constitutional responsibility for their actions.” S.F. Arts & Athletics, Inc. v. U.S. Olympic Comm., 483 U.S. 522, 544, 107 S.Ct. 2971, 97 L.Ed.2d 427 (1987). Any increase or decrease in taxing or spending necessarily affects private behavior. To hold that such an effect necessarily creates a “close nexus” would be to hold that nearly any action in an industry that receives government funding constitutes state action, in contravention of Supreme Court authority. As the Court stated in Blum, “[m]ere approval of or acquiescence in the initiatives of a private party is not sufficient to justify holding the state responsible for those initiatives under the terms of the Fourteenth Amendment.” Blum, 457 U.S. at 1005, 102 S.Ct. 2777; see also S.F. Arts, 483 U.S. at 546, 107 S.Ct. 2971 (<HOLDING>). That is precisely what happened here:
holding that establishing the existence of an understanding among private parties and state actors for  1983 conspiracy purposes is really nothing more than another way to show state action by alleging a private partys connection to a state actor holding that foster parents are not state actors holding that a private actors conduct was not state action just because the government failed to supervise that partys conduct holding private actors are not acting under the color of state law for the purposes of section 1983 liability holding that massachusetts statute did not create a sufficiently close nexus between private hospital and the state to warrant labeling private actors state actors