Duuudde. You just blew my mind, man.

Republican NY Assemblyman Steve Katz has talked tough about the war on drugs. He voted against medical marijuana legalization just last summer. But remember, he is a Republican. So is it any surprise he was busted for speeding, and after the officer noticed a distinctive odor emanating from the car, possession of marijuana? Ooops.

State police said that a suspicious odor was noticed in Assemblyman Steve Katz’s vehicle when they pulled him over for driving around 80 mph in a 75 mph zone at around 10 a.m. Thursday morning.

“After noting the odor of marijuana, a New York State Trooper found Katz in possession of a small bag of marijuana,” a statement from state police said, according to the Times Union.

I'm sure he's got a good excuse to deprive ill and terminal patients the small comforts that he does not deny himself, right?

I guess it shouldn't be surprising, given that this is the same state that gave us Boss Tweed. It is a bit disheartening to see that politicians can be bought for so little money:

A high-ranking Democratic New York State senator was arrested on Tuesday and charged with trying to buy a place on the Republican ticket in the city's mayoral race, in what prosecutors said was part of a bribery scandal that reflected pervasive corruption in New York politics.

Five other politicians, three Republicans and two Democrats, were also arrested and charged with collectively accepting more than $100,000 in bribes in meetings that often took place in parked cars, hotel rooms and state offices, according to court papers.

Authorities described the scheme - potentially one of the biggest political scandals to hit New York in years - as an attempt to game the city's first wide-open mayoral election in more than a decade. New York will vote in November for a new mayor to replace Michael Bloomberg, whose third term wraps up at year's end.

The charges center on State Senator Malcolm Smith, a Democrat from Queens, who was widely considered a long-shot candidate for City Hall. Prosecutors say he made payments to a city councilman to set up meetings with top New York Republicans to assist in getting him on the mayoral ballot.

Smith and the councilman, Daniel Halloran, a Republican from Queens, were among the six politicians arrested on Tuesday morning.

Later on Tuesday, all six appeared in federal court in White Plains, and were ordered to post $250,000 in bail. They face charges including bribery, extortion, and wire and mail fraud.

"From time to time the question arises, how common is corruption in New York?" Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara told a news conference. "Based on the cases that we have brought and continue to bring, it seems downright pervasive."

And that's not the only one. Bronx Assemblyman Eric Stephenson was arrested for accepting $22,000 to help some businessmen by legislating out any potential competition for their adult day care centers. NYTimes' Gail Collins:

Our New York gang comes pretty cheap. Although perhaps it’s heartening to realize that America is still a country so filled with promise that even the chairman of the Bronx Republican Party can dream of one day being indicted for taking a $15,000 bribe. There are hardly any Republicans in the Bronx to chair — the party leader himself, who got the job when his predecessor went to the clink, actually lives someplace in the suburbs.

One of the stranger elements to the New York story was word that a Bronx assemblyman named Nelson Castro has been wearing a wire for the feds for virtually his entire political career. He originally got into trouble when election officials noticed nine voters were registered as living with him in his one-bedroom apartment. Unable to demonstrate how all that worked out, Castro agreed to cooperate with authorities and became the F.B.I.’s own social networking system. Nobody knows yet what else showed up on the Castro tapes, but the assemblyman announced his resignation this week, expressing pride “of my accomplishments and the many benefits that I have secured on behalf of my district over the last four years.”

So, here’s a hopeful thought: maybe you can hit a point of ethical bankruptcy where, for want of anybody else to sell out, all the plotters betray each other.

And while I applaud the rooting out of corruption, the point remains that this is small potatoes. While the US Attorneys bemoan the pervasive corruption of politicians (an inherently corrupting position) in New York state, we still have federal politicians who are legally grafting the system all over the country.

Every time she opens her mouth or tweets, it's worth reminding people that Republicans voted to put this dingbat in the White House.

Oh, and if you thought that they'd finally figured out by now that she's nothing but a two-bit grifter -- guess again.

PS.
The diabetes rates in Red States are exploding. So keep chugging those Big Gulps while you yuk it up with Sarah, wingnuts.

Boy, Philadelphia really dodged the Nemo bullet. We got maybe one or two inches of snow, while New England was hammered. Hope you all made it through okay and still have heat -- more than a half-million New Englanders are without power this morning:

BOSTON - A behemoth storm packing hurricane-force wind gusts and blizzard conditions swept through the Northeast overnight, where more than 650,000 homes and businesses in the densely populated region lost power and New Englanders awoke Saturday to more than 2 feet of snow.

More than 34 inches of snow fell in Hamden in central Connecticut, and an 82-mph wind gust was recorded down the coastline in Westport. Areas of southeastern Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New Hampshire notched at least 2 feet , with more falling. Airlines scratched more than 5,300 flights through Saturday, and the three major airports serving New York City as well as Boston's Logan Airport closed.

Flooding was also a concern along the coast, and the possibility led to the evacuation of two neighborhoods in Quincy, Mass., said Fire Deputy Gary Smith.

All roads were ordered closed Saturday in Connecticut, where the storm made travel nearly impossible even for emergency responders who found themselves stuck on highways. In Maine, officials said numerous vehicles, including several state police cars, were also stuck in deep snow and warned stranded drivers to expect long waits for tow trucks or other assistance.

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Since it's almost certain that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo will toss his hat into the 2016 Democratic primary race, it's worth noting that he could possibly be one of the most Republican Democratic governors ever.

I never in my wildest dreams thought I'd see a Democratic governor support Republican candidates for the state senate, but that's exactly what Cuomo did.

Yes, this is bizarre. Why would a Democrat support a Republican candidate in a contested election? Cuomo tried to pass it off as support because some Republicans voted the same sex marriage law in New York into effect. That would be just dandy, except as Chris Hayes points out, one of those Republicans was defeated in his primary by a Tea Party candidate, yet Cuomo gave no support to the Democrat. Why would that be?

AlterNet reported on this just before the election:

Apparently, pretty hard. What’s really going on? There’s seems to be only one plausible explanation: the Governor prefers conservative Republicans to progressive Democrats. I know it’s hard to figure. But actions speak louder than words. To Cuomo, it may be true that it is more important to keep Republicans in control of the Senate so that he never has to face strong pressure from the left. This tactic, according to key players in New York politics, is an open secret.

Were the Democrats to win back the Senate, inevitably it would mean that they would pass some bills that reflect the interests of their constituents -- against hydrofracking, for raising the minimum wage, on gun control, on school aid, on the incarceration society. That’s not what Cuomo wants as he prepares a 2016 presidential campaign in which his theme will be “I can bridge the partisan divide.” It’s baloney and he knows it. By bridging the divide, he means forcing Democrats to accept a softer, gentler Republican view of the world.

Oh, the bipartisanship fetish again. I could see some nods toward bipartisanship if we were actually dealing with a rational Republican party but there are no rational Republicans. They've run for the hills or switched to independent voter status. From the top to the bottom, the Republican party is not rational, but they are cynical, and Cuomo is playing right into that cynicism.

This kind of Democrat is no Democrat at all. Not even liberal. If Cuomo believed in the strength of liberal principles, he would push for a Democratic state senate to put those principles on display, to hold up New York as a bastion of successful liberalism instead of some bipartisan mishmash nonsense.

There's this myth that plays out in cynical ploys like Cuomo's about how bipartisan is best, yada yada. Yet the most progressive, prosperous times in this country emerged when true progressive legislation was passed with large liberal majorities. Today we have politicians like Cuomo who go all mushy at the idea that all things bipartisan are good, when in fact, this country has just said in their loudest voter voice that progress is what they want.

Cross Cuomo off your list. If he can't stand by even the most basic principles, he's not worth considering in 2016.

Today, New York City released test scores for elementary and middle schools' performance during the 2011-2012 school year. In the past, this wouldn't be anything to write home about, much less write on this blog. But after ten years of No Child Left Behind, and people like Michelle Rhee concern-trolling over our top-dog status, test scores have become the determining factor in whether teachers keep their jobs, whether schools receive funding, and drive far too much education policy.

Just look at how today's release has been reported by the New York Times:

Continuing a trend from last year, this year’s numbers are a stark falloff from the high achievements recorded in 2009, when the Bloomberg administration trumpeted proficiency levels approaching 100 percent as proof that its ambitious education reforms were bearing fruit.

Three years ago, 82 percent of students were proficient in math and 69 percent in English, and Mayor Bloomberg touted those scores as he ran for re-election to a third term.

The weight given to those test results should raise eyebrows, particularly since the New York City students were tested on a ridiculous question about pineapples and hares racing.

Children were asked, for example, “Which animal spoke the wisest words?” To most people, it might seem that the hare’s reaction—that the pineapple was merely a talking fruit and therefore not a credible competitor—was the most relevant and sensible. But to the test designers, the correct answer was the owl, on account of his brilliant insight that pineapples didn’t have sleeves. Pearson strenuously defended this answer, in terms that suggested that its own officials lacked basic literacy skills. In a letter to the New York State education deputy commissioner, obtained by Time magazine, Pearson’s Chief Measurement Officer, Jon S. Twing, insisted that the owl was indeed the wisest animal in the story, because his observation turns out to be the “moral of the story,” and that the answer could not be the hare, who is “presented as incredulous that a pineapple would challenge him to a race, but overconfidently agrees to race a pineapple.”

Evidently no one at Pearson Testing thought children might see the hare as thinking that a race against a piece of fruit wasn't overconfidence, but simple fact.

Yet even in the face of such an absurd test question, weight is given to these results. It boggles the mind almost as much as the notion of a hare racing a pineapple might.

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This is huge, major, awesome news. Finally, finally, finally someone is investigating money-laundering nonprofit organizations like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, who recently admitted to funneling secret multi-million dollar contributions from AHIP to astroturf organizations in order to stoke hate for the Affordable Care Act.

Eric Schneiderman noticed. Via The New York Times:

Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman of New York has begun investigating contributions to tax-exempt groups that are heavily involved in political campaigns, focusing on a case involving the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has been one of the largest outside groups seeking to influence recent elections but is not required to disclose its donors.

Mr. Schneiderman issued a wide-ranging subpoena on Tuesday to executives at a foundation affiliated with the chamber, seeking e-mails, bank records and other documents to determine whether the foundation illegally funneled $18 million to the chamber for political and lobbying activities, according to people with knowledge of the investigation.

The investigation is also looking at connections between the chamber’s foundation, the National Chamber Foundation, and another philanthropy, the Starr Foundation, which made large grants to the chamber foundation in 2003 and 2004. During the same period, the National Chamber Foundation lent the chamber $18 million, most of it for what was described as a capital campaign.

When Mr. Schneiderman has received the documents he seeks with regard to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, perhaps similar subpoenas could be issued to Freedomworks, Americans for Prosperity, and the 60+ Association?

Here's one question I have, though. Why does it have to be the New York Attorney General opening these investigations? Why isn't this a matter for the IRS to address?

Around 10 p.m. on Tuesday night, Mitt Romney's (independent) Super PAC released its six month campaign finance data, just a few hours after his big win in the Florida primary. This is what the campaign to Restore Our Future looks like (all info compiled from FEC Data between Jul. 1, 2011 and Dec. 31, 2011):

Total raised from individuals and organizations: $17,947,952

Total spent: $6,535,213.64

Greatest amount raised from one donor: This is actually a tie between four donors, each gave $1 million:

1. Rooney Holdings, Inc - a large Manhattan private investment firm and construction company. Rooney Holdings built Cowboys Stadium, the U.S. Capitol Visitors Center and the George H.W. Presidential Library. The CEO and President L. Francis Rooney was the U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See from 2005 - 2008.

2. Robert Mercer of East Setauket, N.Y. - Mercer is co-CEO for Renaissance Technologies Corp., one of the world's largest private hedge funds. He owns this house and pays $303,678 per year in property taxes on it.

3. Julian Robertson of Locust Valley, N.Y. - Robertson is a former hedge fund manager who founded Tiger Management Corp. In 2011, his fortune was estimated at $2.4 billion, according to Forbes.

4. Paul Singer of New York, N.Y. - Singer is the founder and CEO of the hedge fund Elliott Management Corporation. His firm manages $17 billion in assets, he personally has a net worth of $900 million, which is almost four times as much as Mitt Romney

Top five total contributions by state:
1. New York - $4.63 million
2. Florida - $3.33 million
3. California - $1.90 million
4. Massachusetts - $1.67 million
5. Texas - $1.58 million

Total raised from corporations, with no individual name given (7/1/11 - 12/31/11) - $6,540,000

The average contribution was about $98,000. Romney and Restore Our Future spent a combined $6.28 million on Florida ads in the final week leading up to the primary, according to the Associated Press. $4 million came from Restore Our Future. In case you aren't sure what a Super PAC is and how the Supreme Court's Citizen's United decision allowed them to exist - read this.

And here's a chart of the data that shows what this all means to the average American:

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I was in New York for a week and made a handful of trips to Zucotti Park to talk to people down there and take some photos. Karoli was nice enough to make them all into a snazzy video.

It was pretty intense down there. First off, Mayor Bloomberg's jokes aside - it is a tourist attraction. They come by the double bus load to look at the 9/11 memorial and then make their way to the protest (to look at what's happened since 9/11). The park is packed to capacity with Occupiers and there's a steady stream of gawkers with cameras passing through.

Who knew it would last this long? No one. The viral nature of this movement is shocking to everyone down there. But they're still there and everyday more tourists come to look and ask questions.

On September 11th, 2001, on what was a perfect morning -- right up until the very moment a Boeing 767-223-ER slammed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center -- I stood on the corner of Delancey and Ridge Streets in downtown Manhattan.

I was working on an election campaign – it was primary day in New York – and little did I realize that politics, culture and our entire trajectory as a nation was about to change forever. I had been alerted to the first crash by a friend calling my cell phone, but it was as I was staring at the gaping hole in this New York City landmark, in horror, shock set in as I saw a second plane approaching.

I can see it all in slow motion these days – the airplane seemed to glide in almost effortlessly, and as I and others around stood unable to move, a loud explosion echoed through the canyons of lower Manhattan as a fireball erupted that almost seemed to reach where I was standing. It was, for lack of a better term, surreal.

For me, the journey forward from that day would be a difficult one. I was born and raised in Manhattan and was young enough that I couldn’t remember the city without those two awe-inspiring landmarks. It is what I would use to figure out where I was going whenever I came up from the subway system.

I had to process the knowledge that I had been in the North Tower only 16 hours before the attack. Because I had been delivering campaign literature to a volunteer who lived in the neighborhood and thought to myself, “I haven’t been in the Twin Towers for a while.”

What sticks with me most, though, is that after seeing the second plane hit, a lanky, salt-and-pepper-bearded man standing next to me who was holding his bike at his side, saying, “this is terrible; we’re going to be at war tomorrow.”

He wasn’t far off the mark. He only underestimated the wars.

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