President Biden: The NEW one and only politics thread

90? California has 58 and we would be just fine if that number was closer to 50 (we could consolidate maybe 6 or 7 into 3 and it wouldn’t affect much except some travel times and bureaucracy)

 

Iowa has 99 counties, Arkansas 75 and Texas 254.

 

Texas has 254 counties for some reason. Big state to be sure, but it has something to do with the way the state was laid out back in the day. I imagine there are some ranches in Texas that have to deal with six or seven county governments.

 

120 counties in Kentucky. 100 in North Carolina, 95 in Tennessee, 82 in Mississippi. Alabama and Florida each have 67 counties and West Virginia has 55.

No I don’t know why I know this shit.

 

My father was a country boy from Georgia. He always said that the reason that there were so many counties was because every little crossroads town that got a railroad station immediately tried to become a county seat. I think that it actually goes back to the 1800's horse and wagon transport. Counties needed to be small enough to get to the county seat and back home in a day or two.

 

Longmire was close to doing so, but I'd love to see a show where you'd have a county sheriff in one of these out of the way places where law enforcement is only a side gig for some more "enriching" enterprises, been elected for 30 years or so and is pretty much the crime boss in the area.

 

The thing to remember is that counties are vital governments in the South and parts of the Midwest, much more so than in the Northeast or West Coast. Townships and boroughs aren’t a thing down here, and it is uncommon to have large stretches of land with little or no human habitation.

 

I'll defer to others with more expertise, but I think the graph shows "core inflation" or whatever - and sure it doesn't count food, shelter, energy (don't know what the deal is with used cars) but I do think it shows how inflation can be fought outside of market forces. Food is obviously impacted by high gas prices, and shelter by high demand low supply (same with used cars) - rather than a generic "cost to make a widget" rising and falling with all factors being stable.

 

I'll take a 3.2 increase in my SSI but costs have definitely gone up more than 3.2% this year. My garbage rates just got bumped 4.7%, my water bill has gone up more than 3.2% and my car insurance got jacked.

 

I was stunned today by the price of Qtips. The other thing that really is pissing me off is how many stores are almost completely going self-checkout. It used to be a convenience thing for the customer. Now it is clearly a cost savings for the stores. In most cases, I've felt a checker gets me through rather than the self-checkout, especially if they have to check my ID, then check my receipt at the end. The lines are equally bad.