Wednesday, December 22, 2010

The common sense of the census

From Weigel at Slate;
It's official: Here are the states gaining and losing seats (and thus electoral votes) in 2011. I've put states entirely controlled by Republicans in bold and states entirely controlled by Democrats in italics, although in some of these states there are backstops against total partisan redistricting -- Arizona, for example, has a nonpartisan panel. The gainers:

Arizona +1
Florida +2
Georgia +1

Nevada +1
South Carolina +1
Texas +4
Utah +1

Washington +1

The losers:

Illinois -1
Iowa -1
Louisiana -1
Massachusetts -1
Michigan -1
Missouri -1
New Jersey -1
New York -2
Ohio -2
Pennsylvania -1
This is about as bad as it could get for Democrats, and as good as it could get for Republicans. The next GOP presidential candidate gets six free electoral votes from South Carolina, Texas, Utah. The Democratic caucus in the House is about to see internal warfare in the rust belt and northeast, as their members are forced into Thunderdome battle for the diminished number of seats. Only in Illinois, I think, will the Democrats be able to create a map that hurts the GOP's newly elected members and takes back a seat or two.
People in a free society vote with their feet. What we all know instinctly we can see in the census data.People are voting with their feet. Not from bad to good weather, but from high tax to low tax. California vs. Texas is a perfect example. Not just taxes, but business climate as well.

One bad side of this is again California. They continue to trade out high-education, high-earning native born citizens for poorly educated, net-drain on the government immigrants. Their educated Leftists who leave the land they ruined are in many cases not changing their politics - they are taking it with them.

As a result, the shifting populations of economic refugees from CA and other Blue States are ruining politics from Wake County in North Carolina to King County in Washington as they leave CA, MA, NY and take their toxic poltics with them, soiling another nest - but maybe they'll learn. This time. Maybe.

You can see the clash though from the Duck Hunters off the Potomac other places they move to. Oh well - it is a free country. The greatness of our system is that different States can try different things. When one State fails, hopefully others will not repeat the mistake. When one State succeeds, hopefully others will follow.

Another
truth comes out when you look at the census data in a long virew - one I ususally cover on Thursday. As any Ward Boss will tell you - one of the easiest ways to control a group of people and to stop them from being free thinking individuals is to have them act based on racial and sectarian lines.

That is why the whole Diversity bit is more political than anything else, and why I will continue to point out that by pushing a retrograde sectarian policy as pushed by the Diversity Bullies - the Navy is engaging in politics pure and simple. That is why it is well withing a standard deviation to use the moniker; "CNO Roughead (D-Navy)."

Via BaseballCrank;
These numbers are an opportunity for Republicans, but also a challenge, since the main areas undergoing population growth are (with a few exceptions like Utah) growing mainly through a growing Latino population. Which explains why Democrats are so eager to try to divide off Latino voters to vote as a homogenous race-conscious bloc the way African-Americans do; it’s their only path to offset their shrinking deep-blue-state power base. There’s no future in being the party of the Northeast and the West Coast, and Democrats know this; liberal pundits and left-wing bloggers are quite open about the extent to which they bank on racial demographics as their salvation, and those demographics only benefit them if they can maintain very high rates of racial division in the voting patterns of Latino and African-American voters, far higher than you would find among white voters. Republicans don’t have to win the Latino vote outright to fend off that challenge, they only need individual Latinos to remain open enough to both sides that Republicans can persuade a decent percentage to vote GOP, as the Democrats still do among white voters. Frankly, it’s not a coincidence that the two states with the most population growth have had, for the past decade and a half, GOP governors starting with George W. and Jeb Bush who worked hard to cater to Latino voters and declined to join in the harshest anti-immigration (even anti-illegal-immigration) rhetoric or policies.

Let’s look deeper at the map through the eyes of a Democrat, and you can see why the campaign of relentless racial division touted on a daily basis by left-leaning commentators and pursued by President Obama in some of his ugliest moments of the 2010 stretch run – calling Republicans the ‘enemies’ of Latinos who had to be ‘punished,’ asserting that Republicans were ‘counting on …black folks staying home’ – will only be exacerbated as Obama’s natural strategy for 2012, given how his performance in office has lost him much of the support among white voters (and some among Latino voters) that he enjoyed in 2008.”
Does that mean that if you believe that people should be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin that you are a Republican? Does that mean that you think one should vote based on the judgment of upper brain functions and not the tribal instincts from the most primitive parts of our DNA - that you are a Republican?

No, of course not - you can find good people on both sides of the aisle. But if the Democrats want to make the logic train go there; so be it.


Hat tip HotAir.
Bad edit this AM - post now fixed.

UPDATE: Patrick Ruffini agrees,
Not only did the South and West win -- which liberals will dismiss as a function of weather -- but low tax states consistently beat high tax states. Not only did conservative states beat liberal states, most tellingly, the winners were almost to a man conservatively governed.

Consider this striking fact unearthed by political strategist (and former Giuliani adviser) Ken Kurson, posted on Facebook:

    Avg tax rate in states gaining a Congressional seat: 2.8%
    Avg tax rate in states losing a Congressional seat: 6.05%
    People vote with their feet.

22 comments:

steeljawscribe said...

Phib:

  'tis Wednsaday and having been on the job for 3+ hours already, maybe I'm a bit dense (OK, more so than normal) - and I'm not sure I'm reading this article right.  It seems that the extended quote at the end is attributed to CNO (as written) when in fact it comes from http://baseballcrank.com/archives2/2010/12/politics_its_ce.php.  Otherwise, why leave "<span>CNO Roughead (D-Navy)." </span>hanging out by itself? Mind you, no fan here of the diversity mandates coming from CNO these days, but if the quote section is attributed to Roughead it is way out of bounds for a Service chief.
w/r, SJS

Skippy-san said...

Here are two questions though: 1) Why is the size of the house fixed at 435? Its been that way since America was 200 million people-we have 309 million now. The House of Commons has about 600 members as I recall. Why not allow it to grow and hold the representative ratio?

Second question-not all of those people voted with their feet voluntairly. The people went where the jobs were. To gain a real view of the population change the shift in industry ( and offshoring) has to be factored in.

Stu said...

Growing the House of Reps would also dilute the power of each individual congressman (good thing) which along with having more races would serve to drive election costs down. 

DeltaBravo said...

Don't forget also we're 37 years into the Roe effect and its consequences for a second generation of potential voters...

Timmy said...

Funny that you call out Wake County, NC since that's where I live as a "refugee" from Upstate NY.  I was hoping moving to a Red State would have my vote count for something again, but I guess I should have paid more attention to which county I moved to :(

<span>At least with the Republicans getting control of the Both the NC House AND Senate (Last time they controlled the NC Senate was in 1898 (That's not a typo. 112 years ago) guess who gets<span>...</span><span> to redraw the districts based on the 2010 census? Paybacks a bitch!</span></span>

The Usual Suspect said...

Having grown up in Oregon during and after the Governorship of Tom McCall (R), "Welcome to Oregon. Enjoy your visit", I can attest to the effect of the infection that California has been on that state and the rest of the Pacific Northwest.  These folks flee the "Golden State" and bring their views and their problems with them, recreating the entire over-spending, over-regulating, overly intrusive, anit-business climate that they just fled.  The first big wave was after Watts in 65' and has continued unabated since that time.  The states of Washington and Oregoon have joined California as one party states.  Democrats used to stand for the working man and now they don't even know what one is.  JFK would be a Republican by today's standards and his brother Teddy would have been a communist by the 60's standards. 

The Usual Suspect said...

<span>Having grown up in Oregon during and after the Governorship of Tom McCall (R), "Welcome to Oregon. Enjoy your visit", I can attest to the effect of the infection that California has been on that state and the rest of the Pacific Northwest.  These folks flee the "Golden State" and bring their views and their problems with them, recreating the entire over-spending, over-regulating, overly intrusive, anit-business climate that they just fled.  The first big wave was after Watts in 65' and has continued unabated since that time.  The states of Washington and Oregon have joined California as one party states.  Democrats used to stand for the working man and now they don't even know what one is.  JFK would be a Republican by today's standards and his brother Teddy would have been a communist by the 60's standards (always has been according to me). </span>

DeltaBravo said...

"Democrats used to stand for the working man and now they don't even know what one is."

Great line!

C-dore 14 said...

Suspect, You're on target there.  My folks moved up to Oregon from California in '71 because they were being taxed out of their home in those "pre-Prop 13" days.  Apparently a large chunk of the retired Berkeley faculty moved up to our former paper mill town in Western Washington in the early 90s and set about gentrifying the place and embracing every liberal cause known to mankind.  

One point you've left out is that these folks expect all of the services that they got back in the Golden State but (as the last election demonstrated) are unwilling to pay the taxes necessary to support them.  Hence, every couple of months the state government/legislature flails around trying to keep the budget balanced by "salami-slicing" each of the departments rather than doing the hard work of determining what services the state should provide given the funds available.

DeltaBravo said...

Some wag called it "Californication."  Can't think of a better word.  Probably the same people who helped kill the logging industry in parts of Oregon to protect that stupid little owl.

Southern Air Pirate said...

DB,

Don't forget that the PacNW is in the process of giving up millions (maybe billions if some estimates were right) in electric revenue to remove a number of dam's in the various area rivers. There are debates now just starting in E. Washington about water rights that seem to mirror the same sort of debates those in the Central Valley are having. Let alone questions of with the increasing housing boom, where are we going to get the power to run the various electrical things the people want, not just the nifty-neato carbon spewing Nissian Leaf mind you, but the lights and heat for thier homes.

I have been reading all the MSM from KING-TV, KOMO, the Seattle Times, Seattle PI, Bellingham Herald, and even the local Whidbey News-Tribune gash thier teeth over WA state current budget crunch, they are blaming everyone . The Gov is blaming everyone but the reckless spending. The county commissions are blaming Tim Eyeman, the cruel Scrooge like voters, and the idiots above them, and not the reckless spending. The mayors and city councils are blaming everyone above them but the reckless spending. The budget surplus we had has been gone now for about four years and the only thing anyone can think of is raise either an income tax or raise tax on food stuffs. No mind to the fraud, waste, abuse in the government; no mind to the fact that we have too many duplicate programs in the state government; no evidence that some of the programs just aren't working.

C-dore 14 said...

DB, You're right...they were selling t-shirts in the Portland area with the phrase "Don't 'Californicate' Oregon" on them in the '70s.

CDR Salamander said...

Should be in the above paragraph and for some reason a sentence has been dropped.  Yea, looks goofy - not meant to be.  Mefixie.

James said...

Same thing is happening in the south. Question is is the south strong enough culturaly to change them.

Many are heading for memphis. Dont expect any change their its been basicly as bad as california for awhile now. Many places you can have bad things happen if your not of a certain racial minority. Sad really :(

Kristen said...

I'm in a mad dash to finish wrapping presents, but I just had to add a thought, since I live right here in the heart of CA. 

One of my sorority sisters who I still see is thinking of moving to a different state.  She just doesn't see any opportunity here and is worried about losing the job she has.  Of course, she votes a straight Democrat ticket.  Of course, she will vote a straight Democrat ticket in whatever state she moves to.

A lovely black couple with whom my husband and I socialize quite a bit are also looking at other states.  He is out of work and can't find anything.  They are huge Obama fans, and they will never, ever vote for a Republican no matter where they live.

So.  It's possible that after the state declares bankruptcy and defaults on its debts, the voters will turn to the Republican party.  Michigan finally did.  But here we have a growing Hispanic voter base, and I just don't see them leaving the Democrat plantation anytime soon.  This state will be reduced to a very wealthy few and an enormous underclass.  And it breaks my heart, because I am a Californian and I know what an incredible place this used to be.  My children are never going to know the amazing place in which I grew up.  It just breaks my heart.

Anonymous said...

Perhaps the best statistic is the number of state legislatures that are now in Republican control. This will ensure the realignment of Congressional districts such that more districts will favor Republican victories in future elections, perhaps even in 2012. But you can be assured that Obama will sit on the Census results till after 2012, so that reapportionment will not occur until after he leaves.

andrewdb said...

C-Dore, my great-grandfather ran the candy plant/general store/post office in Washugal, WA about 100 yrs ago.  I'm guessing that might be near your "former papermill town" (which I won't name in public)

James said...

This is off course but i have been looking around the internets and asking around about EMALS. Specificly the EM affects and what it would do to systems onboard.

So far everything i've been told is that the entire syste is enclosed to prevent the EM pulses from screwing with any systems.

I would have posted this in the article on EMALS but for some reason it acts funny when i try to get to comments.

Anyways heard some remarking upon the EM problem just been lookin for the answers.

C-dore 14 said...

andrew, Actually we're up by the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

C-dore 14 said...

Pirate, I'm not one of Tim Eyman's fans but I do agree with his position that the voters aren't telling state government what they should spend their money on but rather telling them how much is available and expecting them to set priorities and demand accountability.  The problem here is that none of this is happening.  All you need to do is hear about the death of some kid whose case is being managed by DSHS, some outrage committed by a felon under the supervision of the DOC, or the waste of millions through featherbedding and "double-dipping" by State Ferry System employees (thanks to KING-TV) to understand why otherwise compliant taxpayers like me are unwilling to pour more money down that rat hole.

C-dore 14 said...

andrew, Actually we're up by the Strait of Juan de Fuca.  They filmed the movie "An Officer and a Gentleman" here.

Southern Air Pirate said...

C-dore,

Trust me I know. The hardest thing for me to deal with after coming home from one of my deployments was finding out that due to mis-management the Pt Townsend-Keystone ferry had been reduced to reservation only and only one boat. So the one summer I was home and just married, it was a shame to that I couldn't take my wife on a quick trip over to the Pennsuila to Pt. Townsend to walk around the town and then visit some relatives up in the hills near Sequim. Needless to say even with the two new boats that were supposed to go strictly to that run, instead is being changed to again only one boat. Then there are folks in Oak Harbor and the rest of Whidbey Island wondering why tourism isn't coming thier way.
There are all sorts of other mis-managed programs from the programs you talk about, but also a number of local programs in each city, county, and such. I am loving the hate and discontent tween the Mayor of Seattle, the Council of Seattle, the Legislature of Washington, and the Gov all about the tunnel.