I was very encouraged to read this post in the editor’s blog of the Nation, published yesterday:

Now that thirty years of deregulation and tax cuts for the wealthy have failed so spectacularly, creating an economic catastrophe in its wake, the American people are beginning to recognize conservative economic policy for what it is: a disastrous recipe for privatizing profits and socializing costs, and shifting the economic burden to the poor and middle class.

But with 46 states facing budget shortfalls it is clear that conservative orthodoxy is still alive and holding sway in too many statehouses. Too often, the emphasis isn’t on change we can believe in — but on the same old cutting of services that people need rather than raising taxes on the rich who have disproportionately benefited from fiscal policy over these many decades.
We certainly see this short-sighted and proven wrong approach being pushed in New York.
The state is confronting a budget deficit of $15 billion, and Governor Paterson has proposed $9 billion of harsh cuts in education, healthcare and social services, and $5 billion in new taxes that would hit the struggling poor and middle-class the hardest — making an already regressive tax system even more so.
. . . Fortunately there is a great alternative proposal gaining momentum in the New York legislature and with constituents. Democratic Senator and Nation contributor Eric Schneiderman has introduced the Fair Share Tax Reform Act of 2009 which would raise $6 billion in new annual revenues by slightly increasing the taxes on the wealthiest 5 percent of New Yorkers.

I would excerpt the whole post if I could—by all means is it worth the read. It describes how regressive our tax system is in New York, supposedly one of the the more progressive states in the union, and how Sen. Schneiderman’s plan can effectively address this, if only Senate Democrats get behind it.
If you agree, please tell your legislators you support this bill. And thank you, Sen. Schneidermann for putting it forward. This is substantiative change I can believe in, not bumbling and Blue Dog bullshit.