It's Not A Good Idea To Live In A Red State

...blue-state residents can expect to live more than four years longer than their red-state counterparts Paul Krugman (12/2/2019)

One irony about climate change is that some states hit worst — Florida, Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi — have climate-denying leaders. But when a hurricane hits they’re at the trough demanding FEMA support. The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market By Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway
Compared to states where abortion is accessible, states that have banned, are planning to ban, or have otherwise restricted abortion have fewer maternity care providers; more maternity care “deserts”; higher rates of maternal mortality and infant death, especially among women of color; higher overall death rates for women of reproductive age; and greater racial inequities across their health care systems.
The Commonwealth Fund

Abortion Bans Correlate With Children Losing Health Care Coverage (4/30/2024)

Their States Banned Abortion. Doctors Now Say They Can't Give Women Potential Lifesaving Care. (2/26/2024)

In Red States, ‘Gun Reform’ Means Making It Easier To Buy And Carry Guns (5/2023)

The American Human Development Index (AHDI) allows for a state-by-state assessment of critical factors like income, education, and health. When we calculated the average AHDI for the red states — those won by Donald Trump — it was much lower than the average AHDI for blue states. In fact, by way of international comparisons, the blue states won by Hillary Clinton have a human development index similar to the Netherlands, while the red states have an AHDI that resembles Russia’s. Red States, Blue States: Two Economies, One Nation

If more people voted ...

While rural Americans often tell reporters that they feel neglected and ignored by big-city coastal elites, the people preventing them from getting health care aren’t in New York or D.C., they’re in their own state capitals. And these state politicians hold power in large part thanks to the strong Republican leaning of rural voters. Self-Inflicted Medical Misery, Red America’s homemade rural health crisis. (6/24/2019)
One irony about climate change is that some states hit worst — Florida, Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi — have climate-denying leaders. But when a hurricane hits they’re at the trough demanding FEMA support. The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market By Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway
Over the past year, more than 36 States have introduced extreme classroom censorship laws banning books and outlawing conversations about race and gender in public education and pulling books from school library shelves. America's Censored Classrooms (8/17/2022)
Now in red states, attacks from the state legislature, the governors — people elected to serve our country — are damaging higher education and its role as a public good in a democracy. These bills are being turned out at a fever pitch and they are very damaging, not only to higher ed, but to democracy. Education in a democracy is essential. You have to educate voters; you have to have experts who can criticize the government or expose corruption. ... The bills are being drafted in right-wing think tanks funded by dark money. It’s a well-funded, well-orchestrated, decades-long campaign. It’s not just springing up out of nowhere since the language in the bills is very similar.
Irene Mulvey, president of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), the organization that has long promoted the benefits of faculty tenure and intellectual freedom. By the AAUP’s count, there have been more than 50 such bills in 23 states. (6/17/2023) Vox
It is astounding to me that attaining a quality higher education is becoming a red or blue state issue Dr Liz Leininger

Billion-dollar prisons: why the US is pouring money into new construction (10/28/2023)

What Republicans are doing to Wisconsin is a warning sign to all Americans (9/13/2023)

These 10 states have not expanded Medicaid (3/23/2023)


...movement Conservatives that had taken over the Republican Party ... an ideology that permitted wealth to concentrate at the top, just as the defense of antebellum slavery had been. The Republican Party in the twenty-first century adhered to the position it had organized in the nineteenth century to fight. And like their southern predecessors in the 1850s, Movement Conservatives in 2004 were boasting that “Republican hegemony” would last “for years, maybe decades.” Like their predecessors, they were wrong. A looming crises soon revealed that their devotion to an ideology divorced from reality meant they no longer knew how to govern. Heather Cox Richardson: To Make Men Free, a History of the Republican Party.
There is no question in my mind anymore that the Republican Party has reconfigured itself as a Confederate party. Not because it is so largely white, though it is. Not because it is largely Southern, though it is that, too. And not because it fights so hard for vestigial accoutrements like the Confederate battle flag. The Republican Party is a Confederate party, I think, because that is its view of what the government of the United States should be. It is written quite clearly in the party's platform that the Republicans adopted last week in Tampa: "The Republican party... stands for the rights of individuals, families, faith communities. institutions — and of the States which are their instruments of self-government." Charles Pierce: Esquire Magazine 9/2012

States that did not expand Medicaid

Best and Worst States to Work in America 2022

The Real Threat to Freedom Is Coming From the States (5/26/2023)

'The point is intimidation': Florida teachers besieged by draconian laws (5/13/2023)

Maternal Mortality by State 2023

Here’s the real reason the EPA doesn’t want to test for toxins in East Palestine (3/2/2023)

Atlanta shooting part of alarming US crackdown on environmental defenders (2/2/2023)

Can Anything Be Done to Assuage Rural Rage? (1/26/2023) Paul Krugman NYT

Child poverty rates highest in states that haven’t raised minimum wage (1/4/2023)

Can politics kill you ? It Sure Can. (12/22/2022)

Abortion on the ballot: here are the US states voting on a woman’s right to choose (10/11/2022)

State Legislatures Are Torching Democracy (8/6/2022) Jane Mayer in the New Yorker

Americans with a bachelor's degree or higher in each U.S. state

GOP States are poorer

GOP is the party of States rights, strongest in the former Confederacy, where armed, white, Christian nationalism opposed desegregation and federal civil rights law. On 1/6 followers even carried the confederate flag into the capital.

States rights propel a beggar thy neighbor, race to the bottom: competing for lowest taxes, worst labor laws, most stingy social programs, lax environment regulation, keep most people down. schools are privatized for discrimination, books banned, schools censored, guns everywhere, minority voting suppressed, gerrymandering assures that government is not representative. Wealth disparities soar with corporate welfare, tax cuts for the wealthy, and corruption, which kills democracy, but the GOP is fine with that.

Republican States are the most gerrymandered, do not represent the majority of their people, and send radical representation to Congress.

Republican States are poorer, more polluted, have stricter voting rights, looser gun laws, harsher abortion regulation, poorer healthcare, worse virus response, lower education levels, higher religiosity, and worse right-wing government. GOP claims they don't like government, which explains why they are bad at it. They want to take control anyway, by any means necessary.

GOP are climate deniers, probably because they are on the take from fossil fuel interests, yet red States are likely to experience the worst climate damage whether heat, drought, fires, floods devastating storms, or rising sea levels. Ultimately, we will all be impacted, but it is Republicans who are insisting on more fossil fuel use, and refusing to mitigate the damage.

States that refused Medicid Expansion

The US is number 1 in prison population, mostly people of color who become slave labor are very profitable, and in mostly red States lose the right to vote, yet another form of voter suppression.

Red States are leaders in imposing the death penalty.

Death Penalty: Executions by State.

Former Confederate States, now GOP, loosen gun laws, and it appears another Civil War is on the horizon. Texas is considering secession. GOP turns a blind eye to mass shootings, violence, and is willing to incite insurrection.

There is a pattern in red States: voting rights, gun rights, social programs, women's rights, healthcare, pandemic, public institutions, pollution, union rights, school indoctrination, higher education, library, book bans, harsh policing, all become worse. Don't let your blue State turn red.

Guns For Everyone
There is no question in my mind anymore that the Republican Party has reconfigured itself as a Confederate party. Not because it is so largely white, though it is. Not because it is largely Southern, though it is that, too. And not because it fights so hard for vestigial accoutrements like the Confederate battle flag. The Republican Party is a Confederate party, I think, because that is its view of what the government of the United States should be. It is written quite clearly in the party's platform that the Republicans adopted last week in Tampa: "The Republican party... stands for the rights of individuals, families, faith communities. institutions — and of the States which are their instruments of self-government." Charles Pierce: Esquire Magazine 9/2012
The Jim Crow South was upended by the civil rights revolution. Yet even in defeat, its language of oligarchy and its opposition to progressive political and economic policies through an appeal to racism has been adopted by the modern Republican Party. The Oligarchs’ Revenge, The making of the modern right. (10/6/2020)

States With Abortion Bans Are Among Least Supportive for Mothers and Children (7/28/2022)

Links

The GOP is a far right minority, dependent on suppressing opposing voters such as racial minorities. 1/6 hearings elaborated on intimidation of election workers, election interference, and the plot to overthrow the government.

As of May 4, at least 34 bills with restrict­ive provi­sions are moving through 11 state legis­latures. Over­all, lawmakers in 39 states have considered at least 393 restrict­ive bills for the 2022 legis­lat­ive session. Since the beginning of 2021, 18 states have passed 34 restrictive voting laws, which can dispro­por­tion­ately affect voters of color. Brennan Center

The US is on a fast track to theocracy now that the GOP Supreme Court, citing a precedent from a judge who oversaw witch trials, is about to overturn 50 years of settled law to remove women’s rights. Don’t think it ends there.

GOP States are leaders in the effort to overturn Roe, they are also at the bottom of women’s health statistics. Similar to runaway slaves women may not be able to travel, could be treated as criminals, and so might their doctors or assistants. Vigilante enforcement is possible law in Texas.

GOP is passionate about keeping unions down, but dangle incentives for corporations like Amazon .

Republicans will tell you that they are better stewards of the economy, but responsible economists, and history should tell you they are not. Paul Krugman is a leading critic.

Republican economics are a scam. Tax cuts are part of a stealth extraction of wealth from most of the people, and because of their policy wealth disparities are at record highs. Destruction of the progressivity of the tax system by Republicans has done immense damage to the economy. Extreme wealth disparities, a feature of late capitalism, destroy democracy and leave many in poverty.

Those tax cuts trickle down to reduce social programs, increase tuition, cut State workers, corrode infrastructure, and more. Flint was not an accident.

Privatization has made US healthcare the most expensive with mediocre outcomes, a leading cause of bankruptcy, and is downright dangerous in a pandemic. The GOP made great efforts to repeal the ACA without revealing any plan for its replacement. Some GOP States denied Medicaid which probably resulted in 1000’s of unnecessary deaths.

The GOP has attacked all the supports of democracy. As the 1/6 hearings proceed, notice elections are particularly at risk in red States. 

Short-sighted politics is distracted by nationalism, fear, greed, divisiveness, misinformation, even propaganda from right wing media.

People voting GOP are not voting in their own self interest. Inadequate social programs result from GOP small government, privatization, deregulation, corporate supremacy, and union busting.

Firearm Mortality By State (CDC)

Stay out of red States
"When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag, carrying a cross." Sinclair Lewis (1935)

Most known challenges are trans-national: climate, global warming, population, inequality, pollution, migration, pandemic, nukes, but Republicans don’t recognize them. Without change, humanity won’t last long.

Some right wing governments like Syria even make war on their own people to retain power, so in some countries they are near impossible to remove.

Right wing government is never good, but it is ascendant in much of the world. In many countries, including the US, it is financed by Russia and other autocrats, who benefited a lot from electing the last President

outlook.htm

forecast.htm

Here is a map showing teen birth rates by State. Guess which States are Republican.

Teen Birth Rate by State
Republicans are driving a very bad bargain: "we are in the process of destroying a great many things which are real air, soil, water, energy, resources, other species, our health for the sake of something that exists chiefly in our imagination: money. from DeclineOfTheEmpire.com

Bibliography

How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America Heather Cox Richardson

Books on Republicans

See Books on Fascism.