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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Alighieri who wrote (157448)	1/6/2003 1:21:00 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1582683

The Right is so busy accusing the Left either of being unpatriotic or immoral, they don't have time to see the forest for the trees. ...but they do have time to cut the forests and the trees... Al, and its raising hell in the NW. We may have to have a lynching party. <g> ted

To: Alighieri who wrote (157448)	1/6/2003 3:26:21 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1582683

Al, deficits seem to be a GOP tradition.......is this what we have to look forward to on the national level? _______________________________________________________ The New York Times/6 January, 2003 Pataki's Sugar Coating By BOB HERBERT he governor of New York could, if he wanted to be a stand-up guy, tell the hard truth about the state's calamitous fiscal situation. George E. Pataki could go on television and, with his eyes fixed honestly and sincerely on the voters, talk about the billions in deficits that are piling up, and the programs and policies that are necessary to correct (rather than conceal) the madness. He could do that. But don't bet on it. Mr. Pataki is, above all, a defensive politician. He has mastered the art of camouflage, and avoids at all costs the danger inherent in too much candor and exposure. That's the governor's great talent. Politically, you never know where he's likely to emerge. He darts right, then left. Now you see him cutting taxes. Now you see him raising spending. One moment he's the embodiment of the Republican Party's conservative principles. The next moment he's sprinting to the left of Carl McCall. Trying to pin the governor down is like trying to measure simultaneously the precise location and the velocity of a quantum particle. It can't be done. The deficit in the budget for the current fiscal year, which ends in three months, is roughly $2 billion. This is the budget that the governor and the Legislature put together with smoke and mirrors last spring. They did their Albany moon dance (of which the first and most important step is overestimating revenues) and declared the budget balanced. Then everybody winked and nodded and chuckled at one another. The budget wasn't balanced, and the pols all knew it. But, hey, it was an election year. What the voters didn't know wouldn't hurt them. Now it's January and we need $2 billion to close the gap in a budget we were told was balanced last spring. And we need it quickly because the deficit staring us in the face for the upcoming fiscal year, which starts April 1, is an additional $10 billion. If you had listened to Governor Pataki's inaugural address Wednesday, you would not have gotten the impression that the state is facing its worst financial crisis in many decades, perhaps since the Depression. Oh, he mentioned the crisis. And he asked that New Yorkers face up to it with courage and unity. But he did not talk about the very tough measures that will have to be taken and the real pain that will have to be endured to bring the state budget into real balance. And he sure didn't talk about the fact that he and the leaders of both major parties behaved for the better part of a year as if this very dangerous situation didn't even exist. How are we going to get out of this mess? What services will be cut? What taxes or fees raised? Will state employees be laid off? Will the public schools suffer? Stay tuned. The governor's refusal to even acknowledge the dimensions of the crisis not only postponed the necessary hard work for a year, it also worsened the fiscal crisis faced by New York City. The governor was running a feel-good campaign for re-election. So for most of last year, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a fellow Republican, covered Mr. Pataki's political flank by insisting there was no need to raise taxes to cope with the city's burgeoning deficit. That fiction evaporated last month when the mayor signed an 18.5 percent increase in the property tax, the largest hike in history. The city still faces a substantial budget deficit. At least Mayor Bloomberg acted. No one knows what Governor Pataki is up to. Will he begin the heavy lifting that is necessary to ward off a long-term catastrophe? Will he seek to raise taxes where it's necessary and wield his scalpel wisely when it comes to service cuts? Will he ask for a measure of shared sacrifice from all New Yorkers? If his past behavior (and the behavior of most politicians) is a guide, Governor Pataki will do whatever best feeds his ambitions. The feeling is that he longs to join the Bush administration, either as the president's running mate in 2004 (highly unlikely) or in a cabinet post. That could make him reluctant to defy Republican orthodoxy by substantially raising taxes. Another moon dance is probably on tap. The state will most likely raid the tobacco settlement money, which was supposed to be used for health care programs. And the pols will scout around for any other temporary financing they can find. But they are running out of schemes and ploys and ruses. Pretty soon the honest truth will be the only tool available.