If you spend enough time with hookers, apparently people will forget to ask whether or not you’re doing a good job. This New Yorker magazine article, “The Humbling of Eliot Spitzer”, from December 2007, suggests that he was not accomplishing much. Foreigners and financial services firms were keeping New York City flush while the rest of the state continued its decline.
It is unclear what the new guy is going to do. What would it take to create jobs in Buffalo or Rochester? Why would a company subject itself and its workers to crushing taxes to pay for public employee union deals made in the 1970s when they could locate in South Carolina instead?
He wasn’t doing all that well. If anything, he might actually have been making things worse in regards to state government. His very autocratic style might have worked when he was Attorney General but it made a lot of people angry.
Rochester alone has lost tens of thousands of jobs in recent years. Although there have been some companies moving here, the population across all of upstate is declining. People are joining companies as they move to places with lower taxes and brighter futures. I love living here, but there’s no doubt I need to be ready to move.
“What would it take to create jobs in Buffalo or Rochester?”
Richard Florida has some good ideas:
http://www.google.com/search?q=tor-buff-chester