It May Be Time to Think Outside the Box... or Country...

Governor Patterson has called the New York state legislature back into session this week to fix a looming fiscal crisis. The state government has relied too much on Wall Street money in recent years, and with the market down, the money isn't there anymore, but costs are rising (especially those related to gas) and the red ink is rising. Patterson's solution is to do what most of us normal folk do when we have more expenses than money coming in... cut back, tighten the old belt.

The centerpiece of Patterson's plan to fix things in New York is to cap the growth of property taxes. Property taxes are the number one reason why jobs and people are leaving New York; they are among the highest in the nation and a business-killer. However, this does not sit well with fans of tax-and-spend policies. The usual suspects are out... teachers' unions, civil service unions, and the Socialist, errrr... "Working Families" Party. They and a bunch of 527 groups are bombarding the airwaves with ads blasting Patterson and the State Senate for pushing this plan.

After all, don't you just know that if we *gasp* don't give the state a blank check to spend as much as they want any time they want, our children will go uneducated. They point to Massachusetts as an example of a state whose children "suffered" when education spending was reined in. That's kinda funny, considering Massachusetts had the HIGHEST TEST SCORES of any state in recent assessments. If that's what depriving our children of a "quality education" looks like, deprive away!

Of course, the real motivation is to keep the public money flowing, not to save our children or our senior citizens, because the money of course goes through unions and bureaucracy before it ever reaches a child or elderly person. I heard County Executive Mahoney on the radio earlier today, and I understand that actually cutting services amounts to nothing more than passing the costs on to the counties, who then have to raise property taxes themselves or cut the programs. I get that. Again, it comes down to property taxes. So trim the fat out of the budget in rational ways, but in order to increase revenues, you need more businesses in this state, and the way to do that is to cap property taxes. Incidentally, our County Executive is for the cap.

So what is the solution proposed by the Socialist, errr... "Working Families" Party? They have actually done us the favor of not sugar-coating or hiding their real agenda; they are screaming it out in their ads on radio and TV. For them, the solution is... to RAISE taxes on wealthy New Yorkers.

EXCUSE ME?

How does THAT solve anything? Let me repeat: OUR TAXES ARE TOO HIGH AND THAT IS WHY PEOPLE AND JOBS ARE LEAVING! Raising taxes farther does not fix the problem, it exacerbates it. Raise income taxes on rich New Yorkers and just watch how quickly they move away and never come back. And don't give me this BS about how this tactic has worked in the past. That's the new liberal spin... that the Bush tax cuts caused our current economic problems. Gee, didn't realize there was a 5-year delayed reaction between a tax cut and any effects. If that was really the case, we would never pass ANY tax laws, especially in our "I want it now" society today. Yes, Liberal Letter-Writing Minion, the economic hardships of 2008 were preceded by the Bush tax cuts... and by 5 years of ECONOMIC GROWTH caused by those tax cuts. I know you've been hoping for bad economic news for years because it just didn't work when you blamed all our woes on the tax cuts but times were good. Now, you're just being silly.

So the Socialists are calling for higher taxes to solve our problems caused by high taxes. And then of course there is Sheldon Silver and the Assembly, refusing to take this property tax cap seriously. A majority of New Yorkers in a recent poll said they don't think anything will come out of this session; that's just natural cynicism from us New Yorkers, who NEVER expect anything from the most dysfunctional state government in the nation. Those of us who live Upstate have to deal with leaders from the NYC area deciding things for all of us, and some have called for Upstate to secede from the rest of New York and form our own state. Some in NYC want the same, cuz they of course believe that civilization ends at the Westchester County line. I would say that, all things considered, that's not good enough. So I am here to propose my own radical solution to the economic woes of Upstate New York...

Secede from the entire country and join Canada.

Yeah, you may think this is crazy, but apparently I'm not the first to propose such a solution... although I kinda resent the "give Upstate to Canada" line. We're not a charity case, we WANT to leave your asses! You don't talk like us, you annoy the hell out of us, we're outta here... but we're taking Suozzi with us. You don't deserve someone that smart. Fuhgeddaboutit...

Anyway, I hereby propose that we become not the 51st U.S. state, but instead the 11th Canadian province: New Southern Ontario. Don't get me wrong, I love the United States and this is certainly not a slap to our way of government and way of life... I just think this would be a win-win situation for both New York and Canada. Canada wants more people; they openly advertise that they want more population. Well, here ya go, a few million new residents! No need to worry about the Buffalo Bills moving to Canada... they already WOULD BE in Canada! Speaking of sports, we could pull Syracuse University out of the Big East, put them in a Canadian college conference and they would immediately dominate... cuz they've gotta be better than any college team up there. On the downside, we probably would have to keep the whole Chiefs-Toronto Blue Jays relationship since we'd be fellow countrymen now... but the first thing we could do as a Canadian province would be to deport the Simones.

Trust me, it won't be a tough transition. We're getting Tim Horton's here in town soon anyway so we'll fit in quickly. Radio would instantly get better because the stale Syracuse stations would have to play 30% Canadian music. TV would get better because you could watch your favorite American shows and the good Canadian shows like "Degrassi" and "Corner Gas" without needing cable. Plus, we'd all have universal health care... oh, wait... the Canadian system sucks. Okay, scratch that as a positive.

But these guys know what they're doing fiscally; they post budget surpluses and have a *gasp* LOW NATIONAL DEBT. If you're concerned about China owning half our debt and a government that prefers to try to spend its way out of trouble instead of cut, this is a good way out. Let's face it, folks, Canadians already flock here to Syracuse to take advantage of our weak dollar; I say let's get in on the action. Change out our Georges for loonies and twoies, cross the new international border at the Tappan Zee Bridge, go to NYC and SAVE, SAVE, SAVE!

Of course it would mean we'd all have to learn French to read all the bilingual signs... hmmm... I might want to rethink this...