Newsmax columnist George J. Marlin has been spending his time of late having meltdowns over New Yorik City mayor Zohran Mamdani and, more broadly, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul. He raged at the state for alleged Medicaid fraud in his Feb. 24 column:
Medicaid waste, fraud, and abuse have reached pandemic levels — particularly in my home state of New York.
After Medicaid was established in 1965, then-Gov. Nelson Rockefeller quickly sent a bill to the New york State Assembly to adopt it.
Liberal Democrats had a field day.
They added numerous amendments that offered coverage not just for welfare recipients, but also for those they more broadly defined as “poor.”
The law also mandated that welfare officials must seek out potential beneficiaries, and it exempted all relatives from any responsibility for the care of indigent family members.
It was designed to make dependency a way of life in New York.
And so, it did.
[…]The state budget of Gov. Kathy Hochul, D-N.Y., for the fiscal year beginning on April 1, calls for Medicaid costs to increase by 11.5% — four times the inflation rate.
[…]Unsustainable Medicaid costs, never ending fraud, diminishing quality of hospital care, declining accountability.
New York is truly the poster child for Medicaid waste, fraud and abuse.
Marlin ranted at both Mamdani and Hochul in his March 7 column:
New York’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, has been whining that his $128 billion budget, which calls for $5 billion in new spending, is short somewhere between $5 billion and $7 billion.
Instead of eliminating waste or freezing expenses to balance the bloated budget, Mamdani is demanding that Gov. Kathy Hochul, D-N.Y., and the state legislature raise taxes on corporations and the wealthy to close the gap.
And if they fail to do so he has threatened to raise property taxes on every homeowner in the city.
Mamdani’s blackmail scheme would raise the average property tax rate on three million homes and 100,000 commercial properties by 9.5%.
[…]Combined with federal taxes, the top rates for city residents are among the highest in the world, reaching 52% on wages and salaries and 38.6 % on capital gains.”
And if Mamdani has his way, the combined taxes on the wealthy will be the highest in the universe!!
Sound like Marlin is one of those super-rich New Yorkers who would likely see the impact of higher taxes.