Turning A Blind Eye On The People

America has long been held up on this pedestal as the land where the streets are paved with gold, but the mere idea of that is a joke now. Where I live, in the state of New York, Governor David Paterson wants to solve our $15.4 billion budget crisis by instating additional taxes on basically everything that costs money. His solution would call for an increase in taxes on items and services such as downloads on iTunes, movie tickets, taxi fares, beer, soda, massages, cable and satellite TV, gym memberships, even haircuts. He also proposes to remove the tax-exemption on clothing costing less than $110, which for most people is all of their clothing. According to State Conservative Party Chairman, Michael Long, all this would be doing is sending more business to New Jersey, and driving tourists as well as New Yorkers to different areas for shopping due to lower taxes, and while they're there they'll fill up the tank too. There is currently a law that puts a cap on gas tax at 8 cents per gallon, which could go up under the Governor's new plan. Another state resident amenity that is particularly convenient in these tough economic times is the SUNY and CUNY school systems having much more reasonable in-state tuition prices, but under Paterson's plan, SUNY admission would go up $620 per year, with CUNY admission going up an addition $600.

Obviously the entire country is in a very serious economic situation, but this is not the way to go about solving the problem. You will only be lowering tourism and making the people of your own state go to other states to get the things they need, which will ultimately cause a new economic problem for the state as well as hurt the local businesses. The Governor's plans also call for almost $700 million in reductions in school aid, lay-offs of over 500 state employees, the closure of 7 state agencies, and cutting about three and a half billion dollars of health care savings. None of these proposals would be helping the people of the state of New York.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, however, does not agree with the Governor's tax proposals and stated that these cuts would end up costing the city money, as well as hurt the school systems with larger class sizes and a decreased number of services for students. Those that stand strongly opposed to Paterson's plans to cut education and healthcare aid suggest an increase in income tax on the wealthiest New Yorkers. His response was "This is where we are. We should have thought about this when we were depending on what we thought was inexhaustible collections of taxes from Wall Street, and now those taxes have fallen off a cliff."

Any level-headed person in this economic time and climate can say that we all need to do our share and make some sacrifices. Any level-headed person, but that apparently does not include David Paterson, whose administration laid out $37,741 for new rugs to be put into the Governor's Albany mansion. Ken Brynien, President of the Public Employees Federation (the organization whose employees were asked to forget about raises due to increased budget cuts,) Brynien was told, "we took up the 50-year-old carpet that was in there, it was junk, frankly." by the commissioner of the New York State Office of General Services, John Egan. Maybe new carpets were necessary, but I don't think that two "Turkish patchwork" rugs coming in at a grand total of $21,000 were remotely necessary, especially for our "we need to make some sacrifices" Governor. The rugs were purchased from Stark Carpets, according to state records. Stark Carpets donated $8,000 to former Governor Eliot Spitzer's campaign. David Paterson was Spitzer's running-mate in 2006. His administration claims that there is no correlation, and Stark Carpets had no comment.