The Whim of One Man and the lives of millions, or perhaps just one

Today, in my mind, two events stand out from the many that have occurred over the past week. The first was George Pataki and the proposed budget. The fact is he vetoed it, the word on the street claims that the reason he did it was not because of ideology or a deep disagreement with the numbers, but because he wanted to look “fiscally conservative” for a possible Presidential run in the future.

Now, regardless of whether you like or dislike the proposed budget or even whether or not Pataki vetoed for personal gain or deep held beliefs, the way our government stands, he could have done it for the most selfish reasons. He could even stand up tomorrow and say “I made that veto so I could advance myself, and I really don’t care about you York Staters” and nothing would happen to him.

But what does this mean? If we dig deeper beyond this outrage, we will remember that the budget is the product of a long running personal and political feud between Sheldon Silver and Joseph Bruno. Since when is the will of three men considered a republic? Do we stand at the dawn of the age of Caesars? How can the people of New York sit back and be content with their government when it is the arbitrary whim of three, or even three hundred men?

The second event was perhaps not as earth-shaking for York State in general, but will probably affect my life in a greater way. My older brother’s home caught fire yesterday morning and was completely gutted by the flames. Luckily, my brother, his girlfriend, the cat and the dog all escaped unharmed, but all of their possessions were destroyed. Now, this is a tragedy, but such things happen in life; what was not necessary and what brought up my current anger was what happened later that morning.

My brother’s girlfriend, who works on an assembly line, called work (she works third shift) and asked for the day off because her home had burned down. Her boss informed her if she didn’t show up, she would be fired. So she sat on that assembly line all night long making vacuum cleaners and crying, because she could hardly afford to lose her job at a time like this.

What has become to the state of our society? How much power have we given the tyrants of our world, both petty and grand, over our own lives? Both the vacuum plant overseer and the governor can and have put their own personal advancement and profit over the suffering of others and they do so every day.

-Posted by Jesse