Aloha, Ashcroft

First we had dissident individuals, then dissident groups, then dissident towns. Now a state is bristling at the Patriot Act and other new restraints on our freedoms. Hawaii has passed a bill declaring that "to the extent legally possible, no state resources -- including law enforcement funds and educational administrative resources -- may be used for unconstitutional activities." The resolution also urges the state's congressional representatives "to work to repeal any sections of the USA Patriot Act or recent executive orders that limit or violate fundamental rights and liberties protected by the Constitutions of Hawaii and the United States."

Comments

[Sven]

That sounds like secession to me. Let's turn that tub that Bush commandeered last night around at set things straight. Remember Fort Sumter, er, Pearl Harbor or something.

[B]

Just wait until the Dems replace the Republicans in power, then they will join up once again with the libertarians in denouncing big gov't/Big Brother, even though this is their program.

[James Merritt]

Damn, and here I thought California would be the first to secede over the state-fed conflict concerning medical marijuana (or even the PATRIOT act, given that we have several cities that have gone on record against it).

Mahalo!

[thoreau]

Sometime in the past 12 months I saw a tongue-in-cheek article about California secession. It was a speculative story.

The premise was that CA was tired of being governed by the right-wing Bush administration and its fanatically loyal Congress. CA was also tired of paying more in federal taxes than it gets in federal spending (that's right, for every $ we send to DC we get less than a $ back, while in many small, conservative states for every $ they send to DC they get more than a $ back). Some people in Sacramento realized that the tax discrepancy could easily plug the state's budget deficit, pay for a reasonable defense budget, and still leave enough left-over for CA residents to enjoy a nice tax cut.

Meanwhile, in DC, Karl Rove was worried about a monolithic bloc of 55 electoral votes guaranteed to the Democrats, a predominantly Democrat House delegation in a closely divided House, and 2 Democrat Senators in a closely divided Senate.

It didn't take long before both sides realized that there was an obvious solution...

Not that I think it will happen. But it would be nice to live in a nation with lower taxes, legalized pot, real privacy rights, no Patriot Act, and a less belligerent foreign policy...

[Tuning Spork]

thoreau, since California is a wealthy (relatively, and when they aren't making energy deals that b**tf**k 'em), of course they give up more to the Fed than they get back!

I remember, about a year ago, Hillary was crying about the same thing with regard to New York.

If yer gonna complain about getting less return from the Fed than you contribute then get rid of the taxation altogether. There is no need for Washington DC to take money and send it back in direct proportion to the states as it was stolen..er, taken..received.

Taxes are collected by income and distributed by population. If you want California to receive from the Feds exactly what it contributes, then work to get rid of the taxation altogether.

[thoreau]

Tuning Spork:

First, I am in no way defending our system of huge taxes and huge government spending.

However, the way that some states fare better than others at the feeding trough actually has some very interesting aspects. The paper I referred to earlier, "A Curious Paradox of the Red States and Blue States", is by Dean Lacy, a political scientist formerly at the Hoover Institute (not exactly a hotbed of leftist sympathy).

Mr. Lacy crunches the numbers and learns that, if you look at the tax/spending imbalance on a PER-PERSON basis, the amount by which a state gets screwed tends to be proportional to Al Gore's margin of victory in that state in 2000. Conversely, the amount by which a state lives high on the hog tends to be proportional to Bush's margin of victory in that state.

All of this is backed up by precise statistical definitions and computations. Obviously there are some states that get screwed on April 15 but supported Bush, and there are some that beneft on April 15 but supported Gore. However, the overall pattern is that the biggest feeders are most likely to support Bush.

One likely objection is that this analysis only looks at the state overall, not the breakdown of spending received and taxes paid by individuals within a state. Well, the institution of the Electoral College is based on the rationale that we should hold elections on a state-by-state basis. If the most important political consideration were individuals rather than states we'd want to use the popular vote rather than the Electoral College devised by our Founders.

Also, Mr. Lacy examined a number of alternative hypotheses. He looked to see if Bush's states get most of their spending from defense, which would make sense. In fact, defense spending turns out to be statistically unrelated to Bush's margin of victory (which makes sense, since most high-tech contractors and Navy bases are located in the coastal states that supported Gore).

That's not the only option Lacy examined, but I wanted to give an example to stress that the analysis was very rigorous and detailed. I'm a physicist and hence not often impressed by social scientists, but Lacy knows what he's talking about!

Anyway, it's interesting reading. You can find it on the web.

[Steve]

Thoreau:

I'm betting that if you look at the same data under a Democrat administration and congress, you'll see the same skewing in favor of states voting for the dem. that's politics (you know-from the Greek "Poli", meaning many and "tics", meaning blood sucking insects).

[thoreau]

Steve-

Ah, but this data refers to spending before the 2000 election. The spending imbalance was NOT a reward for supporting Bush.

OK, maybe it's because of the GOP Congress. Mr. Lacy looked at that, and found that the composition of a state's House and Senate delegations did play a role. However, the statistical methods disentangle the variables, and having Republicans in Congress wasn't enough to explain it all. Remember, Lacy didn't just look at whether or not a state got screwed on April 15 and whether or not it supported Bush, he also looked at the EXTENT to which a state got screwed, and the MARGIN of Bush's victory. Even allowing for political variables, there was a pro-pork bias in the Bush states.

Stranger still, Lacy found that he could get rid of the spending variables and just look at federal income taxes per capita. The more a state pays in federal income taxes per capita, the larger Gore's margin of victory (or at least the small Bush's margin of victory in some cases).

Finally, even if your suggestion is true, that it's pork-barrel-politics-as-usual, this analysis dispels the myth that states that vote for Democrats are all heavily subsidized leeches while states who vote for Republicans are over-taxed and self-reliant. It appears that states that vote for Republicans are rewarded with pork, and they don't seem to complain.

Strange, huh?

[Another Joe]

Do you have a URL for the Lacy paper?

[Tuning Spork]

thoreau, since the most populous states are also the most prosperous - yet also have the most need for social spending, I gather we agree that States are better off spending their own money on themselves.

The Electral College is a check/balance on the tyrany-of-the-majority that would inevitably result from a strict popular vote.
Invoking Hillary again: She, during the Florida fiasco, publicly endorsed doing away with the Electoral College...even though the political theory that created it was also responsible for the creation of the Senate, to which She had just been elected.

You and I may agree or disagree here and there on the wisdom of checked and balanced Federal government; but I will always maintain - with utmost vigor - that Hillary Rodham Clinton is a fraud of a person, focused only on ambition, dripping with platitude and immediacy, and energized only by the promise of praise from people she at once despises and has never met. That's my theory and I'm stickin' to it!
Hillary wants to be famous AND respected! Hillary is a frustrated tyrant!
DO NOT VOTE FOR HILLARY!!!!

[thoreau]

Another Joe-

For some reason the easiest way to access it is from google, since any time I've given people the URL it doesn't work, even though the link from Google works.

Go to http://www.google.com and search for "a curious paradox of the red states and blue states". If you type it in exactly as I gave it, including the quotation marks, the only link that comes up will be the Lacy paper.

In the interest of full disclosure, I looked at his web page, and it indicates that the final version is still in progress (i.e. it hasn't been published in a peer-reviewed journal yet).

[Croesus]

Tuning Spork,

What does Hillary Clinton have to do with this?

[thoreau]

Tuning Spork-

I hope you're not suggesting that I'm a Hillary fan just because she complained about New York getting screwed and I complained about CA getting screwed. A broken clock is right twice a day, so even Hillary can accidentally be right now and then. But that doesn't mean I would ever support her.

As far as checks and balances to prevent tyranny of the majority, you'd better believe I support that! However, I think some of the mechanisms designed to prevent majority tyranny have failed, and should be replaced with better mechanisms. But that's a topic for another time.

For now I'll just try to take this back to the original topic, by observing that in times of crisis a majority of the population might be scared into supporting Ashcroft's Orwellian proposals. I hope our checks and balances can be brought to bear to beat back these assaults.

[Michael]

Here is the HTML version of the Dean Lacy paper (the original is in PDF format):

http://216.239.51.100/search?q=cache:w6kTRYFILToC:psweb.sbs.ohio-state.edu/faculty/hweisberg/conference/Lacy-OSUConf.PDF++curious+paradox+of+the+red+states+and+blue+states&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

Here is the PDF version:

http://psweb.sbs.ohio-state.edu/faculty/hweisberg/conference/Lacy-OSUConf.PDF

[Anonymous]

I have 2 words to add to this conversation:

Farm Bill

[Hillary]

Look, this is all one big radical conspiracy, and I really don't care WHAT you have to say about me. I'm here only to get Pork for New York.

OK, so some buildings fell on ya on 9-11? So what! You're dead. Who cares. I certainly don't. Screw it!

Like I said, I'm only here to get Pork for New York -- while I bide my time . . . (tick-tock.)

[Gerry]

My satiric genius comments destroyed by your software. No 'cut and paste' allowed, also noticed (which is the why of all the mis-keystrokes and misspellings on your site). Really crank telephone technology you've bought. Actually the crank phone worked better. Salute!, but no more from this libertarian. nada, bye. G

[Kevin Carson]

Thoreau:

I recall reading an analysis by a Georgist (By Amber Pawlik, I believe, also an Objectivist) in recent months arguing that Democratic voting correlated heavily with areas where landlords received the most economic rent, due to site advantages in built-up areas. Her hypothesis was that people who paid the most tribute owing to this form of privilege were most likely to support welfare state measures.

My point? I'm not sure.... Maybe just that when you have a statistical population of fifty, you can make a lot of interesting correlations. Still, food for thought.

[Tim Grammer]

This is not secession my friends. These type laws have a long tradition in the United States. They were first seen in the form of "Personal Liberty Laws" passed in Northern states as a reaction to the Fugitive Slave Clause in the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. Indeed, was one of those "states rights" that the South railed against during the run-up to the Civil War. Whatever the case, good job Hawaii.

[CC Ryder]

Read the whole bill, Bill. Also, read the article linked on the word "towns."

[Mike]

Not one for self-promotion...I feel compelled to mention that some bloggers (myself included) are organizing a site to monitor the patriot act called The Watchtower. So please pay a visit

We are still looking for bloggers interested in contributing. so interested bloggers should email [e-mail]

[omnibus bill]

Yeah, that's pretty radical dissent -- prohibiting state employees from using state resources for "unconstitutional activities". Wow. What's next? Forbidding the Hawaiian police from violating the local criminal code?

[Speck Will]

EMAIL: [e-mail]
IP: 62.213.67.122
URL:
DATE: 01/19/2004 07:30:06
He who gives up freedom for security deserves neither.

[Malver Aaron]

EMAIL: [e-mail]
IP: 80.58.23.235
URL: http://preteen-sex.info
DATE: 05/20/2004 03:08:57
I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.