Nobody Puts Billionaire In The Corner
by digby
In case there are any remaining doubts about who runs the show in America, this should dispel them:
In early spring, Tom Golisano went to Albany from his home in Rochester to meet with Malcolm A. Smith, then the Senate majority leader.
Mr. Golisano, a billionaire business executive, had spent heavily to help Mr. Smith and other Democrats win control of the Senate in the November election, and was angry to hear they were now planning to raise taxes on the wealthy. He expected an audience befitting a major financial patron.
Instead, he said, Mr. Smith played with his BlackBerry and seemed to barely listen.
“I said, ‘I’m talking to the wall here,’ ” Mr. Golisano recalled in an interview on Tuesday.
That meeting led to the dramatic collapse Monday of the Democrats’ grip on the Senate majority as a frustrated Mr. Golisano secretly planned with Republicans to persuade two Democrats to join them in ousting Mr. Smith.
[…]
Along with Mr. Golisano, a key figure who helped pull off the plan to overthrow Mr. Smith was Steve Pigeon, who is not only Mr. Golisano’s top political adviser but also a longtime friend of Mr. Espada’s.
After Mr. Golisano’s fruitless meeting with Mr. Smith in March, Mr. Pigeon and Mr. Golisano returned to Albany to meet with Mr. Smith’s top aide, Angelo J. Aponte, the secretary of the Senate. Mr. Golisano insisted that there had to be a way to balance the state budget without raising taxes, and at one point snatched a pad from one of Mr. Aponte’s aides and began scrawling back-of-the-envelope calculations.
One of Mr. Golisano’s aides asked whether the state could issue billions of dollars worth of bonds. Mr. Aponte said it was unlikely the bonds would find buyers in the economic slump. (Mr. Pigeon disputed that account. “We were there to hear their presentation and they didn’t seem to have any good answers,” he said.)
Mr. Golisano gave up on the Democrats and Mr. Pigeon moved quickly to set up a meeting with three top Senate Republicans. Secrecy was imperative, so they decided to meet at a small Albany rock club, Red Square, an unlikely locale for lawmakers.
“You wouldn’t find anybody there that we knew,” recalled Senator George D. Maziarz, a Republican from western New York who attended. Within days, the trio — Mr. Maziarz, Mr. Skelos and Senator Tom Libous of Binghamton, went to Rochester to meet with Mr. Golisano. The meeting was a chance for Mr. Skelos to meet Mr. Golisano for the first time.
Mr. Pigeon soon set to wooing Mr. Espada, a Bronx Democrat who had once caucused with the Republicans. Mr. Pigeon and Mr. Espada had a long relationship, going back to Mr. Pigeon’s days as a counsel to the Senate Democrats. Mr. Espada drafted Mr. Monserrate, one of his close friends in the Senate, to join him in his defection.
Mr. Espada has said he joined the effort because he wanted to change how Albany does business.
Do read the whole thing. It only gets better, even including the nefarious Roger Stone. And keep in mind that this was a Democratic donor.
“Those who own the country ought to govern it.” John Jay
Update: Not that California’s any better, mind you. We’re so inept even our billionaires can’t get anything done…
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