Well, they're at it again - Matthew Carolan and Raymond J. Keating, the two columnists in Long Island's only daily newspaper whose apparent sole raison d'être is to snipe at the new Nassau County government for the next four years until their guys are back in the saddle again. Within hours of Tom Suozzi's inauguration as county executive, these guys were all over his case, pointing the finger of blame at him for just about all of the county's fiscal ills before he was even on the job.

This week, these two political geniuses ran a column in which they are actually suggesting that the outrageous conduct of the Nassau Assessment Review Commission, that neat little body of Republican insiders who've been handing out free real estate tax reduction passes to their insider buddies for years may, in large measure, be laid at the feet of the Democratic majority in the legislature. They posit the notion that, "the Democrats have held the legislature for a few years now - and already have passed 'reformist' legislation on reassessment. So," they ask, "where were they when top Democrats in the city of Long Beach, for example, were pulling down their property tax cuts?"

For anyone who has lived in Nassau County for any length of time, you'd swear these guys are living on another planet. They suggest by innuendo that the hard evidence for their case against the Democrats is that Bruce Nyman, the former Democratic county legislator from Long Beach and now Tom Suozzi's new communications director, returned an $828 tax rebate he received as a result of the reassessment of his home because he must be guilty of an unspecified something.

Forget that Republican insiders received millions in reassessment monies

during the heyday of Gulotta mismanagement. Carolan and Keating insist on implying that the Democrats are to fault. And the $828 is an example of the problem. Forget that there is no evidence that Nyman ever asked anyone for a favor or that there is no evidence that his home was not indeed overassessed and he might be entitled to the refund. They simply throw out the notion that the return of $828 to a county government awash in hundreds of millions of dollars of Republican created debt has some kind of significance.

You know, I thought that when Emmet Kelly died, the circus would forever be without clowns again. Enter Carolan and Keating, valedictorian and salutatorian of the Emmet Kelly School of Political Analysis. Perhaps their column ought to be syndicated so it can run in the Barnum & Bailey Daily.

Michael A. Levy