The American Kulaks

From Stacy McCain: Kulaks of New York

If you have studied Soviet history, you know that Josef Stalin waged a campaign of economic warfare against the kulaks — peasants who resisted the Bolshevik agenda of agricultural collectivization. The Democrats who control the state government of New York are doing something similar to their own “class enemies,” deliberately destroying the economy in Republican majority communities:

Since the start of the decade, a million people have moved out of New York.
For Andrew Cuomo, that’s not a problem, that’s a victory.
It has solidified his party’s hold on power, and it has reshaped the state and its culture in a fashion more congenial to his interests and agenda.
The subject comes up because of new Census Bureau numbers which show, yet again, that more people decide to move out of New York than any other state in the nation. Those move outs are so numerous that they outstrip population growth and leave the state with fewer total people. . . .
[M]ore than 40 percent of all the net population loss in America took place in New York.
Under Andrew Cuomo.
And that’s a win for him.
Because almost all of New York’s net population loss took place upstate, where values and party enrollment are in conflict with the governor and his progressive agenda.
Forty-two of New York’s 50 upstate counties have had a net loss of population in the last year. All of them were counties that voted against Andrew Cuomo in the recent gubernatorial election. . . .
There is a decade-long depopulation of upstate New York underway, and it is hard to conclude that that is anything other than a policy objective of Andrew Cuomo. In this dramatically bifurcated state,Cuomo’s efforts to make New York — in his words — “the progressive capital of the nation” require a weakening and suppression of conservative, rural and Republican upstate.

I'm not going to accuse Cuomo of trying to drive out the upstaters, but it's almost certainly true that it doesn't bother him a lick. Democratic politics are almost exclusively the politics of the urban centers, and to a lesser extent, their suburban hub, because that's where there votes come from. Fewer people upstate makes his election only slightly easier. Any competition is likely to come from a fellow democrat.

As I have written previously, the urban/rural split is, as it long has been, the fundamental issue in American politics. Cities are the location of the poor and undereducated underclass, whose votes can be purchased for a few loaves of bread. Government services make more sense in an urban environment, where transportation, water, sewage, etc services make community sense. A farm, or even a less dense suburb is unlikely to have these services covered by the government.

Take us, for example. In our community, water is a local co-op, which originated as a private company (which went broke because government regulations forbid them from raising rates before making upgrades), sewage is handled by septic tank, and public transportation is minimal, a "short bus" which rides the circuit of the county on a very skimpy schedule (although a pretty efficient commuter bus serves to feed DC commuter demand. I hate being taxed for the services provided to Baltimore and Monkey County.