The Land of Lost Content

Politics
#1

Here’s a wistful article suggesting that California could be “flipped” to the GOP.

It’s a nice dream, but not, I think, realistic. Unfortunately.

But then again, strange things do happen. And there’s one paragraph in it that surprised me:

"When running the numbers, realigning California isn’t that far-fetched. Not generally acknowledged is the fact that more voters in California in 2020 supported Trump—over 6 million—than in any other state. More than Texas. More than Florida.

Well, California is the most populous state, so …

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#2

Yes, just as with other nutcase states, it is often the big cities that overwhelm the electorate that is conservative. I think in Maryland, there is Baltimore city and county and then 3 or 4 more counties that just outvote the rest. And, of course, Maryland is home to a lot of people, who work in DC, as is Virginia.

And this is why a National Divorce or civil war is very problematic.

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#3

Yes, if only the country could just divorce itself from all the big cities, we’d probably have it solved.

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#4

Liz, I think that the issue of the power of big cities is crucially important. The cities are now like states, putting the Framers’ federalist balance of power between States and Nation out of whack. Some cities have granted powers to themselves that are beyond those granted by the constitution to the States or the Federal government.
I am trying to find legal/political opinion on how the power of cities must be constrained. If you come across anything helpful, please post it.

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#5

Well, since they carry water for the Left and Democrats, because they believe they will always have the black voters to happily continue supporting the black elected leaders, they control how the money is spent.

The funding for education in the counties is a real handicap for choosing local control over public education instead of state/federal control. The only recourse is for counties to stop taking that funding, and only a couple of counties could do that in my state, and we are one of them. It has been proposed year after year to tell the state to take their funding and shove it. This term it might actually come to that…fingers crossed.

The state under big city control gets to decide what funding goes where, and will take funding that is supposed to be a pass through, and keep it for other purposes, and if a county pisses them off, they will withhold pass through funds. This is all to the detriment of the county citizens, their projects, their health and safety departments, their county roads and bridges…everything. So it is a very, very hard thing to do; to refuse to comply and then lose the funding that is needed, sometimes desperately by the poorer counties.

I guess the bottom line is city voters have to vote differently, but so far they have not.

I think the only way is political, Claire. Republicans and Conservatives barely have a voice in our state, even when we had a RINO as governor, Larry Hogan. We are doomed with Wes Moore’s two terms.

Our former governor, Erlich, was a one-term Republican, as most have been in recent history, and he moved out of the state finally. Hogan was in two terms only because he went along with the powerful Democrats that actually have run the state for decades. But this is just my information about my state.

Yet, if you take a look at some Red states, you will find that the Legislature is Progressive, and that is shocking.

I hope you find a legal opinion on that problem, but there is such corruption in the cities, I am not sure it would matter.

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