The Glade 4.0

Words have meanings, Aizle.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

SEMANTICS!

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

how long have you and I been on these boards together? It's interesting that you think I gathered the idea of the kind of person you are from just that post.

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"It is true that democracy undermines freedom when voters believe they can live off of others' productivity, when they modify the commandment: 'Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.' The politics of plunder is no doubt destructive of both morality and the division of labor."

Yup, they sure do. Often times multiple ones too!

I think it does make sense, though, since it's not like that funding is imposed on the southern states against their will. On the contrary, I'm sure their Senators and Representatives lobby hard to get as much of it as possible. In fact, I'd bet the over-representation (by reference to population) of southern states in the Senate goes a long way toward explaining it. More Senators per person means more pork per tax dollar paid.

Fair point.

If mandates and other various federal standards for unrelated things are not met, they lose all funding for those things. And since citizens of those states are compelled to pay federal taxes, this system is used to extort them.

You can't create a legal monopoly on services and then blame the people for using them.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

Eh, fair enough.

That said I'm glad you're happy where you are. I actually haven't visited Mississippi before, tho it's on my list to at least motorcycle through at some point in my life.

To clarify my "civilized" comment, there are plenty of places that I consider to be civilized, all over the US including the South. It seemed from LK's original comments that she'd just resigned herself that Mississippi sucked and had given up, which is why I posted what I did. From her subsequent posts, it sounds like she's doing what she can to effect change and actually likes where she lives. More power to her/you.

Aye, good point. They released a report with similar results in 2004, though, so even if the 2005 numbers are off, I think the basic point is still valid.

Yeah, I miss that about small town life. People here in NYC have definitely mastered the art of completely ignoring everyone around them. I doubt I'll ever live in the south, but I am curious to see what the differences between rural south and rural New England are like. My brother is living in Middle of Nowhere, Arkansas right now, and he's finding it to be a pretty big culture shock. The racial divide (more a divide than a tension in most cases, he says) is bizarre to him, of course, but even apart from that, he says there's just something different about the small town feel there vs. in VT.

I've never been to the East Coast, RD...what is small town life like there?

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

Don't need to live in a small town to find that. I live in Minneapolis, MN. It's pretty common for folks to smile, wave, say hello, etc. and we're a metropolitan area of about 1.5 million. Of course compared to NYC, we basically are a small town.

Don't forget agricultural subsidies, though.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Agricultural subsidies effect prices in New York and LA as much as they do in Iowa and Texas.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

Indeed, they do -- however, it's government spending that primarily goes towards the agricultural areas, right? Or does the accounting get done so the subsidies are at point of sale?

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Generally you have to buy a ticket to go to the prom; they aren't free.

Even if they're subsidized (which is probably true) they aren't a "misappropriation of funds"; there's nothing inherently illegal or unethical about them, nor does the performance of the public education system have anything to do with whether they should exist. There's no good reason to think money spent on social events would improve education if spent on directly educational matters, since only the most "Won't it be great if schools get all the money and we buy bombers with nake sales" **** school-wankers think it's purely a money issue.

On the other hand, I WOULD say that if this school district is asking for a levy this year or otherwise in financial straights, it needs to stop subsidizing proms as a situationally inappropriate expendiature of funds.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I really enjoyed growing up in VT. For me, it involved a lot of time outdoors, a sense of knowing and being known by most people around me, local and school sports teams, etc. As an adult going home to visit, I find it a bit...limited, I guess...because I'm still not ready to settle down in one place, build a house, and start a family, whereas most of my childhood friends did that years ago.

People in VT aren't as friendly and open as you might be used to in the Northwest and the South, but they're definitely kind and familiar to each other. They do the whole "hanging around chatting at the general store" thing, and weddings, funerals, school events, etc. are always notable. There are a lot of extended family connections, and people will often try to place an unfamiliar name by identifying who they're related to. There's not much in the way of socio-economic stratification, and racial issues are pretty well non-existent (largely because almost everyone's white, I guess!). The biggest cultural divide is between the farming/blue-collar, hunting, 4-wheeling, etc. folks and the white collar, hiking, skiing, etc. folks, but that's more stereotype than reality. I'd say it's actually a blending of the two rather than a clear division. Kind of the cultural equivalent of the purple political map Vind posted.

Basically, take a farmer, two contractors, an office worker, and a yuppie, mix 'em together, and that's life in VT.

I'm not sure, but that really isn't the point. Thing is, that once again, subsidies are a socialist price fixing mechanism. Those subsidies exist in order to set and control pirces generated in those industries. It just so happens that the best places for factory farms is in the mid and southwest.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

RD:
That sounds remarkably similar to growing up in WI.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

Yeah, I could see that, Vind. I spent a couple of days driving through WI once, and based on the few interactions I had with people there, it seemed very familiar to me.

I agree, and that's my point. Agricultural subsidies are another thing that I imagine skews the dollars received per capita values towards red states. It would be disingenuous, however, to point to those as "red states feeding off the wealth of the blue states," because, as you point out, the blue states benefit from the subsidies in the form of lower food prices, too. So the benefit gets distributed evenly (or, more to the point, at a flat (ish) rate per capita across blue and red states), while the accounting makes it look like blue states are sending money to red states.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

From my time there, suburban Connecticut (outside Hartford) is remarkably similar to suburban Ohio (outside Dayton). So the VT/WI comparison makes a lot of sense to me, too.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Yup, or MN or ND. You might get a little more of a farming/city divide just because there is so much farming in the midwest.

In my experience, the major difference is that the agriculture in the Northeast isn't geographically isolated from the suburbian sprawl; rather, the sprawl wraps around a tobacco field or small dairy farm here and there.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

The more that I think about it, everywhere I've been has been pretty similar to that, with the exception of areas dominated by a large city. Certainly, there are enclaves with a mindset that makes them closed to outsiders, but cities like Minneapolis/St. Paul, Milwaukee etc. buck that trend outright, or immediately outside the city it reverts back to "normalcy".

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko