Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/03/07/alabama-is-home-to-the-worst-p.html
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What are you doing, Alabama?
You got the rest of the Union
To help you along
What’s going wrong?
On the train from New York to DC recently, some Bavarian tourists were ogling all the trash, bombed out buildings, rusting cars, graffiti, etc. (What are you doing New Jersey?) I asked them what they made of it. They said: “Everyone in Europe knows America is the richest third-world country.” Ouch.
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I wonder where Canada’s native communities are on this. That is a national shame.
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Alabama!? Wrong! I can’t accept that!
It has to be Mississippi.
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Alabama receives three times as much from the federal government than it pays in federal taxes. Clearly we should cut off this welfare queen and allow her the dignity of pulling herself up by her own bootstraps.
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I was thinking West Virginia myself. Places there that look like Haiti.
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Somewhat remarkably, plenty of people claim to be proud of their native Alabama.
I’ve never understood pride in something inherited and not accomplished (“Irish and Proud” etc) and I understand this even less. Possibly there are two meanings of the word and I only know one.
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I think people often confuse pride with their love of the place they’re from. I’m not “proud” to be a native Alabamian, but I do love an awful lot of it, while recognizing its deep problems. It’s because I love it that the problems are painful.
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Isn’t Alabama a right to work state?
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I bet they loved rolling through Baltimore.
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A timely anniversary:
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They consistently vote for Republicans, it would violate their human rights to govern them effectively
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There’s your problem, right there (and the 22 likes it received). The rest of the world just doesn’t make that illogical leap, and people who do usually get pulled into line.
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I can only assume you’re referring to my lovely adoptive city of Baltimore – definitely the roughest patch of the NE Corridor. That is The Wire.
Kind of glad it’s just out there in the open when you roll through on the train. Better to know what our country is for many people, than utterly shut it out, right?
I do love Baltimore though, it’s such a great town. I mean shit, William Gibson talks about Case and Molly getting crabs in Baltimore in Neuromancer. That’s where Gerald Chin’s office was located. Even in his latest The Peripheral, the father behind the antagonist was referenced as being back in Baltimore. So we have the cyberpunk thing going on, right? But it’s great, a very good city for bohemians, so-to-speak. There’s even some cats putting on techno parties periodically at dive bars, ha! And Hampden is quite a scene. I dig it.
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Richard Shelby has been a US Senator since 1987.
Jeff Sessions was a US Senator since 1997 until becoming Attorney General.
Their representatives:
Bradley Byrne R (2013–present)
Martha Roby R (2011–present)
Mike D. Rogers R (2003–present)
Robert Aderholt R (1997–present)
Mo Brooks R (2011–present)
Gary Palmer R (2015–present)
Terri Sewell D (2011–present)
So their ‘voice’ in Congress has been around for a while and still the state is in poverty.
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spit-take.gif
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There was a fairly thick layer of sarcasm in there. The irony of the fact that practically single red state but Texas is a net drain on the national economy while Republicans insist that welfare is only for “productive members of society” is not lost on…anybody but Republicans in the US, really 
Of the top 10 states least dependent on federal funding, only 2 (Kansas and Utah) leaned Republican, and as I understand it Kansas is pretty borderline and can’t be said to be solidly red after their last governor. Of the 10 most dependent, only 2 lean Democrat, Maine and New Mexico. The methodology being used was a weighted score comprised of how much of the state’s annual revenue came from the federal government, how much money people get from the federal government vs how much they pay in tax, and how many are employed directly by the federal government.
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And Utah prefers that its poor join the Mormon church and have their lives directed by the Bishop.
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