> It's by no means perfect but, yeah, for the most part it works pretty well and relatively honestly.
Its current primary function appears to be taking in tax dollars from regular middle class people and transferring them to corporate campaign donors and special interest groups, or whatever the people in swing districts want to the detriment of everybody else. That this may not legally be corruption doesn't mean that it's doing something good or that we wouldn't be better off on net if it would simply stop doing that.
> Always room for improvement--but the critical difference is that, when it is not, there...
...is nowhere to hide because whatever harm or corruption is implemented at the national level can't be avoided by moving to another neighborhood or another city.
> And even were it not: the unquestioned (and, tbh, often profoundly racist when not merely corrupt) localized governmental structures in question are still wrong, so attempting to sandbag criticism of them by pointing at the federal government, regardless of its status, smells a mite bit fishy.
When something is wrong and someone proposes as a solution something that not only doesn't remove the problem but actually makes it worse, they're not saying that the problem isn't a problem, they're saying that the "solution" isn't a solution.
If you look at the federal budget, most of it goes to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. So by the numbers, the federal government's primary function is to take money from working people, and transfer it to the states and the retired.
Transferring money "to the states" while requiring them to not only spend it in a specific way but add even more money to that pot first if they want to get it at all is in reality transferring money from the states.
And given that Florida is disproportionately retirees and a major swing state, all you're doing is proving the point.
Its current primary function appears to be taking in tax dollars from regular middle class people and transferring them to corporate campaign donors and special interest groups, or whatever the people in swing districts want to the detriment of everybody else. That this may not legally be corruption doesn't mean that it's doing something good or that we wouldn't be better off on net if it would simply stop doing that.
> Always room for improvement--but the critical difference is that, when it is not, there...
...is nowhere to hide because whatever harm or corruption is implemented at the national level can't be avoided by moving to another neighborhood or another city.
> And even were it not: the unquestioned (and, tbh, often profoundly racist when not merely corrupt) localized governmental structures in question are still wrong, so attempting to sandbag criticism of them by pointing at the federal government, regardless of its status, smells a mite bit fishy.
When something is wrong and someone proposes as a solution something that not only doesn't remove the problem but actually makes it worse, they're not saying that the problem isn't a problem, they're saying that the "solution" isn't a solution.