Is Marty Golden absolutely f-*@#-ing nuts — Or do he and his crack staff actually believe their own press releases when they bounce back whole in the local press echo chamber ? ? ?

What’s with a very UNCOOL Brooklyn Republican State Senator Martin Golden making threats of a “Nuclear Option” against his largely Democratic fellow legislators if they don’t push for a proposed tax give-away to businesses, mostly to benefit certain public and Orthodox Jewish Schools   —   Golden even trotted-out an “un-named” Rabbi; and even pointed to some “un-named” Jewish groups that quickly beat a retreat from State Senator Golden’s inflammatory remarks

Is Golden just trying to curry particular favor with the small pockets of Orthodox Jews in his district, or is he trying to distract everybody’s attention from other embarrassing facts about the budget recently passed in Albany, with connections to Golden's Moreland mess

What’s with the wild man picture accompanying a New York Observer piece by Ross Barkan about State Senator Martin Golden’s latest tirade against what seems to be everybody in Albany but Golden himself ( See “State Senator: ‘Nuclear Option’ May Be Used to Unseat Pols Who Don’t Back Tax Credit” by Ross Barkan,  4/7/15, New York Observer/ observer.com [http://observer.com/2015/04/state-senator-nuclear-option-may-be-used-to-unseat-pols-who-dont-back-tax-credit/]).

POSSIBLY A MYTHIC FABLE OF WORDS AND DEEDS

One suspects that after last year's blow-out re-election, Marty G. and his staff of bards and troubadours are feeling the kind of invincibility that comes from reading your own press releases recited back to you verbatim by the more compliant parts of the local media establishment.  It's hubris like that, which leads to stories like this [And I'm not comparing Golden to a golden-greaved Achilles...  This story is much more mundane].  Plus, such a sense of invincibility leads to a fool-hardiness, like continuing to fund the kinds of things that were mentioned in the Moreland Report that set off Federal Prosecutor Preet Bharara in the first place.

GOLDEN THREATENS “NUCLEAR OPTION” BY JEWISH GROUPS IF BUSINESS TAX BREAK ISN’T PASSED TO BENEFIT A RELATIVELY SMALL GROUP OF STUDENTS

Here’s how Ross Barkan reported it  —  word for word, from the beginning:   “A prominent state senator recently claimed that religious groups may try to oust state lawmakers who won’t support a controversial education tax credit. ***   State Senator Martin Golden, a Brooklyn Republican, said religious groups, particularly one tied to an unnamed rabbi, would use a ‘nuclear option’ if the education investment tax credit–a bill that would give a tax credit to people and companies donating money to public schools and private school scholarship funds–does not become law by the end of the legislative session in June. This option, in essence, would be drumming up candidates to challenge lawmakers opposing the bill, he said.  ***   ‘A rabbi today, I understand, I’m not gonna go into names but he mentioned some of the groups that went in and met with some of the assembly members and said, “Listen, we’re gonna run against you. We’re gonna put people up against you and you and you” and they even named the people they’re gonna put up,’ Mr. Golden said in an interview on the television show “The Jewish View” that was posted March 25....”

GOLDEN SPOKESMAN SAID THE STATE SENATOR SPOKE OUT  “... IN THE HEAT OF THE MOMENT...”, BUT WOULD NOT DISCUSS DETAILS OF THE THREAT BY GOLDEN OR HIS LATEST "SECRET" ALLIES

In an effort at some kind of damage control, James McClelland, a spokesperson for Mr. Golden indicated that “... [i]t was said in the heat of the moment....  “There were no specifics and no one was singled out. [He] didn’t offer any names....”   Although Mr. McClelland acknowledged. that  threats were made, he noted that they were not specific to any lawmaker; however he refused to disclose who the unnamed rabbi mentioned by his boss Golden might have been, or to what organization that Rabbi belonged.

It’s hard to conceive that Golden would do anything this embarrassing to Catholic Church leaders or the Bishop of Brooklyn; but with this new rambunctious Marty, who knows what the future might bring.

SOME SAY IT’S MARTY'S TRYING TO DISTRACT US FROM SEEING LITTLE BOMBS IN THE NYS BUDGET FOR THE COMING YEAR,   LIKE THIS ONE

It seems that the newest New York State budget continues to fund a local “operation” that houses many questionable, but politically connected “programs.” Here’s how another of the former local beat writers, Chris Bragg, put it in the Albany Times-Union’s “Capitol Confidential”:   “The recently passed state budget steers $505,000 to a nonprofit that was intensely scrutinized by the Moreland Commission on public corruption during its foreshortened nine-month lifespan. ***   In a preliminary report issued in December 2013 detailing its ongoing investigations, the Moreland Commission devoted several paragraphs to its investigation of  ‘one small storefront in New York City that appears to house several interconnected non-profit organizations that receive state funding to provide various medical services.’  ***   Though unnamed in the report, the organization was later identified as Relief Resources, a mental health services referral provider in the largely Orthodox Jewish neighborhood of Borough Park, Brooklyn....”  ( See “Budget steers $505K to Moreland-scrutinized charity” by Chris Bragg, 4/8/15, Albany Times-Union/ blog.timesunion.com  [http://blog.timesunion.com/capitol/archives/231972/budget-steers-505k-to-moreland-scrutinized-charity/]). [btw, I said, "...from the beginning" but not "to the end..."]

Chris Bragg went on to say that “... [t]he Moreland report stated that the [charity mentioned above] had received nearly $3 million in taxpayer dollars largely from a wide variety of lawmakers’ pork-barrel grants, including some from members whose districts fall outside Brooklyn. Yet the Relief funds “certainly didn’t go to improve the health of anybody in New York City,” Moreland co-chair William Fitzpatrick said in an interview just after the preliminary report’s release. ‘Who got those dollars?’...”   And that “...  Relief Resources received this year’s $505,000 through a reappropriation of pork-barrel spending that had been approved in a previous budget, but not yet spent. Its inclusion in this year’s $142 billion spending plan is another example of what the good-government group Citizens Union dubbed in a report last month ‘Spending in the Shadows,’ through a process allowing funds to be allocated by lawmakers with relatively little scrutiny, rather than through competitively bid contracts’...”

HERE’S THE PART THAT GOLDEN DOESN’T WANT TO SEE THE LIGHT OF DAY

According to the Bragg report in the Albany Times-Union, “...  before new member items ceased in 2010, records show that Relief received $475,000 from Brooklyn Republican [S]tate Sen. Marty Golden; $500,000 jointly from Golden and ex-Senate Republican leader Joe Bruno; and $300,000 from ex-Queens state Sen. Malcolm Smith, a Democrat convicted of bribery in February. It also received a $300,000 New York City Council member item sponsored by Felder, before his 2012 election to the [S]tate Senate....”

All of that “support” continues under Golden’s GOP Majority Leader Dean Skelos  — but with State Senator Simcha Felder voting with Golden’s caucus, Golden now can stay about one step away from “ground zero.” (Wait a minute, this isn’t the “Nuclear Option” part; however, the overlaps should be obvious.)