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Dear Readers,
Many of you have noticed already that I have joined my mother in running Lucianne.Com and it has been wonderful getting to know the Ldot family. I just want to take this opportunity to formally introduce myself. Most of you know my brother, Jonah, as the editor of National Review Online and then as a contributing editor for the magazine.
I have been happy sitting on the sidelines and avoiding the limelight. However, that will be coming to an end, a least to a degree.
Just recently I was certified as the Republican candidate for the New York City Council representing the Upper West Side of Manhattan (the sixth district.)
It is well known how liberal the politics in New York City can be, especially on the Upper West Side. I have no illusions about how difficult it is for a Republican running for office here. However, the demographics of the district have been changing over the past two decades and it is a much more family-oriented neighborhood these days. The social politics in the district are still liberal, but not as much as they used to be. Parents don't want to have to worry about their kids and spouses being accosted on the streets.
Fiscal politics, on the other hand, are a whole other story. Middle class families who have been crushed by the local economy and the suffocating taxes are fed up. Something has to give. NYC is headed for a fiscal disaster.
The root of the city's financial problem is not the diminishing tax base at the moment. Tax revenue ebbs and flows. No legislation can control tax revenues. What can be controlled is spending. This is the root of the problem. This city is being crushed by labor costs and overly generous policies toward contractors and entitlements. Extravagant benefits for public employees - - unfunded pensions and medical insurance, ludicrous work rules, numerous holidays, generous overtime etc. - - have gone beyond unreasonable. For example, the Fire and Police departments are very close to the tipping point where they will soon be paying more in pension costs than for payroll.
As far as salaries go: it is not the amount of the salary that makes the municipal workforce so expensive, it is in the work rules where the devilish details lie. For example, can anyone tell me why a first grade teacher needs tenure? Of course, tenure is used in academia so college professors can be free to expound on controversial theories without fear of recrimination from the administration. I just don't know where there is any controversy with "Green Eggs and Ham" and finger painting. Tenure is not a topic for contract negotiations.
For decades the city has been held hostage by the municipal unions. There are so many city workers that they can dictate municipal policy. After all, the city workforce gets to decide who their boss will be every four years. Every mayor in my lifetime has played this game whereby they buy votes from the municipal unions with the public fisc.
While the NYC Council is a legislative body it is hard to call it a deliberative body when 94% of the Council is from the same party (of 51 members only 3 are Republican.) Even if one considers a Republican run for office in Manhattan a "Quixotic Quest" one must agree, at least, that there needs to be some debate during the campaign. It is just too rare. I cannot remember more than one or two times when there was a tie-breaking vote in the council since the '89 charter revision.
My campaign will be on a very tight budget. So, I will be counting on word of mouth and 'pounding the pavement' to get my message and name out to the public.
I am a life-long New Yorker and have worked in many different jobs ranging from working as a researcher at NBC News to working as a fishmonger at the Fulton Fish Market to driving a wrecker on the highways of New York City (during which time I was a first responder at the World Trade Center in the days after 9/11). I have also been an editor at an international editorial cartoon syndicate, a reporter for Page Six at the New York Post and a licensed NYC tour guide. I know this city well and I know that it is headed for financial ruin if there are not some reforms made to the way it does business, YESTERDAY!!!
In the near future I will be establishing a website for my campaign and will announce it on these pages. Those who would like to support my candidacy can contact and make donations payable to:
The Committee to Elect Joshua Goldberg
255 West 84 Street, #6A
New York, NY 10024
OR
By the way, I will NOT be accepting matching funds from the NYC Campaign Finance Board as a matter of principle. To me, it is obscene that the city gives six dollars for every one raised by a candidate for city office.
