STATES OF NEGLECT

A scathing indictment of Republican-dominated state governments for ignoring the needs of their residents, weakening democracy, and stoking divisive issues in order to draw attention away from their subservience to corporate interests.

Since the election of Barack Obama in 2008 and the rise of the tea party shortly thereafter, Republican governors and legislatures have been aggressive in passing legislation to cut taxes, eviscerate environmental regulations, withdraw funding from public education, restrict access to health care, demonize immigrants and labor unions, and limit voting rights, all to the detriment of minorities, working-class citizens, and the poor. Kleinknecht, a newspaper reporter and author of The Man Who Sold the World: Ronald Reagan and the Betrayal of Main Street America, attributes their behavior to a slavish adherence to a corporate agenda that serves both personal and political interests. In short, many people suffer so Republican governors and legislators can thrive, with the country further divided along the fault lines of class and ideology. Particularly egregious, notes the author, are states such as Florida, Texas, North Carolina, Arizona, Mississippi, and West Virginia (a “failed state”) and governors such as Matt Bevin (Kentucky), Ron DeSantis (Florida), and Greg Abbott (Texas). Kleinknecht compares what is happening in these states to the people-friendly policies of California, New York, and Massachusetts. Regarding the boasts of Republicans in Texas and Arizona about their robust economic growth, the author exposes them as deeply deceptive. Blue states, he writes, may not be “paragons of progress,” but it is the red states that stand as exemplars of unfettered market capitalism and political disdain for public welfare. “Only by fully understanding the trend toward autocracy and corporate domination in the red states,” writes Kleinknecht, “and how abjectly it has undermined the nation, can progressives wrest control of the narrative from the far right and begin to alter the course of American politics.”

An impassioned critique of Republican state officials for the harm they cause their most vulnerable residents.