Maggie's Farm

New York State: Enemy of jobs and business. Only a fool would try to start a biz in NYS nowadays. NYC itself is another matter: Huge taxes, but large potential rewards simply because there are so many busy people there enjoying the place.

NYC is the tail that wags the dog of NYS. NYS would be as pitiful without NYC as CT would be without Fairfield County. They would be like Maine, economically.

We were gonna say it, but Riehl beat us to it. Ned gave us the Independent Joe Lieberman (my Senator, with whom I agree on things around 25% of the time - not a bad % for a Conservative voter in CT).

I respect him as a thoughtful human being, and will give credit when due. Plus I like the guy. I like Ned too. Very fine fellow personally, but not politically.

Sowell begins:

Just one year ago, would you have believed that an unelected government official, not even a Cabinet member confirmed by the Senate but simply one of the many "czars" appointed by the President, could arbitrarily cut the pay of executives in private businesses by 50 percent or 90 percent?

Did you think that another "czar" would be talking about restricting talk radio? That there would be plans afloat to subsidize newspapers-- that is, to create a situation where some newspapers' survival would depend on the government liking what they publish?

Did you imagine that anyone would even be talking about having a panel of so-called "experts" deciding who could and could not get life-saving medical treatments?

Whole thing here.

It's a simple matter of incentive. With government medicine, you are a cost unless you are still paying plenty of taxes - which is around only 10% of the population, or less. If you are sick or disabled, you become even more of a burden to "the common good."

With private insurance, they want you alive to pay your premium.

Anybody who believes in government benevolence is in dreamland: as we have been saying here, government is just another powerful special interest group. A doc's committment is quite the opposite.

And nobody wants their doctor worrying about "the common good."

It is a hoax - we were fooled.

From Obama's thesis:

"... the Constitution allows for many things, but what it does not allow is the most revealing. The so-called Founders did not allow for economic freedom."

What???

Ledeen at PJ discusses it all in Obama and the Constitution; He Has His Doubts.

Update: I hear there is some question about whether this is real. Can somebody find out?

The government is still doing this right now:

Denise Tejada bought a house last month at the age of 20, thanks in large part to a loan guaranteed by the Federal Housing Authority. This story offers a dramatic demonstration that, despite the housing bubble causing the worst economic downturn in generations, the ideology of home ownership is alive and well in the United States and still being supported by the government.

Without question, Tejada's loan is toxic--to her and to the taxpayers who are backing the loan. Her house cost $155,000. Tejada's loan was apparently made on a micro-down payment of just 3.5%, the minimum down payment to qualify for an FHA loan. On top of this, however, she got an additional government backed loan to make improvements. Her total loans amount to $183,0000. In short, she was immediately underwater on her new house.

Via Shaw at PJ:

...too many modern liberals bristle when we suggest that checks, limits, and restrictions must be placed on this government largess. “Why,” I have been asked, “should I have to provide proof for some sort of means test in order to receive assistance funded by tax dollars?” Indeed, these same people will question why there should be limits on welfare payments or how we can expect recipients to begin working after a period of time in order to receive such benefits.

From the Sun Times:

The White House trying to dictate who's a news organization. Democrats out to gut a business group. Obama media allies damning Americans as racist, unpatriotic and treasonous. Is this the America Obama promised when he campaigned to end the cynical and divisive politics of the past?

It's a Health Bill. No, it's a Tax Bill. See Surber for the depressing details including the retroactive taxes.

Related from Barone, who wonders who's going to pay for all this?

The moral bankruptcy of academia: NYM

On college admissions, via No Left Turns:

"A recent study of the applicants to seven elite colleges in 1997 found that Asian students were much more likely to be rejected than seemingly similar students of other races. Also, athletes and students from top high schools had admissions edges, as did low-income African-Americans and Hispanics."

"Translating the advantages into SAT scores, study author Thomas Espenshade, a Princeton sociologist, calculated that African-Americans who achieved 1150 scores on the two original SAT tests had the same chances of getting accepted to top private colleges in 1997 as whites who scored 1460s and Asians who scored perfect 1600s."

From Nyquist's What the Founding Fathers Would Say from last year:

The United States is a great country, even now. But the country has followed a path of degeneration via political correctness. To recognize this truth one only has to read Mariam Grossman’s Unprotected: A Campus Psychiatrist Reveals How Political Correctness in Her Profession Endangers Every Student. Grossman is a psychiatrist who works at an American university. “Radical politics pervades my profession,” she explains, “and common sense has vanished.” According to Grossman, “There is a tacit approval of promiscuity and experimentation…. Infection with one of the sexually transmitted viruses is a rite of passage; it comes with the territory. Abortion is the removal of unwanted tissue, sort of like a tonsillectomy.”

The main threat to any great country, quite naturally, comes from within.

Read the whole thing.

It's good to know who the "key players" are. Thanks for the info, Bruce:

 “Aetna participated (as the only invited insurer) in a discussion among a cross-section of key players in the health care debate: the trial bar, employers, unions, and an insurer.  The convening authority was the senior staff from all three key House Committees.”

How dare I doubt that this group had my best interests at heart?

"Just what is it about the functioning of the government that makes you want to entrust them with your medical care when you get sick?"

That's what I have been hearing people asking.

A good analysis. Jay Tea begins his Headless Snake post:

There's an old saying: "when you want to kill a snake, cut off its head." It's turning out that that doesn't exactly hold true in politics.

I'm finding the current political struggles going on tremendously entertaining. The Democrats have managed to pretty much seize power at the federal level, and have shown very little clue on how to handle the role reversal. It's been a very, very long time since they haven't been the minority in at least one respect, and they've forgotten how to govern.

Their old model simply doesn't work. The old way was to find the leadership of the opposition and focus their attacks on him or them, making them the embodiment of what they opposed, and then tearing that down by proxy.

That can't work now, because there is a schism in their opponents -- and there is no clearly defined leadership.

Read the whole thing. The Repubs are wise to keep their heads low for a while, at least as long as the Left seems to be in process of destroying the Dem party.

So who does the Left have to attack in a target-poor environment? Just the talking heads - the "call 'em like they see 'em" folks. Thus the recent attempted muggings of non-politicians like Rush, Glenn Beck, FOX, Sean, a blogger like Michelle Malkin - and now even Liz Cheney. Plus ex-pols who aren't running for office, like Palin.

Woops. Forgot to mention Michael Steele's obvious racism. An Uncle Tom, ya know?

I bet they wish they had somebody like Newt to smear again.

Addendum - re smearing and sliming

From Legal Insurrection:

The point of this tactic is to repeat accusations frequently enough that fiction and reality merge in the public consciousness. And on the internet, all you have to do is repeatedly put someone's name in close proximity to the inflammatory words, so that the search engines associate the name and the accusation.

And it works.

Yes it does. Just ask Chris Christie. If you haven't heard, he has a fat ass.

Chris Matthews appear to hope somebody will shoot Rush Limbaugh...with a CO2 cartridge? What? I find this disturbing, if not sick - if not incendiary. We have never said anything like that about anybody, and would never want to.

I guess dissent and principled disagreement is no longer the highest form of patriotism. Furthermore, I thought debate about ideas was a healthy, wonderful, American thing. Not when the Dems are in power, I guess.

I still wonder where all the hatred is coming from.

MarketWatch.

In fact, it was won by these guys. 

Part 1. Quite entertaining:

The WSJ notes:

Germany's health-care system was brought to life in 1883 by Otto von Bismarck and became the model for virtually every such state-directed national insurance plan since. Alas, the German system is starting to come apart at the financial seams. Germany's system relies on a handful of state-supported health insurers. This week they informed the government that the system was on the brink of a financial shortfall equal to nearly $11 billion.

Read the whole thing about how it all went wrong.

This site reminds us of Bismarck's role in the creation of the modern Fascist-Welfare state.