Yes, I’m stealing “Mario’s Kid” from the fake Shelly Silver account on Twitter. It cracks me up.
Anyway, Governor Cuomo is announcing his budget for New York tomorrow and apparently he’s using it to push for education reform, specifically the arcane concept of tying teachers pay to job performance. How? By tying “…4 percent state aid increases promised to the districts in last year’s budget — some $800 million — to adoption of the teacher-evaluation system developed by the state Education Department, which has been blocked from city schools by a teachers-union lawsuit.”
Long story short, if the districts don’t comply, they don’t get the money.
I know the teachers union hate anything that requires their members to have to do their jobs well in order to keep them, and the Democrat controlled Assembly hates it because the unions give them lots of money so they hate what they’re told to hate. But whenever I hear “performance pay” come up, I think back to high school Chemistry.
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To my left, you see a picture of Governor Andrew Cuomo sandwiched by two freshman Republican legislators: Sen. Lee Zeldin and Asm. Dean Murray (or, “The Legion of Doom” as I’ve taken to calling them). The picture is from today’s bill signing of the Governor’s Tax Reform plan which, among other things, reduced the MTA Tax by 80% and temporarily increasing taxes on people making more than two million dollars a year.
The benefit of finally having a set nominee for Governor in New York is that Rick Lazio can now focus all of his energy comparing and contrasting himself to the Democrat nominee Andrew Cuomo. Well, the compare and contrast I’m sure is coming. Right now, it’s feels good just to be on the attack.
Admittedly, I’ve only paid half attention to Andrew Cuomo finally announcing that he’s running for Governor this weekend. I’m sure a lot of this will get flushed out in a robust debate, but there’s one thing that confuses me…is he running as a Republican?
Those of you who listen to 
Well, New York politics is at least keeping things interesting this week. On the day rumors surfaced that Rudy Giuliani was considering a senate run, two things happened that might help his decision. One was the major terror bust in NYC, reminding us why another strong voice for national security is need on our side. The other was current Senator Kristen Gillibrand being one of seven to vote against cutting off federal funding for ACORN.
