Category: News and Opinion

NYC Demography: A Stunningly Rapid Change

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I’ll have to interrupt my series on Medicaid, which was delayed by a computer problem at home, to call your attention to recent data from the American Community Survey.  The data on educational attainment, written up in today’s Times, is in fact shocking.  I say that as someone who has looked at similar data over long periods of time.  It’s not so much the direction of the change, which corresponds with what I see on the street, but its scope and speed.

The share of the city’s population that is high-school and college-educated is soaring; the share that has not completed high school is plunging.  This cannot be the result of the educational attainment of those who comes through the city’s schools:  the state’s policy of making the life-chances of the city’s children even worse that it would otherwise be has thus far succeeded.  Rather, it is a function of who is moving in and who is moving out or dying off.  The former are better off than the latter, and the population turnover appears to be rapid.

John McCain – Just Another Pol

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A while ago, I wrote on one of the blogs that the test of whether Sen. John McCain is really as different as the media wish is true all their heart or is just another pol would be if he changed his position on ethanol in order to win the Iowa Caucus.

I think the answer is becoming clear.

Here’s McCain’s old position –

McCain Also Voted Against Ethanol in 2004, and 2003. In 2004, John McCain voted against an amendment to Senate Bill S 150 to promote ethanol, declaring that ethanol was “a product that we have created a market for which has absolutely, under no circumstances, any value whatsoever except to corn producers and Archer Daniels Midland and other large agribusinesses.” In 2003, John McCain voted to block a final vote to an “energy bill coveted by Iowa farm interests” that “would double use of corn-based ethanol.” [S 150; Aberdeen American News, 5/2/04, S. Res. 150, 4/29/04, Roll Call #74; Des Moines Register, 11/22/03; H.R. 6, 11/21/03, Roll Call #456]

A Real 2004 Ohio Conspiracy

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While various liberal bloggers + Keith Olberman and Robert Kennedy, Jr. have been trying to convince us that a massive vote stealing scheme (with Democrats & UAW officials in on it) delivered Ohio to George W. Bush in 2004, today’s Ohio papers bring news of a real scandal that really might have made the difference in Ohio.

Shouldn’t this be news outside of Ohio?

Less than a week before the 2004 presidential election, Jim Conrad, then head of the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation, took steps to ensure that a $215 million investment loss in an offshore hedge-fund would not become public …

The Lunatics Will Soon Be Back Running the Asylum (or The Not So Lonesome Discomfort of Frank McKay)

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So, in the Independence Party court battle over whether the constitutional right to free speech trumps the constitutional right to free association (for the all the gory details, click here), a Brooklyn Court has punted, deciding that what really matters is blind adherence to the plain language of the state’s pernicious election laws, which allows a party the right to attempt to dis-enroll its voters, but only at the request of a county’s local party chair. Since the county parties in question were all controlled by the Fulani-Newman anti-Semitic cult, rather than Party Chair Frank McKay’s ragtag coalition of fast-buck opportunist and tin-foil hatted nutcases, this would appear to be game, set and match. In an incidental and accidental victory for free speech, the Fulaniite zombies will still be able to exercise their First Amendment right to regurgitate whatever hateful bile Fred Newman instructs them to chant, without being deprived of their ability to belong to the Party of Fred's choice. Another defeat for the imperialist, Zionist, running dog lackies of International Capital. "But", in the words of Bob Dylan, "you who philospohize disgrace, and criticize all fears, take the rag away from your face, now ain't the time for your tears".

Medicaid: Exceeding the Unlimited Budget (First of Three)

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When asked at the end of the1974 season why he was replacing his general manager, the owner of the Houston Oilers football team replied “I gave him an unlimited budget, and he exceeded it!”  The same may be said of New York State’s Medicaid program.  Its budget is unlimited – its cost goes up by whatever it does every year, and taxes are raised and other services cut to make up the difference. Medicaid, along with debt service and pensions, get the first, second and third bites of the apple.  (Public schools in the portion of New York State outside New York City get the fourth.)  And when the cost of Medicaid is restrained, as in the mid-to-late 1990s, it is by reducing the number of beneficiaries who receive health care benefits, not by restraining the increase in what the health care industry decides to charge.  The number of people employed by that industry in New York, fueled in large part by government money, rises rapidly each and every year.  With just 6.5% of the nation’s population, New York State accounted for 15.1% of its Medicaid spending (see attached spreadsheet).

Medicaid: Exceeding the Unlimited Budget (First of Three)

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When asked at the end of the1974 season why he was replacing his general manager, the owner of the Houston Oilers football team replied “I gave him an unlimited budget, and he exceeded it!”  The same may be said of New York State’s Medicaid program.  Its budget is unlimited – its cost goes up by whatever it does every year, and taxes are raised and other services cut to make up the difference. Medicaid, along with debt service and pensions, get the first, second and third bites of the apple.  (Public schools in the portion of New York State outside New York City get the fourth.)  And when the cost of Medicaid is restrained, as in the mid-to-late 1990s, it is by reducing the number of beneficiaries who receive health care benefits, not by restraining the increase in what the health care industry decides to charge.  The number of people employed by that industry in New York, fueled in large part by government money, rises rapidly each and every year.  With just 6.5% of the nation’s population, New York State accounted for 15.1% of its Medicaid spending (see attached spreadsheet).

Medicaid: Exceeding the Unlimited Budget (First of Three)

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When asked at the end of the1974 season why he was replacing his general manager, the owner of the Houston Oilers football team replied “I gave him an unlimited budget, and he exceeded it!”  The same may be said of New York State’s Medicaid program.  Its budget is unlimited – its cost goes up by whatever it does every year, and taxes are raised and other services cut to make up the difference. Medicaid, along with debt service and pensions, get the first, second and third bites of the apple.  (Public schools in the portion of New York State outside New York City get the fourth.)  And when the cost of Medicaid is restrained, as in the mid-to-late 1990s, it is by reducing the number of beneficiaries who receive health care benefits, not by restraining the increase in what the health care industry decides to charge.  The number of people employed by that industry in New York, fueled in large part by government money, rises rapidly each and every year.  With just 6.5% of the nation’s population, New York State accounted for 15.1% of its Medicaid spending (see attached spreadsheet).

Medicaid: Exceeding the Unlimited Budget (First of Three)

|

When asked at the end of the1974 season why he was replacing his general manager, the owner of the Houston Oilers football team replied “I gave him an unlimited budget, and he exceeded it!”  The same may be said of New York State’s Medicaid program.  Its budget is unlimited – its cost goes up by whatever it does every year, and taxes are raised and other services cut to make up the difference. Medicaid, along with debt service and pensions, get the first, second and third bites of the apple.  (Public schools in the portion of New York State outside New York City get the fourth.)  And when the cost of Medicaid is restrained, as in the mid-to-late 1990s, it is by reducing the number of beneficiaries who receive health care benefits, not by restraining the increase in what the health care industry decides to charge.  The number of people employed by that industry in New York, fueled in large part by government money, rises rapidly each and every year.  With just 6.5% of the nation’s population, New York State accounted for 15.1% of its Medicaid spending (see attached spreadsheet).

Lieberman and Precedent

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Sunday morning Arriana Huffington was on CNN pontificating about the Connecticut Primary and other events.

She continued to blast Joe Lieberman for running as an independent and called his actions unprecedented – losing a Primary and continuing to run.

Now in my last post, I pointed to at least one precedent – Mario Cuomo in 1977 who continued his campaign for Mayor against Primary winner Ed Koch as the candidate of the Liberal Party and a party his campaign created – Neighborhood Preservation Party.

But in honor of Arianna, I decided to jog my memory to find more precedents and to see how those who “turned on their Party” were punished.

Her Smile May Be More Important Than Your Life

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I received some good news about my daughter’s future orthodontist bill recently.  Good news for me that is, at least in the short run.  My wife’s dental insurance will cover part of the cost.  While that insurance is part of her salary, it does not count as taxable income, and is thus exempt from federal, state, local and social security taxes.  And, we’ll be able to put aside money on a pre-tax basis to cover the balance, under a plan she has at work, with a similar exemption from taxes.  My wife works for a quasi-public agency.  The government, therefore, will end up paying indirectly (through the tax break, and through private dental insurance purchased on her behalf) for about $3,000 of my daughter’s improved smile.  The same government, that is, which (unlike the government of virtually every other developed country) doesn’t provide universal insurance for at least basic health care.  If you aren’t a senior citizen, don’t have health insurance provided by your employer, cannot afford an individual policy, and are thus uninsured, her smile – which you are helping to pay for – may thus be more important to our elected officials than your life.