Chaos in Washington: National politics continues to get wackier and wackier with what POLITICO Magazine termed “the sudden defenestration of Kevin McCarthy.” The California Republican became the first House speaker in U.S. history to be ousted by a motion to vacate, but the magazine pointed out that he is the latest in a long line of establishment Republican leaders to be felled by the right wing of his party.
“Something seems broken in American politics – but what is it? Does the dysfunction stem from a sickness in the Republican Party, or is it decay in the institution of Congress? Or is it something else entirely – and is there a way to fix things, so we can return to some semblance of a healthy democracy?”
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POLITICO asked “some of the smartest thinkers and observers of politics and Capitol Hill” for their thoughts (they don’t always agree), including Geoffrey Kabaservice, the director of political studies at the Niskanen Center in Washington, D.C.
Kabaservice looked back to Barry Goldwater and said the modern Republican Party “has attained power without reaching political maturity.”
“A grown-up Republican Party – even a deeply conservative one – would accept the rule of law, the norms of liberal democracy, and the legitimacy of the opposing party,” Kabaservice said. “It would seek to represent all Americans and would prioritize winning converts over destroying heretics.”
Instead, he noted, the GOP has become “a party that prefers temper tantrums to governing, fantasies about stolen elections to the hard work of appealing to swing voters. It would rather destroy the federal bureaucracy than use it to implement conservative policies.”
Other experts quoted in the article blamed the inherent flaws of the two-party system, noting that such ousters of leaders are more common in parliamentary systems like those in Britain, Canada and Australia.
That may be true, but this is not a “both sides” issue. Democrats, for whatever reason, are able to keep the extreme wing of their party (the Bernies, the AOCs) at bay, incorporating some of their policies into the party planks. But a small but vocal and extreme wing of the GOP has proven again and again that the tail wags the dog.
Until that changes, nothing in our nation’s capital is going to change.
City Hall complacency: Fallout continues from Investigative Post’s Sept. 14 story about a clerk who was paid more than half a million dollars not to work. The nonprofit reported that Jill Repman was put on paid administrative leave in 2016 after allegations that she tempered with payroll records to pad her own paychecks. For six years, she held a second job managing payroll for a local health care company and was also paid by the city.
Fillmore Council Member Mitch Nowakowski pounced on the matter, saying in the article, “This is gravely concerning that we have somebody on the city payroll who’s been paid quite well – over $70,000 [annually] – for seven and a half years. Not working or doing duties on the behalf of the City of Buffalo. It’s alarming.”
But City Comptroller Barbara Miller-Williams didn’t seem too concerned. She told News reporter Harold McNeil that she would conduct a review – but not an investigation – into the matter. Brown soon announced “a number of safeguards” to make sure that such an egregious error doesn’t happen again.
Then came the news this weekend, reported by News City Hall reporter Deidre Williams, that Miller-Williams had hired two politically connected people – including one with close ties to Brown – as high-paid aides.
Demone Smith, the former Masten Council member, will be paid $95,000 annually for his duties as “special assistant.” MacCaelin Sedita, the son of former Erie County DA and current Supreme Court Justice Frank A. Sedita III, was also hired at the same salary as the comptroller’s executive assistant.
Brown and Miller-Williams have been longtime political allies through the Grassroots organization. The positions were not posted publicly, but Miller-Williams laughably denied that political connections had anything to do with the hires, noting that “exempt positions are traditionally and historically not posted.”
Ah yes, tradition and history. If there is a political philosophy that has governed this region for decades and that unifies both political parties, it could best be described as, “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine.” Patronage is the rule.
That appears to be what’s happening at City Hall these days. It’s a far cry from the tenure of Mark Schroeder, the former comptroller who was not afraid to question the administration and who took his oversight role seriously.
Once again, there has been a scandal or mini-scandal at Buffalo City Hall. And once again, Byron Brown has emerged basically unscathed.
