Money. It's about who makes/takes the money.
Generally, any mass scale stupidity that seemingly makes zero sense boils down to specific people making money. Bigger stupidity equals big financial gains
Generally, any mass scale stupidity that seemingly makes zero sense boils down to specific people making money. Bigger stupidity equals big financial gains
Well over 2m in federal funds are provided for counties in the appalachian high intensity drug trafficking area organized by a group called the appalachian regional commission and subgroup substance abuse advisory council. Those funds are then used to sponsor manufacturing industries moving to the area and keep up a substance abuse treatment grift that includes a lot of cannabis users. Often the punishment for minor drug crimes is supervised probation for a year, including the requirement of full time employment and inability to leave the area (which is known to be under performing economically as that is the criteria for ARC intervention) [0]. This creates the additional benefit of a cheap labor pool for the sponsored companies.
The entire Appalachian region (which somehow includes Mississippi and Alabama) is given 235m to achieve the goal of retaining or creating 26k jobs (9k per job).
So yea, I guess 2m state budget is nothing compared to propping up several industries in the poorest counties using some people who are essentially enslaved for cannabis use to prop up their success metrics. It is easier to extract productivity from people using a non-addictive substance than actual hard drug users or alcoholics.
[0]https://www.arc.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/FY2022-Congre...
Also, the south is ruled by Republicans, mostly, and they're all about denial. No abortions and no birth control. No public assistance--there is some, but they always seek to minimize it. No affirmative action. No BLM, since they're about All Lives Matter. No vaccines. No mask mandates. No reliable power grids. No lack of corruption at the state level (FL is off the charts corrupt... the people being bribed with zero state taxes). They're generally, bootstrap yourself into wealth like they did, even they they had privilege on their side; poor people need not apply to the American Dream. Curiously, they will ask the Federal government for a handout when they run into trouble, usually due to natural disasters, like flooding.
Texas is the only independent power grid (to which I assume your ignorance refers). The states that people refer to as the south are all actually part of the eastern grid.
Meanwhile vastly subsidized rural America, much of it in the south, is dying, because the wealth producers and job creators in those tax tax tax waste money jurisdictions are tired of sending money to people who complain about having money sent to them.
country’s*
Regardless, that’s a stat for morons to parrot (e.g. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2020/11/09/biden-v...). A county that Biden won 60/40 that produces $1 billion GDP is not $1 billion of GDP support for Biden. It’s 600 mil Biden and 400 mil Trump, and that’s under the charitable interpretation that rich people are just as likely to vote Democrat as they are Republican.