There is a grim day of reckoning on the horizon next year for New York's city and state budgets. It is a subject about which the re-election-seeking Governor, George Pataki, dares not speak, and around which the businessman-turned-mayor, Michael Bloomberg, is still tiptoeing. The current bleak prognosis is that the city faces at least a $5 billion shortfall while the state's deficit will be at least double that figure. Already, the powers that be are pressing for that most regressive of tax hikes, a one-third increase in the cost of riding subways and buses. There are whispers about normally unthinkable remedies, such as closing firehouses. Those and other potential cuts are going to be the grit and substance of scores of as-yet-unplanned rallies and demonstrations, as New York's advocates and activists gird themselves for one more round of... More >>>