By: Joe Strupp Reacting to a power fight at New York's state capitol in Albany -- which has effectively brought legislative business to a halt -- New York's Daily News on Friday published a rare Page One editorial.
The front-page opinion piece, with the headline "Don't Pay the Bums," declared that the state senators and assembly members should not be paid for their time this week.
"Let them make fools of themselves. Let them not make fools of us. Let them not take our money for shutting down an entire house of the New York State Legislature," the editorial stated. "Here is what we will pay to support Senate operations this week: $1,785,230. Every penny of that bloated sum will be wasted by the less-than-useful idiots who since Monday have made an empty farce of governing."
The entire editorial can be found
here.
Editorial Page Editor Arthur Browne said he raised the idea of such an editorial with Editor-in-Chief Martin Dunn as a way of expressing the outrage with "the dysfunction in Albany."
"The legislature's failure to behave responsibly just became unacceptable," Browne told E&P.
The paper is also publishing a coupon that readers are asked to fill out and send back to declare their view that the state officials should not be paid. Browne said editors may send the coupons to state legislators and will tally the responses for a future story.
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