The local political class had their own party today, announcing Kaleida's new vascular center downtown.

PCD was there since I thought it would be nice to have a report from the point of view of those who will actually be paying for all this.

It's a $191M project and of course Kaleida, a secretive private group run by the local plutocrats, is spending mostly other people's money. The state (you) is kicking in $60 million. ECMC (you) is oddly enough lending them some big bucks. The rest is probably being borrowed. Kaleida likes to borrow money from anyone around.

So the players here are Kaleida, a private firm with a government-granted hospital monopoly; UB, ECMC, the Buffalo Medical Campus. These are all public or quasi-public entities with access to tax money, subsidized loans and various laws protecting them from competition. They can thus afford to pay themselves supra-market rates for their "services."

This is what the corporate state is all about. Competition and having to go out and earn a living in the marketplace is anathema to these well-coiffed types. That's for suckers like the greybearded sole proprietors you see at the tea parties.

This is what the political class is all about and judging from the crowd, life is good when someone else is paying the freight.

All the usual plutocrats and political class rogues gallery were there: Higgins, Volker, Stack, Brown, and Thompson.....

Will there be any market or demand for this lavish new facility? Who knows? No one there today cared to ask. They assume that the subsidies will continue to roll in forever since they have richly paid off the politicians with huge campaign donations.

And no one talked about the opportunity cost of this venture. No one there even knows what that term means, especially the local media who acted like cheerleaders as they usually do at these things.

About this Medical Campus, Simpson bragged that we "put togther in one building" various functions. That's 19th century thinking. This is the digital age when xrays are sent half way around the world and the reports comes back in 20 minutes. So we pay $191 million so researchers can bump into doctors at the water cooler?

It was noted that WNY has the highest rate of heart disease in the state. Well, what a surprise. When an area has declined for 50 straight years, people get depressed and hit the bars and comfort food pretty hard. Not to mention the lousy schools whose graduates can't distinguish between a healthy meal and junk food. The wheels of the Gods grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine.

To sum up, when I see the rich get richer at the expense of the working class, I like to think back to Jack Warden's line to Paul Newman in The Verdict. About the rich, he said, "How do you think they got all that money?"

(From the saps at the tea parties.)