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Igel

(37,735 posts)
3. Yeah, actually.
Fri Jul 3, 2026, 12:26 PM
Jul 3

Elections are up to the states; there is no actual election for a federal position--we vote for state reps to the EC, not for the president. We vote for state reps to the House and Senate. Unlike Germany, for instance, where the states are administrative divisions and all power flows down from the central government, we're a bunch of states that together form a federal government. Not as loose as during the Confederation, but certainly flipped from how European countries are constituted. The good news is that if you don't like how your state does things, there are 49 others that might suit you better.

Speech has never and can never be equitable. I live in a city, I can stand and rant on the street corner and maybe reach thousands of people. I live in a rural area, I can stand on a street corner and maybe see 5 people all day. Free press? That's fine if you own a press. You don't own a press? Maybe you can borrow somebody else's, but that depends on the 'somebody else'. If you have money you can pay to use the other guy's--but then we're back to that apparently novel idea that money is somehow speech, as though that wasn't true all along. Got no press and no money, you get to find a street corner.

Even things that are 'equal' aren't. Take the SALT deduction. To really make use of it you have to have enough stuff to itemize. High state income taxes, fees, high property taxes. Texas property values are way lower than in some places in NY and California or Washington (state), we have no income tax, so SALT doesn't really help us. It does benefit people with a lot of property wealth in high-income tax blue states, however. Social Security? Purchasing power parity differences between states means that the same $ amount is worth more in some states than others. As for Medicaid and SNAP, most of the recipients don't pay much in federal income tax anyway--payroll tax, sure, but not "income tax". It's really around the 50th percentile that the household income tax stops being real close to zero.

Still, the Constitution tries to make some things clearly matters of rights that the state cannot violate or abridge because the state just protects and enables the rights to be enjoyed, the state doesn't grant them. It doesn't mention some other possible rights, and whether they were included in the 'other' category back in the late 1780s or not, ask a disinterested historian. (Oh--and good luck finding one of those these days.)

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