Category: News and Opinion

More bad news for Ed Towns; more good news for NY.  Minus One Challenger For Towns (And Jeffries) www.capitaltonight.com 

The Romans were a warrior race who always believed that their actions were just and that it was the other side that was being unreasonable or provocative of the might of the empire.  Sound familiar?  Just look at the Iraq War or even the Mexican War that U.S. Grant himself called an “unnecessary war.”

A year or two ago, the State of Illinois increased its state income tax rate by 60%. It was the right thing to do. Today, Governor Cuomo is refusing to keep a New York State income tax surcharge. That is also the right thing to do. Why the difference? The overall state and local tax burden in Illinois had long been below the national average, unsustainably low given that state’s services and other obligations. New York’s state and local tax burden is the highest in the country, except (in some years) for Alaska and Wyoming where most of the taxes are on mineral extraction and not residents or other businesses. Illinois’ top state income tax rate was increased from 3 percent to 5 percent. The New York State rate is nearly 7 percent without the surcharge – 10 percent in New York City where a local income tax is added, and is 9 percent with the surcharge – or more than 12 percent in New York City.

Throughout the country, public services are being devastated by soaring pension costs caused by two factors – inadequate past funding by taxpayers, and retroactive pension enhancements for public employees. In Illinois, taxpayers deserve the majority of the blame: in many years taxpayers put in zero, and there isn’t nearly enough money even to pay the pensions public employees were promised when hired, even without pension spiking and any of the retroactive deals. In contrast, the public employee unions and their retroactive pension deals may be more to blame in New York City than anyplace else in the country, with the United Federation of Teachers the most guilty of all (based on the difference between what was promised when workers where hired and what they took later).

Barney Frank says everything I've been saying about OWS, but better. He was even harsher on the Maddow Show.

The late Steve Jobs was a Syrian American and he exemplifies what the Arab mind can unleash when free to do so a hope that brings infinite possibilities with the Arab Spring.

Relative to its impressive historical development, capitalism is presently in a crisis: no doubt. Truth be told, it has been in crisis for decades; but you wouldn’t know this if mainstream media has been your exclusive information-delivery system all this time.

A slogan for Hakeem against Towns (and maybe Barron):

This post is the final discussion of the spreadsheet of the U.S. Census Bureau’s state and local government employment and payroll data, which is linked from this post. The data can be downloaded by following the link. In March 2010, U.S state governments employed just under 1,400 full time equivalent workers per 100,000 U.S. residents, a small number compared with the nearly 4,000 local government workers, and more than 5,500 workers in the private health care, social services, and heavy construction sectors, which are substantially government-funded.

The three levels of government may be described this way: the federal government takes in the most money, but sends it right back out again in payments to individuals (Social Security, interest on the debt), the private sector (Medicare), and aid to the states. It actually does very little other than national defense and the Post Office. Local governments do most of the work actually done by government workers. State governments, however, make most of the decisions on the margin, control how local governments do their work, and supply much of their funding. The primary work of state governments, as opposed to work done by local governments and the private sector in part with state money, are state colleges and universities, state correctional institutions, and state hospitals (mostly mental hospitals). These three functions accounted for nearly 60.0% of all U.S. state government employment in March 2010. A discussion of how the State of New York compares follows.