Much like Idaho, Montana or Wyoming, Alaska has a small town mentality. Certainly has some charm, but it also produces some idiotic thinking as well. (The militia movement, the AIP, etc.) A full vetting and some common sense would have told a smart candidate to look elsewhere for a running mate. Sarah Palin's fitness for governor doesn't look so hot given the current investigations and her own quirky ideas, but I can see how she would fit into the Alaskan food chain.

So, the urban and urbane food chain is so different. It has is gang bangers, crime rates that are the worst of all First World countries, corruption like New Orleans or Chicago (remember the corrupt judges), terrible schools, rude citizens, graffitti, and excuse me "Urban Folk Art". Of course, this passes for high culture, if you can hide behind a moat filled with arcane zoning laws and padlocked doors away from the hoi polloi.

These small population states also have something else in common: They preach self reliance to the rest of the country while simultaneously collection $1.10+ in federal money for every $1 they pay in taxes.

Living off the Federal teat while sneering at their benefactors: another small population state trait.

<link>

I wonder what the numbers would show if defense spending was excluded. An Air Force base in South Dakota (arguably) benefits the citizens of New Jersey.

I don't know the answer and I'm not that interested in looking it up, but I wouldn't be surprised if that evened things out a bit.

Steve:

I just took another look at your link. You're aware, I'm sure, that the numbers you cite are 15 years old? Why, that's right in the middle of Democratic control over both houses of Congress and the White House!

Will Obama make this terrible injustice better or worse, I wonder.

The people of New Jersey cold be just as well defended by the air base in New Jersey (Maguire) as the one in South Dakota. Except that small state reps have lobbied for locating DOD installations in all their states as local jobs programs. They appear in the totals of dollars in/dollars out to which I linked.

The link I showed was indeed older. If you do your own search you will see that the Republican Congress has only increased those #'s, even if Conservatives try to defend Republicans by pretending that everything went bad in the past two years.

I cannot say if Barak Obama will make the situation better or worse. However since John McCain has subordinated himself to the Republican Establishment in order to be appointed the nominee, I can predict the John McCain would just treat the federal handouts to Republican states as "business as usual". Even if he does attach "Maverick" to ever single paragraph he utters. He is 90% aligned with George W. Bush, who enver saw a Republican spending program he didn't like. that will not change.

Here's a newer link: <link>

Interesting conclusion from the text:

This state-by-state variation in federal tax

burdens per capita is primarily due to the difference

in per capita income among the state.

So I was wrong about the defense spending component. And I guess you're re-thinking your support of the progressive income tax.

It is the natural resources that the more populated states take away from the less populated and ergo the less politically represented states that is the real treasure being plundered. Federal funds...what a wacky way to make an economic argument. What does it cost to have separate police forces for schools, gang control units, corrupt labor unions in bed with local pols and organized crime, and the even more corrupt Municipal Worker's unions that demand high pay for tax supported drones to do little about nothing, and the cost of the rest of the culture rot so prevalent in urban USA? You metropolitan barbarians are an expensive breed to feed, clothe, house, police and yes, nurture.