The first Morning Jolt of the week features Rick Perry beginning to turn his focus to Herman Cain, the Occupy Wall Street protesters begin to fight among themselves, and this eyebrow-raising assessment of the economies of different states . . .
Red: Is it a State, or State of Mind?
Can being a red state, with less red tape, keep you away from red ink? If state government doesn’t make you see red by taking every red cent, does it leave you with more to paint the town red and create a red-hot economy?
At Forbes, Merrill Matthews offers an analysis that will leave many Republicans cheery and many liberals insisting it cannot possibly be accurate: “If you do not currently live in a red state, there’s a good chance you will be in the near future. Either you will flee to a red state or a red state will come to you—because voters fed up with blue-state fiscal irresponsibility will elect candidates who promise to pass red-state policies. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures(NCSL), 25 state legislatures are controlled by Republicans and 16 by Democrats, with eight split (i.e., each party controlling one house). There are 29 Republican governors and 20 Democrats, with one independent. And there are 20 states where Republicans control both the legislature and governor’s mansion vs. 11 Democratic, with 18 split (one party controls the governor’s office and the other the legislature). And though we are a year away from the 2012 election, generic Republican vs. Democratic polls have given Republicans the edge for more than a year. If that pattern holds—and if blue-state leaders refuse to learn from their policy mistakes, just like their true-blue leader in the White House—it likely means there will be even more red states in 2013.”
Susan Duclos writes at Wake Up America, “Red states are not only doing better economically than Blue states but the policies enacted in Red states are also providing conditions which make them superior, by the numbers, to Blue states in relation to job growth. This is a point I made back in late May with a two part piece I wrote called ‘Red States Add More Jobs Than Blue States.’ The breakdown over the last decade showed that Red states had a totaled 451,600 private-sector job increase from April 2001 to April 2011, Blue states had a totaled 2,041,300 private-sector job decrease from April 2001 to April 2011 and Purple states (swing) had a totaled 597,900 private-sector job decrease from April 2001 to April 2011.”
The Barrister writes at Maggie’s Farm, “Seems to me that most of it is about pols being in bed with government unions, and splitting the pie at the taxpayers’ expense. In blue states, who represents the citizens against the union machines? My state government (CT) is owned, top to bottom, by the government unions and functions like a Mafia conspiracy preying on the taxpayers . . . Perhaps the goal is to have everybody working for our government overlords. Feudalism. Government jobs are a necessary evil and are functionally parasitic, not a basis for the real economy which is required to work and make a profit to pay those government bills.”