Taxing Times in New York

Democrats in the state legislature are planning to soak the "rich"? Check.

Are they considering imposing tolls on East River Bridges and/or raise payroll taxes considerably to finance the MTA which faces a budget hole? Check.

Meanwhile, Governor Paterson has gone ahead and given raises to quite a few people on the Second Floor despite directives to state agencies to curtail raises. It's funny how that works, despite the huge gaping budget hole that New York faces.

This should come as no surprise then: Andrew Cuomo is looking like he'd crush Paterson in the latest polling. In fact, Cuomo looks like he'd crush anyone in the upcoming elections, including Rudy Giuliani.

Still, Paterson has to govern for the moment, and he's been dealt a rough hand by the recession which has battered the golden goose for state revenues: Wall Street and those bonus babies that get huge bonuses on an annual basis for their work. Now, with the revenues gone because of the 2008 toxic paper crisis and the meltdown of multiple financial companies, the state's answer is to tax many of these same people even higher than before to make end's meet.

Paterson is busy blasting the misleading union ads decrying budget cuts in health care. Has anyone in the media bothered to call out both the governor and the unions for their misleading statements regarding budgets - the state's budget is an increase over last year, and yet the unions are screaming that they're cutting the budget by billions and the governor proclaims that he's cut the budget.

In fact, he took his case before the annual Black and Puerto Rican Caucus banquet where he slammed the unions in gloriously un-PC fashion:

And I must tell you in all honesty, I have to go home and ask myself that every night. … I am trying as are all of you to balance this budget fairly. But we’ve been dealt a bad hand. … This is a difficult time, and we will work this out, and we will work it out together.

And listen: I don’t care how many commercial how many commercials you all pay for, I don’t care how many points you all make me lose in the poll, and I don’t care how many blind people you roll out in wheelchairs, I’m going to get this budget balanced, and I’m going to get it balanced by April 1.

It's all nonsense; the state is spending more money than last year, but just not as much as they had hoped to spend. It's that difference that is called a budget cut and far too many New Yorkers will fall for the fear and loathing by those effective union ads and push the legislature to "restore the cuts" when there was no such thing. If the state really sought to cut the budget and restore fiscal sanity, they would not impose a budget larger than last year. It would not only save billions of dollars, but would avoid new taxes and fees to make up the shortfall in revenues anticipated by the increase in state spending in the governor's proposed budget.

The MTA is a morass of fiscal irresponsibility and the state will sooner impose the payroll taxes, sending businesses fleeing than to impose tolls on the East River bridges, including the Brooklyn Bridge, Manhattan Bridge, Queensboro Bridge, Williamsburg Bridge, and the Harlem River bridges.

If you're wondering where your Obama tax cuts are about to go, there's your answer. It's just going to end up in the state tax coffers. You've just witnessed the tax shell game.

UPDATE:
And how could I have forgotten Paterson's call to impose and collect taxes on porn.