Simple Truths

There are some realities that exist whether we like them or don’t, whether they are good for us or bad, whether we can change them or not.

We call these simple truths.

CORRUPTION IN GOVERNMENT

We have said many times that one of the original goals of the Liberal Party was to make the Democrats honest and the Republicans humane. Over the 78 years of our existence we have had some small successes in both areas…some years in which positive changes have been made.

They didn’t last long. Today they don’t exist at all.

The Democratic Party’s game plan is based on “Pay to Play”. The Governor of New York and New York City’s Mayor have both been successful playing the game…the Governor so successful that two of his closest associates are now in prison. The Manhattan DA has retired rather than hear primary opponents lacerate him for following the lead of the Mayor “whose hand has always been out”.

The Republican Party nationally has changed from the party of Lincoln to becoming the mistress of Trump. Locally it is all but gone. The Real Estate Board of New York (as Eric Adams says REBNY is to New York what oil is to Texas) feared the possibility of a Mayor John Catsimatidis so much that it recruited successful bureaucrat Joseph Lhota into running against him in a primary with the promise of an important job at NYU Medical Center if he should not become Mayor. He is doing a wonderful job there.

Since then REBNY no longer saw a problem with a De Blasio and was content to see a Nicole Malliotakis get only 30% of the votes in a loss. Now it sees no problem with any of the top Democratic candidates this year. It has ignored the two Republican candidates neither of whom has a single shred of experience in government and cannot win against an overwhelming Democrat voter majority.

The fact is that one party rule always leads to corruption. That’s the way the World of politics in America works.

The classic form of corruption follows a candidate’s need for money, finding those who can provide it and then providing payback.

In a one party arena like New York, the game is played in primaries since the general election is a sure thing.

Once Tammany Hall controlled the Democratic Party as it controlled New York much like its own Mafia organization. Everything and everyone was bought and sold. That is not the case now. “Pay to Play” is a softer format… more subtle in most instances – but it exists from the top down.

Since so many of the present Democratic candidates for Mayor have no genuine government experience, they have not had to play the game. Scott Stringer is hoping his soft as melted butter TV commercials will convince voters that he is not the kind of guy who twenty years ago put his hands where they weren’t wanted. There is little or nothing on the record that says he has played the “Pay to Play” game but after an entire life in New York politics we know he must know how.

And yet he and other candidates have hired lobbyists as campaign consultants. Lobbyists represent businesses that often do business with NYC. Isn’t that an interesting reality? And yet it is quite upfront. Those “realities” become commonplace very quickly. And tell us all we need to know about game playing.

The New York Times (supporting Kathryn Garcia) recently made certain that voters knew that the only other government official in the race, Eric Adams, not only knows how to play but does it very well.

Will anyone care? Should they?

As long as money means everything in politics anything will be done to raise it. And little by little “anything” becomes a way of life. It’s not nice but who really cares? Does this talent make Adams less of a potential leader or does it signify he knows what he’s doing and knows how to keep his promises?

What’s the simple truth?

NETANYAHU AND ISRAEL

What is it about Israel and its people, that Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu has essentially been its leader since the Clinton era here? That he has been Prime Minister of Israel through four different American Presidents and been on the scene for three others. Can the people of Israel find no one else to lead them but this man who will do anything and everything to stay in power?

It is not only Bernie Sanders, AOC and the like who believe that this horror in Israel today has been caused by Netanyahu’s desire to remain in power. There have been two election in four years and he has not been able to form a government. Thomas Friedman of the NY Times reports that a coalition government was being formed which for the first time would include Israeli Arabs and that fact would finally force Netanyahu out to face long held charges against him for corruption.

It seems that as peace prevails, Israelis no longer seem to care about Bibi…even turn their noses up as the government tries to convict him of self-dealing. But then there is trouble and suddenly Bibi is back in business. Netanyahu knows this very well and he has friends who are quite willing to use him for their ends.

He has always worked closely with the ultra- Orthodox in the country to get what he wants as he gives them what they want. Both know these truths:

Hamas in Gaza exists to gain control of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and then destroy Israel;

Israel has decided to remain a Jewish state and not become a democracy. It fears that Palestinians living in Israel as full citizens would eventually grow numerous enough to vote for change …a change that would end Israel as a Jewish state.

That fear has kept Palestinians from gaining full citizenship and has made them continually vulnerable to the acts of Jewish groups intent on pushing them out of Jerusalem which the two groups “share”. Just such a push on one block with six houses involved and Jewish police raiding an important mosque to quiet its loud speakers was the trigger of what we are seeing now.

Hamas acted immediately with rockets and Netanyahu turned the Israeli Air Force on Gaza. Death and destruction have followed.

American Jews have been endlessly disquieted by many Israeli acts against Palestinians but have essentially remained silent. Political forces on both sides there have never truly wanted a two-state solution.

Netanyahu has always claimed the Palestinians are divided and weak.

Hamas has said that Netanyahu turns his back on every peace agreement.

America has officially supported Netanyahu despite uneasiness but as long as Bibi exists in power and these actions now are reinforcing that power, the death and destruction will continue because no fair solution seems possible.

That is the simple truth.

PUBLIC EDUCATION IN CRISIS

Political leaders and government office holders continue to be totally ignorant about education despite “Education Presidents and Education Mayors”…coming and going with no success. Political involvement in education has made matters worse.

Here’s an incontrovertible fact: Barely one-third of NYC’s high school graduates are prepared for college or work. The other two-thirds need remediation difficult to get at the college level and menial jobs are difficult to find in a more and more sophisticated economy which requires more than these kids can contribute.

Today we recognize that the majority of children in the NYC school system are of color and that too often that means they have difficult family lives pressured by a lack of money and educational resources. All of that puts public education under great pressure but that doesn’t excuse the fact that children all across the country are getting far less from public education than their grandparents got…and that is an indictment of the entire system.

Today New Yorkers are looking at a very diverse set of candidate for Mayor…with women and people of color outnumbering white men. But when you look at their thoughts about improving education – especially after more than a year of a pandemic which essentially closed down learning in American schools – we see nothing, absolutely nothing that indicates any awareness of what is and has been wrong with public education and how to fix it.

Their suggestions …putting two teachers in every class or hiring an entire cohort of teachers of color because of the undocumented belief that if children of color in the third grade have a teacher who looks like them, there is a greater chance that they will eventually graduate has nothing to do with the reality that if they can’t read by the third grade they will never graduate from high school no matter who is standing in front of the class..

Our system of public education began degrading when women who have for centuries been our teachers were given the opportunity of being more than that or secretaries or nurses. Once a women was free to become a doctor or dentist or lawyer or corporate executive or the head of a corporation, Schools of Education recognized that the quality of students seeking to become teachers had changed. Sadly, then and now the quality of teacher education did not change accordingly, and so the system itself no longer produces what it did.

There are other truths as well: No one has taken the time to study how well charter school students are doing in upper grades and even in college; no one has done a study to reveal how well Pre-K is doing in preparing our little children for school success. Do they really work or is it about baby-sitting for busy parents? And while there is great concern about ending gifted and talented programs or changing entrance qualifications for our six high performing high schools, no one has suggested how to improve education for those youngsters excluded from these programs so they could actually succeed in one if they had the opportunity.

Dreaming about the best schools, the best charter schools, the best special programs is nothing more than that – dreaming…or an empty campaign promise.

And that is a simple truth

There are many simple truths in life. Many times they exist to be changed.