Month: January 2018

When I was growing up in the 1950’s Onondaga County was represented in Congress by R. Walter Reihlman, a Republican.

Reihlman represented the district for nine terms from 1946 to 1964.

During those terms, Congress met for no more than three and a half to four months per year in Washington D.C.

The salary went up from $ 10,000 to $ 30,000 during that period.

Clearly, it was not envisioned as a full-time position.

Since 1965, the salary has risen to 174,000 per year and Congress is almost continuously in session.

The position has turned into a full time position and we are now represented by career politicians.

The New York State Legislature has evolved in the same way with the same result.

Proponents of full-time legislators will contend that it is essential because the issues that they deal with are more complex and require the acquisition of expertise.

In my view, this has resulted in a number of developments in the way Congress operates, none of them helpful.

I have observed many times that politics and public office attract people who couldn’t be successful at anything else.

Without naming names, over the course of my lifetimes I’ve seen people rise to the highest levels of power, who have had repeated failures in the private sector.

I’m not talking about the isolated business failure occasioned by an unexpected economic downturn but a track record of failures that defy expectation.

Nonetheless, when these people are elected to office and are repeatedly re-elected, they rise in seniority to genuine positions of power to which they cling desperately to.

The other failing that a full-time legislature has, is that it can result in officeholders who have never had a career doing anything else.

Two examples of this come right to mind and one is a Democrat and the other a Republican.

U.S. Senator and Democratic Minority Leader, Chuck Schumer, has been in public office from the moment he graduated from law school. Indeed, Schumer was so anxious to run for office that he never bothered to take the New York State Bar exam.

He went from the New York State Assembly to Congress to the United States Senate without ever having had a career outside of public office.

Another example of this trajectory is Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan.

Ryan went from being a congressional staffer to Republican campaign speech writer to another staff position until he was elected to Congress.

Unlike Schumer, he spent one year in the private sector where he worked as the marketing consultant at his family’s construction company as he ran for office.

Both of these politicians are what I call “doing life in public office.”

Neither of them can be said to have had the day to day experiences that people who build businesses or professional practices have.

They don’t know what it means to have to lay employees off or obtain a loan with payment obligations in difficult economic times.

They don’t know what it means to have to lay awake at night wondering if losses will turn to profits so that they can meet payroll, fund retirement accounts, or be able to meet medical expenses, children’s tuition or perhaps put food on the table.

“Doing life in public office” permits them to live in a cocoon where all their needs are met by salaries, staff, and all the other perks that comes with public office.

That leads us to the government shutdown.

I don’t think it is wise to ever shut the government down, no matter how noble the reason.

I am second to know one when I think the government should come up with a solution to DACA that allows those children who were brought to this country at an early age to obtain protected legal status and a path to citizenship.

Trump’s threat to deport these kids, if Congress does not enact a legislative solution, is one of the most callous and cruel threats I’ve ever seen.

Schumer’s decision to shut the government down and then to retreat from it after one day was simply stupid.

I’m not optimistic that, come March 5, we will not start to see deportations.

The only concession that Schumer obtained for his retreat was a promise from Senate Leader Mitch McConnell that he would allow “open debate” on the issue of the “Dreamers.”
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There was no commitment that a legislative solution would be had.

Complicating this problem is that Ryan will not allow any measure to come up for a vote in the House of Representatives unless it is supported by a majority of the House Republican members.

That position forecloses the possibility that a bi-partisan measure, agreed to by moderate Republican members and Democrats, could ever be enacted.

That is the price that Ryan makes Americans pay so that he can hold on to the power of the Speaker’s position.

Schumer ended the shutdown after one day simply because he feared that it would hurt the re-election chances of some of his caucus members.

In sum, the nobility of the “Dreamers” cause was and is sacrificed for the political expediency and preservation of those who will not take a principled stand because they want to cling to their elected positions.

And that, is the problem of being governed by those who sre “doing life in public office.”

In 1855 my great-grandfather, James McGuire, arrived in New York from Ireland.

It was in the waning years of what has been euphemistically called the “Potato Famine.”

The “Famine” was, in reality, an exercise in what would be known today as ethnic cleansing.

Although the potatoes rotted in the ground year after year, there was more than enough other crops to feed the population.

Nevertheless, the British Government and their estate landlords in Ireland exported the produce and left the Irish population to starve.

Approximately one million Irish starved to death.

As an inducement to get the Irish tenant farmers off the land and out of the country, the landlords paid the ship passage for the tenants to emigrate to the United States and Canada.

Another million joined in this Irish diaspora.

The ships became known as “coffin” ships because the health and sanitary conditions were so deplorable that almost half of the passengers died enroute.

Donald Trump would have categorized Ireland, at that time, as a “shithole.”

After his arrival in New York, my great grandfather, a shoemaker, married, started a family and relocated to Syracuse in 1870 with my great-grandmother and their first born son.

It was here that my grandfather and the remainder of his siblings were born.

In 1881 tragedy struck the family.

My great-uncle, John Francis McGuire drowned in the canal.

My great-grandfather sank into an alcohol fueled depression and was never able to work again.

My grandfather, Charles McGuire, and his older brother, James K., were forced to leave school and work to support the family.

Charles, at the age of nineteen, opened his own insurance agency which did business in Syracuse for almost seventy-five years.

His older brother, James K., would be elected Mayor of Syracuse three times beginning in 1895 at the age of twenty-six.

He remains the youngest Mayor of Syracuse to this day.

James K. McGuire would, during his lifetime, establish and publish a newspaper, be a candidate for Governor of New York, author two books, Chair the New York State Democratic Party, become an influential leader in national politics and the Irish independence movement.

Together, my grandfather and great-uncle were able to send their younger brother and sister to college at Notre Dame and St. Mary’s College in South Bend, Indiana.

In today’s world and in Trump’s prevailing view, it is likely that they would have not been Americans because they came from a country that he would view as a “shithole.”

Fifty years after this ethnic cleansing, what remained was still “a shithole.”

James K. McGuire traveled to Ireland many times during his life to aid the forces seeking independence from England.

One of the leaders in that cause, John Redmond, described Ireland at that time, writing,

“Dublin desperately needed prosperity. Ireland’s largest city and former capital ranked as the greatest urban disgrace in the United Kingdom. The census in 1911 listed Dublin’s population as slightly more than 300,000. The working class made up more than two-thirds of this number. A government report on Dublin housing conditions showed that 45 percent of the working class lived in tenement housing. Dwellings built for one family often housed several, usually with one family to a room. Dublin has more than twenty-thousand one- room tenement buildings the highest percentage of any city in Britain or Ireland. A large number of these places held as many as seven or eight people to a room. The most egregious example of overcrowding showed ninety-eight people living in a single house.”

My great-uncle visiting a few years later wrote,

“The writer has visited all the cities of America and many foreign cities. Of the large town seen, beyond a doubt the capital of Ireland is the poorest, the most squalid and miserable. The only interesting thing about Dublin are the ruins of its former greatness, the cemeteries, parks and decaying structures. There is scarcely a ripple in the Liffey aside from some boats from a brewery…”

He went on to describe Sligo as having,
“10,000 inhabitants old and poor the remnants of a stricken race. Sligo has nothing to show at the end of 900 years but the melancholy ruins of a once flourishing town, her aged men and women and their rags. Long since most of the stalwart youth have departed for foreign shores.”

Out of this British bred horror came immigrants to America who would become bankers, educators, clergy, writers, artists, musicians, captains’ of industry, public officials and even a President of the United States.

In Donald Trump’s world, my grandfather, great-uncle and those leaders and contributors might never have added to the culture, history or richness of what is America because they came from a “Shithole.”

Last month, I thought I had seen it all with the U.S. Senate candidacy of Roy Moore in Alabama.

Despite the multiple accusations of sexual misconduct bordering on pedophilia, the groper-in-chief currently ensconced in the White House endorsed Moore, dismissing the allegations by multiple women with the trite observation that “He denies them.”

Alabama is one of the most thoroughly red states and hadn’t sent a Democrat to the Senate in over four decades.

Nevertheless the stench surrounding Roy Moore’s life story was even too much for the State’s reliable Republican voters, who elected the Democrat, Doug Jones, a thoroughly dedicated former prosecutor who is above reproach.

My last memory of Roy Moore was him riding a horse to the polls on Election Day to cast his vote.

How often do you get to see a horse’s ass sitting on a horse’s ass?

Moore was a creature of the Trump’s former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, who had vowed to recruit candidates to carry the alt-right banner into Republican primaries in 2018, topple incumbent Republican members who were loyal to Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, and oust him from that position.

Instead, Democrats have a real chance to take control of the Senate as the Republican majority has now dwindled to a two vote margin.

Moore was not Bannon’s only warrior in this inter- Nicene affair.

In Arizona, Senator Jeff Flake, a conventional Republican conservative could no longer stomach serving under Donald Trump and ended his own career in public service.

Having drawn Trump’s ire, Flake had become a target of Bannon, who had recruited a primary opponent for him in the person of Kelli Ward.

Ward, an osteopathic physician and former Arizona State Senator, had unsuccessfully challenged John McCain in a 2016 Republican primary.

When McCain was diagnosed with brain cancer this past year, she publicly called on him to resign from the Senate so that she could be appointed to his seat.

Her rationale for this position was that, as a physician, she was certain that he would die from the brain tumor.

Now, there is a real bed side manner for you.

Ward had been the frontrunner in the upcoming primary against Congresswoman Martha McSalley, a retired U.S. Air Force Colonel and the first woman to fly in combat once the restriction was lifted during the Gulf War.

Ward’s candidacy has now been upended by the entry of a new candidate in the race.

The new candidate is formerly convicted and newly pardoned Joe Arpaio.

Arpaio served multiple terms as Sheriff of Maricopa County surrounding Phoenix from 1993 until 2016 when the voters turned him out.

Like Roy Moore, who was removed from office twice for defying federal court orders, Arpaio has a disdain for the federal courts.

In 2011, Arpaio was enjoined by a federal court judge from engaging in racial profiling, ordered to stop detaining Mexican and other Latino people and unconstitutionally inquiring about their citizenship or immigrant status.

Three years later, after many court appearances and warnings from the Court which Arpaio ignored, he was convicted of criminal contempt by another Federal judge following a trial.

Arpaio’s tenure in office was marked by numerous civil rights suits involving conditions in the Maricopa County Jail.

Arpaio made inmates appear publicly in pink underwear, fed them a starvation diet while requiring them to watch the Food Channel, deprived inmates of essential medical care resulting in a number of deaths and incurred hundreds of thousands of dollars in lawsuits filed against Maricopa County for these practices.

In his spare time, Arpaio became a committed member of the “Birther” movement that questioned President Obama’s birth in this country.

He even sent deputies from his office to Hawaii, at tax payer expense, to prove that the country’s first African-American President was illegitimate.

It was in that endeavor that he bonded with Trump.

Last year, Trump issued his first and only pardon.

He pardoned Arpaio before he was sentenced for the criminal contempt conviction.

In announcing his candidacy for the United States senate, the eighty-five year old candidate said he would like to bring “new Ideas” to Washington and support Trump’s agenda.

This past week, Trump voiced his opinion about Haitians and the nations on the continent of Africa.

We know what he thinks about Mexicans and others from Latin countries.

It will be a disappointment to Arpaio, but someone should tell him that his “new ideas” already reside in the White House.

I sometimes wonder whether Trump and Bannon found these candidates in the bar depicted in the movie “Star Wars.”

Ten I wonder whether they all met in that bar together.

During the past three months, there has been a steady drumbeat of criticism of Robert Mueller’s probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 election from forces all across the right wing spectrum.

Republican members of Congress have tried to cast doubt on Mueller’s impartiality and integrity.

Devin Nunez, the Republican Chair of the House Intelligence Committee has repeatedly tried to frustrate the committee from issuing subpoenas and interviewing witnesses, when he hasn’t been funneling information obtained by the Committee to the White House.

This is the same Nunez who was supposed to recuse himself from the investigation earlier this year after being caught slipping Trump information.

On the Senate side, Judiciary Chairman, Charles Grassley, has declined to advance legislation that would insulate Mueller from being fired.

Congressman Francis Rooney of Florida has called for a purge of the senior officials at the FBI.

Congressmen Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows, the Freedom Caucus chair, have called on Attorney-General Sessions to resign so that Trump can appoint a new Attorney-general who could fire Mueller.

Both seem oblivious to the fact that any replacement of Sessions would require Senate confirmation during which this issue would be fully explored.

The Rupert Murdoch Empire has been united in seeking Mueller’s dismissal.

The Wall Street Journal has called for Mueller to be replaced, despite Mueller having removed a senior FBI agent he determined was biased against Trump as soon as he learned it.

The Journal further contends that because Mueller led the FBI for twelve years, he can’t be impartial when it comes to investigating the firing of James Comey.

That may be the first time that leading the nation’s premiere law enforcement agency is a disqualifier from public service.

The Fox News commentators have been particularly rabid in the pursuit of Mueller.

Sean Hannity, who concedes that he is no reporter, has railed nightly against Mueller, Deputy Attorney-General, Rod Rosenstein and anyone else remotely connected to the probe.

Perhaps the most vitriolic has been Jeanine Pirro, star of the “Judge Jeanine” Show.

Watching her, one would never realize that in addition to being the former district attorney of Westchester County, she was an actual judge in the New York Court System.

Bug eyed, she has ranted that FBI officials should be “taken out in cuffs” and the FBI “needs to be cleansed.”

It’s hard not to wish that someone from the network would come up behind her and lace up the back of her jacket during her broadcast.

Mueller has thus far secured guilty pleas from two individuals from the Trump campaign add indicted two more.

This week, however, there was a development that sheds new light on the substance of the probe.

The founders and owners of GPS Fusion, the organization that hired Christopher Steele to prepare a dossier on Trump’s Russian business activities published an op-ed piece in the New York Times demanding that their testimony before three congressional committees be made public.

They recounted how they were initially hired by a Republican donor and the Washington Free Beacon to pursue this line of investigation. Ultimately the expense of the investigation was picked up by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

They denied demanding a pre-ordained conclusion from Steele and have disclosed thatTrump had extensive business relations in Russia and that there was collusion between the Russian Government and the Trump campaign to secure his election.

They laid out that the Steele dossier was not what triggered claims of collusion but rather corroborated allegations of collusion that came from within the Trump Campaign.

Interestingly, they urged the committees to examine Trump’s banking records from Deutsche Bank.

While none of the committees have taken this step, reportedly Mueller has, which may explain why the drumbeat for his dismissal has suddenly gotten so loud.

They decried the selective leaking of portions of their testimony by Republican members of these committees, which is why they demanded their full testimony be released.

This would seem to support disclosure of something that should have been made public a long time ago.

I am referring to Trump’s tax returns.

Clearly, they would reveal what business relationships he has with Russia and whether his previous denials are truthful.

They would also reveal to the American people whether his claims that he would be hurt by the tax overhaul are true.

The continued canard that he can’t disclose them because “he is under audit” is one that only Kellyanne Conway and Sarah Huckabee Sanders believe.

Justice Louis D. Brandeis once said “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.”

There is another saying that is also timely.

“Put up or shut up.”

That time has finally come.

In December 2015 I retired from the New York State Court System after nineteen years as a County Court judge and acting Supreme Court justice.

I had been a lawyer for twenty years before that and had decided to retire from all legal activity and do the reading, writing and traveling that I had always wanted to do.

Throughout 2016 I realized some but not all of these goals and was intending to do more in 2017.

To my complete surprise, I received a telephone call from Mayor Stephanie Miner in November asking whether I would be willing to come out of retirement during 2017 and be the City of Syracuse’s attorney during her last year in office.

Throughout my life, I have known many public officials at all levels of government.

They have been Presidential candidates, U.S. Senators, Governors, Congressional Representatives, State Legislators and every Mayor of Syracuse during my lifetime.

I’ve known Stephanie Miner for twenty plus years.

I have often said of her, that she is one of the few public officials that has sought public office solely for the purpose of bettering the lives of those whom she serves.

Faced with a decision which could be popular or unpopular, she will always decide to do what she believes is right without regard for how it will affect her popularity or electability.

It didn’t take me long to accept her invitation and join her administration for the last year.

During this past year, I was amazed at how much she had been able to accomplish in two terms.

The Hotel Syracuse, which had been vacant for decades was reopened as part of her economic development initiative.

Under- utilized and vacant commercial buildings were converted to condominiums with 745 residential units added since 2010 enjoying a ninety-nine percent occupancy rate.

Hotels opened in the Armory District and the Redhouse Performing Arts center was relocated from West Street to the vacant Sibley’s building on Salina Street.

A land bank was established which acquired almost 1,500 tax delinquent properties that were either marketed to new owners, generating $ 880,000 in annual property taxes, or demolished if beyond repair.

A Municipal Violations Bureau was enacted to more expeditiously handle housing and code violations.

The mayor implemented Say Yes to Education which led to $ 7.3 million dollars in scholarship money that enabled 3,000 Syracuse City School District graduates to attend college.

She moved the Joint School Construction board to fully renovate four City schools.

These were simply some of the successes of her eight years in office.

Yet, none of these were highlighted in the recounting of her two terms as Mayor by the local newspaper.

Instead, they chose to portray her as negative, combative or an obstacle to development.

For over thirty years, the paper has covered disagreement between public officials with an intellectual vacuity that is both breathtaking and predictable.

When two or more public officials have a disagreement involving policy or philosophy, you can count on the newspaper to bemoan or chastise the fact that there is disagreement without ever analyzing the merits or correctness of the position of the parties to the disagreement.

Thus, in this instance the paper allowed its “guest columnist” to paint the Mayor as a negative obstructionist.

What they forgot, or didn’t think was important to disclose, was the fact that the “guest columnist” was her first mayoral opponent, whose philosophy and views were overwhelmingly rejected by city voters.

To support his critique, he cited the Mayor’s opposition to the DestiNY tax agreement, the City’s litigation with Cor Development over the Inner Harbor Development, and her strained relationship with the Wizard of Oz in the Governor’s Mansion.

So, let’s take a closer look at each of these issues and see what the “guest columnist” either left out or failed to see.

If one recalls the DestiNY tax agreement, it will be remembered that a court ordered the Driscoll Administration to give the Pyramid Companies a thirty year Payment in lieu of taxes agreement for a multi-phase expansion of its mall, which already had a fifteen year tax abatement agreement.

After it obtained its agreement and completed the first phase of the expansion, the company announced it would build nothing more.

If there is someone out there who still thinks that was a good deal, there is a guy named Ponzi who would like to meet you.

The City’s litigation with Cor over the Inner Harbor stemmed from Cor’s reneging on its commitment not to seek a payment-in-lieu of taxes agreement and obtaining one from the Onondaga County industrial Authority.

At this writing Cor’s officials are scheduled to stand trial for, among other crimes, lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

One might want to factor that circumstance into deciding whether the City or Cor was truthful about the issues in their litigation.

The Mayor’s falling out with Cuomo stemmed from her public dissent about one of his policy proposals.

In typical Cuomo harebrained fashion, the Governor proposed that cash-strapped cities defer making their required pension contributions until future years when they would be required to make them along with interest payments for the unpaid years.

If that isn’t the classic politicians strategy to “kick the can down the road” for future generations to deal with, I don’t know what is.

Enraged by her public dissent, Cuomo and some of his local supporters, engaged in the kind of petty punishments that are typical of him and all too common today.

As the newspaper’s “guest columnist “noted Cuomo chose to locate those projects that are part of the “billion dollar” upstate economic revitalization in the suburbs, outside of Syracuse.

That means we didn’t benefit from the Film Hub which has sat empty since it opened and has no tenant on the horizon.

We also missed out on the Led light bulb manufacturing plant that Sorra, the company it was being built for, walked away from.

The Film Hub was the subject of litigation between Cor and the State, after Cor was paid fifteen million dollars to build it and was leasing it back to the State.

The Sorra lighting plant which was built for 90 million dollars, also by Cor, sits vacant. It will now have another fifteen million dollars spent on it in the hope it will make it attractive to another tenant.

As one who got a real up close look at bribery, extortion and corruption during the Alexander probe, it is clear to me that these projects are designed for nothing more than to generate bribes, kickbacks and political contributions.

It is no surprise that the “guest columnist” missed all of this, apparently still smarting over his electoral defeat by the Mayor.

The Mayor has a significant number of accomplishments including keeping the City solvent in the most difficult economic times, which will be her legacy when the history of these times is written.

They were apparent to me although I was a member of the Administration for only one year.

It does surprise me that the only newspaper in town, charged with reporting on civic affairs, either chose to ignore them or missed them entirely.

As the saying goes, no good deed goes unpunished.

Happy New Year!