Sean Hannity:
The states are now fighting and battling against their own federal government. Same thing with individuals. If you live in a state like New York, New Jersey, California [or] one of these high-tax states [where] 60-plus cents of every dollar goes to taxes, you’ll say, ‘What the hell am I doing this for?’
What am I doing this for? That question is asked every time a politician proposes a spending cut—then gets eviscerated for it. There's a reason that Republicans are loath to propose specific cuts, and that's because "what am I doing this for" tends to be answered with a "oh, cool. Don't cut that!"
But this isn't just Hannity railing against taxes, since that's what Republicans do every day of the year. This is about Hannity predicting that if those states don't start doing something about those taxes, that secession is in the cards! Yup. Hannity believes that California, which just passed two ballot initiatives raising taxes, will want to secede because of taxes. Or something.
All the gory details, below the fold.
A lot of people are moving. … I noticed that Bobby Jindal moved to remove his state income tax. He’s not stupid. You know what’s going to happen in Louisiana? The same thing that is happening in Texas and Florida — their populations are soaring. They’re doing a lot better. State governments are fine. They’re surviving. They don’t have the property taxes they do in New York, which is obscene. In New York, you just pay and pay and pay and pay.
Sure, people in New York pay and pay and pay ... yet there's a reason why New York City is a global center for both business, diplomacy and culture, while Louisiana, Texas, and Florida aren't. The kind of infrastructure that allows New York to host Wall Street or for California to host both Hollywood and Silicon Valley doesn't come cheap. And people are willing to pay—both in cost of living (like real estate) and in the tax burden.
States with lower taxes may soon decide they want to stop shouldering the burden of states with higher taxes, Hannity warned.
Shit. Look at the map above. Yes, the data is dated, but spending trends haven't changed much since. Fact is, every single one of the top donor states is Blue. Seven of the top 10 moocher states are Red. Indiana, Texas and Georgia are the only Red states to send more money to D.C. than it gets back.
So yeah, states like Louisiana can try and cut their income taxes because "high tax" New Jersey and Minnesota and Illinois and New York are subsidizing their asses. And that's the big irony, isn't it? The smaller the federal government, the tougher budgetary pressures these Red states would face. And that's before the next hurricane hits.
People that are fed up with a power hungry, radicalized, abusive federal government intruding into every aspect of our lives. People are going to say they’re fed up, and states are going to want more liberty and more freedom. They’re not going to want to tax their citizens to death anymore. If this pattern continues and gets worse and worse and worse, I can see at some point the states saying, ‘Forget it. I don’t want to be a part of this union anymore.
Freedom to marry? Freedom from gun violence? Freedom to receive quality health care? Of course not. These conservatives claim to love America, but what they really love is their asshole America, one that's designed to favor the wealthy, male, powerful and white. Yet the American mainstream has rejected that vision in five of the last six presidential elections, and the only way Republicans win anymore is via undemocratic constructs like the Electoral College (Bush 2000) or congressional gerrymandering (U.S. House 2012).
Real Americans love America for what it is, so you won't see New York or California or Illinois talking secession anytime soon. It's the right-wing yokels in places like Louisiana and Alabama and Texas who talk big about quitting on America. And sure, that's their prerogative.
But they should spare us the faux patriotic bullshit, because America is what Americans say it is. And if conservatives can't handle that and threaten secession, then there's literally nothing more un-American than that.