Friday, September 30, 2011

The difference between NJ Republicans and the Tea Party folks

The Week lists five reasons why Chris Christie cannot win the GOP nomination. They are:

1. Christie is no hardliner on immigration
2. He has a soft spot for gun control
3. Hardliners won't like his stand on the "ground zero mosque"
4. He's got an uncomfortable Madoff connection
5. A possible clincher: He believes people are causing climate change


So aside from #4 (which, if you read the article, is a dubious connection at best), Gov. Christie would be unacceptable to the Republican base because he prefers to take his posiitons based on common sense rather than party orthodoxy? I'm no Chris Christie fan but this essentially validates Bill Maher's claim in 2009 that Democrats Have Moved To The Right and The Right Has Moved Into The Mental Hospital.

First Lady goes on incognito Target run!

This is why Michelle Obama is just plain awesome! Apparently the Target store didn't know until the cashier recognized her. The store manager was quoted in the CNN article:

""We did not have advance notice; it was as big a surprise to us as it was to everyone else," she said.

She continued, "In hindsight, there was a sweep, but it was not obvious to us beforehand. When she left we thought 'Oh, that's what that was!'"
"


Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Replace "Derek Jeter" with "Brandon Nimmo" and replace "good Yankee" with "good Met"

I recently heard a story during a Yankee telecast (one of the few I watched this season) that when the Yankees drafted Derek Jeter with the 6th overall pick in the 1992 draft, he was brought to meet the team and management at Yankee Stadium. Upon meeting Jeter and his parents, then-manager Buck Showalter remarked, "I don't know if he's going to be a good ballplayer but he's going to be a good Yankee." Now the die hard Met fan will question the existence of "a good Yankee" but I think Showalter's point was that he would represent the organization well and not embarrass himself or the team, which I begrudgingly admit is generally the norm for Jeter.

Watching this video of the Mets first-round pick in this year's draft brings that statement to mind. Keep in mind that this kid is only 18 years old.



Aside from the maturity in the press conference, I noticed he has a sweet swing, which is really smooth. He is often compared to Andy Van Slyke, which is a pretty good comparison if he has that kind of glove to go along with that kind of bat.

Of course I'm no expert on evaluating talent but out of the big three outfield prospects the Mets had in the mid-2000's, I thought the order of talent was Carlos Gomez, then Lastings Milledge, and then Fernando Martinez (I may be proven right here). On the pitching side, I felt that Mike Pelfrey should have gone in the Johan Santana trade and the Mets should have held on to Philip Humber (which I was nearly wrong about but may be proven right in the end too.) Perhaps it was the years prior to then hearing about the over hyped Alex's (Ochoa and Escobar) that conditioned me to look for signs of talent rather than take everyone else's word for it.

Then again, if I'm what I've read about Bryce Harper blowing a kiss to the opposing pitcher after hitting a home run is an indication of his psychological state, I may be proven right in the end with what I said about him two years ago.

Better Government Doesn’t Mean Smaller or Bigger: Edward Glaeser - Bloomberg View

Great column on Bloomberg View by Harvard Economics Professor Edward Glaeser, who says the big government vs. small government debate in Washington is a red herring. As Prof. Glaeser says, the goal should be for a smart government. He even takes a quick jab against the Right:

"Republicans, who often pledge to reduce federal spending, don’t have a great track record shrinking the share of government to GDP. Federal outlays as a share of GDP rose under three of the last four Republican presidents, and it’s easy to understand why. Cutting taxes, which Republican administrations did regularly, is fun and popular, but doing so without lowering spending is just passing the buck to our children."

and later on against the Left:

"Cutting even 15 percent of [Government's GDP share] will be tough, given that advocates of liberal spending will argue that our government is already quite small relative to the size of the public sector in other developed countries, and cutting 15 percent would mean reducing government’s share of the economy by 1 percentage point."

Monday, September 26, 2011

Today's Flavor of the Day: NJ Gov. Chris Christie

It seems like there is such disappointment with the Republican field right now that everyone is trying to entice New Jersey Governor Chris Christie to join the already convoluted race. "Should he or shouldn't he?" aside, Chris Cillizza of The Washington Post and Politicker NJ both weigh in -- no Christie-related pun intended (although Politicker NJ does bring it up) -- with three and five reasons, respectively, on whether or not he should run.

Additionally, Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight tries to figure out how Christie differentiates from Republican frontrunners Mitt Romney and Rick Perry.

And these are just the article about this topic today. If this Republican field gets any less appealing, who knows how many calls there will be for Christie to enter the race. Stay tuned.

Family dinners may have health benefits for teens - Boston.com

Great post at Boston.com about a survey that indicates family dinners have a number of health benefits for teens:

"“It’s not the food at the table but the parent engagement that takes place during dinner when parents ask how a kid’s day was,” said Kathleen Ferrigno, director of marketing for the [National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University]. That daily conversational experience paves the way for communication when problems arise like pressure from a friend to smoke or drink."

David Frum: Why our government is broken - CNN.com

Former Bush speechwriter David Frum pens an excellent column on how politics has changed from the 1950's to the 1980's to today:

"Under the old rules, there were certain things that political parties did not do -- even though theoretically they could. If one party controlled the Senate and another party controlled the presidency, the Senate party did not reject all the president's nominees. The party that controlled the House did not refuse to schedule votes on the president's budgets. Individual senators did not use secret holds to sway national policy. The filibuster was reserved for rare circumstances -- not as a routine 60-vote requirement on every Senate vote.

It's incredible to look back now on how the Reagan tax cut passed the Democratic House in 1981. The Democratic House leaderships could have refused to schedule votes on Reagan's tax plans. Instead, they not only allowed the tax plan to proceed -- but they allowed 48 of 243 Democrats to break ranks on the key procedural vote without negative consequences to their careers in the Democratic party. (Rep. Dan Glickman of Kansas, for example, who voted for the tax cuts would rise to become Secretary of Agriculture under President Clinton.)

Hard to imagine Speaker John Boehner allowing his Republicans to get away with similar behavior on a measure proposed by President Obama.
"

Although I personally think he conveniently avoids the issue of how usage of the filibuster has became so prominent (Republican senators after the 2006 Democratic takeover of both Houses of Congress), the column is an excellent read on how our politics got to where it is today.

$10 million prize in a national election lottery? I'd get out the vote in that election!

Matt Miller writes a very interesting and thoroughly detailed column in The Washington Post about the type of stump speech a pragmatic centrist third party candidate would make. Although I don't agree with his ideal notion of a third party, this column really puts some cold hard truths out there:

On Education:
"We’ve been tinkering at the edges when it comes to school improvement, because we’ve ignored the most important question: Who should teach? While the world’s highest-performing school systems — those in places like Singapore, Finland and South Korea — recruit their teachers from the top third of their graduating class, we recruit ours from the middle and bottom thirds, especially for schools in poor neighborhoods. This “strategy” isn’t working. Up through the 1970s, the quality of our teacher corps was in effect subsidized by discrimination, because women and minorities didn’t have many other job opportunities. All that’s changed, but as career options have multiplied for those who used to become teachers, salaries haven’t kept pace to attract top talent."

On Health Care:
"We need to make sure every person in America has basic health coverage that doesn’t break the bank. To achieve that, Democrats must accept a private insurance industry and Republicans must accept that some people can’t afford decent policies on their own. This “grand bargain” is about liberals agreeing that innovation shouldn’t be regulated out of U.S. health care and conservatives agreeing that justice has to be regulated into it. The 50 million uninsured may seem invisible, but today their ranks are equal to the combined populations of Oklahoma, Connecticut, Iowa, Mississippi, Kansas, Kentucky, Arkansas, Utah, Oregon, Nevada, New Mexico, West Virginia, Nebraska, Idaho, Maine, New Hampshire, Hawaii, Rhode Island, Montana, Delaware, North Dakota, South Dakota, Alaska, Vermont and Wyoming. Would America turn its back on these 25 states if they all lacked basic health coverage? That is what we’ve been doing for decades."

On the Financial Markets:
"The banking system is now more concentrated than it was before the financial crisis. There are two ways to avoid the “too big to fail” threat that still exists. We can limit the risks these big banks take — though regulators don’t have a great track record of getting this right. The most important thing we can do, therefore, is make sure big banks have enough capital to absorb any conceivable losses. Yet bank lobbyists are now swarming Washington to keep capital requirements low – in part because higher levels of capital reduce what top bankers can pay themselves. Their bonuses are often based on such metrics as a firm’s “return on equity,” which can be goosed by continually piling debt atop a tiny equity base. That’s Wall Street’s plan. Heads, I win; tails, taxpayers lose. Again."

His idea for turning the national election into a lottery with a $10 million grand prize is definitely out-of-the-box, as is the recommendation to lower the voting age to 15. All-in-all, it's definitely worth the time to read this article all the way through and see how far you actually are from these ideas, regardless of your political ideology.

Friday, September 23, 2011

"Tell me lies, Tell me sweet little lies (Tell me lies, tell me, tell me lies...)"

PolitiFact does its usual fact check of the latest Republican debate. I don't know if it was because the candidates knew it would be Fox News viewers watching or if they were just having a very comfortable day but there were some whoppers in the debate.

"Oh, no, no you can't disguise..."

A subway ad that can only run in New York...

One of the reasons I love the New York City subway: would this ad run in any other city in the United States WITHOUT causing controversy? I took this picture on the #1 train earlier this week.

Saturday, September 17, 2011

More on the Mets and they NYPD/FDNY/PAPD caps.

Thanks to my friend Neil Parekh for pointing out this blog post by Keith Olbermann at MLB.com. Keith gets hammered for being a partisan political talking head but don't forget he did start out as a sportscaster and was one of the faces of ESPN in its early days. One point he made in response to a tweet he received really drives the point home on why the Mets should have worn those hats:

"As an aside, I should note that I actually got a tweet from an idiot who wondered why I thought wearing the NYPD/NYFD/PAPD/EMS caps was somehow “patriotic.” It never crossed my mind. It has nothing to do with patriotism. 343 firefighters and paramedics died that day. 23 New York policemen did. And 47 from the Port Authority Police. This is about remembering them – and acknowledging what all those who survived did for this city and the wounds they still have. For me, as the grandson of a New York fireman, and the descendant of several others, and many NYPD and regional PD, this is something deeper than patriotism."

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Gallup: Record-High 86% Approve of Black-White Marriages

I don't think anyone today would consider this to be a negative trend. It's amazing that only as recently as 1997 that the majority of people did.

"Your life is not your own."

Great post at The Incidental Economist about Ezra Klein's post at The Washington Post on the libertarian view on health care. A few great points below.

From Ezra Klein:

"It’s all well and good to say personal responsibility is the bedrock of liberty, but even the hardest of libertarians has always understood that there are places where your person ends and mine begins. Generally, we think of this in terms of violent intrusion or property transgressions. But in health care, it has to do with compassion.

We are a decent society, and we do not want to look in people’s pockets for an insurance card when they fall to the floor with chest pains. If we’re not going to look in their pockets, however, we need some answer for who pays when they wake up — or, God forbid, after they stop breathing — in the hospital.
"

From TIE:

"...my life is not entirely my own to the extent (some) libertarians may think it is or ought to be. I am not the only one who cares about the consequences of my decisions. I am not the only one who suffers or enjoys what comes of them. I am not the only one who cares about whether I live or die. I am not the only one who matters.

It’s not just some vague “society” that cares about my life. It’s much more concrete than that. It’s the people I see every day, that I live with, for whom I’m, in part, responsible and on whom I rely. It’s my family, friends, and co-workers. They all care about my life. I care about theirs. My life is not entirely my own.
"

Both are excellent reads and really clarify why libertarianism, like liberalism or conservatism, is not a 'one size fits all' solution to the world.

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Gosh, Could Obamacare Be Working? | The New Republic


Now this is interesting. It's hard to argue with this graph.

The Incidental Economist - Why the cheers mattered...

This is very well said and truly explains the context and the issues at hand.

America's Illegal Pioneers - Forbes

Excellent column in Forbes about the history of illegal immigration in the US and what can be done about it today:

"Everyone knows that America was settled by immigrants. But few realize how much of this settlement was done illegally. Shortly after winning independence, Congress enacted legislation that called for newly acquired western lands to be divided into large 640-acre plots and sold for a dollar an acre.

This scheme proved proved impractical. As economist Hernando de Soto has written, few settlers had either $640 or the legal expertise to navigate America’s cumbersome property laws. And so thousands of migrants simply ignored the law and settled illegally on vacant land.
"

FactCheck.org - CNN/Tea Party Debate

Ever notice how these fact checks of the Republican debates get longer and longer after each debate?

Report: Government spends billions more hiring contractors over public workers

I have a hard time understanding how people can say Obama is a far-left liberal when he kept this egregious Bush-Cheney practice in place:

"As Washington's use of private contractors grows, the government is paying those contractors billions more than it would pay their government workers to do the same job, according to a new study released Tuesday..

In an attempt to verify frequently made claims that the government can save money by outsourcing its work, the nonprofit Project On Government Oversight (POGO) compared the total annual compensation for federal (and private sector) employees with federal contractor billing rates.

The group found that in 33 of the 35 occupational categories it reviewed, federal government employees were less expensive than contractors. On average, the federal government pays contractors 1.83 times more than it pays federal employees and two times more than what comparable workers in the private sector are paid.
"

Right again Mr. Friedman!

Tom Friedman, as always, nails it right on the head:

"President Obama has chosen not to push for a price signal for political reasons. He has opted for using regulations and government funding. In the area of regulation, he deserves great credit for just pushing through new fuel economy standards that will ensure that by 2025 the average U.S. car will get the mileage (and have the emissions) of today’s Prius hybrid. But elsewhere, Obama has relied on green subsidies rather than a price signal. Some of this has really helped start-ups leverage private capital, but you also get Solyndras. The G.O.P. has blocked any price signal and fought every regulation. The result too often is taxpayer money subsidizing wonderful green innovation, but with no sustainable market within which these companies can scale.

Let’s fix that. We need revenue to balance the budget. We need sustainable clean-tech jobs. We need less dependence on Mideast oil. And we need to take steps to mitigate climate change — just in case Governor Perry is wrong. The easiest way to do all of this at once is with a gasoline tax or price on carbon. Would you rather cut Social Security and Medicare or pay a little more per gallon of gas and make the country stronger, safer and healthier? It still amazes me that our politicians have the courage to send our citizens to war but not to ask the public that question.
"

His new book is out too. It's been an interesting read thus far, although I'm only about 10% of the way in right now.

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Selig: Mets never threatened over cap flap - NYPOST.com

Here's more proof that Bud Selig is, and always will be, way in over his head as the commissioner of Major League Baseball. The fact that he could be so clueless as to the importance of the Mets wearing the first responder hats like they did in 2001 is pathetic and sad. Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports, Matthew Cerrone of Metsblog, Adam Rubin of ESPN, John Harper of The New York Daily News, and George Willis of The New York Post agree that the Mets should have been wearing the NYPD, FDNY, and PAPD hats for 9/11.

Put up or shut up time.

McClatchy has kind of a sensationalistic headline but as the President keeps saying, if you have a better idea, let's hear it. Washington Post has a great graphic with the breakdown of the tax proposal.

Names on WTC memorial arranged by algorithm - CNET News

This is a very interesting post on how they arranged the names on the 9/11 Memorial. The site for the memorial is also pretty good in that it allows you to search for a name and print a map of where it is located on the memorial.

Sunday, September 11, 2011

8 beers Americans no longer drink - MSNBC

Interesting list. Not surprisingly it consists entirely of American beers since imports aren't such a novelty anymore.

Friday, September 9, 2011

The White House Blog - American Jobs Act: Get the Facts

If you only watched it on TV, check out the "PowerPoint" version of President Obama's address last night:

Whose Lie Is It Anyway?

Whose lies were more outrageous than the others? Go to FactCheck.org's recap and PolitiFact's recap of the MSNBC/Politico Republican Debate to find out.

Leading on 9/11 and Beyond: New York City Fire Department's Joseph Pfeifer - Knowledge@Wharton

Great interview with the fire commander in the World Trade Center on the morning of 9/11. One thing that's not mentioned is this is the same fire chief that was featured in the documentary six months later on March 11, 2002. The one thing I remember from that documentary was Chief Pfeifer's brother was one of the firemen killed on 9/11 and the documentary captured that last moment the two Pfeifer brothers saw each other alive.

The Fighting Bipartisan: Has Obama Finally Found A Solution For Republican Obstructionism? | The New Republic

Checkmate? Perhaps:

"Last night Obama found a way out, sort of. It’s not a fiery partisan confrontation; it’s a kind of fighting bipartisanship. He’s now putting forth a substantive agenda that is very likely to boost the economy, create jobs, and improve the basic fairness of the tax system in order to spread the benefits of economic growth more broadly. But he aggressively linked almost all of those things to ideas that Republicans had already supported, or that wealthy people such as Warren Buffet had embraced. He took ownership of some ideas that had traditionally been conservative, and embraced ideas that had had some Republican support."

"Obama’s new approach, though, sets up, in theory, a different hypothetical win-win than the one we’ve been operating under for almost three years. One possibility is that Republicans have some qualms about a wholly obstructionist agenda, Congress passes some or most of the American Jobs Act, the economy improves (likely with some help from the Federal Reserve, international circumstances, and good fortune), and actual conditions get Obama out of the box he’s in. Failing that, if the White House and Democrats can keep their focus on the American Jobs Act (and if the left can avoid getting distracted by Obama’s wise concessions to reality, such as long-term reductions in Medicare spending), then Republican obstruction takes a new form. It’s not just blocking Obama, or his agenda—it’s blocking economic recovery, systematically, including ideas that Republicans have embraced in the past and will embrace again."

Experts Say The Economy Needs A Boost That Is Big, Fast, And Smart. The American Jobs Act Fits That Criteria. | The New Republic

The New Republic breaks down The American Jobs Act by the numbers and finds it comes close to what economists believed the act should be.

CBS News: Hot mic catches Boehner and Biden talking about golf

So a guy named 'Joe' and a guy named 'John' were talking about golf one day when a little speech happened:



I'd love to be the staffer whose voice we hear at the end say "the mics are live".

The Incidental Economist - Physician fees and salaries in the US and other countries

Interesting post about physician fees and salaries in the US and other countries. Worth checking out.

Mets to host Star Wars night in Citi Field on September 13th (next Tuesday)

I HAVE TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO GET TO THIS GAME!!!

Thursday, September 8, 2011

"First, we must dispose two myths."

Great opinion piece by Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz in Politico. Regarding what the country can do about job creation, Stiglitz states two myths that have been perpetuated by the right:

"First, we must dispose two myths. One is that reducing the deficit will restore the economy. You don’t create jobs and growth by firing workers and cutting spending. The reason that firms with access to capital are not investing and hiring is that there is insufficient demand for their products. Weakening demand — what austerity means — only discourages investment and hiring.

As Paul Krugman emphasizes, there is no “confidence fairy” that magically inspires investors once they see the deficit go down. We’ve tried that experiment — over and over. Using the austerity formula, then-President Herbert Hoover converted the stock market crash into the Great Depression. I saw firsthand how the International Monetary Fund’s imposed austerity on East Asian countries converted downturns into recessions and recessions into depressions.

I don’t understand why, with such strong evidence, any country would impose this on itself. Even the IMF now recognizes you need fiscal support.

The second myth is that the stimulus didn’t work. The purported evidence for this belief is simple: Unemployment peaked at 10 percent — and is still more than 9 percent. (More accurate measures put the number far higher.) The administration had announced, however, that with the stimulus, it would reach only 8 percent.

The administration did make one big error, which I pointed out in my book “Freefall” — it vastly underestimated the severity of the crisis it inherited.

Without the stimulus, however, unemployment would have peaked at more than 12 percent. There is no doubt that the stimulus could have been better designed. But it did bring unemployment down significantly from what it otherwise would have been. The stimulus worked. It was just not big enough, and it didn’t last long enough: The administration underestimated the crisis’s durability as well as its depth.
"

He also states four major events that have taken place in the last ten years:

"First, tax cuts beyond the country’s ability to afford. Second, two costly wars and soaring military expenditures — contributing roughly $2.5 trillion to our debt. Third, Medicare Part D — and the provision restricting government, the largest drug buyer, from negotiating with pharmaceutical companies, at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars over 10 years. Fourth, the recession."

All-in-all it's a very sensible piece that clearly lays out what went wrong, what can't fix it, what can fix it, and how the issue is not about economics but rather about the politics in this country.

Obama's 9/11 Op-Ed in today's USA Today

Check out President Obama's op-ed in today's USA Today. One important point:

"On a day when others sought to destroy, we choose to build. Once again, Sept. 11 will be a National Day of Service and Remembrance, and at Serve.gov every American can make a commitment to honor the victims and heroes of 9/11 by serving our neighbors and communities."

Go to Serve.gov to see how you can volunteer to help in your community.

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

About that big fat lie that regulations and taxes kill small businesses...

Great pieces in McClatchy and The Economist about the fallacy that regulations kill small businesses. A perfect read for anyone that believes this drivel without any idea as to what they're talking about.

Left behind in America: Who's to blame for the wealth divide?

It's hard to say much more about this article than the graph from it.

Friday, September 2, 2011

India's Great Middle-Class Moment - The Atlantic

Interesting piece in The Atlantic:

"There are many uncertainties in the short-term. But, to the extent that India's political and social churning was led by Middle India and its changing expectations, its politicians will have to re-craft their agenda, which currently has little to offer them."

Why not national single payer now?

Great question. The Incidental Economist explains it has more to do with politics than health care or policy.

Fixing schools the "FAST" way

Great op-ed piece in today's Washington Post explaining the FAST proposal:

"Fix America’s Schools Today is a proposal — from the 21st Century School Fund, the Economic Policy Institute and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities — to address the backlog of repairs at the nation’s 100,000 public schools. It’s an idea that efficiently marries big problems to a big solution.

One big problem is that most school districts in our country have been deferring maintenance and repairs for years. The has led to inefficient, and thus expensive, energy use, unsafe drinking water, mold, poor air quality, inadequate fire safety systems and structural dangers. With local governments hammered by the recession, school districts do not have the resources to address this backlog, nor will they for many years to come.

The other big problem is that after the housing bust, employment opportunities crashed for construction workers. So far this year, their unemployment rate has averaged 18 percent.

An efficient and common-sense solution is a government infrastructure program to put many of these workers back on the job fixing our nations’ schools.
"

Among stating a number of obvious benefits, the piece also goes on to say:

"Such an initiative also conveys an important message to our children. It’s hard for them to square the message that we, their parents, are concerned about and committed to their educational success when we send them off to schools that are in ill-repair or even unsafe."

One thing that also can't be overlooked is how many of those unemployed construction workers have children going to those crumbling schools? The emotional benefit of this proposal is one that cannot be quantified.

The missing pragmatism on the right

David Brooks pens another great piece calling out Republicans again from the Right on their positions of late:

"Stable societies are breeding grounds for interest groups. Over time, these interest groups use government to establish sinecures for themselves, which gradually strangle the economy they are built on — like parasitic vines around a tree.

Yet as great as the need is to streamline, reform and prune the state, that will not be enough to restore America’s vigorous virtues. This is where current Republican orthodoxy is necessary but insufficient. There are certain tasks ahead that cannot be addressed simply by getting government out of the way.

In the first place, there is the need to rebuild America’s human capital. The United States became the wealthiest nation on earth primarily because Americans were the best educated.

That advantage has entirely eroded over the past 30 years. It will take an active government to reverse this stagnation — from prenatal and early childhood education straight up through adult technical training and investments in scientific and other research. If government is “inconsequential” in this sphere, then continued American decline is inevitable.
"

Thursday, September 1, 2011

New Planet May Be Among Most Earthlike—Weather Permitting

This is pretty cool, although at 3.6 times Earth's gravity imagine how hard it would be to lose those last 36 lbs. instead of just the last 10.

Robert Reich: Rick Perry's Secret Plan to Save Blue States from the Red States

Robert Reich points out something with which I might agree with Rick Perry:

"On average, citizens of states with strong Republican majorities get back more from the federal government than they pay in. Kentucky receives $1.51 from Washington for every dollar its citizens pay in federal taxes. Alabama gets back $1.66. Louisiana receives $1.78. Alaska, $1.84. Mississippi, $2.02. Arizona, $1.19. Idaho, $1.21. South Carolina, $1.35. Oklahoma, $1.36. Arkansas, $1.41. Montana, $1.47, Nebraska, $1.10. Wyoming, $1.11. Kansas, $1.12.

On the other hand, fiscal secession would be a boon to most blue states. The citizens of California – harder hit by the recession than most – receive from Washington only 78 cents for every tax dollar they send to Washington. New Yorkers get back only 79 cents on every tax dollar they send in. Massachusetts, 82 cents. Michigan, 92 cents. Oregon, 98 cents.

In other words, blue states are subsidizing red states. The federal government is like a giant sump pump – pulling dollars out of liberal enclaves like California, New York, Massachusetts, and Oregon – and sending them to conservative places like Montana, Idaho, Oklahoma, Arizona, Wyoming, Kansas, Nebraska, and the Old South.
"

And that doesn't even include my state, New Jersey, which is dead last by getting only 61 cents for every dollar we send the federal government in income taxes. Please Rick Perry, save us from those Red State Leeches!!