RochesterConservative.com

The text of my speech for the 2010 Tax Day Tea Party – Split NY State

Like most of us here today, I believe the government governs best when it governs least. In the coming election, if Assemblyman Brian Kolb gets his way, you will be asked if you would like a statewide Constitutional Convention. This is the NY State Constitution. It’s 46 pages long. In comparison, this is the United States Constitution, the basis upon which the entire country is created, and it is a mere 6 pages long.

I know some people out there believe the solution to fixing NY lies within fixing this document. However, if there is a Constitutional Convention, who do you think will be the people drafting the new document? It will be the politically well connected, the very people that are a problem in New York.

Sure, it sounds appealing. I’d love to see provisions for recall and voter initiated referendums, giving us a say in power, but do you think those currently in power want to relinquish their stranglehold over us? I think it is more likely that, rather than a whole new Constitution, we’re going to see lots of little tweaks that sound good but are really aimed at making things worse.

Rather, I think we should consider something far more profound, something many of us here have heard rumblings of for decades. I think we need to adopt the mantle of Charlie Eames, the late patriot we remembered earlier today. Now, Charlie wasn’t just active in our Tea Party movement, for years, often finding himself in a room alone after promised people failed to show up, he strongly advocated for one goal – the division of New York into two different states. Charlie worked endlessly devoting a significant portion of his life to freeing the people of this state from the ineptitude of the government in Albany, running for office as a third-party candidate on a line he helped create, and motivating, educating, and inspiring people from all backgrounds to take their state back, including many of the people that stand before you today. Just like Charlie, everyone who came here today doesn’t just have the power to work to change the hearts and minds of your fellow citizens, but a patriotic obligation to do so. And I think it’s pretty obvious, none of us are alone anymore.

Downstaters have complained for years about sending tax money upstate while Upstaters have bemoaned the regulations foisted upon us by the New York City/Albany regime which have strangled our economy. They didn’t care because they had Wall Street and as long as the city thrived, those of us outside didn’t matter. Now that they’ve faltered, we sit on exploding deficits, runaway debt and yet more proposals for yet more taxation and still they refuse to cut spending.

Nationally, New York is dark blue, but if you exclude Long Island, New York City, Albany and the Hudson Valley between them, we are split almost evenly between the left and the right. Do Senators Schumer, Clinton or even Gillibrand represent our interests Upstate? Do they speak for you? I know they don’t speak for me.

In fact, look at the statewide elected politicians. Don’t look at their party, look at where they’re from. Paterson – New York City. Schumer, NYC. Gillibrand, Albany. Ravitch, NYC. Pataki, NYC. Spitzer, NYC. Cuomo, both of them, NYC. Smith, NYC. Skelos, Long Island. Then, of course, maybe the biggest thug of all of them, Sheldon Silver, NYC. In fact, I think that Kolb may be the only statewide guy that ISN’T from the power region of NY. Then again, he’s elected to that position by his fellow Assemblymen, not the voters.

West Virginia split with Virginia over the issue of seceding from the Union during the Civil War, becoming our 35th state. They set the precedent that it can be done.

For far too long, Albany has refused to hear our pleas, to permit our redress of grievances. For far too long, we’ve had mandates shoved onto us by New York City and Albany. It is time to demand our voices be heard, to demand the right to representation in Congress and self-governance as a state. Let New York keep their Constitution, let them modify it however they want. In return, let us become the Fifty-First state, a state of our own. A free upstate.

PL <phantomlord@rochesterconservative.com>