I was going to comment on another thread about why rural and southern communities are having trouble economically and I feel that many states are digging their own graves. Unfortunately, once they figure out that intelligent design and creationism are not the answer to excellent education that attracts businesses that bring good paying jobs to their states, they may have missed the boat. More concerned about intelligent design and gays than education and jobs, states like Kansas are going to struggle to raise their math and science standards to compete with places that are focusing on education.
Let me give an example of what I am thinking about: today, I went to a presentation given about how New York, from the Hudson Valley up to Canada, all along the east coast of New York, is an area called
The Tech Valley. The Albany area has been actively recruiting biotechnology companies, nanotechnology companies (still don't know what they are!), environmental companies, and IT companies. They have attracted quite a few companies, national and international, by making it easy for them to do business. In that area, there are 2 research universities and 20 colleges, one of the highest number of colleges per capita in the United States. This rep said the infrastructure is excellent, the area is gorgeous with its close proximity to the Adirondacks, and they are trying to make it easy for these companies to do business. Now, she assured us that these companies still have to pay taxes, and follow environmental regulations, but the companies don't mind because of the benefits of doing business in the area.
Now let's take a look at Kansas, which I admit, I know very little about except for this: they voted for the state to teach Intelligent Design.
NY, NJ, where the new governor's acceptance speech contained references to bringing stem cell research into the state, and many other progressive states are working to bring great jobs into the area, and not just for the highly educated. Many red states are doing - what??? Anything??? So while we are becoming a nation of haves and have nots, we are, in my opinion, becoming a nation where the blue states are going to have to support our poor cousins, the red states, and the red states have really created this situation themselves.