If you support a progressive agenda, then support a progressive candidate.
I've been a big fan of the way David Paterson has tried to run New York since becoming the Accidental Governor. He recognizes that the state is facing a serious budget crisis and that the state has to fundamentally change the way it does things. He understands and is trying to make legislators accept that irresponsible spending habits have contributed to what was a state budget crisis even before the collapse of Wall Street. He's lectured repeatedly and, astonishingly, to great public approval, on the need for austerity. He understands that the status quo is unacceptable.
Or at least I thought he did.
Just days after saying he'd seek a further $2 billion in cuts to the existing state budget, Paterson has said that Albany can afford to waste $1.2 billion in subsidy handouts to Advanced Micro Devices, in possibly the largest corporate welfare scheme in state history.
I am disappointed beyond words in Paterson. He'd appeared to show courage in standing up to both public sector unions and the business lobby in pushing for across the board cuts. But when it came to one of the most obvious cuts of all, gargantuan, no strings attached handouts, he reverted back to the bad old habits.
Shame on him.
2 comments:
Though I'm far from thrilled on quite that amount, I actually have no objection on principle to giving AMD money to come to the region.
The Albany region has like what 4 highly respected universities that are already tech/engineering heavy but jobs that are few & far between.
The problem is that the amount is far from incidental. That works out to over $1 million per (promised) job. Given that economic development subsidies are based on the trickle down effect, how many decades is it going to take for the state just to break even on $1 million per job?
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