"a semi-criminal enterprise run out of Manhattan"

Let's face it - the territory South of 5 and 20 has survived the last twenty years on public employment, the crumbs from Albany's bloated spending.  Now that our state and local governments are facing bankruptcy, that chicken has crossed the road.  Our decimated private sector can no longer support Albany's demands more and more tax money, so even public employment is shrinking.  In the past year we've suffered the latest symptom: long established restaurants are suddenly in trouble, or in many cases have already shut down.

Writing in the Manhattan Institute's City Journal, Fred Seigel makes a good attempt to explain why us hicks are so angry:

Nationally, most Tea Partiers look favorably on their state governments, but upstaters often consider Albany a semi-criminal enterprise run out of Manhattan. No wonder: the state’s executive-level leadership—its governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general—all hail from the New York City metro area, while upstate New York contains nine of the ten counties in America paying the highest property taxes as a percentage of home values...

 A patch of another upstate region, the Southern Tier, resembles Appalachia in its poverty. 

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