The Party’s Over
Pictured, right, is a photo of New York City during the 1977 Blackout. ‘Puter’s got the distinct unpleasant feeling New York’s entering a new period of fear and turmoil.
Today, Gov. Paterson announced that the state budget deficit this year went from $1.2 billion to $1.5 billion. The projected deficit for the next fiscal year starting April 1 is projected at $12 billion.
As previously noted, New York’s been spending money in a manner that would shame even the most drunken sailor on shore leave, not that there’s anything wrong with Inebriated-Military-Americans. New York’s profligate ways are finally catching up with it, and it will be very unpleasant for all New Yorkers, from the wealthiest resident of the Hamptons, to the poorest child in downtown Rochester.
Here’s hoping that Gov. Paterson has the intestinal fortitude to cajole/shame/force the legislature to reduce spending by the projected $12 billion shortfall rather than raise taxes in the teeth of a recession. It’s time for our state legislators to tell voters the unpleasant truth: there’s no more money, and something’s got to give.
The Leg could start by refusing to mortgage the state’s future through issuing bonds to balance the budget. The Leg could also refuse one-time budget balancing gimmicks and like selling off state assets like its prisons and its lottery. Heck, the Leg could even take the radical step of only spending as much as current tax receipts permit.
‘Puter’s betting against fiscal restraint, though. Why should anything change now? Last productive citizen out, turn out the lights.
Always right, unless he isn’t, the infallible Ghettoputer F. X. Gormogons claims to be an in-law of the Volgi, although no one really believes this.
’Puter carefully follows economic and financial trends, legal affairs, and serves as the Gormogons’ financial and legal advisor. He successfully defended us against a lawsuit from a liquor distributor worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid deliveries of bootleg shandies.
The Geep has an IQ so high it is untestable and attempts to measure it have resulted in dangerously unstable results as well as injuries to researchers. Coincidentally, he publishes intelligence tests as a side gig.
His sarcasm is so highly developed it borders on the psychic, and he is often able to insult a person even before meeting them. ’Puter enjoys hunting small game with 000 slugs and punt guns, correcting homilies in real time at Mass, and undermining unions. ’Puter likes to wear a hockey mask and carry an axe into public campgrounds, where he bursts into people’s tents and screams. As you might expect, he has been shot several times but remains completely undeterred.
He assures us that his obsessive fawning over news stories involving women teachers sleeping with young students is not Freudian in any way, although he admits something similar once happened to him. Uniquely, ’Puter is unable to speak, read, or write Russian, but he is able to sing it fluently.
Geep joined the order in the mid-1980s. He arrived at the Castle door with dozens of steamer trunks and an inarticulate hissing creature of astonishingly low intelligence he calls “Sleestak.” Ghettoputer appears to make his wishes known to Sleestak, although no one is sure whether this is the result of complex sign language, expert body posture reading, or simply beating Sleestak with a rubber mallet.
‘Puter suggests the Czar suck it.