A few people have pointed out that Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul is begging the federal government for help after the tornadoes, but he voted against funding for disaster relief for other states. Sure, that's hypocritical, but the conservative gospel of self-reliance was hypocritical before that happened.
Rand Paul and politicians from other so-called red states make a political career out of decrying moochers and dependency on federal handouts. So okay, here's a chart from the Rockefeller Institute that tells you exactly which states pay more to the federal government than they receive in federal funding; and which states get more from the federal government than they put in. Notice anything? (The big number for Virginia reflects the salaries of federal workers in the D.C. suburbs.)
Yep, Kentucky residents get $14,153 per capita per year more from the federal government than they pay in federal taxes. The extremely self-reliant state of Alaska is number 3. Other big moochers include Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, Arkansas . .
And where does the money come from? In Connecticut, we contribute the most. The teats at which Kentuckians suck also include New York, Massachusetts, and New Jersey. As a matter of fact, the single biggest industry in Kentucky consists of spending federal money. Coal mining is trivial. Just something to think about.
4 comments:
Man, oh man, oh man. This needs to be widely disseminated, Rand Paul should have to defend himself publicly. What a weird, fucked-up dude he is.
he won't have to defend himself publicly. Fox News is not going to mention this.
That’s for damn sure. Fux daily asks its gullible marks to disbelieve the obvious and accept the improbable by omitting facts and spewing fantastic lies. Too bad our foolish government lets them.
I think some of the false perceptions around this stem from the tendency of individuals to impute their own hard-scrabble and self-reliant existence onto the community as a whole. Alaska, for example, is a very hard place to live and those I've known who have done so can say a great deal about mechanisms for staying housed and fed: roadkill list, salmon runs (make native friends), using your oil company check to buy heating oil for the year, etc... That Alaska as a state exists only thanks to federal largesse doesn't have much impact on their day to day lives, and I'm sure much the same can be said for Kentucky and the like.
That's why people from these places simply disbelieve such numbers when shown to them: it doesn't compute against their experiences. If this is true, they reasonably ask, why is my life so hard? The liberal tendency to mock them over such things only makes them more resistant to the information. I find it works better to ask "Then what is your state government doing with the money?"
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