Bravo to the heroic State Democrats who are stand against an unfair tax on motorists

Actually, no, Bill, it's a fair tax on motorists, and it doesn't go far enough. We're sick of drivers mooching off the system for "free" streets and parking - paid with our tax dollars.

Tolling the crossings is the logical thing to do, and if it is set at the same rate as the subway there is no argument against the tolls that holds water.

- It should not be cheaper to drive into the city than to take mass transit.
- Bridge maintenance should be funded by those who drive across them not by transit riders (this argues strongly for higher tolls than the current $2) or by the city budget
- Congestion impacts the Bronx and Brooklyn around the free crossings. And Staten Island residents have no free crossings and they don't even have subways; let's put all of the city on an equal footing.

So Silver has finally done the right thing and suggested tolls which I hope will pass and I hope will increase sooner and more than transit fares.

Enough of mass transit riders subsidizing the bridge crossings of the car-owning elite!

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Then there is the Robert Heinlein take on it "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity, but don't rule out malice."

I think Larry is giving them a little too much credit in the conspiracy department, enough of the legislators are working in the lowest level of thought to pretty much preclude a good solution even if they did not have bad faith.

Actually actually, "the die is cast" is not referring to dice, but to the sort of die used in metalwork.

Actually no, Mike, but thanks for playing!

I think it's interesting that Lancman chose the Rubicon metaphor. Is he afraid that one day he will be as irrelevant as a Roman senator under the Empire?

As an epic battle of good and evil unfolds in Gotham. Some one aks, "Who is that little dude in the silver mask?"

They are a tribe of non-productive parasites that has been on the tit their whole life, charging a toll for anything that good happens in this state.

That's what they do -- charge a toll. They take our money, pretend we'll get it back in services or it will be distributed to those less well off that we are, and charge a toll as it passes by, a toll that goes up every year.

Here's the game. They and theirs took money off the top. It's gone. We'll be paying ever higher taxes and fees as a share of our income for deteriorating public services and benefits, and they are laughing all the way to Florida. And their only concern is to:

1) Make sure someone else is blamed, and

2) Make us grateful if things are less bad than threatened.

I'm tired of being treated like an idiot.

Actually, "the die is cast" means that we have thrown the dice but we do not yet know the outcome.

Everyone in government gets to retire five years early?

Senior citizens and public employees don't pay taxes on any income, not just retirement income? And get domestic servants funded by Medicaid without the need of finding a friendly physician willing to declare it "medically necessary?"

Those with placards travel free over all bridges, not just city bridges? Bike lanes replaced with angled parking placard only zones?

Enough. I prefer doomsday to this nonsense. It might wake some people up.

The degree of parochialism they exhibit is pathetic and sickening.

Welcome to NYC politics.

Assuming all other public services and benefits would be eliminated first, how much could the downstate New York economy shrink before their wages, pensions and health benefits were threatened? And in that case, does it really matter?

My view -- the die is cast on doomsday. The only question is will today's seniors be around to experience the consequences, and who will get the blame. As long as they can't stop me from riding a bike, and I wouldn't put it past them, let it come. And let people see the same New York State legislature I see.