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Politics : Fahrenheit 9/11: Michael Moore's Masterpiece -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JeffA who wrote (1049)	6/29/2004 8:54:13 AM
From: Rock_nj	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2772

Go look up the statistics. The biggest receivers of federal largese are states that consistently vote Republican. It's been that way for years. I know it sounds crazy, but the figures speak for themselves. Wealthy/democratic states like California, New Jersey, New York, Mass, Conn, pay into the federal coffers at much higher rates than poorer Republican states in the South. Yet, it is those poorer Republican states that receive more money back from the federal government. I'm not trying to make political hay about it. It's not like I'm being critical of Republicans by pointing this out. It really demonstrates that our politics in both Democratic and Republican states are driven by considerations other than financial ones, things like social issues seem to motivate people to vote the way they vote.

To: JeffA who wrote (1049)	6/29/2004 10:57:08 AM
From: Rock_nj	Respond to of 2772

Here's a good example of our voting patterns opposing our economic interests that I was talking about: As the writer Wallace Stegner observed, the rural Northeast is the prelude to the American West, and you could argue that the paradox of Delaware County rewrites itself in blazing letters over and over again across the Great Plains and the Mountain West. Nobody thinks it's strange that Nebraska and Nevada and Arizona and Montana vote for right-wing Republicans in election after election, consumed with tax-cutting fervor and a passion to shrink the government, even though it's the massive federal programs of the 20th century -- dams and aqueducts, agricultural subsidies, public lands thrown open to ranching and mining and lumbering -- that supports those states' economies to this day. From: How the Democrats lost the heartland salon.com