“With the poorly named SAFE Act, His Majesty, King Andrew created thousands of criminals from innocent New Yorkers overnight with the stroke of a pen and now he is trying to go one step closer to a total police state by turning teachers and children into state informants,” said Sharpe. “They will be the eyes and ears of ‘Big Brother.’ We will have an environment where teachers will be held criminally, civilly, and/or socially liable for violence committed by their students. We are involuntarily making teachers part of a secret police force they didn’t sign on for. They will have no choice to join Cuomo’s Gestapo and ensure they grab as many guns as possible to protect their positions.”

Larry Sharpe (L) is a Bronx native, Marine Corps veteran, entrepreneur, and management consultant with 15 years of experience mentoring international executives, entrepreneurs & sales people. He is also a teacher, previously serving as a guest instructor for business management and leadership at institutions such as Yale University, Columbia University, Baruch College and John Jay College. He is now running for Governor of New York in order to make education more effective through innovation, reform the criminal justice system to focus on rehabilitation, and build an economy that works for all of New York State.

The post Larry Sharpe responds to Cuomo’s latest gun confiscation proposal appeared first on Larry Sharpe, Libertarian.

by Dan Smith

April 15th is commonly known as National Tax Day (well, this year it’s April 17th). That’s the deadline for average Americans to file their annual federal and state income tax returns.

But assigning one day with that title is misleading, because EVERY day is Tax Day—especially for New Yorkers.

On top of all the taxes we pay from our incomes throughout the year, we all face a myriad of other taxes and fees. They’re everywhere and in nearly everything. New York has been clever about hiding them. They include: sales tax (8%), property tax (1.8%), taxes within cable and mobile phone bills (25%), taxes on electric and gas bills (50% higher than the national average), hotel taxes (5.9%), airport fees and taxes ($30 fee at JFK), alcohol ($0.14/gallon for beer, $6.44/gallon for liquor) and cigarette tax ($4.35/pack), gas tax ($0.62/gallon), car registration fees ($75 and up to $25/year), tolls on roads and bridges (between $5 and $15), dozens of taxes on health insurance and healthcare expenditures, and many, many more.

While most people in our country face these taxes and fees, New Yorkers get hit harder than anyone else.

Yes, we’re Number 1.

Several independent studies have recently shown that New Yorkers have the highest tax burden in the nation. And it isn’t even all that close.

To demonstrate this in another way, the Tax Foundation has calculated each state’s “Tax Freedom Day”—the day when the average taxpayer has earned enough to pay his or her share of taxes for the year, including federal, state and local taxes and fees. After that date, you get to keep all your own money. So, earlier is better. The national average Tax Freedom Day is April 19th. The best state is Alaska, whose relatively low taxes allow them to celebrate theirs on April 4th.

New York is, by far, the worst. Our Tax Freedom Day is May 14th. That’s 11 days later than any other state.

11 days!

The reasons for this are pretty simple:  our state’s spending has been rising quickly, while people are leaving the state. More cost spread over fewer people. And it’s getting worse. Sadly, we’ve ranked in the top three in the statistic of most moved-out-of-states for the seventh year in a row.

As history has shown, people flee wars and bad government. For example: refugees fleeing war-torn Syria, Cubans floating to Florida, North Koreans running through the DMZ and away from Kim Jong-un.

And now people are fleeing New York state.

Having the highest taxes and so many people leaving our state is no coincidence. They are cause-and-effect. People are leaving New York because of the high tax burden, the ever-growing set of rules and regulations and because those taxes are squandered by our corrupt and incompetent politicians in Albany.

None is worse than Governor Andrew Cuomo—who’s presided over New York for those seven years.

The source of the problem is spending, of course. Spending on incompetence, waste and corruption. And since New York can’t print its own money or borrow endlessly, the money has to come from taxpayers in New York.

But most New Yorkers have had enough. Many are leaving. Those who stay need to demand change—deep spending cuts to permit deep tax cuts. These changes, along with a slashing of rules and regulations, will attract people and businesses to our state—further diminishing the tax burden.

It’s time to demand change!

The post Tax Day is Coming appeared first on Larry Sharpe, Libertarian.

New Yorkers deserve all the facts about how many years late and how much over budget the Cuomo Bridge will be.

by Dan Smith

“It is on time and it is on budget! . . .” loudly proclaimed Governor Andrew Cuomo last August, as he stood atop the Mario Cuomo Bridge—the Hudson River crossing which is to replace the Tappan Zee Bridge.

However, it turns out that neither of the Governor’s statements were true, even at the time.

It is quite late and quite over budget. And the situation is growing worse by the day.

While some of Cuomo’s media friends were happy to grant Cuomo his undue victory, some basic fact checking shows that it’s no victory at all—not for Governor Cuomo and certainly not for New Yorkers.

It was just a bunch of lies. Records show that the Cuomo bridge was originally slated to be completed by February 2017 at a cost of $3.9 billion dollars. While a portion of the bridge has indeed opened, even today the bridge is far from complete. The August announcement demonstrated the missed February deadline for completion. And Poltico has reported that contractors are submitting claims for overtime and other cost overruns which will put the project at least hundreds of millions of dollars over budget.

But no one is certain how long the project completion will be delayed, nor by how much the budget has been blown. That’s because the Cuomo administration has been opaque about costs and has even refused Freedom of Information requests for details about his people’s activities to date.

Realistically, few public projects are completed on time or on budget. That’s the way our system works. Politicians and bureaucrats almost never pay a price for making unattainable budgets and timelines. So, without a penalty for lying, politicians say whatever they wish in order to get projects approved.

But Cuomo’s claim goes well beyond a faulty projection. His statement was demonstrably false the moment he said it.

That’s incredibly brazen.

Cuomo probably thought he could risk the bold-faced lie. A portion of the bridge was opening. And at the time of that declaration, he was on the heels of a political victory, having convinced the state legislature to rename the bridge after his late father, former governor Mario Cuomo. That decision has since been met with public backlash and a bill to have the name revert to the prior name—the Tappan Zee Bridge.

So perhaps New Yorkers are wising up to Cuomo’s game. Perhaps voters will hold a lying politician accountable after he squandered taxpayer money and trust.

Given the delay which will likely end up being close to two years, and given the cost overruns which some estimates put in the billions of dollars, perhaps Andrew Cuomo will tackle the issue honestly as he seeks reelection this autumn.

It won’t happen unless New Yorkers and the media demand honesty and transparency from their governor. Time and again, he has done neither without incredible amounts of public pressure.

The post Cuomo’s Bridge: Late and Over Budget appeared first on Larry Sharpe, Libertarian.

Governor Cuomo has declared a state of emergency for New York’s subways. But he’s also the cause. Killing passengers, service declines, crumbling stations, corruption, waste and illegally discriminating against the disabled are just a few of its problems.

By Dan Smith

I doubt I’m going to shock anyone by pointing out that the New York City subway system is a mess.

When I first started riding the subways every day, almost 30 years ago, the system had just undergone a massive revitalization—new, clean subway cars and refurbished stations. But things are much different today. Crumbling stations and dilapidated cars are frequently the case.

Worse, service had declined dramatically. Ten years ago, trains ran on time 90 percent of the time. Since, that figure has fallen to 70 percent.

And more people are getting hurt, as there have been many notable derailments and track fires. As a result of these issues, and many more, in June 2017 Governor Cuomo declared a state of emergency. Cuomo was quoted as saying, the “state of decline is wholly unacceptable,” which sounds like he is just a casual observer of the situation rather than the person responsible.

For you see, while the NYC subway system is owned by New York City, it is run by New York State’s Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA), with both its chairman and its CEO being appointed by Governor Cuomo (as well as several of its other board members).

So, when the New York Times chronicles in some detail, that the system is plagued with a “byzantine bureaucracy which has allowed transit leaders to avoid responsibility for problems,” they are referring to Governor Cuomo’s appointees and cronies—if not Cuomo, himself.

The New York Times lays blame on current and former administrations—both Republican and Democratic, both in Albany and in New York City for the long history of how we got here, but Cuomo has had more than seven years to deal with the problems and they’ve only gotten worse.

While riders pay fares to ride the subway, New York City contributes hundreds of millions of dollars to the MTA. But that begs the question: why is the city diverting taxpayer dollars to a fee-based transit system? Why don’t rider fees, shop rentals and things like advertising fund the entire system? The answer to that is complicated, meaning that it’s political. And when government tries to run a consumer service, it gets complicated and this is the result—high costs, bad service, lost rights, waste, fraud and abuse. Everyone suffers—except those who benefit from the system: politicians and unions.

The MTA Breaks a Law Which NYC Strictly Enforces on Everyone Else.

As I’m writing this, I’ve just read that it’s been announced the U.S. attorney has filed a lawsuit against the MTA to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The ADA is a 1990 law whereby those with disabilities must have access to all buildings and businesses which serve the public. This includes apartments, shops, restaurants and everyone else—including the subway. However, the MTA has ignored the law . . . because they can.

The MTA has had 28 years to comply with this law and it has done almost nothing. Only 20% of subway stations have elevator access. If that’s not bad enough, many of those elevators are 20 years old and many are regularly out-of-service. That’s an unwelcome but frequent surprise to those who depend it.

I have friends who are disabled and daily life getting around New York City is a nightmare. They tell me that, despite New York City’s strict access laws enforced against private businesses, the MTA aren’t even in the Top 10 cities in the nation in helping the disabled get around. As a substitute, the City provides a service called, Access-A-Ride which are shuttle buses for the disabled. But my friends complain that Access-A-Ride is terrible: slow and unreliable. Further, a recent audit by the Comptroller shows that complaints about the service’s safety and bad service are high and that the MTA is unresponsive to the issues.

In response to the federal lawsuit alleging that the MTA is violating the ADA, an MTA spokesperson said, “the MTA and NYC Transit are committed to adding and maintaining accessibility for the century-old subway system, and working hard to do so by investing more than a billion dollars over the current five-year capital plan alone.”

That statement is both an excuse and clearly a false promise . . . if not an outright lie. The MTA is blaming the age of the system, but they’ve had 28 years to comply. And they’re implying that a billion dollars will fix the problem in 400 stations, when it has cost $3.5 billion to lay one mile of track. The idea that $1 billion will make even a small dent in making the MTA compliant with federal law is laughable. Moreover, that billion dollars is likely the same billion dollars promised last June to correct the “state of emergencies” issues which led to the derailments and track fires.

It’s just another shell game by Governor Cuomo’s cronies. Neither they nor Cuomo are up to the monumental task of even beginning to address the issues which Cuomo is largely responsible for creating.

The Root Causes

Let’s look at the realities. The MTA is inherently flawed. It answers to politicians and unions, not riders. It is a monopoly and acts like one—it has no interest in controlling costs, obeying laws, nor pleasing its customers. It’s terrible because it can be. It takes in money from its ever-increasing ridership, from advertising, from shop owners, from New York City taxpayers, from New York State taxpayers and from bondholders. Yet it largely answers to bureaucrats, politicians and unions.

And New York City punishes competitors with high bridge and tunnel tolls, insane parking taxes and a highly regulated taxi system—all to compel people to use the subway.

Yet, the system is the most expensive at building new track and one of the most expensive to operate—all while getting ever-worsening results.

Another problem is the system’s debt. The MTA spends 17 percent of its budget paying interest on its ever-growing debt—three times what it did 20 years ago. Its debt is $35 billion, which is greater than 30 World nations. Despite all of its sources of revenue, it operates at a perpetual loss–$6 billion per year. The average MTA employee makes $90,000 per year and has the most generous benefits imaginable, while a typical worker anywhere else sees a fraction of that—and usually produces much, much better results.

These problems are symptoms of the immense, multi-layered bureaucracy to which the New York Times referred, as well as the control the unions have over the system and the corruption which both bring. In addition to the high profile pay-to-play corruption conviction recently, reports by the Times and others highlight overstaffing, hundreds of employees with no apparent job, highly slack bidding processes, and costly and useless consulting firms.

What Can Be Done?

Let’s address the incentives problem. The MTA has no interest in providing a good service, so they have to go. New York City should fire them—fire Cuomo and his cronies. I’m sure it’s illegal to do so, if not prohibited by contract. But the MTA has flouted the laws for decades. Shouldn’t a lawbreaker and lax provider of service be fired? New York City must find a way to do so.

This creates a few other issues. Two of them are: i) who will run the subways? and ii) who will repay the huge MTA debt?

These two problems can solve each other New York City should put the operation and perhaps even the ownership of the subway system out to bid to private entities. Just as New York has done to revitalize Bryrant Park, they could do with the subway—turn the operations over to those who know how to please customers and are incentivized by profit to do so.

It’s not a crazy idea. With a firm like SpaceX showing they can do things which NASA cannot and doing them much cheaper, one should question government monopolies over such things. Although some will say that only a city can run a transit system, airports around the World have privatized with a great deal of success—more efficiency, better service and benefits to taxpayers instead of costs. A private firm will find what customers value and drop nonsense. The city can set any rules it wants. And the money from a sale or leasing could address the $35 billion in debt.

And the city could require that the operator bring the system up to compliance with the ADA—something which the MTA has no interest in doing.

No matter what, a big change is essential. Expecting it from Governor Cuomo and his cronies at the MTA has proven a failure—as usual.

The post The Subways Have Gone to Hell appeared first on Larry Sharpe, Libertarian.

March 13, 2018

NEW YORK, New York – Larry Sharpe (L), candidate for Governor of New York and Cuomo’s main opponent, responded today to the news of ex-Cuomo aide Joseph Percoco’s conviction on corruption charges.

“Sadly, the corruption in New York has become so common that the conviction of another one of King Andrew’s henchmen has gone mostly unnoticed. We’ve been immune to the stench of the swamp, and for good reason,” said Sharpe. “There doesn’t seem to be another option, no obvious hope. This conviction is a feel-good Band-Aid on a diseased culture of corruption and bribery. We need a real change. A break from the old parties, the old ways. We need a new vision, under new leadership, for a new, New York.”

Larry Sharpe is a Bronx native, a Marine Corps veteran, an entrepreneur, and a management consultant with 15 years of experience mentoring international executives, entrepreneurs & salespeople. He is also a teacher, previously serving as a guest instructor for business management and leadership at institutions such as Yale University, Columbia University, Baruch College and John Jay College. He is now running for Governor of New York in order to make education more effective through innovation, reform the criminal justice system to focus on rehabilitation, and build an economy that works for all of New York State.

The post Press Release: Gubernatorial Candidate Larry Sharpe responds to conviction of Cuomo aide appeared first on Larry Sharpe, Libertarian.

“To fight this kind of corruption, for Pay to Play to end, the Play part needs to end,” says Sharpe, a Marine Corps veteran and New York native. “As long as policy makers wield large power over lucrative contracts, licensing, and other opportunities, there will be people with an interest to either influence them or replace them with someone who can.”

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By: Aaron Segal

Since 2010, New York has lost over one million people. It’s losing more every year. In 2015, it fell below Florida. Even adjusted for inflation, the NY State budget has increased by 20 billion dollars a year. Many of New York’s metro areas, such as Binghamton, Syracuse, Ithaca, and Utica, ranked within the lowest 20 out of 400 for economic growth since 2013. It ranks first for education spending, but 19th in education quality. It ranks first for healthcare spending, but 13th in healthcare quality. While spending huge amounts of money on infrastructure, it ranks 22nd. For opportunity, it ranks 44th. Economy: 29th. The pattern continues.

Another factor is alarming. With a decreasing taxpayer base, one would expect New York to reduce its budget, as not doing so would increase the burden on those who stayed. With less people, the costs of necessary services would supposedly decrease, not increase or even stay the same. Instead, the budget has increased, and the required taxpayer contributions have done so as well. Of course, New York, under Cuomo, can deny reality. It can say that the exodus is over, and that offering gigantic temporary stimulus packages to companies will fix everything. It won’t. Higher per capita taxes will drive people out at a faster rate. This is already happened, as 187,000 people left in 2015, while 223,000 left in 2016. This will not stop. The circumstances that drive people out of New York are exacerbated by a lower population and a desperate, out of control government. People will leave faster. Budgets will increase to keep them from leaving. Taxes will increase. People will leave faster yet. The cycle will repeat until something changes. This is reality. The solution is not artificial incentives to bribe corporations like Amazon into setting up their headquarters, the solution is to create a climate for business that is conducive to growth. If New York does not have this, no artificial incentive will change anything.

The artificial incentives are a central part of this horror show. In Cortland, a giant abandoned factory stands, barely being used, as it was built during a ten year tax break period. When you force a business to start paying higher taxes after giving it a break, it leaves. If New York offered lower taxes to compete with other states, businesses may grow and stay. Any decrease in New York’s government size would make a positive impact on the economy. But bribing businesses to stay long enough to create a few temporary jobs is not the solution. It’s like planting a flower in sandy soil. If you take perfect care of it, and give it all sorts of special treatment, it might grow, but if you want flowers to grow on their own, you need different soil. Business owners aren’t fools. They won’t fall for some sort of trick to get them to start a business and pay up ten years later. The only fool is New York, who is paying businesses to come, make a quick fortune, and leave when their time is up. This is not real economic policy. This is what a state would be like if governed by children.

This is not an opportunity to say “I told you so”, or to mock government for its failings. It is not an opportunity for people on one side to mock the other for their abstract errors in state government. This is New York. The state housing the biggest city in the country. New York City, the physical incarnation of capitalism at its finest. The physical incarnation of heroism and industry. And it is undone by politics. New York City was the place of opportunity that immigrants kissed the ground of upon arrival. Now it is a city of government overreach, a poison so great that it seeps into the rest of the state.

Politics aside, something is wrong. One doesn’t have to be a Tea Party radical to see that whatever New York has tried has failed. Nobody would disagree on the statement that it is a challenge to govern so much territory, along with the largest city in the country. But New York can be a state of prosperity again, and the solution is not legal bribery. The solution is not paying Amazon the best package to come here. The solution is fixing the problem at its source, creating a climate for business that is conducive to economic growth. Lower taxes. Privatization. Less subsidies. Less regulation. Any policy maker can cover their ears and drown out the reality that their state is failing. But what they cannot do is control this reality. No extra government program will keep people from leaving. We’ve tried big government, and it has failed. It’s time to give something else a try.

NY Exodus

NY Budget Growth

NY Going Downhill

States Rankings

The post New York Needs Something Different appeared first on Larry Sharpe, Libertarian.

by Dan Smith

If energy policy makes your eyes roll back into your head, I get it. And if all the regulations, bans, subsidies, taxes combined with all the different forms of energy leave you confused, I get that, too.

It’s likely by design.

That’s because the players probably wouldn’t like you taking too close of a look at the big bucks at stake ($40 billion per year in New York) and how it’s all tightly controlled by state and federal officials—giving way to lots of favors and taxpayer handouts, as we’ll see.

One should probably start with New York’s 2015 Clean Energy Standard. By 2030, 50% of electricity generated in New York will be from renewable energy sources: wind, solar, hydro, nuclear, biomass, et. al., up from 24% in 2016. That’s a big gap to close, so it’s phased in starting in 2017 and grows each year until 2030. Companies which produce non-renewable energy—oil, coal and natural gas, face a significant and growing tax (called “alternative compliance payments”).

The Clean Energy Standard is a big reward for energy companies to immediately start increasing investment in wind and solar, among others. Renewable energy technologies are being given special privilege over coal, oil and natural gas, who are quickly facing a big, new cost for failure to switch. Such an advantage is a call for investment money to start rolling in from banks and other private investors to fund the expansion into renewable energy in New York.

Unfortunately, there’s one big investor who is funding a lot of this: New York taxpayers, via Governor Andrew Cuomo.  

Governor Cuomo has promised $5 billion of New Yorkers’ tax dollars to the Clean Energy Fund—subsidies which are being given to renewable energy firms.

Setting aside whether or not you like the rule requiring more renewable energy, this situation begs the question:

Why do we need both . . . the Clean Energy Standard and also taxpayer funded subsidies?

Put another way, the Clean Energy Act was put in place to reward those who invest in Governor Cuomo’s vision of moving toward renewable energy, so why must taxpayers also payoff renewable energy companies now, before the fact, as well?

I believe there is no good reason. It’s just another excuse for Governor Cuomo to hand out more taxpayer money to cronies and for him to gather more power.

But there’s got to be a stated reason. New York renewable energy advisor, Phoenix Energy cites a common storyline, “generators of renewable sources . . . warned they would sell their generated energy to other states, and wind farms even went so far as to threaten authorities with a complete shutdown if subsidies were not granted . . . and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that 11 large renewable energy projects would be getting a total of $360 million in subsidies.”

Did you get that?

The companies who know they’re needed under Cuomo’s law, who were given the huge business advantage in 2015, had the audacity to come along in 2016 and threaten New Yorkers’ access to electricity if they didn’t get taxpayer money to subsidize them, as well.

They held New Yorkers hostage. Andrew Cuomo capitulated.

Let’s examine the threat. There are a great many problems in believing it. It’s easy to imagine this was all designed to get Cuomo’s cronies a $5 billion taxpayer payday.

But taking the claims at face value, the first problem is that wind and solar already have been receiving generous federal subsidies which should have seen them through their industries’ formative years. Why should New Yorkers pay more on top of that?

Further, individuals and businesses themselves can receive New York tax incentives for installing things like on-grid solar energy facilities, smaller, off-grid residential and commercial solar installations and small wind turbines, thereby getting some taxpayers to fund expensive panels and installation  for others.

But what’s most curious is that it makes no sense for them to move away from New York at the moment they were being handed a big regulatory advantage—one that would allow them to undercut competitors and/or raise prices when their non-renewable competitors had to pass their compliance tax onto customers.

Wind and solar weren’t alone in the “take New York hostage” game. Separately in 2016, several upstate nuclear power plants threatened to shut down if they didn’t get their own subsidies. Always generous with New Yorkers’ money, Governor Cuomo rewarded them with $500 million per year going forward. Reports are that the nuclear plants’ excuse for requiring the subsidies is that they can’t compete with another renewable energy source, biomass.  

This is becoming insane. Why should New Yorkers subsidize one renewable energy source and punish another? Isn’t the goal getting renewable energy . . . does it matter which one?  

And don’t lose sight of the irony here—nuclear is a less efficient and more costly than biomass and Andrew Cuomo has forced New Yorkers to back the less efficient technology. This isn’t isolated. It’s happening across the board, as New York’s energy efficiency has fallen from third in the nation in 2013 to seventh in 2017, and is expected to continue falling under these policies.  And inefficiency means higher energy prices, on top of the big tax bills Governor Cuomo is leaving us with.

One would be quite reasonable to start questing these policies and believe that taxpayer money could be better spent elsewhere. Perhaps someone should consider investigating how this all came about.

But is this the way one earns goodies from Andrew Cuomo—threaten to do something deeply illogical and hope New Yorkers don’t recognize the silliness of your empty threat?  Do we have to hand out taxpayer money and also see higher electricity costs as the “benefit”?

Sadly, it appears this is the way business is done in New York.

The subsidies themselves make no sense to anyone with a basic understanding of economics.

Governor Cuomo has piled billions in New York taxpayer funded subsidies on top of favorable mandates and rules which are on top of a many years of other federal and New York state subsidies which themselves run into the tens of billions of dollars.

And basic economics also instructs us that energy prices are very likely to go up as the non-renewable tax is passed on to consumers and wind and solar are free to raise their prices in response. When combined with our falling efficiency, that spells trouble for New Yorkers’ electric bills.

So New Yorkers can expect to get hit now and later, just as Californians have with the nation’s most-aggressive renewables programs and, not coincidentally, the nation’s highest electricity costs—paying 41% more than the national average.

These policies make sense only in the world of corruption and wasteful spending of Albany under the direction of our governor, Andrew Cuomo.

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