Blago vs patterson

[philcski]

She's an excellent choice.


However, I am so f*cking tired of this upstate/downstate battle that everyone in the media continues to throw at us. I've lived in this state my whole life, minus the 4 years of college. I'll be 31 in a week, and I've lived 15 years in upstate NY and 12 in downstate NY. I don't have a preference or bias for either. Both have their positives and negatives in lifestyle, which is a topic for another day, but the fact of the matter is everyone in NYS faces the same issues regardless of whether your drivers license says Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Albany, Plattsburgh, Greenwich, Kingston, Monticello, Scarsdale, Manhattan, Queens Village, or Southampton. Our public preparatory schools are terrible, SUNY (an excellent university system) does a poor job marketing itself out of state which limits graduates' viability outside of NY, budget decisions made in Albany seem continually rushed and slapped together to fix whatever leaks right now without regard for consequence (see the handling of Belleayre Mountain as a great example), many state project decisions reek of corruption (see slots-at-Aqueduct), violent crime (while significantly down in NYC) abounds at near-record levels, and civic pride is at an all time low.

Again, these are STATE issues, not locality issues. Nobody in Massachusetts talks about "Boston" and "not Boston", why do we do it here??? If that really is the prevailing sentiment, maybe New York should reconsider dividing into two. I would be very much against that, of course.