A CALL TO THE SONS OF LIBERTY
I called the governor's office yesterday.
Governor David Paterson. I called his office.
I got a machine. No humans work there. At least no humans answer the phone.
Instead, the machine gave me a place where I can mail a letter, or send a fax. Basically, I was blown off. Basically, all New Yorkers are blown off.
The days of sending a letter or calling the office or typing out an e-mail have ended. That was always just a con, a way to apease people. The letters and the petitions and the e-mails all go into oblivion. They are not read, considered or counted. They are a joke on the people who send them. They simply don't work.
The proof of that is that we've been sending them and signing them for years on end and we've never won, we've never stopped them, we've ended up where we are now.
And where we are now is that the highest-taxed state in the nation is geometrically expanding the taxes it imposes on its people. In dire financial times, David Paterson whittled a sniveling one-quarter of one percent of the state workforce while finding 88 new taxes to impose and 49 old fees to increase. Tax and spend has a new daddy.
And New Yorkers are fed up.
Which must make the Albany politicians laugh. Because it doesn't matter how fed up New Yorkers get, the stranglehold of those in power is unbreakable. Both parties are so completely morally corrupt that they are above shame and accountability. Over many long decades they have perfected placation and rule now with an unquestioned iron fist. Things are going to be the way they say they're going to be.
Unless we can find a way to get their attention.
Sometimes, in a fight, you've got to reach up and grab the guy's tender parts and give them a squeeze, just to focus his attention. You've got to choke off his air a little bit to get him to reconsider his life choices.
And that's what New York needs. It needs the government to take a good solid punch to the solar plexis. If we don't knock the wind out of them, we're not doing it right. If we don't knock the wind out of them, we're going to continue to be their tax slaves.
No, this isn't a call for petition signing or letter writing -- it's a call for something more. Something just shy of breaking the law but a little more forceful than leaving a message on an answering machine.
It's time to remember the patriot motto: Don't tread on me!
We need to get in their face. Young and old, black and white, Democrat and Republican. The college students and the business owners. The folks who resent a tax on downloads and the folks who resent a tax on haircuts. The ones who think an 18-percent tax on soda pop is nuts and the people who think a $1 million tax on nuclear power plants is nuts. Everyone who uses the insurance or the services or the products that have come under nuclear-tax attack by the governor.
We need to stand together - or we will hang alone.
And here's the first step. Let's send the governor a present. Because the insane non-diet soda-pop tax has gotten the most media attention, let's start there. Let's send him a can of soda.
Not a full can -- that would cost us too much money in postage and packaging. We're going to send him an empty can -- that takes the weight down from just under 13 ounces to less than one. If we do it right, i'll only cost us an envelope and 42 cents postage.
Here's what you do. You get a can of non-diet soda -- the kind Governor Dave's fat tax is going to save us from -- and you drink it. Then you smash it. You crush the can underfoot until it's flat as a pancake. Then you put it in an envelope and send it off to his office in Albany.
You need to do that, and I need to do that, and we need to ask every single one of our friends to do the same. Make that happen by forwarding this column to as many people as you can. Blanket your address book with this column, and ask everyone you know to blanket their address book as well. Spread it as far and wide as we possibly can. Ask your relatives, friends and co-workers to send a can. Ask the people at your church or at the bar or in your neighborhood.
Smash a can and send it. Maybe you could smash a can and send it -- every day.
This is how we start to shake things up. The metal can in the envelope will mean that each envelope will have to be opened -- to separate the two different types of recyclables. The annoyance of that, and the attention it will draw, will let the governor know we're not happy. It will put him on notice that we're not going to take it.
That'll give us a week or so to brainstorm and think of our next step. And there will be a next step, and a next step, and a next step.
We're not going to break the law, but we are going to break their will.
We're going to reach up and choke off their air, and let them know that we've moved past petitions, now we're taking action.
So get your can, smash it, and -- in an act of First Amendment free speech -- send it to the governor. If you're feeling ambitious, send one as well to your assemblyman and senator.
Our forefathers started by throwing tea in the harbor. We're going to start by sending cans to the governor.
But we're both going to end up in the same place -- with the words WE THE PEOPLE meaning something again.
So forward this column. And send your smashed can to:
Gov. David Paterson
State Capitol
Albany, New York 12224
- by Bob Lonsberry © 2008
