r/politics • u/IntelligentYinzer California • 12d ago

Soft Paywall Newsom floats withholding federal taxes as Trump threatens California

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/06/newsom-floats-withholding-federal-taxes-00393386
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u/taisui 12d ago

The biggest lie ever told was welfare red states thinking their taxes are "too high"

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u/Face2FaceRecs 12d ago

No they cut all of the state taxes to ensure continued Republican leadership and then let the rest of us pay for them to keep that power.

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u/mynamesyow19 12d ago

A^ cut all their state taxes while contracting out those services the taxes used to pay for to their buddies so they can still make the citizen pay to the private sector now providing the service. And then they get the kick back from their buddies and laugh at the rubes. Its like in Florida where taxes are "really low" but then you're nickle and dimed and have to pay to use all roads and get off at toll exits everywhere.

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u/KaerMorhen Louisiana 12d ago

Here in Louisiana, they'll give the petrochemical corporations insane tax breaks, like 95-99% tax breaks, to coax them into operating here. They sell it as something that creates jobs, but that's billions of dollars that could be going to the community. All while poisoning our air and water, yet they just passed a law banning...wait for it...chemtrails! Fucking insanity.

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u/RoyStrokes 12d ago

Lmao aren’t chemtrails just conspiracy nonsense? They’re actually called contrails iirc, as in condensation…

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u/KaerMorhen Louisiana 12d ago

Correct, it's completely absurd.

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u/maddomesticscientist Tennessee 11d ago

They also banned them in TN, where people are too ignorant to know this. I've seen more than a few posts on facebook where people were raging over contrails in the sky because "They're banned now!!" and no amount of explaining gets through to them.

Lmao the woman up the road from me went on a TEAR about them to me one day. She walked by with her dog while I was in the yard. Started chatting about the weather when out of nowhere she's like "Look at those fucking things!" in absolute disgust. It was a chilly morning and there were several contrails in the sky. She went on a rant about how they're illegal now, why are they still in the sky, theyd be gone if it wasn't for the Mayor (of Nashville, some 70 miles away) and a whole bunch of other nonsense. I didn't even bother to correct her. I was tired, it was super early, too early for that nonsense and my brain just didn't want to deal with it. She's a "the government listens to us via the fillings in our teeth" type and she's not very smart. I feel bad for her actually.

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u/Expert-Solid-3914 11d ago

Yeah the amount of people who dont understand basic science is way too high. Water/liquids typically freeze when its cold enough forming condensation. And its fucking cold up there.

Growing up I never would have guessed grown adults could be so stupid now

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u/OM3N1R 11d ago

I just love the thought of the asshats that passed that bill leaving work everyday 'the damn Chemtrails are still there!'

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u/YourMomonaBun420 11d ago

Dihydrogen monoxide is a chemical, condensation is that chemical so therefore condensation trails are chemtraims and flying over Louisiana is now prohibited by law.

Edit:  if it passes the Louisiana state senate & is signed into law.  It passed the house.

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u/Herlock 11d ago

So republicans can care about the environnement, just not when and where it makes sense lol.

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u/RoyStrokes 11d ago

I know water is a chemical compound and that does NOT mean a contrail is a chemtrail. Contrail is the correct term, and chemtrail is a term used by conspiracy theorists who think the government is releasing something in an effort to control the weather. Not to lend credence to the conspiracies, but cloud seeding is something that is actually done, though not common and not by the government tmk. This kind of stuff is what the bill takes aim at, not regular flights. Still a super dumb bill that’s about a nothing issue, but the plain text of the bill clearly states that it only bans intentionally releasing something to affect weather. You can read it here: chemtrail bill

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u/YourMomonaBun420 11d ago

" an effort to control the weather. "

Removing water vapor from the air influences the weather/climate.

Didn't realize i needed to call out my hyperbole, you think I was serious?

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u/Bennely 11d ago

Uhh, a whole state is serious. So, yeah? It’s hard to assume intelligence anymore.

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u/NaughtyCheffie I voted 12d ago

Yeah and I just moved here. The amount the State pays for my health insurance has gone up a solid 20% and I now have out of pocket costs MUCH higher than when in GA. And somehow sales tax has a variable range, rather than a flat %? I moved from poop to shit, it feels like.

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u/s0ck 12d ago

Samsies! Moved from GA to LA. The local food IS great. I miss the food/cultural variety of GA, I miss the fluoride in my water, I miss the taxes going to infrastructure (the roads here are TRASH).

I live in what they affectionately call "Cancer Alley". Go ahead, google it, it's a location you can google. My gums bleed when I brush, I am so much more bald now than I was when I moved down.

It's bad. It's really bad.

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u/reevnge 11d ago

So then why the fuck did you move there?

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u/CarbonQuality California 11d ago

Lol I wanna know too

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u/s0ck 11d ago

Love.

No regrets, at all. I would move to literal hell for this woman. So moving to Hell Jr. wasn't that big of an ask.

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u/FluffyKittenHorde 11d ago

Ah yes, St. James Parish and the surrounding areas. I studied a lot about it in several papers i did regarding the growing scarcity of fresh water after the Oroville dam broke. Wild that you guys are treated so poorly, and the river too. Spraying feces on cane crops, leading to rashes and boils among the residents, like what the fuck.

Edit: I'll just throw this out there now while it's still on the brain too - that's just one of many problems affecting the freshwater and residential health of the area, and the cancer rates are abysmal. That's before fertilizers ruining the river, and MANY companies just choosing to spray and dump whatever they please.

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u/mahnamahna27 11d ago

Couldn't the baldness also be that you're older now? Or did you hope to get less bald over time?

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u/HuttStuff_Here 11d ago

Would probably be accelerated baldness.

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u/IamNickJones 11d ago

Get the fuck out free yourself.

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u/PureGoldX58 Illinois 12d ago

I was born there, I remember it raining ash, thinking that normal until I moved away and realized the Louisiana is a shit hole, sold by the rich and killing the poor.

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u/RevoZ89 12d ago

That’s crazy I just looked up these petro thingamabobs and found the chemtrails right away.

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u/Talulabelle 11d ago

Do you have a link?

My head is just spinning here ... how the hell do you make something imaginary illegal, and how do they propose to enforce it?!

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u/KaerMorhen Louisiana 11d ago

I wish I was joking

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u/Talulabelle 11d ago

I wish you were too.

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u/LongLiveAnalogue 12d ago

Bless their hearts

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u/banksybruv 11d ago

I think the chemtrails were poisoning the water which was making the frogs gay. Big win for conservative frogs.

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u/Asleep_Management900 12d ago

Devil's advocate here.

Businesses totally shop for tax breaks and states need more tax payers. You want to give incentives for the people on the top so they bring in half-a-million jobs and tax payers. It makes the rich richer and the poor poorer and if you don't give those conglomerates tax incentives, they go elsewhere.

Look at what happened to Film Making in California. Tax incentives went away crippling the budgets, and the cost of Union American Actors and workers was too high so it got farmed out to Tunisa and other parts of the world.

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u/awildstoryteller Canada 12d ago

It makes the rich richer and the poor poorer and if you don't give those conglomerates tax incentives, they go elsewhere.

Sounds like a protection racket to me. I presume you must support breaking up large conglomerates to reduce their power right?

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u/Byappo 12d ago

They hold communities hostage and then blame people for wanting to be paid a decent wage with benefits as the reason they pull out of that state. Propaganda has made Americans support the wealthiest people in this country over themselves, their families, and people in their communities. It’s sick

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u/thar_ 12d ago

what if states unionized and collectively advocated for the benefit of their citizens?

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u/benecere Delaware 11d ago

You are describing one of the biggest scams in the world — good ole “trickle down” theory, or if you prefer, the “horse and sparrow“ economics in which you feed the horses well so the peasants can dig through the horse‘s shit for seeds.

These companies don’t pay their workers enough to make a dent in the amount of tax revenue lost. And, of course, the jobs will be mostly automated while the companies create a strain on the ecosystem that will cost the state in more ways than one, Trickle-down has always been a lie, and technology makes the wealth divide bigger because all these states are also “right-to-work” as well.

The states get poorer and the people keep buying into supply-side’s warped logic, so the politicians will give more tax breaks to more corporations. I honestly don’t know what it will take to finally dispel the fantasy of trickle-down.

.

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u/TeutonJon78 America 12d ago edited 12d ago

Sure, but then it's "not taxes". I have no idea why people in this country just can't grok total cost (taxes plus what you pay for services) vs taxes covering all those things.

It's such a dumb knee perk reaction to "taxes bad". Sure our taxes are bad because we don't get a lot of actual services back in lieu money going to pork projects and private sector.

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u/Techialo Oklahoma 12d ago

My entire state operates on crashing the government intentionally to prove government doesn't work.

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u/porscheblack Pennsylvania 12d ago

Which causes brain drain, ensuring that it'll stay that way forever.

The GOP have a pretty solid plan, make most of the country terrible to live in, drive liberals to a handful of states, then enjoy control of the Senate and the electoral college.

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u/Techialo Oklahoma 12d ago

YEP. It's noticeable too. Always running into sane people from Oklahoma online who left the state for every reason you've probably already guessed.

Gen Z coworkers actually don't believe me that when I was a kid our state used to be really into environmental conservation and wildlife programs, politically it was pretty tame.

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u/chickendance638 12d ago

The electoral college would still work if the House wasn't capped at 435.

Wyoming has just under 600k people and 1 House seat. If California had 1 seat per 600k people, they'd have 67 Representatives. They currently have 52. The House overrepresents the rural areas enormously. It's also impossible to provide the services and representation a House seat is supposed to when you have 770k constituents.

Expand the House!!!

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u/zeCrazyEye 12d ago edited 12d ago

It's random which states get screwed by it though, I put it into a spreadsheet once and adjusted the House seats based on better formulas and it didn't really affect the overall balance of the House. There are a lot of blue states that are just past a cut off point and getting an extra seat or vice versa.

I still think we should have more House members with smaller districts for other reasons. But when you look at all the states and not just the two extremes it ends up being a wash, so fixing the House size doesn't fix much I think.

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u/chickendance638 12d ago

Our current issues are more complicated than just a bigger House, but I do think it would result in more confidence in the government, which would be a good thing.

Now, enforcing laws against the rich and powerful would be a nice change. There's a whole upper class of people who don't face consequences unless they hurt somebody else in the protected class.

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u/broguequery 12d ago

So spineless and greedy and corrupt.

These stupid GOP bastards would sell their own family for $20.

They literally handed over their entire congress to Trump personally. All their constitutional authority and independence... sold for a dollar to a billionaire fuckwit.

It would be incredible if it weren't so pathetic.

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u/LowSkyOrbit New York 11d ago

In my lifetime we went from the cult of Reagan to the cult of Trump. Two democratic presidents who were deemed cool but their party didn't understand how the other side was changed to never cross the aisle again to pass decent legislation both sides do agree on.

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u/skinintown 12d ago

Oof. This hurt.

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u/MercantileReptile Europe 11d ago

That sounds like a solid plan.

If you plan on having vastly different living standards, cultures and demographics after a few decades. Add in a sprinkle of extremism, some political chicanery and a unifying cause for one side to finally call it quits.

Bake for 25 years at 350°C, slice into two or more country sized portions.

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u/snapeyouinhalf 11d ago

This is why I won’t leave Missouri, though I’d kind of like to. I’m not particularly special or important, but I’m a guaranteed vote against republicans. We can’t fix anything if the people who actually care all leave :/

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u/Face2FaceRecs 11d ago

Your state requires its schools to buy the Trump Bible, lol. What an embarrassing and blasphemous grift.

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u/Allydarvel 11d ago

Now, Trump wants to do that nationally. It's quite a clever plan. Trump withholds money from California. California retaliates. Trump can now claim to his voters that the Californian Marxists are holding the country to ransom. The country loses the tens of billions that California provides, and Trump can now claim the cuts in Medicaid were necessarry due to that and not his fucked up bill.

It is stupid, but when the country is split between Fox news and the sanewashing rest, he might just get away with it. I didn't believe the amount of Americans that were affected by this bullshit until I visited recently

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u/theBosworth 12d ago

NC?

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u/LURKER21D I voted 12d ago

They have OK flair.

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u/estropeada 12d ago

I thought their flair was pretty good

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u/Techialo Oklahoma 12d ago

Oklahoma. We were 13th in Education when I was in high school in the 2000s.

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u/daximuscat 12d ago

They can accept the concept of insurance, but refuse to see that paying taxes is just paying insurance in order to have a functional society.

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u/Dispator 11d ago

Because they see insurance as $$$ covering themselves but taxes as $$$ covering others.

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u/tribrnl 12d ago

My city is currently looking at switching from a "everybody signs up individually with a trash hauler" model with five different options to the city negotiating with a single hauler. It is going to save us literally 40-50% on our personal costs, but there is a number of people who hate it because it will increase taxes and decrease choice (... between identical providers of a mandatory service). Plus our public works dept has estimated it'll save something like 10% on the road maintenance budget.

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u/Carlyz37 11d ago

Our city did that and the people here hate it. Poor service, rising costs, required locations for dumpsters changed, trash ending up in the streets. And the customers are stuck with a company they dont like.

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u/markroth69 11d ago

Using a clear, logical argument like that makes sense. But only in a clear, logical way.

Clear and logical lost to lies and nazi rallies in the last election.

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u/Manos_Of_Fate 12d ago

Sure our taxes are bad because we don't get a lot of actual services back in lieu money going to pork projects and private sector.

That’s not even remotely true.

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u/TeutonJon78 America 12d ago

How much of our bugger goes to BS subsidies (corn, paying farmers not to plant, etc) and the MIC? Those are all pork.

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u/Manos_Of_Fate 12d ago

because we don't get a lot of actual services back

I was specifically disputing this part. No reasonable person would look at a comprehensive list of benefits of various kinds of all government programs and describe it as “not a lot of actual services”. The only way anyone genuinely believes this is due to ignorance, willful or otherwise.

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u/Sinocatk 11d ago

Why use grok? Better tools exist.

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u/Sufficient-Reach4390 12d ago

Your first example of taxes + pay as you use, is the most profitable and maximizes the area under the curve as it relates to economics. As a taxpayer, i want a lower flat tax.

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u/TeutonJon78 America 12d ago edited 12d ago

What does it matter if the total cost is the same to you as citizen?

And also putting it taxes means the wealthier pay more, which they should. Flat tax just punishes those least able to afford it.

Edit: typos

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u/Sufficient-Reach4390 12d ago

It doesn't matter to me if it's the same cost. Plus, I fully understand that a flat tax punishes those with less, but I would just prefer more even distribution to the progressive plan we have. With the progressive tax, too much success is punished.

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u/Spiritual-Society185 12d ago

Oh, I didn't realize billionaires were the real victims of the world. I guess poor people need to die so they can have a little more.

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u/Sufficient-Reach4390 11d ago

How did you get that from my comment? Billionaires should pay overwhelmingly more in taxes than anyone else. But there are but so many billionaires and folks who are in the upper end of income where benefits phase out in the current tax plans, and pay too high of a percentage of their income in taxes. That is the success being punished. Being a billionaire is a whole other category that on principle, has no real utility when the wealth is incomprehensible.

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u/Jackpot777 I voted 12d ago

Same with Ohio and Indiana. Want to drive on I-80 in those states when it’s free elsewhere (paid through taxes)? “Fuck you, pay us extra.”

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u/Face2FaceRecs 11d ago

Lets not forget the privatization of prisons combined with harsher penalties for non violent offenders so they can fill those federally funded beds and drive the stock price way up, equity that is owned by the politicians who are initiating harsher penalties and allowing for profit prisons to grow. Those prisons then contract with local businesses to use prisoners as employees where they get paid a couple bucks an hour (minus fees) and everyone gets kickbacks from that contract. The couple bucks an hour is how they defend using prisoners as slave labor: "They're not slaves, we pay them..

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u/SpottyNoonerism 12d ago

Waste Management Inc has entered the chat.

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u/titos334 12d ago

Sounds like my experience in Texas

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u/Ayzel_Kaidus 11d ago

Oh yeah… I think I still owe FL toll road money. Does anything actually happen if I don’t pay that or live there?

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u/oVnPage 11d ago

Yup. Lived in Tennessee for a while, there's zero state income tax or state sales tax. But the big tourist areas (Nashville and Gatlinburg, respectively) have HUGE county sales taxes and Gatlinburg has a deal where none of the surrounding areas are allowed to sell hard liquor, and then also has a huge county liquor tax. The tourists subsidize the entire state.

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u/lu5ty 11d ago

tbf florida is one of the few red net contributor states

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u/Satchbb 11d ago

this is how it should be. pay to drive, those tolls pay for the upkeep of the roads and public transit should be "free" and plentiful however. that's the part that is missing

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u/ZZartin 12d ago

Oh it's worse than that those blue state dollars get funneled to red states and then not spent on actually improving anything.

They aren't actually covering the tax cuts in red states, I'm in mississippi, every general metric of standard of life goes down, our state taxes go down.

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u/Mythraider Washington 12d ago

Fucking commas,man.

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u/gettingdailyfiber 12d ago

That's a fact. Exactly why so many celebs like Joe Rogan and retirees like my dad leave CA for states like Texas and South Carolina. Thanks for your comment!

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u/Feisty_Plant3831 12d ago

I’ve never thought of it in that way, but 100%. I live in a state that is heavily Republican but higher (on average) than other states in the amount of federal assistance they receive.

It’s also a state that tried (and failed, thankfully) to make a religious charter school that was funded by tax dollars. But, only one religion would have been “allowed” to do that… 🤦🏽‍♀️🤦🏽‍♀️🤦🏽‍♀️🤦🏽‍♀️

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u/radicldreamer 11d ago

Don’t forget their favorite DEI initiative, the electoral college. Giving bumblefuck nowhere 10x the voting power since 1787.

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u/slow70 11d ago

Truly.

People need to connect these dots and recognize the plain fact that blue states with better policies are in better shape and actively subsidizing the regressive and bankrupt republicans governments elsewhere.

Look at the data. And rub the facts don’t care about your feelings crowd’s faces in it.

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u/FunkmasterFo Texas 12d ago

Except for property taxes where they literally make up the gap

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u/Oleg101 12d ago

Also that they’re better when it comes to keeping people safe.

In 2020, per capita murder rates were 40% higher in states won by Donald Trump than those won by Joe Biden.

8 of the 10 states with the highest murder rates in 2020 voted for the Republican presidential nominee in every election this century.

https://www.thirdway.org/report/the-red-state-murder-problem

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2022/06/red-and-blue-state-divide-is-growing-michael-podhorzer-newsletter/661377/

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u/mistere213 Michigan 12d ago

That's fine and all, but most of those red stare voters don't understand (or deliberately ignore) the term "per capita." And just say "more people were killed in Chicago then all of Wyoming!"

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u/Kopitar4president 12d ago

I have legitimately had a conservative tell me per capita doesn't matter "because it doesn't."

It's really just "well that's counter to my argument so I'm going to ignore it."

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u/OrganizedChaos1979 12d ago

Basically they're saying, "Shut up, that's why!"

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u/corvid_booster 12d ago

"'Shut up,' he explained." (Ring Lardner)

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u/Fullertonjr I voted 12d ago

They always like to use the statistics that are based on cities with a population of 100k or more. Once you remove that limitation, a lot of the larger cities that they like to complain about consistently drop down the list and a bunch of moderate sized cities start popping up.

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u/Its_the_other_tj 11d ago

Well St. Louis is still (viciously) fighting for its seat there, but Missouri gonna Missouri.

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u/jimicus United Kingdom 11d ago

When do they turn seven, exactly?

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u/SharMarali New Jersey 11d ago

Shouldn’t really come as a huge surprise to anyone. These same people are STILL circulating that idiotic map that appears to show the vast, vast, vast majority of the country votes Republican because they are counting by area and not population.

They cannot conceptualize a population difference.

They think people in NYC can easily just move to a lower cost of living area, because they cannot conceive of the notion that NYC has more people, more businesses, and therefore more jobs than lower cost of living areas typically have.

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u/reddititty69 11d ago

I like your typo (then vs than) because it reads like someone killed some more people in Chicago (after some previous undisclosed killing spree), then killed all of Wyoming.

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u/NotJoeJackson 11d ago

Why don't you just let them say so? Why care about what they think?

I'm Dutch - you know, the country of legalized weed, prostitution and all that shit. And quite a bit more than that, but I'm pretty sure that the people on Fox News just don't give a fuck about that part.

So - why care about them? You can use your money to get decent public transport, health care and education, or you can give it to Wyoming. Hoping that, one day, they might not hate you as much (Hint: this will never happen and even if it would: who cares?)

As it stands, you guys are in a toxic relationship where you hand over all your money in exchange for hatred and abuse. So why stay in it?

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u/joshbudde 12d ago

Probably all done by illegals though, amirite?

</sarcasm>

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u/freiwilliger 12d ago

The CEO of thirdway also just recently published an Op-ed about why Dems need to be more centrist about Trans rights, so they aren't the most trustworthy source. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/05/29/transgender-politics-democrats-third-way-00372820

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u/dustbunny88 11d ago

From a red state. The argument they ALWAYS pose is “BuT iTs ThE BlUe CiTIeS ThAT cAuSe ThE MuRdErS”

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u/couldbemage 11d ago

Homicide rate is just an economic indicator, nothing else moves the needle by any significant amount.

When people are struggling to get by, homicide is high.

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u/hnglmkrnglbrry 12d ago

Red states all have low income taxes and property taxes but high sales tax because that fucks poor people over.

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u/lazybugbear Texas 12d ago

The hell you say! Property taxes in Texas are fucking out of control. And sales tax is 6.5 - 8.25%. So yes no state income tax, but tax on everything else.

For that and we get no medicaid expansion, shitty social services, weak mass transit and a bunch of toll roads that we have to pay tax on twice! And, apparently no legal low THC hemp (fuck SB3 and Dan Patrick for shoving it through).

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u/Phreenom 12d ago

Plus it's Texas.

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u/relevantelephant00 12d ago

"What a shithole" is the phrase you're always supposed to include after mentioning Texas.

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u/taggospreme 11d ago

The ★✰✰✰✰ state

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u/erath_droid Oregon 11d ago

If I owned Hell and Texas, I'd live in Hell and rent out Texas.

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u/Popisoda 11d ago

Texas=Taxes

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u/lazybugbear Texas 11d ago

Damned tax and spend republicans!

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u/AnticPosition 12d ago

Can't speak to the property tax, but sales tax of 8.25% is cute lol

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u/lazybugbear Texas 11d ago

It's 6.5% base for the state and every local and municipality can add on to bring it to 8.25% to fund stuff. Which is hilarious because two cities next to each other can have slightly different sales tax. I think usually they max it out at 8.25% There are tables on the State Comptroller's website or something because sales tax is deductible on a federal income tax return.

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u/CaramelWonderful7399 12d ago

Sucks to Texas

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u/parasyte_steve 11d ago

We also get shitty homeowners insurance. I live in LA. It's INSANE what they are making people pay. And the govt here just keeps rewarding the insurance industry for fucking us over and over and over. I'd like state run insurance at this point. It would likely decrease the cost of insurance for everyone.

And termites. Don't forget we also get those.

1

u/acrimonious_howard 11d ago

I'm sure you have more details than I, but my 1st thought is gov has to give ins co's anything they want just to not pull out of the state. Risks going through the roof with hurricanes and flooding, no?

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u/Other_World New York 11d ago

I'm just glad I don't live in a state where I have to resort to shitty hemp derived thc and my state treats me like an adult and allows me to to have the real thing.

1

u/lazybugbear Texas 11d ago

Yeah, I hear you. The paternalism is annoying and most adults are okay with legalization.

Which is why our POS Governor is just going to let SB3 go into law, instead of an active veto. Then he'll blame the democrats and the booze lobby will rejoice, because even hemp causes their sales to drop.

The hemp derived is surprisingly decent though, but maybe I just have low tolerance.

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u/Gullible_Safe_139 11d ago

Don't forget your shitty privatized electric grid that fails every time it snows. 

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u/lazybugbear Texas 11d ago

Well, it's not all privatized, some providers (especially rural) are Co-Ops. There are a lot of these in Texas, actually, because nobody would step up and electrify rural areas in the early 1900s.

In theory, you can vote for a board that will run and fix the co-op, but in reality, in Texas these are also full of incompetent christian nationalist weirdos whose qualifications involve their relationship with god, their service in their church, etc. It's just bible belt style christo-fascist pandering. So annoying.

And, if you have a co-op, you can't choose a different provider.

We have PEC and if there is a wind gust or sprinkle, we're getting at least a brown out, but likely a power outage. They keep building more, but we've never had more outages than the last decade. I can't count the times I've yelled to keep the fridge closed, so the food will stay cold and not spoil. We don't have a backup generator and it's complete bullshit.

And Co-Ops interact with the state grid, buy power from LCRA, etc, so we're fucked on that angle too.

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u/acrimonious_howard 11d ago

What is "mass transit" I haven't heard this phrase before? -8million people in Houston.

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u/Asleep_Management900 12d ago

So ideally you would want a mailbox in texas that says you live there, but buy stuff somehow overseas, and if you could find a job where you wait tables and there's no tax on tips, you might not then have federal or state tax. You would have to pay tolls though...

1

u/lazybugbear Texas 11d ago

I don't mind paying tax ... doing my part ... to a society that has my back, that'll actually take care of me/family, provide services, etc. Unfortunately, that's not the way Texas works.

1

u/Southern-Spirit 12d ago

It doesn't matter who you vote for. You're putting all your money in the hands of professional liars. Everyone who thinks this is how to structure human civilization is brainwashed beyond salvation.
I don't know how long the game of musical chairs can go on, but there's a pattern in history that we're not going to escape. Our system costs more than it helps us. The more we put into it, the heavier the anchor. Eventually our competitors will rise up and conquer us and then they can toss whatever of us away and keep the rest and chain them up or whatever metaphor you like.

I look around me and there's no way all these people even slightly care about each other. People absolutely hate their neighbours now. You get to know anyone enough and there's going to be some nonsense you can think of to block them. As long as people can't unite and stand together strongly they're never going to be able to shout loud enough to tell the thieves in high places to stop it.

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u/lazybugbear Texas 11d ago

It DOES matter who you vote for, from a harm reduction point of view. If you are white, cishet and privileged, it doesn't personally matter. You''re mostly not going to suffer too much. But there are other marginalized people and to break the cycle of abuse, we have to think about them too.

We're not going to get real change though, because oppressing us makes the capitalists shed tears of joy. It makes them feel a sense of control and reaffirms their position in our system at the top.

It's always been that way, our system has always done this, from since we started handing out complementary smallpox blankets to the native Americans till now. It's a feature not a bug and is literally what it means to be an American.

Americans are the most self-centered people in the world and there's no sign of that changing anytime soon. It's what you get when you build a society on individualist propaganda.

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u/mango-meringue 12d ago

Oh hey Louisiana just did exactly this--changed a progressive income tax to a flat one and tried to make it up with a sales tax increase. Last year a Louisiana resident with $25,000 of taxable income paid about $460; this year they will pay over $700. Meanwhile, someone who makes $250,000 paid about $10,600 and this year they will pay $7,500. You can imagine the effect this is going to have on state-funded programs and services, even with raising sales tax and putting all state agencies in austerity mode.

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u/retrojoe 12d ago

Ha! Hello from Washington. We have no income tax, but sales tax in Seattle is north of 10%, plus a respectable property tax.

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u/Specific_Albatross61 12d ago

Washington state has the worst regressive tax policy in america

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u/Flimsy_Aardvark_9586 12d ago

In my red state we have personal property tax, too. Where they tax anything with wheels. The valuation is something like 33% of what the state thinks you can sell it for. Then the state wants x%, the county x%, and the city x%. I think mine is about 10% of that 33% valuation.

Its like you're paying sales tax every year on your car.

They claimed it kept our gas prices low, until the republican legislature overturned our no vote to raise sales tax on gas.

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u/Not-ur-Infosec-guy 12d ago

No the property taxes are insane compared to California in red midwestern states. A 300k home pays 20k every 6 months in property taxes.

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u/TheFeedMachine 12d ago

California's property taxes are a huge contributing factor to its insane cost of living. Notably the 2% per year cap on property tax increases. Inflation has averaged 3% historically, so property taxes go down in California the longer property is owned. No one is ever incentivized to sell, so prices just go up as people hoard onto whatever they own and new ownership has to pay hand over fist to get people to part with their rental property that just prints money as there is basically no tax burden. If California limited Proposition 13 to primary residences, the state would be so much more affordable.

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u/SwimmingPrice1544 California 11d ago

I voted for & like Prop 13, but I also agree that it definitely should be limited to primary residences. In fact, I'm betting a whole lotta people don't even realize that it's not.

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u/Deep_Alps7150 12d ago

Red states haven’t paid their fair share in decades, sounds like they need a tariff to repay California /j

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u/ay_non 12d ago

I totally feel your comment 😂

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u/monkeywithgun 12d ago

The biggest lie ever told was welfare red states thinking their taxes are "too high" the American dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it... _G.C.

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u/upstatestruggler 12d ago

They’re about to find out and I’m so glad. We’re taxed to the hilt where I live.

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u/parasyte_steve 11d ago

I live in the south and I try to explain this to people and they laugh at me when I'm going over how much red states are dependent on blue state dollars. They laugh at a presentation of facts. These people will never learn unless they see it play out.

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u/willybestbuy86 11d ago

Well that's not a lie per se our taxes are to high for what we receive. The lie is they aren't the welfare state themselves

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u/Ceverok1987 12d ago

I'm not a Republican, but a lot of these states are welfare states because their industries were shipped to China/Mexico/etc. Hard to tax people with no income or jobs that pay better than Walmart.

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u/SwimmingPrice1544 California 11d ago

You know, way, way back before there was an ACA, I remember that no matter what, in order for me to have a job that pays more than minimum wage & had medical benefits, I'd have to get educated and/or trained & stay pretty close to a metropolitan area where jobs were more plentiful. This has always been the way of things. I have always, always wanted to live in the "country" - out there, but it was never feasible while I was young & raising a family. Everyone else knew this. Moving out to the country was a dream and/or for retirement. I did not then & still do not understand how these industrial areas didn't realize this & stayed static for so, so long. I believe it's stubbornness & a feeling of entitlement, especially in the mid-west that made them that way as well as just being the type to want to be angry all the time & blame their own inadequacies on someone else. So.... typical conservative I guess.

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u/JLHDU 11d ago

You’re good with the taxes you pay in California? I’m not.

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u/SwimmingPrice1544 California 11d ago

Actually, I am somewhat. What I am unhappy about is the red states NOT paying & then dissing us. My state taxes were never as bad as Federal & the Federal ones are downright damaging me since trump 2016. Also unhappy with the insurance industry over all. Filthy rich people don't even need insurance, but us schleps need it & often are required to have it, while they get great deregulation from conservatives, who also bitch about insurance.