a while, or walk around.
There is a new effort to keep the park up, the Stuyvesant Square Community Alliance (SSCA), founded in August 2006, that describes itself as a group of organizations, schools, businesses, institutions and individuals living and working around Stuyvesant Square Park, focused on the betterment of the park through community-driven projects and events. It was founded with the assistance of the NYC Partnership for Parks, an organization of the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation, whose Manhattan Outreach Coordinator Catherine Ponte at 212-408-0214 is listed as a contact person (also stuyvesantsquare@yahoo.com). The leader I met is local resident Phyllis Mangels. On Sunday June 1 SSCA had its first fundraiser in the Park, also hosted by our very active Parks gardener, Christie Dailey. Plastic bunting decorated the Park, and local people and Friends School students sold cookies, pastry and $2 and $5 potted annuals for planting in the park, which was done immediately, along the north fence, by Christie’s volunteers.
Young women in green Parks Department shirts had brought groups of Manhattan children to enjoy the Cinderella puppet show, presented by the Puppets in the Park, a Swedish Cottage Theatre traveling troupe sponsored by the City Parks Foundation. Local residents and parents with children in strollers, alerted by posters and Christy’s e-mail, came in groups and brought along their friends, and fun was had by all.
SSCA lists as their participants the Friends Quarterly Meeting and Seminary, Manhattan Comprehensive High School, Hospital for Joint Diseases, Garden of Forgiveness (Friends 9/11 memorial), Manhattan Mennonite Fellowship, Parks Department and its Foundation, and Stuyvesant Park Dog Owners Group, who maintain and police the off-leash dog run, maintained during specified hours in the East Park.
Last mentioned was Stuyvesant Park Neighborhood Association, Inc. (SPNA), which deserves special mention. SPNA the residents’ group founded in the late 1960s, with 200 dues-paying members, presided over by Rosalee Isaly,one of its earliest members, has been zealously protecting the Historic District (awarded 1975) and individual Landmarks designations of the area, and raising several thousand dollars a year to pay for the paeks' summer maintenance help and flowers. It has been working toward restoration of the park fences, the largest free-standing fences in the city. In the mid 1980s, after hard joint effort with a dedicated Parks architect, the late Rex Wassermann, it managed to connect with federal ISTEA highway funds to restore the West fence, at a cost in seven figures (hard times closed further funds for the East fence).
SPNA lost a Landmarks designation of the Dvorak House, at 328 East 17th Street, the residence of the Czech composer in the 1890s (when he directed the Music Academy, on the site of the now Washington Irving High School, learned the Blues from a Black St. George’s choir singer. and wrote the New World Symphony here), when Beth Israel Hospital persuaded the City Counsel to let them convert it to the Maplethorpe AIDS Center. Nothing daunted, SPNA was material in a joint effort with the Dvorak American Heritage Association (DAHA) and Jaromila Novotna, the late Czech Metropolitan Opera star, in rescuing the Ivan Mestrovic statue of Dvorak from benign neglect at the Avery Fisher Hall and placing it in the East Park corner, across from his former residence, and raising the $40K endowment that Parks Department requires for maintenance.
The landscaping has been recently refreshed (is it thanks to the Greenacre Foundation, its sometime benefactors?), but there is some concern about the handicapped-equipped park benches that the Hospital for Joint Diseases has placed near the statue, out of character with the Park’s ambiance (note that alittle green and white paint would cure most of the pain), without approval of CB6, Landmarks Commission and Arts Commission. However, it was accepted by an assistant head of the entire Parks and Recreation Department, to the regrets of the hardline preservationist contingent of the SPNA, who have been concerned with the Parks Department philosophy of making the city’s recreation facilities self-supporting, with inserting restaurants, particularly in landmarked areas. Over the years there have been several Parks Department attempts to find a restaurant owner to redo the closed brick utilities building in the East Park as a food kiosk.
Others may disagree, but as a former co-President of SPNA I should like to see the maintenance of parks for the tax –paying residents to be a City function, less commercialized,ith local residents pitching in on a non-commercial basis, when the city runs out of steam. SPNA has done so over the years, as a recent instance filling the North side of the West Park with blooms, with a minimal investment of $2,000 for flowers, bought directly, with more to come for the area facing St. George’s. This is a small fraction of the money the city has expended when gardening in the East Park with a landscaper, paying heavy administrative overhead. People cooperate, and Stuyvesant Park has received person to person voluntarily donated plants from Stuyvesant Town and Union Square,On the hottest Saturday a week later SPNA held its main fund-raising even, a flea market on 2nd Avenue where it bisects the parks (hence the 1985 ISTEA generosity), a major venue for dedicated SPNA members to recruit more neighbors. This type of dedication has for years underwritten the parks’ maintenance shortfalls. Walking through the West park, we found a Parks employee carefully feeding water to a plastic bag surrounding a new hawthorn that arrived two weeks ago and might suffer transplantation shock in the excessive heat, another example of dedication.
With this amount of attention from truly well-meaning people. City and local, the Stuyvesant Square parks are really blessed and should flourish forever – as long as people can cooperate without worry about kicking order considerations. To close, a brief heartfelt in memoriam for Jan Hird Pokorny {1914-5/12/2008), the Czech-born architect and Landmarks commissioner who was the main mover in bringing the statue of Antonin Dvorak to the Park.
Visiting the West Park is a joy for the soul. The bushes are green, and although the crab apple, weeping cherry (there’s one near the 2nd Ave entrance), red bud, hawthorn, dogwood (a magnificent one at South entrance) and pear trees might be past their bloom (sorry, my spring alert was late this year), they are full of foliage. The aura of peonies, roses, rhododendrons (white and purple). irises (nearly finished), calibrachoa (small purple petunia, and newly planted lobelia, pot wine and impatience smoothes the spirits of the day that plague us. Come visit, and sit for a while, or walk around.
There is a new effort to keep the park up, the Stuyvesant Square Community Alliance (SSCA), founded in August 2006, that describes itself as a group of organizations, schools, businesses, institutions and individuals living and working around Stuyvesant Square Park, focused on the betterment of the park through community-driven projects and events. It was founded with the assistance of the NYC Partnership for Parks, an organization of the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation, whose Manhattan Outreach Coordinator Catherine Ponte at 212-408-0214 is listed as a contact person (also stuyvesantsquare@yahoo.com). The leader I met is local resident Phyllis Mangels. On Sunday June 1 SSCA had its first fundraiser in the Park, also hosted by our very active Parks gardener, Christie Dailey. Plastic bunting decorated the Park, and local people and Friends School students sold cookies, pastry and $2 and $5 potted annuals for planting in the park, which was done immediately, along the north fence, by Christie’s volunteers.
Young women in green Parks Department shirts had brought groups of Manhattan children to enjoy the Cinderella puppet show, presented by the Puppets in the Park, a Swedish Cottage Theatre traveling troupe sponsored by the City Parks Foundation. Local residents and parents with children in strollers, alerted by posters and Christy’s e-mail, came in groups and brought along their friends, and fun was had by all.
SSCA lists as their participants the Friends Quarterly Meeting and Seminary, Manhattan Comprehensive High School, Hospital for Joint Diseases, Garden of Forgiveness (Friends 9/11 memorial), Manhattan Mennonite Fellowship, Parks Department and its Foundation, and Stuyvesant Park Dog Owners Group, who maintain and police the off-leash dog run, maintained during specified hours in the East Park.
Last mentioned was Stuyvesant Park Neighborhood Association, Inc. (SPNA), which deserves special mention. SPNA the residents’ group founded in the late 1960s, with 200 dues-paying members, presided over by Rosalee Isaly,one of its earliest members, has been zealously protecting the Historic District (awarded 1975) and individual Landmarks designations of the area, and raising several thousand dollars a year to pay for the paeks' summer maintenance help and flowers. It has been working toward restoration of the park fences, the largest free-standing fences in the city. In the mid 1980s, after hard joint effort with a dedicated Parks architect, the late Rex Wassermann, it managed to connect with federal ISTEA highway funds to restore the West fence, at a cost in seven figures (hard times closed further funds for the East fence).
SPNA lost a Landmarks designation of the Dvorak House, at 328 East 17th Street, the residence of the Czech composer in the 1890s (when he directed the Music Academy, on the site of the now Washington Irving High School, learned the Blues from a Black St. George’s choir singer. and wrote the New World Symphony here), when Beth Israel Hospital persuaded the City Counsel to let them convert it to the Maplethorpe AIDS Center. Nothing daunted, SPNA was material in a joint effort with the Dvorak American Heritage Association (DAHA) and Jaromila Novotna, the late Czech Metropolitan Opera star, in rescuing the Ivan Mestrovic statue of Dvorak from benign neglect at the Avery Fisher Hall and placing it in the East Park corner, across from his former residence, and raising the $40K endowment that Parks Department requires for maintenance.
The landscaping has been recently refreshed (is it thanks to the Greenacre Foundation, its sometime benefactors?), but there is some concern about the handicapped-equipped park benches that the Hospital for Joint Diseases has placed near the statue, out of character with the Park’s ambiance (note that alittle green and white paint would cure most of the pain), without approval of CB6, Landmarks Commission and Arts Commission. However, it was accepted by an assistant head of the entire Parks and Recreation Department, to the regrets of the hardline preservationist contingent of the SPNA, who have been concerned with the Parks Department philosophy of making the city’s recreation facilities self-supporting, with inserting restaurants, particularly in landmarked areas. Over the years there have been several Parks Department attempts to find a restaurant owner to redo the closed brick utilities building in the East Park as a food kiosk.
Others may disagree, but as a former co-President of SPNA I should like to see the maintenance of parks for the tax –paying residents to be a City function, less commercialized,ith local residents pitching in on a non-commercial basis, when the city runs out of steam. SPNA has done so over the years, as a recent instance filling the North side of the West Park with blooms, with a minimal investment of $2,000 for flowers, bought directly, with more to come for the area facing St. George’s. This is a small fraction of the money the city has expended when gardening in the East Park with a landscaper, paying heavy administrative overhead. People cooperate, and Stuyvesant Park has received person to person voluntarily donated plants from Stuyvesant Town and Union Square,On the hottest Saturday a week later SPNA held its main fund-raising even, a flea market on 2nd Avenue where it bisects the parks (hence the 1985 ISTEA generosity), a major venue for dedicated SPNA members to recruit more neighbors. This type of dedication has for years underwritten the parks’ maintenance shortfalls. Walking through the West park, we found a Parks employee carefully feeding water to a plastic bag surrounding a new hawthorn that arrived two weeks ago and might suffer transplantation shock in the excessive heat, another example of dedication.
With this amount of attention from truly well-meaning people. City and local, the Stuyvesant Square parks are really blessed and should flourish forever – as long as people can cooperate without worry about kicking order considerations. To close, a brief heartfelt in memoriam for Jan Hird Pokorny {1914-5/12/2008), the Czech-born architect and Landmarks commissioner who was the main mover in bringing the statue of Antonin Dvorak to the Park.
