Agreed about red and blue states...not so sure I agree about food production.
I'm not presently a farmer, but come from a farming family. I grew up on a dairy farm now owned by my brother. My extended family owns/owned various types of farms. Many of them have sold to corporate farms over the years. We're in a midwestern state that used to be solidly red, but has occasionally gone blue. Like most families, we run the gamut from one extreme to the other. My observation of the other farming families is the same.
I believe that most people choose a political party based on 2-3 big issues. Very few people agree 100% with any given party platform. For some people that's based in religion, for some it is based in their livelihood. If you depend on oil production, you're going to support more drilling. If you are producing opiates, you're not going to favor regulation of the pharmaceutical industry.
In agriculture, we depend on the land. We've been talking about climate change and changing growing seasons since I was a kid. When your whole year depends on very specific weather events, like the last frost, or spring rains, or first frost, you pay very close attention. It's a given amongst farmers, especially multi-generational ones that the climate is changing, and it's changing rapidly. We depend on clean water. When regulations limiting runoff are lifted, or fracking contaminates an aquifer, we notice.
In my experience, most of us don't care who is boinking who, or what bathroom you use. Some do, and they might vote based on that...but many of us have a hard time voting for the party that actively tries to harm our family's livelihood.
I suppose the one point that you do have is that most food is produced by big corporations, and those corporations might benefit financially from republican policies...but it is not sustainable. Those CEOs are out to make a buck, not have a legacy in the land that they can pass to their grand kids.
Wrong. That's where cattle feed is grow. Most of it is unfit for human consumption. The rest of the land we subsidize to NOT grow corn. It's a fixed market where if we stopped the heavy farm subsidies and tariff protections, the midwest couldn't begin to compete on a global market.
Wrong. That's where cattle feed is grow. Most of it is unfit for human consumption. The rest of the land we subsidize to NOT grow corn. It's a fixed market where if we stopped the heavy farm subsidies and tariff protections, the midwest couldn't begin to compete on a global market.
"According to the U.S Geological Services the Central Valley supplies eight percent of U.S. agricultural output and produces 1/4 of the Nation’s food, including 40 percent of the Nation’s fruits, nuts and other table foods."
The Central Valley is often looked past. It doesn’t seem like much. What it does, not only for California, but for the rest of the country–and world–doesn’t seem to be acknowledged. When someone thinks of California they do n...
So what if some parts of California are red? We're talking about states seceding. What, do you think every red county in every blue state is also going to secede, creating about a million border entry points?
California creates an awful lot of food, it's true. It's also as blue as they come. So not only do you not get the economic output of the cities, you also don't get the food from the meth-ass hick parts of the state.
What you do get, in your infinite wisdom, is bottom-feeder garbage like Alabama, West Virginia, Wyoming, and all of the other low-education, low-literacy, obese-dominant nowheres.
National divorce? Bring it on. I'd love it.
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So what if some parts of California are red? We're talking about states seceding. What, do you think every red county in every blue state is also going to secede, creating about a million border entry points?
Idiot in the Room thinks that 51% red vote give reds the right to force not only the 49% blue voters, and also the 30-40% of non-voters, to be slaves to the decisions made the 1 out of 3 people. There is not area in the Central California values that is 100% red voters. There is not such place in the U.S.
dude, just leave the board. Your 87 IQ isn't the 150 that you think it is. You're in over your head and making a fool of yourself. California is the agricultural capital of the US along with Silicon Valley and everything else that the state has. Without California, you inbred morons in the red states would be bankrupt.
WHEN we are forced to choose between 80-something year old Biden and 80-something year old Trump, I think both sides will realize how ludicrous this has become. It boggles my mind that these will be the candidates, again.
It's the definition of insanity. Both candidates are pretty strongly disliked within their party. Both have no intention of governing or fixing any issues. Both are incredibly corrupt (in different ways), old and can't speak and come off as illiterate. I predict during the Republican primary that all republicans will drop out and support one candidate (not Trump) and make it a 1v1 race.
If only they were as enlightened as you think you are in 1861...
These things don't happen because they are great for the economy they happen when people feel there's no other choice.
If people do not have representation in the government they will not want to be a part of that government. That's what the Revolution was about. That's what the Civil War was about. Pretending it could never happen again is absurd.
Hey, genius: Was the civil war a peaceful "national divorce" like your Trumper friends are imagining? Or was it chaos and bloodshed that set the economy back decades and made us vulnerable to foreign adversaries? I didn't say it couldn't happen; I said it's a very stupid idea.
Who do you think doesn't have representation in our government? Obviously you're not talking about DC or PR or people being disenfranchied by red states, so are you under the impression that rural Trumpers, who have outsized representation at the federal level and a bought-and-paid-for Supreme Court, actually have NO representation? That they are like the slaves in 1860? Time to grow up and get a grip.
Conservatives have already lost the right to protest. That's what the Antifa thugs with pipes and black masks are here to enforce. They aren't different from the various Nazi and Fascist thugs of the 1930s in Europe. The right to vote is also questionable in some areas. When you lose your rights, you lose the hope that anything can improve.
Blue states don't support the red states. It's hard to put an Air Force base with a 10,000 foot runway in the middle of New York City, so they are stuck where there is more space. Missile silos, jails, garbage dumps, and nuclear power plants (and their waste sites) aren't "support".
I feel the US is more segregated now than in the 1980s. Not officially, like in the 1950s, but by people moving away from the urban areas to less diverse neighborhoods.
Look at the insults and the nastiness in this thread. That's why people are (foolishly, in my view) imagining the idea of a divorce. I moved from a solidly blue to a fairly red county in Maryland. I'm sure the average income in the blue county was much higher. But, I took early retirement to escape the bad schools, crime, and general nastiness to get to a much nicer place to live. After a while, I realized that I was a poor husband and father to make my family stay there.
Agriculture is largely funded at the state level. That's a big part of the reason why notoriously red Texas has seven times the farmable land as California but only produces half the food. Stay in your lane and tell us the number of "mass murders" that occurred in Chicago today because you are embarrassing yourself little dude.
Wrong. That's where cattle feed is grow. Most of it is unfit for human consumption. The rest of the land we subsidize to NOT grow corn. It's a fixed market where if we stopped the heavy farm subsidies and tariff protections, the midwest couldn't begin to compete on a global market.
While I 1000% agree that adult in the room is an idiot…what do you think we do with the cattle that eat that corn? It’s all human food in the end.
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