Democracy In Albany

1. Fundamentally, the machine hates what it does not control. That's the nature of any machine. They don't control Soares, therefore he's a threat that must be eliminated.

2. He ran as an insurgent and won.

3. You may have noticed he's black.

4. He's treading in some of the traditional home turf of the machine.

There are people all over this city who can tell you where you can buy drugs.  When is the last time a drug house was busted in Albany?

The last bust of a building being used for illegal activity was when the one group of thugs raided the illegal poker club and stole their money.    

If Cusick wants to run on the Integrity line and he wants the endorsement of the Police Union I recommend that he requests whoever sold that machine gun to the gun shop come forward and apologize AND then donate the proceeds to a worthy cause.  

The bottom line is that Soares ran as an outsider and is now part of the machine, same tactic that Jennings used.

2)Any time anything is done or not done in Albany is can be spun as "politically motivated."  DGS Does a bad job plowing someones street its politics. Anytime a street gets paved it has to be politics. Connors does an audit during a gasp election year it must be politics.

3. If Connors was out to get Soares he would have turned the whole mess over to the State AG to prosecute.  I looked at the report (available on the Comptrollers web site) and came across the $1,000 check that Soares wrote himself and cashed. Missing cash and evidence from the safe they cant pin on him.  This they could if they wanted to.

4. I am willing to bet that this is "audit" is being used to "insulate" Soares against a first strike by Coumo.

Soares has been implementing new policies in the DAs office that undermine the fundamental dynamic of power and resources in the city.

The philosophy of the Machine is, basically, to blame the people in the community for the community's problems, and then to distribute the punishments and rewards as they deem appropriate.

So, poverty is the fault of poor people.  A declining city is the fault of the people who stay in the city. Crime in particular neighborhoods is the fault of the people who live in those neighborhoods.  And punishments should be distributed accordingly.

The District Attorney is the specific person who is charged with the responsibility of doling out those punishments.  It's a key role in the operation of the whole system.

But what if a District Attorney sees his job not only as punishing criminals, but also as preventing crime?

This philosophical distinction was pointed out by Cusick in tonight's debate.  He claims Soares is in the wrong job, because the DA's job is supposed to be strictly punishing criminals.  All this preventing crime business is not in the job description.

A major part of Conner's attack on Soares is based on this philosophical difference.  The fact is, Soares has spent a lot of money on crime prevention programs.  (Money that, by the way, largely came from busting drug dealers).  And not surprisingly, a lot of this money has been spent in the neighborhoods where there is the most crime.  

Conners claims that this is misuse of funds.  

The audit isn't really about the handling of finances.  It's about the way Soares sees the job he's been given to do, and the way Soares' policies affect the functioning of the Machine.

My point is a simple one, you're the one with the big mouth.  The next time, before you open it, why don't you find out what your talking about.  

I personally understand the thought that the way to stop the cycle of poverty is to stop jailing the fathers and making sure that they are part of a childs upbringing. However, what good is it to leave a criminal in the community?

Now there is no doubt that the steroid case netted him some pretty large cash.  If they hadn't screwed the case up it would have been more.  In the millions

But to hold a press conference on the money that he is OBLIGATED BY LAW to give to the Office of Substance abuse is pretty interesting.  

If he had his way, he would have used it to buy more over priced t-Shirts, and flashlights with his name on them.  

Then, and only can, can one begin to debate facts.

Having read through the entire report, it is quite clear that there is a serious accounting problem in the the office of the District Attorney.

As was pointed out above, this audit began in May after other initial findings of accounting problems had to be followed up on.  So here's the point I want to stress:

This audit is NOT politically motivated.

Please re-read that sentence.  The only reason anybody is talking about it as being politically motivated is because we are in an election year and the mainstream corporate media loves to sell papers with "scandalous" stories of "politically motivated" stuff, and then turn around and write glowing editorials about themselves about how "politics" is bad.  Spare me, Rex, spare me.

Guess what?  Mike Conners is the Comptroller.  He is supposed to investigate problems like the ones he found.  He is required to make these kinds of reports, without regard to the timing.  You want politically motivated?  I'll give you politically motivated:  if Conners had waited until after the election and then revealed this information (which is damaging to the District Attorney and that's his responsibility by the way) then that would have been politically motivated.  Conners isn't pulling any political stunt; he's pulling his weight by fullfilling the duties of his job-description.

Let's jog people's memories about Mike Conners:  in 2004, he switched parties and ran as a Republican against State Senator Neil Breslin.  So to disregard that and run around saying that this is the machine doing this when the entire report was drawn up by somebody who was, and still is, brave enough to fight the machine echoes a cavernous lack of logical reasoning.  He remains one of the most independent-minded elected officials in the County, and it's a breath of fresh air to have somebody who doesn't care about Republican or Democrat or whether the year is odd or even, just someone who cares if the credit and debit side of the financial reports are equal.  And by the way, he crushed his previous primary opponent last year as a Democrat again.  So if anybody has a true claim to a party by the name of "Integrity" it's County Comptroller Mike Conners.

You know what is politically motivated?  The Times Onion!  They got so wrapped up in whether or not this was Conners against Soares, they misprinted the debate in yesterday's story about the race they actually said that Conners was going to debate Cusick.  I've heard of yellow journalism before, but this excuse for journalism is as brown as...well, you fill in the blank.

I won't get into the details of the audit, either.  I linked to it, so the onus is on you to get into the details of the audit before forming opinions about it.  But I will say this:  after reading through it, and seeing how much money was unaccounted, mishandled, and used for what seem to be truly politically motivated purposes and after reading the attachments (yes, you have to read the entire document before forming a valid opinion) to see how unresponsive the District Attorney's office was to the Comprotller's office's legitimate and authoritative requests, I have found my down-ticket race on which I will split my ticket this year as I have done every year.

Once again, it was not Mike Conner's intentions to have people come to this conclusion; his intention was to do his job by making sure the District Attorney was doing his.  As it stands, the office has become too politicized as it is; out of all the offices in county government, the office of the people's prosecutor should be the least political.  While I'm happy with much of Soare's term in office, especially the grassroots manner in which he came into it, it seems the campaign never ended, and that's not how you run a DA's office, but it is how you run the DA's office into the red (or, as the case may be, off the books.)  All you need in a DA, really, is somebody with a license to practice law and good intentions.  A Gooper he may be, but Roger Cusick has one of those, and he's running on a third-party ticket (something I like) and he too challenged a Breslin (County Executive Mike, Brother #2 of 3) in the past, so his intentions seem good enough for me.

Cusick got my vote last year, and he'll get it again this year.  David Soares proved that you can indeed beat the machine, and his legacy for that will never be forgotten; but he forgot that you have build a better machine, and he failed to do that by the information provided by the Comptroller's accurate, informative, and impartial audit.

Fact #2: Your statement "I've never claimed to be an expert on the inner workings of the APD" is a lie.  Your statement before that was " When is the last time a drug house was busted in Albany?", implying that you know the answer.  And your next line "the last bust of a building being used for illegal activity was when the one group of thugs raided the illegal poker club and stole their money", proves it.  You don't know what you're talking about but you imply to other bloggers that you do.  And when someone calls you out on your lies, you do what all good liars do, back down.  

Fact #3:  How the hell do you know if the police department doesn't report crime to the media.  You don't, you just assume they don't because the media doesn't report it.  Maybe the media just doesn't give a fuck about reporting crime.  About 15 years ago the Times Union use to print the daily blotter in the paper.  You don't see that anymore do you?  Have you ever asked yourself, why not?  Of course not, that wouldn't fit your agenda.

Fact #4: And for your question "who had the guns?".   I think they know who had the guns, but that isn't the real issue, is it?  

This comment is not meant in anyway to diminish the seriousness of the DA's sloppy accounting practices.

With that being said, I do know more than you, which really isn't saying much, is it?  Does knowing more than you make me an expert?

Do you know that all the beat cops weren't eliminated?  Probably not.  When their positions were being cut one of the beat cops went to the Chief and proved he was doing his job.  He got to keep his job and to this day, still works his beat.  Too bad some of the other lazy cops didn't do the same.  And this has nothing to do with expertise, it comes from personal knowledge.  So I guess no apology is necessary.  

And while you have never claimed to be an expert of the Albany Police Department, you sure the hell have implied it!  Over and over and over.......................

And if you want to take the word "integrity" off the side of the cops cars go ahead.  I'm sure the cops won't mind, their called a lot worse when they're out on the streets then having no integrity.  But you wouldn't know that, would you?

My biggest problem with you is that you make blanket statements about the cops without knowing the facts.  Again, show me when I have ever said I was worried about what people think about the Albany Police.  I never have, that is just some more or your lies and false information.

The main reason I post in your blog is to correct your lies and distortions of the truth.  

The TU was briefed about the audit by someone in the APD.  The police union is endorsing Cusick, and the first one to run to the press about the audit is someone from APD.  Not politics?

The audit was done in 2008 because of problems that arose earlier.  You stressed that reading is imporatant; it is.  But reading the audit itself is more important than reading the Times Union article about the audit.  That's the difference between a primary source and a secondary source.  You don't have to read far to answer your first question...the following quotes are from page 3:

An audit of the State and Federal forfeiture funds was necessary due to the findings and recommendations of the Petty Cash Audit of May 8, 2008, which illustrated the fiscal mismanagement of County monies by the District Attorney's Office.
::
The Albany County Comptroller's Office audited the Federal and New York State forfeiture and seized asset accounts, the safe that was the focus of a review by the NYS Office of State Comptroller (OSC) in 2005 and the New York State Police review and evaluation of the evidence procedures in 2005 and the procedural operations for oversight of those funds.

Emphasis added.

As such, we can see that this audit is one of several in an on-going process.  Somebody above pointed out that reorganization and professionalism takes years...so does accountablity.

Also, Layman, you mention many years the audit could have been done.  2007, 2006, 2005...

I'll gently remind you that the second Tuesday of November is Election Day every year in America.  To prove my point, a few rhetorical questions need to be asked:  If the audit was done in 2007, would it be "politically motivated" towards Conner's re-election that year?  If it was done in 2006, would it be "politically motivated" in some way towards elections for the County Committee or something?  Surely, couldn't somebody come up with some "politically motivated" reason for having the State audit the District Attorney's office in 2005?  Let's go further...if Conner's had audited the office in 2004 when Paul Clyne was still District Attorney, would the language in defense of the District Attorney be the same except for the name of he who currently holds the office?  My point is this:  every year is a political year.  So just saying something is "politically motivated" based on a number derived from the death of a man who advised against such petty bickering in the first place simply holds no weight in my book.  And with that in mind, it's worth looking around to see who cast the first stone on this one.

I have to rest my case on that one, and reiterate that the authority cited in the audit, the scope of the audit, and the facts and correspondence made plain in the audit make it very clear that this audit is not "politically motivated."  Those two words are simply cooked up by machine politicians, professional political distractors, and a press corp that likes to think the combination sells papers and grabs attention between commercials.  I don't care how the TU gets their information, and obviously neither do they, or we'd have some semblance of accuracy and impartiality in that rag.  Also, the police union, like all unions, are not political organizations; any union is simply an extension of every American's first amendement right to freedom of assembly, and their endorsements an expression of the freedom of speech, guaranteed in the same amendment.  Like I said, if anything is truly politically motivated in the purest sense of those two words, it is the coverage, not the audit.  The fact that the debate has been muddied up so much, as evidenced by discussion here on this board, proves that a reliance on their shoddy excuse for reporting over the actual document in question is the prime suspect in the crime of people debating what they think the facts are as opposed to the fact as they stand in the realm of reality.

I stand by my assertation that this is not a matter of who's involved in "politcs" and who's not; it's a question of who's doing their job and who isn't.  And my belief is that Conners is doing an excellent job and that Soares has performed less than adequately, especially considering the great promise he came into office with.  Sometimes the harder they come, the harder they fall.

A quick disclaimer:  I have no license to give a legal opinion, and nothing I said should be construed as such.  But I do have a right to disagree with political opinions, and I hope I haven't been too disagreeable in doing so, especially with a fellow blogger whom I have the utmost respect for.  If I have been, I apologize, and would remind everyone that after election day, no matter who wins (and I hope Cusick does) we need to fix the glaring problems in the DA's office no matter who serves out the next term.