From left to right, a bunch of politicians in Albany on June 6th, saying they're gonna make up their minds about ethics reform sometime in the near future, possibly by appointing some people to make sure everyone stops being shady. (Source: Lori Van Buren/Times Union)

 

Today is the official deadline for Cuomo and the legislature to appoint the 15 members of their Joint Commission on Public Ethics: a new watchdog group that they came up with this summer. JCOPE will be replacing the New York State Commission on Public Integrity, which has been operating for months with a skeleton crew authorized to collect, but not investigate, reported ethics violations.

 

Some people in the Cuomo administration told their political buds that the appointment stuff will probably get done closer to this Thursday, actually.

 

As part of the new ethics regime, Spitzer-era restrictions on catered legislative receptions have been lifted—heralding a return to the cocktail weenie bacchanals of yester-yore!

 

Mikhail Prokhorov—owner of the soon-to-be Brooklyn Nets—has announced that he’ll be making a bid for president … of Russia … against Vladimir Putin … a man who rides horses shirtless and never loses elections.

 

About 290,000 businesses in the New York City suburbs will no longer have to pay taxes for the MTA anymore, on the grounds that they don’t use that shit anyway, especially since they were kicked off their fucking improv team because Stacey is psycho jealous.

 

Occupy Wall Street is “squidding” Goldman Sachs today. (More on what that means later.)

 

The guy who took Anthony Weiner’s old seat thinks he can beat Kirsten Gillibrand in a senate race.

[Update: A previous version of this post got the number of people on the ethics committee wrong. Sorry.]

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