Quote:
Originally posted by Not Bob
I live in a red state, and our local congressman is very happy to boast about bringing home the pork from Washington. Highway money for roads and bridges, research money for the medical school at the state university, defense contracts for the B-17 bomber factory (well, it makes the guidance gyroscope for the targeting device for the trigger mechanism for the missile that is launched from the Flying Fortresses, but you get my drift), a new HHS/social security regional complex. You name it, he'll take it for us, and we keep electing him by overwhelming margins in appreciation for all of the bacon he brings home.
And yet he campaigns as a fiscally conservative, anti-spending watchdog. I think that that was Ty's point -- he (and representatives like him, and we voters who elect him) are hypocritical. (Though, in his defense, he doesn't push the fiscal conservative thing as hard as others do.)
As for your state government being smaller in red states, that may or may not be true. But (1) our educational system -- K-12 and post-secondary schools sucks in comparison (under any metric you care to use) to California, New York, Wisconsin, Minnesota, etc.; and (2) we ain't doing so hot on crime, either. (As an aside, I'd like to see how low-tax Nevada does when they try to educate kids with the kinds of problems that the kids have in California -- language, health, etc.)
Throwing money at problems isn't a cure, but it is hard to cure things without it. There's a reason why Mississippi and Alabama are at the bottom of education rankings, and it ain't because their kids are intrinsicly stupid. And this is a problem that private sector is starting to see -- according to an automobile industry trade group, Toyota built their latest US plant in Ohio instead of South Carolina or Alabama (home of the US plants for BMW and Mercedes, I think), despite higher labor costs and less governmental incentives -- the education of their prospective workers. It apparently costs too much to train the workers in SC and Ala to make up for their lack of learning.
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You are getting into other issues. I was making the point, that in the more rural areas of America people have a stronger inclination towards limited government. And this is reflected in their size of their state governments. For reasons, that are beyond me this statement was disputed by Sexual Harassment Panda and Ty. The main point of evidence used to dispute my assertion was that most rural states recieve more money from Washington than they send to Washington.
I think I have demonstrated that the people in the more rural areas of America are less inclined towards a large government and this inclination is reflected in the state governments. In addition, I have demonstrated that the fact that they receive more federal money than they pay out in no way contradicts or lessens the validity of that statement.
As is typical with this board I make pretty obvious statments, that are then disputed, and then the people that dispute them try and change the argument so they don't have to face the fact that their original derision of my statement was wrong.
Nice Try Not Bob. As soon as you acknowledge that Ty and Panda were wrong in contesting the validity of my statement we can move on to any other issue you like.
