New York Comptroller Hints at Bailout

And so it goes. The very blue state of New York, controlled entirely by Democrats, with New York City under control of a guy who can't figure out what party he wants to belong to, is now getting ready to sidle up to the federal trough.

Watch your wallet, folks.

New York Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli says the financial crisis gripping Wall Street and the world economy could cost the state and New York City 225,000 jobs over the next two years.

DiNapoli says instability in the securities industry could also cost the state and city $6.5 billion in tax revenue during that same period.

The report issued Monday suggests the city and state may need a federal bailout despite the efforts of Gov. David Paterson and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to close budget deficits.

Wonderful. So due to the sheer incompetence of the hacks running New York into the ground, the rest of the country will be left bailing them out. You can be sure Barack Obama and his crack economic team will be sure to take care of a reliable Democratic state.

Meanwhile, you would think a guy like DiNapoli, who's apparently failing miserably at his job, would be looking to bail out himself. Instead, he's hiring Obama's pollster as he looks toward 2010.

State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli's 2010 campaign committee announced today that it has hired the Benenson Strategy Group to work on his first statewide run.

The firm's founding partner and namesake, Joel Benenson, has a long history of working for pols in the metropolitan area, but is best known these days as the key pollster for Barack Obama's presidential campaign.

So far, public polls have shown the greatest obstacle facing DiNapoli, who, until the Legislature elevated him to his current post in February 2007, was an assemblyman from Long Island, is the fact that he lacks name recognition - more than half of New Yorkers consistently say they have no clue who he is.