The Rhode Island meets reality model
If you are interested in recent economic stories and statistics, Doug Noland has a long blog on recent economic news at PrudentBear.
There are signs of recovery as well as worsening. Noland’s important point is that the Fed cannot withdraw from support for mortgage loans without endangering the mortgage market and any recovery in housing prices. Yet, maintaining its support has hidden costs, one being the creditworthiness of the Fed itself. Noland expects a sudden credit crisis leading to bond boycotts and higher interest rates for all bonds, and all mortgages. Attention is shifting to the creditworthiness of the Federal Reserve. We’ll have more on this in later posts.
Financial Armageddon picks up an article from Center on Budget and Policy Priorities that focuses on the finances of the states. The Center projects each state’s budget gap for 2009, 2010, and 2011. The biggest gaps are in California, Nevada, Arizona, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Rhode Island.
The quote is from FA:
“At least 27 states have implemented cuts that will restrict low-income children’s or families’ eligibility for health insurance or reduce their access to health care services. Programs for the elderly and disabled are also being cut. At least 24 states and the District of Columbia are cutting medical, rehabilitative, home care, or other services needed by low-income people who are elderly or have disabilities, or significantly increasing the cost of these services.
“At least 25 states are cutting or proposing to cut K-12 and early education; several of them are also reducing access to child care and early education, and at least 34 states have implemented cuts to public colleges and universities.
“In addition, at least 42 states and the District of Columbia have made cuts reducing the size or work time of state government employees. Such cuts not only often result in reduced access to services residents need, but also add to states’ woes because of the impact on the economy from less consumer activity.”
FA also has many links to state-specific stories, including this one and this one on California. This latter story goes a long way to debunking the tales of woe that state legislators tell about the necessity of cutting education and health programs. The first place state legislators should be cutting is bureaucrat salaries. Some states are, but not all. It’s great to see that California is cutting subsides for battered women’s shelters. Battered women’s shelters are a phony scam. We’ll have more to say about them in future posts.
We didn’t realize that Rhode Island was in the worst shape, and 80 percent of its bureaucrats are going to take a holiday. Notice that unions are at the heart of the overpayment problem, and the unions hold the key to negotiations as to whether the government can stay in business full time.
NWOU is constantly accusing Democrats of overspending on their favored constituencies, thus endangering state economies when tax revenues fall. Democrat governments are entirely parasitical. They simply control us and use our tax money to enrich themselves and their chosen constituencies. Their constituencies are mainly state bureaucrats and unions, but there is plenty of graft in state contracting. These days those contracts go entirely to private companies that satisfy racial diversity requirements, meaning white guys get squeezed out.
Notice in the article on Rhode Island how many government services are devoted to transferring cash payments from one party to another. The Democrats slice up society into racial, gender, and age groups and then address their favored groups with subsidies. They then turn governments into multi-service centers that take over the functions of private industries, families, and communities. You may shed a tear that Jewish shelters can’t be funded in California, but we are happy to see this trend reverse. Do you want to tell us that Jews don’t have enough money to finance women’s shelters privately? We don’t believe that government belongs in the business of education, health care, or food distribution.
Now that tax revenues have declined across the nation, states are forced to cut their budgets, usually by a few percent. That takes spending levels back a few years, that’s all. It chokes off further expansion of spending and ends a few programs, but most of these states are refusing to address the biggest cause of overspending, government employee union agreements. This is where the cuts should start.
In one of our previous posts we asked the question, is Undoing progress? Since “progress” is progress toward the global police state, is reversing this trend genuine progress? Yes it is, even if states are only returning to spending levels of a few years ago. Continued pressure on state budgets should eventually result in the spotlight being focused on inflated union wages and the corruption involved in government contracts. Ideally, this process of examining state spending would result in government confining itself to a few essential services, public safety, defending borders, monitoring public health threats, police and fire services.
We would be delighted to see the government out of education, health care, and the domestic abuse racket. If we can make genuine progress in doing so, private citizens can step up and provide these services. This would mean a flow of people and capital away from the central control of government into private communities. What a great release of energy and creativity this would mean for the people.
Are you shedding crocodile tears over the loss of a few programs, or a few days’ shutdown of nonessential government services? Are you focusing on stories about people who have become entirely dependent on government services? These extreme cases can be handled by volunteers in local communities and by local charities. Cities and towns can address cases of extreme need. When states provide these services, the bureaucracies grow and grow. Focusing on single stories of extreme need ignores the greater general welfare, which is put at risk when governments overspend and overtax. In case you hadn’t noticed, these policies have led our richest states into the pit of financial crisis.
Have you been living in liberal fantasy formation, favoring expanding government without thinking about the cost? If so, you have also been promoting family breakdown and socialist takeover. Today’s state budget struggles mean the reality principle is finally at work. There isn’t enough tax revenue to fund liberal dreams, and borrowing simply incurs greater costs. It’s about time that centralization and control policies reversed. Now, if we could just remove from power those politicians who have been shepherding everyone into mass institutions under the control of global takeover policies, we would have a real chance at local freedom and democracy.
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