Street Fighting Man
 

Raises the question of why we don't.

Why, bilmore, why?

S_A_M

Street Fighting Man
 

I don't. I think the compromise was entirely reasonable and sensible. What has undermined it is not the one state/two senator rule, but rather the transfer of power from the States to the federal government. Much of this would be irrelevant if the principle governance was at the state level and the federal government did only those things that required national efforts. I think one could eliminate 75% of the federal government through devolution.

Street Fighting Man
 

Raises a meta-point about communication in general. . .

If you THINK you were talking about A, or INTENDED to talk about A, but everyone else understood you to be talking about B . . . then what were you really talking about?

The problem was that, as often happens, you and Ty spent a long time beating on each other using slightly different points. You are correct about the psychology. Ty is correct about the hypocrisy and self-interest. The rest is just detail.

S_A_M

Street Fighting Man
 

Whatever. I have lived in the biggest state and the smallest state, and some in between, and know rather more about their respective governments than you seem to think. I was making a rather different point, about the hypocrisy of the modern Republican party, who prattle about the virtue of small government while spending more and more federal money, esp. on pork.

Somalia is the ultimate in small government, so I thought it had a sort of reductio ad absurdum charm to it, but different strokes, I guess.

As I think your answer implicitly suggests, we essentially have had Gray Davis budgets under Arnold, without the cuts in spending that would restore the state's budget to balance. Instead, we get the same sort of tricks -- e.g., deals with Indian casinos, which revenue gets counted all in the first year instead of as it comes in -- to paper over the imbalance.

Please show me where I said that.

Street Fighting Man
 

I think that you, like most people, have not spent time in western South Dakota. In some areas, what you say is surely true, but in many rural areas, everyone knows all too well that if the military leaves, they're fucked, because there's nothing to take it's place.

We all may benefit from the spending, but South Dakota (e.g.) benefits in a way other states do not from the decision to spend it in South Dakota -- as opposed to spending it elsewhere, not as opposed to not spending it at all -- which is what the $1.10 figure is trying to capture.

Street Fighting Man
 

I'm not denying that a place might be fucked if you take out a military base, but if people choose to get fucked by it, they bear at least some of the blame. First off, they can move to where there is a job. Second, closing bases doesn't always eliminate jobs. Many of the closings simply shuffle personnel around. Sure, there are relocation costs, but long run those are relatively small. I truly believe that the large part of the "subsidy" is simply going to whoever happens to get the employment, not a particular location. (and that's a small part of the overall benefit)

On the second point, I agree, the question is as opposed to not spending. And that's why the $1.10 figure doesn't capture much at all. The question is what we're spending versus spending it elsewhere. You're looking at it from the locals' perspective, which is "I get it all or I get nothing, because it's going to another state." I'm looking at it from the national perspective, which is we need to spend a dollar on the military, where do we spend it. It might waste a few pennies to spend it in S.D. instead of Cal., but otherwise we're getting the benefit of that dollar spent (or most of it). The only "waste" is the subsidy for doing it in S.D. To me, it's pretty unobjectionable (not entirely so) that we might waste a couple of pennies putting a base in S.D. (and it's probably in some ways cheaper than putting it elsewhere). Put differently, you could buy a book at Amazon or City Lights. It will surely cost you more at the latter. The subsidy (if you want to call it that) is not the price you pay for buying it at City Lights. It's the difference in the prices.

Street Fighting Man
 

All those so-called anti-government types learned a little bit about what that really means when Newt shut the government down. It became apparent that their anti-government rhetoric was complete and utter bullshit.

Street Fighting Man
 

I think it's a little unfair to compare the situation in California to pretty much any small state. It's a lot harder to govern California than to govern SD. We have a population much more diverse by any metric you can name - ethnically, by religion, by sexuality, etc.; much greater diversity in occupations (what can you do in SD? Beyond work at the base, farm or greet customers at WalMart); greater disparity in incomes among the populations, etc. than in the red states, which in general tend to be more homogeneous. I'm not saying that corruption and waste are equivalent, but the greater challenges in governing this state have contributed to a larger, more complicated - and yes, probably more wasteful - government. Put another way, waste aside and assuming perfect efficiency, do you think California could provide the same type, level and quality of services to its citizens that SD does, at the same per capita cost? How many Hmong interpreters do the SD courts employ?

Street Fighting Man
 

Why are californians so less capable of taking care of themselves than South Dakotans?

Street Fighting Man
 

How many Hmong interpreters do the SD courts employ?

eta This is my way of saying there are five other sentences in my previous post, and I would be honored if you would read them in addition to the last one.

Street Fighting Man
 

Having Hmong interpreters makes Californians less capable of taking care of themselves?

Street Fighting Man
 

How many does it need to employ?

And I did read the others, and my question still stands. How does diversity of religion, sexuality, employment require more government?

Religion is something the state can't be involved in
Sexuality is, for the most part, similarly irrelevant (I'll grant you a few resources for enforcing discrimination codes--although not granting the need for those codes in the first place)
Jobs--so you need more regulatory agencies?
court translators--what's the Cal. judiciary's budget for this? What part of the state budget is that, %-wise?

Street Fighting Man
 

If you have a given level of government regulation - say the same level of oversight that South Dakotans are comfortable with - the greater number of - what's the word I'm looking for - items? things? - in California to regulate will equal a more expensive government. We have to regulate freighter traffic in and out of the Port of Oakland, a problem SD does not face. We have to provide interpreters in our court systems for a wide variety of languages - a problem that SD faces to a far lesser degree, if at all. We have to employ many more wildfire suppression personnel than most red states do.

These are examples. Each individually does not seem to add much, but they illustrate my point - they do not, and are not intended to, comprise the total of it.

Street Fighting Man
 

If there are not yet Hmong intrepreters in SD, there will be soon. Minnesota is 2nd in terms ofHmong population, and St. Paul, MN has the largest number of Hmong in any city in the country.

http://www.hmongcenter.org/hmonpop.html
http://www.mncn.org/hmongbriefing.htm

Street Fighting Man
 

I'll agree with this wholeheartedly.

"Compassionate Conservatism" is another fine example.