There is a lot going on in world: LA riots, Middle East powder keg, the Russian/Ukrainian war, etc. But through all this, the American political class continues to constantly deliver its own special brand of insanity, stupidity, wasteful taxpayer spending, and ineffective government programs:
1)In New York state today, the following state residents, all American citizens, are in need:
158,000 state residents are homeless.
51,000 New York kids are homeless within that 158,000 number.
About 4,600 state residents die from a drug overdose every year.
About 2.2 million residents, or about 12% of the state population, live in food insecure homes, often finding it challenging to feed themselves and their families.
1.2 million of those 2.2 million residents live in New York City.
Yes, as with most states, there are thousands and thousands of state residents that are in need. But apparently, that need has been lost on the current governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, and other New York politicians:
State politicians recently announced that the state government would allocate and spend $50,000,000 to provide legal services to help illegal immigrants who are facing deportation.
Specifically: “They [illegal immigrants] don’t have the attention. They don’t have the lawyers. And that’s why the state of New York is providing $50 million to cover legal services for people who are finding themselves in this situation.”
Yes, thousands and thousands of American citizens living in the state are hungry, homeless, and in need of drug addiction treatment and she is going to divert $50 million to help illegal immigrants, who should not even be in the country to begin with, to fight deportation.
But this is not the first time that New York liberal politicians have neglected state residents in favor of illegal immigrants.
According to CBS News, the state has spent $7.5 billion since 2022 to serve the illegal immigrants in the state, providing free food, free lodging, free medical care, and free cellphones.
Bloomberg reported recently that NYC politicians expect to spend another $12 billion over just the next three years on illegal immigrants.
Such bad priorities, illegal immigrants over suffering American citizens. For example, that $50 million could have provided over 100 meals to EVERY homeless state resident. But that has been the priorities of New York politicians for many years and it is disgusting.
2)Lori Lightfoot, the former mayor of Chicago, was pretty pathetic when it came to helping her city’s residents. Rampaging, violent crime rates, gang activity, illegal immigrants using up hard earned taxpayer wealth to be fed, housed, given medical care for free while city taxpayers went hungry, homeless and sick, etc. causing residents and businesses to flee the city because of high taxes and crime, and neglect by elected politicians.
Another one of her failures was the reality that Chicago public schools continue to be pathetic when it comes to educating the city’s kids. We have previously discussed the reality that in a recent set of standardized testing of the city school kids, not a single kid had a passing score relative to proficiency.
Along comes a new mayor, Brandon Johnson, and he somehow has managed to do even worse than Lightfoot:
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Johnson currently has historically low approval ratings as measured by opinion polls.
Johnson, who is black, has recently attained only a 30% approval rating among black city residents.
And yet, given his low approval ratings, given the myriad of city problems that city residents face everyday, given the failure of city schools to educate, he has decided that Civil War reparations for black residents is the most important battle to fight right now.
He recently announced a new task force to study plans on how to pay out slavery reparations to the city’s black community.
He will divert half a million dollars to fund the task force.
Specifically: “The Task Force will conduct a comprehensive study and examination of all policies that have harmed Black Chicagoans from the slavery era to present day and make a series of recommendations that will serve as appropriate remedies. Today’s Executive Order is not just a public declaration; it is a pledge to shape the future of our city by confronting the legacy of inequity that has plagued Chicago for far too long.”
Potential types of reparations include housing subsidies, economic development efforts for black owned businesses, and other race based health, insurance, and safety programs.
Sometimes it is difficult to fathom the stupidity of politicians and programs like these;
Who is going to fund these types of programs, which will require more city spending, more taxes, more future unfunded liabilities and most importantly, will cause even more taxpaying citizens and businesses to flee the city.
The illegality of such a program is pretty obvious, how can the city government legally dole out taxpayer wealth solely on the basis of skin color/race?
Even if the money was available, wouldn’t it be better spent to fix the failed school system and give black kids in these underperforming schools a real chance to be successful in life rather than spending it on perceived injustices that happened well over 150 years ago?
Just like Hochul above, horrible and disgusting priorities from the Chicago mayor.
3)Let’s circle back to Hochul, the governor of New York, who recently actually had a sane brain revelation, But first, let’s review a topic we have discussed many, many times in this blog, namely which state or major city government is
likely to go financially broke in the very near future:
The scenario of going broke unfolds as follows: state or city politicians continually raise taxes to fund more and more government projects and services that are usually failures.
This continually raising of taxes causes some residents and businesses to flee a state or city to places with lower tax burdens on their families and businesses.
This out migration of residents and businesses reduces the tax base and eventually reduces the tax revenue that city and state governments collect.
This creates a budget crisis but rather than reduce government spending and make it more efficient, the politicians just raise taxes even more.
This causes more residents and businesses to flee which further reduces the tax base which reduces tax revenue and the financial death spiral is in play.
The states which have the very best chance of racing to the bankruptcy courthouse first include: New York, California, Illinois, and New Jersey. These states have heavy tax burdens already, are already experiencing out migration, and they have heavy future, unfunded liabilities that will require even more taxation in the future.
For the same reason, cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York City are the most likely big cities to go bankrupt next.
For the most part, politicians are too short sighted to see the possible financial death spiral staring them in the face. They continue to raise taxes, cut services, and generally create a lower quality of life for their residents. But along comes a die hard, tax raising politician who just might finally understand that the impending financial death spiral has a real chance of happening:
Governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, actually realized recently that too many taxes causes out migration and tax base reduction.
Apparently a leading candidate to become the mayor of New York City is socialist/communist, Zohran Mamdani.
He wants to raise taxes on the state and city’s wealthiest residents to fund all kinds of “free” socialist programs that are doomed to failure before they even begin.
His ideas include government funded/free transportation services, government run supermarkets, etc., all paid with taxpayer dollars.
When asked about this tax raising plan of his, Hochul replied: "I’m not raising taxes on people at a time when affordability is the big issue. I don’t want to lose any more people to go to Palm Beach. We’ve lost enough"
Wow, she finally got it, raising taxes without a comparable rise in government services is a long term financial death knell. She obviously understands that the very people this new tax would be directed at, the wealthy, are the very people that can most easily move to a place with a lower tax burden, depriving the city and state government of big time tax revenue sources.
She obviously realized this insanity when she saw the following numbers or numbers like these:
According to the Census Bureau, in 2022 91,201 New York residents moved to Florida while only 21,3000 Floridians moved to New York, giving Florida a net gain in taxpayers of almost 70,000.
In just two counties, Palm Beach County and Miami-Dade county, net gains of former New York taxpayers in those two countries alone brought a net increase of $9 million in income from former New Yorkers.
Former New York Congressman, Lee Zeldin, realized this reality a number of years ago: "A lot of New Yorkers have fled to Florida, Texas, the Carolinas, Tennessee, and it’s not just about the weather. You come down to a place like Florida and you feel like you’re living freer, safer, your money’s going further, and you’re not just putting the state in time out. You’re gone. It’s a permanent move, and you’re not looking back."
One more statistic: the top marginal state income tax rate for New Yorkers is 10.9%, the top rate for state income tax in Florida is 0%.
Final words of wisdom from Hochul: "Driving them to Florida does not help us. So let’s be smart about this."
Now that was not so hard, was it Governor? It remains to be seen if she actually follows through with not only blocking additional taxes but reducing government spending and the current tax burden before her biggest city or her entire state goes into bankruptcy. Time will tell if she is “smart about this.”
Enough for today: the New York governor still prioritizes illegal immigrants over her own citizens but does have an economic revelation and the Chicago mayor is still clueless about how to run a city.
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If you agree that we need to deseat every member of Congress for their lack of success and accomplishment, then please consider going to the following petition link to help the cause:
https://www.change.org/p/deseat-congress-reset-freedom
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