The Red Stater - The Ultimate Welfare Queen

[onehandle]

The majority in red states vote against the 'gubberment,' but love Uncle Sam's Free Money.

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In response to... http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025802794

[Old Nick]

1. K&R to THAT!!!

[Cali_Democrat]

2. Toothless hicks may vote GOP, but they have no qualms about getting their hands

on other people's cash!

[backwoodsbob]

8. so anyone from the south is

a toothless hick?

Nice to know

[beam me up scottie]

12. It's the one stereotype that's completely acceptable on DU.

And it's not just southern states, this time the slur included everyone from red states.

Disgusting.

[TrollBuster9090]

16. As a Washington State person, that stereotype was never acceptable to me.

And I don't think Alaska, Idaho, Wyoming, Indiana, or Ohio are what anybody would classify as Dixie.

The bottom line is that there are massive numbers of common sense progressives in the South, and alienating those people with negative stereotypes that only apply to southern conservatives is just playing into the hands of Republican spin doctors.

[beam me up scottie]

18. I am originally from the Green Mountain State.

And as a progressive liberal now living in the south, I agree.

DUers in red states have to put up with unbearable ignorance and bigotry from their neighbors, we don't enjoy seeing it here.


Thank you for speaking up about this issue.

[TrollBuster9090]

30. This is a little off topic, but one way to end this kind of thinking would be to push to get rid of

The Electoral College system for electing the President. The whole idea of 'Red States" vs. "Blue States" comes from this all or nothing electoral college system.

If we dumped this stupid idea, and moved to electing the President by POPULAR VOTE (an idea which people would have a hard time opposing), we'd see that the Country is composed of "red vs blue" voters, and that the South has PLENTY of blue voters who are the compatriots of people in the north east. This would also lead to a much more sensible political system, where a handful of swing states are able to completely distort political decision making; and other states that are not swing-states are completely ignored. (I'm thinking in particular about how a few people in south Florida [Florida being a swig state] have completely distorted our foreign policy towards Cuba. That's only one example, there are plenty of others.)

[F4lconF16]

20. +1

It amazes me how many will defend their bigotry too.

[beam me up scottie]

21. Everytime I see that I look for the sarcasm tag.

Maybe they keep forgetting to use it.

[TrollBuster9090]

31. Yeah, I'm tempted to ask "by 'toothless hicks' are you referring to Gore, Clinton and Johnson?"

Maybe Jefferson and Washington, too, if you want to go further back in history.

[Enthusiast]

15. Inbred, uneducated toothless hicks.....Get it right!

[CBGLuthier]

26. Shit, I have met folks in fucking CALIFORNIA that would make the hillbillies from Deliverance seem

like a couple of ivy-league blue-bloods who were out slumming.

You people with your state-based prejudices are so tiresome and a major detriment to any hope of healing this nation.

[WillyT]

3. K & R !!!

[SheilaT]

4. While New Mexido is number one

on the list, two things to note. One, it's not really a red state. Yes, we have a Republican Governor, but both Senators and two of our three Representatives are Dems. Since 1992 we have gone with the Democratic candidate 5 out of 6 times. In 2004 the state went Republican.

In the past it tended more Republican.

The other thing to look at is that we have a total of five military bases here, plus Los Alamos National Labs, plus Sandia Labs. White Sands Missile Range is one of the bases. We also have a very large Native American population, right at ten percent of the total. We also have 21 percent of our people living in poverty. Those are things that are going to tend to bring in more federal dollars than given back.

In fact, I wonder to what extent there is a strong relationship between military presence in a state and whether it's a net giver or a net taker of federal money.

[mountain grammy]

9. Yes, NM is not red.. purple at worst, and does have it's problems, but

I love your state, from Espanola to Ruidoso. Plan to spend a good part of next summer there. Your gov's an idiot, but glad Tom Udall kept his seat. His opponent was a real meany.

[SheilaT]

24. The chart above shows it as red, which surprises me.

Yes, our governor is an idiot, widely despised, but the man who ran against her was even more incompetent, which is pretty sad.

The state house is now R controlled, although not sure how much difference that will make. Other than they'll probably try to cut funding for our already poorly funded schools, and let big businesses have even more ability to get away with crap than ever before.

At least this governor was willing to expand Medicaid, although she probably couldn't have stopped the legislature from doing so.

[Sirveri]

25. They typically use the one Bush election where NM broke for Bush.

It's deceptive in my book. And you're right, that's why Hawaii is so far up the list, because they have a major Naval presence. Washington has Everett and Whidbey Island and a bunch of other naval bases. CA would be on the list if we didn't have a huge economy.

[ellennelle]

5. JERSEY???

really?? jersey has the lowest ratio??

amazing.

[onehandle]

7. Pre-Christie numbers.

My guess is that red states (and states like NJ that are temporarily red states) have much worse ratios by now.

[NewJeffCT]

11. NJ and CT are typically at the bottom of those lists

so, I don't really think anything has changed in that regards, even with Chris Christie.

[NutmegYankee]

23. I doubt the governor has any effect.

NJ is still a blue state. Hell, CT had R governors for decades and still voted D in national elections. Malloy (Governor) only won by 6,000 votes in 2010 and 22,000 in 2014. This in a state with 3.5 million people!

[JustAnotherGen]

29. Nope

We get very little from the Fed here.

Nothing has changed.

[JustAnotherGen]

28. Yep we sure do

It's extremely wealthy - and extremely expensive.

[allan01]

6. good post

[mountain grammy]

10. Great post, but please don't paint Colorado red.

We still have a Dem governor and state house. The Senate turned red by 1 seat, but Colorado Dems won't give back an inch.

[MisterP]

13. that's actually how the Duck Dynasty rhetoric works--north LA literally

is flattered into believing that it's singlehandedly carrying Granolifornia, Welfare York, and Taxachusetts on its back: Kansans are always vocal about how they don't want to "pay for other people's infrastructure" when they're the ones not paying--they think this *because* they're the ones not paying, since facing this situation would force them to rethink everything about economics, party politics, regionalism, and just how people work in general

also the righties sometimes just pass around this list with the numbers inverted--Jersey costing Washington $1.64 and WV .57 per tax dollar ...

the same works for teen pregnancy: they have the highest rates--so they assume it's because of "immorality" which of course means they shouldn't encourage sex by *teaching* them about it and *giving* them condoms (unless of course they blame loose Blacks and Mexicans)

[TrollBuster9090]

14. I seem to remember this being the subject of a pissing contest between Rand Paul and Chris Christie

When Rand Paul called Christie "The King of Bacon," and Christie pointed out that New Jersey gets $0.61 back from Washington for every $1.00 they send, and Kentucky gets $1.51 back from Washington for every $1.00 they send.

For some sadly predictable reason, this resulted in a lot of fat jokes about Christie, rather than an honest discussion about the dishonesty and hypocrisy of politicians who claim to hate the Federal Government, and think it's more harmful than good.

[JustAnotherGen]

27. And a lot of pain for the people in NJ

Because Christie was right.

[Rex]

17. Evidently they will only be happy until the programs they depend upon

are cut by the very people they voted into office. Then they will blame Obama or liberals or whatever else the M$MGOP tells them to do.

[Treant]

19. Pennsylvania blue?

We're more like a moderate purple. We tend to go Dem in Presidentials, but our state government is raging red (due to gerrymandering, of course). We did just elect a Democratic governor.

[Odin2005]

33. PA = Pittsburgh and Philly with Alabama in between.

[DeSwiss]

22. ''An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people.'' - Thomas Jefferson

''Now, to balance the scale, I'd like to talk about some things that bring us together, things that point out our similarities instead of our differences. 'Cause that's all you ever hear about in this country. It's our differences. That's all the media and the politicians are ever talking about--the things that separate us, things that make us different from one another. That's the way the ruling class operates in any society. They try to divide the rest of the people.

They keep the lower and the middle classes fighting with each other so that they, the rich, can run off with all the fucking money! Fairly simple thing. Happens to work. You know? Anything different--that's what they're gonna talk about--race, religion, ethnic and national background, jobs, income, education, social status, sexuality, anything they can do to keep us fighting with each other, so that they can keep going to the bank!

You know how I define the economic and social classes in this country? The upper class keeps all of the money, pays none of the taxes. The middle class pays all of the taxes, does all of the work. The poor are there just to scare the shit out of the middle class. Keep 'em showing up at those 'jobs'.''

~George Carlin

[Odin2005]

32. When Cons rant about people on Welfare, they really mean Black people.

They are ethno-racial tribalists, in their mind only White Protestant Christians can be "real" Americans, and thus entitled to government aid.