One of the polite email responses I received to my op-ed this morning in the New York Times (readers of that elite broadsheet are more foul-mouthed than one might think) came from a New Yorker familiar with the federal assistance to his city in the 1970s. Here is an interesting bit, which I checked out:
"When NYC asked not for $$ but simply for loan guarantees in the
1970s, the [MY NOTE, THEN FORMER] Governor of California (Ronald Reagan) said that he got
down on his knees every night and prayed that NYC would not be given
those guarantees.
"Another point: NYC was treated like a beggar, but in fact NYC gives
the federal government far more in taxes than it gets back. I would
guess that California might too. At first, this simply seems like it
would have to be true, as we give $$ to the Federal government for
defense, but, for example, when Newt Gingrich represented an ex-burb
in Georgia, his district got far more in federal $$ than it
contributed to the federal government in taxes (even as they were
complaining about great urban center such as NYC begging for $$ to
support education still 2 decades after Reagan)."
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