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Carl Strock THE VIEW FROM HERE
Carl Strock can be reached at 395-3085 or by e-mail at carlstrock@dailygazette.com.
Legislature
dysfunctional as always
    How much has the New York State Legislature changed since the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University labeled it the most dysfunctional in the country four and a half years ago?
    Hardly at all, ladies and gentlemen, hardly at all.
    “New York’s legislative process remains broken,” the center concluded recently in a follow-up report, not surprising those of us who pay even a little attention to goings-on in Albany.
    When the first report came out in 2004, the Senate majority leader at the time, Joe Bruno, famously dismissed it as “total nonsense” and declared that greater democracy within the Legislature would be “Third-World country stuff,” which for me remains one of the great all-time quotes from our state government.
    Today Bruno is gone, but the culture that he embodied remains: Power is centralized in the hands of one leader in each house, committees exist “only as a formality,” most bills are offered simply for show with no chance of becoming law, those that reach the floor pass unanimously without debate.
    “The Legislature rarely engages in any deliberation,” the Brennan Center reported, “either by holding hearings … or through public debate,” and just think about that. In contrast to the U.S. Senate, often described as the world’s greatest deliberative body, our state Legislature “rarely engages in any deliberation.” It’s like saying the Court of Appeals rarely hears appeals, the governor rarely carries out the law, the police rarely make arrests.
    What do our senators and assemblymen excel at? They excel at what are known as one-house bills, that is, bills that are drafted with the expectation that they will never become law but will pass only in one house, generally in order to impress some constituency back home.
    In 2004 it seemed scandalous when the Brennan Center reported that our Legislature introduced more than double the number of bills of the second most prolifi c bill-producing state. Now, most recently, it introduced triple the number — more than 18,000, of which just 9 percent passed both houses. That compared with about 6,000 for New Jersey, the next most dysfunctional state, and with 2,000 for California, the most populous state.
    That is preponderantly what our legislators do instead of deliberating. They pass meaningless bills in their own houses — thousands upon thousands of them, just for show, all of which require many hours of legal staff work.
    How many hours, I don’t know. How many staff members to do the meaningless work? At last count, 3,342, at a cost of more than $200 million a year, which is something to keep in mind when you hear them moaning about a budget deficit.
    More than 90 percent of these meaningless bills pass their single houses unanimously and without debate — for those of you who think there is a significant difference between Republicans and Democrats.
    That things might change now with the Democrats in control of the Senate seems to me unlikely, though I prepare to be proven wrong. The new ..................http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....amp;EntityId=Ar00900

Surprise, Surprise, Surprise!

And this should surprise us? Mr. Strock, we ALL could have written that same article. The subject matter to this article is 'water cooler' and 'kitchen table' talk.

Well...for the informed people anyway!

The only 'informed' folks are those not on the Merry-Go-Round.......the rest of us are here....but, that being said, there is no end to the means
what the heck are we doing in this state?????? or..........in this country, for that matter???? anyone???? Help me here.....all suggestions are welcome...
think of yourself as the 'second opinion' in a cancer diagnosis......'cause that is where we are at the present moment.....
choosing a path of truth......NOT a path of 'blue blood' suckers...........