Lots of tax dollars from poor residents of Newark is going to build Federal highways in Utah, after all.

Your analysis misses a key point. The point really is NOT that tax dollars of wealthy liberals in blue states is going to conservatives in red states. The real point is that many states that are rich because of their past history of sound economic and social policies are subsidizing other states that are poor because of their past history of unsound economic and social policies. This is not about individual groups. This is about what kind of policies are right for the states and for the country.

The supply-side tax cutting policy loved by the charlatans in the media and the Bush admin has been tried already in many states. This kind of policy is what is partly responsible for the condition that states like Alabama face. Whether or not liberals in the blue states are rich misses the point. The point is that liberals - being a majority - have voted people into power that have made the states' citizens richer overall. This includes the conservatives in those states.

The utter irony of this whole system is conservatives in blue states clamor for economic systems that have been shown to be relative failures (from a wealth creation standpoint) in many of the red states. Not to mention that liberals in blue states are supporting an ideology that significantly enriches conservatives in their own states.

More here from Washington Mutual Group of Funds...
http://www.wmgroupoffunds.com/binary/document.pdf/DEMVSREP_9.04.r5.pdf?id=1772905116&redirected= true

Notice how the case for Republicanism (in the link above, page 2) is barebones, largely free of facts (unsurprisingly) and enriched with the glaring omission that Reagan was responsible during his tenure for the largest cumulative peacetime tax increase in American history...

And if we don't win any of those, we will not win any more Presidential elections.

I've written more about this here.

Blue Democratic states are rich.
Red Republican states are poor.
Rich blue-staters are Republicans.
Poor red-staters are Democrats.

But it is easily explained:

Cities are engines of growth, income, and jobs.
Cities (for a variety of reasons) also lean Democratic.
Thus, our Blue states generate lots of tax revenue because they have lots of cities.
Although that tax revenue comes from the richest among us, and those individuals are overwhelmingly Republicans, their money is generated by the economic dynamism of the cities; their Red wealth depends on the large Blue populations around them.  

As Democrats, we support assistance for the unemployed, the poor, the elderly, the disabled, the disadvantaged.  We set up federal programs to help do this: Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, education grants and loans, Section 8 housing, and more that account for a large share of the non-defense federal budget.  We also support military spending for our troops and their families - whether salaries, schools, or body armor.

Red states have disproportionately high numbers of the poor, the elderly, the disadvantaged.  Red states (by accidents of geography and politics) have large numbers of military personnel and families.

So it is no surprise that tax revenues from rich blue staters should be used to help poor red staters; this is a good thing.  
But it is surprising that Democrats should want to end it.

In short, although I don't like the red-state/blue-state division either, those making a lot of the money in the blue states, and thus paying a lot in taxes, still voted Democratic.  

But I think I saw a statistic showing that Republicans give more to charity as a percentage of income than Dems.  Tax credits, of course!

BTW -- have you noticed how often Bush has used the word "Capital" in his speeches and press conference since the election?

The "tipping point" where the majority goes forBush seems to be just over $50,000, which really isn't much for a two-earner family. How has Bush managed to persuade all these people that they are better off under the GOP policies?

"Values" are probably a part of it. I suspect that another part is convinving many in the middle class that they will be taxed more by the Democrats, even though Kerry pointed out again and again that he would only raise taxes on people paid more than $200,000.

Anticipating your collective answer of "no". I would ask if would be still necessary to do so, anyway? I would love to change the paradigm that material possession and consumption is at the heart of a good society. When you fight for "jobs" and "healthcare" and wages, you reinforce the idea that without the ability to command those things in the marketplace, one is somehow a non-participant in the cultural life.

Being poor and being content is one of the states of mind we ought to promote, not to win, but because it is clear that we cannot afford everyone a middle class lifestyle and still have an environment.

In a true America, leaders serve only with the consent of the governed, and that consent must be obtained by lawful elections that accurately measure the will of the voters. We shall not tolerate any violation of this fundamental principle, the SOLE moral tenet on which our nation was founded and has since relied.

The voting systems and practices used in the conduct of this past election are so clearly flawed that the results in nearly every state are wide open to corruption by systematic vote suppression, data manipulation, human and machine error, and consequently, willful fraud. The only certain result is that we can have NO confidence in how accurately they guage the will of the electorate.

We refuse to further descend into the Stalinist perversion of "democracy;" in which "Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything." Such was the clear underpinning of the 4-year-old edict of the 5 black-robed political operatives, who arrogated to themselves the perquisite of sentencing the nation by their fiat to live under appointed rule as opposed to elected leadership.

We the People, through our representatives, have set out our election laws to ensure that election results reflect OUR will. In far too many states, demonstrable errors and anomalous patterns of result have rendered the "official" tally suspect. More tragically, the systems and processes implemented by "experts" now make it impossible for us to rule out corruption without further investigation and audit.

Given the likely consequences of once again tacitly accepting corrupt results, the moral burden must now be on each state to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that their results are accurate and lawfully obtained. There is no other patriotic option.

But let us be clear, IF WE ARE UNABLE to obtain this proof under current election law, through civil and/or criminal judicial means, then we MUST RESORT to a political solution and demand that our Congress reject the electors from ANY STATE that fails to validate its results through comprehensive, apolitical investigation and audit.

Our law is intended to serve our will, not thwart it. We can never again allow a "technical" or "legal" arguments and rationalizations to trump reality as we did in 2000.

NEVER AGAIN.

_____

What We Require.

To prove that their election results were lawfully obtained and reflect the will of the voters, we demand that each state:

(1) Provide the data required to prove they did not create discriminatory barriers to voting.

Across the nation, people were forced to wait for hours to even attempt to cast their ballots. This onerous waiting time constitutes a de facto poll tax (time is money). Each state must provide data on wait times at each polling place, demographics of the registered voters served by the polling place, and the number of resources (voting machines, poll workers) assigned and working during operating hours. The burden is on the state to prove, not simply assert, that its practices were not discriminatory.  

We will not accept any argument that the discrimination would not have affected the outcome. Such arguments are a sham. Are systematic violations of voting rights OK for those who live in a state in which the margin of victory for one candidate or the other is large? Of course not! Further, if any discrimination is found to be racially based, as was the legal finding of the US Commission on Civil Right in the 2000 Florida election, such a result is unlawful, as well as being intolerably immoral and contrary to American values.

Whatever the margin of victory or number of electoral votes, if any state FAILS TO PROVE that the existence of poll-tax-lines, or any other unnecessary obstruction to voting, was not correlated with RACIAL, SOCIO-ECONOMIC, or PARTISAN STATUS of the voters, that state MUST NOT be afforded the privelege of participation in the electoral vote.

2) Provide to all responsible, professional investigators any necessary records and full access to systems and software, in order to PROVE THAT THE RESULTS WERE NOT CORRUPTED by manipulation, human or machine error, or fraud.

Acceptable investigators will be those sanctioned by any court, professional organization, political party, or other bonding entity willing to warrant their actions. These investigations must be provided the records and access required to examine:

Every tabulation system that consolidates results at any level (e.g., GEMs tabulators).

Every "black box" voting system.

Every undervote, overvote, and spoiled ballot occurance.

Every voter registration record and known voter registration agents and entities.

Every absentee ballot request, delivery record, return envelope, counted and disallowed ballot, any and all records of absentee vote and ballot disposition by any agent or entity.

Every provisional counted and disallowed provisional ballot, unfullfilled provisional ballot request, provisional ballot inventories for each polling station,  any and all records of provisional ballot disposition by any agent or entity.

ANY STATE THAT REFUSES to make every effort to successfully confirm that their published vote tallies are free from manipulation and/or error MUST BE considered morally irresponsible and acting contrary to agreed upon American values. There CAN BE NO ACCEPTABLE EXCUSE or rationalization that can compete with the restoration of confidence in our electoral process.

For such a circumstance there can be no other moral, or patriotic response than full criminal investigation and prosecution, civil pursuit of maximum remedies for damage to the body politic, and DENIAL OF THE PRIVILEGE of participation in the Electoral College for any tainted, irregularly appointed, electors who might endeavor to infect the process.

We will accept no verbal assurances, no misleading representations from partial investigations, no shifting of responsibility onto the media or the public at large, and NO DELAY OF ANY KIND.

On this there can be NO COMPROMISE of what is required of us, NO RETREAT from our historic duty, and NO SURRENDER to any agent, foreign or domestic, that would even contemplate any act of obstruction.

1. Corporate welfare, specifically farm subsidies, but also mining, timber, and energy handouts, goes disproportionately to the so-called red states. There's no reason to make it a red-blue issue, but Democrats should seize on this and make ending corporate welfare a signature issue. It's popular, and most of the people who will be against change, like lumberjacks and cattle ranchers, do not and are not going to vote to vote Dem anyway.

2. A need for greater federalism. A big part of the reason blue states pay higher taxes is that they are more urban, and therefore have a higher cost of living as well as higher salaries. So, ironically, a lower-middle class family in NJ could very well be paying taxes to subsidize a similar family in AL, or to pay farm subsidies in SD. If Democrats could trim out the above-mentioned corporate welfare and turn the money into some sort of tax cut (hopefully aimed at the low end), blue state legislatures could have a little more room to maneuver in terms of raising taxes. More money would stay in the blue states. Don't republicans want to give the states more freedom?

This got me to thinking about a couple of points in this thread. First, voting economics is perception based. People in general don't think through the numbers and how they fit into the general trend but how they feel they are doing. This is important because most people feel they are in general one or two brackets higher on the income scale then they really are. Which is why the tax the rich rhetoric filters down so far into what should be our base. Second the Blue States pay more then they get argument while true leads nowhere. It is just too complicated an argument to make to sway any voters. And that is the whole point. We can have the historically correct path to improve the general welfare, but if we can't get into power it means nothing. Once the discussion moves to averages and statistics we have lost because we get tuned out. It all devolves into bad memories of high school math classes. So the simple argument of lower taxes is all anyone hears.

We do need to make the economic self-interest argument, but we need to make it in very broad terms. We have to boil down our economic message. When Bush talks about Capital we have to talk about labor. We have to lose some of the anti-business aura we have been tagged with. We are not anti-business at all. We just don't think government should be trying to promote profit that is what after all business is all about. We think government should be promoting growth that is what leads to labor being valued. Is government in the business of money or people?