THE NEW YORK STATE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION
R. A. Schultz
One of the more interesting events occurring as a result of last Tuesday’s off-year elections was the defeat of the proposal for a constitutional convention in New York State by a 78% to 22% of an admittedly meager vote count.
Had the proposal passed, remaining residents of the Empire State would have been treated to a months-long circus called a constitutional convention, which would have placed certain long-established institutions in serious jeopardy. Two of these would be the state public employees retirement system and the police and firefighters retirement system.
Andrew Cuomo, the radical left-wing governor of the state, his cronies, and the establishments of the Democrat and Republican parties thus experienced a stunning, and well-deserved, defeat. Their intent in pushing for passage of this proposal was to funnel the assets of the retirement systems into the general fund where they could steal from it at will to fund their various social welfare projects, as well as to postpone for a few years the inevitable state bankruptcy that has been looming for decades.
New York State is one of the highest-taxed jurisdictions on the planet. The state income tax hits a middle-class couple with a rate of 6.5%. Add to that a sales tax which averages over 8% on virtually everything, property taxes which, in most jurisdictions within the state, are nothing short of astronomical, fuel taxes, usage fees, and road tolls, and you’ll begin to wonder why anyone who works for a living still lives there!
A relatively simple change in political philosophy, lowering taxes to boost tax revenue, is totally out of the question with elitist progressives as well as out-of-the-closet communists like New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio in positions of power throughout an increasingly bloated and corrupt governing class.
But now that some semblance of common sense seems to have broken out among New York’s electorate, the governing elites will have to look elsewhere for their bailout. I predict that in their infinite stupidity, the progturds will elect to cram yet another tax increase on the beleaguered citizenry.
