A legislative breakfast for a Brooklyn-based educational group, Shema Kolainu, on August 5 will be something of a who’s who of New York politicians.

Amusingly, attendees will hear both “remarks” from State Senator Kevin Parker, and “greetings” from one of the Democrats looking to unseat him, Simcha Felder.

The chairman of the event is possible mayoral candidate John Catsimatidis, whose company, Gristedes, is the sponsor.

(Honorary chair status is given to Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton, which may help sell a few more tickets.)

The event is paying tribute to, among others, Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, the State Senate minority leader, Malcolm Smith, comptroller candidate and City Councilman David Weprin, and City Councilman Bill de Blasio, who is also a candidate for Brooklyn borough president.

The state’s teacher’s union wrote two $10,000 checks to Tom DiNapoli’s re-election committee, exceeding -- depending on your definition of the word "election" -- the self-imposed contribution limit the comptroller announced he would adhere to.

The two checks were written by the political action fund of the New York State Union of Teachers, called Vote-Cope.

A campaign spokesman for DiNapoli said the campaign is still adhering to the $10,000 per contributor limit because it applies "per election." (The line from DiNapoli's original announcement is, "The committee will not accept contributions totaling more than $10,000 per contributor per election.")

The spokesman explained that one of those checks in question is for the primary election and the other is for the general election, and therefore that the limit has not been exceeded.

The checks were first spotted by Bill Mahoney of N.Y.P.I.R.G., who has been combing through the filings throughout the day.

Here’s a ticket that intern Em Whitney and I scored as a souvenir from last night’s State Democratic Party fund-raiser at 41 Broad Street. Since the event was closed to the press, we didn’t actually make it inside, but we did get to chat with a few people outside about Hillary Clinton‘s presidential campaign and other topics of interest.  read more »

Dan Squadron is trying to unseat fellow Democrat Marty Connor for state Senate, in the district that represents lower Manhattan and Brooklyn.

But more interesting than the people on the ballot are how Demoratic power brokers are lining up in that fight. Schumer is supporting Squardon, his former aide, against Connor, who didn’t support Schumer in his 1998 primary for Senate.

But as the invitation for Connor’s May 8th fund-raiser at the Ritz Carlton shows, he's got a good chunk of the rest of the party establishment.  read more »

Here’s a shot from the breakfast hosted Sunday morning by the Council of Orthodox Jewish Organizations on the West Side, which, as Grace Rauh noted, attracted nearly every 2009 candidate for citywide office.  read more »

Twenty percent of state revenue comes from Wall Street, Comptroller Tom DiNapoli told Brian Lehrer during an appearance on WNYC this morning.

“That’s corporate profits and that’s personal income taxes from the people who work there—and much of that is paid out from the personal bonuses,” he said. Budget projections until recently “follow[ed] a couple of years of really record bonuses."  read more »

The city and state comptrollers want America’s 10 largest companies to disclose who they make political contributions to.

“Shareholders need full and complete disclosure of companies’ political expenditures to fully evaluate the political uses of the corporate assets,” Bill Thompson said in a public statement.

The companies targeted include Halliburton, Wal-Mart, Entergy and Charles Schwab.

More info over here.

Tom DiNapoli, the Long Island Assemblyman who was installed as state comptroller last year did “a leisurely breakfast interview” with the Great Neck Record that's out today.

The article doesn’t reveal much that we don’t already know, but a hint of one of Eliot Spitzer's first political battles caught my eye. From the profile:  read more »

Tom DiNapoli just released a report saying that the New York Racing Association, which Eliot Spitzer recommended be allowed to continue running three of the state's horse-racing facilities, “continually misinterpreted the mathematical formula for calculating the franchise fee and shortchanged taxpayers.”

Joe Bruno has been pressuring lawmakers to make a decision on the issue before the end of the month.

More on the story here.

OK, this will be the last video from the state Democratic Party's conference yesterday.

In it Tom Suozzi puts up with my questions about kissing one-time rival Tom DiNapoli, on the forehead. And watch what he says he'll do to Eliot Spitzer, another one-time rival.