Perhaps the first place to start is with the state legislature itself. not only does the legislature give us too much government, it is unbelievably expensive!

No, I'm not talking about the salaries of legislators. (For most capable candidates, that's a pay cut, and we don't want to see our legislature restricted to only the idle rich. So the salaries should remain until the legislature becomes truly part-time, which will take a while.) The problem is that the Assembly members each spend more than ten times their salary for offices, travel, staff, patronage jobs, etc. That's over $633,000 per district (and 1.3 M$ per Senator), for a grand total of over $175 million dollars!

That's way too much for a legislature that is really run by two people, a legislature which spends too much time doing what we don't need, but which can't ever do its job: pass a budget on time and go home!

But there is much more waste and overspending, beyond the $177M of our tax money that the legislature spends on itself. New York State spends 41% per capita more than the average state. (I know NY is expensive, but not 41% more expensive!) Millions and millions of dollars are taken, by Albany, from working people's paychecks - and again at the checkout counters by sales taxes - to be given out as Corporate Welfare, Agricultural subsidies, bank subsidies, overpriced and interminable highway boondoggles, shoddy housing built by party contributors, and on and on and on. (I understand that one of the next to line up at the trough may be George Steinbrenner.) Taxes from the many go continuously to the favored few, while the rest of the economy must take their chances in the free market.