May, 2019,Part 2, Political Class Insanity: Increased Taxation Means LESS Tax Revenue and NYC Goes Idiotic On Global Warming Hot Dogs

It is another month which means it is again time to review the latest political class insanity from Washington and around the world. Political class insanity takes many forms including the wasting of taxpayer wealth, criminal fraud within government programs, inane and stupid political quotes and actions, the inability to create and implement effective and efficient government programs, stupid and ill performing economic policies and strategies, and other forms of insanity that continue to evolve and surprise and shock us.

Let’s get started:

1) We have often pointed out how high taxation in liberal/Democratic controlled states is driving people to leave those states for lower taxing states. It is our view that humans basically want the freedom to run their lives the best way they see fit, not the way some politicians see fit. And taxing someone to death denies them that economic freedom to run their lives the way they want it to be run.

Too prove our point, again, consider some recent data at the state level, as reported by Warner Todd Huston of the Godfather Politics website.. Consider the states with the highest state level taxation burdens:

• New York: 12.7 percent
• Connecticut: 12.6 percent
• New Jersey: 12.2 percent
• Illinois: 11.0 percent
• California and Wisconsin: 11.0 percent

If you look closely you will see that, surprise, almost all of them have been run by liberals and Democrats for decades. In fact, New York ,Connecticut, and New Jersey have ranked in the top three since at least 2005.

New Jersey actually takes the high taxation game higher in that the three highest tax counties in the country are all in New Jersey: Passaic County (8.79 percent), Essex County(8.27 percent), and Union County (8.13 percent).

These high tax rates cause citizens to take their hard earned wealth and leave those states. But where are they going? For the most part they are going to low tax states, including at least two (Florida and Texas), that do not have a state income tax in 2018: 

• Florida: 118,890
• Arizona: 98,513
• North Carolina: 70,628
• Washington: 61,974
• Texas: 57,173

The states that are losing the most citizens are:

• New York: -167,328
• Illinois: -144,343
• California: -137,895
• New Jersey: 1137,895
• Massachusetts: -26,734
• Connecticut: -15,646

This is not a good trend for those high tax states. New York, for example, the state which has lost the most citizens, is now facing a $2.3 billion budget deficit as the base of working and taxpaying citizens continues to decline. Which starts a financial death spiral: raise taxes and taxpayers leave and take their tax payments with them that creates a state government revenue shortfall which means it has to raise taxes again which drives more taxpayers out of the state which results in more tax shortfalls, etc., etc.

What often happens in these high flee states, is that legal and illegal immigrants come in behind the taxpaying existing citizens. These folks, and please do not call me racist when I discuss reality, tend to be less wealthy, more liable to be on welfare rolls, and thus do no contribute nearly the same amount to state government coffers that the exiting citizens once contributed. 

For example, the state government of California spends a whopping $15 to $22 billion each year supporting illegal immigrants, many of whom pay no taxes at all. Bottom line from an old Rascals song is that “people want to be free.” And to be truly free you need as much economic freedom as possible. 

And that is becoming less and less possible in certain states as the tax burden crushes people’s ability to make life decisions that they want to make. Raising taxes rarely results in a better life or a more efficient government, it just feeds the political class beast’s thirst for control.

2) We do a continuing series of blog posts centered around the theme, “I am a global warming doubter and a believer in science.” Just about every month we discuss the insanity of people and politicians who think that they cannot be incorrect about how mankind is messing up the climate. We have shown via research, numbers, statistics and reality how wrong they have been for the past forty years.

In the 1970s and early 1980s we were told by “climate experts” that a new ice age was about to hit with devastating consequences. It never happened.

Then we were told by the same people that global warming was destroying the climate and we had to something before we burned up the planet and ourselves. It never happened, global warming stopped about two decades ago.

When the global warming myth imploded we were then told a more generic disaster was coming, “ climate change.” In that way those advocates that had been wrong for fifty years could not be wrong again: gets too cold, it’s man made climate change. It gets too hot, its man made climate change.

And now the New York City mayor is taking the whole man made climate change paranoia to a new low:

• According to a Godfather Politics article by Warner Todd Huston on April 26, 2019, the New York City mayor wants to ban hot dogs in the city to combat global warming.
• Bill de Blasio wants to remove hot dogs and all other processed meats from schools and government run cafeterias.
• Specifically: “The plan will cut purchases of red meat by 50 percent in its city-controlled facilities such as hospitals, schools, and correctional facilities. The new commitment builds off of the Meatless Mondays campaign that was adopted by all NYC schools in 2017.”
• De Blasio is very proud of this idiocy: “It is a difficult plan. It is a necessary plan. … Estimates that tell us that we have only 12 years to get it right. Let’s be clear, we have until 2030 to change things fundamentally, or our lives won’t be the same.”

My gosh, let’s consider a few realities before we ban hot dogs:

• Global warming stopped about twenty years ago so Mr. Mayor why are you fighting yesterday’s myth?
• Pardon me if I am a little skeptical about your earth is going to end in 12 years, folks like yourself have been predicting these types of catastrophes for fifty years and have NEVER been right, what makes you think you are right now?
• Let’s keep in mind that China and India, forget the rest of the world, plan on building over 2,500 coal burning power plants over the next 12 years so do we really think that forcing New Yorkers not to eat hot dogs will offset the carbon burning of over 2,5,00 new coal burning power plants?

It must be nice to be a mayor who has resolved all of the problems of your city: schools are great, there is no crime, no homelessness, no crumbling infrastructure, a mayor can now take on China and India from a carbon footprint perspective. It’s the old story: politicians do not know how to resolve real issues so they waste time and energy and fake outrage over stupid stuff that citizens could care less about.

Insane politicians that keep raising taxes and then are bewildered when every leaves their state and a bewildered city politician who has the most insane priorities. A typical day of political class insanity.

P.S.: Mayor de Blasio, please go to the following link to see why we do not believe that the world is going to end in 12 years, much smarter people than you who were actually scientists predicted the end of the world and were always wrong:

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2014/05/i-am-global-warming-doubter-and_25.html

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

https://www.amazon.com/Walter-Bruno-Korschek/e/B002KYU08Q/ref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:


http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w