"You Have Been Found Wanting - I Summon The Lightning!"
Posted on 10/14/2004 11:30:12 AM PDT by barbelmohr
"He talks about PAYGO. I'll tell you what PAYGO means, when you're a senator from Massachusetts, when you're a colleague of Ted Kennedy ... "
—President Bush in the Oct. 14 debate.
"As a matter of fact, your record is such that Ted Kennedy, your colleague, is the conservative senator from Massachusetts."
—Ibid.
"[O]nly a liberal senator from Massachusetts would say that a 49 percent increase in funding for education was not enough."
—Ibid.
As a liberal, I long ago got used to name-calling from conservatives, even ones who occupy the Oval Office. (If liberalism itself were as unpopular as the term "liberal," the Democratic Party would have folded its tent years ago.) And Ted Kennedy's a big boy who can take care of himself. But I hope Bay Staters aren't so demoralized by their 41-year exile from the White House that they let Bush scapegoat their commonwealth.
Bush probably tells himself that it's all right to sneer at Massachusetts because Massachusetts-dwellers sneer at everybody else. It's a cherished myth among conservatives that Northeastern liberals spend all their time snickering about those pathetic hicks in Texas, Mississippi, and the various other states that comprise "the real America," whatever that is. In fact, I could probably count on one hand the number of times I've heard any liberal sneer at any state of the union, and the people who did the sneering were usually morons. Are there substantive disagreements between Blue America and Red America? You bet. Is class snobbery a social reality in the United States? Absolutely, and the kind that's codified by meritocracy is probably more toxic than the old-fashioned kind based on bloodlines. But liberal disrespect for "the flyover," if it ever existed, failed to survive the advent of cheap airplane travel, mass communications, and merit-based aristocracy. In America, genius and virtue are widely dispersed. Who can afford to be provincial?
Only the president, it seems, and a few intolerant conservatives. And even they can't really believe it—Bush least of all as the scion of an aristocratic Connecticut Yankee family, who escaped National Guard duty by enrolling at Harvard Business School.
Want to know something funny about Taxachusetts? For every dollar it pays Uncle Sam in taxes, it receives only 97 cents back in federal services and subsidies. That ranks it 44th among the 50 states in federal expenditures per dollar of taxes. Indeed, there's a very strong correlation between liberal, pro-government "blue states" and states that are least dependent on federal spending. There's also a strong correlation between conservative, anti-government "red states" and states that are most dependent on federal spending. (Click here for details.) If you think of Red America as stubbornly self-reliant and Blue America as a drain on the Treasury, you've got it exactly backward.
I don't begrudge the South and the West their many military bases and national parks. But I do wish people in those parts of the country would stop feeling superior to Northeastern welfare-staters. I will happily make an exception for the District of Columbia, where I live, which eats an appalling $6.17 for every dollar of federal revenue it kicks in. But lay off Massachusetts, Mr. President. When you took the oath of office, you swore to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of all 50 United States, not just the ones that voted for you. We fought a war about this, and the secessionists lost.
A little friendly advice. Put up a barf alert or face the wrath of the administrative gods.
I think much of it has to do with the idears.
You forgot the barf alert.
The Big Dig state... Hey John if you can't even control a construction plan in one state from getting so out of control how will you control 50 states.. .You are clueless..and probably at fault for the Big Dig...
Smell the air....
Thanks - I guess I'll get ZOTTED for this, but I'm interested in hearing opposing views.
Mass @ss a few suits
Tax my @ss and a few suits
Liberal =Bad, Liberal, Liberal = bad
There that felt good.
> I think much of it has to do with the idears.
Idears? Pls explain.
I see it happen all the time. I see it within' states as well.
Its amazing that the country has lasted several centuries without these meritorious planners and government bow-wows.
Having grown up in the northeast I can tell you that the attitde towards people down south is appalling. Superiority doesn't come close to the way that the upper class elitists view folks south of the Mason-Dixon line. Yet, the NE is full of liberal ideology that is what keeps those "poor and oppressed" minorities down through soft bigotry and lowered expectations.
Go figure
Boo freakin' hoo. Any state that repeatedly elects Kennedy and Kerry, has such a high cost of living and higher taxes, violates its citizens' Second Amendment rights and has a mess like the Big Dig deserves the ridicule. Believe me, I'm from the state that has sent Robert C. "Sheets" Byrd to the Senate for the past 125 years, and we deserve a certain measure of ridicule, too.
Oh boy, West Virginia...
Let the jokes begin.
OK, we now know how the author feels, along with the requisite liberal knee-jerk untrue canard about Bush avoiding military service; how about the facts ? Taxachusetts legislators are not liberal because ... why ? {waiting} Don't they teach people to back up their arguments with facts anymore ? {still waiting}
It's Massachusetts who keeps electing the extreme liberals
That is how the word "idea" is pronounced by some people in Massachusetts.
My New England accent comes out once in a while and usually freaks out my California friends.
Think Cuber!
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