WNC's GOP post-helene self-own

The following is my verbose response to a post from a former student. He remarked on the irony that folks in WNC who had long voted for federal cuts and who were supportive of DOGE's destruction of FEMA were complaining that the federal government was not responsive to their needs. It set me off and I troll-flooded his feed. Then I wend back and deleted the comments but they seemed worth keeping someplace. So here we are. [Late February 2025] Lloyd Benson Another comment does a good thing in trying to understand the attitudes of many (though far from all) folks in WNC as hurricane relief unfolded. They identify (1) gov't corruption (2) the desire to shrink the workforce because of the massive federal debt, and (3) Folks barely scraping by who conclude they could spend money better than the Feds can. My short answer is that some of these are true, some of these are things people believe because bad actors have disproportionate control of WNC's information channels, and most of these are things that the current party in power were the primary creators for, both in NC and nationally. Lloyd Benson (1) All governments, private sector firms, non-profits, and churches, have ethical or corruption problems. We are humans. However, if you look at the state by state corruption indices, states that do the best job providing social support for kids and the elderly, invest the most in education, and do best at public health, have the smallest problems with government corruption. N.C. does OK here (down at 41st worst) but the folks who run our national government are from Louisiana, the Dakotas, and other most corrupt states. This was the party that brought us the corruption of Citizen's United. Note, too, that WNC consistently votes some of the most ethically challenged people into Congress, including Russian bank guy Charles Taylor, Vote fraudster and election stealer Mark Meadows, nutty Maddy Cawthorne, and PEP funds grabber Chuck Edwards. We have met the enemy and he is us in WNC, as Pogo would say. Lloyd Benson (2a) Yes, we are spending money we don't have. But that, too, is disproportionately the result of policies enacted by the folks people in WNC keep voting into office. 2/3ds of the federal debt in the last quarter century has been the result of revenue declines relative to GDP. In FY2000 revenues were 20% of GDP. Since then, largely because of tax cuts, revenue has averaged just 16.7% We borrowed the rest. Trump alone added $6 trillion in debt from his TCJA of 2017, and is planning to add $4T more. Moreover, the largest increases in spending since FY2000 have been for defense and veterans, compensation increases to health providers, and interest payments, The dominant party in WNC voted enthusiastically for all of that. Lloyd Benson (2b) Research has shown over and over that voter perceptions of excessive spending are highly correlated with racial resentment. If you have been led to believe (wrongly, it turns out) that most government spending goes to Black people who won't work, then you tend to vote for candidates who encourage that sort of false witness dog whistling, White replacement theory, etc. Consider how few folks in WNC were bothered when Trump's FEMA failed Puerto Rico (predominantly People of Color) so evilly. From Jesse Helms to Rep. Edwards, dog whistle race resentment has been a top pathway to success at the ballot box. Lloyd Benson (2c) Something like 2/3ds of federal civilian employees work for Defense, Homeland Security, or the Va. Do you really want to fire all the nuclear watchdogs, forest fire preventers and firefighters, communicable disease trackers, USDA food safety teams, and the inspector generals who police government waste and corruption? That would be idiotic. You are not going to cut your way to prosperity by eliminating jobs. Note, too, that the average number of civilian employees per congressional district has fallen to about 70 percent of its 1990s levels. If government is not responding quickly, it is because there are fewer staffers out there doing the job. Wait 45 minutes to get someone at Social Security to answer the phone? That's entirely due to a quarter of a century of GOP staffing cuts. Lloyd Benson (3a) I understand and can appreciate the desire of folks on the edge of household budget survival to want to have tax cuts. Me too. But every dollar of tax cuts right now will have to be borrowed. If you get a tax cut now, your grandkids will have to pay higher taxes to pay off the federal debt. Lloyd Benson (3b) There is a strong correlation between GOP control of states and the percentage of the population in those states with high levels of non-mortgage debt, high levels of medical debt, high levels of medical debt bankruptcies, and unpayable credit card debts. Since the 1990s, the GOP blocked or tried to block every serious attempt to get control of our medical debt problem. In the early 1990s, US medical expenses and US health outcomes were largely in line with the other advenced nations. Now our our costs are far worse, and our outomes far worse, than most other nations. If North Carolina were a country, we would rank 83d in the world in life expectancy. Folks in NC voted for the folks whose policies have drowned the people of WNC in debt, even pre-Helene. Lloyd Benson (3c) Over and over again during the last few election cycles, folks here in WNC were warned that if the GOP got into power that we would end up bankrupting the nation to line the pockets of millionaires. Each year we borrow at least *$115 Billion* in federal debt to give federal tax subsidies to millionaires, inheritance trust fund kids, and profitable corporations. $115B for just them, not you. If you think borrowing billions of your tax dollars to give Amazon or Apple or UnitedHealth billions in taxpayer subsidized higher profits is a good idea, then, well, you might be a WNC voter, it turns out. We voted in our own suffering.