As our parting gift to Pataki, re-elect Alan Hevesi for NY State Comptroller

As our parting gift to Pataki, re-elect Alan Hevesi for NY State Comptroller

By Mary MacElveen

November 5, 2006

I want everyone living in New York State to think back to last winter especially if they heat their homes with oil. As the tank gage inched lower, your anxiety of how you were going to pay for another delivery sky rocketed. I know mine did. You would have thought that Governor George Pataki could have demanded assistance on behalf of all of us for some relief from his friend in Washington, D.C. who is George W. Bush.

As we all know, Bush is a former oil man who just loves profits. Do you see him actually helping out consumers? I do not think so. But, we all know what George W. Bush told the citizens of California when it came to their energy crisis which brought about the recall of Gray Davis said, “There will be no help coming from Washington, D.C.” Nice huh?

I want all Long Islanders to think back when LIPA (Long Island Power Authority) was implemented since LILCO (Long Island Lighting Company) was charging Long Islanders an arm and a leg for electricity. Do you remember when Governor Pataki stated that through the implementation of LIPA it would cut our electric bills in half? Get out your bills and see for yourself that it did not occur. In fact, our electric rates went up.

Many were ready to blow our circuits (pun intended) when Governor Pataki refused to let this go to a voter referendum in which ‘We the people’ of Long Island would have a say whether or not this plan would go through.

In an executive summary of this deal you will read where top-level executives of LILCO received a $67 million dollar golden parachute. While Pataki denounced this deal as being “disgraceful”, maybe with a voter referendum in which we the rate payers had our say, thing might have been different. As a result of this deal, William Catacosinos the former CEO of LILCO received a $42 million dollar golden parachute. What did we as Long Islander get? Oh yeah, higher electric rates.

As of this date, many of us on Long Island are paying over $200 dollars a month for electricity and some even higher rates and there has been no help coming from George E. Pataki.

This past summer all Americans were paying higher prices at the pump and there was absolutely no help coming from the Republicans. As I wrote in another piece: "Making a trip to Nashville, Tennessee...while defending huge profits made by Exxon/Mobil, Bush said: "consumers socked with soaring energy costs should not expect price breaks." I can just hear some expletives being said out there.

I have always said to voters in each and every campaign to gather up their bills, take them into the voting booth, and vote accordingly. While Pataki is not running for re-election, he singled out Comptroller, Alan Hevesi. Yes, Hevesi did as he has stated in a commercial “a dumb thing”, but he has made restitution to the tax payers. That should count for something in my book.

So, gather up your LIPA bills, your oil bills, and receipts for gasoline purchases and take them into the voting booth on Tuesday.

One has to wonder why. As I was thinking today, it all boils down to who controls the money. As we all know, comptrollers do control pension funds and as a person who is relying pension fund remaining safe, I just do not trust a Republican put in charge of overseeing these funds and neither should you.

In the past six years since a Republican president took the oath of office with a Republican controlled congress to help him out, our money is being spent big time. They used to say that Democrats were big spenders; I would like to debate that as we are in debt up to our eye balls and then some. No bid contracts for Halliburton, no problem which cost you and I billions of dollars. The Republican led government has involved us in an illegal war against the wrong people, no problem. It is now costing you and me as of this date over $300 billion dollars and rising by the second. Oh and do not forget that bran spanking new embassy in Iraq the size of the Vatican that is costing all of us over $500 million dollars.

You have not heard a peep coming from Pataki on the way our federal government spends our money, now have you? But, he will target a man that has successfully secured our state employees pension funds. He will target a man who has successfully overseen many school systems fraught with fraud. We cannot lose a man in, Alan Hevesi who is looking over our money. We cannot take that chance.

As some have distanced themselves from Alan Hevesi, if I were a gambling person although I am not, I would bet you that once inside the voting booth, they will be voting for Alan Hevesi instead of Callahan.

So as our parting gift to George E. Pataki and our collective angst against George W. Bush, cast your vote for Alan Hevesi. In a recent stump speech the DNC Chair, Governor Howard Dean even stated, "You cannot trust Republicans with your money"

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