Buying the vote and with no real relief

Modest rebates miss the mark
...this refund is clearly designed also to curry favor with voters, by legislators running for re-election Nov. 7 and a governor eyeing the White House in 2008. If there was ever any doubt that was the case, it was erased when the state Department of Taxation and Finance destroyed 200,000 of the rebate checks because they didn't give credit to Gov. George Pataki, as the New York Post recently reported.
...ask them what they're doing to really solve the problem of soaring property taxes.