Nicholas Goldberg: Why I’m voting against Rick Caruso. (It’s not because of his positions on the issues.)
Here’s the deal. When a liberal and a conservative are fighting for the same office in New York, the liberal always wins.
The more conservative wins when it comes to money. That, too, is a reason to vote for someone. If I was running for city council, I’d be doing pretty good with about $5,500 a year.
The liberal wins when it comes to the issues that are important if you care about the future of the community.
Now, look at the polls here.
This city is divided, and there are differences in policy positions, but the liberal agenda has been a winning one, and Caruso has been on the left, and won.
What is the liberal agenda?
It’s a two-pronged attack on our economy.
I am against the tax breaks the state and federal governments give to companies making record profits. If the tax breaks in Albany were doubled, then a big company like Amazon would be paying more in income tax, which would help out the city by giving other people more incentive to live here and work here and invest here.
Instead, they are getting the tax breaks, and they are getting the money they made this year.
I would keep the tax breaks, but we’d have to figure out how to pay for them. Caruso is always talking about how New York should be a $20-a-gallon state.
I would keep the tax breaks, but we should be in a position to look at ways to pay for them.
Now, here’s what I would do, instead of putting in more taxes.
First, the state should be paying for the cost of transit. They should make it mandatory for every company that operates or leases transportation infrastructure to pay for their own infrastructure.
If you want to work in the city, where you pay property taxes and you pay income taxes, then you should pay for the roads you drive on.
That would mean putting a tax on the people that drive in the city. It would mean putting a tax on you and me. And then it would mean we