12 October 2013 (16:44 UTC-07 Tango)/07 Dhu’l-Hijja 1434/20 Mehr 1391/08 Ren-Xu (9th month) 4711
Today, I was questioned by yet another newbie to the Gem State of Idaho, this time they were from the Prairie State of Illinois.
They were looking for the DMV (Department Motor Vehicles) and the local Currency Exchange office. Mmmm, there ain’t no currency exchange around here, oh but they weren’t taking about exchanging foreign currency (money). It turns out that Currency Exchange is a private company in Illinois that not only offers check cashing service but lends people money for such things as vehicle registration. You can also get your car registration completed at the Currency Exchange. Ain’t no such thing in Idaho.
In Idaho it’s only been relatively recently that a DMV system was adopted. Up ’till a few years ago vehicle registration was handled by the counties. Our so called conservative republican leaders pushed the DMV system, which is actually proving to be less efficient, and more costly, than if they kept it at the county level!
The former Prairie Stater seemed confused at the lack of available services in the Gem State, but what do you expect when you move from a Blue state to a Red state?
This brings me to the point I’m trying to make, about how divided the country really is, and not just because of political/religious/social differences. Most Blue states receive the lion’s share of federal government funding, most Red states west of the Mississippi receive a relative pittance. The result of this is uneven and unfair distribution of federal funds for social programs, many Red states have far fewer government funded social services compared to Blue states.
One reason for this is that Blue states are more population dense than Red states. Let’s compare Illinois to Idaho: Illinois is considered the 5th most populous state in the U.S., with almost 13-million people crammed into an area of 149998 square kilometers (57914 square miles).
Idaho has 1.5-million people spread over a spacious area of 216632 square kilometers (83570 square miles)! For more perspective; Idaho is a larger state geographically than Illinois, yet has a million less people than the city of Chicago!
How does that affect federal funds for social programs in Idaho? There is no taxpayer funded housing assistance, there is no taxpayer funded legal aid, there is no taxpayer funded utility assistance, most school districts do not have federally funded Head Start programs, etc.
“….inequalities arise from uneven administration….recipients…may not receive assistance because funds may have been exhausted…Competition for…funds…may result…limited appropriations are still common and are likely to continue to be so….distribution of these funds because of the absence of standard concepts of need and of standardized methods for determining the amounts of assistance grants, and because of the lack of uniform policies with
respect to the acceptance of applications…..Inequities in administration of
public assistance will arise if inadequate funds are available…”-DISTRIBUTION OF PUBLIC-ASSISTANCE FUNDS WITHIN STATES, Joel Gordon & Olivia Israeli
Before the Obama Care fiasco adult heads of low income Idaho households (meaning they have children) did not get Medicaid (if they were not disabled) and were not counted in Food Stamps, because the federal funding going to Idaho for the programs had been cut drastically. (I know about this because I tried to get help and was told that because I was healthy only my children were being given Medicaid and being factored for food stamps, and then they cut them off food stamps after 18 months anyway, despite my income still being poverty level. This was back in 2000-2001).
(I’ve been asked by some Mormons why I don’t get charity from church. I’m not a Christian and that’s my gott damned Right as a U.S. citizen, just like owning a military grade weapon! Which I admittedly don’t have but wish I had the money to do so)
But it’s not just populations that are the reason for uneven federal funding. Many studies have shown that more populous states get more federal funding because of corruption in Washington DC. The more populous states actually have more pull, in the form of lobbyists who represent private organizations and corporations.
This is why so many sparsely populated states are going their own way, pulling away from federal control, and working hard to stop the major screw job that is Obama Care.
By the way, despite my low income, for the past three years I’ve had to pay federal income taxes at the end of the tax year (my children are adults and living on their own now, so no more dependent deductions for me), and currently I’m back due on taxes owed to Uncle Sam (remember, there is no taxpayer funded legal aid in Idaho). At the state level Idaho does not have an Earned Income tax credit for poor people, like many Blue states. In Idaho if your income is below a certain level then no state income tax filing is required, but it means they keep all the state income taxes your employer deducted from your pay. It’s rare for an Idahoan to get a full refund of state income taxes. When I was a Californian I actually got more than a full refund of income taxes, because of California’s own Earned Income Credit for low income workers. Since moving to Idaho in 1996, I’ve gotten only a fraction of a fraction of an Idaho state tax refund, and that was only a couple of times. One year I paid extra income tax, and since 2000 my income is too low to file a refund request under Idaho tax rules. Also, Idaho taxes groceries, which shocks many newbies. But we can blame that on the fact that the federales unevenly distributes funding for federal programs, Idaho getting relatively nothing.
Now to another point: People are moving to Idaho because it looks like the economy is good here. That’s a mirage caused by the small scale of Idaho’s economy.
I’ve written before about the economic decline in my part-o-the state. Idaho’s economy has actually been on a slow down hill roll ever since the conservative republican leaders turned Idaho into a Right to Work you over state back in the mid 1980s. But because Idaho’s economy never came close to rising to the high power economies in more populous Blue states, Idahoans didn’t have far to fall. The higher you are the farther you’ll fall. So it ‘looks’ like Idaho’s economy is good to a newbie from a state like California, Michigan or Illinois.
The major layoffs and business shut downs are taking place in tax sucking Blue states (to be clear, there are plenty of tax sucking Red states east of the Mississippi). But layoffs and business shut downs are also taking place in federal funding deprived Red states, it’s just not as noticeable.
Why the F-ck should we in the sparsely populated states go along to get along when we’re getting F-cked over on our taxes paid to the federales, who then turn around and give most of it to Blue states and the more populous Red states?!
So why am I living in a sparsely populated state that has little services or help for low income people? ‘Cause I hates populous states. In California I was getting all kinds of social services, I was even getting free college! But the system made me feel trapped and controlled. The system was set up to screw over anyone who went over the income limits for social services, because those limits were still too low for you to actually support yourself. On top of that California has imposed too many laws against guns and cars. I also got tired of paying hundreds of dollars per year to register my car. Then there was the time the city council of Los Angeles created a law banning cars more than 10 years old (back in the early 1990s). People were being told to buy new cars or take the bus. The only thing that stopped the law was all the upper middle class who had sunk tens of thousands of dollars into restoring their classic cars. The law did not differentiate between a junker and a restored classic! In other words, the tax sucking Golden State of California was going nuts! I was offered a job in Idaho and I took it (three years later a management change, and the political games involved, resulted in me losing the good paying job. But you couldn’t pay me enough to move back to Blue California)!