Here are my so-called predictions for 2017. As usual some of these I predict to put a curse on them so that they WON’T happen. Sometimes I predict them so that they WILL happen. Sometimes I predict things that I really think will happen. No matter what I predict, people always say that my predictions are real and that I should be held accountable for them. So here we go:
After a defense agency leaks news of a Putin-Trump conversation relating to fixing the presidential election there will be an immediate move in the House of Representatives to impeach Trump. Speaker Ryan who will certainly run for president at some point will be under such incredible pressure that he will have to allow an impeachment vote. Trump will be impeached and the Senate will convene for a trial and convict Trump. There will be other charges including one that says he violated the emoluments clause of the United States Constitution.
Governor Andrew Cuomo will be seriously embarrassed by the trial of his close colleagues when his name is dragged through the mud.
Planned Parenthood and Public Radio will have more contributions than ever before in history.
Preet Bharara will announce an exploratory committee to pave the way for a possible run for governor of New York either as a Republican or a Democrat. The crime fighting US Attorney will immediately be endorsed by Senator Chuck Schumer, his long time sponsor and by Donald Trump who will then get to name his successor. A Trump intimate will leak that Bharara was concerned that the Republican president was worried that sooner or later Bharara would come after him. Trump was heard to say, “I sure didn’t want a replay of the Watergate Saturday Night Massacre.”
President Trump will undertake a major anti-press effort. He’ll call for tougher libel laws and he will use his surrogates like wife Melania and daughter Ivanka to sue at will bankrupting newspapers and others who dare to call them out on personal or professional issues.
The (now) gang of seven members of the Independent Democratic Conference (IDC) in the New York State Senate will keep the Republicans in power despite the fact that they are a minority.
Governor Andrew Cuomo will be called out by a coalition of minority and good government groups who will say that if he had been more persuasive he could have made Senate Jeffrey Klein realign with the regular Democrats in the Senate. A powerful black politician will suggest that Klein and his gang are blatantly racist because Senator Andrea Stewart-Cousins, the leader of the Senate Democrats is a black woman. A coalition of Bronx Democrats, represented by Klein, will turn on their senator and offer a more progressive candidate in the 2018 elections.
A Republican insurgency in the state Senate will replace Senator John J. Flanagan as the Senate Majority Leader with a newcomer, State Senator James Tedisco who was once the leader of the Assembly Republicans. Tedisco will call for a wide-scale revision of the legislative ethics laws.
The Supreme Court will reverse the guilty verdicts against Speaker Sheldon Silver and Dean Skelos. The Court will rule that there wasn’t the necessary proof that a quid pro quo existed between the two men and those who are alleged to have bribed them.
The effort by some very well-meaning people to convince the people to vote for a Constitutional Convention will fail. The primary arguments against yet another convention is all be that the same people who now run both houses of the Legislature will end up electing their friends and associates to be delegates to the convention. People who are already fed up with the Legislature will say, “What do we need this for? If the Legislature wants to make changes, they have the power to do it.” Others will say, “knowing these clowns they’ll take the good stuff out of what we have now in the Constitution and put bad stuff in.”
