The House Democrat Revolt That Wasn't

The 70 Democrats who voted today against authorizing Obama's splendid little Libyan war that is not war at first gave me a faint smidgen of hope that the progressive wing of the party is branching off on its own.  They defied Nancy Pelosi for a change.  They didn't listen when Hillary Clinton fed them her guilt-trip spiel that if they weren't for bombing Libya, then it logically follows that they must love K-Daffy.  The "if you're not for us, you're against us" tripe used to sell the Iraq invasion didn't work this time.


 And one New York congressman actually stood up on the House floor and called his president a monarch in the making as far as his bombing adventure is concerned.  Gerry Nadler, whose district includes the 9/11 site, has been anti-war since Vietnam, when he worked on Gene McCarthy's 1968 campaign. (another one of those dreaded "spoilers").  He is also disgusted with Obama's bait and switch Afghanistan withdrawal plan, and wants the troops brought home -- now. He pointed out, rightly, that each executive administration has given more and more power to successive presidents.  Obama seems to believe that he is Commander in Chief of the entire country, when the Constitution merely makes him commander in chief of the armed forces. He actually does still work for "the people" -- if only in theory.


And then, inexplicably, the House voted to pay for the war it just said was illegal. Never mind.


Of course, the ruling class Democrats in the Senate want to bomb Libya for a whole year more, if necessary, so the House voting on the fact that they hated Obama going behind their backs was purely symbolic anyway.  You have to love the message it's sending Obama, though, as he campaigned at this week's factory.  How ironic that his latest factory makes robotics.  How refreshing that at least 70 House Democrats are not pure robots, but bona fide androids with just a touch of humanity still left in their carcasses.


This has nothing and everything to do with Republicans.  Of course the Republicans voted against authorizing Obama to bomb Libya for all the wrong reasons.  If it had been one of their own in the Oval Office, they would have been urging him to invade a dozen more countries and given him a blank check.  Of course it was the Republicans who cheer-led the Iraq War and bankrupted the country.


But they are the known lunatics and the Democrats are supposedly the sane ones -- although by compromising with the GOP on the budget, they're just enabling and colluding with the insanity.  The two parties we have now are the John Birch Society and the Reagan Republicans.  Either Democrats have to start acting like Democrats again after a 50-year hiatus, or the whole party should just implode and allow a new liberal/labor/progressive party to emerge from the ruins.  Right now there is only one Democrat in the Senate, and his name is Bernie Sanders.  And he calls himself a socialist.


Michele Bachmann and her ilk could never have risen to national prominence were it not for the big Democratic sellout.  The vacuum created by the inaction of the so-called liberal class on jobs, the continued bankrupting wars, the deregulation of Wall Street, the infusion of corporate money into national elections, the corporatization of the mass media and the killing of the Fairness Doctrine have left a citizenry so devoid of hope that it creates the perfect atmosphere for the rise of a theocratic demagogue like Bachmann.


Obama, from his waffling on Afghanistan, his capitulation in the name of bipartisanhip to Republicans, his dithering on immigration reform and DREAM Act amnesty, his failure to appoint Elizabeth Warren and protect consumers, his release of oil reserves for pure political expediency, his groveling to Wall Street --is about one thing: his own re-election. We have to stop looking to him, or the plutocratic millionaire-bloated Senate,  for any leadership. We should instead concentrate on voting for representation on the local and state and Congressional levels -- and continuing to organize as progressive groups and to speak out as individuals.


Holding Republican nutjobs up to the ridicule and blame they so richly deserve is fine, but it isn't enough. Not by a long shot.


**Update 6/25:  Some writers are pointing out that the vote against defunding the war was actually a vote against a sneaky provision in it, thus absolving the Congresspeople who voted against authorizing the war and then seemingly doing an about-face.  Glenn Greenwald writes in his Salon column today:  

That was the reason so many anti-war members of Congress -- including dozens of progressives -- rejected the "de-funding" bill despite opposition to the war in Libya: because it was a disguised authorization for a war they oppose, not because they cowardly failed to check executive power abuses.  As Rogin reports, "there were more than enough lawmakers to pass" a true de-funding bill, but GOP leaders -- who have been protecting Obama on Libya from the start -- did not bring that to the floor.

That's the whole trouble with so much of the legislation being voted on these days: the bills are riddles wrapped in secrecy surrounded by enigmas.  Half the Congresspeople probably didn't even realize what they were voting for. Some voted against both measures, some voted for, and some split the difference. Where was House Speaker Boehner in all this?  Probably canoodling with Obama. He was not present to vote on the Libya bills yesterday.

Happy Talk Keep Talkin Happy Talk

How's this for a White House public/private partnership strategy: blame the media for painting a too-gloomy picture of the economy, and keep insisting America is the greatest country on earth, the best of all possible worlds, and the glass is not only half full but almost overflowing.

Reuters Editor- at- Large Chrystia Freeland, who was invited to "moderate" a panel discussion of the White House Council on Jobs and Competitiveness in New York this past weekend, quoted a mega-banker as saying just that. According to her article,  Robert Wolf, chairman of UBS Americas, and one of  Obama’s earliest Wall Street supporters said: “Since I sat here a year ago, we have two million jobs that have been created. Exports have gone up by 10 percent and technology is booming, agriculture is booming. But when you look at the TV you hear what we are not doing well. I believe we have built a foundation and are on the right path.”

Yeah, that TV sure is biased, all right.  I have to give Freeland credit for not being a media stenographer on the meeting that the Public Private Obama Administration so obviously co-opted her into attending as a discussion "moderator" rather than a reporter.  Just beneath the surface of her balanced piece is the wee-est bit of healthy snarky skepticism.  A close reading reveals just what lengths the White House is willing to go in its propaganda campaign of getting the masses to put on their rose-colored glasses and just how they attempt to manipulate public opinion by cultivating the press. I loved this bit about Obama BFF and Chief Cheerleader and Presidential Back-Watcher Valerie Jarrett:

That’s why her determined good cheer at the forum matters. “We have good reason to be optimistic,” she said. “We have great entrepreneurs and the capacity to reinvent ourselves. This is still the best country on earth.”

The other panelists, all members of the Jobs and Competitiveness Council, faithfully chimed in in the same key. Brian L. Roberts, chairman and chief executive of Comcast, the cable giant that recently acquired a majority stake in NBC, said a positive outlook was essential to “make America a great place to live and work. We all want that to be the outcome, so it’s critical to have a sense of optimism."

Jarrett now runs something called The White House Office of Public Engagement and even blogs about it. Her entry today touts the oxymoronic "Corporate Voices for Working Families", a consortium of megabanks (including Goldman Sachs), giant pharmaceuticals and multinationals that strives to make life better for the workers.  Who needs a union or on-site day care or paid maternity leave when the beneficent corporations are now making it okay for new moms to bring breast pumps to work!  And thanks to the miracle of Public/Private, breast pumps are now tax deductible. 

And Jarrett is certainly enthusiastic if not very original: "As we work to Win the Future by out-innovating, out-educating, and out-building the rest of the world, we must use every tool at our disposal, and workplace flexibility is one of those tools!"  (take an extra 10 minutes, Honey, and pump away and we won't even dock your pay!)

In the best of all possible results of this ham-handed White House propaganda campaign of feel-goodism, the American people will at long last arrive at their Candide moment in the face of this hideously happy Panglossian assault.

"...and private misfortunes make the public good, so that the more private misfortunes there are, the more everything is well."
- Voltaire, Candide, Chapter 4

What Harry Told Barry



It's Academic and Far, Far Away



State Department head attorney Harold Koh has been universally lauded as a champion of human rights. He is widely reported to be on President Obama's short list of future Supreme Court nominees, precisely because of his stellar record as a trans-global, humanistic legal scholar and public servant in both Republican (Reagan) and Democratic administrations. The son of first-generation immigrants from South Korea, he would be the first Asian-American Supreme Court Justice and its only international law expert.  The former  dean of Yale Law School, he served as Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor under President Clinton and is currently Legal Adviser to the State Department.  Thus, he has had both Clintons as bosses. 

So it came as a  surprise last week when Mr. Koh, an erstwhile staunch defender of the War Powers Act,  performed a prima facie flip-flop on his interpretation of it. This came after the President had already been advised by two other lawyers in the Departments of Defense and Justice that he needed congressional approval to keep bombing Libya.  But war is not war, according to Koh's conveniently convoluted thinking, when we destroy just a few buildings and people with remote control gizmos.

 He told the president exactly what he wanted to hear, much in the same way George Bush's lawyers told him what he wanted to hear about torture.  It's easy.  All you have to do is mangle the English language. Torture becomes an enhanced interrogation technique.  War becomes a limited kinetic military exercise when you perform surgical strikes with drones and minimal collateral damage.  If these weapons do happen to kill some innocent women and children along the way, it's because of system failure, not human aggression.  Or so the reasoning goes.  It's kind of like a video game, because from a distance, you don't have to deal with even looking at any blood or mangled bodies.  You are at so many degrees of separation.  You can physically be thousands of miles away. Plus, if no American is in imminent danger of bodily harm, the grudgingly acknowledged and always regrettable deaths of civilians simply don't count.  War is war only if someone on our side gets hurt. It has to be a mutual thing.

Since Koh had always been such a defender of the War Powers Act, why has he now seemingly gone out of his way to subvert it through semantics? 


"One possibility is that Koh has a client, the Secretary of State, who is committed to the Libya intervention, and he is serving his client faithfully" writes former  DOJ and DOD lawyer Jack Goldsmith of Harvard University. "Another possibility is that Koh’s commitments to humanitarian intervention and the 'responsibility to protect' outweigh his commitment to his academic vision of presidential war powers.  I certainly do not believe that Koh’s academic views should control his advice and judgment during his government service.  Nor do I think that his academic writings addressed the precise issue under the WPR that he is now advocating in the government.  But for a quarter century before heading up State-L, Koh was the leading and most vocal academic critic of presidential unilateralism in war, and a tireless advocate for institutional cooperation between the political branches in war decisions.  I am thus genuinely surprised, as many people are, by his current stance."


Goldsmith added that "it cannot be pleasant for the men and women involved in this 'kinetic military action' to know that the Defense Department General Counsel and the head of OLC think the intervention in Libya as currently executed is unlawful."


In his capacity as State Department legal advisor, Koh was also instrumental in  writing new international rules governing the behavior of private security contractors in the wake of the Blackwater (now XE) scandal involving the shooting of civilians in Iraq. Of course, the new code of behavior does not include sanctions for previous bad behavior.  It's another one of those aspirational things, apparently, with the purpose of placating the international human rights community.

And then there is that bane of the Administration and of the American Security State, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, subject of an ongoing DOJ investigation for possible violation of the Espionage Act.  Last December, Lawyers Rights Watch Canada, a advocacy group which has an advisory role at the U.N., accused the ubiquitous Mr. Koh of violating ethical standards and putting British barrister Jennifer Robinson in jeopardy by interfering with her representation of her client. Koh had posted a letter online conflating her legal work for Assange with criminality on her own part. (Shades of the Bush Administration's criticism of lawyers defending Gitmo detainees?)  Koh's actions, according to the Canadians, violated both international law and the ethical standards of the American Bar Association.  Details can be found here. LRWC filed a complaint about Koh with Attorney General Eric Holder and Sec. Clinton.  But since Koh not only still has his Foggy Bottom job, but is also now a go-to legal eagle for the White House, we can safely assume the letter was stuffed in a circular file somewhere, eh? 

Koh is a new breed of apparatchik, a tool of the neoliberals who wage war that is not war with a wink and a nod and a path to riches in an oil-rich state that is conveniently not too dedicated to human rights.



It's Collateral Damage and Far, Far Away



Update: Here's a list made by Rep. Dennis Kucinich of 10 reasons to oppose the war in Libya.

Jobs in America and the False Promises of Free Trade

(The following post was written by Valerie Long Tweedie, a regular contributor to the Comments Section of this blog.)

I am anti-Free Trade. Whenever I share this sentiment, I am treated like some stupid, backwater simpleton who doesn’t understand economics. People condescendingly tell me that “protectionism will stall the economy” and “Americans enjoy many benefits of Free Trade.” It reminds me of the period after 9/11 when I questioned the wisdom of attacking Iraq, a country that hadn’t attacked us. People acted like I was completely out of touch with reality to question the wisdom of my government to drag us into a war. Wasn’t it obvious to anyone who had watched FOX or CNN that there were WMDs? Why would our government lie to get us into a war? But here I go again, questioning the wisdom of my government and the policy of Free Trade.

In truth, I am not a total isolationist. However, I believe that a government’s number one job is to watch out for the overall good of its citizenry and in our case that means maintaining the conditions for a strong Middle Class. We all know it to be true, American manufacturing businesses cannot pay their factory workers a liveable wage with benefits and still compete against imported goods made by underpaid factory workers in Third World countries. If we are to revive our manufacturing base in the U.S., we need to level the playing field - and that means tariffs and protectionism.

The bill of goods we were sold by the Republicans and the Clinton Administration was a two part scheme to get the American people to go along with Free Trade.  Part One:  If we ship off our low skilled manufacturing jobs to third world countries, displaced American factory workers will be retrained to do highly-skilled, higher-paying jobs. The problem was not all the blue collar workers were intellectually inclined toward highly skilled technological work and were unable to make the leap. Even those who could make the leap and re-skilled, found that there weren’t enough of those promised higher paying jobs. The result is we now have a large number of factory and semi-skilled workers in our country who don’t have jobs that pay a liveable wage and provide reasonable benefits.  Part Two:  All those people working in the newly off-shored, Third World factories will create a huge market and demand for the more expensive, high tech American made goods. Sounds good in theory but we underestimated (and were kept in the dark about) the obscene amount of corporate greed involved. As it turns out, Third World factory workers are heavily exploited and paid a paltry wage for their work. They barely make enough money to meet their basic needs and certainly not enough money to buy goods made in America.  In both cases, we were conned into believing that Free Trade would be a win-win for the workers on both shores when in reality it has pretty much been a lose-lose.

Now I have nothing against Third World factory workers. If they were paid a decent wage and quality products were made under sustainable environmental conditions, I wouldn’t be barking up this particular tree. I have no problems with importing Western European or Japanese goods, for example, which are high quality products, made to last, and built under decent working and environmental conditions. I don’t deny the chance for third world countries to industrialise - but let’s be honest here, that is not what is really driving this issue. Corporations off-shoring their production are treating vulnerable, desperate, human beings like expendable beasts of burden; they have no rights, no benefits,  no protection against injury or illness and they are grossly underpaid.

It should be evident to everyone by now that the big winners in Free Trade are the corporations - especially the multi-national ones. They pay low to no taxes and are allowed to bring all their goods into our markets with minimal costs – disregarding both the human and environmental destruction they leave in their wake.  Most importantly, and more dangerous to our way of life, is the fact that these same corporations use their ill-gotten profits to lobby (bribe) our elected officials through (often anonymous) campaign donations and force through (or slip through undetected) legislation that makes their dirty dealings legal. As long as Free Trade goes on as it is, these companies will only grow richer, more powerful and more destructive.

Sadly, the one group that could have put the brakes on this descent into plutocratic rule was Organised Labour. Their demands on politicians in exchange for their block of voters - the right to organise and hold politicians accountable to those who elected them, a decent retirement, a fair wage for an eight hour day’s work, health care, safe working conditions - benefitted all of us. As those human rights are being eroded in our country and the corporations get stronger and stronger as a result of Free Trade, organised labour has been transformed from a lion into a mouse and the Middle Class has lost its champion.

I read a lot of articles and comments proposing that new technologies are the answer to our economic woes. President Obama campaigned on green jobs back in the days when he was inspiring a nation. But green technology will require A LOT of government investment for R &D as well as incentives to make products like solar panels affordable to average citizens.  I am ALL for it! We should have been on the green energy bandwagon in the seventies when Jimmy Carter first proposed it! But I worry that even if those green energy companies get the governmental support they need to be up and going, will their CEO’s find it cheaper to move their factories overseas?  Will they use the excuse of having to compete with Chinese green energy products as a reason for doing so? Will green jobs be yet another casualty of Free Trade?

Admittedly, the ramifications of import taxes are big – but I suggest not as bad as we are led to believe. If we put a tariff on foreign made goods, our goods will be taxed in return - no doubt about it.  But America is the world’s biggest consumer so we would be in the position of being able to buy our own products and sustain our markets. As citizens we would have to be willing to pay more for the products we buy – and that is a hard pill for a lot of people to swallow – but I argue that the secure economy engendered by strong employment would be worth it.

As a nation, we have to stop blindly accepting the belief, promoted by those who profit most from it, that factory jobs are gone forever from our shores. We need these jobs in order to have a strong Middle Class and a stable economy - and must find a way to bring them back.

We’ve tried Free Trade for almost twenty years and like deregulation and trickle-down economics, it doesn’t work – at least for most of us. When we discuss the terrible job situation in the U.S. and the decline of the Middle Class are we ignoring the elephant in the room? Is it time to examine another option?

This particular entry only addresses the consequences of Free Trade as it applies to the blue collar jobs issue in the U.S. There are huge environmental ramifications and social justice issues concerning the exploitation of indigenous people and poor citizens of Third World countries.  We are also starting to see the off-shoring of white collar jobs. I am not minimizing these grave consequences of Free Trade. They deserve specific attention and will be addressed in another entry.

-- Valerie Long Tweedie

The Betty White Method of Raising the Retirement Age

Think raising the retirement age to 68 or 70 is unfair?  Well, just get over it.  After all, Betty White is 89 years young and still working, so what the hell is wrong with you, ya buncha wusses!  She wants all those working 50-somethings out there to join the American Association of Retired Persons because you're still eligible even though you are not yet retired. And look at Betty. She is starring in a new AARP commercial proving that 89 is the new 62, She will never retire, and neither should you. The AARP's name has been rendered absolutely meaningless.  Retirement is so yesterday, after all.

The Wall Street Journal (sorry, no link -- they have a paywall) ran a story today claiming that AARP is now open to the idea of raising the retirement age in order to "save" Social Security -- something it had vowed to fight against.  But this lobby, which has become more of a broker for Medicare supplement insurance plans than a real public interest advocate for seniors, is walking back this report in a hurry.  It looks like it may have been one of those coordinated trial balloon leaks to gauge wind direction. AARP is acting very confused about exactly what its position is, and seems to want to have it both ways.


While telling CNN today that that there was some "miscommunication" with the Wall Street Journal, AARP legislative policy director David Certner  acknowledged that AARP believes that Social Security needs to be changed.


"Everybody knows we need to look at a package of different changes to Social Security to make it strong for the long term," he said. "The reality is, we have more people older and who are living longer, so we need to make changes. Everybody recognizes that. And we're certainly willing to talk about a package of changes that will keep Social Security strong."


Even though raising the retirement age does constitute a benefits cut, the 37 million-member lobbying powerhouse launched a national ad campaign Thursday warning members of Congress not to reduce benefits for recipients of Social Security and Medicare.  Raise the retirement age without raising the retirement age -- Paul Ryan must be loving this. It's doubletalking doublethink after his own heart. I betcha he'll apply for a special waiver to join AARP before he's 50.  I betcha AARP will also rope in the Millennials with a special introductory offer to give them a headstart on shopping for voucher plans of the future.  Medicare Part F for Failure, they might call it.

Meanwhile, a grassroots campaign is taking shape urging people to just cut up their AARP cards and demand a refund of their membership fees. Eric Kingson, a former advisor to President Obama on Social Security, is going to burn his.  From his Firedoglake post today:

And so, sadly and with respect for many good people associated with AARP, I have decided to make the supreme sacrifice and “burn my AARP card” and recommend that others consider doing so as well. No more AARP discounts, free Magazines with Katie Couric, Sally Field, Michael Fox, Goldie Hawn, Condoleezza Rice, Robin Williams, Robert Redford, Harrison Ford and others emblazoned each month on its cover– all fine people but hardly typical of the nation’s very diverse population of boomers and elders. Oh well.
Fortunately, there are a couple of organizations out there — the Alliance for Retired Americans and the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare — which maintain an advocacy focus more supportive of the protections provided by Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. For those also inclined to “tune out and drop out” of AARP, maybe its time for us through our various networks, blogs and organizational involvements to encourage others to do so as well. And, with AARP being so wavering in its support of elders, hopefully, two outstanding organizations — the Alliance for Retired Americans (www.retiredamericans.org) and the National Committee for the Preservation of Social Security and Medicare (www.ncpssm.org ) — will find opportunity to further build their already substantial memberships and with it to become even stronger advocates for today’s and tomorrow’s older Americans.

And don't forget Betty White, the new face of the AARP. If you want to figure out what will truly happen to older people once Social Security and Medicare get "fixed," here's the real picture:

Pay to Enter to Win the Future

Just when I thought it couldn't get any better.....  (the crossed-out bits are from the original draft of the email, which I fished out of a dumpster.  It was hard going, because there were a dozen FBI agents with me, ploughing through all kinds of stuff thrown out by regular, innocent citizens):

Karen -- 

My campaign operatives have forced me to pretend to sacrifice I've set aside my precious valuable time for four supporters like you to join me for dinner.

My campaign always   Most campaigns fill their dinner guest lists primarily with Washington lobbyists and special interests.

We did absolutely didn't get here doing that, and we're not going to stop start now. We're running a schizophrenic different kind of campaign.  We have got one campaign for the big Wall Street and corporation folks and a pretend grass-roots one for the little people. We don't take money from Washington lobbyists or special-interest PACs -- we never have, and we never will.  Pay no attention to the New York Times article the other day about the big dinner I have planned with The Wall Street banksters.  Pay no attention to reports that we have a special program in the DNC enabling us to take anonymous donations from lobbyists, special-interest PACs, even foreign governments.  We have to out-innovate and out-compete Karl Rove.  We have to beat him by joining him.  We have to deal with conditions on the ground as we find them. 

We rely on everyday Americans to keep drinking my Kool-Aid giving whatever they can afford -- and I want to spend as little time as possible with a as few of you. as I decently can.

So if you make a donation today, you'll be automatically entered for a chance to be one of the four supporters to sit down with me for dinner. Odds of winning will be about one in 1,000,000,000.  Odds of me having to cancel dinner and replace me with a White House intern due to a trumped up national security issue will be 99 out of 100.  Please donate $15 or more today:

We'll pay for your taxable to you flight and the dinner excluding tip -- all you need to bring is your story and your ideas and the names and email addresses and phone numbers of a hundred close friends and relatives about how we can continue to make this a better country for me Americans.

This won't be a formal affair. I know there's 9.1 percent unemployment and it costs plenty for regular folks to buy new clothes at Walmart. It's the kind of casual meal among friends that I don't debase myself get to have as often as I'd like anymore, so I hope you'll consider joining me and hundreds of press people for a one-minute photo op before I have to head to my real dinner with the bankers at the Four Seasons.

I'm not asking you to donate today just so you'll be entered for a chance to meet me. I'm asking you to say you believe unquestioningly in my personality cult in the kind of politics that gives marginal people like you a seat at the table -- whether it's the dinner table with me or the table where decisions are made about what kind of country we want to be or whether it's the table where your Social Security or Medicare will be cut and my tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires and corporations will be extended through eternity.

It starts with a gift of whatever you can afford.

Please make a donation of $15 today, and we'll throw your name in the garbage hat for the upcoming dinner:

I've said before that I want people like you to shape this campaign from the very beginning -- and this is a chance for only four people ever to share their ideas directly with me. I will do my usual best to pretend to care.

Hope to see your pathetic paltry check you soon,

Barack (when I ask for money we're on a folksy first name basis)

Bloombergville Begins: Union Members Camp Outside City Hall in Protest

About 100 New York City union members and supporters have "occupied"  a space around City Hall to protest budget cuts instituted by Mayor Michael Bloomberg.  Doug Singsen, City College professor and one of the founders of New Yorkers Against Budget Cuts, writes:

The first night of Bloombergville was great! After it stopped raining (and the cops started harassing us), we moved across the street and set up camp on Centre Street east of City Hall. There are around 100 of us here, the weather is perfect and it's been an exciting, inspiring night.

But we're not done! Some of us will be staying here during the day to maintain the encampment and we will be re-assembling in full force at 7 pm to have a speakout rally and another night of sleeping out and protesting the budget cuts. We need your help to make it even bigger and better! The Rude Mechanical Orchestra will be here and will provide some musical entertainment for us. Even if you can't sleep over, come down for the rally, tell your friends and help us build the struggle against budget cuts.

More background on the protests and occupation can be found here. 

Like other unions , District 37 members are facing massive layoffs and wage and benefit cuts under the austerity craze sweeping the nation.  Bloomberg's plans include firing 4100 city workers and closing a quarter of the city's fire houses. Protesters cite a union research report that claims the city could soften the blow by tapping more than $800 million in newly-identified potential revenue sources, including uncollected taxes.

New Yorkers Against Budget Cuts also point to the elimination of the state's so-called Millionaires' Tax on Wall Street as another main reason for the manufactured budget shortfall.  New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, recently polled as being more popular with Republicans than among members of his own party.  Even Carl Palladino, his GOP opponent, has praised the governor as being a true friend to fiscal conservatives and the Tea Party.