NEW YORK, NEW YORK

Hey, things could be worse. We could live in New York State.

You see, they had this comptroller....Now, since I work in the Family Caregiver field, I should have felt sorry for Alan Hevesi. His wife was ill so he had state employees take her places.

Other family caregivers hire someone, take time off work or even take leaves of absence from their jobs. Alan had to do the third choice, but it wasn't HIS choice.

But what was really weird was that, because the Republicans didn't put up anyone decent to oppose him, when the feces hit the airconditioner, they didn't have a credible candidate to oppose him. Warning to MA Republicans. Not that we have any officeholders that would warrant abandonment....

So now, Alan H having been re-elected and then smartly resigned, they needed a new comptroller. Their new gov, like our new gov, came into office vowing to run state government another way. So he asked the legislature to promise that they'd pick a candidate from an independent screening panel.

Guess what? The panel DIDNT NAME ONE MEMBER OF THE LEGISLATURE AS A POTENTIAL COMPTROLLER. So what did the Legislature do? Name one of their own. He once balanced his own checkbook which I'm sure qualifies him to be Comptroller of NYState.

In the case of both MA and NY, there have been many years of R governors, and the Legislature has gotten used to giving the Gov the finger when they want to. Now there are new sheriffs in both towns, but there hasn't been any noticeable change in the attitude toward the collective corner offices.

But what do I know? Off to sunny CA where of course, there's a R governor and a Democratic Legislature. But I'm only staying for four days, so I doubt I'll be reforming their system over the weekend. But I will be sitting in the green room at the Jimmy Kimmel show and having high tea at the Biltmore.

Eat your hearts out.