I had an amusing thought. A while back I came across the movie “Blue State” on Netflix, “a romantic comedy about a disgruntled Democrat who actually follows through on a drunken campaign promise to move to Canada if George ‘Dubya’ Bush gets re-elected” back in 2004. Didn’t want to live in that kind of country anymore. The movie wasn’t great, and I didn’t watch it to the end, but it was an interesting premise. Disgruntled Democrats had lots of countries to flee to at the time. Almost all of Europe, for example.

This is a rare occasion where I would say “fortunately” to the fact we don’t live in a swing state, because we are being spared the deluge of deception and overwrought emotion being pumped in there. Those of us who don’t have cable, at least. But I’d bet there would be plenty of people out in the Red States who would have a similarly nuts reaction to an Obama re-election. The question is, what countries will disgruntled Republicans be able to flee to if Obama is re-elected in 2012? I couldn’t think of any, and of course the idea of calling them “red countries,” for those of us who were around before 1989, is ironic in itself. Switzerland, Monaco and Hong Kong don’t count, except for those in Romney’s tax bracket, who probably have multiple countries to flee to anyway. But lots of people like that from elsewhere are buying condos in New York. Any suggestions?

Can we have Biden do the next two debates?   

Back in 2000, a widely held pre-election suspicion was that George W. Bush was going to win the popular vote, but that Al Gore was going to triumph in the Electoral College.

In a race between Russ Gallo and Ben Akselrod, I am agnostic.

I do not care which of them can deny more minority religions a place to worship, or deny LGTB persons more rights.

Gate: Dybbuk, be a mensch.

I start this column in New York City. It’s three o’clock on the morning of a public holiday we celebrate in this city: Columbus Day. It’s only fitting that I write this column today since it deals with a simple but profound prediction: Mitt Romney has no chance of winning next month’s presidential race. He will be soundly defeated. This is a general election that has been over long before the primaries started: contrary to all the media hype of it being a close race. 

As promised, this piece documents why the toy balloon known as Dov Hikind’s political power largely consists of hot air.

The fiscal 2010 state and local finance data compilation has been released by the U.S. Census Bureau, and I spent one and one-half days of a weekend putting it into a readily comparable form for local governments in the U.S., New York State, New Jersey, New York City, and (by subtraction) the rest of New York State. You can follow my work step by step in the series of worksheets in the “Local Government Finance 2010” spreadsheet, which can be downloaded from Archive.com here. Look to the left and click on “Excel” to download it. I did the work on my own time because providing comparisons with the national average and other states is something neither the City of New York nor the State of New York, which between them spent $3.3 billion on agencies in the Census Bureau’s “Financial Administration” category, have seen fit to do. In the “Added” worksheet, you can hopefully print the FY 2010 data on two pages. The “FY 2002 and FY 2010” worksheet provides that comparison for those who have good eyes.

How much should people concern themselves with this data, and with the New York State legislators and New York council members who pass the budgets that have decided what the data show? Consider this. In FY 2010, the money New York City local governments (including the Port Authority and New York City Transit) directly spent equaled 20.8% of all of the personal income earned by all New York City residents. Of that amount, the equivalent of 12.8% of the income of city residents was extracted directly from city residents and others spending time here in taxes, fees, fines and other revenues, with the equivalent of 8.0% coming from the federal government and the State of New York (with some of the state money originating with the federal government). The State of New York exercises indirect control over the entire 20.8% of everyone’s income that is spent by the city, and also directly spends the equivalent of 12.8% of the income of state residents. Taken together, New York City’s state and local governments spent the equivalent of about one-third of everything New York City residents earn. On public services and benefits that are, or can be, absolutely essential, but which the city and state and those who work for it have no contractual obligation to provide with any quality.

The time has come, the blogger said, to speak of many things.

In 2006, as part as part of a longer piece, I posted a detailed complaint about the failure of the Republican Party in NYC to provide the voters with general election choices.