Friday, February 4, 2011

South Carolina Isn't Funny Anymore

I came away from a political meeting last night shaking my head.  I'm working on grasping the destructive politics of the US Congress, and I believe a good bit of it can be understood by the concept of: "Follow the Money".

But here in South Carolina, that doesn't even work.  We refuse federal dollars (that our taxes have paid into) to build infrastructure that would make our state more appealing to the businesses we claim we crave.  We join the rest of the country in mocking a governor for eight years (re-electing him just to be sure we aren't missing something), and then elect a woman who reflects the same goals and values.

I believe South Carolina operates under the assumption that, if banging your head against the wall isn't working, it's only because you aren't banging it hard enough.

Is it the "good ole boys" that just get angry because y'all in the Yankee states are trying to prove they're wrong?  Because they don't even seem to want to do what is good for big business, other than keep cutting their taxes.  And of course, the worse our schools and roads and neighborhoods get, the more tax incentives they have to offer to compete with other cheap labor (oh, I'm sorry, freedom to work) states.

And our voters, ever the product of a poor education system that teaches compliance and acceptance of minimum standards, continue to be grateful that smooth talkers like Lindsey Graham and Jim Demint defend their right to be from one of the states with the worst education system, highest level of teen pregnancy, and greatest numbers of working poor (that are lucky to be employed at all).

So how do we even begin to figure out how to change any of this mess?

Well, our neighbor, North Carolina, is having troubles of its own.  And they have figured out a way to begin to turn things around:

 
So now that we are so pathetic we don't even rise to the level of laughingstock, I guess we can either declare war on North Carolina, or wake up and start to support people and programs that will begin to dig us out of this hole.

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