Good Morning,

 

Two weeks ago we were told by the WH that O would not have time to prepare for the debates..he was busy you know. Well, apparently that was true. Not that he was busy but that he wouldn’t be prepared. You see, without a teleprompter, someone filling in all the blanks for him, we get to see and hear the real Obama. With his head down most of the time, we as a nation were treated to witnessing a very pompous, overrated, under-performing and clueless president.

Last night’s performance is one that the left will regret. As Anthony Dispenza wrote this morning….From the time Obama gave his now-famous speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004 to today, the liberal establishment that pervades and indoctrinates American society has relentlessly pushed the idea that Barack Obama is the most well-spoken, brilliant, wisest president that ever graced this country with his service. After being president for about five minutes Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The historian Michael Beschloss told radio host Don Imus that Obama is the smartest president with the highest IQ ever.  David Brooks was amazed that, in addition to his “perfectly creased pant” Obama was even smarter than Brooks on both policy and political philosophy. Chris Matthews felt a “thrill” going up his leg when listening to Obama speak. San Francisco Chronicle‘s Mark Morford said Obama would show us “a new way of being on the planet”. And Newsweek‘s Evan Thomas declared on MSNBC, “I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above – above the world, he’s sort of God.”

They should all be fired for misleading We the People for “The debate result itself will not surprise conservatives. After all, Obama is already known by informed citizens to be “the least qualified man in any room he walks into,”” to paraphrase Rush Limbaugh.

While most report this morning that Romney slammed it (including CNN and Van Jones himself; Ed Schultz said ‘O was off his game’ and Chris Matthews asked ‘Where was O tonight’), AARP is trying to save their own butt by being annoyed with O ‘for using their group to promote himself’ (laughable really b/c we ALL know AARP sold out our seniors with their support of OCare, but here is that story:

http://dailycaller.com/2012/10/04/aarp-bashes-obama-for-using-it-to-promote-himself-in-debate/

Rachel Maddow, true to form offered excuses for O: ‘O’s last debate was 4 years ago’; Andrew Sullivan over at the Daily Beast wrote “He choked. He lost. He may even have lost the election tonight,” Sullivan wrote, later adding, “Obama looked tired, even bored; he kept looking down; he had no crisp statements of passion or argument; he wasn’t there. He was entirely defensive, which may have been the strategy. But it was the wrong strategy. At the wrong moment.”

Sullivan, an Obama supporter, was even more vicious on Twitter, calling Obama’s performance “terrible” and “political malpractice.”

A CBS News snap poll last night of uncommitted voters shows 46% think Romney won the debate, 22% think it was Pres Obama, 32% call it a tie. That is upsetting to some.

Breitbart gathered the five biggest–and worst–excuses for Obama’s defeat:

5. We won’t know for 2-3 days whether Mitt Romney actually won. The idea here seems to be that the polls will tell us who won, although even CNN’s instant polling of those who had watched the debate had it at 67%-25% in Romney’s favor. This excuse has a purpose: to buy time for so-called “fact-checkers” to attack Romney’s arguments and change the narrative from “Romney won” to “Romney lied.” Speaking of which…

4. Romney lied with a straight face for ninety minutes. This excuse betrays the fact that so many on the left never leave their own media bubble. They believe what they tell each other about Romney and his policies, rather than listening or learning the truth. A good example was Rachel Maddow’s battle with Rudy Giuliani afterwards, in which she insisted Romney lied about a $5 trillion tax cut that he has never, in fact, proposed. Sad.

3. The free-flowing format was bad and let Romney dominate. On the contrary, the format allowed Obama to deploy his favorite defense, the filibuster. It just so happened that Romney didn’t let him get away with it, insisting on the right to reply to repeated distortions of his position. It is Obama’s fault, not the format’s, that he didn’t know when to stop talking, letting himself lose focus while the words kept coming out.

2. The moderator, Jim Lehrer, let Romney win. This is the Obama campaign’s official excuse, judging by the post-debate comments of Stephanie “Felon” Cutter, who argued that Lehrer allowed Romney to dominate. Actually, Lehrer was his usual liberal self, and was tougher on Romney than on Obama, interjecting more often with follow-up questions and letting the president use a full four minutes more than his challenger.

1. Obama didn’t show up tonight. This was the lament of Chris Matthews, who suggested–colorfully–that Obama had not tried hard enough to win the debate. The idea, once again–it is always the same when Obama suffers a setback–is that the president needs to fight harder, to be more aggressive. In fact, Obama was often too hostile. What needs to change are the ideas, not the tactics. And it’s too late for that.

Yes, all of this is fun, watching the left rant on and having to concede that their messiah lost last night and let’s face it, what Romney did in 90 minutes last night is what the lib media has refused to do in 4 years: tell the truth about Obama’s record.

Given that, we must put the headline and pundit views aside and continue on as responsible people and delve into what BOTH candidates stated last night and fact check/gut check accordingly b/c we KNOW above all else – we reap what we sow:

Obama accused Romney of proposing a $5 trillion tax cut. Not true. Romney proposes to offset his rate cuts and promises he won’t add to the deficit.

Romney again promised to “not reduce the taxes paid by high-income Americans” and also to “lower taxes on middle-income families,” but didn’t say how he could possibly accomplish that without also increasing the deficit.

Obama oversold his health care law, claiming that health care premiums have “gone up slower than any time in the last 50 years.” That’s true of health care spending, but not premiums. And the health care law had little to do with the slowdown in overall spending.

Romney claimed a new board established by the Affordable Care Act is “going to tell people ultimately what kind of treatments they can have.” Not true. The board only recommends cost-saving measures for Medicare, and is legally forbidden to ration care or reduce benefits.

Obama said 5 million private-sector jobs had been created in the past 30 months. Perhaps so, but that counts jobs that the Bureau of Labor Statistics won’t add to the official monthly tallies until next year. For now, the official tally is a bit over 4.6 million.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/factchecking-the-first-presidential-debate-of-2012/2012/10/04/9d47934e-0d66-11e2-bb5e-492c0d30bff6_blog.html#pagebreak

 

AP offered these:

OBAMA: “I’ve proposed a specific $4 trillion deficit reduction plan. … The way we do it is $2.50 for every cut, we ask for $1 in additional revenue.”

THE FACTS: In promising $4 trillion, Obama is already banking more than $2 trillion from legislation enacted along with Republicans last year that cut agency operating budgets and capped them for 10 years. He also claims more than $800 billion in war savings that would occur anyway. And he uses creative bookkeeping to hide spending on Medicare reimbursements to doctors. Take those “cuts” away and Obama’s $2.50/$1 ratio of spending cuts to tax increases shifts significantly more in the direction of tax increases.

OBAMA: “Over the last two years, health care premiums have gone up – it’s true – but they’ve gone up slower than any time in the last 50 years. So we’re already beginning to see progress. In the meantime, folks out there with insurance, you’re already getting a rebate.”

THE FACTS: Not so, concerning premiums. Obama is mixing overall health care spending, which has been growing at historically low levels, and health insurance premiums, which have continued to rise faster than wages and overall economic growth. Premiums for job-based family coverage have risen by nearly $2,400 since 2009 when Obama took office, according to the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. In 2011, premiums jumped by 9 percent. This year’s 4 percent increase was more manageable, but the price tag for family coverage stands at $15,745, with employees paying more than $4,300 of that.

When it comes to insurance rebates under Obama’s health care law, less than 10 percent of people with private health insurance are benefiting.

More than 160 million Americans under 65 have private insurance through their jobs and by buying their own policies. According to the administration, about 13 million people will benefit from rebates. And nearly two-thirds of that number will only be entitled to a share of it, since they are covered under job-based plans where their employer pays most of the premium and will get most of the rebate.

ROMNEY on the failure of Obama’s economic policy: “And the proof of that is 23 million people out of work. The proof of that is 1 out of 6 people in poverty. The proof of that is we’ve gone from 32 million on food stamps to 47 million on food stamps. The proof of that is that 50 percent of college graduates this year can’t find work.”

THE FACTS: The number of unemployed is 12.5 million, not 23 million. Romney was also counting 8 million people who are working part time but would like a full-time job and 2.6 million who have stopped looking for work, either because they are discouraged or because they are going back to school or for other reasons.

He got the figure closer to right earlier in the debate, leaving out only the part-timers when he said the U.S. has “23 million people out of work or stopped looking for work.“ But he was wrong in asserting that Obama came into office ”facing 23 million people out of work.” At the start of Obama’s presidency, 12 million were out of work.

OBAMA: It’s important “that we take some of the money that we’re saving as we wind down two wars to rebuild America.”

THE FACTS: This oft-repeated claim is based on a fiscal fiction. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were paid for mostly with borrowed money, so stopping them doesn’t create a new pool of available cash that can be used for something else, like rebuilding America. It just slows down the government’s borrowing.

OBAMA: “Gov. Romney’s central economic plan calls for a $5 trillion tax cut – on top of the extension of the Bush tax cuts, that’s another trillion dollars – and $2 trillion in additional military spending that the military hasn’t asked for. That’s $8 trillion. How we pay for that, reduce the deficit, and make the investments that we need to make, without dumping those costs onto middle-class Americans, I think is one of the central questions of this campaign.”

THE FACTS: Obama’s claim that Romney wants to cut taxes by $5 trillion doesn’t add up. Presumably, Obama was talking about the effect of Romney’s tax plan over 10 years, which is common in Washington. But Obama‘s math doesn’t take into account Romney’s entire plan.

Romney proposes to reduce income tax rates by 20 percent and eliminate the estate tax and the alternative minimum tax. The Tax Policy Center, a Washington research group, says that would reduce federal tax revenues by $465 billion in 2015, which would add up to about $5 trillion over 10 years.

However, Romney says he wants to pay for the tax cuts by reducing or eliminating tax credits, deductions and exemptions. The goal is a simpler tax code that raises the same amount of money as the current system but does it in a more efficient manner.

The knock on Romney’s plan, which Obama accurately cited, is that Romney has refused to say which tax breaks he would eliminate to pay for the lower rates.

THIS is my favorite piece from last night:

Now, let’s get down to Romney/Ryan’s tax policy solution. Yes, it’s been vague and I’ll even say thin, very thin, on details. But, here is what we know thus far: He has a proposal to cut taxes across the board by 20 percent, The proposal seeks to cap itemized deductions at $17,000 per filer.

“As an option you could say everybody’s going to get up to a $17,000 deduction; and you could use your charitable deduction, your home mortgage deduction, or others — your healthcare deduction, and you can fill that bucket, if you will, that $17,000 bucket that way. And higher income people might have a lower number,” said Romney during an interview with Denver’s FOX31.

“Or you could do it by the same method that Bowles-Simpson did it where you could limit certain deductions, but that’s the sort of thing you do with Congress,” he added.

A few critics were pleased with Romney’s idea.

“This proposal gives Romney a concrete response to the Obama campaign attack that he wants to raise taxes on the middle class. This policy would hold almost every taxpayer making less than $200,000 a year harmless from tax increases,” writes Josh Barro for Bloomberg.

“If tax rates are cut by 20 percent across the board, as Romney also proposes, you would have to face a 25 percent increase in your taxable income to get hit with a tax increase,” he adds.

He continues:

For example, that means a family with $150,000 in income would have to be taking $43,600 in itemized deductions today in order to get hit with a tax increase — not impossible, but unlikely. (And many of those high-deduction filers get hit with the Alternative Minimum Tax today, which Romney says he would repeal.)

But there are a few who’ve reacted to Romney’s proposal with more caution than praise because, they say, the plan isn’t specific enough.

“I have to see the details because I can’t get behind this idea until I know middle class taxes will not go up,” said CNBC’s Larry Kudlow, who argues that a limit of deductions, technically speaking, increases taxes.

“I want Romney to red line all middle class deductions — leave them alone,” Kudlow added.

And, of course, the Obama campaign has attacked Romney’s idea as not good enough.

“Romney still refuses to be straight with the American people. While he promised to pay for his $5 trillion tax cut plan that’s skewed toward millionaires and billionaires by closing tax loopholes for the wealthiest Americans, independent analysts have shown that his plan can only be paid for by eliminating deductions that middle class families rely on, like the mortgage interest deduction,” said Obama spokeswoman Lis Smith, according to ABC News.

While I am a stickler for principles and common sense, we really DO need to see and understand the full Romney/Ryan plan.

Now, we need to turn our attention to 2 things today:

Sarah Palin and Ann Barnhardt are warning us here:

“Now we have to be aware in the next couple debates also if Mitt Romney continues to gain and gain and gain just by being truthful and experienced and intelligent, that doing a good job as a presidential candidate, these guys in the Obama camp, they’re not going go down without swinging. They’re going pull something,” former Governor Sarah Palin warned after tonight’s debate.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/10/03/palin_warns_obama_camp_will_not_go_down_without_swinging_will_pull_something.html

“No preparation was done because they know that the elections will be fixed and none of them care, least of all Barry who is a drug-addled imbecile and doesn’t care about much beyond his next gram of coke and male fellation” Ann Barnhardt. http://barnhardt.biz/

The warnings aside, give this piece by Brandon Smith some consideration…

It’s Not America Anymore

Many of us in the liberty movement find ourselves searching for a distinct root cause of the trials and tribulations of American culture — the Holy Grail catalyst that, if unraveled, would save this country and heal the septic wounds covering the landscape of our hobbled society. The obvious answer would be to remove the global elites who are poisoning the well from the picture entirely. Yes, this has to be done eventually. However, we must also identify how those elites have been able to so thoroughly con the masses of this nation for so long.

What inherent weakness has made us susceptible to manipulation? For this question, there are NO easy answers. But, if I had to choose a single frailty of our collective psyche as paramount to our downfall, I would say that Americans most of all are confounded by their own patriotism. We often embrace the ideal without knowing what it really means.

There are in fact two kinds of patriotism: the concrete, and the imagined. Many Americans fall haphazardly into the fantasy of being patriotic. They define patriotism upon the exploits of the mainstream and of the government in control at the time. They become cheerleaders for the establishment instead of stalwart champions of their country’s founding principles. In fact, true patriotism is NOT about blindly defending one’s nation or leadership regardless of its trespasses; true patriotism is about defending the philosophy that made one’s nation possible and prosperous in the first place — even if that means standing against the power structure in place today.

I often hear the uneducated and unaware claim that America and its principles have been a bane to the rest of the world. They say America is at the center of the vampire squid, flailing its vicious tentacles against innocent foreign civilizations. This is an oversimplification at best. The crimes that these well-meaning but naïve activists scorn cannot be attributed to “America” because the American ideal has been completely abandoned by those in the seat of power in our modern era. We do not live in “America” — at least, not the America that the Founding Fathers and authors of the Constitution created.  Therefore, the original philosophy that gave birth to America is not the issue, the abuse and neglect of that philosophy is.

America has been ransacked and deformed into a hideous lampoon of its former self. This has been done for the most part through the destruction of the guiding principles we pretend we still hold onto as a culture, but in reality have cast aside. If we are ever to undo the damage that has already been done, we have to rediscover what the original design of America was. Wailing and growling about the inadequacies of the present does nothing unless we also establish where it is that we have fallen from grace. What is America supposed to be? What did the Founders truly intend?

America Is Supposed To Be Controlled By The People

The concept of a Republic revolves around a reversal of the traditional narrative of power. Throughout most of history, government stood at the top of the pyramid, where the hands of a few dominated the destinies of the citizenry. The future was a matter for the elites, not the peasants, to be concerned with. The American Republic, as designed by the revolutionary colonists who defeated the old oligarchy (at least for a time), flipped the role of government to servant rather than master. The goal was to make government tangible and accountable rather than abstract and untouchable. The America of today has no such accountability anymore.

We have a two-party system that pursues the mechanizations of globalism in tandem, not in contest. When both parties have the same desires and goals, when both parties collude to remove civil liberties rather than protect them, and when both parties are funded by the same corporate backers, there is no such thing as change through the process of elections. Anyone who claims that government corruption can be punished through the ballot box hasn’t the slightest clue how our system really functions. They think we are still living in the original “America,” one that values the voice of the people.

When the government decides to push through banker bailouts, the Patriot Act, the National Defense Authorization Act, etc., all while ignoring opposition by a vast majority of citizens, it is clear that the paradigm has shifted and the American value of representation by and for the people is lost.

America Is Supposed To Prosper Through Free Markets

One of the first acts of the American Revolution in the fight against British tyranny was to decouple from British economic dominance. They stopped relying on goods produced in England and peddled by the European merchant class and began making their own. From homespun clothing to homemade rifles, Americans created a legitimate free-market environment. Free markets are systems controlled by the people, thriving on the natural functions of supply and demand. They are not administered by bureaucracies or corporate hierarchies that manipulate the economy to fit preconceived political and social ends.

Free markets are decentralized markets. Corporations, which obstruct decentralization, were never meant to exist according to Adam Smith, the architect of traditional free markets. Today’s framework operates on centralization and the removal of options and choices, which is facilitated by the imbalance and lack of accountability in the corporate legal structure.

I have to laugh every time I hear someone attack “capitalism” and free markets as the source of all our ills. America has not had the pleasure of free markets for at least 100 years (since the construction of the private Federal Reserve, a collusion between banking and government interests). No one alive today has ever seen an actual American “free market” beyond community barter, so to blame free markets for our modern failings is rather thoughtless.  To summarize, the U.S. economy is nothing like what the founders envisioned and fought for.

America Is Supposed To Have A Reserved Foreign Policy

The Founding Fathers specifically sought to keep America out of foreign entanglements and haphazard alliances. They knew from experience that the elites and monarchies of Europe often used wars as a means of consolidating power and keeping populations in relative fear. They were well aware of the methodologies of Niccolo Machiavelli and knew that forced alliances were a trap used to ensnare nations into unnecessary conflict and financial dependency while keeping the masses subservient through false patriotism.

Today, our government has utterly violated the original principles of reserved foreign policy, especially in the past century. The excuse always used is that “we are under attack,” yet we usually discover later that these “attacks” were actually fabricated by our own leaders. From the sinking of the USS Maine, to the sinking of the Lusitania, to the Gulf of Tonkin and beyond, for the past 100 years, Americans have been presented with false flag threats used as leverage to convince us to become entangled in foreign engagements. This strategy has become so common that elitists now openly admit their intentions to commit future false flags in order to draw us into yet another war, this time with Iran.

The current policy of “exporting democracy” has not only been a complete failure (just look at Egypt, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.), it is also a total affront to the foundation of the American dynamic. Patriotism in the name of interventionism is foolhardy and decidedly un-American.

America Is Supposed To Respect Individual Rights

The Founders witnessed the extreme abuses of government firsthand: invasion of privacy, invasion of property, wrongful arrest and imprisonment, loss of representation, overt and malicious taxation, thuggish law enforcement, and the targeting of those who dared to dissent in their speech. The excuse used by the British for their tyrannical behavior was, essentially, national security. In the end, though, the elites’ actions had nothing to do with security for the populous and everything to do with what they saw as opposition to their hegemony. Our government has become a mirror image of the elitist power-mongers of Britain in the days of the revolution. Absolutely everything the colonists fought against has been re-established by the globalists in our political structure today, once again, all in the name of national security.

We have seen the enslavement of our money supply and general economy by the Federal Reserve; invasive and violent taxation through the Internal Revenue Service; loss of privacy through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance and the Patriot acts; loss of property rights through multiple agencies including the Bureau of Land Management, the Environmental Protection Agency, the IRS, the Food and Drug Administration, etc. (who claim their tightening fist is for our own safety, yet they constantly overlook corporate misdeeds that put the public in true danger while pummeling average citizens for minor or non-existent offenses); the militarization of law enforcement through the Department of Homeland Security and Federally dominated fusion centers; potential loss of Habeas Corpus through the NDAA; and even wrongful arrest against those who merely speak openly of their discontent (look into the case of Marine veteran Brandon Raub for a taste of what lay ahead).

What Have We Become?

Those who rally behind the modern concept of America rally behind a façade — an empty shell devoid of the heart and soul that gave life to this once great experiment. I do not support what America is. I support what America was and what it could be again if the truth is adequately smashed into the faces of the currently oblivious public. If this country is content to suckle from the putrid teat of globalism and forsake the moral force of conscience that gave it life, then it has become another place — an alien land.

I have heard the argument that America is meant to be a kind of chameleon built to change its stripes and adapt to the demands of the era. I have heard it argued that the Constitution and the principles of the Founding Fathers are outdated and inadequate for our new age of technological wizardry and terrorist ideologies. This is pure intellectual idiocy. The principles of freedom never expire. Individual liberty is inherent and eternal. It is the driving force of every great accomplishment in the history of mankind. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights embody the spirit of that eternal battle of individual liberty. There is no adaptation. There is only freedom or tyranny.

It is time for us to decide what kind of Americans we wish to be: the deluded rah-rah puppets of a desiccated totalitarian society, or the watchmen on the wall. Will we be the keepers and protectors of the vital core of the American identity, or will we be fly-by-night consumers of the flavor-of-the-day political carnival, eating every tainted sample from the elitist platter in an insane attempt to replace our free heritage with a sleek, sexy, rehashed form of top-down feudalism?  (h/t Phil P).

We MUST get back to basics and we MUST take the Senate, keep the House, and try anew with Romney.

As expected, numerous emails were received yesterday regarding the 9/11 segment. Today, as requested, I offer my personal take. I did not conclude that the engineers, scientists, and experts were pointing fingers at our government – in that ‘they did it’. What I took away was that they all believed we have been lied to and as such want the investigation reopened. I 100% believe it was the terrorists that planed and planted the material that ultimately caused the structure failures. Further, I believe our government knows this and one look at all of the new pieces of legislature since, it’s almost laughable to believe differently. I conclude that our government knows something fell through the cracks aka they failed in keeping our country safe. IF that story was spread, imagine the panic, imagine the hatred, imagine the chaos that could have ensued.

It’s hard to argue the evidence portrayed but for me anyway, it’s easy to believe the government lied ‘to protect us’ from ourselves. The ‘See something Say something’ campaign still gives me pause, but perhaps it really is/was a necessity! Given the latest lie over Libya, it seems more likely than not, that ‘we the government’ knew, but was fearful in coming clean.

So, if I believe this, then why did I include the video? That’s an easy one. We are NOT safe from foreign or domestic enemies and the mere fact that our government is having a conversation about defense spending and cutting …. well, to me, that’s just a damn dumb idea. We can no longer trust what the media tells us, what the WH tells us, what our own parties tell us. Everything is painted a certain way in order to a)keep order b)insight a response or a/b)to manipulate. Sometimes, we have to see THEIR bigger picture.

It’s hard to comprehend that the ‘beacon on the hill’ could have a weakness, but we did and perhaps, still do. All I know is, we witnessed the best of America..Americans coming together to care for strangers. I wonder, what may have happened if our response had been out of fear and let’s face it, knowing that terrorists were on the loose planting bombs would not make for a ‘feeling safe and patriotic’ response. The commission should be reopened and let the truth and facts speak for themselves. The horror will always live on, but the truth will perhaps enhance that ‘See something Say something’ for we will ultimately know, we are not as safe as we and the government would like us to believe.

LOCAL:

Assemblyman Vito Lopez’s Republican opponent, Richy Garcia, says he’s no longer interested in continuing his campaign against the embattled Brooklyn Democrat.

A state judge invalidated Binghamton’s two-year fracking moratorium, marking the first time a local law that would ban or delay hydraulic fracturing in New York has been struck down.

Nassau County Legislature Majority Leader Peter Schmitt died after suffering a heart attack in County Executive Ed Mangano’s office.

House Speaker John Boehner is back in New York this weekend, this time to assist GOP NY-27 candidate Chris Collins.

Stephen Barton, the 22-year-old Aurora, Colorado shooting victim who appears in a Mayors Against Illegal Guns ad running this week, met with Mayor Bloomberg.

Cuomo signed legislation allowing the state Department of Motor Vehicles to place a distinguishing mark on a driver’s license, or non-driver ID, to indicate its holder is a veteran.

Oh Jeeze….

Sen. Greg Ball plans to unveil a measure that would raise the state’s minimum wage while also cutting business taxes, the Putnam County Republican said in a statement yesterday afternoon.

CapitalTonight reports: Ball, a freshman lawmaker who is considered deeply conservative but has something of a maverick streak, said in a statement he plans to reveal the business and job package at an event on Friday.

Ball announced the move in a news release and advisory, saying the measure is an attempt “to cut through the clutter and lead from the front.” No details on the tax cuts or how much the minimum wage would be increased were immediately available.

The bill comes after a bill to boost the minimum wage from $7.25 to $8.50 and tie future increases to the rate of inflation failed in the Legislature after Republicans balked at the proposal.

Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos had insisted his conference would not pass the measure or exchange it for business tax cuts that Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver likely would not have gone for, either.

The bill also comes as the election season enters its final month and Ball faces a challenge from Democrat Justin Wagner.

“Albany is in stalemate between those who want a minimum wage hike and those who want a tax cut for businesses. We can do both, and we should, but any hike in the minimum wage must be paired with an equally compelling tax cut package for small business owners. My comprehensive package increases the minimum wage while also cutting taxes on small business owners by 20% and fully repealing the MTA payroll tax. If we can avoid the politics and work together, we can take care of both the employee and the employer,” Ball said in a statement.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo told reporters in May that raising the state’s minimum wage — a move he supports — would have been a heavier lift than passing same-sex marriage through the Republican-controlled Senate. Cuomo hinted recently that a special session could result in a minimum wage increase, with a pay raise for lawmakers used as a bargaining chip.

The Wagner campaign responds — very quickly — this video of Ball discussing his opposition to the minimum wage hike on Sept. 27.

Truth — its fun isn’t it?

Enjoy your day.

Lisa