Posted by
The Hermit Crab on Thursday, November 06, 2008 12:16:40 AM
In my home state of New York, we had the State Senate go Republican for the first time in 40 years. Oddly, this is probably a great blow to the plans of our Democrat Governor, David Patterson. The Governor, who succeeded to the job when Eliot Spitzer was forced to resign in a prostitution scandal (he wasn't a prostitute, except for campaign cash), is the usual New York liberal in all ways save one -- he actually seems to understand economics.
The state, due in large part to the Wall Street meltdown, is facing a huge budget deficit this years and apparently for years to come. He realizes that hiking New York's already sky-high taxes would be a catastrophe, since the state is hemorrhaging jobs already. He was trying to persuade the legislature to cut the bloated state budget, and he was getting at least a little help from State Senate Republicans.
Now, with the take-over of the Senate by his supposed political allies, he most likely has even less chance of accomplishing this than he had before.
Train wreck, here we come!