Blaming the Reaction

Recently, a redneck aquaintance sent me a spam email that argued the nation should "pull out of Chicago" because, like most American cities, the city has a variety of crisises. Of course, any city in the United States would exhibit a colleciton of economic and social failures these days. After 8 years of waste and corruption in Washington and all over the country, everywhere Republicans have reared their evil heads, the whole country is failing.

The title of this retarded neocon rant is "Should the US pull out of Chicago?" Look it up, you'll be amazed at how foolish working class Republicans can be. Here is my response:

"More politics from the innumerate conservative crowd?

"Of the Illinois Legislature, 26 of 59 of the members are "there aren't any" Republican. They even have a website (http://www.senategop.state.il.us/.) which must be non-existent since they don't exist. Illinois isn't even in the top five of the highest state taxes: "Tennessee (9.4%), Louisiana (8.7%), Washington (8.5%), New York (8.25%), Arkansas (8.15%), Alabama (8.05%), Oklahoma (8.05%), and California (8.0%)." However, Chicago is the most expensive place in the country to buy cigarettes, but the the "top nine states with the highest state tax on cigarettes are: New Jersey ($2.58), Rhode Island ($2.46), Washington ($2.025), tied for fourth place are Alaska, Arizona, Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, and Michigan ($2.00)." Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Vermont tax Social Security income as harshly as does the federal government. A bunch of Republicans run most of those states. "The top five states (in order) based on median real estate taxes paid are: New Jersey ($5,772), New Hampshire ($4,136), Connecticut ($4,049), New York ($3,031), and Massachusetts ($3,195)." Of course, those states also have the most expensive incomes and the most expensive real estate.

"Overall, the most taxed states are New Jersey at 11.8%, New York at 11.7%, and Connecticut at 11.1%. New Jersey is cursed with ex-Goldman Sachs CEO and Republican Christopher Christie, New York's David Patterson is a Democrat, and Connecticut is governed by Republican Jodi Rell.

"The worst colleges in the nation are all from neocon states or worse: http://www.radaronline.com/features/2006/09/the_nine_worst_colleges_in_america.php/. The worst schools in the nation are unquestionably from the south, with Mississippi heading the list. (http://www.heartland.org/policybot/results.html?articleid=14359).

"Chicago doesn't make it into the top 25 of the country's most dangerous cities, either: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0921299.html. Again, it's mostly red states that are home to the dangerous places.

"The natural neocon political tactic is Nixon's Big Lie. You can safely assume that pretty much anytime a Republican is talking he or she is lying. We expect if from them. The real reason that people get so upset when a Democrat gets caught screwing around, robbing from the public till, or lying is that we don't expect that behavior from Democrats. We elect them to fix things. We elect Republicans because we have too much spare cash or too much economic stability and want them to "fix" it for us."