I totally agree with Zev. The thing is that it is Bruno, Sel, and the Gov who run things. Usually Bruno and Seldon with the Gov being the tie breaker. With Bruno being a Republican, when Pataki was in charge, the pubbies got what they wanted.
Isn’t Bruno supposed to move to the position of Lt. Gov? Won’t that change the power triad. Bruno will probably fight being made Lt. Gov as it is really a demotion.
No, I mean I had no idea the man I saw on TV was a black man.
Just look at a Google Image Search, it’s obvious in many of those still pictures, but not all of them.
http://images.google.com/images?um=1&hl=en&rls=com.microsoft%3Aen-US&q=david+patterson+governor
Imagine if he had said, ‘No need to, my wife swallows, she ain’t no spitzer’.
Because there are no provisions in our State’s Constitution, the Lt. Gov. position will remain vacant. Bruno (lovingly nicknamed the “senile piece of shit” by the Steamroller) has caused an uproar saying he will occasionally assume the role of Lt. Gov. when needed: namely casting a 2nd vote to break ties on the Senate floor.
I’ll 3rd the ‘not much (if any) of a discernible change’ sentiment. The state’s machine politics is a carry-over from the old Tammany Hall days. The third leg of the triad might have a new face - but little can / will change. Paterson’s appointment gives new meaning to the old ‘rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic’ analogy. A new chief executive is no substitute for a new legislature; especially when the executive crawled out of the same sewer that created the mess.
Ralph Bruno: Will still be corrupt and facing indictment. He’ll get along better with his former colleague, Paterson - but anything that helps Bruno generally hurts the state. Until he’s arrested, loses that last seat majority or croaks, we’re stuck with him.
Shelly Silver: A puppet of the trial lawyers playing the role of puppet master himself to an assembly that’s in the pocket of the civil service unions.
The Citizens Budget Commission awards NY the dubious honor of highest taxed state in the country nearly every year. They did so under the Pataki and Spitzer('s truncated) administration. They’ll likely do so under Paterson and his next half dozen successors. Our legislators keep getting returned to office. The only time there’s turnover is via special elections that result from reappointments, death or incarceration of the incumbent. Until that situation changes, little else can.
My mistake. I guess I should have realized that from your location listed on your profile. Oh wait, “Caribbean Stepford” isn’t a place… :smack:
It’s not entirely sure he knows it himself. 
Seriously, the difference his blindness will make has got to be mostly due to his narrowed bandwidth for gathering information. Just the extra time it takes for him to digest a document by having it read to him means there are fewer documents he can read, and either less detail he can get into or fewer subjects he can get into in detail. He’ll therefore have to delegate more than a sighted person would, and his judgment of people and the quality of the strategic guidance he gives them will be acutely important. If he does have to focus on just one or two big things to get done, well, that will still put him ahead of other chief executives who’ve been frittered away by trying to do too much at once.
The experience will be quite interesting for both him and the citizenry of NY; there’s surely no disagreement about that.
The Joaquin Balaguer Story, for those of you. He didn’t go blind until an advanced age - that makes a huge difference in life.
It did just change: There are now two men in the back room, because you can’t replace the Lt. Governor.
On ‘three men in a room’, here’s some cites. It’s literal.
http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2008/03/atlantic_yards_4.php
It did just change: There are now two men in the back room, because you can’t replace the Lt. Governor. Or is it Bruno you can’t replace? I forget.
On ‘three men in a room’, here’s some cites. It’s literal.
http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2008/03/atlantic_yards_4.php
Bruno will be the acting Lt. Governor, but I’m sure a different Republican will become Senate majority leader and do more or less what Bruno would have done. So that part of the calculus may not change too much.
Lt. Governors no, Senate Minority Leaders, sometimes. Paterson is awesome. I worked on an event he put together. My friend used to work for him, has nothing but admiration for the guy, was sad to see him leave his position to become Lt. Gov.
I think Paterson will make a good Governor.
The saddest thing about Spitzer’s demise is that he didn’t get Bruno first.
My understanding is that Bruno won’t actually become the Lt Governor. He’ll remain the Senate Majority Leader and he just becomes the next in line of succession if Paterson leaves office.
Wikipedia says Bruno “will start performing the duties of the Lieutenant Governor of the State of New York on March 17, 2008, while keeping his role as the majority leader of the New York State Senate, because he also serves as the “temporary president of the senate.”” Nothing to suggest he would have to give up either office for the other.
BTW, who is this third NY institutional immutable eternal sacred triumvir, this “Sel”? I tried searching the name several different ways and came up with no NY politicians.
It’s Shel not Sel. Sheldon Silver, the Speaker of the Assembly.
BTW, I was interested to learn today that Paterson is NOT the first legally blind person to serve as governor in the U.S.
From here.
Another Paterson joke was back when he and Spitzer were running. Paterson said that Spitzer would be the visionary and he would be the legislative technician. He said it would work out best that way because he wasn’t good with vision.
He also tells a story about how some people underestimate his disability because he’s learned to compensate so well. He asked for directions on how to get to the building he was going to and his driver pointed toward the building. So Paterson started walking across the plaza and walked right into a ground-level fountain.
Couldn’t Gov. Paterson appoint a new lieutenant governor a la the 25th Amendment? Is there really no provision for that under the New York Constitution?
The Albany NPR station was rerunning old interviews with him Saturday afternoon. When asked to summarize the duties of the lieutenant governor, he said (I’m paraphrasing): “I get up at 6:30 every morning and call the governor, and if he answers, I hang up and go back to sleep.”
None. We do, however, make the gov. and the lt. gov. run independently in the primaries, but on a single ticket in the general election in order to … actually I have no idea why we do that. A little while back it did mean the same Lt. Gov was on tickets with two different candidates for gov in the general election.
Personally I thnk the office should be awarded as a Lotto prize, but I’m not getting too far with that plan.
I have been told that there is no provision for that, by the talking heads on CBS AM, and this is why the three men in the back room are down to two. Even with Bruno doing an Al Haig, he’s not got the power to be two of the three men, so there’s more deadlock potential.
The Lt. Gov. was never one of the three men in the room and Bruno has been.
The three men are the Speaker of the Assembly (Silver), the Senate Majority Leader (Bruno) and the Governor (now Paterson). Bruno keeps his Senate post, so he hasn’t lost any power.