Blue State Blues, Bluer Than Blue, and The Massachusetts Job Fair

A Massachusetts employment organization has canceled its annual job fair because not enough companies have come forward to offer jobs.

Richard Shafer, chairman of the Taunton Employment Task Force, says 20 to 25 employers are needed for the fair scheduled for April 6, but just 10 tables had been reserved. One table was reserved by a nonprofit that offers human services to job seekers, and three by temporary employment agencies.

Shafer tells the Taunton Daily Gazette the lack of employers means the task force won't have enough money to properly advertise the fair.

The task force has been organizing the job fair nearly every year since 1984.

Shafer says the cancellation reflects the current economy -- even though things are getting better, companies are still cautious about hiring full-time workers.

Why would Massachusetts companies be reluctant to take on new workers?
Obamacare?
Threat of new taxes?
They're in a Blue State?
Card Check has not yet been defeated?
Uncertainty?
The Fed printing money?
The White House seems determined to punish success?
Regulatory Hell?

Pick one.

Here's Michael Johnson, singing a late '70's classic.

Illinois or Mexico? Guess who has to pay higher interest

From Bloomberg News, via Newsalert, via Instapundit:

Illinois capital-markets director John Sinsheimer and Citigroup Inc. bankers took a globe-girdling trip from the U.K. to China in June to persuade investors that the state’s $900 million of Build America Bonds were a bargain.


The seven-country visit worked. The state sold one-fifth of the federally subsidized securities abroad the next month, tapping investors who are the fastest-growing source of borrowed cash for U.S. municipalities. Illinois, with the lowest credit rating of any state from Moody’s Investors Service, dangled yields higher than Mexico, which defaulted on debt in 1982, and Portugal, which costs more to insure against missed payments.

In other words, the children of the state of Illinois are going to be forking out Payday Loan-type interest rates.  All so their parents can support the political culture that produced Barack Obama, Rod Blagojevich, these 3 governors who have been to jail, Dan Rostenkowski, and the next mayor of Chicago. 

Mexico is a better investment.  I repeat, Mexico is a better, safer investment.  Look at these three guys.  Would you purchase a used hubcap from any of them???  Let it roll around in your brain for a few minutes.  According to people who evaluate risk, Mexico is a safer investment than Illinois. 

CAVEAT EMPTOR, dammit ! !

If you purchase the Illinois bonds, Obama is eventually going to print some money, give it to Illinois, and they are going to pay you back with .50 cent dollars.  Hide and watch.   
Mexico is a better investment. 

******
The Wanted Poster came from here. 

High taxes equal high emigration and high deficits

This is from the TaxProf blog, where Paul L. Caron lists the states with the highest tax rates for top earners.  All of these are Blue States that went for Obama, by the way:

1. Hawaii:  11% (income over $400,000 (couple), $200,000 (single))
2. Oregon:  11% (income over $500,000 (couple), $250,000 (single))
3. California: 10.55% (income over $1 million)
4. Rhode Island:  9.9% (income over $373,650)
5. Iowa:  8.98% (income over $64,261)
6. New Jersey  8.97% (income over $500,000)
7. New York:  8.97% (income over $500,000)
8. Vermont:  8.95% (income over $373,650)
9. Maine:  8.5% (income over $39,549 (couple), $19,749 (single))
10. Washington, D.C.:  8.5% (income over $40,000)

Ok, so what? 
Well, this is from the Wall Street Journal.  It's a map showing the migration patterns from state to state. 

With the exception of Oregon, all of the top tax states lost population from 2008 to 2009.  Most of them were already losing population in the earlier time period. 

Entrepreneurs don't like putting money at risk in places where greedy little government munchkins can confiscate more of their increasingly unlikely earnings. 

(Washington D.C. isn't shown on these maps, and would probably be an exception to all trends since it is ground zero for the currently popular porkfests.  Looters are moving there to be a part of the ongoing orgy of stimulus pillaging.)

But don't state governments need more money to operate?  Can't states just increase the tax percentage and have an automatic increase in revenue? 

Here's a map from The Economic Populist, showing each state's budget deficit as a percentage of the state's overall budget:

Hawaii is the only pale outsider among the ten listed by The TaxProf above. All of the other top tax states have a large gap between revenue and spending.  (Granted, a state can "go Reagan" with low taxes and insanely high spending levels and go dark brown on this map.) 
So what does it all mean? 

Be like Texas.  Take less away from people.  Spend less of their money.  You'll probably end up with more people and more money. 

Let's redraw the map !

The good people at The Economist magazine have come up with a fantasy map of Europe.
If you've followed the travails of the EU for the last decade, this thing is FUNNY. 



The good folks at Reason magazine have opened their comment field for suggestions for the United States version. 

All right-thinking citizens, of course, want to float California out into the Pacific and let it sink under the weight of its own incredible debt. 
We could move Arizona further away from the Mexico border, just to give sheriff Joe Arpaio a break. 

One guy suggested that we "move DC to Salina, KS. That way all the people who speak for the regular Americans can meet them for once. This will also give VA, MD and DE a break from government busybodies making local laws."

My suggestions?

Let each state with beachfront drill for oil closer to the coastline.  Those who do not allow oil companies to drill in reasonable locations will be swapped out with an interior state.  OR drug out into the ocean where the oil is beneath a mile of water. 

In exchange for producing William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Elvis Presley, B.B. King, Howling Wolf, Muddy Waters, Tennessee Williams, Richard Wright, Jimmy Buffett, Archie Manning, Jim Henson, Jerry Rice, and Walter Payton, The Great State Of Mississippi gets to stay where it is, but will be renamed "Awesomeland". 

All states that do not allow gay marriage will be consolidated someplace in the upper Midwest.  This way, they won't be offended by gays, lesbians, or tasteful interior decor. 

Move the entire government apparatus currently in Washington, D.C. to an abandoned Sam's Club warehouse in Hobbes, New Mexico.  Do NOT pay any moving expenses for employees or government officials.  Take extensive notes on whether the economy improves or deteriorates afterwards. 

Consolidate California and Tennessee so that Al Gore's two mega-mansions will be closer together, thereby shrinking Gore's carbon footprint. 

Let's have a referendum on ObamaCare® so that the states favoring socialized medicine can cluster around their V.A. hospitals.  Move the Border Fence around these states, and allow the Free Market nation to impose a "medical tourism" tax on anyone crossing over. 

We should attach hundreds of chain hoists to Las Vegas and drag it to the outskirts of Fort Worth, Texas.  I'm tired of driving to Shreveport to get to blackjack tables with player-friendly rules.  The remainder of Nevada will be uprooted and moved to Iraq.  After all, they produced Senator Harry Reid. 

Hawaii should be dropped into the center of Kenya, ending the Barack Obama "birther" controversy once and for all. 

270 To Win

Here's a fun toy that you can mess with until election day.
It's called 270 To Win.
270 is the number of Electoral College votes needed to win the presidency.
They have an interactive map that will show you the Red State/Blue State (or Green State/Black State if you go back a ways) for every election since George Washington beat the tar out of John Adams in 1789.

Go ahead and mess with it a while. Please come back.....

It's interesting to start in 1960 and watch the Deep South go from Blue to Red to split as the candidates go from Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush. (I think that's the correct order.....)

And if you go even further back to the period immediately before the Civil War, the South goes anti-Lincoln Blue, then goes plaid until the 1880's (because of carpetbaggers and the brief period of Black Suffrage???), and then stays Democrat Blue for a long, long time.

Real Clear Politics will eventually have similar maps. But 270 To Win shows you the history going back to day one.