Train Runs Over Rudy

Ralph Nader also wrote an op-ed piece in the Timesthis week, laying out just how much in property and sales tax breaks, and sometimes direct grants, the Giuliani administration is giving giant corporations, theoretically at least to keep them in New York. These are the companies that employ many of the 800,000 commuters who get the city's best jobs, earning three times what the average resident earns. Thanks to decades of corporate welfare, starting with Ed Koch and blossoming under Giuliani, and now thanks to Joe Bruno and Shelly Silver, neither the commuters nor their companies will be underwriting the city they depend on for survival services.

The sole justification for the gutting of this tax is greed. But in an era of transparent, top-down, class politics, it's become our only political value.