vote!

image courtesy of www.monoscope.com

Tomorrow is election day!  I don’t know about you (I almost said “my friends.”  Who do I think I am?  John McCain? You betcha.   Call me Maverick) (Guys, I know.  Sometimes I am the only one laughing at my jokes.  Especially Election 2008 ones.)

Maybe you are thinking “Hey, no big deal, these are just city and state elections.  These are small beans.”  Not so.  The frustrating beauty of our American system is that the most immediate effects come from our “small beans” elections.  Mayors, governors, city councils, state assemblies, district attorneys; these are the people who make the “small” decisions like how to budget for schools, fire departments, streets and garabage pickup.  These are the people who fight the small fights like congestion pricing, commuting costs, residential zoning, industrial rezoning, water quality and taxes.  They aren’t glitzy (we in New York are a little jaded by our billionaire mayor spending $100 million of his own cash to run a campaign) and they don’t fill football stadiums, but these are just as, if not more, important elections than the national contests.  So get out there!

Which reminds me:  Can you believe that it has been one year since we elected President Obama?  Where were you on election night last year?  O. and I went to a local bar to watch the results and just as we decided to head home the whole street erupted into cheers:  Obama was declared the winner.  It was one of the most specatacular nights in Brooklyn and one of the most memorable nights of my life.  Where were you?  How did you feel?  Please share your story, my friends.