DATE: 06 May 2009, 3:01 pm / MOOD: Other

Thanks to twitter, I discovered this wonderful report called "Freedom in the 50 States: An Index of Personal and Economic Freedom"  Here is the executive summary.

This paper presents the first-ever comprehensive ranking of the American states on their public policies affecting individual freedoms in the economic, social, and personal spheres. We develop and justify our ratings and aggregation procedure on explicitly normative criteria, defining individual freedom as the ability to dispose of one's own life, liberty, and justly acquired property however one sees fit, so long as one does not coercively infringe on another individual's ability to do the same.

This study improves on prior attempts to score economic freedom for American states in three primary ways: (1) it includes measures of social and personal freedoms such as peaceable citizens' rights to educate their own children, own and carry firearms, and be free from unreasonable search and seizure; (2) it includes far more variables, even on economic policies alone, than prior studies, and there are no missing data on any variable; and (3) it uses new, more accurate measurements of key variables, particularly state fiscal policies.

We find that the freest states in the country are New Hampshire, Colorado, and South Dakota, which together achieve a virtual tie for first place. All three states feature low taxes and government spending and middling levels of regulation and paternalism. New York is the least free by a considerable margin, followed by New Jersey, Rhode Island, California, and Maryland. On personal freedom alone, Alaska is the clear winner, while Maryland brings up the rear. As for freedom in the different regions of the country, the Mountain and West North Central regions are the freest overall while the Middle Atlantic lags far behind on both economic and personal freedom. Regression analysis demonstrates that states enjoying more economic and personal freedom tend to attract substantially higher rates of internal net migration.

The data used to create the rankings are publicly available online at www.statepolicyindex.com, and we invite others to adopt their own weights to see how the overall state freedom rankings change.

Here is the information about New York

New York is by far the least free state in the Union (#50 economic, #48 personal). One of us lives in New York and can attest to the fact that few New Yorkers would be surprised by such a finding. Sadly, equally few New Yorkers seem to believe that anything can be done about the situation. New York has the highest taxes in the country. Property, selective sales, individual income, and corporate income taxes are particularly high. Spending on social services and "other" is well above national norms. Only Massachusetts has more government debt as a percentage of the economy. Government employment is higher than average. On personal freedoms, gun laws are extremely restrictive, but marijuana laws are better than average (while tobacco laws are extremely strict). Motorists are highly regulated, but several kinds of gambling are allowed statewide (not casinos, except on reservations). Home school regulations are burdensome, but asset forfeiture has been reformed. Along with Vermont, New York has the strictest health insurance community rating regulations. Mandated coverages are also very high. Eminent domain is totally unreformed. Perversely, the state strictly limits what grassroots PACs may give to candidates and parties, but not what corporations and unions may give.

View Entry | Leave A Comment

DATE: 04 Mar 2009, 10:14 am / MOOD: Happy

The North Shore Chamber Choir Presents

The Passion and the Messiah

Sunday, March 15^th at 2:00 pm

Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, Stony Brook 

Featuring soloists David Kirk, Leslie McBride, Donna McBrien and Gary Betrino and the 30 voices of the North Shore Chamber Choir, performing the music of Handel and Dubois accompanied by string quartet and piano

 

Tickets are $10 and will be available at the door

For further information please call 631-929-8549

View Entry | Leave A Comment

DATE: 13 Jan 2009, 8:39 am / MOOD: Other

“At barbershop quartetting, we have practiced very hard.  We got together every week, to work on one retard.”  (From a parody by the Musical Quartet “Fred”)

 

 

If you have ever heard (or seen) the musical Music Man you would probably have heard of the “Barbershop Quartet;” four voices without accompaniment singing close harmony.  If sung right it almost seems that there is a fifth person somewhere in the group.

 

We can define Barbershop harmony as: Four-part, unaccompanied, close-harmony singing, with melody in the second voice, called the “lead.” Tenor (counter-tenor voice) harmonizes above the lead singer; bass sings the lowest harmonizing notes, and the baritone provides in-between notes, to form consonant, pleasing chords. Barbershop is a “melting pot” product of African-American musical devices, European hymn-singing culture, and an American tradition of recreational music. Melodies are in the vocal and skill range of the average singer, with lyrical emphasis on simple, heartfelt emotions.

 

The four part style of the Barbershop Quartet is not confined to one person / one part.  The Barbershop Chorus works on the notion of the quartet and adds multiple people on each part.  They can be as small as a dozen people or as large as a hundred.

 

The “Barbershop Harmony Society” (originally known as the “Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barbershop Quartet Singing in America” because the founder had a very interesting sense of humor) is an organization of quartets and choruses from all over the United States and Canada.  They have affiliated barbershop organizations in Finland, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Ireland, South Africa, Sweden, The Netherlands, and Great Britain. There are also barbershop singers in Denmark, Israel, Japan, Saudi Arabia, and parts of the former Soviet Union.

 

Because of the nature of close harmony singing, the Barbershop Harmony Society is an all male singing society.  There are all female singing societies as well including Sweet Adelines International and Harmony, Incorporated.

 

The Barbershop Harmony Society is divided into districts and chapters.  The North Brookhaven Chapter of the Mid-Atlantic District hosts the Harbormen Chorus.  The chorus has regular rehearsals every Monday at the Unitarian Fellowship Hall on Nichols Road in Stony Brook.  We sing at nursing homes, hospitals, Long Island Ducks and Islanders games, as well as libraries, fairs and all other interesting venues.

 

Other chapters on Long Island include “Twin Shores” in Babylon, “Long Island Sound” in Dix Hills, “Long Island Harmonizers” in Westbury, “The Queensmen” in Fresh Meadows, and “Kings Chorus” in Brooklyn.

 

For more information about the Barbershop Harmony Style go to www.barbershop.org and get in on the fun.

View Entry | Leave A Comment