Communists

It used to be a ritual for many New Yorkers who wanted to buy clothing - hop in the car, travel to your nearest NJ or CT mall, and buy clothing there, at a lower (read: zero) tax rate. New York State lawmakers (read: a**holes) realized that their exorbitant tax rates were doing much to drive commercial activity away from the state, and were enabling business and economic growth in the surrounding, out of state areas. So NYS legislators passed a law exempting tax on clothing articles under $110 each to bring that business back.

This law is may be about to change - see this article on VIN. Legislators are seriously considering bringing back sales tax on all clothing and doing away with so-called "tax holidays" - periods of time during the year when certain items are exempt from sales tax - in order to plug a multi-billion dollar hole in an overdue budget.

As usual, NYS legislators are showing their true colors: RED. These communist bastards think that the solution to nearly every problem lies in the state's power to levy all manner of taxes, fees and excises. In reality, these blowhards aren't really solving problems by throwing money at them as much as creating new problems by refusing to cut the state's freakishly bloated, corrupt entitlements system. All these idiots know how to do is tax and spend, not cut and save. Want to get fat people slim, and earn some revenue in the process? Tax sugary foods and drinks. Want to help otherwise undeserving people obtain mortgages so that they, too, can live "the American nightmare" (oops - I meant "dream")? Tax mortgages and home financing. Want to throw more money into a failing school system? Tax local properties. And on and on and on.

I have a great idea for Paterson, Silver, Espada, and their rag-tag cast of spineless communist idiots. How about cutting entitlement programs instead of throwing money at them? How about tightening fraud detection to crack down on abuse of the system so people who really need state aid can get it?
How about growing a pair of balls when it comes to dealing with the teacher's union? How about passing a school voucher system to inject a little competition into the education market? How about learning from states like Texas, New Hampshire, and Florida as to how to effectively run a state with minimal individual tax burden (granted the demographics are different but there must be something that can be learned and adapted).

The sad fact is that the lazy, whiny babies in the NYS legislature and the idiots who represent this state in Congress seem to view themselves in unassailable positions and therefore have little incentive to change. All these people know how to do is tax and tax and tax, I truly believe this. They don't even think of drastically altering the state's time-honored tradition of raising and creating taxes by actually cutting programs. This is why I look into my crystal ball and see NYS becoming a failed, bankrupt state in the future - its tax structure is such that it creates little to no incentive for firms to do business in the state and ultimately drives established firms from the state. The individual tax burden that exists to fund all these wasteful entitlement programs will drive residents from the state, leaving fewer households to fund ever growing deficits. That spells doom.

Adam Smith was right. The 'invisible hand' has it's flaws, but it works. It's not by accident that the US has become the economic and political powerhouse that it is in such a short span of time. Capitalism has its flaws, but it WORKS. Reagan had it right - people should be given as much freedom as possible to decide what to do with their money, not governments. Income redistribuition just does not work. Governments have proven time and time and time again to be extremely poor decisors on how to spend other peoples' money and they have little moral right to tell individuals how to spend theirs. Free markets do a far, far better job in apportioning resources than do "central command", essentially government-run economies, such as exists in New York right now.

New York state, as it exists today, is not a state that's worth residing or doing business in from an economic point of view. The return on your the average NYS household's tax investment is staggeringly miniscule. Taxpayer dollars - whether business, sales, or personal - are funding programs that will bring the state to economic ruin, a la California. This article on VIN is just another example of how myopic these legislators can be. They either don't realize or don't care that all they're doing is, to use a tired cliche, rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.


POSTSCRIPT - while I obviously have nothing but vile contempt for the elected nincompoop babyish a**holes that make up the great state of New York's legislative and executive structure, I would somewhat exempt Governor David Paterson from my ire. He's not too bad a fellow and doesn't seem much like all the others: greedy, power hungry, and grasping. He kind of seems to want to do something right by NYS citizens and taxpayers (this is because, in part, he's not elected); he's just terribly weak and incompetent as governor and completely the wrong person for the job.
As for all the other elected officials: if the aliens from Close Encounters of the Third Kind would come to take them away tomorrow for aeons of experimentation, I'd be very happy. Good riddance.


FNY!!

Testing on microblogging from the EVO

Lessons from the Rubashkin trial

The Rubashkin trial is now officially over. Yes, there will be appeals of the 27 year sentence, but that could take years and may not be successful, unfortunately.

It would be easy to feel dejected and to say that all the prayers, gatherings, tehillim recitals, and letter and phone campaigns were all, in retrospect, for naught. That the Jewish community expended all that energy, time, and money and came away with nothing to show for their trouble. That, I think, would be a grave mistake.

It's a fundamental Jewish belief that things don't just happen arbitrarily. Judaism believes that God runs the world and that He will make things happen or not happen for our ultimate good, hard as it is for us to see. Therefore, there must be something, some good that can come out of the Rubashkin sentencing, some message that we're meant to take. So what could it possibly be?

There are probably many messages and hints that we can glean from this episode. One of the big ones I can think of is, despite whatever your opinion of the matter itself, the sheer achdus that we are capable of when we want to be mis'ached. I think that the one theme that overarches many others, though, is that of honesty and integrity.

Let's call a spade a spade. Nobody (or nearly no one) is saying that the guilty party is or was completely innocent in this case, now that the case itself has been laid to rest. The trial, conviction, and sentencing occurred and is occurring over a time period marked concurrently with relentless chilulei Hashem of legal and financial flavors splashed across all manner of media outlets. Is it beyond the pale of reason to suggest that maybe, just maybe, for whatever reason, God is telling His people to keep their noses clean, that He's had enough of seeing His name desecrated in the NY Times, the LA Times, the London Times, the NY Post, etc? Maybe God is, for whatever unknown reason, using this particular case as a warning message to His people to look within themselves, to better themselves regarding this aspect of life - to strive to act with utter honesty and integrity when dealing within the legal and regulatory system with each other and non-Jews alike, and to take the grave sin of desecrating His name a lot more seriously.

This is not meant to be an argument for or against Mr. Rubashkin's innocence or whether his sentencing was fair or not. That's been argued ad infinitum and the trial is over and done with. The question is, what will we take from this episode? Is this a test, a nisayon, from God? If it is, will we pass it or pass it up?

Food for thought...

Thoughts at a Bar Mitzva

I was attending a family bar mitzva recently and was struck by a thought after the music started up and people started dancing.

What other group of people or religion can you find a bunch of virulently homophobic Orthodox men get up and dance with each other, sweaty hand clasped in sweaty hand??

MI KE'AMCHA YISRAEL!!!

;-)