Stephan: Something very strange is taking place in the U.S., but getting very little coverage at least on the context of the trend it represents.
Corporations requiring high intelligence, as well as physicians, nurses, and female college students are all moving out of Red states to Blue states, or choosing not to go to colleges and jobs in Red states. Concurrently, as this story spells out, the weapons corporations that make the guns that kill tens of thousands of Americans each year are leaving Blue states and moving into Red states. I am going to follow closely the cultural impact of this transformation. I will say today that I predict that Red states which already have inferior social outcome data in comparison with Blue states will become even less attractive to large population groups, and the Red states, in contrast will become more violent as people in those states increasingly go around during their days armed with guns.
Feeling unwelcome in blue states, gun companies move to red ones Credit: Charles Krupa / AP
Smith & Wesson CEO Mark Smith was fed up. He was running the largest firearms manufacturer in America, based in Springfield, Mass., where it had been making weapons since 1860, and yet state lawmakers were considering a bill to ban the manufacture of AR-15-style rifles for the civilian market. The proposed law would cripple Smith’s company. Sixty percent of Smith & Wesson’s revenue came from AR-15-style guns.
So after years of flirting with the idea, Smith announced last September that Smith & Wesson was pulling up stakes and moving its headquarters from Massachusetts to Tennessee.
Deciding to leave was “extremely difficult,” Smith told investors, but “we feel that we have been left with no other alternative.”
At least 20 firearms, ammunition and gun accessory companies — including some of the industry’s biggest names, such as Beretta and Remington Arms — have moved headquarters or shifted production from traditionally Democratic blue states to Republican red ones over the past decade, relocating thousands of jobs […]
ISABEL WEBB CAREY and DREW DESILVER, Intern | Senior Writer - Pew Research Center
Stephan: Yesterday I did several articles on the masculinity issues that plague MAGAt world. Well today, here is another story on this trend, a report that is very revealing about MAGAt Republicans in Congress. Guess who owns the guns amongst Congressional members, and guess who votes against the laws designed to regulate the weapons that each year kill tens of thousands of Americans. Did you guess right?
Republicans in the United States are considerably more likely than Democrats to say they own a gun, as Pew Research Center surveys have consistently found. A similar pattern appears among members of Congress, according to a new analysis of lawmakers’ social media posts, press releases, interview transcripts and other publicly available information, as well as direct correspondence with lawmakers’ offices.
Overall, at least 110 representatives and senators in the current 117th Congress have publicly stated or otherwise confirmed that they own a gun as of Aug. 9. Around three-quarters of these confirmed congressional gun owners (85 of 110, or 77%) are members of the GOP, while the remainder (25 of 110, or 23%) are Democrats.
The partisan difference in gun ownership among members of Congress is greatest in the House, where Republicans make up 82% of confirmed gun owners (68 of 83) despite being a minority of the chamber. In the Senate, the difference is more modest: Republicans there account for 63% of […]
Stephan: Here is a report that explains why Republicans don't want the funding of the IRS increased. During the Trump reign, the IRS was rigged by cutting its budget in such a way that the uber rich, who rented the MAGAt congressional whores to see this funding decrease occurred, assisted by Trump's administration, were much less likely to be audited, whereas poor and middle-class Americans saw audits increase.
The Internal Revenue Service headquarters in Washington, D.C. Credit: Andrew Harrer / Bloomberg / Getty
The audit rate for Americans earning more than $5 million a year plunged from to just over 2% in 2019 from over 16% in 2010, according to a report from the Government Accountability Office.
The main reason for the decline, according to the report, is a lack of IRS funding.
The IRS also has seen its staffing levels fall to the same levels as 1973, despite having millions more returns to process and additional mandates to perform.
The wealthiest Americans are getting their taxes audited at a far lower rate than they were over a decade ago, due in large part to staff and funding shortages at the Internal Revenue Service, according to a new report.
The audit rate for Americans earning more than $5 million a year plunged to just over 2% in 2019 from over 16% in 2010, according to a report from the Government Accountability Office, a federal watchdog. That means only about 1 in 50 high earners were audited in 2019, […]
Stephan: One of the things that stands out for me as I watch what is occurring in the Red and Blue states as the Great Schism Trend becomes ever more pronounced is the sheer nastiness of the Red state governments. Here is an example of what I mean. In the second decade of the 21st century, what kind of person advocates disciplining children by physically beating them with a paddle? Republican MAGAts, of course.
Missouri school district revives paddling to discipline students Credit: Catherine McQueen / Moment RF / Getty
Classes started Monday for the 1,900 students in Cassville R-IV School District, about an hour west of Branson and some 15 miles from the Arkansas border. During open house, families were notified that the school board had adopted a policy in June allowing “use of physical force as a method of correcting student behavior.” Parents were handed forms to specify whether they authorize the school to use a paddle on their child, the Springfield News-Leader reported.
Formally known as corporal punishment, the disciplinary measure usually involves striking students on the buttocks with a wooden paddle. In Cassville, staff members will employ “reasonable physical force” — without a “chance of bodily injury or harm” — in the presence of a witness, according to the new policy. A teacher or principal must also send a report to the superintendent explaining the reasoning behind the punishment.
What exactly constitutes “reasonable physical force” is unclear. Superintendent Merlyn Johnson declined an interview request from […]
Stephan: For weeks now, as I have trolled through the world of MAGAt media, one the things that has stood out most strongly for me is the insecure masculinity of men in that world, their obsession with heterosexuality, and the control and subordination of women. It is very weird. In contrast, I have never given my masculinity or heterosexuality a thought, and since I was a boy have believed gender and racial equality ought to be a social given. But it is blatantly obvious from their media, and the things they write on social sites or in interviews that it is a constant issue for Republican men, whether famous men like Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Ted Cruz, or anonymous incels and Proud Boys. To such a degree that this obsessive focus on gender issues, compulsory heterosexuality, and fear of gender equality has become a powerful defining trend in American culture.
Credit: Shutterstock
Why do people who attack the gender identities and romantic and sexual affiliations of others often seem so twisted up? I suppose history tells us that it pretty much goes without saying. But we need to speak plainly about it because we are all now hyper-aware of the serious damage that damaged people can do to others — and to society.
The Republican Party long ago slipped under the sheets with the religious right to become bedfellows in the culture wars, encouraging bigots, misogynists and Christian zealots to insist that others live by their morals (or lack thereof).
This bizarre-tent party of religious grifters, p*ssy grabbers, gun polishers, closeted men, angry incels, alleged rapists and take-girls-across-the-state-line Lotharios is evangelically intolerant of the personal business of others and determined to dictate whom you can love or marry, how you should come to terms with your gender identity and how much of your reproductive future you should control. These people believe they have the right to demand that you go through your entire pregnancy even if you […]
