If by Empire State one means “state dedicated to bankrupting productive citizens to benefit an increasingly greedy sector of public employees and welfare recipients.”

‘Puter caught this item today: New York’s budget is in a $315 million hole that must be filled by year end. The Empire State’s best and brightest blame the gap on increased Medicaid enrollment due to the Great Recession. The total of New Yorkers on Medicaid is now 4.9 million.

This got ‘Puter thinking. As in, “Holy cow, that’s a whole lot of poor New Yorkers in what’s alleged (by the liberal intelligentsia) as being the Second Happiest Place on Earth.” The Happiest Place on Earth of course being nestled in the nurturing bosom of the all-encompassing Nanny State.

‘Puter decided to crunch some numbers in order to compare America’s Best Liberal State with some of those poor, backwards gun-and-Bible-clinging rednecks. ‘Puter used 2009 population data from here and 2007 Medicaid data from here. Admittedly, the data is not perfect as it’s not from the same year, but it ought to be close enough to get a general sense of which state has the poorer populace.

Here’s the data.

New York, Nirvana on Earth, had 19.54 million people and 4.9 million Medicaid recipients for an overall Medicaid receiving population percentage of 25.01%.

West Virginia, Almost Heaven If You’re Inbred Or John Denver (according to East Coast Elites), had 1.82 million people and 392,000 Medicaid recipients for an overall Medicaid receiving population percentage of 21.54%.

Mississippi, Mouth Breather Central (again, according to our elected betters) had 2.95 million people and 750,000 Medicaid recipients for an overall Medicaid receiving population percentage of 25.40%.

May I recommend a new state motto, Governor-Elect Cuomo? How about: “New York, We’re Slightly Less Impoverished Than Mississippi!”

At least we, as a state, seem to have the “send us your tired, your poor” part down pat.

'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.