New York is mired in the biggest budget shortfall in its history. Village Voice writer Sydney H. Schanberg says Gov. George Pataki put political gain way ahead of the pain this fiscal hemorrhage will cause, especially for the state's poorest residents. "The scandal-tinged governorship of George Elmer Pataki is now caught in its biggest scandal of all — how he, apparently to ensure his election to a third term last year, kept from the voters the gravity of the state's financial situation and thus worsened the crisis by not taking early emergency measures to deal with it," Schanberg writes.

The patients, recent immigrants from countries such as Mexico and Vietnam, are bused in from Arizona for procedures ranging from circumcisions to colonoscopies at a string of California clinics. Every single operation is unnecessary, part of a shocking new health-care scam in which perfectly healthy patients voluntarily go under the knife (or scope) -- and, thanks in part to state laws that force insurance companies to pay claims promptly, everybody involved gets rich. As Paul Rubin of Phoenix New Times reports, it's not always easy money.