1) A couple of weeks ago I forwarded an announcement from the "Working Families Party," an entity created in New York by the national New Party. It was endorsing the dreadful Democratic candidate for governor, NY City Council speaker Peter Vallone, with the hope of getting 50,000 votes on their party line, and with that, a permanent ballot line. The Observer's Devin Leonard reports that the WFP, icky name and all, is a creation of ex-NYC mayor David Dinkins and his cronies, designed to exact revenge on the Liberal Party, a patronage machine run by another hack, Ray Harding - beloved of reporters, because of he gives good quote. Despite their name, the Liberals endorsed Rudy Giuliani for mayor; their reward was senior city posts for Harding's two sons. The WFP hopes to drain away the Liberal voters, deprive the party of its 50,000 minimum needed to stay on the ballot, and thereby destroy the party. In 1993, the New Party served as a backup in case Dinkins lost the Dem nomination for mayor; they disappeared from view after that campaign. Now they reappear, endorsing a hack to destroy another. What a vision of independent politics!
2) Michael Thomas reports in his column: "I remember having a friendly argument with a since-to-be-famous intellectual about his son's wish to major in history. Where the hell was the career possibility in studying history, for Lord's sake, he fulminated. What the hell was the practical use of a history degree, where was the money in it? The speaker? One Myron S. Scholes, for whom the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science and a lucrative founding partnership in Long-Term Capital lay several years in the future."
Doug