Talk:Sheldon Silver

message: This page needed considerable cleaning up. Sorry - I'm still a bit of a newbie at Wikipedia, but I *have read* and *do understand* issues like NPOV and avoiding weasel-phrases.
So, I'm cleaning up some of these issues, and I started this talk page. Never done the latter before, so apologies if I'm screwing up (I've made a note to look into how to do them -- and I mean well -- so anyone who flames me for it, please send me your phone number and we'll chat. >;-)
Some of the assertions were just plain biased (and I'll mention I'm a centrist, politically, from the entire other end of the country). It was laughable that Silver was portrayed as some sort of lone Democrat counterweight to the crushing power of the Republican Party in NY State -- today's (2/4/06) NY Times has an article referring to NY as a Democratic stronghold, as one tiny example.
: Silver was not portrayed as the lone Democratic counterweight "to the crushing power of the Republican Party in NY State." He was simply portrayed as the counterweight in the state government, which he essentially is. I'd personally argue the Republicans are less powerful than the Democrats in the state overall, but the fact is that Republicans control the Governorship (at least for now) and they control one half of the Legislature (and probably will for a while). They are not toothless in the least, and even if they lose the Governor's desk this year, they will not be toothless.
: I reworded the offending paragraph, but put it back more or less in its original form. The point about Silver being (as originally worded "by default") the lone counterweight is kind of a segway into some of the criticism section. It's also just how New York State politics have worked for decades, and hardly a problem unique to Silver; indeed, if the governor were a Democrat, Joseph Bruno would by default become the lone counterweight to Democratic power in the lawmaking process.  Anyway, I looked at the old wording and can see where it's confusing (that may be my fault), but the idea behind it was more or less factually correct (the terms 'legislature' and 'assembly' were mixed up in one place). Bolwerk 17:35, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Belated thanks. The points above seem to have been addressed. —Patrug (talk) 08:13, 15 February 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: The apealate injunction preventing Espada from becoming Temporary Senate President does not place Sen. Smith into the role of Temp. President, therefore Speaker Silver is, atleast until midday tomorrow the Acting Luitenent Governor of New York.--Rljackson67 (talk) 03:14, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Belated thanks. The points above seem to have been addressed. —Patrug (talk) 08:13, 15 February 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Acting Lt. Gov. Silver 

message: This page needs to be updated by a knowledgable source. Spitizer has resigned; with the chaos in the State Senate in 2009 and the precieved void of leadership by Paterson, Silver was said to be the only one of the Big Three in Albany to command influencee according to a NY Times article of 2010; Cuomo became governor and has steadily isolated Silver and stripped him of power by triangulating with the Republican Senate and allying with Joe Morelle, formerly a close Silver ally. And of course the Lopez sexual harrassment debacle, which is the most notable of all these events. 74.69.8.195 (talk) 14:40, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Belated thanks. The points above seem to have been addressed. —Patrug (talk) 08:13, 15 February 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Update 

message: Criticism section needs to be re-written in NPOV. Tag added for now. I.am.a.qwerty (talk) 18:55, 3 April 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: , I do not see what is NPOV - particularly no weasel words, you should flag them, else I will take the flag down.--Wuerzele (talk) 03:09, 31 January 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Belated thanks. The points above seem to have been addressed. —Patrug (talk) 08:13, 15 February 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  POV issues in criticism section 

message: This deletion 
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sheldon_Silver&diff=601346878&oldid=595550369
eddy212 (talk | contribs)
(Out of date, irrelevant)
:Silver has long been criticized for his employment with Weitz & Luxenberg, one of the state's larger litigation firms. This has led some to accuse Silver of having a conflict of interest, as he has consistently blocked medical malpractice and other tort reform in Albany. Weitz & Luxenberg insists that Silver's ties with the firm are "negligible" but Silver has refused to disclose the details of his employment or the salary he receives from the law firm.
turns out to be not irrelevant after all, since according to the NYT Silver is going to be arrested for his unexplained income from law firms, possibly including Weitz. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/22/nyregion/sheldon-silver-new-york-assembly-speaker-faces-arrest-on-corruption-charges.html?emc=edit_na_20150122&nlid=52068085 
I don't see anything here about Silver's connection to the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty either. There was a lot of media coverage about that. 
For the benefit of editors who are new to Wikipedia, I would suggest that you read WP:RS. Basically, if you want to say something about Silver, you have to quote a reliable source, such as a newspaper. If you don't include a reliable source, it will be quickly deleted. OTOH, if you can find several reliable sources that say the same thing, it will not be deleted. If it's true, it's pretty easy to find reliable sources with a Google search. 
--Nbauman (talk) 11:49, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Belated thanks. The Sheldon Silver article appropriately discusses those payments from law firms, and the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty article appropriately mentions its connection to Silver, but the Met Council probably doesn't have sufficient weight in the context of Silver's long career to include in his bio article. The info is reliably sourced; it just seems to fall short of the WP:BALASPS policy, cited below in the subsection "Balancing aspects". —Patrug (talk) 22:21, 28 June 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Criticism and reliable media coverage 

message: Beyond the specific points discussed above, we should also keep in mind the policy WP:BALASPS:
:
In that spirit, I've just deleted a few Sheldon Silver paragraphs that merely presented ordinary disagreements between two people. Viewing them in the context of Silver's long career encompassing many serious issues of policy and law, I think we can safely skip the smaller personal disputes.—Patrug (talk) 00:59, 16 February 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Balancing aspects 

message: Before placing this opinion we would need to see what other highly qualified authors say. We would need to bring all opinions and see if this is a minority opinion. 
In addition, it gives undue weight since it is too lengthy and sounds like POV Pushing. 
I would support removing it unless/until proven otherwise/corrected. Caseeart (talk) 05:51, 24 February 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: You must be referring to the quote from The Buffalo News. The same thoughts have also been published regularly by major newspapers throughout New York State, almost a unanimous consensus, so I've added them to the article. A multi-Pulitzer-winning upstate newspaper is a good representative source for summarizing a mutiny by upstate officeholders, and it's not undue weight for this Wikipedia article to give it 5 out of 64 sentences. If anything, the article should include even more discussion of the "Three Men in a Room" system that fosters so much of Albany's corruption. —Patrug (talk) 03:53, 9 December 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lengthy disputable opinion from a relatively unknown newspaper 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified  on Sheldon Silver. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified  on Sheldon Silver. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I'd been meaning to add a sentence giving the appeals court's rationale for overturning Silver's 2015 conviction on July 13, 2017.  However I can't figure it out.  According to the ruling, "The District Court’s instructions on honest services fraud and extortion do not comport with McDonnell and are therefore in error," adding that the jury must be "properly instructed, as is required by the law for the verdict to stand." (See also this NYT article.)
What I don't understand here is the legal meaning of "properly instructed".  What was "improper" about the District Court's 2015 instructions at the time?  Was there some precedent justifying McDonnell's narrowing of "official services" that the District Court should have known about, as distinct from an arbitrary decision in 2016 that no one could reasonably have predicted in 2015?  If not then I don't understand the sense in which an "error" was made in the jury instructions, other perhaps than in the sense that if you bet on the favorite at very short odds and it unexpectedly stumbles near the finish then in hindsight you were "in error".  Vaughan Pratt (talk) 22:50, 22 July 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reason for overturning conviction