Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver dropped something of a bombshell this morning at a breakfast hosted by City Hall news, declaring his personal support of the commuter tax and saying he'd be willing to pass it in his Democrat-dominated house.Silver Open To Reviving Commuter Tax
That should come as music to the ears of Silver's frequent political foe, Mayor Bloomberg, who just announced yet another round of budget cuts and could certainly use the extra revenue.
The one caveat: Silver said the GOP-controlled Senate would have to take the lead on this, which seems highly unlikely since Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos has made it clear he opposes any and all tax increases.
In addition, it was Skelos who sponsored the 1999 legislation to repeal the commuter tax in the first place. He called the matter "an issue of fairness" at the time.
Bloomberg is waiting for things to change.
13 comments:
Looks like were all going to be paying out of the ass to do anything with this wonderfull economy that was left to Wall street gambling,deregulation thieves, and smirkers that take 10 billion a month for the Iraq war we can pay off for the next 50 years or so.Welcome to debt society.Get your Euro's or gold bars.
NY aint that only palce thats paying for this recklessness, because its affecting London,Asia, and Europe stock markets obviously.
Sheldon Silver - takes his modus operendi from a page of Tammney Hall. This is the best example of what not to have in an elected POL.
I was just told
that there are already some stores
in NYC ACCEPTING EUROS!
In preference to a devalued
U.S. DOLLAR?
And maybe even offering a discount
on payments tendered
with the European Union's currency?
Who knows!
But that's probably coming soon!
In case you haven't figured it out yet VOTERS, we are NO LONGER AN ECONOMIC SUPER POWER!
All that's left to us now
is our military paper tiger image!
The Bush boys finally blew it!
And "Geritol" John Mc Cain wants to privatize/deregulate our medical
care system...
maybe Social Security too!
Go on and vote for him!
I opted to take my S.S. payments
at age 62 so I'm covered for awhile
with what's still left in the government's cookie jar.
You youngsters
are the ones that are going to get screwed in the future if our country has any!
I live in NYC so WTF do I care if
some jerk from Jersey, Connecticut or Long Island has to pay a commuter tax for the privilege of earning his bread off of the city that he's always spitting on!
Other than that,
I can't stand Sheldon Silver!
First I was against it, then I am for it?
NYC lost billions of dollars because Silver to help a long island democratic beat a republican incumbent voted to repeal the Commuter Tax. By the way the the Republican won and NYC lost a fair tax put into law by Rockerfeller.
Why should NYC pay for emergency health car, fire and police protection for someone who earns his money in the city but lives elsewhere?
I'm all for a commuter tax if it is used to offset the fare hikes on public transportation.
How We Became the United States of France
By Bill Saporito - TME Magazine
This is the state of our great republic: We've nationalized the financial system, taking control from Wall Street bankers we no longer trust. We're about to quasi-nationalize the Detroit auto companies via massive loans because they're a source of American pride, and too many jobs — and votes — are at stake. Our Social Security system is going broke as we head for a future where too many retirees will be supported by too few workers. How long before we have national healthcare? Put it all together, and the America that emerges is a cartoonish version of the country most despised by red-meat red-state patriots: France. Only with worse food.
Admit it, mes amis, the rugged individualism and cutthroat capitalism that made America the land of unlimited opportunity has been shrink-wrapped by a half dozen short sellers in Greenwich, Conn. and FedExed to Washington D.C. to be spoon-fed back to life by Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. We're now no different from any of those Western European semi-socialist welfare states that we love to deride. Italy? Sure, it's had four governments since last Thursday, but none of them would have allowed this to go on; the Italians know how to rig an economy.
You just know the Frogs have only increased their disdain for us, if that is indeed possible. And why shouldn't they? The average American is working two and half jobs, gets two weeks off, and has all the employment security of a one-armed trapeze artist. The Bush Administration has preached the "ownership society" to America: own your house, own your retirement account; you don't need the government in your way. So Americans mortgaged themselves to the hilt to buy overpriced houses they can no longer afford and signed up for 401k programs that put money where, exactly? In the stock market! Where rich Republicans fleeced them.
Now our laissez-faire (hey, a French word) regulation-averse Administration has made France's only Socialist president, Francois Mitterand, look like Adam Smith by comparison. All Mitterrand did was nationalize France's big banks and insurance companies in 1982; he didn't have to deal with bankers who didn't want to lend money, as Paulson does. When the state runs the banks, they are merely cows to be milked in the service of la patrie. France doesn't have the mortgage crisis that we do, either. In bailing out mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, our government has basically turned America into the largest subsidized housing project in the world. Sure, France has its banlieues, where it likes to warehouse people who aren't French enough (meaning, immigrants orAlgerians) in huge apartment blocks. But the bulk of French homeowners are curiously free of subprime mortgages foisted on them by fellow citizens, and they aren't over their heads in personal debt.
We've always dismissed the French as exquisitely fed wards of their welfare state. They work, what, 27 hours in a good week, have 19 holidays a month, go on strike for two days and enjoy a glass of wine every day with lunch — except for the 25% of the population that works for the government, who have an even sweeter deal. They retire before their kids finish high school, and they don't have to save for a $45,000-a-year college tuition because college is free. For this, they pay a tax rate of about 103%, and their labor laws are so restrictive that they haven't had a net gain in jobs since Napoleon. There is no way that the French government can pay for this lifestyle forever, except that it somehow does.
Mitterrand tried to create both job-growth and wage-growth by nationalizing huge swaths of the economy, including some big industries, including automaker Renault, for instance. You haven't driven a Renault lately because Renault couldn't sell them here. Imagine that. An auto company that couldn't compete with a Dodge Colt. But the Renault takeover ultimately proved successful and Renault became a private company again in 1996, although the government retains about 15% of the shares.
Now the U.S. is faced with the same prospect in the auto industry. GM and Ford need money to develop greener cars that can compete with Toyota and Honda. And they're looking to Uncle Sam for investment — an investment that could have been avoided had Washington imposed more stringent mileage standards years earlier. But we don't want to interfere with market forces like the French do — until we do.
Mitterand's nationalization program and other economic reforms failed, as the development of the European Market made a centrally planned economy obsolete. The Rothschilds got their bank back, a little worse for wear. These days, France sashays around the issue of protectionism in a supposedly unfettered EU by proclaiming some industries to be national champions worthy of extra consideration — you know, special needs kids. And we're not talking about pastry chefs, but the likes of GDF Suez, a major utility. I never thought of the stocks and junk securities sold by Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley as unique, but clearly Washington does. Morgan's John Mack calls SEC boss Chris Cox to whine about short sellers and bingo, the government obliges. The elite serve the elite. How French is that?
Even in the strongest sectors in the U.S., there's no getting away from the French influence. Nothing is more sacred to France than its farmers. They get whatever they demand, and they demand a lot. And if there are any issues about price supports, or feed costs being too high, or actual competition from other countries, French farmers simply shut down the country by marching their livestock up the Champs Elysee and piling up wheat on the highways. U.S. farmers would never resort to such behavior. They don't have to: they're the most coddled special interest group in U.S. history, lavished with $180 billion in subsidies by both parties, even when their products are fetching record prices. One consequence: U.S. consumers pay twice what the French pay for sugar, because of price guarantees. We're more French than France.
So yes, while we're still willing to work ourselves to death for the privilege of paying off our usurious credit cards, we can no longer look contemptuously at the land of 246 cheeses. Kraft Foods has replaced American International Group in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the insurance company having been added to Paulson's nationalized portfolio. Macaroni and cheese has supplanted credit default swaps at the fulcrum of capitalism. And one more thing: the food snob French love McDonalds, which does a fantastic business there. They know a good freedom fry when they taste one.
Comuter Tax. Great. Bring it on! It is about time.
If those who live in the suburbs have to pay to work in NYC then...
those who live in NYC should pay to work on LI, Westchester, Hudson Valley, NJ, CT, etc...
OVER 300,000 NYC RESIDENTS WORK IN THE SUBURBS (increasing each yr)!!!
Its only fair to TAX REVERSE COMMUTERS TOO !!!
The time magazine "quote" was a bit excessive with the length there. Capitalism killed the U.S. and the right wing greed that deregulated wall st.A lot of us saw this coming but the right played blame games when there in control.You see having a surplus is a good thing and not spending insanely for your private military contractor buddies with tax money.Mccain also has ties to freddie mac with his campaign team.They dismantled FDR's structure and this is what you get.NOT good.
Hell....
let's cut to the chase:
We've socialized private debt
(the bailout)
and intend to privatize all
of our government's former responsibilities!
(A-hem....i.e. health care and Social Security).
Hey Shelly, you fucking prick, how about we tax your ass for all the money you make us spend flying you up to Albany?!
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