politicartoons | (no subject)

Confused as to how he's 'invading' a state in which he's the Commander-in-Chief...

Maybe I just don't understand USA politics.

The people complaining about it are deeply confused as well.

I'm beginning to understand why the main complainers call the USA, 'Murica. They haven't quite grasped the meaning of the 'United States of' part yet.

The U.S. has what's called a "dual sovereign" system. That means that each state is "sovereign" over matters within its own borders, with the federal government acting as its own "sovereign" overseeing the relations between the states and matters that transcend their borders. Over time, the federal government's power has grown and reached deeper into intrastate matters, though there has been, of late, a movement back in the direction of "states' rights," not just in constitutional law (where limits around federal power have been drawn) but also as Congress has proven increasingly dysfunctional and states have had to take up initiatives on their own.

The Jade Helm 15 fever-dream is partly a product of this design. Obama is the head of state of a sovereign that is structurally separate and independent from the sovereign governments of the several states. In some quarters, this amounts to an antagonism - so that there is this continuing fear that the federal government might "invade" the states and impose some kind of military or autocratic rule over them. Why they would want to do that is hard to understand and is never more than vaguely explained. The people who seem to think there's a genuine risk of this seem to have an over-inflated sense of their own importance on the national scene.

As for the politics - well, the people who believe this tend to be Republican and likely primary voters. So cynical fakes like Cruz see an opportunity to bolster their electoral support by half-promising to oversee the operations. For more moderate Republicans, it's just a Senator doing his job; for the right-wingers, it demonstrates responsiveness to their bizarre concerns.

There's a deeper strain here, too, insofar as "red" states tend to be net receivers of federal spending. The Republican effort to promote "states rights" ends up being really a ploy to reduce government spending and programs that primarily benefit "blue" states while preserving programs and spending that primarily benefit "red" states - so we see things like cuts to food assistance while they raid federal retirement plans in order to fund highway building. Part of the strategy for achieving this is to promote the untrustworthiness and inefficiency of the federal government. Lending a sympathetic ear to the Jade Helm 15 wackos is a way of doing this.

Ok. You wrote a lot and I read it all but I think I half-understood some of it. Based on what you've said I half-gather that the Republican primary voters particularly in the 'Red' (southern) states are under the impression that they are completely self-governed, that the 'Big Brother-type' Federal Government is out to take over and they need to prepare for said invasion. Nevermind the fact that the Government has no need to/interest in invading. Is this more or less the case?

I'm sorry if I wasn't clear, but I think that's more or less right. I think the South realizes they're not "completely self-governed," but they certainly think they should be.

I think they should be allowed to self-govern, with absolutely no help from anyone else... just to see what happens.

Texas gets $40 billion in aid from Washington a year. For the last several years it has not paid more than it got back.

I think what would happen is in about 30 years Texas would be a Third World country.

Meh. I currently live in a third world country. They'd survive.

I wasn't implying they wouldn't. I was implying that without that Federal aid, Texas would go from having some great roads and infrastructure, 'could be worse' schools, good hospitals, reliable emergency services, to those of a Third World nation.

I mean no offense, but yes things would degrade a bit I think.

I understand what you mean. We all want the best things possible, whatever those things may be, but if you virtually exist because of benefits given to you but essentially bite the hand that feeds you or can't play nicely with others, then perhaps those benefits need to be taken away. Why should they be rewarded for bad behaviour?

Edited 2015-07-19 00:52 (UTC)

*tries to imagine several states without environmental regulation dumping raw sewage into rivers going into other states*
*imagines Mississippi reinstating slavery. Because: Mississippi*

I keep telling the joke: Why doesn't the US allow the South to secede?
Because we Mexico doesn't want a dirty, polluted, poverty-struck, crime-ridden, uneducated, theocratic, third-world country on their border.

Well, when you consider the social welfare of Mexico I can understand not wanting that to happen.
The Southerners would run wild and think it was within their right.

Texas REALLY likes to forget that their Sovereign State clause was negated by them being on the losing side of the civil war...

I say let them secede.

20% less oil for the U.S. (not to mention a 20% loss of refinery capability), $40 billion a year less Federal money for Texas.

It's a lose-lose situation. Sorry to break it to you.

Well, that's not quite right, is it? It's not the U.S.'s oil, really. In an independent Texas, that oil would still be pumped by the same companies that pump it now, and they'd still want to ship it to nearby markets like they do now. I'd think the only difference would be in whether the U.S. government gets royalties for drilling on Texas's land. But apart from that, I don't see much of a difference.

Um. No.

Oil is bought and sold on the international market. Period. All the oil pumped up in Texas and California and Alaska goes on the market first, then *maybe* goes back to America. The right-wing talking point of drilling more to make cheaper gas for America is nonsense.

Possession is 9/10 of the law.

The U.S. started a war halfway around the world for oil, you can damn well bet they'll do the same thing to keep an oil-rich state in its place, international markets notwithstanding.

They started a war to *pump oil*, which is one of the major points of profit. The oil went on the international market and ended up sold all over the planet.

It's ridiculous to think that America would suddenly break with the international oil market to start producing and consuming its own oil. Just the effort of start up a new market would be immense, not to mention the huge amount of international ill-will it would generate (one of the reasons that people think that we went into Iraq in the first place, was that Hussein was starting up a oil market that traded in Euros...)

Most non-Americans I've 'talked' to (inasmuch as we can 'talk' online) don't seem to realize how decentralized the U.S. government really is. Generally speaking, states can legislate whatever isn't specifically granted to the Federal, and state laws can be more stringent than the Federal, but not less. For that matter, local laws can be more stringent than either- but not less.

It makes for an interesting political landscape; for example, when you have a 'wet' county that allows liquor sales, one county next door that is 'dry', and a third where the county is dry but the city is not- all in the same state.

...or the more recent issue with Federal officers raiding marijuana distributors in states that have legalized it...

I know it's a photoshop, but I wish it wasn't. ;)

This would be a good t-shirt for Andrew Johnson.

Still waiting to be hauled off to a Wal-Mart for whatever is supposed to happen at the Wal-Marts.

I guess this summer is going to be boring after all.

Just avoid those ice cream trucks, yo.

I would be doing that regardless. Listeria is not my favorite flavor.

https://www.intellihub.com/blue-bell-ice-cream-trucks-to-be-used-as-cold-storage-body-transports-in-upcoming-event-some-speculate/