Red States Vs Blue States - Let the Experiment Begin?
By Thom Hartmann A...
Ever since the Reagan revolution, right wing billionaires have been pouring money into Red states to cement Republican control. Their big issue is how much they hate "socialism" including things like Medicaid, free college, and food and housing supports. Red states are heavily subsidized by federal tax money taken from Blue states. These Republicans have been arguing against the federal income tax for years, along with opposing food stamps, housing support, aid to education, etc. They also say that "states rights" mean that they should be able to prevent women from getting abortions and allow discrimination against LGBTQ people, women, and racial minorities.I say, "Let's give them what they want." Let's end the federal income tax, and let the federal government pay for the army with tariffs like they did from the founding of the republic until World War I. Then transfer all the "welfare" programs to the states, where the Blue states on the West Coast and East Coast and a few in-between can form a single giant coalition that provides single payer healthcare, high-quality primary and college education, and food and shelter as rights.
Let the Red states go. Leave them to their billionaire benefactors and their preachers and gun nuts. Blue states can improve their quality of life when the Red states stop mooching from them, and thus provide a Scandinavia-like example of how to create happiness and quality of life right here in America.
At the same time, the Red states can try their Libertarian example and show us what billionaire rule combined with extreme poverty looks like.
Let the experiment begin!
-Thom
Comments
#2
An ER Doctor in my neighborhood works at a South Denver Hospital. She is allocated 1 mask per day. She skips lunch rather than remove it. Seamstress's in the neighborhood are making gowns for her. Why are the numbers in the Trump briefing so different than what the real world is.
#3
An ER Doctor in my neighborhood works at a South Denver Hospital. She is allocated 1 mask per day. She skips lunch rather than remove it. Seamstress's in the neighborhood are making gowns for her. Why are the numbers in the Trump briefing so different than what the real world is.
#4
Try looking at this fake news in New York. Talk about crowded conditions.
#5
In episode #4, Tin News is employing a logical fallacy sometimes called "part to whole," whereby one assumes that what's true of a part must, therefore, be true of the whole.
So, what's his overall point? Because some news outlet or two got some detail or two wrong, misjudged a source, or fudged a picture (meaningless anecdotal evidence that is relatively minor considering the truly astounding larger picture), then that must mean that all mainstream media is also wrong about the whole story ...ah, doesn't it?
(Your tell is that you have parroted Limbaugh's self-serving, over-generalized, threadbare coinage, "lamestream media." Yawn.)
Hint: To take in the big picture in all of its raw nakedness, one must research multiple credible sources while studiously avoiding the bottom feeders and the liars, like Rush Limbaugh and Tinhip's second source above, Wayne Dupree.
That clown is one of the worst partisan propagandists of our era -- so far to the right that visual graphs almost run out of space trying to express just how extreme this fool is.
Therefore, using tinhorn logic, one could assume that Tinhip must think just like Wayne Dupree since he proudly posted a link to his tripe and, therefore, must be so far to the right that Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan look like "leftie lemmings" to him. (Haha, I like Tiny Tin's alliterations though.)
You know ...therefore.
#6
Brilliant! simple, to the point and so "american" (--> in a democracy of adults each one takes responsibility of one's actions and all together we are responsible for our collective actions)
I am not sure that a 'blue' state exists, but i will assume (for the shake of argument) that i am a blue state interested in public-funded (minimum)16-year education (primary, secondary, university) for all its citizens.
First i would do my homework: How much the plan will cost annually, how much state taxes i got for education purposes 'last' year (or the average of last years), how much federal tax (FT) i paid 'last' year, how much federal money was given for education 'last' year, a 'breakdown' of how was federal money spent 'last' year (salaries, increase deficit, education, health, defense etc))
With the above data i would ask that a certain (reasonable) % of my FT money is 'returned' to me (i.e. deducted from my FT) to use it for my education-for-all idea.
Clearly i will need some good lawyers for that. Hopefully, among my citizens i can find some competent ones and ACLU would also take an interest in my case.
I have no idea how successful this implementation plan would be, but it has become obvious to me (quite clear thanks to Andrew's Yang numbers supporting UBI), that current technology (HEAVILY subsidized throughout centuries by ALL governments) has reached the point where with a less than a 3-day working week enough wealth is created to cover more than the basic needs (of all citizens), at least for a country like USA. From this wealth, money (especially TRUE money as defined in "Giri and Gimu - Where Money REALLY Came From" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4ru7mYEippY) that suffices to cover a 16-(if not 18)-year-education plan for all is easily found.
If this works, it can be expanded to other sectors such as health, welfare, (UBI?) and to other states (blue, red, pink whatever) that are willing to broaden the basis so that the logistics (economics) of the above mentioned plans are improved, and therefore their provisions are improved (22-year education plan, pre-conditions covered by insurance, etc)
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Trump is a lying, sniveling coward who won't take responsibility for any of his aberrant and disgusting behavior, which has aggravated most of the problems in this country as well as around the world: from denying that human activity is primarily responsible for massive climate destruction (the big one) to unwinding regulations that keep us safe and healthy; from the predations of rapacious monopolists to a further shift of wealth toward the very top at the expense of the middle class and the poor; from 17,000 lies and the destruction of truth and the shared reality of objective evidence to the ridiculous Republican fantasy world of deluded fever dreams that have ensnared nearly half the nation; from insulting and betraying our most trusted allies to praising and encouraging our most intractable enemies and the world's worse tyrants; from the decline of Western democracy to the rise of worldwide fascism.
And he puts kids in cages.
One should fully expect Trump to declare martial law as the pandemic drags on and the economy crumbles, taking that last step to full-blown fascism. Most of us dearly hope that he does not but all of us should prepare for the worst. Trump has a proven track record as a megalomaniacal wannabe dictator in love with himself. That's how he runs his piss-poor business; that's how he runs his piss-poor government. A skunk ain't gonna change its stripe.
Fascism is the biggest threat to democracy, not socialism -- despite how Republicans may negatively interpret such an amorphous word (usually incorrectly). It always has been.
If Trumpists can't handle the truth of America's slide into authoritarianism, detailed by Naomi Wolf, Thom Hartmann, and so many other scholars of history, then they should at least understand what fascism is and how it has evolved. Corporate fascism married to the government will afflict hapless citizens much longer than the coronavirus pandemic and economic depression.