Quentin Hardy on "Parasite States"

Quentin Hardy

Updated with clips from a DOE video at the bottom.

I have been looking for the video or transcript of this November 27th, 2004 airing of Forbes on FOX for ages.  If anybody has the video, I would appreciate a copy.  FOX does not have a video archive with the article.  When I saw it live, I could not believe that I was seeing a mainstream Leftist talking about "Red State parasites".

Quentin Hardy, Silicon Valley Bureau Chief: Well, I doubt that David (Asman). Most immigrants, in general, seem to be going to blue states like California and New York, where people pay more to the federal government than they get back. The red states, the parasite states that take more from the federal government than they give, don’t draw as many immigrants. Now what does this tell you? Immigrants aren't’t (sic) taking as many services as other people do. They put more into the economy, legal or illegal.

The important part here is not the part about immigrants, nor is it Hardy's perennial hypocrisy on "from each according to their ability," the point is what Hardy calls "parasite States." The red states, the parasite states that take more from the federal government than they give, This has been a long standing indictment by the Left against States that have 'benefited' from massive, Democrat initiated, federal programs and dare to show their ingratitude by voting Republican.

Growing up in Tennessee I used to hear this nonsense from my father (hardcore Democrat), and then in college from Leftist faculty members.  The reasoning goes: FDR and LBJ gave all of these magnificent public works to these people, but they show no gratitude at all.  Usually a helping of bumpkin/hillbilly was added to sweeten the argument that only served as identifying the speaker as an ass.

Norris Dam construction: People used to live here

The Leftists of course, never see the downside to the jackbooted statist implementation of these grand plans (TVA, Manhattan Project, National Parks), they only see the results and they cannot even manage to look at the results honestly.  The ungrateful bumpkins happen to know families, now their descendants, that were thrown off of their land for all of these grand projects.

In East Tennessee the federal government came rolling in to make the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and kicked out families across the Smoky Mountains.  Many from the Cades Cove area left, eventually getting some money for their land, and resettled in the Clinch River Valley.  About ten years later the feds came in again and kicked them out to build Norris Dam and lake.  Of course, in both cases the feds did not come in and negotiate with anybody who already lived there, no they just took their land and gave them arbitrary amounts of money for their property.  Negotiations were made with developers and contractors, of course.

Y-12 under construction. People used to live here too.

Then, about ten years after that the biggie came.  People in the Bear Creek Valley, now know as Oak Ridge, TN, many who had just arrived from Norris ten years earlier, were greeted with notes tacked to their doors telling them they had a short time to vacate.  The bulldozers rolled in and destroyed everything to erect the weapons manufacturing facilities for the Manhattan Project.  The property owners were given some money for their land months later.

War Department Land Grab Notice

If I had left out the government element in this story of the plight of farmers in East Tennessee, one might have thought it a story of big, mean corporations driving people off of their land in search of profits, just like in the movies.  Fact is, no company can do that without the help of the government.  In this case, no corporations were involved, it was all government.  A government with all of the resources in the world to pay farmers a fair, or even a generous price for their land.  If you don't believe me, feel free to find the next showing of watch A Nuclear Family: Y-12 National Security ComplexHow the Manhattan Project changed life in East Tennessee.  If it was on CSPAN I could give you a link to the video, but it is on the Public Broadcasting System, so you are on your own the federal government bought a copy (watch it all here).

Watch the relevant portion here:

Now you know why many in the Tennessee Valley wished the federal government stayed in DC.