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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: combjelly who wrote (694096)	1/21/2013 4:57:55 PM
From: Bilow	1 Recommendation Respond to of 1576160

Hi combjelly; Re: "But it has never been more than a small minority." Population of CSA (1860 census) was 9.1 million of which 5.6 million were not slaves. Total population of USA (1860 census) was 31.4 million of which 27 million were not slaves. Thus the CSA began the war with 5.6/27 = 21% of the free population. But they ended up with about 33% of the officers. Twenty-one percent is not a "small minority". And as I noted above, the reserves universally fought for the state they were organized in. There is not a single example of a confederate state militia or reserve fighting for the North. ------------------------------ But let's continue into the present. Let's look at the political makeup of today's military. Latest polling data (2012) shows: Military 9.72% democrat, 43.81% republican, Guard/Reserve: 10.97% democrat, 44.39% republican Veterans: 14.19% democrat, 41.43% republican militarytimes.com Sure they're going to fight against Republican national guard units. Sure you can use them to grab the guns out of red states (where sheriffs are widely stating that they're not going to support any federal incursion against the 2nd amendment). BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!! LOL!!!! Re: "Texas is one of the few red states which pays more in taxes than it gets back in federal aid. So yeah, the blue states would be more wealthy without the red states, bar Texas." In the red / blue state dollar calculations, the thing people keep track of is not "federal aid" but instead all federal expenses. Military bases tend to be in red states and this skews the data to show that the red states are receiving federal aid. Over the short term, having the military forces in your own borders is incredibly useful from a military point of view. And over the long term, with the collapse of the US empire, those expenses go away. A collapse of the US empire means an end to the current situation of trade deficits forever because the US will no longer be able to back the dollar with military force. We'll actually have to export real things in order to get the oil we need. Funny, those oil supplies are almost entirely from red states. And the only thing the US has consistently been able to export is food that is almost entirely produced in red states. The mountain red states, and the red counties of California, Oregon and Washington, have huge amounts of federally owned land. In the event of secession, these lands will become state property and will probably be sold to private interests. This will vastly increase the income from these lands. The US Forest Service manages to spend several billion dollars managing the national forests but only manages to sell a few hundred million dollars worth of products. If this were to become private land the public expenses would go away and morph into private taxes. Instead of being a vast sink for federal waste, they'd become a vast source for State income. By the way, Texas joined the USA as an independent State (like the original 13) and consequently has no such wasted federal land. -- Carl P.S. Look for yourself, unlike the situation 1860, now the red states have most of the US army reserves: usar.army.mil These are red state soldiers who are overwhelmingly republican.