If anyone ever wondered why the State's budget mess is being met by most legislators with a yawn, a story in today's NY Post should clear things up...

With the teacher's union and the healthcare workers unions number three and five on this list, legislators fear reprisals and fear losing campaign cash.  The GOP has been as guilty of this as the Dem's, especially when it comes to the State Senate.

It's time for GOP elected officials to free themselves from the chains that bind them by saying no to any more support from these two entities.  Otherwise, Patterson's effort to control the out of control budget will be limited and NY State's future will follow...

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written by Jay Golub , August 15, 2008

E.J. McMahon has an excellent piece in Today's NY Post about the NYSUT...

http://www.nypost.com/seven/08152008/
postopinion/opedcolumnists/teachers_go_nuclear_124547.htm

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written by Jay Golub , August 16, 2008

the healthcare workers take aim at the Governor for proposed healthcare cuts...

http://www.nysun.com/new-york/hospitals-paterson-at-odds-over-proposed-cuts/83956/

""I think the commissioner has learned very quickly how to do the old Hudson River two-step," a spokesman for the Healthcare Association of New York State, William Van Slyke, said. He said the average hospital operating margin was 0.7% in 2006, the first year New York hospitals reported a profit after suffering seven years of deficits. That slight rebound is "being used as a license to cut us back," he said."

"License to cut us back???" Is he kidding?

If NY State needs to cut it's budget, it can only cut the budget where the spending is - healthcare and education. No one is looking for a "license to cut." The Governor, to his tremendous credit, is making realistic budgetary proposals to ensure that the Hospitals, schools and the entire state doesn't go "belly-up."

Another good line from a useless pol...

"Legislators also expressed reservations. "The package that the governor put on the table does bring back memories of the old Pataki budgets," the chairman of the Assembly's health committee, Richard Gottfried, said."

"Old Pataki budgets???" Does Gottfried mean the first one he passed after being elected? Because if my memory serves me right, 11 out of 12 budget passed by Pataki and the rest of the triumvirate were overly generous - the ramifications of which the present Governor is having such a problem dealing with today.

Enough is NEVER enough for Albany pols. It's amazing guys like Gottfried and Silver can continue to do a disservice to thier own constitutencies just for the sake of political ideology and grandstanding and still get re-elected year in year out.....

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