Remember that time when Gov. David A. Paterson was good at his job? Yeah. It was about a year and a half ago, when he was a tight-lipped lieutenant governor whose soul purpose in life was to agree with former Gov. Eliot Spitzer and smile for the cameras.
Granted, he was thrown into the governorship almost overnight, a position he never craved or wanted, but he is really failing miserably. I can't help but feel like he's not even trying.
The point is, I would rather have Spitzer in office paying for sex and actually caring about New York state citizens than Paterson traipsing around the office, doing whatever he wants for the next year and running our state into the ground.
Paterson has all these 'ideas' to increase the state's budget in the middle of our crumbling economy, but has he stopped to think how his genius plans are going to affect the people of New York?
No.
Many complain about his idea to withhold tax returns (totaling hundreds of millions of dollars) from citizens in order to boost the budget. I can't really complain about that, though. I won't be getting a tax return at all. Apparently, even though I'm a broke college student in student loan debt, cashing a savings bond that I got at my baptism because I'm desperate to feed myself counts as an exorbitant amount of income.
Whatever. It's not like I need to eat … or do laundry … or put gas in my car to get to work. Just take all my money, Paterson. It's all yours.
In all honesty, we should really just move. If Paterson has his way, no one's going to be able to afford to live here anyway.
Some of the taxes Paterson's proposing include a 4 percent tax on iTunes, taxi, limo and bus rides, cable and satellite T.V., clothing under $500, movies, concerts, haircuts, massages and gym memberships. Paterson also wants to double the tax on beer, bringing it up to $0.24 per gallon, as well as instituting an 18 percent tax on soft drinks and eliminating the law that caps the gasoline tax at $0.08 per gallon.
Paterson wants to raise all these taxes to increase revenue for the state, but he has no set plan to bring jobs to all the unemployed New Yorkers. It's like he feels it's President Barack Obama's job, so he shouldn't have to worry about it. Sorry, Paterson, but Obama's job is the nation. Your job, whether you like it or not, is New York State. Act accordingly.
Paterson is not running for re-election, which means he pretty much has free reign for the next year. If he doesn't balance out these tax proposals with ideas to employ more New York state residents, no one is going to be able to afford to live here.
We won't be able to drive to our non-existent jobs, drown our sorrows in the highly-taxed beer, alleviate our stress with a concert or a movie and we won't be able to even stay home and download a song off iTunes for cheap. Not to mention, we're all going to look like Neanderthals because we won't be able to afford haircuts or other salon services.
What really gets me, though, is his tax on soft drinks. He claims it's to help fight obesity. David, if you're trying to fight obesity, then why are you hiking the prices of gym memberships with taxes in this toilet bowl economy?
It simply doesn't make sense. Apparently, you can lose weight by simply cutting out soda and not setting foot in the gym. It's the logic that Weight Watchers operates on and goes against everything a physician will tell you, so it clearly makes sense.
I guess all I'm really saying is that I love living in New York State and I'd like to stay here. So David, remove your head from your sphincter, think, and then act.
I'm too young to go bankrupt and I didn't do anything to you. I didn't even judge you when you admitted to cheating on your wife and doing cocaine. Please don't ruin my life. Thanks.
E-mail: caitlin.tremblay@ubspectrum.com
Photo: Breadchastick / Wikimedia Commons
