Cash-hungry Cuomo: non-Indian casinos OK

Non-Indian, "commercial" casinos will soon join the competition for New York residents' shrinking budgets.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo says his administration is actively investigating whether to bring commercial, non-Indian casinos and related gambling to New York.

By the time the graft has been distributed, New Yorkers can expect a net loss, to be made up with higher taxes. We should have gotten into the casino business in 1950.

Seneca to ban smoking?

Is rural Seneca County, New York planning to completely ban smoking on all county-owned real estate?  The county's Board of Supervisors will consider the issue tonight, and we assume Seneca's town supervisors will vote to join all the cool counties in banning the evil weed.  However,  almost 25% of all Seneca residents are smokers, well above the state's average, and if they're old enough to smoke, they're old enough to vote.

And don't forget, the new growth industry in the picturesque, but economically depressed, county is cigarette manufacturing.

Fix the economy overnight

Connecticut real estate agent Chris Fountain has proposed a one-sentence recovery plan for the US economy.  His suggestion for Obama's next move:

Imagine if he came out, eventually, to announce a plan to cut taxes, rescind his EPA’s latest regulations and rethink ObamaCare? The market would soar but he’d be dead meat with his “base”, however dwindling that base is. But he could bring this economy back in five minutes.

 We endorse the Fountain plan.

Credit downgrade was planned

Lonely Conservative shares our fury: 

I can’t put into words that are fit to print my anger at the current administration. After his allies in Congress ratcheted up spending to unprecedented levels, he refused to discuss any real spending reductions. So what happened? He got his deal, and now our credit rating has been downgraded.

She then puts it into words.

Don’t tell me this didn’t happen on purpose. They hire the best and the brightest with our tax dollars. They knew this would happen, they planned it. This was done on purpose.

He palled around with Bill Ayers.  He idolized Jeremiah Wright.   Like Mitsuo Fuchida, he's doing what he was sent to do.

Tax assessment pits county vs. county

Oswego

Among New Yorkers protesting their tax assessments we now find Cayuga County's government.  Cauyga County, it turns out, bought a piece of land in Oswego County, and is now suing to get its tax asessment reduced.  

Yes, taxpayers in Cayuga County will be forced to pay taxes on land they "own" in Oswego County.  Justin Murphy explains the convoluted confiscation in the Auburn Citizen.

The building at 11 River Glen Plaza, a former grocery store which the county bought May 16, is assessed at $2 million. By 2011 tax levels, that means about $102,000 in property taxes.

In a tax certiorari petition filed July 27, the county and JHMPAC, the entity from which the county bought the building for $950,000, asked an Oswego County judge to lower the assessment to $700,000, which would yield $35,850 in 2011 taxes.

“It’s part of a process you go through with any purchase,” Cayuga County Legislature Chairman Peter Tortorici said. “The assessment came in, I think, a little high, and we’re just going through the process to see if we can get it reduced.”

Government entities generally don’t pay property taxes, but Cayuga County does have to pay in this case because the property in question is outside county borders, according to an advisory opinion issued by the state Office of Real Property Services.

So highly paid experts toiling in our county governments can't agree on what a property is worth. What confidence can we then have in our own assessments?  For instance, this million dollar lakefront mansion in Seneca County was just reassessed at $194,000.  Sound a  little low to you?

Sounding presidential

Western Wall, Jerusalem, 2010

Now that Boehner, McConnell and the usual gang of idiots, after  falling behind by 30 points in the first half, have blown the debt ceiling negotiations, we can look ahead to 2012.  While the smart money is on the "stupid party" nominating another guaranteed looser, it doesn't have to be that way.  Looking for leadership?

If we were really domestic terrorists, shoot, President Obama would be wanting to pal around with us wouldn’t he? I mean he didn’t have a problem with paling around with Bill Ayers back in the day when he kicked off his political career in Bill Ayers apartment, and shaking hands with Chavez and saying he doesn’t need any preconditions with meeting dictators or wanting to read US Miranda rights to alleged suspected foreign terrorists. No if we were real domestic terrorists I think President Obama wouldn’t have a problem with us.

And then there's this.

I want these candidates to not be sitting back. And bless his heart. I have respect for Mitt Romney but I do not have respect for what he has done through this debt increase debate. He waited until it was a done deal that we would increase the debt ceiling and more money would be spent and more money borrowed and then spent on bigger government.

Click the link, and watch the videos.  Sounding presidential, indeed.

Top NY Dem signs big gas lease!

J.R.  Jacobs

Forget the debt ceiling michegoss, this is real news:  Unlikely Hospitalist reports that the chairman of the New York State Democratic Party, one Jay Jacobs, has signed a gas lease for his 140 acre ranch in Pennsylvania.

Jay Jacobs has committed a cardinal sin. He has signed a contract with Hess Corp and received per-acre money upfront to drill 140 acres of land at his Tyler Hill summer camp in Pennsylvania. His claims of doing his own research and coming up with an honest conclusion will not sit well with those in his party.

The warm hearted physician worries that the gas lease may cost Jacobs his job as the Empire State's top Democrat, but we are not concerned.  140 acres at $3,000 per acre, plus royalties, should help ease the pain.