New Yorotica & Ohipocrisy

Here's a blue-plate special post: two for the price of one.

~  ~  ~

Just when you thought that the state of New York had Spitzed out one reprobate Donk governor, they're being asked to swallow the exact same scandal from his hand-picked successor:

Governor [David] Paterson admitted Wednesday he may have improperly billed his campaign for at least one hotel tryst with a girlfriend.

The hotel tryst was apparently listed as “constituent services.”

A Daily News review found that in a handful of other campaign expenditures, Paterson may have used campaign funds to cover personal expenses and misstated their purpose in public disclosure forms.

The records also show he made reimbursements, but he acknowledged he may have failed to pony up in one instance.

Governor Paterson is described as "mild-mannered".  After his crooked caped crusader predecessor, he could hardly be anything else.  Indeed, he admitted right after his swearing in that he had been unfaithful to his wife several years ago, but that they had gotten through their "marital difficulties".  Making that disclosure up-front made sense - it was only admitting the sex part of it, and the immediate aftermath of your predecessor's scandal is the best time to innoculate yourself against your own.

But the misappropriation of public funds?  That's against the law.  That's, equivalently speaking, what ex-Governor Spitzer did.  The only difference is the size of the theft, since Governor Paterson was only paying for the venues for his romps, not the romps themselves.

So who's in line after DP?  If the New York Daily News is correct that "every politician in Albany has probably committed the same crime," just how many governors is New York going to have in the next few months?  It'd be like watching Gilligan take on the Skipper at arm-wrestling.

Which is why Paterson will probably survive.  It's the same basic dynamic that enabled Bill "Gingerbread Man" Clinton to skate past all of his malfeasances: scandals have a low saturation threshold.  It's a significant public upheaval to get rid of a sitting governor; to turn immediately around and purge his successor, even for the exact same wrongdoing, is usually beyond the public's stamina, to say nothing of the political system's.  Besides, that's where Paterson's "mild-mannered-ness" comes in; he can't possibly have as many enemies as Eliot Spitzer did, and thus would have plenty of wagons to circle around himself.  Which is why the Republican minority wouldn't dare call for his impeachment.

Oh, yes, and Paterson's black, which he won't hestitate to invoke if he has to.  And he probably won't.

One would think that New Yorkers would be pondering the connection between such ubiquitous moral, financial, and political corruption in their state's government and their one-party voting habits that have entrenched the Democrats in permanent, unchallengeable power in Albany.  Perhaps even motivate them to throw all the Dems out and give the GOP a chance to run the state, even if just for fumigatory purposes.

One would be fantasizing.

I saw Batman Begins.  In this case, art is apparently not within a country mile of fully imitating life.

~  ~  ~

Ohio isn't a one-party state - yet.  But its Donks are as hypocritical as the rest of that vile breed:

The Cuyahoga County Board of Elections has launched an investigation that could lead to criminal charges against voters who maliciously switched parties for the March 4 presidential primary.

Elections workers will look for evidence that voters lied when they signed affidavits pledging allegiance to their new party…

After the election, some local Republicans admitted they changed parties only to influence which Democrat would face presumed Republican nominee John McCain in November. One voter scribbled the following addendum to his pledge as a new Democrat: “For one day only.”

Such an admission amounts to voter fraud, said [board member Sandy] McNair, who pushed for the investigation…

Lying on the signed statement is a fifth-degree felony, punishable by six to twelve months in jail and a $2,500 fine.

Oh, my, how the one-way-streetery abounds.  Everybody wants "open" primaries, it seems, and Democrats never fail to avail themselves of the opportunity to "cross over" and subvert GOP nominating contests to screw us over and force an unwanted nominee on our party.  But let any Republican anywhere return the favor, and THAT is "vote fraud"?  Since when have Democrats been the scourges of election integrity?

Simple: since they got a token taste of their own medicine.

Will this convince Donks of the error of their banana-republican ways over the balance of this decade?  Will they now back real, genuine, wholesale election reform to close all primaries, require voters to show identification to verify citizenship and eligibility, repeal "motor-voter" statutes, and for spiteful good measure, abolish "vote by mail" and force people to have to haul their lazy asses out of bed and actually transport themselves to the polling place to cast their ballots on Election Day?

Is a New York governor celebate?