Statesmanship or . ..

Listening to the news the other night I heard one of the New York Democratic legislators claim that the current standoff between the Democrats and Republicans was "statesmanship versus gamesmanship." Presumably that meant that the Democrats were engaging in "statesmanship," which is the exercise of wisdom in the matter of public affairs, and the Republicans were engaging in "gamesmanship," a sort of taking-advantage-of-technical-rules-in-a-mean-spirited-sort-of-way kind of thing. Today I looked for the quote, and it turns out it actually came from Senator John Sampson, who is the Democractic Conference Leader. He said it in response to a question why Democrats had failed to show at a meeting to which Republicans had shown up because the Democrats had been running around publicly demanding a meeting. Apparently they wanted to meet on a different day.

So Senator Espada, at the center of the supposed coup staged June 8th, claims that he has a video tape of the proceeding that clearly shows the validity of the vote that accomplished the coup.

No back to Sampson's quote, here in full: "There needs to be public negotiations, but not negotiations where you have video tapes of what happened on June 8th," Sampson said. "This is about statesmanship, versus gamesmanship".

So, essentially, Sampson is saying that he is interested in negotiating, but only when the truth is not invited to the meeting.

What could Senator Sampson fear from a videotape? Either it shows, or does not show, the validity of the Republican-led vote. If it shows the vote is not valid, then his party gets to keep the gavel. But - - as is more likely - - if it shows the vote is valid, then the reality becomes that Sampson wishes to retain power where he validly has none. Put different, he wishes to subvert a legitimate vote in the exercise of state authority for the sole purpose of keeping "his party" in power over "their party."

That sounds more like "gamesmanship" to me than anything.

Remember, they are all getting paid for this. And yes I know the State Comptroller has decided to hold the vouchers. He doesn't say he won't pay them, however, he just says he won't pay them right now. So rest assured that if the Senate ever does come back to work, all those vouchers will move through pretty quickly. (Incidentally, the State Comptroller is a former legislator himself. And he was put in the State Comptroller's position by . . . the legislature. The gesture of holding the vouchers is meaningless and meant only to coax his former colleagues out of a position of embarrassment.)

Now the interesting thing is that at this moment various powers in government are discussing whether it should be considered "fraud" for a doctor to submit a bill to Medicare for a surgery if the surgery fails to meet certain quality standards. So if you go in for surgery and the surgeon does kind of a poor job, then submits the bill, the Medicare overlords get to say that's "fraud." There's a parallel in goods law also, that goes much further back, called the "lemon law." If you buy what looks like a car, but it turns out to be a lemon, it's a fraud and you get your money back plus a little something for your lawyer.

So if you send a person to Albany who is supposed to be a legislator, but then it turns out that the closest they come to legislating is engaging in some sort of sophomoric football game designed to figure out who has the better "team," well, then you've bought a lemon. It's a fraud and you should get your money back.

I want my money back.