Bruno was basically guilty of doing what everyone else up there does, only a little more so.

Here's what they actually nailed him on, though:

Bruno was convicted of count four of the indictment of taking 11 payments from companies for consulting work he never performed.

He was also convicted on of failing to disclose his participation in a partnership involving thoroughbred race horses.

Bruno was also charged with "depriving the public of 'honest services,'" which, once again, is vague enough to indict a State Senate quorum.

Bruno faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in jail and $250,000.

Savino was roundly cheered for her speech on the House floor yesterday urging her colleagues to support gay marriage. It concluded, "We have nothing to fear from love and commitment."

Her colleagues did not agree! But Savino's speech is well worth watching, particularly for her skewering of the whole idea of "sanctity of marriage," which she contrasts with, you know, reality shows about women competing to marry a dwarf. So who is this ray of light from Albany's dark, homophobic sould?

• She represents District 23, which includes southern Brooklyn and the Northeastern portion of Staten Island. She is the Wu-Tang Clan's official representative!
• She is strongly pro-union!
• "Senator Savino has passed important legislation, including a law that ended the 5-year statute of limitation on sexual assualt, a bill establishing a task force for the prevention and treatment of cervical cancer, the Olive Oil Labeling Bill, which prohibits additives in virgin olive oil, the Prompt Pay Bill, which ensures prompt payment to construction contractors and their employees, a cost-of-living increase in the death benefit for widows and widowers of police officers and fire fighters killed in the line of duty." She is protecting your olive oil!
• She is prone to self-disclosure while speaking on causes personally important to her. In a speech about a recent DUI bill, she revealed that her parents were alcoholics. Brave!
• Also she wants people to be quiet on the Staten Island ferry!
• After Gov. Paterson blamed some of his problems on his race, Savino instead blamed his problems on the fact that he was blind, and does not read braille, and has aides reading him the papers and whatnot, and wasting time. That was a little insensitive!

The Democrats have a one-seat majority, so, of course, the bill went down 38-24. Not a single Republican supported it.

Meanwhile, Washington DC's city council embarrassed all of us by overwhelmingly approving gay marriage.

Openly gay Sate Senator Tom Duane sponsored the bill. The State Senate generally doesn't vote on anything until passage is ensured, but, to his credit, Governor Paterson pushed the Senate to actually vote on the marriage bill instead of letting it wither and die in legislative gridlock, as Senate leaders preferred.

Debate quietly began this afternoon, with the bill's supporters generally being more vocal (this speech, from Staten Island Sen. Diane Savino, is particularly moving). And then it went to an up-and-down vote with no one having any idea whether it would pass or not, and then it didn't, because some Democratic senators are cowards, some Democratic senators are bigots, and all the Albany Republicans are both.

Update: these are the Democrats, many of whom have received gay money, who voted Nay on equality: Carl Kruger, Bill Stachowski, Ruben Diaz Sr., Joe Addabbo, Darrel Aubertine, Hiram Monserrate, Shirley Huntley and George Onorato.

John DeJohn, who owns four Albany eateries including the new Pearl Street Pub, and Joe Schaefer, co-owner of Savannah's, located two blocks from the pub, are scheduled for a three-round boxing match...
"I'm going there not just to win but to take out a lot of rage and aggression I have toward certain people," says Schaefer

Also maybe a good night for Steve Barnes to look for a suspect in his beating: an Albany restaurateur with a violent streak.

The new $11 billion operating budget is actually just an ominous warning that in a year—or maybe a few months—the Transit Authority will once again cite the need to hike fares in order to strong arm Albany in finding a newer, more regressive way of funding operating costs.

They have basically promised it already:

In addition to the 2010 budget, the MTA released a four-year fiscal plan. It envisions 7.5% fare and toll hikes in 2011 and 2013 as the agency tries to establish a pattern of regular inflation-based increases.

There is really not so much inflation right now, in America, is there? (But who knows what the future holds!)

But, yes, it is insane that our mass transit is operated by a rotating cast of idiot millionaires with free E-Zpasses for life (and beyond!) beholden to absolutely no one, at all, operating with two sets of books, and yet we have to actually sympathize with them because the people who profit from the way an efficient mass transit system allows for the mobility of cheap labor don't think they should be forced to pony up any money to keep transit affordable. Fares are simply taxes—incredibly regressive taxes, just like the sales taxes that New York City residents suffer to fund our own transit while suburban New Yorkers bitch about the prospect of being charged to clog our streets with their cars, and Jersey dicks bemoan the tolls they have to pay to enter the city where they make all of their money while contributing nothing back.

Meanwhile, though, the MTA lies, about everything, all the time. They are saving just enough of the money from the emergency bailout earlier this year to allow them to not threaten to raise fares again for one (1) year (while fighting transit workers' promised wage increase in court). And thanks to that bailout, we only had to endure a slight fare increase with no service cuts! Except that not a single goddamn line is running on schedule anymore, ever, and that's been the case all year and it only gets worse every week.

Track and signal work must be up 1000% across the board, because there's hardly a line that isn't out of commission on the conveniently poorer or less utilizied portions of the routes these days. The F just gives up at Jay St now. The service advisories, when they are actually correctly posted, which is rarely, grow longer every weekend. If you live outside Manhattan, you better catch a train home before 11 pm, because otherwise who the fuck knows when a train will show up and where it will actually take you. Lord only knows what the hell the G train was doing last weekend, and why. Everyone, anecdotally, has noticed this. But no one has just straight-up said that these are the across the board service cuts that they promised they wouldn't need to institute once we saved them from disaster a few months ago.

It is time, now, immediately, to do a few things:

• To end the insane federal transit funding system that a) overfunds highways and b) dispenses capital project money for urban mass transit systems but forbids any federal spending on operating costs for cities of more than 200,000 people. The Reagan administration slashed mass transit funding, of course, but it was Mr. Bill Clinton who eliminated operating assistance altogether. Do you want to know about how much highway funding has increased over the same period of time? No, you don't. Real estate taxes and fares are not the proper way to fund the nation's largest subway system, especially when we will earmark federal cash for the Robert Byrd Memorial Frontage Road to the Erma Ora Byrd Conference and Learning Center and Community Swimming Pool.
• To destroy the MTA. The public authorities reform bill that just passed the Assembly is a wonderful start! But the entire board needs to be dissolved and replaced with, you know, actual subway riders, elitist technocrat transit wonks, and people with experience in government management and accounting. Civil servants, in other words.
• Everyone in Albany should be tarred and feathered. This is an important part of our prescription for any local problem.
• Also fuck Bloomberg.

Anyway! No fare increases until January 1, 2011! And some day—maybe in like 2015, when you ride the robot-operated Second Avenue line to your favorite soup kitchen—there may be those little signs that tell you when the next train is coming! This "install little signs" project is only a zillion dollars over budget (so far!).

First of all: two awesome TV ads. Governor Paterson looks so much more professional clean-shaven, right? We miss the mustache though. The first ad is all "I never asked to be governor and also I have too won some political victories" and the second one is mostly "look, you don't actually know anything about this man, so we will tell you that he was very smart and went to Columbia and stuff."

But why TV ads, now? Because he would like to raise money. And you have to spend campaign money to make money.

Ickes was, maybe, the most reality-based of the triumvirate of assholes who destroyed Hillary Clinton's dreams, but he was also the guy still running around in June of 2008 crowing about how superdelegates and his magical maps of Michigan meant certain victory for the White Lady of Experience.

Still: he was and is not Mark Penn. For the most part, Paterson has hired the Good Clinton People, leaving the Bad Clinton People to Bloomberg and evil PR firms and the Wall Street Journal and little talking head boxes on Fox News.

Meanwhile, the Governor is preparing to push for gay marriage again. And it will fail, spectacularly. This is maybe a smart way to point out how evil and useless everyone else in Albany is, and how that is not even the governor's fault, or it is maybe just him trying to fuck with the State Senate because he hates them.

Queens Democrats will instead endorse Assemblyman Jose Peralta. All because Moneserrate switched parties earlier this year in an attempt to seize control of the State Senate and then went on trial for slashing his girlfriend's face with a broken glass and also there are dozens of campaign finance disclosure and ethics violations that someone should probably be looking into!

It's not all bad, though! The Democrats still haven't decided whether or not they should expel Monserrate from the Senate (hint: you should), and so far they have just asked him politely to resign, which he will not do.

And! Some good news! Secret billionaires are paying all of Monserrate's legal bills, in a gross and obvious violation of State Senate ethics rules that, once again, no one is investigating.

Still: not having the backing of the Democratic party might make it difficult for Monserrate to fundraise for his reelection.

Of course, it could be worse! Someone could've slashed his face open with a broken glass, literally dragged him kicking and screaming from his apartment, and dumped him off at a hospital miles away from home. That might put a damper on his day.

[Photo: Getty]

It is a shitty decision, frankly. Misdemeanor reckless assault means it was unintentional, but if the judge didn't see any intent, why did he issue an "order of protection" keeping Monserrate away from his girlfriend until the sentencing? According to a New York criminal law blog, if the judge had found Monserrate guilty of intentional misdemeanor assault, the fact that he used a "dangerous instrument" would've made it an automatic felony, which would've forced his removal from the State Senate, once again throwing Albany into chaos.

But whatever! What's slashed and dragged to a hospital is done! What is next for ol' Hiram?

Albany Democrats were, perversely, praying for a felony conviction, if you believe the anonymous quotes in the Daily News. This would've saved them the trouble of having to oust Hiram themselves.

"I was praying that [expletive deleted] would get convicted and he would be gone," one furious Democratic senator said.
[...]
"A lot of people want to oust him," a Senate Democrat said. "As the days go by, I think most people will (agree) that we should get rid of the guy. This is not a guy who most of his colleagues want to see back."

But!

Fearful of losing their slim majority in the Senate, Democratic leaders were vague about the what kind of "disciplinary action" Monserrate might face.

Hah. Yes, and when the pol in question is happy to switch party allegiances whenever it suits him (making Republican calls for ouster equally amusing), and when that switch has the potential to give the other party the Senate majority, your disciplinary options are limited, especially if you're a bunch of scum-sucking political cowards and hacks. Which they are.

Last December, Monserrate slashed his girlfriend's face with broken glass. He claimed—and she eventually also claimed—that he tripped while bringing her a glass of water. But a video of Monserrate "dragging" her out of the apartment and her original statement to medical personnel that she had been attacked will be allowed into evidence.

"Sen. Monserrate is wrongly accused and will be vindicated," his lawyer Joe Tacopina said, probably in a really gravelly voice.

[Photo: Getty]

A supervisor in the Office of General Services and a janitor reportedly got paid more than $28K in overtime while chilling in the back room, blazing. They narrowly missed making the city's "Top 10,000 Thieves" list.

Their so-called "man cave," situated inside the East Garage off Phillip Street, featured couches, a television and DVDs, a refrigerator, and rolling papers and scales to weigh marijuana...

Fisch's office alleged the men used the secret party lounge, located in a maintenance area, to sell drugs, get high and sleep while other janitors cleaned Pivoda's section in the garage. The IG's office said the janitor made pot deliveries in his OGS vehicle to electricians, plumbers and fellow state workers.

Just wait until the Inspector General finds out what Taco Bell employees in the state food court are doing on their breaks.
[Times-Union]

Seeing as how the mostly crooked, idiotic politicians running the New York State Senate have grinded their work to a complete stoppage due to a leadership standoff that's involved everything from locking the other party out of the chambers, to screaming matches, to making face-slashers a crucial factor in New York politics, it's about goddamn time we stop feeding the zoo's inhabitants. State comptroller Thomas "The Clench" DiNapoli has stopped paying the New York Senate until they get their shit in gear. He's withholding their paychecks along with $560,000 worth of travel vouchers until they get back to work. Naturally, they're pissed.

"I have strived to avoid inserting my office into what is essentially an internal matter within a separate branch of government," Mr. DiNapoli said in a statement. "But the deadlock in the Senate is undermining the ability of state government to function."

Austin Shafran, a spokesman for the Senate Democrats, said simply, "We'll see him in court."

Spoken like a true agent of progress! Meanwhile, DiNapoli's the only one doing his job in this political tesseract of jackassery, and he's about to be villianized by the State Seanate and harassed for trying to get something accomplished. I bet the guy's a good dad: they act like children' so he's treating them like the dumbass brats they are. Either way, this should be it: if anything can make a crooked New York pol move their ass, it's a constipation of the single motivating force in New York politics: money.

COMPTROLLER PUTS FREEZE ON CLOWN POLS PAYCHECKS [NY Post]

The Democrats and Republicans keep convening separately, having moments of silence, and then gaveling out because they don't have a quorum. But! Hey! Victory for Governor Paterson!

State Supreme Court Justice Joseph Teresi handed Gov. David Paterson a significant victory this afternoon, ruling that each and every member of the deadlocked state Senate - all 62 of them - must convene at the same time in the chamber when the governor calls an extraordinary session.

Teresi ordered the entire Senate to convene at 10 a.m. tomorrow, and called the separate, gavel-in/gavel-out sessions the warring factions have been holding since last week "a fiction" and "an illusion."

But! The attorney for Senate Republicans will appeal tomorrow, and that apparently means the Republicans do not have to show up tomorrow for work.

Meanwhile, hah, Mayor Bloomberg's control over the schools will end tomorrow, and New York City will not be able to balance its budget because the sales tax increase is not even included on the list of legislation that the Democrats can't even pass anyway.

But population growth downstate and population decline upstate means that the Democrats will have a healthy majority in 2013. Hah, if there is a "fair" redistricting process, which, good fucking luck.

Rudy has a plan to fix New York State Government: put him in charge of it! No, but seriously. He would like a State Constitutional Convention. Because a legislature that cannot get a quorum because half the members have locked themselves in the chamber and stolen the gavel will probably get right on that Constitutional Convention thing.

Once that happened, voters would select delegates, to go to this convention, in November of 2010, and then, after the convention, everyone would vote, again, on the recommendations, so this is maybe more of a long-term "fix," Rudy, when what we need right now, at this very moment, is for those fucking idiots to just shut up and vote on legislation.

Oh, but let us hear Rudy Giuliani out. Because, you know, we are always so fair to him, and never call him a fascist, or a cross-dressing opera-loving Manhattan dandy whose much-vaunted political acumen turned out to consist entirely of an ability to rile up and stoke the insecurities of the White Ethnics.

But let's look at his recommendations to our new Constitutional Conventions (so exciting! it's like a state fair!).

He'd like a more sensible budget process, term limits (hah!) for statewide elected officials (HAH!), redistricting by independent commission, campaign finance reform (o rly), "supermajority for tax increases" (mandatory supermajorities always cure partisan gridlock), pay increases for judges, and a better system of gubernatorial succession.

Aren't those all, with the exception of the tax increase thing, reasonable suggestions? Look at Rudy over here, playing the bipartisan elder statesman, ready to bring seriousness back to Albany! It is almost like he is trying to make center-left rich white Times readers more comfortable with the idea of Governor Rudy, or something!

Of course if Governor Rudy was faced with this current crisis, he would probably try to solve it by instituting state-wide martial law, stopping and frisking all the black state senators, going on the radio to call Democrats names, stamping his little feet, attacking Al Sharpton for some reason, hiring various mobbed-up criminals, and moving his office to whatever is currently the most obvious remaining terror target in New York (the Brooklyn Bridge?).

Thankfully he won't be governor, because his campaign strategy will once again consist of not campaigning except in Florida.

Not actually living in his Bronx district is just one of the things Espada is currently under investigation for (another is "funneling funds intended for AIDS victims into his campaigns"). But it is hard to prove! This is why the hero DA from the Bronx, Robert Johnson, stole Espada's maid, for a day.

Sen. Pedro Espada's housekeeper, who works at the senator's Westchester home, was detained Tuesday night and interviewed about the senator's residency by Bronx District Attorney Robert Johnson, according to Espada Chief of Staff Andrew Yong.

The housekeeper was taken to the Bronx without counsel and was not arrested, according to Yong. A "friendly lawyer" called to demand arrest or release, and the district attorney let her go.

"She's obviously in extreme emotional distress," said Yong, who called the actions "clearly illegal harassment and politically motivated."

The Bronx District Attorney's office would not comment on anything related Sen. Pedro Espada, said spokesman Steven Reed.

Now when Espada says something happened, that is usually a good indication that it didn't happen, but this time it seems like it might've. So let's all just hope that this entire Albany thing ends with both of the assholes in jail. Or maybe with everyone in Albany in jail.

The Daily News broke the news on the front page today, which is funny, because they keep reporting on that assault thing and calling him names like "traitor." But apparently Monserrate is losing his mind, or something, because of all the stress from his upcoming trial. Being a mercurial violent asshole narcissist is almost as exhausting as "legislating" or whatever he is supposed to do!

Here is your Daily News sports columnist, Mike Lupica, calling Monserrate and Espada various names, on the occasion of their trip to a baseball game.

Anyway. Remember how the Democrats said the GOP takeover was illegal and so they took them to court? The Judge hearing the case basically refuses to decide anything, still.

"As a matter of public policy, you guys should work this out so I'm directing you to go across the street and do that and report back to me at one o'clock," he said. "There are 64 (sic) members over there, who are, in my opinion, hopefully, capable of getting together and working through what I have every understanding and appreciation are very serious and difficult matters, but which can be resolved and can be worked through in a way to be beneficial to the citizens of this state."

Ha, ha.

So Pedro Espada Jr, a State Senator from the Bronx, and Hiram Monseratte, the Queens Senator who is on trial for glassing his lady friend, organized a coup. Remember? They handed the State Senate back to the Republicans. And the Democrats sued. But a judge told them to just deal with it themselves without getting the courts involved. (He will still maybe take up the case on Monday, though!) And Espada has promised that there will be no resolving this thing over the weekend, at all. And then his "home" in Mamaroneck (because he does not actually live in his district) got "broken into," he claimed. He also said the Governor called him to congratulate him, which the Governor denied.

So here's where we are, today:

• Espada is trying to lure Democrats into his "coalition" by promising, now, to actually try to get bills progressives like to the floor, for a vote. Like the gay marriage, and rent control! And so Espada tried to drive a wedge between Tom Duane, who would like there to be a vote on the Gay Marriage, and Majority Leader Malcolm Smith, who, some claim, promised not to bring the Gay Marriage to a vote in exchange for the support of Ruben Diaz Sr., who, along with Monseratte, threatened to caucus with Republicans a couple months ago. This does not seem to be working.
• Meanwhile: the Democrats are most likely going to throw Smith under the bus and strip Smith of his leadership as part of their attempt to bribe Monseratte back into their caucus. What this would mean is a deadlocked, evenly divided Senate. And no Lt. Governor, because Paterson is not authorized to appoint one, and therefore no tie-breaking votes. Also: the scumbag asshole who slashed his girlfriend's face would be welcomed back to the party fold with open arms and money.

So basically we can have a Republican-led Senate partially led by a corrupt liar that would gerrymander redistricting next year but maybe actually vote for thing people would like voted on, or we can have a deadlocked Senate that includes the violent asshole as a prominent Democratic leader.

But at least we don't have California's state government! They're really screwed!

[Photo: AP]

Is there a more dishonorable, less intelligent form of life than the sleaze that inhabits Albany? No.

Has any group of politicians more debased themselves and the once-proud institution in which they serve? No.

Would New York be better off building a sewage treatment plant on the grounds of the Capitol? Yes.

It would then be possible to flush the human wastes whose double-dealing, felonious flirtations and idiotic incompetence have left the state without a functioning government.

Dream on.

The last time the city's also-ran tab was this upset they were talking about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Well, they are not really Republicans. They are just caucusing with the Republicans. They were just so excited about their successful campaign to utterly and completely fuck over any hope of a semi-reasonable solution to the MTA crisis that they figured they could hold the rest of the state hostage to their parochial concerns even more effectively by throwing the whole State Senate to the Republicans again. Yay Albany!

This might have something to do with the Gay Marriage, or it might not, who knows. So corrupt, non-campaign finance disclosing Senator Espada and the face-slashing Scientologist Senator Monserrate are basically in charge now, up in Albany.

Why Mr. Espada and Mr. Monserrate suddenly defected on Monday afternoon was not immediately clear. Both men are under investigation by the authorities. The state attorney general's office is investigating a health care agency, Soundview HealthCare Network, that Mr. Espada ran until recently. And Mr. Monserrate, who was indicted on felony assault charges in March stemming from an attack on his companion, would automatically be thrown out of office if convicted.

No one knows what happens now. It will go to court or something, maybe?

Monserrate Photo: Getty

Jerry Spiegel, a professional mixed-martial arts fighter, was charged with assault in connection with the attack. There, uh, aren't too many details yet, but the Times-Union story features this compelling line:

The arrest of 36-year-old Jerry Spiegel of Troy comes as law enforcement sources said Guilderland police are continuing to examine connections between Spiegel and an Albany restaurant that Steve Barnes, a food critic, had written about last year.

Let this be a lesson to all of you: never criticize anything, ever, or blog. Or just stay the hell out of Albany.