Hassett compares the fiscal health of states that voted for Bush to that of states whose voters when for Gore.

Ha ha ha.

Though the total population of Bush and Gore states are almost identical, the states that voted Democratic account for fully 70% of today’s state deficits; Republican states ring up only 30% of the total. And of 10 ten states with the largest per capita budget deficits (see nearby table), every single one voted Democratic in the last presidential election.

But wait, there’s more!

. . . in the top 10 deficit states (again: all Democratic) tax revenues increased at the dramatic rate of about 5% a year over the last decade.

And more!

. . . the average tax revenue per person in today’s sickest ten states was $2,445 in the last data available–compared to only $1,923 per person in the 10 healthiest states. This blasts out of the water the idea that states get sick because they have been starved of revenue; indeed it shows the opposite.

Hassett doesn’t pick on Democrats alone, mind you. He reserves some sharp words for President Bush, who, he notes

increased spending on just about everything. Three of the five biggest increases in federal spending in U.S. history occurred during Mr. Bush’s first three years in office (the other two took place during World War II).

Something that makes me positively sick to my stomach, btw.

Because those of us who understand that government spending is a hugely, hugely inefficient way to take care of people have no party that even approximates our views. We’re forced to hold our noses and consort with fringey groups that attract only marginal political talent. Ugh.

My only hope is that people will finally wake up and look at the data. It’s right there, if you just look. Increasing taxes should NEVER be the first line solution. We have to tighten our belts. We have to stop running deficits. We have to truly cut the size of government.

Until we can show the maturity and discipline to do those things, our situation is only going to get worse. It might take a generation or two, but we will impoverish ourselves.

Like Norway.

No, that isn’t a joke. That’s a New York Times article. Click it and read for yourself.

THE received wisdom about economic life in the Nordic countries is easily summed up: people here are incomparably affluent, with all their needs met by an efficient welfare state. They believe it themselves. Yet the reality – as this Oslo-dwelling American can attest, and as some recent studies confirm – is not quite what it appears.

Even as the Scandinavian establishment peddles this dubious line, it serves up a picture of the United States as a nation divided, inequitably, among robber barons and wage slaves, not to mention armies of the homeless and unemployed. It does this to keep people believing that their social welfare system, financed by lofty income taxes, provides far more in the way of economic protections and amenities than the American system. Protections, yes -but some Norwegians might question the part about amenities.

In Oslo, library collections are woefully outdated, and public swimming pools are in desperate need of maintenance. News reports describe serious shortages of police officers and school supplies. When my mother-in-law went to an emergency room recently, the hospital was out of cough medicine. Drug addicts crowd downtown Oslo streets, as The Los Angeles Times recently reported, but applicants for methadone programs are put on a months-long waiting list.

More:

After I moved here six years ago, I quickly noticed that Norwegians live more frugally than Americans do. They hang on to old appliances and furniture that we would throw out. And they drive around in wrecks . . .

One image in particular sticks in my mind. In a Norwegian language class, my teacher illustrated the meaning of the word matpakke – “packed lunch” – by reaching into her backpack and pulling out a hero sandwich wrapped in wax paper. It was her lunch. She held it up for all to see.

Yes, teachers are underpaid everywhere. But in Norway the matpakke is ubiquitous, from classroom to boardroom. In New York, an office worker might pop out at lunchtime to a deli; in Paris, she might enjoy quiche and a glass of wine at a brasserie. In Norway, she will sit at her desk with a sandwich from home.

So those of you who want our country to abandon our Constitution and go socialist, there’s your template.

Celebrate politicians who call for tax increases.

Call at the top of your lungs for more government “services.”

Beg for more government intervention into businesses and our private lives.

And, if things go really really well, we might one day be as well-off as Norway.

Goody goody.

E.g. adultery. You don’t have to believe adulterers burn in hell to recognize that there’s often a big pile o’ nasty fallout when someone cheats on a spouse.

Which is why the tenth commandment addresses covetousness.

You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

Coveting is a destructive behavior. It shifts one’s focus to the wrong things.

First, and fundamentally, it shifts one’s frame of mind to an inner state of envy and frustration.

What good can come of that?

None.

Next, from this starting point of envy and frustration, a person has only two choices. Stew and be miserable. Or act out by stealing, or cheating, or tearing down the object of his envy.

Guess where I’m going with this, yet?

When our politicians propose that we tax “the rich” in order to pay for services for “the poor,” are they not encouraging covetousness?

Are they not — in fact — institutionalizing covetousness?

Welcome to the post post modern ethical wilderness. Where behaviors once regarded as destructive are now celebrated openly by our political leaders.

Think we aren’t going to reap what we sow?

During that conversation, as reported by Larry Grathwohl, an undercover agent who had infiltrated the group, Ayers and his buddies discussed what they would do with the estimated 25 million Capitalists who refused to submit to re-education and knuckle down to Marxist rule.

Their plan: exterminate them–exterminate 25 million Americans for having the wrong political beliefs.
Could that happen here, in the United States in America?

I certainly hope not.

But I will say this. We are slouching toward socialism, and socialism is anathema to the principles upon which this country was founded: the principles that we are all created equal, and that government should be LIMITED in its power, because when it is not limited, it encroaches on our individual liberties in ways that ultimately refuse us the opportunities we should have to pursue our happiness.

Those are ideals, yes, and ideals can never be perfectly expressed in this world. But they must–MUST–serve as our guideposts. Or we become lost.

Lost, and slouching toward socialism.

And as this trend picks up momentum–driven by a people who have abandoned the physical courage that characterized our founders and instead cling, in their weakness, to the notion that a Paternal Government is their only refuge–I am, by definition, an Enemy of the State.

I am, by definition, aligned with those 25 million people Ayers would have put to death.

With whom are you aligned?

The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of ‘liberalism’ they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.

– Norman Thomas, 1884-1968, six-time presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America