Just who should New York voters elect in this upcoming election? Long Islanders are faced with three main issues that make all others irrelevant by comparison and the candidates hardly even touch upon them save in the most superficial and politically correct ways: government, jobs, and education.
Government. We are governed by local yokels via 200 special districts between JFK and the Montauk lighthouse and by distant bureaucrats in dysfunctional Albany. We need to restore the power of the county and township at home while working for greater autonomy from the rest of New York State. A 15-minute drive shouldn’t be a journey through a dozen governmental jurisdictions and the potholes we encounter on that drive shouldn’t wait for a green light by a DOT bureaucrat who can reach Quebec before he can reach Quogue. If we can’t find a leader or party willing to address this issue, our services will decline in quality as they go up in cost until we are left with bankrupt states and municipalities.
Jobs. Our very existence as a stable middle class society with stable neighborhoods and intact families is threatened by the decline in wages, benefits, and job security by foreign imports, outsourcing, downsizing, and illegal immigration. If we can’t find a leader or a party willing to take on this issue, our college graduates who have failed to find overseas opportunities after graduation will have nothing but poverty to look forward to in old age as they struggle to raise families in communities overrun with guns and gangs.
Education. We need to approach every educational policy from the assumption that the objective of education is not to mass-produce political patronage jobs, lucrative contracts, and union featherbeds, or even to promote social causes, alternative lifestyles, or pop culture psychobabble. The objective of education, after all, is the moral and intellectual development of children by inculcating in them an awareness of the vast scope of human knowledge and by providing them with skills that will render them employable and productive adults. We need a leader and a party willing to assert these objectives or we will continue to graduate students less educated than their grandparents and, indeed, less educated than students in many undeveloped nations.
There are a number of candidates running for public office this time around. There are a number of political parties tossing their hats into the ring. But which one will provide the leader and party we need?
Paul Manton
Levittown resident
