The Race to the Bottom

These days it has become too routine to turn on the news and find out that a Republican governor proposes to cure their state's budgetary problems by eliminating that which actually benefits the citizens of their state.

Chris Christie, when he is not commandeering a police helicopter to make a short trip to his son's

baseball game, keeps busy by trying to undermine the successes New Jersey has earned over the years. He told the federal government that they could keep their money and cancelled a tunnel project that would have employed hundreds and helped alleviate congestion on the existing structures linking NJ with New York City. He then proposed to cut the eligibility threshold for Medicaid to less than $6000 for a family of 3...or so that a person who works 20 hours per week at minimum wage would be too wealthy for assistance.

In Florida, Rick Scott refused money to help create a modern rail network in his state. He didn't want the jobs or the prosperity that jobs and work might bring to his state.

Go to Texas, and witness what Rick Perry and his cohorts did this legislative session. At the beginning of the session the Governor may declare some projects emergency priorities and thus getting them moved up on the list of projects to debate on the floor of the legislature. With the state facing a large deficit, the emergency priority included nothing that addressed this. Instead his emergency priorities were, an assault on women's health and reproductive rights, replicating the Arizona Papers Please law and getting guns on college campuses. Proposals that would have brought jobs, such as the proposal to allow slot machines at the state race tracks could get the same expedited treatment.

In all of these examples, the governors of these states are falling all over themselves to shower money on business interests and paying for it by gutting education, funding for nursing homes, and programs that actually work to help the citizens and attract businesses by providing a well educated workforce capable of innovating with the best on earth.

In 2012, you must ask yourself, is the person you are voting for working in your best interests, or for his wealthy patron's interests.