Dispatches from the everything-you-know-is-wrong department
[1/31/04: Edited]

NYT, Dan Pink: Love the tax subsidy, demonize the tax payer [Link via atrios]

Words failed me. So here's this instead:

Federal Taxing and Spending Benefit Some States, Leave Others Footing the Bill

If some states are beneficiaries, then naturally some must be benefactors - those states where so much is collected in federal taxes that any federal spending they receive is overwhelmed.
    
New York has often been the biggest payer in the Tax Foundation's annual comparison of taxes to spending, which inspired Daniel Patrick Moynihan and the Kennedy School of Government to launch their annual reference book comparing state taxes with spending (www.ksg.harvard.edu/fisc99) more than 25 years ago. In recent years, however, other states have eclipsed New York for the "blessing" of being the state that gives far more than it receives.
    
Combining the third highest tax burden per capita with the ninth lowest federal spending, New Jersey had the lowest federal spending-to-tax ratio (62¢). Other states that had low federal spending-to-tax ratios in FY 2002 are Connecticut (65¢), New Hampshire (66¢), Nevada (74¢), Massachusetts (75¢) and California (76¢).

[taxfoundation.org]

Red state, Blue state, Sponge state, Screwed state. Pitiful.