Roads Crumbling, New York Wants To Raise Taxes

If you live in New York it might be a wise investment to pick up a  pair of good sneakers, you’re going to need them. According to the soon to be lieutenant governor, Dick Ravitch, New York will be lacking the tax revenue to afford maintaining the roadways in a manner fit for driving.

            What are his solutions? According to the NY Post, he will be using the same old liberal tax and spend way of trying to fix a problem:

…significantly higher taxes, fees, fares and tolls or a drastically diminished transportation program that could jeopardize safety and economic well-being.

            As with any inability of government to pay for something, it is not a revenue problem but a spending problem. Anytime there is a budget deficit or a program that government is supposed to fund that goes under liberals always say taxes are too low so lets raise them. They fail to see beyond the failure of their spending ways and decide to confiscate more income from the taxpayers. If less money was spent on useless programs that only benefit their lowlife voter base then there would be no need for raising taxes to pay for things that actually should be funded; like roadways and other infrastructure. Taxes are only a symptom of the disease, not the cancer slowly traveling to the brain.

            The state of New York, pays the most money for Medicare, welfare, social benefits and the public sector unions have raided the public treasury to get sweetheart pensions and pay for their members at the expense of everyone else in the state. The total budget operating budget is around $136 billion dollars and the majority of that goes to the programs listed above.

            All of this has been at the expense of transportation and infrastructure. Everyday, this writer drives on crumbling bridges, pothole ridden roads and spent tires litter the side of the roadways.

            The solution beyond raising taxes is to take a sledgehammer to spending. Residents of New York, especially on Long Island and upstate, pay the highest taxes in the nation. If you were to raise taxes even higher than they are now, you would see even more people flee New York in droves towards states that have a much lower tax burden and see the industrial base of this state smashed.

            What to cut? Well, I see Medicare a good place to start and maybe completely cut using the tried and true method of state nullification. I would mandate that state worker’s salaries be topped at $100,000. The State also needs to go into serious austerity mode and severely slash state benefits and entitlements to free-loaders. I’m sure you could go through the state budget line by line and find things to cut; if you have a vibrant social life I would advise against this.

            Dick Ravitch(say that three times without laughing) is right in diagnosing the problem but dead wrong on the solutions. We need good roads that are fit to drive on for the state’s economic security and future. Without world class roads, bridges and tunnels you will see this state brought into the gutter with California. Albany will be burning while the freeloading ghetto welfare recipients will sit around in their pajamas eating Coco Puffs, watching Jerry Springer and getting free root canals.

            Andrew Cuomo will be the governor in January. Will he swoop into Albany, slay the union dragon and cut spending before this state goes fiscally insolvent? I’m not holding my breath. 




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