Very, very one-sided reporting too, Ravitch = God. Ravitch is not non-partisan, he's a Democrat, he ran for mayor as a Dem, he's just not a rabid political hack. They say non-partisan so many times it's not an accident, and totally fail to mention this tiny little point. Finally around minute 32 the host finally says, 'Ravitch is an old school liberal' yet weirdly, he apparently does not view this as contradictory to non-partisan.

The final summary seems to be that Ravitch believes you have to cut services or raise taxes, this is presented as some profound concept. Well, I agree of course, his plan made a lot of sense for them, under the circumstances, but it's all meaningless to talk about future cuts, because future cuts never happen, even with threatened penalties because you can't enforce such things. Anyone not talking about immediate cuts and charting out specific future cuts is really not helping. In that whole clip, they never seemed to mention any specific proposed cuts in spending. So, I'm sure he means well, he seems like a good guy, that's basically why he was picked anyway I suppose, but I don't see much to praise.

Sort of the point really, politicians need to - and some do - grab their balls and say specifically what they'll cut, or they need to raise taxes, and that latter is even less doable politically than cuts and not a good idea, for New York or the country as a whole.