Monday, January 25, 2010
It’s the jobs, Washington
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
You got trouble, in Obama city. Pundits may blame it on the emphasis on reviving the bloodstream of business credit, on no-win wars, bailout, nuclear proliferation and global warming, on the internal Democrat health policy clash, but the most important neglected activity is the creation of jobs. Not 10% but 17% of Americans are jobless, and extensions of unemployment insurance and COBRA have expired. People are losing their homes, and going hungry!
Yeah, the other priorities were more acute, media screamed terrorist threats, and we saw shoelace bombers everywhere (bin Laden is clever and will sacrifice individual terrorists to keep us off-balance), and Republicans claimed neglect of public safety. Politics prevailed. Jobs, WPA-type infrastructure repair, renewable energy projects, immediate road and bridge jobs should have had equal priorities, with portable housing for transplanted workers sending money home. There are plenty workers in poor states willing to sacrifice home comforts for food for families. So what happened? Apart from the foreign emergencies, there were health care squabbles, similar to those besetting Clinton in 1993 (lucky for him, the dot.com economy boomed). Obamites should have learned. The Volcker method that saved Ragan’s economy , letting unemployment and inflation deplete inventories and force domestic production to revive, as the WWII did for the USA and world economy, appears not quite practical when China, India, Japan and the other Asian little tigers are willing to race their technologically-efficient machines (global warming be hanged, and thanks, for your US transfer of information machinery!), and will sell on credit, taking their payback in US treasuries, backed by our wealth. To New Yorkers, still flush with funds and IRAs from the good days, the threats are less evident, but travel upstate and the rest of the country! Rural people avoid some hunger and homelessness pain by taking in their married children (remember Robert Frost’s Home is where they have to take you back). Really, US has got to get back into the productive rather than the service economy game by shrinking imports and making more and trading with equals (in Israel they have expensive German flashlights rather than Asian fenny-priced goods). And let’s cut some maquiladores’ and Made in China goods.
So, what happened? The 2008 voters, disgusted with Bush, gave their faith and expectations to Obama, who said the right things and was willing to negotiate everything, in the interests of our and the world’s survival. But the dogs attacked on all fronts, the non-cooperative Republicans as recklessly as the terrorists. Obama’s New Deal did not start in as deep a despair as FDR’s and has a more effete and less hard-work oriented and more couch-potato citizenry. Anger and distrust spring up fast.
Example: Massachusetts, a Red state, three-to-one, elects this ex-nude male model, Scott Brown, to be remembered in the history books as Senator Beefcake, whom even Glen Beck the GOP agitprop ace wants to equip with a chastity belt. This outlier Palen-emulator had no trouble beating Martha Coakley, who was too self-assured to campaign, and compounded the errors by denying al Quaeda’s presence in Afghanistan. Even Obama’s last minute campaigning plea, emphasizing the need to save the health program, was blown off by the Massachusettsians, who have their own Romney plan, 97% effective.
Where does that leave Obama’s health plan, bereft of the 60 Senator majority? There are two ways, compromise or barge ahead. This column, eons ago, opined that the 100% coverage plan would never be accepted, and that community clinics are needed to take on the uninsurable and the poor, to avoid overloads at emergency rooms. The barge ahead option, as expressed by Paul Krugman, states that none of the three legs of the plan can be shortcut. He identifies them as coverage of the uninsurables, the 100% participation, to avoid a plan that only the deadly ill will join and that does not have the premium income to pay for itself, and premium subsidies for the poor and indigent. One may suggest another direction, Medicaid/Medicare extension to age 50. Also tort reform, hated by lawyers.
That the popular trust in Obama ha diminished is evident, but he has an undeniably brilliant flexible mind, and three more years to cure.
Lesser priority items are Guantanamo, the treacherous bankers, who cannot repair credit but gamble with people’s deposits in hedge fund world, using the gains to pay bonuses. Will Obama tax them, ash the Brits are already doing? Restore Glass-Steagall Act? Problem: the market is sinking.
Worse to come; the Supreme Court has overruled more than a century’s worth of decisions, dating back to the Theodore Roosevelt trust-busting era. In 1907 the Congress banned corporations from contributing to individual candidates. Corporations are not people and cannot vote; hence they cannot contribute to candidates, as individuals can. This new decision, which effectively permits corporate lobbyists to buy Congress people’s votes (shall we call it the Abramoff Decision?) breaks several precedents, and even John McCain, author , with Russ Feingold, of the contribution control law, is reportedly troubled by the extreme naiveté of some justices. Naiveté, my foot, Kennedy maybe, but Scalia the Constitution writers’ intent tracker, is he naive? This ranks with the Supremes’ 2000 election decision, in Bush v. Gore. Let’s get them on Sunday morning shows to eat their naiveté, and then write some laws requiring stockholder approval and lobbyist fund disclosure. That might help, at least with publicly financed corporations. The Supremes may be naïve; put people are smart, emotionally temporarily unstable, but sound on the whole. Or are we, still?
You got trouble, in Obama city. Pundits may blame it on the emphasis on reviving the bloodstream of business credit, on no-win wars, bailout, nuclear proliferation and global warming, on the internal Democrat health policy clash, but the most important neglected activity is the creation of jobs. Not 10% but 17% of Americans are jobless, and extensions of unemployment insurance and COBRA have expired. People are losing their homes, and going hungry!
Yeah, the other priorities were more acute, media screamed terrorist threats, and we saw shoelace bombers everywhere (bin Laden is clever and will sacrifice individual terrorists to keep us off-balance), and Republicans claimed neglect of public safety. Politics prevailed. Jobs, WPA-type infrastructure repair, renewable energy projects, immediate road and bridge jobs should have had equal priorities, with portable housing for transplanted workers sending money home. There are plenty workers in poor states willing to sacrifice home comforts for food for families. So what happened? Apart from the foreign emergencies, there were health care squabbles, similar to those besetting Clinton in 1993 (lucky for him, the dot.com economy boomed). Obamites should have learned. The Volcker method that saved Ragan’s economy , letting unemployment and inflation deplete inventories and force domestic production to revive, as the WWII did for the USA and world economy, appears not quite practical when China, India, Japan and the other Asian little tigers are willing to race their technologically-efficient machines (global warming be hanged, and thanks, for your US transfer of information machinery!), and will sell on credit, taking their payback in US treasuries, backed by our wealth. To New Yorkers, still flush with funds and IRAs from the good days, the threats are less evident, but travel upstate and the rest of the country! Rural people avoid some hunger and homelessness pain by taking in their married children (remember Robert Frost’s Home is where they have to take you back). Really, US has got to get back into the productive rather than the service economy game by shrinking imports and making more and trading with equals (in Israel they have expensive German flashlights rather than Asian fenny-priced goods). And let’s cut some maquiladores’ and Made in China goods.
So, what happened? The 2008 voters, disgusted with Bush, gave their faith and expectations to Obama, who said the right things and was willing to negotiate everything, in the interests of our and the world’s survival. But the dogs attacked on all fronts, the non-cooperative Republicans as recklessly as the terrorists. Obama’s New Deal did not start in as deep a despair as FDR’s and has a more effete and less hard-work oriented and more couch-potato citizenry. Anger and distrust spring up fast.
Example: Massachusetts, a Red state, three-to-one, elects this ex-nude male model, Scott Brown, to be remembered in the history books as Senator Beefcake, whom even Glen Beck the GOP agitprop ace wants to equip with a chastity belt. This outlier Palen-emulator had no trouble beating Martha Coakley, who was too self-assured to campaign, and compounded the errors by denying al Quaeda’s presence in Afghanistan. Even Obama’s last minute campaigning plea, emphasizing the need to save the health program, was blown off by the Massachusettsians, who have their own Romney plan, 97% effective.
Where does that leave Obama’s health plan, bereft of the 60 Senator majority? There are two ways, compromise or barge ahead. This column, eons ago, opined that the 100% coverage plan would never be accepted, and that community clinics are needed to take on the uninsurable and the poor, to avoid overloads at emergency rooms. The barge ahead option, as expressed by Paul Krugman, states that none of the three legs of the plan can be shortcut. He identifies them as coverage of the uninsurables, the 100% participation, to avoid a plan that only the deadly ill will join and that does not have the premium income to pay for itself, and premium subsidies for the poor and indigent. One may suggest another direction, Medicaid/Medicare extension to age 50. Also tort reform, hated by lawyers.
That the popular trust in Obama ha diminished is evident, but he has an undeniably brilliant flexible mind, and three more years to cure.
Lesser priority items are Guantanamo, the treacherous bankers, who cannot repair credit but gamble with people’s deposits in hedge fund world, using the gains to pay bonuses. Will Obama tax them, ash the Brits are already doing? Restore Glass-Steagall Act? Problem: the market is sinking.
Worse to come; the Supreme Court has overruled more than a century’s worth of decisions, dating back to the Theodore Roosevelt trust-busting era. In 1907 the Congress banned corporations from contributing to individual candidates. Corporations are not people and cannot vote; hence they cannot contribute to candidates, as individuals can. This new decision, which effectively permits corporate lobbyists to buy Congress people’s votes (shall we call it the Abramoff Decision?) breaks several precedents, and even John McCain, author , with Russ Feingold, of the contribution control law, is reportedly troubled by the extreme naiveté of some justices. Naiveté, my foot, Kennedy maybe, but Scalia the Constitution writers’ intent tracker, is he naive? This ranks with the Supremes’ 2000 election decision, in Bush v. Gore. Let’s get them on Sunday morning shows to eat their naiveté, and then write some laws requiring stockholder approval and lobbyist fund disclosure. That might help, at least with publicly financed corporations. The Supremes may be naïve; put people are smart, emotionally temporarily unstable, but sound on the whole. Or are we, still?
Friday, January 22, 2010
Haitian tragedy horrifies New Yorkers
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
The terrifying stories about the earthquake destruction and human tragedy in Haiti that have dominated the news since Tuesday January 12th open many questions, even for us New Yorkers, who feel secure behind the solid structure of our geological bastions. Can the same degree of destruction happen in San Francisco, which also sits on a geological fault line? And what about the likelihood of a tsunami, after all Port-au-Prince is only 600+ nautical miles from Miami? Why is US so slow in responding, with Haiti only two hours away by plane, is this another New Orleans, a FEMA/Homeland Security mix-up?
Should Haiti be still so disorganized, with the UN having a security force of 9,000 men and management teams in place for years? Port-au-Prince has two fire houses, scant sewage, and we see pictures of the country’s President Rene Preval wandering about at the airport in shirtsleeves, with no shelter for the night, as fearful of aftershocks as the man in the street; of a dump truck dropping loads of unidentified and unrecorded body parts and whole bodies in the landfill, by the thousands; of a hospital full of injured people left unattended overnight (except for the single-handed all-night nursing marathon by the CNN reporter/physician).
The history of events that led up to the present horrors in what prides itself of being the world's first republic in continued existence, since 1804, is not good. Once deemed the richest productive country in Western Hemisphere, with sugar, tobacco, coffee and indigo fortunes made by French colonists with slave labor, it has become the poorest, with 30% of GDP coming from US, Canadian and EU aid. Settled by Spanish arrivals soon after its 1492 discovery by Columbus, the native Tainos were soon annihilated and replaced by slaves from Africa. A French buccaneer settlement in Tortuga attracted French immigrants. The peace treaty of Ryswick in 1697, ending the Nine Years’ War, gave the western third of the island to France, more colonists came and prosperity thrived, until the French Revolution aroused the slaves under Toussaint L'Ouverture into revolting. They succeeded in 1804, beat back Napoleon and got rid of the colonialists (many escaped to New Orleans, increasing the city's French character), and the country led a somewhat democratic existence, interrupted by many dictatorships, until US occupied the country in 1915-34. Dr. Francois Duvalier (“Papa Doc”) was elected President in 1957, and upon his death in 1971 son Jean-Claude ("Baby Doc") followed, until a revolution in 1986 sent him to a luxurious exile in France (the Duvaliers had looted some $500M from the treasury.) Under a new constitution, ex-priest Bertrand Aristide was elected President , but a military revolution followed in 1991, a surge of Haitian refugees stressed the US, and many were sent back. UN intervention returned Aristide in 1995-96, and he transferred power to his elected successor Rene Preval in1996, returning 2000-04, until another coup sent him to exile in South Africa. Preval returned to rule, with the help of 9,000 UN peacekeepers, mostly from Brazil.. Besides the political unrest (Tonton Macoutes, a criminal enforcers’ group, terrorized the governments), hurricane Georges in 1998 and tropical storm Jeanne in 2004 destroyed the country, with more storms in 2008. Despite the political climate and nature’s ravages, the population of Haiti has grown from three million in 1950 to almost ten million now, nearly half of it under age 20. Overpopulation has led to deforestation, with subsequent mud slides killing people. Inadequate agriculture brings on hunger, and mud pies have become part of diet in Port-au-Prince’s Cite de Soleil, where merchants bring truckloads of yellow clay soil from the mountains for sale to market women who mix it with salt and vegetable shortening, and bake dirt cookies on the hot roofs. Ugh!
The country cannot support its people load , at 900 persons per square mile, and millions of Haitian émigrés are dispersed throughout the world, with some 600,000 (officially, 230,000 legal permanent residents) in the US, alone . Under the current earthquake conditions, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano has extended the stay for 100-200,000 illegal Haitians for 18 months.
If we do not see so many Haitians in NYC work force, it is because they are concentrated down south, with 275,000 in Florida alone. New York’ s visible immigrant worker component is Mexican, who constitute 27% of the 12.8 million legal permanent immigrant residents of the US, Haitians don’t even make it to the top tem immigrant supplying nations. They are, in order, Mexico, the Philippines, India, China, Dominican Republic, then Cuba, El Salvador, Canada, Vietnam, UK.
Haiti’s neighboring Spanish-speaking Dominican Republic, another source of immigrants, concentrated in NYC’s Upper West Side, also had intermittent native republics since early 1800s, interrupted with long occupation periods by Spain. That was until US Marines took over , 1916 to 1924, installing a constitutionally elected government and withdrawing. A brutal dictator, Leonidas Trujillo Molina, ruled 1930-1961, and US Marines and UN peacekeeping forces were needed to keep the country running after his assassination.
The terrifying stories about the earthquake destruction and human tragedy in Haiti that have dominated the news since Tuesday January 12th open many questions, even for us New Yorkers, who feel secure behind the solid structure of our geological bastions. Can the same degree of destruction happen in San Francisco, which also sits on a geological fault line? And what about the likelihood of a tsunami, after all Port-au-Prince is only 600+ nautical miles from Miami? Why is US so slow in responding, with Haiti only two hours away by plane, is this another New Orleans, a FEMA/Homeland Security mix-up?
Should Haiti be still so disorganized, with the UN having a security force of 9,000 men and management teams in place for years? Port-au-Prince has two fire houses, scant sewage, and we see pictures of the country’s President Rene Preval wandering about at the airport in shirtsleeves, with no shelter for the night, as fearful of aftershocks as the man in the street; of a dump truck dropping loads of unidentified and unrecorded body parts and whole bodies in the landfill, by the thousands; of a hospital full of injured people left unattended overnight (except for the single-handed all-night nursing marathon by the CNN reporter/physician).
The history of events that led up to the present horrors in what prides itself of being the world's first republic in continued existence, since 1804, is not good. Once deemed the richest productive country in Western Hemisphere, with sugar, tobacco, coffee and indigo fortunes made by French colonists with slave labor, it has become the poorest, with 30% of GDP coming from US, Canadian and EU aid. Settled by Spanish arrivals soon after its 1492 discovery by Columbus, the native Tainos were soon annihilated and replaced by slaves from Africa. A French buccaneer settlement in Tortuga attracted French immigrants. The peace treaty of Ryswick in 1697, ending the Nine Years’ War, gave the western third of the island to France, more colonists came and prosperity thrived, until the French Revolution aroused the slaves under Toussaint L'Ouverture into revolting. They succeeded in 1804, beat back Napoleon and got rid of the colonialists (many escaped to New Orleans, increasing the city's French character), and the country led a somewhat democratic existence, interrupted by many dictatorships, until US occupied the country in 1915-34. Dr. Francois Duvalier (“Papa Doc”) was elected President in 1957, and upon his death in 1971 son Jean-Claude ("Baby Doc") followed, until a revolution in 1986 sent him to a luxurious exile in France (the Duvaliers had looted some $500M from the treasury.) Under a new constitution, ex-priest Bertrand Aristide was elected President , but a military revolution followed in 1991, a surge of Haitian refugees stressed the US, and many were sent back. UN intervention returned Aristide in 1995-96, and he transferred power to his elected successor Rene Preval in1996, returning 2000-04, until another coup sent him to exile in South Africa. Preval returned to rule, with the help of 9,000 UN peacekeepers, mostly from Brazil.. Besides the political unrest (Tonton Macoutes, a criminal enforcers’ group, terrorized the governments), hurricane Georges in 1998 and tropical storm Jeanne in 2004 destroyed the country, with more storms in 2008. Despite the political climate and nature’s ravages, the population of Haiti has grown from three million in 1950 to almost ten million now, nearly half of it under age 20. Overpopulation has led to deforestation, with subsequent mud slides killing people. Inadequate agriculture brings on hunger, and mud pies have become part of diet in Port-au-Prince’s Cite de Soleil, where merchants bring truckloads of yellow clay soil from the mountains for sale to market women who mix it with salt and vegetable shortening, and bake dirt cookies on the hot roofs. Ugh!
The country cannot support its people load , at 900 persons per square mile, and millions of Haitian émigrés are dispersed throughout the world, with some 600,000 (officially, 230,000 legal permanent residents) in the US, alone . Under the current earthquake conditions, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano has extended the stay for 100-200,000 illegal Haitians for 18 months.
If we do not see so many Haitians in NYC work force, it is because they are concentrated down south, with 275,000 in Florida alone. New York’ s visible immigrant worker component is Mexican, who constitute 27% of the 12.8 million legal permanent immigrant residents of the US, Haitians don’t even make it to the top tem immigrant supplying nations. They are, in order, Mexico, the Philippines, India, China, Dominican Republic, then Cuba, El Salvador, Canada, Vietnam, UK.
Haiti’s neighboring Spanish-speaking Dominican Republic, another source of immigrants, concentrated in NYC’s Upper West Side, also had intermittent native republics since early 1800s, interrupted with long occupation periods by Spain. That was until US Marines took over , 1916 to 1924, installing a constitutionally elected government and withdrawing. A brutal dictator, Leonidas Trujillo Molina, ruled 1930-1961, and US Marines and UN peacekeeping forces were needed to keep the country running after his assassination.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Outlier politics: Michael Bloomberg, Norman Mailer, William F. Buckley, Barry Farber
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
In statistics, an "outlier" is a data point or sample that lies outside of the expected range of possibilities. In politics, the most positive development of the 00’s was the Presidential campaign of 2008, where not one but two "outlier" candidates, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, rose to a never expected apex: a presidential primary between a black man and a woman. Good for America, defying our own expectations in this wonderful way.
In NYC politics, our own "outlier" Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, used a jaw-dropping $102 million to get the City Council to override the term limits law (for his benefit and their own) and then to made good on this bid by winning re-election. Why, at 67, does he want yet another term, to deal with a $4.1 dollar city deficit (in a $60 billion budget), a 10 percent unemployment rate, a heavy load of home foreclosures, protested budget cuts in school, park, child care support and payroll areas, and a push for a comprehensive immigration policy? Clearly the man is a total Action Jackson, with a mission to save us, and the self-confidence of aprophet, either a Robert Moses or maybe the biblical Moses. Well, there will be pain in the short term, but I’ll bet on him to keep us afloat, as he is not afraid to try new things.
These unusual political times reminded me of the unsuccessful "outlier" Mayoral candidates of our more innocent and fun political days, Mailer, Buckley and Farber.
Starting chronologically, William F. Buckley Jr., author of Man and God at Yale had used his great charisma and moneyed background to start a successful Conservative journal, National Review, which grew to be respected even by the anti-Communist Liberals at The New Leader (some to turn neocon later). Buckley decided to run in 1965 on the new "Conservative" line. He gained 341K votes, a reputable 14%, behind John V. Lindsay and Abraham D. Beame. Point made, he left elected politics to his brother James L. Buckley, NY's only Conservative Senator , 1971-79 (more anon).
Early in 1969, much encouraged, five Democrats entered the pre-Primary campaign, including eminent author Norman Mailer, with journalist Jimmy Breslin as City Council President-to-be. Mailer was the mover, with Gloria Steinem and Peter Maas of New York Magazine, and Jack Newfield from Village Voice, plus some Eugene McCarthy losers from the Chicago massacre that passed for the 1968 Democratic Presidential primary, as the collaborators in what many local literati thought would be a hoax. There was an on-the-fly program conjured by Mailer, with separating NYC as 51st state, shift of political power to localities, a collaboration of the Left and Right to get the rascals out (usually expressed with eloquent profanity), and general cleanup as the main points. Mailer, the Harvard man, carried the upbeat fantasy, and Breslin spoke for Brooklyn and his cop-firemen-poor people highschool graduating class, and together they had an act that played well in colleges, old folks homes and some Dem clubs on candidates’ nights. Around May Mailer had to declare candidacy, and organize seriously, to get the 5,000 signatures on petitions, and collect some donations, for staff pay. Alas, money was tight, and Mailer, with a movie contract, paid a staff of six, laying out $175 to $50 per week each. But voter recognition was not easy to get, and some 9,000 signatures brought Mailer 41,136 votes, second-worst in a field of Comptroller Mario Procaccino, Robert F. Wagner (a comeback), Bronx Borough President Herman Badillo , Mailer and Congressman James H. Scheuer, while Breslin’ 75,480, beat then Assemblyman Charles Rangel by a few. John J. Marchi beat Lindsay in the Republican primary, but Lindsay won, running as a Liberal.
Working with the Murray Hill Reform Democratic Club which liked Badillo, known as the “tallest Puerto-Rican in the world,” I would occasionally drop in on the Mailers and collect their position papers as literary souvenirs, although they did not have the insane poignancy of the Mailer-Breslin repertoire. Fortunately, some of it is preserved in Managing Mailer (1970), by the late Village Voice reporter Joe Flaherty, their amiable campaign manager, who was rumored to have taken the job for book material, but became a convert.
In 1973 Abraham J. Beame became Mayor (we the Murrays backed Badillo), against a poor field of Marchi, Albert H. Blumenthal and Mario Biaggi, and two years later ran into the biggest fiscal crisis ever and relinquished governance to the Municipal Assistance Corporation and an emergency financial control board. The Daily News headline “Ford to New York: Drop Dead” reflected Republican Washington’s attitude. Consequently, in 1977 Beame had six democratic contenders in the primary (we the Murrays backed our Congressman Edward I. Koch against Badillo, Bella Abzug, Percy Sutton, Mario Cuomo and Beame). On the Conservative/Republican side, all-night talk show host Barry Farber, who speaks 15 to 30 languages, with the charming Southern intonation reserved for his English, bucked the perennial Congressman Roy Goodman, with a program of fiscal control and law and order. His campaign advisor, Charles W. Wiley, added the necessary strident tone to the campaign, and Barry won over 30,000 votes, nearly 40% of the Republican tally. Koch won, and we the Murrays closed shop (another story).
In statistics, an "outlier" is a data point or sample that lies outside of the expected range of possibilities. In politics, the most positive development of the 00’s was the Presidential campaign of 2008, where not one but two "outlier" candidates, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, rose to a never expected apex: a presidential primary between a black man and a woman. Good for America, defying our own expectations in this wonderful way.
In NYC politics, our own "outlier" Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, used a jaw-dropping $102 million to get the City Council to override the term limits law (for his benefit and their own) and then to made good on this bid by winning re-election. Why, at 67, does he want yet another term, to deal with a $4.1 dollar city deficit (in a $60 billion budget), a 10 percent unemployment rate, a heavy load of home foreclosures, protested budget cuts in school, park, child care support and payroll areas, and a push for a comprehensive immigration policy? Clearly the man is a total Action Jackson, with a mission to save us, and the self-confidence of aprophet, either a Robert Moses or maybe the biblical Moses. Well, there will be pain in the short term, but I’ll bet on him to keep us afloat, as he is not afraid to try new things.
These unusual political times reminded me of the unsuccessful "outlier" Mayoral candidates of our more innocent and fun political days, Mailer, Buckley and Farber.
Starting chronologically, William F. Buckley Jr., author of Man and God at Yale had used his great charisma and moneyed background to start a successful Conservative journal, National Review, which grew to be respected even by the anti-Communist Liberals at The New Leader (some to turn neocon later). Buckley decided to run in 1965 on the new "Conservative" line. He gained 341K votes, a reputable 14%, behind John V. Lindsay and Abraham D. Beame. Point made, he left elected politics to his brother James L. Buckley, NY's only Conservative Senator , 1971-79 (more anon).
Early in 1969, much encouraged, five Democrats entered the pre-Primary campaign, including eminent author Norman Mailer, with journalist Jimmy Breslin as City Council President-to-be. Mailer was the mover, with Gloria Steinem and Peter Maas of New York Magazine, and Jack Newfield from Village Voice, plus some Eugene McCarthy losers from the Chicago massacre that passed for the 1968 Democratic Presidential primary, as the collaborators in what many local literati thought would be a hoax. There was an on-the-fly program conjured by Mailer, with separating NYC as 51st state, shift of political power to localities, a collaboration of the Left and Right to get the rascals out (usually expressed with eloquent profanity), and general cleanup as the main points. Mailer, the Harvard man, carried the upbeat fantasy, and Breslin spoke for Brooklyn and his cop-firemen-poor people highschool graduating class, and together they had an act that played well in colleges, old folks homes and some Dem clubs on candidates’ nights. Around May Mailer had to declare candidacy, and organize seriously, to get the 5,000 signatures on petitions, and collect some donations, for staff pay. Alas, money was tight, and Mailer, with a movie contract, paid a staff of six, laying out $175 to $50 per week each. But voter recognition was not easy to get, and some 9,000 signatures brought Mailer 41,136 votes, second-worst in a field of Comptroller Mario Procaccino, Robert F. Wagner (a comeback), Bronx Borough President Herman Badillo , Mailer and Congressman James H. Scheuer, while Breslin’ 75,480, beat then Assemblyman Charles Rangel by a few. John J. Marchi beat Lindsay in the Republican primary, but Lindsay won, running as a Liberal.
Working with the Murray Hill Reform Democratic Club which liked Badillo, known as the “tallest Puerto-Rican in the world,” I would occasionally drop in on the Mailers and collect their position papers as literary souvenirs, although they did not have the insane poignancy of the Mailer-Breslin repertoire. Fortunately, some of it is preserved in Managing Mailer (1970), by the late Village Voice reporter Joe Flaherty, their amiable campaign manager, who was rumored to have taken the job for book material, but became a convert.
In 1973 Abraham J. Beame became Mayor (we the Murrays backed Badillo), against a poor field of Marchi, Albert H. Blumenthal and Mario Biaggi, and two years later ran into the biggest fiscal crisis ever and relinquished governance to the Municipal Assistance Corporation and an emergency financial control board. The Daily News headline “Ford to New York: Drop Dead” reflected Republican Washington’s attitude. Consequently, in 1977 Beame had six democratic contenders in the primary (we the Murrays backed our Congressman Edward I. Koch against Badillo, Bella Abzug, Percy Sutton, Mario Cuomo and Beame). On the Conservative/Republican side, all-night talk show host Barry Farber, who speaks 15 to 30 languages, with the charming Southern intonation reserved for his English, bucked the perennial Congressman Roy Goodman, with a program of fiscal control and law and order. His campaign advisor, Charles W. Wiley, added the necessary strident tone to the campaign, and Barry won over 30,000 votes, nearly 40% of the Republican tally. Koch won, and we the Murrays closed shop (another story).
