A Modest Proposal - The Gormogons

Unions Don't Pay Taxes, Senator. Taxes Are For The Private Sector. New York state is facing a huge budget crisis. The state projects a $17.9 billion shortfall in the 2010 fiscal year. The state is increasing taxes and fees like mad. Leaving aside for the moment the wisdom of continuing runaway spending and raising taxes in the teeth of a recession, ‘Puter’s got a proposal for the state.

Start taxing state pension payouts. The state income tax is 6.85% (for most — low end is 4%), not counting some city add-ons (NYC, Yonkers, etc.). There are 350,000 current state retirees. The average annual payout to be approximately $35,000. Some are paid significantly more. In 2008, the pension fund paid out $6.84 billion in benefits. If pensioners paid state income tax on their benefits (like everyone else) the state would have an additional $468 million with which to pay down its debt. And having everyone with income pay income tax would go a long way to reestablishing tax fairness.

When will the state call on its unions to finally start paying their fair share?

'Puter

Always right, unless he isn’t, the infallible Ghettoputer F. X. Gormogons claims to be an in-law of the Volgi, although no one really believes this.

’Puter carefully follows economic and financial trends, legal affairs, and serves as the Gormogons’ financial and legal advisor. He successfully defended us against a lawsuit from a liquor distributor worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid deliveries of bootleg shandies.

The Geep has an IQ so high it is untestable and attempts to measure it have resulted in dangerously unstable results as well as injuries to researchers. Coincidentally, he publishes intelligence tests as a side gig.

His sarcasm is so highly developed it borders on the psychic, and he is often able to insult a person even before meeting them. ’Puter enjoys hunting small game with 000 slugs and punt guns, correcting homilies in real time at Mass, and undermining unions. ’Puter likes to wear a hockey mask and carry an axe into public campgrounds, where he bursts into people’s tents and screams. As you might expect, he has been shot several times but remains completely undeterred.

He assures us that his obsessive fawning over news stories involving women teachers sleeping with young students is not Freudian in any way, although he admits something similar once happened to him. Uniquely, ’Puter is unable to speak, read, or write Russian, but he is able to sing it fluently.

Geep joined the order in the mid-1980s. He arrived at the Castle door with dozens of steamer trunks and an inarticulate hissing creature of astonishingly low intelligence he calls “Sleestak.” Ghettoputer appears to make his wishes known to Sleestak, although no one is sure whether this is the result of complex sign language, expert body posture reading, or simply beating Sleestak with a rubber mallet.

‘Puter suggests the Czar suck it.