This is Why You’re Poor
We need to throw more napalm on the fire if we’re ever going to extinguish it. You scaremongers would claim that fighting an inferno with fuel will only worsen it. But that means you simply don’t understand how tricky it is to run the Empire State.
Unfortunately, a new study indicates that those in charge are only running a once-admired state into the ground. New York is a Dickens novel come to life, as downtrodden, hardscrabble commoners can only hope to scrape through the day without being run over by a carriage or stricken by a crotchety rich jerk’s cane:
A new report by the Fiscal Policy Institute called “Grow Together or Pull Further Apart? Income Concentration Trends in New York,” details the vast and growing economic gap between New York’s wealthiest and poorest communities.
The report states quite plainly that “New York State has the highest income inequality of all states.”
It won’t surprise anyone who’s looked for signs of life in upstate’s downtowns that we’re a borderline Second World Country:
Given its degree of inequality, if New York City were a nation, it would rank 15th worst among 134 countries with respect to income concentration, in between Chile and Honduras.
Is Chile bad? It sounds bad. And I’d personally like to aim higher than Honduras. But the report sadly takes a different tack. For one, the Fiscal Policy Instituters wallow in classic class warfare by making a novel observation regarding humanity, namely that some thrive more than others:
Wall Street, with its stratospheric profits and bonuses, sits within 15 miles of the Bronx–the nation’s poorest county.
But both Wall Street and 161st Street share much in common: those on each are equally hooked on governmental cheese. Corporate bailouts are as insalubrious as unending welfare checks.
Actually, the study refers to the boring stereotype of unfettered capitalism unfairly rewarding those who take risks and work hard to invest and grow the economy. It’s amazing that entrepreneurs can create opportunities without Joe Biden’s gentle guidance.
Those in higher brackets could share how reducing the state’s role benefits all if they weren’t busy creating wealth for themselves and opportunities for the rest of us.
By contrast, the study generators want more mucking. They sadly indulge in the classic leftist ploy that the downtrodden are downtrodden because we haven’t redistributed quite enough income.
The study conductors are praising misery when they, say, announce in a different study that “New York’s Income Tax System Among the Best for Working Families.” Maybe they should go back and read their own “big income gap waaah” study. An astoundingly progressive tax rate sounds great for those in the basement until they realize the penthouse-dwellers aren’t hiring.
Endorsing excess confiscation also implies that the best way to help those at the bottom is to give them stuff taken from those at the top. It’s unfulfilling for both groups, in part because of how it actually creates the disparity that the currency-spreaders allegedly loathe.
Raising taxes even more on the most successful is jealousy as policy. It interdicts upon the finances of those who would otherwise pump the economy. As a result, Tom Golisano is not coming back, while Cliff Lee and LeBron James aren’t coming at all.
The state just lost a pair of congressional seats because so many avoid residing here. The dynamic types who dodge New York aren’t out to do their part to bridge the wealth discrepancy, either. Taking their industriousness elsewhere hurts those who could use work created by big shots spending their money.
Our wretched state’s ridiculous tax grabs and unbearable regulations encourage dependency among low-income earners while aggravating the high-bracketeers who finance it.
Such heavy planning hurts both sides. And the economic masochists want more of it. Poor New York poor people won’t be able to sustain much more help.
Wrangling Rangel
Fool NY-15′s voters 20 times: shame on you. Fool them 21 times… Censured Charlie Rangel capped of a humiliatingly busy week by demonstrating his oft-unacknowledged sense of humor when he claimed there was “no evidence of corruption” after he was found to have committed massive corruption.
His amusing take on his own misdeeds apparently explains why he feels entitled to keep acting roguishly. But the taxing and spending specialist has inflicted far more harm in true New York Democratic style during his tenure’s non-crooked portion.
At least he remains obliviously entertaining. For one, his Michael Jackson Defense is so shameless that it would have made the late King of Pop blush through his pale cheeks:
“History would show that a different standard has been used in this case where I did not curse out the Speaker, I did not try to have sex with minors,” he said, referring to past censure cases.
It’s heartwarming to know a bad guy wasn’t doing something worse. But I’m a typical conservative who focuses upon how the congressional mainstay is a corrupt scumbag instead of his history of not sexing up high schoolers. Rangel’s misappropriation is merely the culmination: he promoted bad policy even when he wasn’t enriching himself.
Regardless, the myth persists that Rangel helped his constituents when he wasn’t helping himself to rent-controlled apartments. It’s irrelevant whether his constituents believe it or not: governmental funds didn’t suddenly create a relatively meager oasis in Manhattan’s most famous desert.
Still, some won’t accept who he is. As an example, his Wikipedia entry includes the remarkable claim that Rangel deserves credit for Harlem’s semi-rebirth, at least the parts of the neighborhood people don’t avoid. Such hilariously partisan blather is egregious even by the proletariat web encyclopedia’s standards:
He played a significant role in the creation of the 1995 Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone Development Corporation and the national Empowerment Zone Act, which helped change the economic face of Harlem and other inner-city areas.
They would have better off without his alleged help. Gentrification due to rich private citizens rediscovering brownstones along with entrepreneurs tapping into a neglected market combined to fix the area. On the other hand, federal intervention helped Harlem as much as the stimulus helped the rest of America.
In fact, the money taken from the economy and thrown in Harlem’s direction dramatically slowed the process of private cash injection. At best, some of the federal cash thrown above Central Park stuck to a few blocks; in that case, it only took a few decades to see a few signs of life.
Fellow Empire Stater Chuck Schumer subscribes to the latter theory, although he still failed in his effort to sock it to millionaires on New Year’s Day. No higher levies for rich folks? I guess they’ll have to take their money and create jobs without Joe Biden’s help.
Aside from his personal investment in the slick suit and pomade industries, Rangel is the ideal combination of personal and political corruption. If one is going to redistribute income, why not do some of it to oneself?
In his disregard for laws and decency, Rangel also serves as his party’s tattered mascot. Yes, even Sean Hannity would admit there are corrupt and/or shameless Republicans off-camera after Greta’s show began. But this state’s Democrats are better manufacturing humiliation, which makes them much worse.
Many of those in power here are semi-unique: criminal or not, they’re sleazy in their own individual ways. Notably, Western New York’s most famous representatives during the Barack Obama have been amateur wrestler Eric Massa and shameless denture anecdote spinner Louise Slaughter. Our reps reside in the damp basement apartment of the People’s House.
The executive branch’s seat-fillers are similarly sterling. Shameless Wall Street bullier and hooker buyer Eliot Spitzer set the standard for Yankee fan David Paterson, who is in turn being replaced by former HUD scoundrel Andrew Cuomo. Worst, they all advocate a command economy even when they manage to behave.
They think they can spend your earning better than you can. On a related note, the shifty lefties all share tremendous antipathy for corporations, aside from the bailed-out failures and those politically connected enough to cut out favors. Their goals are appalling whether they enact them legally or not.
Rangel is merely the worst at present. The Ways and Means meanie is a greasily arrogant embodiment of a politician who thinks he shouldn’t have to obey the same rules as us peasants. But he hurts the nation even when he’s not thieving.
Lost Race
Running a business is tough. It’s no fun responsibly paying bills and still floundering in red ink when reaping profits is worlds more fun. So why not ask for state aid to get ahead? Nah, that’s aiming too low: ask the state to take over your operation first, especially if it’s clear you’re never going to rake in the dimes. They key is failing spectacularly enough.
Naturally and sadly, New York has learned nothing from the folly of bailing out companies who aren’t good at being companies. As a result, the state is contemplating preventing the horror that would be the inability to bet on ponies, at least not in New York City’s state-owned parlors. On a related note, the state owns parlors for some reason:
Officials are warning that the New York City Off-Track Betting Corp. could be forced to shut down in December unless state lawmakers approve a bailout of the operation.
City OTB board chair Larry Schwartz and president Greg Rayburn said Sunday that state lawmakers need to intervene to keep betting parlors and horse racing tracks open.
Aren’t bettors supposed to keep the venues open? But too many people are spending what little they have on non-horse-race-related expenses. There may be jobs lost in an obsolete industry as a result of the utter disinterest:
A shutdown would reverberate throughout the state’s horse racing industry, threatening up to 70,000 jobs.
About 500 workers are expected to be laid-off Tuesday.
Who would think that an entity catering to those who think they can get rich by beating the house via wagering on an obscure sport might face financial woes?
The state-owned New York City OTB is laboring to emerge from bankruptcy.
Most horse carriage drivers who don’t sucker tourists into jaunts through Central Park have been out of work for about a century, too. But noooo, they don’t get a lifeline. The fact the horse industry has gone the way of the dodo is apparently irrelevant.
The state just couldn’t stay uninvolved. Heavens forbid greedy citizens run a business themselves: that would deprive a selfless government from reaping 100 percent of potential profits.
If betting without visiting a horse oval was lucrative, then investors should be making money and employing people off of it. It’s not the state’s money to make. But they’re not making it, anyway.
And subsidizing antiquated jobs vacuums away money that could be used to add to the employment rolls of 2010′s industries. Free marketeers can create wealth. But propping up state workers is a zero-sum game. In other words, we’re paying from a finite pile for a racing and gambling industry we’ve demonstrated we don’t want.
It’s disappointing but expected that this self-impoverishing state is rewarding failure. After all, they set the standard for the federal government. Nearly two years of Obamaism has taught us that putting businesses on the dole gives them every reason to take dumb risks and no reason to fear the consequences. The only thing worse than the government acquiring private enterprises happens when they’ve already been publicly owned for awhile.
Nothing’s about to change. As for our lame duck statist state leader, David Paterson is fittingly finishing off his unelected reign by calling for governmental money to rescue an arcanely unpopular hobby pursued by degenerates. While it’s nice that he’s on his way out, he’s not leaving without fighting to waste the taxpayer’s money first. It’s not precisely a noble last stand.
Worse, a new executive entering office in the new year won’t bring relief. We can’t count on the next governor to make wise decisions, and not just because he’s dating a woman responsible for creating both a most curiously appalling Kwanzaa cake and the most disgusting meatloaf imaginable.
His girlfriend’s questionable culinary abilities aside, Andrew Cuomo has spent his career studying in the political school that advises students to take money from the economy to fix problems created by taking money from the economy in the first place. He won’t change despite claims of suddenly being stricken with pangs of financial responsibility.
But who cares what we want? We can survive without Off Track Betting, as most of us don’t care about what happens on the track. If enough people wanted to gamble by betting which horsey will run the fastest, it would be a self-sustaining business.
As it stands, equine wagering is about as unpopular as NPR and as equally undeserving of public subsidies. If it’s worthwhile, pay for it yourself.
The state should get out of a business in which they never should have been involved. But they’d have to be pro-business first.
Loco Loko Ban
Is there anything more demented than consuming an icky-tasting, artificially- and vaguely fruit-flavored drink containing four alcohol and two caffeine units? Well, yes: banning the right to consume it is downright insane in an ominously annoying manner.
Infamous malt libation Four Loko may be the most disgusting Kool-Aid variation possible, and my research indicates it is a guaranteed hangover causer. But that doesn’t excuse confiscating our right to drink something gross.
Of course, complex concepts like the freedom to intake whatever the hell you want are foreign to New York’s Nanny Democrats. Their kingpin maintains his relentless desire to destroy your options. To wit, hyper-alcoholized and heavily-caffeinated Four Loko is basically illegal largely thanks to patronizing quasi-fascist Chuck Schumer.
The senator with the permanent crap-eating grin first did what he could to keep New York State residents from purchasing a product containing two legal drugs. Of course the government can take away the right to choose what you want to drink. It’s not an abortion or anything:
New Yorkers have around another month to get drunk on the “blackout in a can” Four Loko. According to the New York Daily News, “The State Liquor Authority has pressured the state’s biggest beer distributors to stop delivering Four Loko and other caffeinated alcoholic cocktails to New York retailers by Dec.10.” In addition, Phusion Projects, the makers of Four Loko, has agreed to stop shipping the drink to New York distributors after November 19th. As an extra bonus, any store caught selling Four Loko without proof it was ordered before the deadline risks heavy fines. Keep your receipts handy, store owners, before the SLA’s goon squad comes after you.
They didn’t bother themselves with anything pesky like passing a law. The only thing worse than ending sales of a product which contains the same chemicals as a rather big Labatt draft with a Starbucks chaser is doing so without voting and signing.
The interdiction is creepily frightening precisely because it’s a ban of something as simple as a party beverage. The feds think they can do as they please, and they haven’t been proved wrong yet. Simultaneously, the ban is a hassle on its own from bureaucrats who just know they need to make decisions for us.
Knowing the rest of the country looks like they will be suffering a lack of purchasing freedom along with us endlessly regulated Empire State residents is no consolation. The good news is that Four Loko aficionados won’t have to waste gas money jaunting to Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Vermont, or similarly nearby states to purchase the unhinged fruit cocktail. The bad news is that it’s because it won’t be for sale in those places or anywhere else in America, as the FDA is wretchedly taking after New York and effectively banning the cans.
Again, why bother with the legal process? Next on their agenda will be prohibiting six-pack sales for those who have recently patronized a Tim Hortons, and no, they won’t bother to get a legislator to sponsor a bill first.
They already have a successful tactic, whereby Schumer pushes an unaccountable federal agency to infringe upon our right to consumption. He’s so good at being a senator that he doesn’t even need to pass laws to pester us.
He’ll partake in whatever scuzziness is necessary. The man with such an onerous record that he even makes us miss Al D’Amato was as manipulative as usual: he appeared at a press conference with the grandmother of a young woman who died after drinking the concoction in question after taking a diet pill earlier in the day. It was a typically shameless attempt to exploit tragedy in a most Schumerian way.
It’s disgusting to leverage the suffering of one family to promote the government taking away a simple right for everyone else. A tragic but lone exception can be used to infringe on all behavior, but only by someone cynically motivated to increase state or federal power in every capacity possible.
Of course, such galling behavior is expected from the oily senator in question. He learned it from a House counterpart, which is why we call it the Louise Slaughter Technique. I have declined their request to appear at a bicameral press conference banning coffee mugs because I burned my lip that one time.
Regardless, Schumer’s been particularly irksome since his woeful reelection. Ending sales of a skanky party drink isn’t even the most irritating prohibitive fiat endorsed by Chuck Nasty this month: he’s also after the scourge of reusable shopping bags.
Shockingly, the hippies were misguided. It turns out the amount of lead in those oh so Earth friendly containers is actually hazardous for our not-really Mother. The tremendous bacteria buildup isn’t good for humans, either.
The Earth-unfriendly grocery-holders already miss the point: um, every bag is reusable if you don’t throw it away or poke a hole in it. Regardless, the Gaia stormtroopers would like us to forget how they used to freak out that we simply had to use the PBS tote bag-style carriers.
They can’t make up their mind about how they want to destroy our options. Choose a direction, you intolerant treelickers. They love the planet as much as they hate free will.
But this state has again set an infuriating standard for intrusion. It’s especially bad for New Yorkers in New York City, where evil elf Michael Bloomberg is again attempting to cut off salt when he’s not keeping Knickerbockers from consuming trans fats while forcing hungry restaurant patrons to look at calorie counts on menu boards in a shameless attempt to destroy joy. And don’t you dare ask if you can smoke in here.
It’s a thoroughly annoying campaign, and Schumer is leading the charge. I’d like to toast everyone who voted for six more years of a self-aggrandizing camera whore and his schoolmarm-style belief that it’s his job to ban anything that could ever potentially be dangerous. I would use a fruity malt caffeinated/alcoholed potable to toast. But you know how that goes.
Cuomo Against Cuomo-Style Policies? Not So Fast
Noted small-government Tea Partying populist conservative Andrew Cuomo… wait. The new New York governor seems to have forgotten that the election is over, as he’s still trying to suck up to voters by eschewing tax hikes even after winning. Paladino may have cruised to defeat, but the victor sounds like he’s opening a Carl’s Jr. franchise as he rails against increasing the state’s take:
Gov.-elect Andrew Cuomo repeated his pledge of no new taxes at a Nov. 9 press conference, his first since being elected the next governor of New York.
“There’s not a lot of mystery here. No new taxes, no new taxes, no new taxes. That would be counterproductive,” he said.
One question for the next governor to clarify: no new what? Cuomo the younger goes on to sound like he’s reading from the Heritage Foundation’s Morning Bell:
“If we want to attract businesses, keep young people here, grow businesses here, we have to offer an environment for business that is palatable. And if we keep raising taxes and (writing) overregulations, we’ll be alone here,” Cuomo said.
And he isn’t just announcing qualified support for keeping “middle class” taxes low in a classic class warfare tactic a la Obama. Cuomo is at least saying he isn’t interested in confiscating any more income from successful people:
Cuomo, a Democrat, also appeared cool to the option of extending a income-tax hike on New Yorkers making $250,000 or more a year. The hike is set to expire at the end of 2011, taking more than $1 billion of revenue out of the budget.
Of course, there’s a leftist catch. He’s lamentably fine with soaking the rich at the already-established exorbitant rate. Additionally, he’s apparently also oblivious to how the present unpleasant burden is already scaring away entrepreneurs, not to mention the money they’d use for purchases or investments:
“We have no problem saying to rich people, ‘You should pay more taxes.’ We do that better than anyone else in the nation,” Cuomo said.
Maybe that’s not the best thing about which to brag, Andy, especially when you remarkably don’t realize the damage that’s already been inflicted by being number one:
“The problem is, at what point do the rich people say, ‘I’m moving,’ ” he asked.
We’re already past that point: call Tom Golisano in Florida and ask. Cuomo has inadvertently revealed his true form while railing against higher rates: he’s trying to make a cynical calculation of how much the state can loot before the highest earners revolt and bail.
This miserable Keynesian balance treats the rich as a resource to be tapped until emptied. He only thinks we’re entitled to take from wealth-creators for the public’s alleged benefit until the economy has been maimed, not mortally wounded. That’s so pragmatic of him.
It’s too bad, as Cuomo almost sounded sensible for a moment. It wouldn’t even be the first time he said something astute: he also mercifully opposes holding September 11 trials near the attack site in a rebuke of the Department of Justice’s persistently delusional indulgence in perilous symbolism.
Whether the governor-elect is standing on principle against his usual ideological brethren or pragmatically rejecting the epitome of liberal self-righteousness remains unclear. But we’ll take any ally we can get in the effort to prevent slapping a target upon Manhattan.
Unfortunately, he won’t lean rightward frequently. After all, Cuomo is most renowned for his stereotypically meddlesome liberal tenures both as state attorney general and Housing and Urban Development kingpin. And he’d never suggest actually making the Empire State less empire-y about its own citizens’ incomes:
But you’d better keep tax cuts on your Christmas list. Cuomo called them “unrealistic,” given the $9 billion deficit facing the state in its next fiscal year.
The fact the percentage won’t suck any more is small consolation. Even if he follows through and doesn’t raise taxes, which, um, he won’t, it will fail to be enough. Maintaining the current woeful environment is a prescription for doom. Naturally, Cuomo sadly never discussed spending cuts, either.
Of course, New York’s Republican politicians have been complicit in the state’s profligacy. This state once again frustratingly stood at the vanguard before the rest of the destitute nation followed a miserable lead.
Regardless, continuing to tax at will in order to please unions and get as many people addicted to Medicaid as possible isn’t good enough. Assuming the entirely dubious proposition that he means it, claiming he won’t raise levies any further is marginally nice of Cuomo. The problem is they have already gone too far.
Same Old New York
“We’re 46th” isn’t quite as appealing a slogan as “I Less Than Three NY,” even if the former implicitly asserts this place is better than a handful of other states. Jobs are scarcer in New York than Bills victories, which is as shocking as discovering that taxes are high in these parts, too.
And the losses keep piling up. The feds recently released bad news for anyone who likes jobs or money. Specifically, they shared state-by-state job gains and losses for the time from February 2009, when the stimulus was going to crush unemployment, through September 2010, when we dealt with yet another month of a jobless rate approaching double digits:
The Department of Labor today released its latest state-by-state job report, showing state jobs and unemployment data for September 2010. This latest data, when compared with the level of jobs in February 2009, when President Obama signed Democrats’ trillion-dollar stimulus plan into law, reveals that 48 out of 50 States have lost jobs since then.
It’s unsurprising New York is in the bad 96 percent, although it still stings that the state lost 159,800 freaking posts. That said, former governor and john Eliot Spitzer is again working in this state as a television host, although it’s difficult to find someone who has seen his program to confirm his employment status.
The overwhelming loss stands as fifth-most. Of course, that’s in part due to the Empire State’s prodigious nature. That might be in line with where observers expected such a large state to rank, which is criminally depressing. Exceeding standards should be the goal, not being just barely less awful than expected.
Of course, the state was already in rotten shape before the Semi-Great Recession. Yes, unemployment stands at a troubling 8.3 percent here. But that’s unfortunately not discouraging in relative terms.
Still, it’s important to remember that people who fled the state don’t count. Perversely, the jobless rate dipped in New York because so many people got tired of coping with a desolate economy that they moved elsewhere. Those who bailed also took congressional seats with them. Lamentably, they’re wisely leaving behind the unimaginable deficit.
We’re lucky California is around to make New York look slightly less foolish by comparison. But being the nation’s second-biggest failure remains a rather weak consolation prize.
In that light, it’s discouraging that a, to phrase it mildly, flawed candidate who nonetheless remains the only hope to shove the budget into submission is lagging in polls. The rather problematic Carl Paladino represents the best bet for cutting governmental excesses, not to mention that he remains the second-most entertaining candidate in the race.
Instead, New York voters seem maddeningly willing to coronate a contender who, his contrary guarantees aside, will treat augmenting government like a full-time job paired with a hobby. Believing a Mario Cuomo Democrat like Andrew Cuomo when he claims that he wants to cut spending and cap property taxes is like taking Lindsay Lohan at her word that she’ll remain sober.
That’s not even to mention Young Cuomo’s woeful tenure as Housing and Urban Development Secretary, where he led an agency that did more to initiate global financial ruin than every fat cat and robber baron combined.
Regardless, nothing will ever improve in this state as long as any spending cut is portrayed as an attempt to punish the downtrodden for the hell of it. Modest reductions may lead to gangs of elderly and impoverished children engaging in turf battles to see who can control the most sustenance-providing Jim’s Steakout garbage bins. But it remains unlikely we will face an apocalyptic landscape created by a sensible budget where citizens are free to earn their own way and help preferred charities.
New York also remains dedicated to the notion that children will get dumb unless schools are lavished with state income tax revenues, not to mention its willingness to prepare citizens for Obamacare by getting as many people as possible signed up for Medicaid. During what should be Dollar Menu time, we’re ordering a second dessert at the Chop House.
There remains some hope for electing an even blunter Chris Christie, if perhaps not much; meanwhile, Senate candidates who would possibly stand against national profligacy are seemingly getting zero traction.
Circumstances could change in the final days, and there’s hope that the national desire to put government on a fast could have an effect even in navy blue states. But, unless there are some wild surprises proving otherwise next Tuesday, it appears that many voting New Yorkers just can’t wait to throw the bums back in.
