Posted on 08/22/2013 7:19:36 AM PDT by shortstop
Welcome to New York, Mr. President. I will be your guide.
I am the ghost of America future.You have already been visited by the ghost of America past. She showed you a nation that led the world in liberty, morality and prosperity, and which was on the cutting edge of science, medicine and the arts. A nation that went to war not for conquest, but for liberation, which gave of its treasure and blood to free Asia from the Japanese, Africa from the Italians and Europe from the Germans. A nation that led the world into peace, freedom and modernity.
Likewise, you have been visited by the ghost of America present. He showed you a nation divided down the middle, between a group you call the selfish haves and another group you call the entitled have nots. A nation suffocating in debt and cancerous mismanagement. A nation that has outsourced its industries and spent itself into poverty. A nation whose people are increasingly fettered by government command and rigid political correctness.
But now, I will show you America’s future.
You will see it out the window of your bus.
As you land today in Buffalo, and then drive to Syracuse, before spending the night and driving on to Binghamton tomorrow, all you need to know about the future of America will be visible as you drive down the road.
That’s because New York has already spent decades living the policies you and your party advocate. What you propose, New York has long since done. The progressive America you envision is presaged by the New York through which you will pass. The impact of your policies is writ large across the Empire State.
Or rather, what used to be the Empire State.No one can use that phrase with a straight face anymore. Unless it’s a Star Wars reference that I don’t quite get, there is no empire whatsoever in this state.
In Buffalo, your first stop, you will find a decayed waterfront through which once passed the bulk of America’s Midwestern vitality. You will see beautiful buildings that mostly sit empty, and hulks of factories that are now nothing more than homes to hobos and pigeons.
When you drive past the Rochester exit, you will be bypassing the city that gave birth to Kodak, Xerox, IBM, Bausch and Lomb, and other companies ranging from French’s mustard to Ragu.
Today, Kodak is in bankruptcy and the others are in the wind. The last truly successful business started in Rochester processes paychecks for people who overwhelmingly don’t live in New York.
At your final destination for today, in Syracuse, you will find a city that peaked in the 1890s, cruised comfortably until the 1970s and has since crashed and burned. Syracuse has Jim Boeheim and a big mall, and that’s about it.
As you visit New York today, you will be driving through some of the most economically depressed areas in the country. Great weather, rich topsoil, well-educated people, and the place has turned into a crap hole.
Because of progressive policies like the ones you advocate.
The highest combined state and local taxes in the country. The highest property and gasoline taxes in America. The greatest net loss of House seats of any state in American history. The highest expenditures per pupil in American education matched with some of the lowest rates of academic achievement in America. The highest per capita rate of welfare dependence of any state in the nation. The highest-paid government employees in the country and the highest number, per capita, of government employees in the country.
New York is the most pro-union state, the most reliably Democratic state, it is arguably the progressive capital of America.
It is a state saddled with all the regulations and taxes you advocate, with all the redistribution and environmental protection and affirmative action. Health care is already rationed, half our pregnancies end in abortion and we don't frack our gas. It is a liberal's dream come true.
And it is in ruins.
As reflected by the fact it has the highest rate of move out of any state in the nation. More people leave New York, and take their money, than any other state, as a total number or as a percentage.
That’s what progressivism does.
That’s what you’re preaching will accomplish.
That’s the future you are building for America.
In New York, objectively the most dysfunctional state in the union, you have a case study – a pilot project in progressivism.
And the place is a mess.
Just like America will be.
If we follow your policies.
I am the ghost of America future.
And I have given you your warning.
Welcome to New York.
Article to why folks are moving out of blue states to red states.
After his idiocy the other day I give him zero credibility. But he should have also pointed that bus north into the Adirondack park. And looked at the timber industry destroyed on the altar of the APA and Sierra Club.
And all the ruins of towns and villages left in it’s wake.
i have a lot of friends that moved out of new york to here. they are all very nice, hard working ‘real ville’ people. I can just imagine the losers that stayed behind - they probably love it now, free to urinate/defacate anywhere they want, collecting their various welfare checks, and cursing the rest of the world for not sharing their sick vision. If Gary Indiana is America’s armpit, the New York is its butt hole...after a raunchy mexican buffet...
Unfortunately, like a cancer.. . they bring their blue voting ways. Liberals never learn. . even when liberalism bites them in the arse.
Well when they move, they end up learning from that old but very useful saying “when in Rome, do as the Romans do” very fast if they want to be accepted.
We moved out of the Socialist state of Maryland and one of the highest tax counties in the nation. Where we lived in Maryland, the local tax was 1/2 of the state tax. And the property taxes were out the wazoo. Gas prices were high.
We moved to a conservative county in Georgia where there was no local income tax. Property taxes were much lower and gasoline was much less expensive (by about 40 cents a gallon). It was like getting a huge raise.
With this move, we were able to put our children through college ending without loans and even paying off our inexpensive (relative to MD) house off a few years later.
We now see a retirement nest egg in sight, no thanks to Socialist states like Maryland or New York whose socialist policies have only seemed to increase with the years.
Tea Party, here we come; no need for a 'blues' state (with Blues) here.
When those lines on the graph connect ... you get New York ... you get Colorado ... you get Texas in the not-too-distant future.
after being raised in CNY I moved away from syracuse in 1989 and never looked back.
I did have to laugh at the writer’s reference to the “great weather.” Lol!
I left Rochester in ‘90. That weather comment made me laugh too! Beach living with a constant breeze and almost no need for air conditioning is perfect for me!
abenaki check this Bob Lonsberry story today!
Ah... Great memories of Rochester. There are things I love and miss there but they are long gone and it will never be the same. Each time I go home to visit i’m stunned how the area manages to continue deteriorate.
I suppose there is some truth to the “rich topsoil” but I too laughed at the “great weather”. I have never lived in the state but when the Navy sent me to Keflavik, Iceland they told us it really is not all that cold, the average temperature is six degrees HIGHER than New York City. I gather that most of the state is colder than NYC so I don’t think great weather is something to brag about in the state of liberal disfunction.
Central NY... Where winter lasts half the year. I saw it snow in July several years... Once on the syracuse u. Campus... Someone went into the crouse bell tower and started playing jingle bells. Lol!
Definitely rich topsoil... I’m remembering the famous muckland of Rome that produced gorgeous fruits and vegetables.
Chicago or Detroit would have worked better for the author's purpose.
An astute student of history and human nature, Thomas Jefferson, predicted what we see happening here in America. While a strong case can be made that the French aristocracy brought it upon themselves, as ambassador in France, he witnessed the run up to the FIRST socialist/communist revolution there. He penned the following observations concerning what would happen HERE should that socialism come to the United States. He CORRECTLY predicted that we would become an increasingly contentious and litigious people as we shouldered one another out of the way to get OURS from the public trough and the trough would soon be empty.
He also knew where the bulk of the problem would originate.
That whirring noise you may hear coming from that mountain in Charlottesville, Virginia is Mr. Jefferson getting up to around 3600 RPM.
(A 6 minute video with this information may be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypLu49pq3bI)
As I understand it, at the time of the drafting of the Declaration, Mr. Jefferson originally wrote “…Life, Liberty and PROPERTY…” (meaning that one’s right to freely acquire, use and dispose of his property – to the extent doing so did not violate the same to others – was a Creator endowed right. Because slavery viewed humans as property, the phrase “Pursuit of Happiness” was adopted instead to avoid – at least for the time being — the inevitable debate on that subject.
“The mobs of the great cities add just so much to the support of pure government as sores do to the strength of the human body. It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution.” —Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.XIX, 1782. ME 2:230
“I think our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries as long as they are chiefly agricultural; and this will be as long as there shall be vacant lands in any part of America. When they get piled upon one another in large cities as in Europe, they will become corrupt as in Europe.” —Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1787. Papers 12:442
“I view great cities as pestilential to the morals, the health and the liberties of man. True, they nourish some of the elegant arts; but the useful ones can thrive elsewhere; and less perfection in the others, with more health, virtue and freedom, would be my choice.” —Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Rush, 1800. ME 10:173
“Our cities... exhibit specimens of London only; our country is a different nation.” —Thomas Jefferson to Andre de Daschkoff, 1809. ME 12:304
“Everyone, by his property or by his satisfactory situation, is interested in the support of law and order. And such men may safely and advantageously reserve to themselves a wholesome control over their public affairs and a degree of freedom which, in the hands of the canaille of the cities of Europe, would be instantly perverted to the demolition and destruction of everything public and private.” —Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1813. ME 13:401
“An insurrection... of science, talents, and courage, against rank and birth... has failed in its first effort, because the mobs of the cities, the instrument used for its accomplishment, debased by ignorance, poverty, and vice, could not be restrained to rational action. But the world will recover from the panic of this first catastrophe.” —Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1813. ME 13:402
“I fear nothing for our liberty from the assaults of force; but I have seen and felt much, and fear more from English books, English prejudices, English manners, and the apes, the dupes, and designs among our professional crafts. When I look around me for security against these seductions, I find it in the wide spread of our agricultural citizens, in their unsophisticated minds, their independence and their power, if called on, to crush the Humists of our cities, and to maintain the principles which severed us from England.” —Thomas Jefferson to Horatio G. Spafford, 1814. ME 14:120
A story this very important and 17 replies???
I wonder if it was the time of day?
This is so much a preview of other states problems.
It is very important to understand how it happens!
Thanks for your comments, however.
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