DECLINE OF A STATE - AT 9:55 A.M. ET:  At Urgent Agenda we emphasize national and international affairs, but occasionally the follies within a state catch our attention.  One of the great political tragedies occurring right now is the decline of New York State and the virtual collapse of its state government.  It's important because, historically, New York has had a significant influence on the rest of the country.  Virtually the entire American social "safety net" that Ronald Reagan spoke about, and respected, originated in New York.   The once-great New York City public school system served, for decades, as an urban model.

Not so anymore.  Today New York is a train wreck, its government paralyzed, its coffers empty, and gripped by ethnic divisions that we'd hoped would be eased by the election of Obama.  False hope.

No one knows New York politics better than the New York Post's respected Fred Dicker. Today he writes a virtual obituary for the state he's covered for decades.  It's worth reading as a warning to other states.  Please note this section:

During the long years of Republican control, the all-white GOP "conference" would regularly bemoan its lack of diversity, and make extra efforts to recruit minority Senate candidates and hire minority staff.

During the first five months of this year, with the Senate under the control of its first African-American majority leader, Malcolm Smith, top Democrats bemoaned the lack of minority Senate staffers.

But instead of trying to recruit new hires, they fired nearly 200 almost exclusively white workers and replaced them with a large number of minority employees, many of whom were seen by their fellow workers to be unskilled at their new jobs.

The move produced severe racial tensions, made worse by the fact that, as a high-level Democratic staffer confided, "We've been told to only hire minorities.''

COMMENT:  That is racial politics at its worst, and it can happen elsewhere.  New York has been heavily financed by tax revenues from Wall Street.  They are way down, and the state seems to be going the way of California. 

This is my state, and we are heading for very hard times.

July 5, 2009