My dad got an email yesterday that was apparently sent to a bunch of Columbia University alumni:
Thanks for taking the time to read this message. A number of Columbia Alum are getting together to try to address what is going on in Albany these days. The Columbia Community can really stand together and do something huge for the state.
I'm planning to run against sheldon Silver in 2012, and we are recruiting a slate of other candidates, ready to decentralize power to the communities. We are also recruiting more candidates to form a caucus to reform the procedure of the assembly, so that the 151 members of the Assembly do not have their voting power concentrated into a single man. Decentralization will address the fact that the majority of bills are debated for less than a minute on the floor of our Assembly -- a travesty to our supposedly democratic legislature. Sheldon Silver is the figurehead, but the system is the problem.
One particularly interesting proposal we have is to create athenian style community lending authorities, which leverages state funds through federal reserve lending facilities, in order to allow monetary policy to work from the bottom up as well as the top down, more effectively. We will also be seeking fiscally efficient ways to implement green governance.
Our website is www.realdealdemocracy.com and we will be having parties throughout the year all over the city. Please take a look and I hope to hear your thoughts and will try to follow up with you soon.
It only takes 6000 votes to change the entire legislature. This isn't just any election, and as an Alumni I hope you will help, whether it is in a financial capacity or with your time, ideas, and words.
Ed Chen
I don't know too much about Chen, but he has one great asset: he's not Sheldon Silver. I know he raised money for Paul Newell in 08, so his heart should be in the right place. Furthermore, that link, realdemocracy.com seems to be an organization that is opposing all the right people- Pedro, Shelly, and Carl Kruger:
There are a lot of political reform groups out there right now, yet politicians like Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Finance Chair Carl Kruger are running unopposed in a year that saw our state legislature fail us repeatedly, costing New York billions of dollars less through their ineptitude then their personal interest.
Silver and Kruger thrive in the den of Albany because no one will take them on, and if someone does, they have no support. Your contribution will be used to help us defeat Sheldon Silver and his ilk in the State Assembly, where bills are debated for less than 1 minute -- shorter than most third world countries. These men control the legislative bodies that failed to approve congestion pricing and lost the city $380 Million in Federal transportation funding and violated the will of the City Council and the mayor without even letting the bill go to a vote. Albany has robbed us of representation for years. That can all end now.
This cycle, New York reformers are rightly focused on the State Senate- first to remove the worst of the worst, already getting rid of the Slasher and with our sights on Pedro and Ruben Diaz Sr. to prevent the setting of a bad precedent with the new Democratic majority in that chamber; and secondly, to expand the Democratic majority in November so the bad actors like Pedro and Kruger can't have undue influence on the caucus. But in 2012, assuming we achieve our objectives in the Senate, we will set our sights on the Assembly leadership again. |
