On a national level, they haven't been able to pass any sort of a health care bill despite occupying the White House and holding overwhelming majorities in both houses of Congress.
In New York state, the person who was actually elected to the office occupies just two of the six statewide offices they control.
And in Niagara County, they haven't made any electoral gains since 2007.
They're the Democratic Party, of course, the "party of power" across the entire nation. And as a lifelong Democrat rather than one of the many Republicans who switched sides during the long and unfortunate presidency of George W. Bush, I find myself asking what the heck happened. The first time I voted Democratic, the first time I voted at all, I cast my ballot for Jimmy Carter in 1976. What a disaster that was. Carter was such a lousy president, people were scared to elect another Democratic presidential hopeful for 16 years!
Barack Obama looks to be cut from the same cloth as Carter, heaved into office as part of a populist surge that seems to have dissipated with astonishing speed. He's only been in office a little over a year, and already more people say he's doing a lousy job than say he's doing a good job.
At least we didn't elect everybody's mother's favorite candidate, John Edwards. He's about to get indicted for handing over a big chunk of campaign funding to the woman who bore him an illegitimate child. Election laws are very specific about what sort of things you can spend your contributions on, and apparently baby mamas don't qualify.
Moving from Washington to New York, we might be on the plane with Congressman Charles Rangel, who was recently forced to give up his chairmanship of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee as a bribery scandal unfolds around his office.
Rangel's from New York City, as is Hiram Monserrate, who was recently expelled from the state Senate after slashing his girlfriend across the face with a broken glass. The city is also home to Eliot Spitzer, who resigned as governor after it became known he was having sex with prostitutes, and Gov. David Paterson, who might have resigned by the time you read this because of several competing investigations into witness tampering, abuse of power and bribery.
Rep. Eric Massa isn't from the city, but he is under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for sexually harassing one of the guys in his office.
Here in Niagara County, sad sack Democratic Chairman Dan Rivera presides over a shell of a party that, until recently, controlled just about everything here. During the last election, Rivera-backed characters like former North Tonawanda mayor Larry Soos and former Lewiston supervisor Fred Newlin got their clocks cleaned in lurid fashion, and the party was helpless to do anything to address the Republican super-majority in the county Legislature.
And Rivera's unfathomable backing of Jon Powers during the 2008 congressional elections was enough to give GOP upstart Chris Lee the seat.
There are but two Rivera-aligned Democrats currently serving in office here, Niagara Falls Mayor Paul Dyster and state Rep. Francine Del Monte, who used to live in Niagara Falls but moved to Lewiston after deciding to make her old home town into a dumping ground for sexual deviates.
Clearly, this isn't your mother's Democratic Party.
Things just get worse and worse at City Hall. After last week's item on Jeannine Brown-Miller, sister of local accountant and soon-to-announce county treasurer candidate Pat Brown and sister-in-law of Niagara Falls Controller Maria Brown, city employees made available several documents showing that Brown-Miller's expertise lies in time study rather than race relations or equal opportunity hiring.
Brown-Miller is the recipient of an open ended, no-bid contract that is being passed off by the administration as a state-mandated series of seminars on race relations. The actual purpose of the exercise, according to numerous city workers, is to gather data on the efficiency of public employees that will be used to shrink the number of workers in various City Hall departments.
Maria and Pat Brown gave a total of $750 to the Dyster campaign in 2007, money well spent if the result was a lucrative contract for a close family member. Old-timers can remember when it cost twice that to get somebody a job.
The Niagara Gazette, in its role as City Hall's public relations arm, has not seen fit to mention the brewing mess. The Buffalo News noted that Maria Brown, perhaps plowing the road for what is to come, told City Council members at the Feb. 8 meeting that new funding requests should only be approved with a corresponding tax increase or cuts in staff to offset cost.
Tellingly, perhaps, she made no similar speeches when Dyster went ahead with a $20,000 expense to have his own street named to the National Register of Historic Places, a $350,000 line item to fund a commission investigating whether Harriet Tubman caught a fleeting glimpse of the great cataracts while onboard a moving train some 40 years before Niagara Falls was incorporated as a municipality, or giving $180,000 to the Hard Rock Cafe to stage a half-dozen concerts by no-name bands this summer.
Nor did she mention it when the city hired her husband's sister.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | March 9, 2010 |