Relief Is In The Air

Come Wednesday, relief will be in the air, literally, in the airwaves of TV and radio. Also, there will be relief to our mailboxes and any other forum that we use for our personal consumption of daily enlightenment.

After this election, I am confident that Albany just does not get it and probably never will until there is a change in leadership at the capital, to include Spitzer, Bruno, and Silver. The change of leadership should occur on a regular basis, term limits need to be enacted on the leadership positions, not necessarily the elected positions, but the leadership positions of Senate Majority Leader and Assembly Speaker. The current systems breeds power brokers and corrupts the use and distribution of taxpayer's money as well as disproportionately serving the needs of residents who are represented by minority versus majority members in a particular house. The current systems stifles creative thinking and limits or even eliminates debates on proposed legislations and limits potential legislation that might otherwise benefit New York State residents. All of this leads residents and outside observers to the belief beyond any assumption that New York State government is one of the most dysfunctional governments in the land.

Yet, somehow Albany fails to perform any introspection as well as any peer review to see what best practices are being performed by other state governments for possible improvement for New York. And in the end, they bring this failed thinking to the residents of Northern New York for the past nearly two months in the form of the race for the 48th District Senate seat. The only beneficiaries of the race could be possibly the media organizations who have reaped the millions of dollars being spent to stretch anyone's imagination as to the wildest of possibilities.

The race for the 48th Senate seat has resurrected issues that are four years old, raised issues of candidate's personal property that should not even concern district voters and found nuances in any piece of legislation possible to paint a grim picture of one another. Northern New York residents rarely care for this type of politics and they are not alone, most residents of New York State do not care for Albany's politics. Cathy Calhoun from the Aubertine camp and Steve Minarik from the Barclay camp should have been sent packing before they even thought about bringing their ugliness in campaign styles to Northern New York. I know both Aubertine and Barclay and neither of these gentleman are representative of the campaigns that have been run for them by party money.

Tuesday, good luck to each candidate. Wednesday good bye to the operatives and thank you for the infusion of capital into our economy, you did have one thing right on the campaign trial, the economy is a concern and you followed through by spending money on advertising, hotels, meals, etc. We appreciate it, but for once we will say, don't come again.