What a disturbing day.In a noble demonstration of leadership, Governor David A. Paterson called the Legislature back to address our fiscal crisis. He proposed modest mid-year reductions in the rate of spending. Despite the reporting of certain lazy members of the Albany press corps, he did not propose budget "cuts."
The usual suspects appeared anyway, of course.
If New Yorkers want to truly understand why our state is being destroyed, it was on display outside the Capitol today. So-called protesters were in action. They were screaming into bull-horns, using children as political props and waving obnoxious, fake signs.
They were demanding another hand-out, another government program, another tax hike. If you told them the facts of the financial doomsday we are now living in, they wouldn't care. They wouldn't give a damn.
It was an appalling spectacle. These people exhibited their ignorance, greed and selfishness.
New Yorkers who see the pictures outside the Capitol could reasonably conclude it was comprised of grass roots protesters. Or "concerned citizens," as the predictably clueless Times Union described them. Wrong. They're union employees. A true protester shows up motivated by free will.
We are in a terrible economic decline, and I'm tired of citing the numbers. The numbers that show how many jobs we've lost. The numbers that detail the population flight from New York. The numbers that demonstrate, undeniably, how we are nationwide leaders in spending and taxation. These numbers write the obituary of our former great state.
And who do we have outside our Capitol, a building I love and my former place of employment, today? People too stupid and narcissistic to accept the facts. They want to continue the same, failed policies that have turned our state into a national laughingstock. A state over a million people have waved good-bye to during the last decade.
I don't travel home to Long Island anymore to visit my Mom and Dad. I have to go to Virginia, where they retired. Largely because of these hopeless, Jimmy Hoffa-style unionists plundering The Empire State just two blocks away from me today who will never get it. Ever.
