Posted on 06/30/2009 7:54:16 AM PDT by SmithL
Sprawling across the northeastern corner of California, this huge, thickly forested county with more cows than people epitomizes the Western frontier - and what seems to be a two-faced political ideology.
Modoc has the highest Republican registration of any county in California, it unfailingly elects anti-tax Republicans to office, and the vote here against last month's ballot measure that would have raised a variety of taxes was one of the most lopsided in the state. And yet, per capita, Modoc County gets more state taxpayer dollars than all but one of California's 58 counties.
The prevailing attitude among the right-wing ranchers and modern hippies who define Modoc County is of fierce self-reliance - but more people here than just about anywhere else depend on welfare checks of some kind to get by.
So with state Republicans blocking new taxes and insisting on deep cuts in taxpayer-funded services, does that make this most solid of GOP bases politically conflicted? Or, worse, just plain ignorant?
No way, say the cattlemen and the hippies. Most folks up here will tell you that no matter who is in office or what the big-city politicians do, the dearest wish of anyone living in Modoc is to be left alone - except for a little help for core needs like hospitals and schools.
And if you cut off our funding even for that, they say, we won't like it - but we'll get by. We're independent.
It's a frontier thing.
Ken McGarva and Tina Hodge will both tell you with equal ardor that government should stay out of their faces. But you wouldn't know they could agree by looking at them.
McGarva is a cowboy. The real kind,
...
Hodge is a back-to-the-land hippie. The real kind,
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
I wonder what their #1 agricultural export crop is?
If there's few people, of course the per capita receipts are going to be higher. Just another hit piece trying to make conservatives look like hypocrites.
“per capita,” is the straw man in this article. When a county has a very low population count it is easy to have a high per capita amount. The author is less than honest but then consider the source.
If there are very few people any amount of governemnt spending is amplified on a per capita basis.
If they have 1,000 people and they get $100,000 for roads schools, public buildings their per capita spending will be much greater than billions spent in SF, or LA counties.
veed?
The entire county has a population of 9,000 people.
Interesting comments at the end of the article.
I never mind being called a hypocrite.
The left uses it all the time against us, but what would they rather happen?
Yes we all know that having a child out of wedlock isn’t in the best interest of the child. So just because one gives into temptation does that mean he now has to be an advocate for repeating his same mistakes?
Or if a preacher sins and tells a lie about something does that mean he now must preach that lying is ok? one can know what is best, even though it’s difficult to follow/live by.
Or lets switch gears for a moment and look at the hypocrisy of the left. They have proponents of abortion and even worse partial-birth abortions. We should ask them if they ever had a partial birth abortion and if they say no, we can brand them as hypocrits.
Heck it even works for taxes. When they say they want the rich to pay 50% tax on their income, then you just ask if they ever had to pay 50% on their income. Obviously they probably didn’t it, so you claim they are a hypocrite. Or if they complain about the rich taking tax breaks ask them if they ever took a tax break (earned income tax will be a good one to point out) and then call them a hypocrite.
When I get hit with the hypocrite argument I don’t claim it’s wrong to be a hypocrite I point out the stupidity of such a claim.
Try it next time and you may be surprised at the response.
They get more than that. From Wiki (this info will probably disappear today...):
A large portion of Modoc County is federal reservations. A patchwork of overlapping government agencies form a significant part of the economy and provide services to this rural area. The federal presence includes the following agencies and departments: US Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the US Fish and Wildlife Service.
Most likely, that’s why the only govt they want there, are medical and schools. If their welfare goes away, they probably will still have an income.
I wonder how their unemployment rate compares to other CA counties.
Since this is California, maybe they get paid by the tree.
Per Wikepedia:
“There are 2.25 persons per sq mi, making this one of the most sparsely populated counties in California.”
‘The entire county has a population of 9,000 people.’
Those 9,000 people must have had a huge affect on the recent tax-hike propositions!
...the county doesn’t touch salt water...
It was a good example. Looks like you stumbled upon the real reason behind the skewed statistics in the hit piece.
California's annual state budget is $100,000,000,000. Modoc gets .002% percent of that. How does this compare to the wise expenditures of public funds elsewhere in the state? In Berkeley, they spent about $820,000 on a five year program to store the contents of shopping carts abandoned by the homeless. If we took .002 % of Modoc's $20,351,744, it would be $414. That sounds like a fair assessment for the residents of Modoc to pay towards the storgae of broken keyboards and stolen shopping carts, shich the city dmits are rarely collected by their owners.
Hypocrisy is the worst of all sins in an adolescent morality, because it negates all authority, even legitimate authority.
The left simply desires to discredit all authority so that we are left with only the arbitrary imposition of will by an all-wise ruler. They think this is the best way to manage a country. Any authority that might serve as an intermediary between the individual and the state has to be uprooted.
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