madlori:kingjaffejoffer:miraculoushufflepufftrash:mapsontheweb:The flags of every U.S. state made ou
madlori:kingjaffejoffer:miraculoushufflepufftrash:mapsontheweb:The flags of every U.S. state made out of their county lines.Each state has a flag?????Reading the last reply made me realize that some people have said the name “United States” their entire lives but not understood the literal description of the name and how it applies to how the government works. Quick primer for the non-USians.Each state in the US is mostly a self-governing entity. It has an executive (the governor), a legislative body, a supreme court, a state police force, and its own economy (it’s often said that California is the 8th largest economy in the world although I think I heard recently that it actually moved up a peg). Each state sets its own budget, tax structure, and laws (most laws are state-level). Each state has its own educational system, park system, big fancy Capitol building (well most do - a few states have Capitol buildings that look like office parks), and States vary in terms of things like what age you can drink, gun regulations, death penalty statutes, income taxes (a few states have no income tax, for example).Most of the governing that really affects people here is done at the state level, or the local/municipality level. Even things that ARE federal (like Medicaid) can be affected by how various states implement them.In theory, the federal government exists for two reasons:National defenseInternational relationsIn other words, the states handle how we deal with ourselves, the federal government handles how we deal with other countries. Theory is not practice, obviously. The federal government does a lot more things, and federal laws and SCOTUS rulings supersede state-level laws. But in many ways the states are where the real, concrete governing happens. And yet we pay waaaaaaaay more attention to national elections than state ones. Go figure. -- source link