Posted by
The Hermit Crab on Wednesday, December 17, 2008 1:15:25 PM
It's almost enough to make you wish Eliot Spitzer hadn't been caught.
David Patterson, New York's accidental governor (having succeeded Eliot Spitzer in the wake of his "Trousergate" scandal), has decided to break his "no new taxes" pledge and raise (at last count) 88 taxes and fees. The prostrate Empire State already forces its citizens to pay the nations highest taxes. Now, in the midst of an economic slowdown, His Accidency wants to drain the taxpayers of his state of any money they had managed to keep from his Sheriffs of Nottingham. This is literally insane.
If the New York government really wanted to save the state's economy, they would do it by closing the budget deficit strictly with spending cuts. That would make the state business friendly again. Fat chance that will happen.
Governor Patterson apparently thinks he inherited a crown, and not an office.