E. J. McMahon is the Manhattan Institute’s senior fellow for tax and budgetary studies and director of the Empire Center for New York State Policy. In this article in The City Journal, Mr. McMahon lays out the case against New York that ‘Puter has struggled to make as eloquently. Read the entire thing, and be aghast.

In a nutshell, the perfect storm of a Wall Street crash in a state that was increasingly reliant on that sector of its economy, coupled with overly-generous welfare and public employee benefits has led to an unsustainable state budget paradigm. The only way out now seems to be to rethink the entire budgetary model, scale back benefits and cut spending drastically. Or municipal and state bankruptcy. Either one works for ‘Puter.

For all you pundits out there wondering what Obamanomics in practice is going to look like, look no further than New York. Sen. Obama’s proposed taxation and redistribution model (to the “poor” and to the public employee middle class (and its union masters)) is an example of Obamanomics in action. For years, New York (essentially a one party state) has taken greater and greater shares from the rich Wall Streeters and given to the public unions and their members through pensions and benefits, as well as high salaries. New York also created the most generous Medicaid and welfare system of just about any state, and has accordingly become a mecca for government benefit seekers from around the country. New York’s confiscatory tax levels have over the same period driven out many private employers who created non-governmental middle class jobs. Thus, New York’s economy today is reliant on the rich Wall Streeters, with the government “spreading the wealth” to public employee unions and welfare recipients. Having driven many private employers out of the state, there remain few private entities left to tax in order to maintain current spending levels. Therefore, in response to the current financial crisis, New York has no one’s wealth left to “spread around,” yet the benefit recipients are still clamoring for their unearned handouts.

Don’t say ‘Puter didn’t warn you when the United States looks like New York in 4 to 8 years.

'Puter

Always right, unless he isn’t, the infallible Ghettoputer F. X. Gormogons claims to be an in-law of the Volgi, although no one really believes this.

’Puter carefully follows economic and financial trends, legal affairs, and serves as the Gormogons’ financial and legal advisor. He successfully defended us against a lawsuit from a liquor distributor worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid deliveries of bootleg shandies.

The Geep has an IQ so high it is untestable and attempts to measure it have resulted in dangerously unstable results as well as injuries to researchers. Coincidentally, he publishes intelligence tests as a side gig.

His sarcasm is so highly developed it borders on the psychic, and he is often able to insult a person even before meeting them. ’Puter enjoys hunting small game with 000 slugs and punt guns, correcting homilies in real time at Mass, and undermining unions. ’Puter likes to wear a hockey mask and carry an axe into public campgrounds, where he bursts into people’s tents and screams. As you might expect, he has been shot several times but remains completely undeterred.

He assures us that his obsessive fawning over news stories involving women teachers sleeping with young students is not Freudian in any way, although he admits something similar once happened to him. Uniquely, ’Puter is unable to speak, read, or write Russian, but he is able to sing it fluently.

Geep joined the order in the mid-1980s. He arrived at the Castle door with dozens of steamer trunks and an inarticulate hissing creature of astonishingly low intelligence he calls “Sleestak.” Ghettoputer appears to make his wishes known to Sleestak, although no one is sure whether this is the result of complex sign language, expert body posture reading, or simply beating Sleestak with a rubber mallet.

‘Puter suggests the Czar suck it.