Last week, New York State Supreme Court Judge Patrick McGrath struck down proposed language for the upcoming Proposal 1, which is a referendum question that amends the state constitution to change the state redistricting process. The vote on Proposal 1 will be on the ballot this November.
Citing the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the judge said that Prop 1’s description of the proposed redistricting Commission as “independent” was inaccurate.
In the ruling, Judge McGrath found the language was misleading since the proposed commission “cannot be described as ‘independent’ when eight out of the ten members are the handpicked appointees of the legislative leaders and the two additional members are essentially political appointees by proxy.”
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Well-known comic Joan Rivers died last week. Ms. Rivers was reportedly undergoing an endoscopic procedure to repair her vocal cords. She was having the procedure in an outpatient setting – meaning it occurred outside of a hospital.
Little has been reported on how Rivers was treated or what the problems were. It is well known that when a patient is under general anesthesia, possible complications can occur. One such complication is aspiration (that’s why patients are instructed to eat and drink nothing after midnight before the day of the procedure); another is a severe laryngospasm (vocal cords suddenly seize up or close when taking in a breath, blocking the flow of air into the lung); or over-sedation from the anesthetic.
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This week marks the beginning of the semester for most colleges in New York State. As students begin their next collegiate experience, families tackle how to pay for it.
American higher education has seen a dramatic shift in who pays for public college. America was once a society that valued college education and put its collective money where its mouth is by funding the bulk of the cost of that education.
But since the 1980s, there has been a shift in the burden of paying for public college from government to the families of those in college. The clearest evidence of that shift has been the drastic slashing in state dollars going to public colleges and the dramatic increase in tuition. In New York State, for example, the average tuition and fees charged at SUNY was about $1,673 in 1987, today that cost has jumped 340% (for academic year 2013-14, SUNY average tuition and fees was $7,400).
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One of the big national political stories last week was the grand jury indictment of Texas Governor Rick Perry, charging him with abuse of power when he tried to pressure a local district attorney. Governor Perry has argued that he is innocent of the charges.
The case has centered on Governor Perry’s veto of funding for a public integrity unit in a local district attorney’s office. It was claimed that the Texas Governor used his veto power in an effort to get a local district attorney to resign after her arrest on a drunken-driving charge. The district attorney is the top prosecutor in Austin, Texas and oversees a powerful public corruption unit that investigates public officials. Its work led to the indictment of a former Republican congressman, Tom DeLay, on charges of violating campaign finance laws.Following the district attorney’s arrest, Governor Perry threatened to veto $7.5 million in state funding for the public corruption unit in her office unless she resigned. When the local DA refused, Governor Perry followed through on his threat, and vetoed the state funding. The DA remains in office. Read the rest of this entry »
America’s campaign finance system has been awful for many years. But thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court, that bad situation has gotten worse. In its landmark decision Citizen United, the Court ruled that corporations have the same free speech rights as flesh and blood human beings. As such, corporations can spend as much as they want on elections, as long as such spending is not coordinated with a candidate.
The Court’s rationale is based on the need to protect the constitution’s free speech provisions. Of course, there should be a big difference between the speech rights of humans and those of legally created and regulated corporations. But in its zeal to ensure free speech, the Court has extended those protections to corporations as well.
In reaction, the U.S. Senate has advanced an amendment to the federal Constitution reversing two major Supreme Court rulings and reestablishing the authority of Congress to set campaign finance limits. The legislation, introduced by Sen. Tom Udall of New Mexico and cosponsored by 48 Senators, including both Senators in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, is an effort to overturn the Citizens United and McCutcheon v. FEC rulings.
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