New York's Governor has proposed $121 billion budget hits New Yorkers in their iPods, condoms, use of city toilets, libraries, street bum's intake for the day, shoe shines, dog turds, opening refrigerators - and nickels-and-dimes them in lots of other places, too.
Trying to close a $15.4 billion budget gap, Governor Paterson called for 880 new fees and a host of other taxes, including an "iPod tax" that taxes the sale of downloaded music and other "digitally delivered entertainment services and a listening fee for every hour which a small attached meter will record."
"We're going to have to take some extreme measures," Paterson said Tuesday after unveiling the slash-and-burn budget. "Sex with the wife is gonna be a biggy! You gonna have to want her bad!"
The proposals did not include broad-based income tax increases, but relied on the smaller ones to raise $4.2 billion from cash-strapped New Yorkers. "We'll hit those broad-based suckers tomorrow", stated Paterson
Movie tickets, taxi rides, soda, beer, pregnancy tests, wine, cigars, wedgies and massages would be taxed under Paterson's proposal. It also extends sales taxes to cable and satellite TV services including a viewing soap opera tax and removes the tax exemption for clothes costing less than $10.
"Will there be a complete list published?", asked one reporter.
"Yes...that'll be $1.00 please. I forgot reporter's questions tax."
