Current contributors: Doug Newman, Adam Peck

UPDATE: Stony Brook University is bracing for the worst after the news that Governor Cuomo had struck a deal with leadership in the legislature to pass a budget that would cut the overall SUNY budget by 10 percent.

With Stony Brook looking at a further cut of as much as $12 million, the university is considering drastic cuts to some academic programs, perhaps even the elimination of entire departments, said university spokeswoman Lauren Sheprow.

“While it is still unclear how cuts will be distributed across the SUNY system, it is clear that we will have to move forward on some of the cost saving initiatives we hoped we would not have to make, she said. “Among other things, it will likely include combining administrative services between departments and possible program closures.”

The state budget deal calls for $86 million less in cuts than had been announced by Cuomo in early February, but Stony Brook is still anticipating a $12 million reduction and tens of millions more from the university hospital’s operating budget.

“The University was hoping for full restoration,” said university spokeswoman Lauren Sheprow.

The university has not yet announced any specifics of possible cost-cutting measures, but speculation has grown in recent months that smaller departments, including programs within the Art Department and the Asian American Studies Department, are prime targets for cuts.

EARLIER: Governor Andrew Cuomo has reached a tentative agreement with the leaders of the New York State Assembly and Senate that includes deep cuts to SUNY and CUNY that are nevertheless smaller than those he originally proposed, the Associated Press reports.

According to the AP, $86 million in funding will be restored to SUNY and CUNY under the agreement, leaving the majority of Governor Cuomo’s proposed cuts intact.

Watch this space for more information as we get it.

Even Chuck Schumer knows how to party.

The opposition to Four Loko is unfounded. There are still many ways to consume alcohol and caffeine at the same time. A very popular option is mixing Redbull with vodka. In fact, the founder of Four Loko said he got the idea for the drink when he saw how popular Redbull and vodka was among college students. Additionally, many Americans mix drinks like Bailey’s Irish Cream with coffee every day. Made liberally, these concoctions have a higheralcohol content than Four Loko, and yet there is no public outcry over these other cocktails.

The main argument against Four Loko is that it is simply not wise to mix an upper, caffeine, with a downer, alcohol. So if the FDA is going to ban drinkslike Four Loko and Joose they should also target other companies and establishments who profit off of mixing caffeine with alcohol. If they do not, it will be an arbitrary enforcement of the law.

While it is true that a number of blackouts have been attributed to the consumption of Four Loko, it is also true that far more blackouts occur from consuming alcoholic beverages that aren’t Four Loko. When 21-year-old Courtney Spurry died after drinking two cans of Four Loko and choosing to drive a car, no one mentioned the roughly 40,000 deaths that occur every year from drunk driving. Her parents blamed Four Loko and not her poor decision to get behind the wheel of a car while she was impaired. Hers is a tragic story, but the fact is that most drunk drivers were not drinking Four Loko when they crashed their cars. Banning one single beverage isn’t going to solve the problem.

But wait, it contains caffeine! Doesn’t that mean that you are too hyper to realize that you’re drunk? Actually, not really. Before Spurry entered her vehicle, it was reported that her friends said that she was slurring her words and mixing up their names. Her friends said they tried to take her keys away but were unsuccessful. She was in- formed that she was very intoxicated and still made the decision to drive. It’s obvious that people who drink Four Loko may become very impaired, but the majority of responsible alcohol drinkers should not be punished for the foolish actions of a few.

Some parental groups have expressed concerns that the colorful packaging of Four Loko makes it especially appealing to younger children. To these parents we say, if you are worried about your children getting their hands on Four Loko then you should probably watch them more. It is no more likely they could get their hands on Four Loko than beer because delis are supposed to I.D. everyone who purchases alcohol. It is probably easier for your children to find a weed dealer and buy drugs because weed dealers don’t ask for your identification—they just deal.

Just like marijuana prohibition has failed to stop Americans from smoking, the prohibition against beverages that contain alcohol and caffeine will fail from keeping Americans from consuming alcohol and caffeine at the same time. Simply banning these types of drinks won’t stop people form drinking them, and may actually promote them by boosting their notoriety.

Counterpoint: You Could Die!

He looks like he's having a great time!

The idea that the government can tell us what we can’t drink, or what mixtures we can’t make with legal ingredients, is indeed a manipulative gesture that seems to overstep a boundary. But Four Loko is one of the few exceptions where New York State intervened on behalf of what it felt was the good of the people when it “banned” the drink, to which an easy response is that they have no right to do so. But when you explore the true intention of Four Loko through the act of pure observance, you could argue that the banning of the caffeinated and alcoholic beverage is something good for the public, despite whether the college kids or high school binge drinkers know it yet.

Four Loko has the same alcohol-per-ounce equivalent of 4.7 12 oz. cans of beer, given that the cans of beer are five percent alcohol per volume. Combine that with the oft-repeated speculation that one can contains up to three cups of coffee and you have your- self a dangerous 23.5 oz. drink. Are their more dangerous mixtures out there? Of course. Are they available even to younger kids in high school? Yes. But none are so pervasively employed to make heavy drinking so easy, accessible and accepted. It’s both the notion behind Four Loko and the blaring intention you give off whenever you decide to drink one, which makes it such an unwanted product.

Someone looking to reach the same level of inebriation could simply buy cheap liquor and drink an equivalent amount of alcohol, but therein lies the idea behind Four Loko’s appeal. It’s a roughly $4 beverage that can (or used to) be found at any gas station, and it let’s you bypass the strenuous process of drinking 50-plus ounces of beer or struggling through shot after shot of the equivalent of rubbing alcohol out of a plastic bottle.

It is essentially a binge drinker’s dream concoction, and no avid Four Loko fan would tell you otherwise. Everything is mixed all into one easy to drink mixture, and even if it does taste horrendous, it has enough fruity flavor and the caffeine kick to keep you going. New York State may claim that the caffeine is misleading and urges youths, or those unaware of the effects, to keep drinking beyond their limit. But that’s common sense and anyone stupid enough to not understand that does not deserve the right to responsibly drink. The real problem of Four Loko is the colorful- ness of its can, the fruitiness of its taste and the generally accepted notion that for less than seven or eight bucks, you can drink to the point of blacking out and nobody will think twice. Because, well, that’s Four Loko, right?

The 2009 elections offered up mixed results for progressives.

While some would claim otherwise, the 2009 elections were hardly a landslide for either party. Both Congressional races were won by Democrats — one in a district that hasn’t elected a Democrat in a lifetime — while both gubernatorial races, in states won last year by Obama, went to Republicans. A rich Democratic incumbent lost a governorship, but a rich independent incumbent right across the river kept the mayoralty of a city more populous than most states. Voters in one state rejected same-sex marriage but reaffirmed their approval of medical marijuana, while those in another seem likely to have approved “marriage-like” unions for same-sex couples, but only barely. And as much as Republicans would like it to be the case, the successful Republicans don’t seem to owe their wins to anti-Obama sentiment; on the other hand, neither did the “Obama factor” help the Democrats he campaigned for in high-profile, high-stakes races, even in the most Democratic part of the country.

But that doesn’t mean there are no greater implications for the races that took place yesterday. There’s something to learn from every election. And wonks like me just love analyzing elections. So let’s take a look at some of this year’s big ones:

Republicans Take Governorships in New Jersey and Virginia

The gubernatorial contests in New Jersey and Virginia were undoubtedly the most talked-about races across the nation yesterday. And here, the news for Democrats was terrible: Republicans won both races in states whose governorships had been held by Democrats for eight years, and which President Obama won last year.

Both races had some things in common: lackluster Democratic candidates and Republicans who stayed away from hot-button, culture-war social issues and crafted campaigns carefully designed to win independents. But the two losing Democrats were as different as the two states.

Virginia is a state that would vote solidly Republican were it not for urban and suburban voters in the state’s north, part of the Washington, DC metropolitan area. Essentially, northern Virginia is the northeast, while the rest of the state is the south. Northern Virginians propelled Obama to victory in the state last year, but most couldn’t get enthused about “country lawyer” Creigh Deeds, a conservative Democrat from the ultra-rural west of the state whose down-home style would mostly have appealed to conservative rural voters who would never vote for a Democrat anyway. Meanwhile, Republican Bob McDonnell, who grew up in northern Virginia, campaigned largely on economic issues, casting himself as a moderate and staying away from social issues that would alienate independents. The result: McDonnell won some of the northern Virginian counties that had been the state’s Democratic strongholds in recent years, and came away from the race with a commanding win over Deeds, garnering 58.7% of the vote to Deeds’ 41.3%.

Like McDonnell, New Jersey’s Governor-Elect Chris Christie tried his best not to touch social issues, focusing instead on the economy, taxes and corruption. In liberal, highly urban and suburban New Jersey, strongly articulated conservative stances on issues like abortion and gay rights would have alienated even more voters than in Virginia, at least part of which is still in the conservative south. But his opponent, Governor Jon Corzine, was very different from Creigh Deeds. Despite his origins in small-town Illinois, the one-time Goldman Sachs chairman certainly lacked Deeds’ “country bumpkin” image. Unfortunately, Corzine came off as distant and uninspiring. The terrible state of the economy and New Jersey’s chronic problems of astronomical taxes and rampant corruption combined with Corzine’s lack of personal likability to make him a very easy target for voters’ anger about the terrible state of the state, and his attempts to portray Christie as a dangerous ideologue with close ties to George W. Bush seemed not to stick. (This was a typically dirty New Jersey campaign, with allegations flying that Corzine’s campaign even made fun of the weight of his corpulent opponent.) Even the very public support of President Obama in this reliably Democratic state could not save the incumbent, whose campaign seemed to consist of, “I’m not doing as bad a job as you think — really! And that other guy will be even worse!” It was still a close race, Christie taking 48.8% of the vote to Corzine’s 44.5% and independent Chris Daggett’s 5.8%, but ultimately New Jersey voters decided to axe an incumbent seen by many as disconnected, ineffective and even duplicitous in favor of someone who at least might do better.

Republicans, of course, would like to portray these races as manifestations of a backlash against President Obama, but polls show that voters were largely focused on local issues and that for most President was not a major factor in their decisions. What they do show is that Republicans can still win, at least on a state level, if they stay away from controversial social issues and stick to economics, where their message still resonates with many.

Bloomberg Wins in NYC — Barely

For many (certainly, for me) the surprise of the night was the slimness of the margin by which Mike Bloomberg won his third term as Mayor of New York City. In an election with low turnout, Bloomberg took only 50.6% of the vote to Comptroller Bill Thompson’s 46%.

Given the dynamics of the campaign, Thompson did better than anyone could have reasonably expected. The billionaire Bloomberg had essentially unlimited resources, and did not hesitate to use them, setting spending records. Against the huge financial resources and impressive organization of the Bloomberg campaign, Thompson, an earnest but bland candidate who largely criticized Bloomberg rather than advancing his own agenda, and who seemed to have little coherent vision for how the city should change, should have fared terribly. But no small number of voters were angry with Bloomberg for getting the City Council to overturn term limit laws that the voters themselves had enacted in referenda, and the enormous amounts of his personal wealth left a bitter taste with many as well. According to exit polls, those for whom these two factors had an effect went overwhelmingly for Thompson, perhaps helping to account for his surprisingly good performance. But while a substantial minority did care about these issues, most New Yorkers did not — and those voters by and large went for Bloomberg.

That said, it may perplex many that New York, a city where Democrats outnumber Republicans by a huge margin, will not have had a Democratic mayor in two decades by the time Bloomberg’s third term expires in 2014. Bloomberg is an independent now, but he ran on the Republican ballot line and was formerly a Republican (and, to be fair, a Democrat before that). But while most voters who considered Bloomberg a Republican voted for Thompson, the largest number of voters considered him an independent, and that group broke overwhelmingly for Bloomberg.

Ultimately, the main reason that Bloomberg won is that most New Yorkers are fairly satisfied with him. An astounding 70% of voters polled said they approved of the job Bloomberg was doing, even though 25% of those voters went for Thompson. Thompson won voters whose biggest issue was housing, but Bloomberg won on the three issues the largest numbers of voters identified as most important to them: the economy, education and crime. The economy in New York, as with most everywhere, is not good (and most voters said so), but it seems voters didn’t blame Bloomberg, and had little confidence that Thompson could do better or even as well. And Bloomberg won big on education and especially crime (though a small majority of parents of public-school students went for Thompson).

But perhaps most importantly of all, those who said they voted in favor of a candidate for mayor mostly voted for Bloomberg. Those who said they voted against the other candidate went overwhelmingly for Thompson. Thompson, perhaps, was unable to win because he didn’t convince New Yorkers why he should be mayor, and while his relatively strong performance indicates that many are not happy with Bloomberg, that discontent simply did not run deep enough for New Yorkers to jump ship en masse to a candidate who did not give them enough reasons to favor him.

NY-23: Conservatives Reach Too Far

Parts of New York’s 23rd Congressional District, in the very rural far north of the state, haven’t elected a Democrat since 1851. (No, that’s not a typo; the district’s largest city, Watertown, hasn’t been represented by a Democrat for 158 years. The Republican Party didn’t even exist in 1851; back then, the Democrats were opposed by the Whigs!) But the Republican nominee for this seat’s special election, Dede Scozzafava, chosen by New York Republicans for her broad appeal, was deemed by many national Republicans to be “too liberal.” Enough national Republicans, lead by Sarah Palin, endorsed Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman and attacked Scozzafava that the Republican dropped out of the race, allowing the Democrat, Bill Owens, to win what should have been a very safe Republican seat.

The lesson here is pretty simple: those who demand absolute ideological purity should be prepared to lose often. Imagine if the Republican candidates for governor in Virginia and New Jersey ran explicitly ideological, hard-right campaigns….

Maine Voters Like Pot Better than Gays; Washington Voters Seem to Have Approved “Marriage-Like” Partnerships

I like Maine. Or at least I used to. It’s got a nice coastline, produces some really nice boats and mail-order clothing, and McDonald’s sells lobster there, which is at least good for a laugh. Unfortunately, 52.8% of Maine’s voters decided their gay and lesbian neighbors just don’t deserve the same rights as everyone else, which is no laughing matter and doesn’t leave me with very warm feelings toward the state. This continues same-sex marriage’s unbroken record of being rejected every time it has come up for a popular referendum — now in 31 states. Worse, this scourge has now entered the northeast, the region hitherto most friendly to same-sex marriage, and for the first time, voters have overturned their elected legislators’ decision to grant equality. (On the other hand, unlike the other 30 referenda, Maine’s didn’t take the form of a constitutional amendment. But that is not much consolation.)

On the other hand, 58.7% of Maine voters did decide to expand the legal usage of medical marijuana. That’s nice; maybe I can get some to make me feel less depressed about the bigotry of the majority of Maine voters and its absurd political system that makes the rights of minorities subject to the whims of the majority.

Meanwhile, voters in the State of Washington appear to have likely approved, by a slim margin, a measure establishing domestic partnerships that would be like marriages, except not. Right now it’s still too close to call, but while I hope the measure does pass, the fact that the voting is so close (currently 51.6% in favor), and that if it does pass, it will still create a “separate and unequal” status for same-sex couples means that still wouldn’t be much of an occasion for celebration.

Long Island: No Real Winners

And at last, we turn to the dull but important business of local Long Island politics. Or this year, maybe not so dull.

Long Island, where high taxes and corruption are chronic problems, looks very similar politically to that other home of NYC’s inner suburbs, New Jersey, but its voters don’t have an entire state government to play with. Instead, similar politics play out on a local level. (New York’s Westchester County, where most of the remaining inner suburbs are located, has similar problems and politics to those of Long Island and New Jersey, and Republicans made big gains there this year.)

Nearly every office in Nassau County was up for election this year, and here voters seemed evenly split on who they want to run the county — or at least those who cared enough to vote, with low turnout signaling a general feeling of apathetic discontent. In spite of, or perhaps because of this low turnout, Election 2009 has turned out to be quite a spectacle in Nassau: more than 24 hours after polls closed, Democratic County Executive Tom Suozzi still doesn’t know whether he’ll keep his job! Right now he appears to have defeated Republican challenger Ed Mangano by an astonishing 237 votes out of more than 245,000, but it could be weeks before a winner is declared. It’s Bush-Gore, Long Island Edition.

It’s not just Suozzi on whom voters were evenly divided; Democratic Comptroller Howard Weitzman lost to Republican challenger George Maragos by 576 votes out of over 230,000 cast. And the County Legislature has been re-taken by Republicans, raising the prospect of governmental gridlock with the Executive and Legislature constantly at odds. Yet District Attorney Kathleen Rice, a Democrat, won by a respectable margin; so did County Clerk Maureen O’Connell, a Republican. Town and city races were mostly won by incumbents of both parties. If anything, Nassau voters don’t seem to care, and those who do are divided astonishingly evenly in what was, when I was growing up there (and my parents before me!), an impenetrable Republican fortress.

Things in Suffolk County were not so edge-of-the-seat exciting. There were no contested county-wide offices; the incumbent District Attorney and Sheriff (Democrats) and Treasurer (a Republican) all ran uncontested. Democrats will keep control of the County Legislature. But town elections show that, like their neighbors in Nassau, Suffolk’s voters are mostly apathetic, and those who aren’t are divided. In the largest town, Brookhaven (home of Stony Brook), Democratic incumbent Mark Lesko, who in March won a special election to replace fellow Democrat and now State Senator Brian Foley, won his first full term as Town Supervisor. But every incumbent on the Town Council will remain, giving Republicans a majority that will continue to encumber Lesko’s ability to carry out his agenda. In other towns the picture is much the same with, as in Nassau County, incumbents largely winning in this low-turnout election, though Democrats picked up the position of Town Supervisor in Southampton, and lost it to Republicans in East Hampton and Riverhead.

So the picture on Long Island is pretty glum: Democrats’ headway in taking over this one-time Republican stronghold seems to have ended in a stalemate with many residents just sitting on the sidelines.

Maybe off-year elections aren’t that boring after all.

In the 08-09 budget, Paterson cut $146M from SUNY while trustees approved a tuition hike (the super-majority of which went directly into the state’s coffers). It’s the darndest thing, though: New York spends three times as much on health care as it does on education. Now, certainly, the proposed plan includes cuts to Medicaid… But are cuts the appropriate answer?

Let’s talk about health care in New York. New York had the fourth highest per capita spending on health care ($6,535) as of 2007. New York also has some of the highest insurance premiums. Nationwide, medicaid enrollment has had a positive correlation with unemployment (many people rely upon their employers to provide health care), the effect of which has been obvious: greater strain on the budget and poor, myopic decisions by state politicians.

One of the reasons for such high premiums in New York has to do with the way in which we’ve pursued health care reform (very similar to the way Obama hopes to address the national health care system). Under Cuomo, state regulation of health care resulted in two well-intentioned but horrible rules: (1) insurance companies can’t adjust prices based on health/age and (2) insurance companies can’t deny anyone coverage who can afford it.

Here’s the thing: the major non-profit provider of health care at the time (who, might I add, endorsed these regulations in an effort to prop itself up against the insurance companies) failed to report that because of these kinds of mandates it had been suffering losses and eventually dropped out of the game entirely. This resulted in private insurance companies raising their premiums across the board in order to maintain profits (nearly a third of which go toward marketing and CEO salaries, mind you) which has helped to herd people into Medicaid.

Parente and Bragdon, writing in the Wall Street Journal, advocate “market based reforms”. These sound neat and it’s easy for us to say that government interference has caused New York’s health care problem and therefore contributed to budget concerns, but this is a shallow view of a complex issue. The problem here is profit. The problem here is “competition”. The problem here is the commodification of health and the ensuing class-based discrimination and subsequent hands-free (or not so free) genocide (45,000 uninsured die each year).

If you believe that health care is a human right and that therefore we must find the most optimal solution to ensure universal, quality coverage as well as economic stability within that solution then we’re on the same page.

I’ll reiterate that around 1/3 of insurance premiums go toward marketing and CEO salaries, two things I fail to see as integral to patient care and research and development. The reason premiums skyrocketed after New York’s petty health care reform efforts doesn’t just have to do with breaking even and covering the cost of high-risk clients who they’re now forced to cover. It has to do with meeting that criteria and then surpassing it, not only to reproduce CEO salaries but to increase those salaries! That’s the thing about for profit industry: it’s all about the growth of profit.

So, peep the strategy:

Let’s ditch these high rollers and archaic class-based health care system and establish a state-wide single payer system. Medicare for all. A single, public entity propped up by a progressive tax which will be, without a doubt, cheaper than most New Yorkers’ current premiums as well as an employer tax only for those employers who currently provide health care which will almost certainly be cheaper than what they currently pay for their employees under-coverage.

A single payer system doesn’t require a CEO salary or marketing and so all of that money can go to providing care, research and development and new technology. A single payer system doesn’t require a wasteful and horrendously expensive system of paperwork and filing. A single payer system doesn’t include the legal fees that come from dealing with clients you’ve denied coverage. Best of all: a single payer system may be the best antidote to an ailing state economy.

Congratulations. The Republicans have finally taken control of the New York State Senate after the evil Democrats’ long tyrannical reign over New York State. The new Republicans promise a bipartisan effort to move forward and eliminate the old corrupt ways of Democrats doing business behind closed doors and keeping certain people out of the process. After a long and terrifying period of the democrats’ old stagnation politics and back-door deals, we are free at last, free at last.

If this doesn’t sound familiar, then you haven’t been living in New York at any point in the last 70 years.Republicans finally get a taste of their own medicine and suddenly they are the party of reform and bipartisanship. I’m not buying it, and neither should any liberal. Democrats gain control for a few months, and immediately the Republicans are up in arms as if they haven’t been playing the same games for decades.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to any Democrat; we are just as much to blame for the coup as they are. What have Democrats really accomplished in their short time? I’ve heard a lot of bickering, not a lot of transparency, and very little progress on important civil rights issues or health care. I am talking to you Mr. Brian Foley. We didn’t elect you to put up with this nonsense. What happened to change and progress? You let them distract you, just like we always do. Democrats never fail to fall apart when it counts, and this late attempt to stop the coup is just the epitome of their attitude towards getting things done.

But, maybe giving the minority party more power will be a good thing in the long run. I think it was certainly a good thing to give the long-standing Republicans a scare. Now they know New York is liberal enough to beat them and they may have changed their attitude as a result. The current rhetoric is nonsense, but I hope Democrats can learn something from this. Keep the bickering behind closed doors, and make unified decisions in a transparent manner. Republicans will continue to do whatever they can to hold on to power. Appreciate it as part of the democratic process and never stop pushing back.