Barbour, advisers privately mull 2012 run
Yes, please run for President, Haley. You are governor of the state that is:
• Dead last in median family income;
• Dead last in percent of people who have completed high school (including equivalency);
• Dead last in a ranking of “best states to live”;
• Second to last in a state by state ranking of personal income;
• Second to last among “best educated”;
• Second to last in health and physical exercise;
.... as well as being dead last in internet usage, home of the country’s third-highest teen pregnancy rate and ... oh, it just seems cruel to go on.
What the hell: Findings from A Portrait of Mississippi: Mississippi Human Development Report 2009:
• Though whites are doing better than African Americans in Mississippi, they are doing less well than whites in other states. On the overall Index, whites in Mississippi rank 48th on the state list. They are 46th in education and are tied for last with West Virginia whites in terms of health. They perform somewhat better on the income index, ranking 40th on the list. A white resident of Washington D.C., which has the country's highest score for whites, lives eight years longer, earns 2.4 times more, and is five times more likely to have a college degree than a white resident of Mississippi.
• African Americans in Mississippi, on average, are worse off than African Americans in most other states. Of the 39 states with an African American population sufficiently large to be included in this analysis, Mississippi ranks second-to-last on the overall state index as well as on the health index and income index (Louisiana is last) and last on the education index. Compared to an African American from Mississippi, an African American living in Maryland lives four years longer, earns twice as much, and is twice as likely to have a college degree.
• The average cost per year of keeping an inmate in prison in Mississippi in 2006 was $15,000; the average expenditure per pupil for elementary and junior high school in the state that same year was just over $7,000. Thus the state is spending twice as much per prisoner as it is on education per schoolchild.
• An African-American baby boy born today in Mississippi can expect to have a lifespan shorter than that of the average American in 1960.
There’s a reason “thank God for Mississippi” is a national punchline. Haley Barbour thinks the country wants what he’s selling?
Hey Haley: before trying to fix the rest of the nation, maybe you ought to clean up your own house first.
