Go Ahead and Spend Time in a Desert of Your Own Creation

I haven't been posting as much lately because business has picked up during the day and I've been engaged in other mind-distracting enterprises during my down time. But this article passed by my eyes a few minutes ago and I wanted to post a blurb while it is still fresh in my mind.

So Oklahoma wants to try to opt out of the federal government's spending and bailout plans. I say let them try it out for a while and see how it feels. Perhaps some readers can send me updated info on this but a few years ago I was doing a little research and confirmed that for the most part, red states like Oklahoma, among the reddest of them all together with Utah, Wyoming, and Idaho, receive significantly more federal tax dollars in grants and services per capita than they pay in. It's not even close. Big Blue states like California, New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and purplish Florida pay in way more than they get back (and if you split Florida down by its relative red and blue areas, the pattern is maintained).

The bailout strategy initiated by the prior Republican administration but continued by the current Democratic one may indeed be questionable if you look at it in terms of saving the individual banks concerned. They were DOA and have now become zombies with the infusion of federal money. But that wasn't really the strategy of it. The strategy was to save the entire economic system from sudden collapse. The bailout was an emergency parachute to stop the crashing of the world economy. That it was set up to be a slush fund for the folks who caused the crash in the first place is just another example of how the Bush people did business and failed, did politics and failed, and gave not a rip about anyone worth less than a few million dollars.

So if the fine representatives of the people of Oklahoma wish to exercise their Constitutional 10th Amendment rights over the actions of a federal government exercising its authority under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, then let the legal battles commence. Good luck to the yokels. Let's cut them off from the largesse for the duration and hold the funds in escrow and see how they do.

It's a nice idea and would be fun to watch from the sidelines, but it probably violates the 14th Amendment right to Equal Protection under the law. On the other hand, could this be considered treason? Maybe that's a bit much. Oh well. Let the children rant then.