The South has already been holding US politics hostage for over a century. It's one of the quirks of our history. For all practical purposes, the South as a whole is totally ignorable except for its population, ie the fact that it votes. The South consistently ranks near the bottom of every lineup: education, median household income, crime, health, and so on.
In 2002, of the 20 metropolitans with the top annual murder rates, only 4 were not in the South. New York state has a violent reputation, but on the rankings for murders with firearms, it comes fifth - after Louisiana, Mississipi, Kansas, and South Carolina. Going down the list showing the percentage of population imprisoned, you read: LA, MS, TX, OK, AL, GA, SC, MO, etc, etc. Teachers in Texas are paid 7% better than the average population; teachers in California are paid 29% better, and teachers in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island are paid nearly one and a half times as much as the average. Forty-seven percent of Massachussets fourth-graders are proficient at reading; in Alabama the figure is 22 percent, in Mississipi 16 percent. Morgan Quitno, from which all these statistics are taken, rates Minnesota as the most livable state based on forty three factors including home ownership rate, high school graduation, infant mortality and teen pregnancy, etc. The top five were Minnesota, Iowa, New Hampshire, Nebraska and Virginia; the bottom five were Mississipi, Louisiana, Tennessee, Alabama, and West Virginia. When ranking health [infant mortality rates, the percent of population not covered by health insurance, per capita expenditures for health care, percent of population lacking access to primary medical care, childhood immunization rates] the top five included Vermont, New Hampshire, Nebraska, Iowa, and Minnesota. The bottom five were the usual suspects - the only state not in the Deep South being New Mexico. The study showed that Mississippi faces the nations highest infant mortality rate, the highest teen birth rate and the highest percentage of population lacking access to primary care physicians. For overall state crime, Vermont came in first place as "safest" state followed by the Dakotas, Maine, and New Hampshire; Louisiana came last followed by Arizona, Florida, Maryland, and Nevada. Finally, in overall education, Massachussets came first [we had a thread on it, iirc] followed by Vermont, Connecticut, Montana, and New Jersey. In the bottom five - New Mexico, Nevada, Mississipi, Louisiana, Alabama.
I'm aware that these statistics show a big split between the "Deep South" and the moderate south, which scored about average on most of these studies. Some states - Kentucky, Arkansas, Virginia, and North Carolina - scored better than some coastal states, in fact.
I am also particularly chagrined by how low California scored on some of these studies [we pay teachers nearly as badly as Alabama!] which I attribute to poor leadership because of the uncontestability of our state in the past few decades... but that's a side note.
Unfortunately, the generalization that can be drawn from this is that the Deep South and to some extent the Middle South is an economic backwater, and that the true powerhouses of this nation are the coasts and the northernmost Midwest.
Thus, my overall response to Free Enterprise is that the South is already a hundred times "more important in politics" than it should be. I'd like to know: exactly what is the South contributing to our nation? Besides leadership - because unless you're from the South, you're unelectable?
. ( Maybe before long He will even be a christian )
