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About the Author

William Kleinknecht was a veteran reporter and crime correspondent for the Netwark Star-Ledger. He previously covered the crime beat for the New York Daily News. The winner of awards from the Associated Press and the American Society of Professional Journalists, he has contributed to American show more Journalism Review, National Law Journal, and The Boston Phoenix. The author of New Ethnic Mobs: The Changing Face of Organized Crime In America, he lives in Glen Rock, New Jersey. show less

Works by William Kleinknecht

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Common Knowledge

Birthdate
1960
Gender
male

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After all the slander and name calling calms down, someone needs to check the facts on red states vs blue states. That assignment was taken up by William Kleinknecht, in States of Neglect. As readers might glean from the title, states with Republican governments are being dismantled and impoverished, while states with Democratic leadership get built up and tend to lead in all the positive stats. If that’s all there was to it, this would already be a valuable book. But there’s lots more.

The red states follow the conservative bent of less is better. Less government, less taxation, less money for education, health, road repairs and pollution controls make for a Republican paradise. And since the USA has a large sampling of both red and blue managers, it can be made clear if there are definitive winners and losers from the two different approaches to government. For Kleinknecht, the results are poisonously obvious; red states are losers. But hitting readers over the head with it repeatedly can become annoying.

The book focuses on gold star red states like Florida and Texas, but also features bottom dwellers like Mississippi and West Virginia. Pretty much the only difference is the top performers’ natural advantages. Texas has every kind of energy for sale, while Florida has a great climate with lots of beach. It attracts retirees from all over the country. They bring all their money with them, and they want to spend it. Mississippi and West Virginia have only corruption and opioids to fall back on, it seems. But then the similarities among them all really kick in.

As the book progresses through topics like education and healthcare, the pattern becomes rock solid. Reduce taxes to corporations and the wealthy, slash allocations for services, then claim the ballooning budget deficit must be tamed, resulting in even bigger cuts in services. Eventually, the services become so pathetic the state seeks to close them altogether, and set them adrift among private, for-profit contractors. These perform even worse (while pocketing huge sums), perpetuating the race to the bottom for red state residents.

That’s what readers will feel, but not what they will see. What they will see is detailed stories of political shenanigans, immorality, corruption, half-truths, lies and deceptions of all flavors in these red states. Extremely low quality, amoral leadership, surrounded by incompetents. It can be gripping to read these real crime stories, and the criminals get rich. But it is also endless. It gets predictable and even tiresome. It’s the same in every red state, in every domain of government. Red states are for pillaging. Red bad.

Some red states have managed to go without personal income tax altogether (though they typically make it up in real estate taxes and/or sales taxes). Does this make them the darlings of business as predicted? Kleinknecht cites the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, saying: “States with the highest personal income tax rates have greater economic growth, higher wages and better employment opportunities than the states with no personal income tax.” Other studies, he says “show the red states have lower per capita growth, higher poverty, inferior school performance, higher rates of suicide, greater prevalence of diabetes, higher rates of infant mortality and teen pregnancy, less effective health care systems, and lower health care spending.” Business makes its choice clear. Red states are mostly unattractive to them unless the incentives overcome their principles.

Predictably as well, the red states do things like side with polluters over residents. It gets really bad in pockets all over the country, to the point where “When twenty-year-old non-smokers start coming down with lung cancer, something is wrong.” This from Debbie Jarrell of Coal River Mountain Watch, which labors to halt mountaintop removals in West Virginia, Kleinknecht’s model for the most pathetic of the pathetic. Red states typically protect and defend frackers, oil and gas drillers and factories dumping chemicals and raw sewage into lakes and rivers. Scandals like environmental disasters result in cutting back inspections and inspectors even further, to prevent this happening again. Residents sicken and die while the state congratulates itself for being business-friendly. In blue states, regulations and restrictions are far more pervasive, as are cleanups and restorations you just don’t see in red states.

With all the undisputed reports and facts available, Kleinknecht would like it to be even starker than it factually is. He favors vague negatives, like saying some red state being among the worst performers in some category. Were there any blue states among them? But if it’s not impressive enough, he doesn’t divulge the numbers. “Red states are bigger culprits than blue states in virtually any measure of humanity’s degradation of the planet,” he says, seeking new lows in vagueness. He then gives some examples, citing more of this and less of that without any actual data. Readers are supposed to be impressed with all the negativity, and forget the lack of backup. Or this: “The main tax cut bill was crafted with no participation by Democrats and almost no public debate of any kind.” Could mean anything, but you get the drift. Red bad.

The poster child for red state small government was Kansas. Governor Sam Brownback turned his state in to a living experiment in libertarian, trickle-down economics. Continual tax reductions, followed by continual budget cuts. It went on until the populous got so fed up they hit the streets. Brownback was then humiliated by his own red teammates, who banded together to raise taxes against his will, before the state totally collapsed. Brownback was mercifully lifted out and away by President Trump, who made him the US ambassador for religion, whatever that meant. But he nearly destroyed an entire state.

In healthcare, there is the demonic Affordable Care Act. It’s enough to nail anyone as evil in a red state. Deadly poison. Yet, by refusing to expand their Medicaid programs, several red states lost out on billions of free dollars in funding from the federal government. It costs the lives of thousands of their residents every year, but red states don’t care; they have their pride to think of. Kleinknecht accurately says “It is governmental malfeasance of the highest order, and it arises quite simply from a brute desire to undermine President Barack Obama’s legacy.” Had Obama been a Republican, he says, Mississippi would have been the first in line for the money. Instead, they let Mississippians die, he adds. If that weren’t bad enough, it joined several red states to sue to overturn the ACA, so no one else could benefit, either. This is a much better use of taxpayer money. In a red state.

During the pandemic, when Florida Governor DeSantis forbade mask wearing in school and discouraged vaccinations and other preventive measures, his state racked up 153 deaths per 100,000, while horribly blue California had 58. For Kleinknecht, “many red states have public health profiles more in common with nations in Eastern Europe and parts of the Middle East than with developed countries.” In case readers still didn’t get it.

Meanwhile, fabulously wealthy Texas, the golden state of Republican rule, “has the highest percentage of people without medical insurance, the highest number of shuttered rural hospitals, and rural counties with almost no doctors.” And Texas is fine with that. They’re not doing anything about it.

Two thirds of the way through, Kleinknecht looks at California, the poster child for everything wrong with blue, according to reds. Fires, floods, protests, high taxes, too much regulation and an outflow of residents are all supposedly the result of overmanagement by Democrats. But as Kleinknecht points out in detail, blue state management is actually highly sought after by corporations. They gladly pay the higher taxes for a better educated, healthier and more reliable workforce, and an administration that seeks to make the state safer, more prosperous and less corrupt. That this takes an active government is the cost of having it all. Meanwhile, red states administer as little as possible.

But the California chapter bogs down into a long apology for its many failings. The long march of Governor Jerry Brown, with all his missteps, has an excuse for each of them. It’s like—Honestly, folks, he tried, he really tried. He had the best of intentions for everyone. The red state governors were and are malicious, greedy and uncaring by comparison. You see that, right?

This hagiography of California is sugary sweet and therefore enormously suspect. And anyway, California is not a “state of neglect” so the chapter shouldn’t even be there. It is more evidence of this book being a blunt instrument rather than a disciplined analysis.

The whole thing could have been more valuable if Kleinknecht had organized it around issues, and used charts. For example, he could have listed all 50 states and shown how much they spent per student. Presumably, the blue bars at the top would have been the longest, and the red bars below the shortest. The same could have been done for environmental disasters, incidents of various diseases, sales of opioids per person, unemployment insurance, tax receipts per person of certain tax brackets, and so on. Then readers could see for themselves without the clop up the side of the head on every issue.

His conclusion is that “wherever Republicans control the state government, the public’s interest is not even on the map.” It is all and only about what Republican politicians want. And mostly for themselves. Readers will easily have figured this out a couple of hundred pages before Kleinknecht says it.

It must have been exhausting, writing this book. Kleinknecht obviously spent years researching, piecing political moves together, making a linear thread of corruption and failures. Payoffs and conflicts of interest abound. Lobbyists and corporate executives move into politics and overtly favor their own. And get rich in public. The lower classes can find comfort in opioids. I give him full credit for all that research, as well as his swift and easy writing style. The book is hardhitting and fearless. But the overall feeling for readers (at least this one) will be impatience with more and more of the same and the same.

David Wineberg
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DavidWineberg | 1 other review | Feb 7, 2023 |
States of Neglect by William Kleinknecht shows the history and details of how so many red states have neglected their citizens in order to cater to corporations and score ideological brownie points.

Most people realize the glaring differences between blue states and red states, from voter suppression and poorer healthcare to underfunded education and a lack of concern for the environment. These are not simply a recent manifestation of the previous administration's infestation but an organized and long-in-the-making strategy of a segment of the right.

Looking in detail at some of the glaring examples, Kleinknecht makes a strong case that should upset not only those who lean left but those who consider themselves conservative but still believe that human beings deserve respect and support from their governments, both national and state.

The idea of a progressive federalism is interesting and may well be one of the few ways to slow our descent into authoritarianism. His last chapter lays out the concept and some practical ways this can be accomplished.

Highly recommended not just for those who disagree with the right on almost all policies but also those on the right who might have some areas of agreement but aren't willing to throw democracy away to establish an authoritarian regime.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.
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½
 
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pomo58 | 1 other review | Jan 11, 2023 |
Another book about Reagan's legacy; this one joins the somewhat more slowly growing accumulation on the left that attempts to set the record straight. This has some good material, and is focused almost solely on his domestic policies, but I find the weaknesses overcome the strengths at times. For instance, the simplistic mis-reading of Adam Smith that shows he failed to do correct research. His failure to address the fact that, after the first tax cut, Reagan actually presided over regular TAX INCREASES. This is actually perpetuating the legend that the right has been building around him, rather than dealing accurately with the hype and clearing the air. There were several other mistakes of this sort that I noted, most of them not quite so large or far-reaching, but enough to render the book suspicious in many ways, including the author's annoying habit of committing the fallacy of the golden mean. He seems to think that all who are not centrists are extremists, and that the only correct point of view is in the middle. This is simply an example of sloppy thinking. There are better books on the topic; this one can be missed.… (more)
½
 
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Devil_llama | 1 other review | Oct 13, 2012 |

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