Posted on 10/31/2003 10:26:19 AM PST by pabianice
In reading other posts here on FR and in spending most of the day just reading (I'm a reporter), I am again struck how the US has split into two countries: "red" Bush America and "blue" Gore America. That's nit news. What's most compelling is how Bush America is increasingly having to prop-up the utterly failed Great Society/Gore America, and for just how much longer such a situation can exist.
Item: teacher disciplined for telling Mexican kids in her US class to stop disrupting the class (she's a "racist" for so doing). The other kids in the class continue to get no education and the Liberals think that's just fine -- for other kids. The LIberals opt out of the system by sending THIER kids to private schools.
Item: A conservative estimate puts as much as 35% of the American economy underground. Taxpayers are fed-up with having 50% or more of of their hard-earned pay taxed by the feds, the state, Medicare, Medicaid, etc. So peopledo the natural thing: opt out of the system by going cash-only, off the books.
Item: the blue states lead in victim disarmament, where the law-abiding are denied the constitutional right to self-defense while the Liberals turn a blind eye at violence from career criminals ("poor victims of a racist system"). Liberals make sure they live in guarded, gated communities, and never have to set foot in any scruffy areas as they drive their SUVs from gated home to gated office building. Others who can, opt out by leaving such areas for places where they can carry concealed if they wish and where criminals know they are likely to be shot.
Item: International embarrassments like Ted Kennedy give long, boozy speeches about the evils of President Bush while his devotees urinate themselves in the glow of their self-righteousness. Others simply ignore such crap and tune-into talk radio.
Item: "Blue" America is financially bankrupt, and California is a glaring example. "Blue" America has degenerated into a coven of grasping, mentally diminished, selfish, thuggish special interest groups who have become increasingly violent in fighting over what is left of the Big City Democratic machines that have run things for the past 150 years. The "blue" islands on the 2000 map can best be described as cancers on the national MRI -- blighted areas of malignant, imploding selfishness that are trying to spread across the entire national body. And the "red" nation has to keep paying for it.
I have to wonder how much longer this will be the case. The defacto separation of "red" and "blue" has already occurred, and is fat too profound to be fixed by any social "bussing." At what point does the whole scheme collapse? And how is this going to be expressed and dealt with in the coming 2004 elections?
That's what kills me the most. They should be cheering for Bush.
Government overhead costs run about 50 percent. So if you give the government $1, getting back anything over 50 cents is a bargain.
New Jersey gets about $0.67 to $0.69 back. Get in line. :-)
It will probably be worse now that they've sent the corpse of Frank Lautenberg back to the Senate and the Democrats no longer control either house to grab pork. Of course Frank always seemed more interested in spending money in Colorado than in New Jersey.
That's the message I wish they'd get people to understand.
I think Texas breaks about even. New Mexico makes out like a bandit. West Virginia does pretty well, too, thanks to "Sheets".
Common fantasy and dead wrong. In 2001, Massachusetts Liberals had placed on the MA state Income Tax form a line allowing any taxpayer to voluntarily pay more taxes than he owed. The Liberals were SURE that the huge surge in extra giving would show that most people believe the pernicious Liberal lie that they are undertaxed and wish to pay far more for the general good.
When the results were tallied, the Boston Globe went full-bore to suppress the outcome. A total of .04% of MA taxpayers voluntarily paid more taxes than they owed. I'll bet not one overpayer was a Liberal. Liberals insist upon OTHER people paying more, never themselves. Right now the Liberals are consumed with stopping the placement of wind electrical generators in Nantucket Sound. You see, Liberals insist that OTHER PEOPLE put up with "alternative energy resources," but, oh, no! Not Kennedys or Cronkites, who would actually have to LOOK at these unsightly towers fromm their ocean-going yachts...
The first thing we've got to do is stop bailing out the liberal spendthrifts like NY and CA.
NY gets only $.85 for every dollar it sends to the Federal government. California gets $.93.
If you want to find the states sucking up money, look to states like Montana ($1.73), North Dakota ($1.65), West Virginia ($1.72), or New Mexico ($1.97).
There’s plenty you can criticize NY and California for, but putting money in the federal kitty is not one of them.
Even overhead has to be spent somewhere! Almost every dollar the US Government spends, whether it's a direct payment to an individual through a subsidy program, to build an interstate highway, or to pay some bureaucrat's salary is spent in some state. (Foriegn aid is an exception.)
As a matter of fact, since the US Government is deficit spending, the total amount of Government spending in the 50 states EXCEEDS the amount of taxes received from the citizens of those states, so on a whole, the overall payback exceeds 100%.
That's nice. It has nothing at all to do with the issue at hand, but it's an example of... something.
Currently, for every dollar Massachusetts sends to the Federal Government in taxes, they get back $0.75. They're one of the blue states, that you claim are such financial drains on the U.S. Kentucky - picking a red state at random - gets back $1.50 for every dollar they send in. But they're an example of fiscal solidity?
Why?
And why would not wanting to pay more, on top of an already terrible deal, be an issue?
Drew Garrett
Concur. CWII *Forward Observers* Ping.
-archy-/-
A better question might be, how can we keep this cancer from metastisizing and spreading as it is doing now?
Liberals move from their failed "blue" areas to the "red" areas as their policies inevitably fail. They bring their same old, failed attitudes with them, and try to remake their new homes into their old image of failed nostrums, thereby spreading their fatal disease.
I'll try to find you a web site. As for farm subsidies benefitting anyone who eats food, exactly how does paying a farmer not to grow food to keep market prices higher than they'd otherwise be benefit me? How do farm subsidies for tobacco or mohair benefit me, a non-smoker who doesn't have any interest in mohair products? At best, it is redistribution. At worse, it makes food more expensive.
You can start here.
Of course. That's why it is so hard to cut spending. They money all goes somewhere. But the point is that it is redistributionist and contrarty to what a lot of Freepers seem to think, the redistribition isn't from the "red" states to the "blue" states but often the other way around. And where the money gets spent doesn't necessarily have to do with need but which congresscritter sits on the right committee. This is why New Mexico gets more than $2.00 back for every dollar.
As a matter of fact, since the US Government is deficit spending, the total amount of Government spending in the 50 states EXCEEDS the amount of taxes received from the citizens of those states, so on a whole, the overall payback exceeds 100%.
Should I assume that since you don't seem to be troubled by redistribution that you aren't troubled by going into debt to play Santa Claus?
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