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Candidates should redo slogans, in light of economic crisis

DAN JANISON | dan.janison@newsday.com

September 29, 2008

Crisis is clouding the slogans. John McCain's "Country First" sounds like the name of a busted bank, and Barack Obama's "Change We Need" suggests a search for coins behind the seat cushions.

Financial failure has eclipsed war and terrorism. So even an ordinary event like the Manhattan breakfast on Thursday of the Association for a Better New York brought buzz about a gloomy future.

Richard Kessel, new head of the state Power Authority, was on hand. As a former member of the Nassau Interim Finance Authority, and would-have-been deputy county executive, he predicts tight times locally. Bailout or none, Wall Street is losing jobs, so Nassau residents buy less, so sales-tax revenue drops. Saying cuts have a limit, Kessel defended County Executive Thomas Suozzi's proposed property tax hike as heading off disaster.

"I wouldn't be surprised if they're going to have to readjust their budget in the middle of next year if things get worse in this economy," he said.

Rep. Peter King (R-Seaford) last week was backing Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's push for a fast bailout. King said opposition from other House Republicans arose both from "the grass roots" and members.

"The feeling is they'd be intervening to aid a bunch of rich New York City bankers," King said from Washington as the weekend began. With his district affected, the challenge ahead was to persuade others that their farms, businesses and 401Ks are at stake, King said.

His Democratic opponent, Graham Long of Glen Cove, said: "From watching the reports on it, the bailout plan makes me as angry at the Democrats as the Republicans. I think it's gambling with $700 billion in taxpayer dollars." The funds would be justified, he said, if they were part of a systemic restructuring with improved oversight and regulation.

OFF THE RAILS: Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos (R-Rockville Centre) has long been the state lawmaker most involved with the Long Island Rail Road, with cordial union ties and a hand in its capital funding. Asked Thursday about state and U.S. probes into a federal board's suspiciously routine granting of disability pensions, he said: "If somebody's creating a crime, they're creating a crime, and they should be punished for it."

Roy Simon, Skelos' Democratic challenger, said the situation "smacks of someone asleep at the wheel in the Bush administration's regulatory bureaucracy."

TAX TILTS: Sen. Craig Johnson (D-Port Washington) denounced the proposal in April 2007, but Republican Barbara Donno charges on her Web site a vote for Johnson "is a vote to bring back the commuter tax." In fact the top boosters of reviving the tax are New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg - who supports Donno - and Democratic Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, whose agreement to kill the tax in the late 1990s was slammed by GOP Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Expect no support from either party's Long Island lawmakers.

SNAZZY!: Former Sen. Alfonse D'Amato appears in a TV ad for close friend Sal Paterno, who owns Milano Clothier in Huntington.