By Dave Lindorff
Texas Republican Party Chair Allen West has joined blow-hard right-wing radio whackjob Rush Limbaugh in suggesting that Republican-governed states (like Texas, Wyoming, Nebraska, Utah, Montana, Alabama, Mississippi and others) should “band together” and secede from the Union.
Some have expressed outrage at such a suggestion, but really, since it’s going to be next to impossible to get rid of the Electoral College that has enabled Republicans to capture the White House for three of the last five election cycles despite losing the popular vote, we’re stuck with having far too many right-wing presidents. We’re also stuck with the consolation prize of, when we do manage to elect a Democrat to the White House, ending up with some namby-pamby Democratic wimp like Obama or Biden. Then too, there is the Senate, where the reactionary, even fascistic GOP has a virtual lock on the majority thanks Constitution assigning two seats per state, regardless of population. This means California’s 55 million mostly Democratic voters and Wyoming’s 300,000 mostly Republican voters each get only the same two senators to send to Washington.
If some of the reddest states were to secede and go off to form their own country, the remaining US would inevitably be a much better place. This is not just because the trog politicians who dominate the Senate and the White House would be removed to some new Red States of America (RSA) capital (hint: it won’t be Richmond, which was the capital of the Confederacy, since Virginia is now a reliably “blue” state), as delightful as that would be. More importantly, the remaining states of a likely bi-coastal USA would also be instantly divested of a huge number — tens of millions! — of wilfully ignorant, dogmatically religious, gun-obsessed, anti-science, racist, sexist, homophobic and anti-abortion dregs of humanity.
A roughly 25-state USA would also be suddenly much richer — and much better able to fund long-unmet human needs. That’s because most of the income and the tax base of the United States is in those 25 states.
Because the Republican states like Texas, Missouri, Alabama, Montana, South Carolina, Florida, and Kansas, are militantly anti-union, wages in those and other Red states are significantly lower than in the Democratic-led states, here most unionized workers can be found. As a result, tax collections by the IRS that go to fund federal programs are much higher from those states. Yet on a per capita basis, because of higher levels of poverty in Republican states, and poorer state programs for health care, public assistance, etc., federal transfer payments for federally funded or supported programs like SMAP (Food Stamps), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), subsidized insurance under the Affordable Care Act, and Medicaid, are significantly higher to red states in aggregate…
For the rest of this article by DAVE LINDORFF in ThisCantBeHappening!, the uncompromised, collectively run, six-time Project Censored Award-winning online alternative news site, please go to: https://thiscantbehappening.net/a-red-state-secession-movement-from-the-us-of-a-is-a-great-idea/
you do realize California and New York have the highest deficit.