Eliot Spitzer single-handedly ruined New York’s reputation with the Insurance Industry. How many reputable firms backed out of New York State thanks to Eliot’s rampage against ‘White Collar Crime’ (as opposed to the ‘victim-less crime of Prostitution)?

Since HERSELF! is out of the New York political picture, one supposes the Cuomo’s won’t take Eliot’s return with good graces. That is, of course, unless Cuomo the Younger makes his move against Patterson, leaving the AG seat open.

A shambling State economy, Wall Street already in Federal gun sights and ever higher taxes means Eliot trail to the AG Throne is full of mines.

SeniorD on April 15, 2009 at 10:31 AM

Spitzer is an especially rancid example of the way big-city politics are distorting the national political culture. Cities have become black holes that suck resources from the rest of the country, and spit out socialist politicians with lifetime tenures, warrantied by political machines. Almost every major city in the country, even including some capitals of “red” states, is a disaster that has been run by Democrats since the Sixties or Seventies. The relatively small number of voters truly in play in these cities is swamped by machine politicians with automated constituencies. In states such as Illinois, the votes and preferences of rural and suburban voters are effectively irrelevant to a national election, as they are frozen by the shadow of Chicago.

Even among voters who aren’t harvested and processed by industrial vote farms, the urban environment produces an unfortunate, but understandable, tendency to consider only huge, centralized solutions to every problem. The city is a jumble of highly motivated constituencies that demand the government address their specific concerns, and the nature of the city often precludes individualistic or free-market solutions to these issues. The politicians who thrive in such an atmosphere can’t win votes by telling civic groups that their demands are outside the purview of a properly limited, constitutional government, or by suggesting that free enterprise and the spirit of innovation can help them find their own answers. The big city politician, of either party, knows that he must juggle the demands of his constituent groups, and pay off the ones most likely to vote him back into office. The constituent groups, in turn, know that tight central organization helps them package their votes for sale, and the leaders of these groups are experts in securing the highest price for their support. To thrive in a big city, your best assets are an obedient group of followers who will pick up their protest signs, or calm down, upon command… and if you’ve got that, you’ll never have a shortage of customers at City Hall for what you’re selling.

The immense populations of the big cities give them a lot of power to spread their political pathology to the nation at large. The Founding Fathers were mostly agrarian land owners, writing a Constitution for a vast country that so much room to expand that it took the better part of a century to fully explore its interior. In a pre-industrial environment, they didn’t predict the economies of scale that would provide the incentive for the increasing urbanization of the Western world during the 20th century. They thought so little of the allure of centralized power that they dropped the capitol of their new country into the middle of a swamp. Their ideal politician was a Cincinnatus, a citizen who would leave his lands with some reluctance, serve his community for a term or two, and return home when his duty was done. They did not envision or desire royalty elected from safe seats in gerrymandered districts, sitting on thrones built by voters who barely bother to read the ballots before filling them out… and in some cases, don’t even fill out their own ballots.

Doctor Zero on April 15, 2009 at 12:51 PM