Joe Wilson! Mark Sanford! Andre Bauer! Kristin Maguire! What is it about South Carolina Reprobatelicans? I wrote the following on 8/8/2005. Some of the numbers may have changed but I wonder if anything else has?
According to this week’s Economist, South Carolina leads the nation in hate groups. There are more organizations that hate more different people in South Carolina than anywhere. They hate Jews, blacks, gays, Muslims – there’s more than enough hate to go around. South Carolina has white supremacist groups, neo-nazis, you name it, including an outfit called the League of the South, whose aim is to secede from the U.S. Those of us who thought that controversy settled for good in 1865 must have missed something all these years.
In fact, South Carolina’s a pretty hateful place in general. Unemployment runs about 20% higher than the national figure. You thought there was something the matter with Kansas? South Carolina ranks 26th out of the fifty states in education spending per student,investing less in education than even Arkansas, West Virginia, and yes, Kansas.
There’s a price for all this hatred, sloth, and ignorance, and it’s borne by you, the taxpayer. Wealthy and productive states like California, Massachusetts, and New York send more in tax payments to the federal government than they receive in federal largesse. In the case of California, residents get back about $.78 in Federal services for every dollar they send to Washington. The figure is similar for NY and MA; New Jersey gets the booby prize in this game, receiving a paltry $.57 federal cents for every dollar they ship to the capital. South Carolina, on the other hand, is rewarded for its poor behavior with a 36% return on every dollar of federal tax it pays. For every dollar South Carolina sends to Washington, the state receives $1.36 in return. Chalk it up to the wages of sin.
Doubtless there are things to like about South Carolina, once you get past the hate groups, unemployment level, federal free-loading, and low levels of education spending. Perhaps South Carolinian readers can enlighten us as to just what those are. Meanwhile, there’s one other noteworthy feature of the great state of South Carolina: “Other than Texas, there isn't a bigger Bush state," according to Katon Dawson, the state Republican party chairman.
Far be it from this page to associate the assorted ills plaguing South Carolina with its overwhelmingly Republican political character. It's simply a case of a state whose voters plumped for Mr. Bush in the 2004 election by a huge majority having its dreams come true. As goes South Carolina, so goes the rest of the country? Let us hope not.