In another demonstration of the absurdity of so much political talk about government spending, the Daily Beast published a "gallery" ranking all 50 states according to how much federal tax money they take relative to the tax dollars they pay out.
The top five were Mississippi, West Virginia, New Mexico, Hawaii and Sarah Palin's Alaska. Alaska withdrew $2.24 from federal coffers for every dollar it paid in taxes. Small government, anyone?
Meanwhile, those tax-and-spend liberals in Massachusetts (#39 at $.95 per dollar), New York (.72 per dollar), Illinois (.79 per dollar) and Connecticut (.74 per dollar) actually helped carry all the deadbeats above.
What's that say? It says that everybody relies on the government for support in one way or another. That may not be good all the time -- fiscal conservatives have a point there -- but we should not pretend that conservatives are rugged individualists living off the land while liberals are welfare cheats. Let's get down to fact and decide how best to allocate resources.
That, after all, is whta politics really is for.
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