Eye from Albany


by Paul Marshall Bray


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On Bill Moyer’s public TV program constitutional lawyer, Glenn Greenwald, said the United States has the “most merciless criminal justice system in the world”. He pointed to the large number of our citizens incarcerated in support of his comment.

Especially in light of this “mercilessness”, don’t we have a responsibility for a strong and effective system of public defense so that the weak and unfortunate amongst us do not get unjustly caught in the tentacles of the criminal justice system?

Regrettably, it is a responsibility we have been woefully poor in meeting. As the NY Times pointed out in a front page article, “Citing Workload, Public Lawyers Reject New Cases” on November 9, 2008, “Public defenders are notoriously overworked, and their turnover is high and their pay low”. They are pinched to “the breaking point” as the Times graphically points out.

With this as the background, we have a new class of impaired and in need citizens coming up against the criminal justice system. These are the veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan who return from the harms way of war to the harms way of adjusting to civilian life carrying the baggage of war.

The good news to the extent any good news exists from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is that the “ratio of survivors to fatalities in the current war operations is greater than in any other war in modern history”. The very bad news is many returning veterans suffer untreated psychological and brain trauma on the battlefield. It has been reported that “of the 1.6 million military personnel deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, 38 percent of Army and fully half of National Guard service members have been diagnosed with mental illness”.

Medical care and the health and social safety net for veterans diagnosed with mental illness are notoriously bad from a health system for veterans characterized as “overcrowded, mismanaged, and under funded.

While veterans are supposed to have a health safety net as poor as it may be, I wonder how many of the Blackwater contracted private forces are coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan with traumatic brain injury or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Is their mental and other war related health problems covered by Blackwater or will it be added to the social burden and cost of the war for all of us?

It isn’t surprising that veterans become incarcerated. Here are the basic facts: “Justice Department statistics suggest roughly 12 percent of the 7 million people within corrections systems-in prison, jail or on parole-have served in the military. Four in five incarcerated veterans reported drug dependency, and nearly a quarter held in jails were homeless in the year before arrest. A quarter of these veterans were also identified as mentally ill”.

When the public defender service providers are already overburdened, what can they do when they face special needs from the men and women who risk their lives to protect our freedom and have high incidence of substance abuse disorders and represent a disproportionate number of our prison population?

Veteran and defense advocates are trying to get public financial support necessary to train and educate the public defense community on matters like identifying defendants with traumatic brain injury and PTSD and being able to relate it to explaining criminal behavior.

The problems relating to the trauma suffered by returning veterans are very real. Let us not lose sight of the importance of providing these veterans with social equity so they can reintegrate themselves into the life of their home communities.

The state’s financial troubles are no excuse for failing to fully meet our responsibilities to veterans getting trapped by our criminal justice system.

      

On Bill Moyer’s public TV program constitutional lawyer, Glenn Greenwald, said the United States has the “most merciless criminal justice system in the world”. He pointed to the large number of our citizens incarcerated in support of his comment.

Especially in light of this “mercilessness”, don’t we have a responsibility for a strong and effective system of public defense so that the weak and unfortunate amongst us do not get unjustly caught in the tentacles of the criminal justice system?

Regrettably, it is a responsibility we have been woefully poor in meeting. As the NY Times pointed out in a front page article, “Citing Workload, Public Lawyers Reject New Cases” on November 9, 2008, “Public defenders are notoriously overworked, and their turnover is high and their pay low”. They are pinched to “the breaking point” as the Times graphically points out.

With this as the background, we have a new class of impaired and in need citizens coming up against the criminal justice system. These are the veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan who return from the harms way of war to the harms way of adjusting to civilian life carrying the baggage of war.

The good news to the extent any good news exists from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is that the “ratio of survivors to fatalities in the current war operations is greater than in any other war in modern history”. The very bad news is many returning veterans suffer untreated psychological and brain trauma on the battlefield. It has been reported that “of the 1.6 million military personnel deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, 38 percent of Army and fully half of National Guard service members have been diagnosed with mental illness”.

Medical care and the health and social safety net for veterans diagnosed with mental illness are notoriously bad from a health system for veterans characterized as “overcrowded, mismanaged, and under funded.

While veterans are supposed to have a health safety net as poor as it may be, I wonder how many of the Blackwater contracted private forces are coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan with traumatic brain injury or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Is their mental and other war related health problems covered by Blackwater or will it be added to the social burden and cost of the war for all of us?

It isn’t surprising that veterans become incarcerated. Here are the basic facts: “Justice Department statistics suggest roughly 12 percent of the 7 million people within corrections systems-in prison, jail or on parole-have served in the military. Four in five incarcerated veterans reported drug dependency, and nearly a quarter held in jails were homeless in the year before arrest. A quarter of these veterans were also identified as mentally ill”.

When the public defender service providers are already overburdened, what can they do when they face special needs from the men and women who risk their lives to protect our freedom and have high incidence of substance abuse disorders and represent a disproportionate number of our prison population?

Veteran and defense advocates are trying to get public financial support necessary to train and educate the public defense community on matters like identifying defendants with traumatic brain injury and PTSD and being able to relate it to explaining criminal behavior.

The problems relating to the trauma suffered by returning veterans are very real. Let us not lose sight of the importance of providing these veterans with social equity so they can reintegrate themselves into the life of their home communities.

The state’s financial troubles are no excuse for failing to fully meet our responsibilities to veterans getting trapped by our criminal justice system.

      

Stimulus package: Good news and not so good news; and where are the plans

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger told reporters that “the Obama administration wants to rebuild America”.

Where is the plan for rebuilding America? At a program on the North Country of New York, a Chamber of Commerce rep from the North Country said a number of times, “we need a plan”. The other regions of New York State, the state itself and the nation also need a plan.

The good news is that the Obama administration is going to quickly advance a massive stimulus package to support much needed infrastructure projects. Fueling a failing economy and public infrastructure are good especially when infrastructure has been ignored for many decades.

The not so good news is the Obama administration intends to quickly advance without adequate land use, resource management and development plans this stimulus package targeted to real needs like refurbishing the existing power grid, existing sewage and water treatment facilities, repair roads and bridges and repair schools.

In the words of NYTimes columnist David Brook, the effect will not be “transformational” or bring “Americans together in new ways” after more than a half century of sprawl and decline of most of our cities. As Brooks goes on further to say, “the Obama infrastructure plan may freeze that change (an urban and transportation revolution), not fuel it”.

Furthermore, unlike the Eisenhower era when there was pent up demand for production after World War II, we are likely to suffer a prolonged hang over from the binge of the last decades. The stimulus is unlikely to be strong enough to get the private sector including business and the consumer to respond no matter how large it is.

Given our financial condition, we can’t avoid a spending binge investing in the past if the spending drought continues and new production doesn’t directly follow.

How did we get into this fix? We do have creative and sometimes even visionary people with ideas about smart growth, sustainability, new urbanism, renewable energy and distributed power, open space protection, heritage development and 21st century mobility. These ideas exist both on paper and in some cases real projects, but to be realistic they are mostly seedling ideas.

Missing has been an overall system of national, state and regional planning to blueprint and marshall resources and the political courage of conviction necessary to really restore our cities, our rail and transit systems, our educational system, our food system, our health system, our natural resources stewardship, and so forth. We pick and poke at one thing or another, but we don’t get our act together to really be transformational. We have been just too busy making paper profits, driving SUVs, building McMansions and just plain shopping? Or, is it that there are just too many vested interests in every of our “systems” to create the great log jam we are in? We have no desire or willingness to support planning.

We need a grand vision for the 21st century that addresses all the aforementioned systems and clearly provides the road map to realize the vision. Let us hope that Obama understands this and takes steps like initiating a comprehensive planning effort with Federal financial support for urban, regional and state planning throughout the nation and an overarching national body to frame the vision and implementing strategy for Congress.

Please, we need real planning at every level of our complex governmental system and economy to guide the real makeover of our rural areas, suburbs, cities and regions to be socially, environmentally and economically sustainable. Can we do that without a planning infrastructure? I am not a planner and I think not.

Some like America 2050 (www.America2050.org)—Coalition of Leading Civic/Business/Environmental Organizations and Transportation Officials express concern that the stimulus money “will be blindly thrown at rebuilding America’s infrastructure-causing more harm than good”. It is hitting good buttons of fix, phase, green, train and count, but they don’t call for the grand vision nor needed planning infrastructure to avoid what it fears. Rather it is simply a group of transportation, policy and other usual suspects looking to get their hands on stimulus decision making. If they do and we don’t get an ongoing real planning effort to transform America, we still will be doing more on the harm side than the good side.

In the 1960s Governor Rockefeller had a first class planning agency that helped design public efforts like pure waters, the Adirondack Park Agency and a State University System. It produced a broad State Development plan. It foundered when Rockefeller’s successors had no interest in planning and only reacted to the crisis of the moment.

Time will tell if Obama understands that a broad and ongoing planning effort is needed if we can accomplish more than fixing the old and really organizing and building a 21st century future that the public and private markets can believe in. Let us hope he understands.

      

December 2008 Economic Collapse

December 5th, 2008


Eye from Albany
 
By Paul M. Bray
 
From the depths of economic collapse
 
In October when the stock market began to tank I was in Rome (Italy not NYS). I felt like I was enjoying a sunny day on the beach with a tsunami about to strike in 24 hours. It was an eerie feeling. Everything appeared to be fine even though the economic plunge in the USA was occurring world wide.
 
The streets and restaurants were crowded. The Italians appeared to be their usual social selves. There was no hand wringing or doom and gloom in the air. There were articles in the Times of London about whether we were seeing either the end of western civilization or the American hegemony as we’ve known it. But that was about it when it came to being threatened.
 
Almost two months later I was in New York City on Thanksgiving weekend. The stock market took a small bounce up.  The theater where I saw Gypsy was almost full. I waited in line for a table at a restaurant and the buzz on the street was holiday festive.
 
Yet all signs point to doom and gloom and I know doom and gloom. No, I wasn’t alive during the depression but I knew about the depression from my parents. What I did know personally was the 1970s and that is enough to fear.
 
I remember the dark, almost empty and fearful streets of New York City during the 70s. There were the homeless sleeping on sidewalk grates, empty storefronts, abandoned strip malls and the ever present graffiti and decay in features of the public realm like parks.  Jobs were hard to find and there was little promise in the future of the economy, unusual for Americans who tend to believe the sun will shine tomorrow and the tomorrow after that.
 
So here we are with all economic indicators including jobs, consumer confidence, the stock market, housing and GDP pointing down not only in the USA but almost all other nations. New York State that reaped benefits from an economy based on the financial industry while also paying the price for collapse of its upstate manufacturing economy is likely to feel a double whammy, the lose of it s growth sector and continued problems with its weak upstate economy. It doesn’t help that there is a good but still a fill-in Governor and an unsettled condition in the State Senate. Who will lead us in New York State (in a nation of shoppers rather than producers) in making tough decisions or inspiring us to rebuild, doing more with less?
 
Where do we find hope? Yes, there is hope with President-elect Obama who is clearly intelligent and is a natural leader. That is hopeful.
 
There were some things that happened in the 70s that were also hopeful and offer promise.
 
Hudson Ave. in Albany was a street of 19th century brick row houses that were mostly shells in the early 70s. By the 80s they became restored homes. With community development funds individuals and couples rolled up their sleeves and restore their future homes.
 
The failed tear it down and rebuild notion of urban renewal was replaced by historic preservation and community renewal. In a larger sense, the seeds were laid to celebrate cities for what they represented over time with the establishment of urban cultural parks now called20heritage areas. The gritty, failed city of Lowell, Massachusetts led the way when a school superintendent, a nun and a political leader, Paul Tsongas, went about turning a place “where everything was perceived as dull, into a city where everything is interesting”. That was the origin of the Lowell National Historical Park, a city that is now part of the National Park System with real National Park Rangers leading city tours. Today there are more than 20 state designated heritage areas in New York State and more than 40 national heritage areas across the country.
 
Perhaps from the depths of a deep economic recession or worst, we will roll up our sleeves and harness our imaginations and sense of community to turn what could be the worst of times into a=2 0time for transforming from a nation of shoppers desirous of McMansions and SUVs into a nation of neighborhoods, cities and landscapes where what glitters is not gold but rather human spirit.
 
Paul M. Bray is an Albany attorney, teacher and writer. His e-mail is pmbray@aol.com
 
      

Thoughts on Palin nomination

September 22nd, 2008

When I first heard Senator McCain selected Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his choice for Vice President, I immediately thought of Clarence Thomas. Palin in my book is a reactionary social conservative as is Thomas albeit probably far less intelligent than Thomas. They also shared coming in a package liberals or progressives would find difficult to reject. Thomas was put forward to have an African American on the Supreme Court even though it would be hard to image an African American less willing to advance African American interests on the Court.

Just when the calls for a woman on a national ticket for the highest offices in the land reached a high level, McCain offers up a woman in Palin who is not likely to act in the interests of women, or at least middle of the road to liberal women. Both are the result of cynical moves by the Republicans. Thomas worked and so may Palin who, if elected Vice President, would appear given McCain's age likely to become President. Like the 2nd Bush she could easily become a tool of neo conservatives.

I have not seen anything about the Thomas connection spoken or written in the media. Am I wrong about what seems an obvious cynical gesture?

Now I am seeing something else about Palin that while still insidious may be more benign than the Thomas parallel. Could Palin be a clone of George Pataki, I thought, after reading a front-page story on her in the NY Times?

The story in the NY Times described the political career of Sarah Palin including her year and a half as Governor. At first I was aghast as I read about her pattern of hiring friends and family for high administration positions and her vindictiveness towards anyone who crossed her. How horrible this would be if she became the leader of the free world (assuming that after Bush’s world war on terrorism there is much free world left).

It all came back to me, I thought of the early years of the George Pataki administration. I remembered the firings including firing former Rockefeller Republicans who somehow survived 20 years of Democratic administrations, the hiring of family and friends and, yes when it comes to vindictiveness, Zenia Mucha, a queen of vindictiveness. After awhile and when the time for re-election came up, the worst of Pataki's ways mellowed and he settled into the banal presence he became during his last 8 years in office.

Perhaps that is all we will have to suffer with a President Palin who may be nothing more or less than an ambitious politician over her head. Palin's vindictiveness may be no greater than Pataki's was and it may fade as the larger purpose of staying in office for a second term is front and center. After all Palin will still have to deal with a Congress that might have a veto proof majority especially after the first mid-term elections when enough of the public wakes up to what has befallen the republic with her as President. And the media, not a great force for reasoned reporting and discourse, still has pit bull tendencies when it smells blood. It could easily turn a Palin presidency into an ongoing soap opera.

Whatever happens, it is sad that John McCain would stoop so low with his pick of Palin when so much is a stake.

No one likes a person who says I told you so, but I did warn you in my November 2004 Eye from Albany column titled “Low prices are taking their toll”. I began the column by saying, “Low prices are killing us. You won’t hear this from your leaders in Albany or Washington, DC, but the price of gasoline, Wal-Mart prices (based on the China price) and food prices are undermining our security, health and environment.

Let me add that our economy is also undermined. Now we are paying the real price and not just in $4 plus a gallon for gasoline. One might call what we are suffering a “perfect storm” affecting almost every basic sector of our lives. The I.M.F. calls it “the biggest financial crisis in the United State since the Great Depression”. Along with our own shrinking pocket books and the loss of jobs, the retail sector is reeling. Anne Taylor, Starbucks, CompUSA, Steve and Barry’s, Sharper Image, Talbots and Linens’n Things are closing stores, declaring bankruptcy or going out of business.

The binge on sub-prime mortgages started the collapse of our bargain basement house of cards. Mortgages became a little cost up front way to get a home. There was no down payment mortgages and initially low interest for people without the income to support payment when interest flexed upwards and the economy flexed downward.

When the greedy were able to package these fantasy mortgages as security to raise capital in the world market, it was only a matter of time for capital to dry up and for financial powerhouses whether they played along or not from Bear Stearn to Fannie and Freddie to fail or get very shaky and need for government bail outs.

It isn’t unusual for market economic systems to suffer periodic and occasional instability. Not unusual at all if you remember the S & Ls and the collapse of the tech bubble from resent time. But this instability may be different than its predecessors as it reveals the unsustainability of an economy based on low prices for food, energy and consumer goods coupled with huge profits making one new billionaire after another.

So far the powers that be in Washington, New York City and Albany show they only understand the traditional fixes for economic declines like providing financial stimulus for consumers, talking tax cuts and assuming the financial liability for trillion dollar financing institutions like Frannie and Freddy. I am not an economist but rather a long time observer who believes the low price and huge profit binge we have been on is a last gasp for an economic system that is no longer viable in a global economy with growing power houses like China and India and an energy economy that is destroying us environmentally through climate change and security wise through dependence on foreign oil.

Everyone and especially the politicians know the immediate pain of ending our dependency on foreign oil, becoming a saving rather than a consuming society and accepting less consumer goods. But do they know that these changes will actually give us more. Take Wal-Mart for example. We spend 21 cents of every dollar spent for food at Wal-Mart. Some predict that may increase to 50 cents as the company continues to drive down costs to unsustainable low levels, our health bills will rise as more food of lesser quality and nutritional value is eaten. The more from higher prices will be better health and lesser public costs for the health system. Are we to dumb to accept that message?

There are other significant gains from the pain that will come with rising prices. If we are willing or have to pay the real rather than the China price, we will have more local jobs, more durable products and food with more nutritional value. Getting to a sustainable economy is not going to be easy. When the owner of my fitness club tells me, “no pain, no gain”, I am likely to still retreat from the pain. No one likes pain. This puts the burden on our political and other leaders to show the way both in their own practices (not, for example, driving an SUV or living in the countryside) and by educating, educating, educating on global warming, the value of local economies and living in walkable communities with supporting density.

To conclude on an optimistic note, look around and see the increased attention on growing our local and regional food production and distribution systems. National chains like Macy’s have also started their own process of “striving for local focus”. Macy’s tried to cut costs through consolidation and is now finding that the “best department stores were the ones that were merchandized to the local market”. Perhaps we will get our economy off the unsustainable fast track, and come back to a healthy, sustainable and local market based economy. Do we have a choice? This is the real challenging facing state government and us.

Paul M. Bray is an Albany attorney and lecturer in the Department of Geography and Planning at the University of Albany.

Let's face it; we rarely know what our political leaders really are about when they are first elected to high executive office like governor or president.

Sandra Day O'Connor whose vote in the infamous Supreme Court decision that elevated George Bush to the presidency thought he was going to be a benign country club Republican kind of leader. She saw in Bush what she wanted to see. If only she had been right. Little did she or we know he would become a Rumsfeld-Cheney radical.

Eliot Spitzer's rise to the governorship took this not knowing to higher level. By this I don't mean his comet like departure as a "john", or the fact that no one could have reasonably expected that he would be a serial john.

What fascinated me was how many people pinned all their ideals on Eliot Spitzer and saw him as the embodiment these ideals.

At a dinner between Spitzer's election and his taking office I had a conversation with a progressive woman who was bubbling over with enthusiasm for what Spitzer represented. There was also a wise political observer in the conversation. The woman told me that once Spitzer got rid of Senator Bruno and the Democrats took over the State Senate, unbounded progressivism would reign in Albany and the State.

I told her I voted for Spitzer and had high hopes but they were tempered by realizing who Spitzer really was. I asked her, did she know that Spitzer supported the death penalty. "No!," she responded, "He couldn't support the death penalty". The wise political observer said, "Yes he does support the death penalty." I then said, did you know that Spitzer supports civil commitment? "No!, she responded again, "he couldn't support civil confinement." The wise political observer said Paul was right again. And this repeated itself when I mentioned Spitzer being closer to the State Senate than the Assembly on criminal issues, Spitzer being fiscally conservative on taxes and spending, and on other issues where Spitzer was not the progressive this woman imagined.

Demonizing Albany, a very easy thing to do, and attacking Wall Street were all Spitzer needed to do to become the progressive's white knight. The woman I spoke with was not alone. Just read "Confession: I thought electing Eliot Spitzer governor of New York was a really good idea. Now it's clear to me why some people refuse to register to vote. You never know" by NY Times columnist Gail Collins. She wrote in her column: "Sure, you think you're up on the issues. And you watch for character flaws -- we've been watching Hillary Clinton's for so long we could give them pet names. But we don't really know. What if she has a secret life as a French undercover agent or a space alien? The Spitzer scandal has completely undermined my confidence as a voter. You pull the lever for your feisty clean-up-the-government candidate with years and years of experience putting the bad guys in jail, and it turns out he's into high-risk, high-priced hookups."

One of the lessons from the Spitzer affair is to not let your prejudices, in this case being anti-Albany, overwhelm your judgment. Sure, politics in Albany is messy, sometimes dirty and often ineffective. But isn't what we see in Albany what we should expect in any Capital where governing decisions are made for a population and territory that has great diversity and varying levels of needs and wants. Albany carves up a big pie of over $100 billion in the State Budget and affects a very wide range of public and private actions worth many, many times that amount. Considering the graft and corruption in democratic nations and states around the world, it is amazing (albeit, not justifiable) that state government in Albany is as clean and effective as it is.

Governance in Albany and elsewhere is a power game and for the legislative parties you either win or you are out of the game at least until the next election. No wonder the political battles are intense and campaign money from lobbyists is so precious. There was a time when a governor was leading on cleaning up water bodies like the Hudson River and building a State University System. At that time legislative leaders would fight it out when their houses were in session and then go back to one of their offices, kick up their heals, have a beer and laugh about what just happened. There was a clear agenda for the public good and civility amongst the political contestants. Those days ended in the 70s.

From day one it was clear that Eliot Spitzer was not a leader. What was wrong wasn't just that he was tough -- you know the "steamroller" thing, but that he didn't even coalesce his natural friends (they were just as subject to his knee jerk attacks as his enemies). He thought of himself as a law unto himself ("smartest man in the room") and his cause was always right. Good governance doesn't work that way. We should be grateful not that he fell. That seems like it was fore ordained. Rather let us be happy it happened so quickly leaving us with a new Governor who has a sense of humor, civility and perspective.

Sure, reform needs to be on the political agenda in Albany. It just needs to be built on the base of real leadership. We need to be much more careful not to just see what we want to see. This especially applies as we approach the national election in November.