I once told myself...

...(I talk to myself a lot) that politics -- at the end of the day -- is all about getting more than a dollar's worth of services from the government than every dollar paid in taxes.

(Think about it: if everyone received exactly what they paid for, there would be no need for lobbyists -- and legislators could work part-time. Really, the vast majority of what goes on in Washington is about tweaking the tax code for one's advantage.)

Yesterday, in a post about Wisconsin, I mentioned that most red states receive more from the federal government than they pay in taxes.

To check that, I referred to a piece in the Economist from last August. (Hence the map above.) According to the article, the top ten states which received more from Washington than they paid in federal taxes in the last twenty years (adjusted for the size of their economies) were:

1. Puerto Rico (U. S. territory)
2. New Mexico
3. Mississippi
4. West Virginia
5. Montana
6. Alabama
7. North Dakota
8. Maine
9. Maryland (includes D. C.)
10. Alaska

And the top ten states which received less than they paid to the federal government were:

1. Delaware
2. Minnesota
3. New Jersey
4. Illinois
5. Connecticut
6. New York
7. Ohio
8. Michigan
9. Nebraska
10. Massachusetts

As you can see from this map, six of the ten states that received more from the federal government voted for John McCain in the last election; only one of the states that received less voted for the Republican candidate for president.