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[The Blue States pay more in taxes and subsidize the Red States because it's easy to be a Republican when others subsidize you. Great article below about the refusal of Red States to pick up the tab. Surely, more will be said. Previously posted with great graphics --- A Pox on One of Their Houses
If you loved the
obstruction, extremism and ignorance the Tea Party has brought to government,
you're gonna love this one!
Paul Begala offered his insight below, as well as the amusing FAUX propaganda. At the bottom, there's some information about the 8 of the top 10 states that receive the most federal welfare are Republican. When you perpetuate ignorance and poor public education, it's easy to ignore the simple facts. ]
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Showing posts with label secession. Show all posts
Showing posts with label secession. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
Red states discover the pain of paying their own way
Friday, April 19, 2013
Hypocrites R Us.....in Texas
Texas Representative Who Voted Against Sandy Relief Seeks Federal Money After Explosion
April 18, 2013 By
Today, less than 24 hours following the devastating explosion of a fertilizer plant in West, TX, Governor Rick Perry made a statement declaring the area impacted by the explosion a disaster area.
He’s now asking for President Obama to follow suit in declaring this a federal disaster emergency.
Yes, you read that correctly. Rick “Secessionist” Perry”, the man who constantly rallies against government spending, took less than 24 hours to ask President Obama for money—from the federal government.
The same Rick Perry who rallied against the Stimulus bill passed in 2009, while bragging about his balanced budgets—which he balanced with stimulus money, didn’t take long to extend his hand and request government money for his state.
Oh, but there’s more. West, TX is represented in Congress by Bill Flores, who is also asking that the government declare the impacted area a federal disaster—and is requesting federal money.
Why is this a big deal? Well, it just so happens that Mr. Flores was one of the 67 members of the House of Representatives who voted against the Hurricane Sandy Disaster Relief.
As always, when Republicans want help from the “big bad government” and federal money, they’re usually the first in line demanding sweeping regulations or funding for what they want. It’s only when that same government opposes their ideology or spends money on someone else that suddenly it’s “giant government and out of control government spending.”
Then again, as Rick Perry proved by bragging about his balanced budgets (which were only balanced because he took stimulus money) while rallying against Obama’s 2009 stimulus bill, being a hypocrite is nothing new for him.
As for Mr. Flores, feel free to contact him to let him know what you think of his hypocrisy.
Photo via the AP
Last Inspection Of West, Texas Fertilizer Plant Was In 1985
The Associated Press is reporting that the fertilizer plant in West, Texas that exploded on Wednesday night hasn’t been inspected by the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) since 1985, nearly three decades ago. It was issued a fine on its last inspection for a violation related to storing ammonia:
A day after the explosion in West, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a new report documenting a widespread lack of workplace inspections by state OSHA programs. After surveying 22 state-run programs, it found that the agencies had problems with hiring and retaining inspectors, in part due to low pay. State budget cuts have had a big impact, leading to funding problems, and the federal agency often hasn’t taken over state plans because its own budget is too tight. This has meant that a workplace only gets a visit from OSHA inspectors every 99 years on average, with some state programs even worse. In Texas, a plant can only expect an inspection every 126 years.
The report led Rep. George Miller (D-CA) to introduce a bill to give the federal agency more authority to intervene in state plans and strengthen fines and prosecutions against violations. The lack of OSHA inspections contributes to a high rate of workplace deaths in the U.S., with over 4,500 in 2010 alone. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has already stated its opposition to Democrats’ efforts to strengthen workplace safety regulations.
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/04/19/1893601/update-last-inspection-of-west-texas-fertilizer-plant-was-in-1985/?mobile=nc
Records reviewed by The Associated Press show that OSHA issued the West Chemical & Fertilizer Co., as the plant was called at the time, a $30 fine for a serious violation for storage of anhydrous ammonia.The plant was also cited for failing to get a permit in 2006 after a complaint of a strong ammonia smell. That smell was reported to be “very bad” on the night of the explosion. Storing ammonia at fertilizer plants can be very hazardous; in 2008, the Center for American Progress found a fertilizer plant that stored millions of pounds of anhydrous ammonia in Pasadena, Texas to be among the most hazardous chemical facilities in the country, with more than 3 million people living in range of a worst-case ammonia gas release.
OSHA cited the plant for four other serious violations of respiratory protection standards but did not issue fines. The maximum fine for a serious violation was $1,000.
A day after the explosion in West, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a new report documenting a widespread lack of workplace inspections by state OSHA programs. After surveying 22 state-run programs, it found that the agencies had problems with hiring and retaining inspectors, in part due to low pay. State budget cuts have had a big impact, leading to funding problems, and the federal agency often hasn’t taken over state plans because its own budget is too tight. This has meant that a workplace only gets a visit from OSHA inspectors every 99 years on average, with some state programs even worse. In Texas, a plant can only expect an inspection every 126 years.
The report led Rep. George Miller (D-CA) to introduce a bill to give the federal agency more authority to intervene in state plans and strengthen fines and prosecutions against violations. The lack of OSHA inspections contributes to a high rate of workplace deaths in the U.S., with over 4,500 in 2010 alone. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has already stated its opposition to Democrats’ efforts to strengthen workplace safety regulations.
Update
The plant in West was inspected in 2011 by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), which issued a fine of $10,100 for missing placards and “not having a security plan” in violation of Hazardous Materials Regulations. A compromise was reached in 2012 after corrective actions were taken, which included the plant admitting to the violations and paying a lowered penalty of $5,250.http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/04/19/1893601/update-last-inspection-of-west-texas-fertilizer-plant-was-in-1985/?mobile=nc
Thursday, November 15, 2012
The Moochers support secession
From: Too Informed To Vote Republican
Census records show that six of the seven states that amassed more than 25,000 signatures on their petitions to form independent nations in the past week took more than $10 million in revenue from the federal government that year.
The seven states – Texas, Florida, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee and North Carolina – took more than 23 percent of all federal revenue allotted to the states that year.
Missouri also received $11 million and has collected more than 29,500 signatures, but the electronic votes are divided between two identical petitions, disqualifying the state from receiving a White House response.
Petitions to secede started popping up on the White House’s We the People website three days after President Obama won re-election.
The number of states petitioning had reached the teens by Monday. By 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, every state except Vermont had a searchable secession petition on file, and each had gathered at least 600 signatures. A petition must have a minimum of 150 signatures to be found in the We the People search database.
ABC News’ reported Monday that Texas was the first state to hit 25,000 signatures, growing to more than 30,000 by the end of the day. Texas’ petition now has more than 100,000 virtual signatures.
In addition to the state’s bid to leave, a user named Caleb M. created a petition asking that his home city of Austin be allowed to withdraw from the Lone Star State, while remaining part of the United States. Caleb still needed almost 20,000 signatures to get a response from the White House.
The Obama administration policy is not to address petitions that don’t receive at least 25,000 clicks within the first 30 days after their posting.
A White House official told ABC News Tuesday that the secession petitions that made the cut would receive a response.
Nov 14, 2012 6:23pm
States With Most Signatures to Secede Took Millions in Federal Money
All the states petitioning to secede from the United States that obtained enough signatures to elicit a response from the White House — with the exception of Alabama — were some of the largest recipients of federal funding in 2010.Census records show that six of the seven states that amassed more than 25,000 signatures on their petitions to form independent nations in the past week took more than $10 million in revenue from the federal government that year.
The seven states – Texas, Florida, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee and North Carolina – took more than 23 percent of all federal revenue allotted to the states that year.
Missouri also received $11 million and has collected more than 29,500 signatures, but the electronic votes are divided between two identical petitions, disqualifying the state from receiving a White House response.
Petitions to secede started popping up on the White House’s We the People website three days after President Obama won re-election.
The number of states petitioning had reached the teens by Monday. By 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, every state except Vermont had a searchable secession petition on file, and each had gathered at least 600 signatures. A petition must have a minimum of 150 signatures to be found in the We the People search database.
ABC News’ reported Monday that Texas was the first state to hit 25,000 signatures, growing to more than 30,000 by the end of the day. Texas’ petition now has more than 100,000 virtual signatures.
In addition to the state’s bid to leave, a user named Caleb M. created a petition asking that his home city of Austin be allowed to withdraw from the Lone Star State, while remaining part of the United States. Caleb still needed almost 20,000 signatures to get a response from the White House.
The Obama administration policy is not to address petitions that don’t receive at least 25,000 clicks within the first 30 days after their posting.
A White House official told ABC News Tuesday that the secession petitions that made the cut would receive a response.
Go Ahead and Secede, Texas. I Dare You.
A thought-provoking article --
Go Ahead and Secede, Texas. I Dare You.
Go Ahead and Secede, Texas. I Dare You.
- November 14, 2012
Hector Mata/Getty Images
In the wake of news that more than 80,000 people have signed an online White House petition asking permission for Texas to leave the Union, a single grave concern has united the minds of Americans of all political colors: If the state secedes, where are we going to get our NFL-caliber wide receivers?
As a recent student not just of secession, but the traditionally Southern mindset that drives it in this country (similar petitions for Louisiana, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, and North Carolina have all topped 20,000 signatures), let me be the first to say to the aggrieved liberal community: relax. No one is talking about building a Berlin Wall around the upside-down pistol grip part of Texas.
Texans may be stubborn, but they ain’t stupid. In the event of secession, mutually beneficial treaties would be drawn up between the United States and newly formed Texas Republic, ensuring both sides get what they need.
The U.S.A. would be guaranteed access to Texas’s critical military bases, and to necessities such as refined oil, natural gas, cattle, cotton and cheerleaders. (By the way, anytime someone mentions jazz as America’s singular gift to world culture, I hasten to remind them of the cheerleader outfit.) In return, Texas would receive from the rest of the nation such life-sustaining provisions as …
Come to think of it, what does Texas actually need from the rest of us?
It’s not just that the state leads the nation in production of most of those aforementioned resources.
With a rock-solid infrastructure (Texas is the only state in the continental U.S. with its own independent power grid) and stable political tradition, it’s also a self-sustaining player in agriculture, aeronautics, computers, energy, high-tech research and manufacturing, telecommunications, transportation and just about any other economic category to which you care to attach a dollar value.
It’s home to six of the top 50 Fortune 500 companies, including ExxonMobil, ConocoPhilips and AT&T, not to mention Southwest Airlines, American Airlines and Dr Pepper. According to a 2011 Economist ranking, Texas’s $1.224 trillion GDP makes it the economic equivalent of Russia—and the fourteenth-largest economy in the world, second among U.S. states only to California.
Even during the recent economic downturn, commerce in Texas has remained robust. Employment is growing at 3.1 percent annually; its manufacturing and export figures are trending up; its unemployment rate currently stands at 6.8 percent, a full point below the national average; and housing starts are up 17.2 percent over the past year.
Texan Bob Smiley, author of the witty Texas secession novel Don’t Mess With Travis (Travis being the surname of a fictional Texas governor who calls for secession), is even more emphatic on the point. “In the last decade of the Great Recession, Texas has expanded by more than one million jobs, more than all other states combined,” Smiley told me in an email. “And fully 95 percent of the country receives its oil and gas courtesy of pipelines that originate within Texas. That is what one might call leverage.”
Texas isn’t entirely without need—consider the recent drought there, and accompanying federal aid—but then again, no major player in the global economy is entirely self-sufficient. Point being, instead of freaking out about angry Texans and other Southerners wanting to control their own destiny, we'd do better to consider their position and complaints, and ask ourselves: Shouldn’t shared values, cultural norms and manageable geography—not the chance tentacles of history and insatiable federal bureaucracy—ultimately be the things that unite a given population?
For two years, I traveled throughout Texas and the South researching these very questions for a book.
I concluded that while on its surface secession is an admittedly absurd proposition, there’s a certain logic, even a sense of humanity, in its essence. Sure, splitting the country apart feels unnatural—a crime against manifest destiny, at the very least. Americans have become so accustomed to their hard divisions—conservative-liberal, black-white, Roe-Wade, red-blue, Tea Party-sane—that the chasm separating us feels almost ordained, an organic and even integral part of the national tradition. But just because spiritual, political, racial and commercial divides have always been with us doesn’t mean they must continue to define us.
So let’s back away from the secession ledge for a moment, see if we can’t find a compromise. Maybe the solution for dissatisfied Texans and other wannabe secessionist states that can’t tolerate the oppressive yoke of the federal government is to grant them some measure of quasi-autonomy.
There’s plenty of international precedent. Maybe deal with Texas the way that the Philippines deals with its restive state in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, or the way China manages economically independent Hong Kong as a Special Administrative Region, even issuing its citizens their own passports. Hell, Scotland already has a semiautonomous parliament and in 2014 it’s going to vote on an independence referendum that could abolish its 300-year tie to the UK. Turn Texas into Puerto Rico or Guam; give them some form of political and social expression in exchange for diminished power in federal government.
Or maybe the solution is simply to give Texas and other secessionist-conservatives what they really want: free passage to the land of all their conservative fantasies. Send them all off with gratis one-way tickets (I’m happy to earmark some of my socialist tax dollars for the effort) to a country with: a small federal government with limited power and meager influence over the private lives of its citizens; extremely weak trade unions routinely sabotaged by the federal government (i.e., a “pro-business environment”); negligible income tax; few immigrants, legal or otherwise; a dominant Christian population, accounting for some 70 percent of the people; no mandatory health insurance or concept of universal health care; a strong social taboo surrounding homosexuality and a constitution that already states, “All individuals have the right to marry a person of their choice of the opposite sex”; and a gun culture so ubiquitous that you can find automatic weaponry displayed openly on the streets of its capital city and in many households.
Sound like a Texan secessionist’s dream? Well, it’s no dream. This country already exists. It’s called the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Don’t mess with us, Texas. You just might get what you want.
Chuck Thompson is the author of Better Off Without ’Em: A Northern Manifesto for Southern Secession (Simon & Schuster).
As a recent student not just of secession, but the traditionally Southern mindset that drives it in this country (similar petitions for Louisiana, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, and North Carolina have all topped 20,000 signatures), let me be the first to say to the aggrieved liberal community: relax. No one is talking about building a Berlin Wall around the upside-down pistol grip part of Texas.
Texans may be stubborn, but they ain’t stupid. In the event of secession, mutually beneficial treaties would be drawn up between the United States and newly formed Texas Republic, ensuring both sides get what they need.
The U.S.A. would be guaranteed access to Texas’s critical military bases, and to necessities such as refined oil, natural gas, cattle, cotton and cheerleaders. (By the way, anytime someone mentions jazz as America’s singular gift to world culture, I hasten to remind them of the cheerleader outfit.) In return, Texas would receive from the rest of the nation such life-sustaining provisions as …
Come to think of it, what does Texas actually need from the rest of us?
It’s not just that the state leads the nation in production of most of those aforementioned resources.
With a rock-solid infrastructure (Texas is the only state in the continental U.S. with its own independent power grid) and stable political tradition, it’s also a self-sustaining player in agriculture, aeronautics, computers, energy, high-tech research and manufacturing, telecommunications, transportation and just about any other economic category to which you care to attach a dollar value.
It’s home to six of the top 50 Fortune 500 companies, including ExxonMobil, ConocoPhilips and AT&T, not to mention Southwest Airlines, American Airlines and Dr Pepper. According to a 2011 Economist ranking, Texas’s $1.224 trillion GDP makes it the economic equivalent of Russia—and the fourteenth-largest economy in the world, second among U.S. states only to California.
Even during the recent economic downturn, commerce in Texas has remained robust. Employment is growing at 3.1 percent annually; its manufacturing and export figures are trending up; its unemployment rate currently stands at 6.8 percent, a full point below the national average; and housing starts are up 17.2 percent over the past year.
Texan Bob Smiley, author of the witty Texas secession novel Don’t Mess With Travis (Travis being the surname of a fictional Texas governor who calls for secession), is even more emphatic on the point. “In the last decade of the Great Recession, Texas has expanded by more than one million jobs, more than all other states combined,” Smiley told me in an email. “And fully 95 percent of the country receives its oil and gas courtesy of pipelines that originate within Texas. That is what one might call leverage.”
Texas isn’t entirely without need—consider the recent drought there, and accompanying federal aid—but then again, no major player in the global economy is entirely self-sufficient. Point being, instead of freaking out about angry Texans and other Southerners wanting to control their own destiny, we'd do better to consider their position and complaints, and ask ourselves: Shouldn’t shared values, cultural norms and manageable geography—not the chance tentacles of history and insatiable federal bureaucracy—ultimately be the things that unite a given population?
For two years, I traveled throughout Texas and the South researching these very questions for a book.
I concluded that while on its surface secession is an admittedly absurd proposition, there’s a certain logic, even a sense of humanity, in its essence. Sure, splitting the country apart feels unnatural—a crime against manifest destiny, at the very least. Americans have become so accustomed to their hard divisions—conservative-liberal, black-white, Roe-Wade, red-blue, Tea Party-sane—that the chasm separating us feels almost ordained, an organic and even integral part of the national tradition. But just because spiritual, political, racial and commercial divides have always been with us doesn’t mean they must continue to define us.
So let’s back away from the secession ledge for a moment, see if we can’t find a compromise. Maybe the solution for dissatisfied Texans and other wannabe secessionist states that can’t tolerate the oppressive yoke of the federal government is to grant them some measure of quasi-autonomy.
There’s plenty of international precedent. Maybe deal with Texas the way that the Philippines deals with its restive state in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, or the way China manages economically independent Hong Kong as a Special Administrative Region, even issuing its citizens their own passports. Hell, Scotland already has a semiautonomous parliament and in 2014 it’s going to vote on an independence referendum that could abolish its 300-year tie to the UK. Turn Texas into Puerto Rico or Guam; give them some form of political and social expression in exchange for diminished power in federal government.
Or maybe the solution is simply to give Texas and other secessionist-conservatives what they really want: free passage to the land of all their conservative fantasies. Send them all off with gratis one-way tickets (I’m happy to earmark some of my socialist tax dollars for the effort) to a country with: a small federal government with limited power and meager influence over the private lives of its citizens; extremely weak trade unions routinely sabotaged by the federal government (i.e., a “pro-business environment”); negligible income tax; few immigrants, legal or otherwise; a dominant Christian population, accounting for some 70 percent of the people; no mandatory health insurance or concept of universal health care; a strong social taboo surrounding homosexuality and a constitution that already states, “All individuals have the right to marry a person of their choice of the opposite sex”; and a gun culture so ubiquitous that you can find automatic weaponry displayed openly on the streets of its capital city and in many households.
Sound like a Texan secessionist’s dream? Well, it’s no dream. This country already exists. It’s called the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Don’t mess with us, Texas. You just might get what you want.
Chuck Thompson is the author of Better Off Without ’Em: A Northern Manifesto for Southern Secession (Simon & Schuster).
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
A Letter To Texas From The Remaining 49 States
A Letter To Texas From The Remaining 49 States
WE THE CITIZENS of The Remaining 49 United States of America hereby grant Texas it’s wish to withdraw from our country, that it may create it’s own sovereign nation. A nation completely free of the burden of tolerance regarding any ideas, customs, laws, taxes, or ethnicity that it does not “cotton to”.We congratulate our new neighbors to the South on the imminent creation of it’s perfect Utopia, in which cumbersome gun laws need not exist, the mentally handicapped can be executed with reckless abandon, and school curriculums can be properly adjusted to instruct children that the Earth is a mere 3000 years old.
We will, of course, miss the economic benefits, quality barbecue and hot cheerleaders that you have nobly provided over these past 200-plus years. But though we won’t argue that Texas has been at the forefront of the nation in production of oil, beef, cotton, and other valuable commodities, those benefits have always been tragically counterbalanced by your state’s equally impressive production of prideful ignorance and unrepentant assholes.
(Side note: We know it’s a long shot, but is there any chance that we could convince you to take Alabama with you? With both of you gone it would really help boost our national literacy rate. You could call yourself “Alabexas”. No? We didn’t think so. It was worth a try.)
One last request: as an act of goodwill between nations, before you erect your long-awaited immigrant-proof wall can you do us a solid and give the Austin hipster-transplants a couple of weeks to pack up their instruments and get their vans back up here? Thanks.
So I guess this is it Texas. I suspect we won’t hear from you again until you remember that human beings need water to live. But we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
Thanks for the memories and for Stevie Ray Vaughan. Our country just got a little bit smaller but a great deal more respectable. And for that we thank you.
-THE REMAINING 49 STATES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Guest Contributor: Mike Polk
http://samuel-warde.com/2012/11/a-letter-to-texas-from-the-remaining-49-states/
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