This is what conservative policies look like in the real world:

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

 

http://www.peoplesworld.org/third-world-mississippi-shows-failure-of-conservative-policies

HATTIESBURG, Miss. - Republicans around the country proclaim that conservative remedies, such as repealing "Obamacare," or enacting Paul Ryan's Medicare-warping, tax-slashing budget plan, will solve the nation's health care and economic disparities. However, evidence from Mississippi suggests otherwise.

Mississippi is, by many metrics, an extremely conservative state. In fact, according to Gallup, it is the most conservative state in the union. The governor's and lieutenant governor's offices, as well as both chambers of the state legislature, are controlled by the GOP. Mississippi, according to a report in the Jackson Progressive, has a very regressive income tax, and has one of the lowest tax burdens in the nation.

The state ranks dead last economically, with the lowest per capita income in the country - $30,399 according to the Census Bureau figures for 2008. Compare that to the national per capita income of $40,208. Additionally, as of 2010, 21.9 percent of Mississippi residents lived below the poverty level, and 10.9 percent were unemployed -  much worse than the national rates of about 14 percent and 9 percent respectively.

As the poorest region of the poorest state, the Mississippi Delta illustrates the huge income disparity in the world's richest nation. The Delta is a rural region composed of 17 agricultural counties in the alluvial flood plain of the Mississippi River. The region is historically considered to be one of the most economically and educationally deprived areas of the nation.

The Delta region is the flagship of poverty in the state. According to the U.S. Census, 20 percent of the region's population is on food stamps.
 
The economic problems of the region have been endemic for quite some time. Even back between 2006 and 2008, while the nation had a 6.8 percent unemployment rate, the Delta held at 12 percent unemployment.

Susan Mayfield-Johnson, Ph.D., is the director of the Center for Sustainable Health Outreach at the University of Southern Mississippi, which researches community health in rural Mississippi. Dr. Mayfield-Johnson states that the lack of a viable non-agriculture-based economy in the region has resulted in "stagnant incomes and low-skilled jobs for decades."

The region also experiences significant barriers in education. Only 61.6 percent of adults in the region have a high school diploma, compared to 80.4 percent nationwide. Adults in Mississippi have the highest rate of low literacy in the nation, with 30 percent scoring as "Level 1" on the National Assessment of Adult Literacy conducted by the U.S. Department of Education in 2003. Level 1 literacy is generally defined as less than fifth-grade reading and comprehension skills.

Mississippi also leads the nation in a number of health care problems. It has the highest rate of heart disease and the second highest rate of diabetes in the country.

According to the Mississippi Department of Health, the prevalence of adult diabetes in the state increased by 70 percent between 1994 and 2006. The department also reports that one in three Mississippians suffer from hypertension.

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death among adults in Mississippi, according the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In fact, one out of every five adults in the state who die under the age of 65 dies from cardiovascular disease. Its prevalence in the state is 33.6 percent higher than in the U.S. as a whole. In the Delta region it is an astonishing 83.5 percent higher.

ABC News reported this month that the five U.S. counties with the lowest life expectancies for women are in the Mississippi Delta. All five counties have life expectancies for women of less than 74 years, which is lower than the nations of Honduras, Peru or El Salvador.

The study that ABC cited also revealed that the five counties with the lowest life expectancies for men are also in Mississippi, and four of them are in the Delta region. The life expectancies for men in these counties are all under 69 years, lower than countries like Brazil or Latvia.

The lack of health care access in the Mississippi Delta is even more staggering and may be a major factor in the health disparities seen in the state. In fact, the Mississippi Department of Health has designated the region as a health professional shortage area.

According to the Delta Health Alliance, a nonprofit organization aimed at improving health in the region, of the 5,000-plus physicians licensed in the state, only 584 are listed in the 17 Delta counties.

In the entire state there are only 16 diabetes and metabolic specialists, and there is only one in the 17-county Delta region. Of the 12 ophthalmologists in the Delta, only one accepts Medicaid. The state health department offers no chronic disease clinics in the region.

In total, there are 21 hospitals that service the region. The majority of them are small, under 20 beds, and limited in the services they deliver. Three Delta counties - Benton, Carroll and Tunica - have no hospital.

Gov. Haley Barbour's resistance to President Obama's health care reform adds to the region's woes. Barbour claims that the state cannot afford to cover more citizens' health care. "This new law will ultimately force the state to raise taxes, as hundreds of thousands of new people will be added to our Medicaid rolls," Barbour said.

Contrary to the facts, Barbour has claimed, "There's nobody in Mississippi who does not have access to health care." While this is obviously not true (18 percent of the state currently lacks insurance), Barbour has been making the problem worse since he took office in January 2004.

According to the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, Mississippi cut its Medicaid rolls between 2004 and 2008. Barbour has also taken to cutting the health care safety net to balance the state's budget. He reduced the coverage for 65,000 citizens who qualified for a Poverty-Level Aged and Disability (PLAD) program. The state has also begun requiring unprecedented annual in-person interviews for Medicaid.

Mississippi, dominated by conservative politicians, has health care, income and economic disparities that embody the worst of the nation's ills. And the Delta is the most extreme example. Overall, conservatism doesn't seem to be translating into positive results for the Hospitality State.

I am sure that bereft of the heroic states in the Union that are last in everything good and first in everything bad that the Union would collapse into a welter of socialist misery equalled only by the poor, oppressed, starving masses of France, Sweden, and Germany. I am also sure that bereft of such examples of the success of conservative policy the USA would rank somewhere around the completely, utterly, bankrupt, and abysmal failure that is Norway.

Why with such definitions of success and prosperity, we need never worry about failure and misery ever again. But seriously, I'd like to ask the conservative members of the community why, if their ideas are such grand successes, Mississippi and Louisiana and much of the Deep South rank first in religiosity and rural status and dead last in economic prosperity and in fact in ranking as societies of the First World. Is Mississippi's society just that screwed up? Do the people there have no initiative, no drive to bring themselves up by their own bootstraps? Why is it that a state with some of the lowest tax rates in the Union is one of the biggest failures in the Union?

In my opinion the answer is simple: you can't run a 21st Century political system on the budget and political ideas of the late 18th Century, no matter how much you try to clap your hands to make it so.

Comments

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

I think the issue is not conservative politics, but the conclusions being drawn by this cherry-picked article. It assumes per capita income being the lowest means something without cost of living. It assumes that insurance = access to care. It assumes providing a chronic disease clinic is necessary.

This is a hit job, plain and simple. Until someone pulls together a more comprehensive - and less ideological - statistical analysis, we won't be able to make a conclusion. Until then, it's like a knee-jerk "leftism caused Michigan's failures" "analysis."

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I'm fairly sure it's not a hit job, given that in Louisiana we're glad Mississippi exists because it's number 50 where we're number 49, and that joke's older than I am. And as far as the defunct nature of Mississippi, this isn't just Mississippi, it's the entire Deep South. And I'm also fairly sure that Georgia, South Carolina, Florida, Texas, and Louisiana, as well as Alabama are also equally conservative states.

If they do not qualify, then it's fair to say that conservatism does not exist.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

And as far as Michigan's failures and Leftism, when did the state that was the core of General Motors as in "What's good for General Motors is good for the USA" turn into the People's Republic of Michigan? When has any US state adopted a command economy and mandated quotas which business must produce, if they are not produced, then another quota of people to be shot for failing a worker's regime must then be filled?

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

I'm fairly sure it's not a hit job, given that in Louisiana we're glad Mississippi exists because it's number 50 where we're number 49, and that joke's older than I am.

Well, it is a hit job. It's from a Communist-supported site (http://www.peoplesworld.org/about-us), and it leaves all pretenses of objectivity at the door with its "Third World Mississippi" commentary. Many protest at even using Fox News as a source, and that's a legitimate news organization.

If they do not qualify, then it's fair to say that conservatism does not exist.

So let's find an even-handed analysis. Let's figure out what they're actually doing right and what they're actually doing wrong.

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

It also blames carte-blanch all problems on policies without actually caring to draw the connection. It complains about a county lacking a hospital... small counties of 8-10,000 people. As if such a sparsely populated area could even sustain a full hospital. God, you'd need a constant supply of major accidents to keep it afloat.

Most of the state is undeveloped nothing and people are fairly scattered. So of course there's going to be lots of nothing out there to support them. Most anything if you need it is an hour drive away. That's why it's called rural living.

But yea, the South sucks which is why everyone is moving here.

[http://users.livejournal.com/-wanderer-/]

It assumes providing a chronic disease clinic is necessary.

I agree that the article doesn't provide a good context, but why do you point this one out?

[dwer.livejournal.com]

to paraphrase, "this is what conservative politics have to offer"?

:P

[malakh-abaddon.livejournal.com]

Underlanker, not to pick at your post, but you should have brought up grand old West By God Virginia, where there are more churches than ... well lets just say in the Town of Northfork (about .25 miles wide by .5 miles long) there are 7 churches, Keystone at about the same size has 5, Pineville which is three times the size of the previous two towns has 3 churches at the same intersection. Large cities like Beckley, Princeton, and Bluefield have well into the tens of churches. Maybe we have a member from Montana, which is another very poor state, and they can relay information about churches in that area.

What is lost is this, and I am no conservative, when faced with poverty some people turn to drugs or alcohol, while others turn to god which is a drug as well, when it is used improperly.

[malakh-abaddon.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, in regards to West Virginia, where I live in this state, the majority of jobs that pay decently are in coal. As such the only way to make decent money is to work for a mining company (Bluestone Industries, Massey, Cleveland-Cliff, or Headwaters). Outside of that, employees of subcontractors (Coal truck drivers $12-17.50 an hour, Y&Y Toilet Cleaners $12.00 an hour, Superior Steam Cleaners $8-10 an hour, Security $7.25-8.15 an hour).

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

West Virginia's major problem is exploitation for natural resources. They are, basically, a Third World economy (insofar as they're based almost entirely on extraction of raw natural resources), but I'm not sure anything short of totally shutting out the coal companies (AKA political and economic suicide) would fix the situation. It's hard to say that WV is the best example of conservatism, because the underlying economic foundation is so problematic that it's difficult to separate from the impact of conservative policies.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

has 3 churches at the same intersection.

Please tell me the fourth corner is a McDonalds.

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

Compare New Hampshire. We have one of the lowest unemployment rates in the nation, weathered the recession really well, and have a pretty good economy overall coming out of it, with several growth sectors, particularly in tech and other growth industries. We also have no income or sales taxes, and rely on a structural deficit to ensure that our government stays small. We have some issues resulting from that, mostly related to our infrastructure, but we're working around that in our own way. Our roads may suck, and we don't have commuter rail linked to the MBTA's network, but when the power went out for the rest of the Northeast, I was able to watch the chaos in New York City on a high-def TV because we're on our own grid, powered in large part by the local nuclear reactor. Now, we have some non-conservative political elements (REGGI membership, gay marriage, and we came very very close to a civil rights bill for trangendered individuals last session etc.) but they're largely unrelated to the economic environment.

Explain why largely conservative economic policies in New Hampshire have left us a relatively strong state, whereas in the South they've created a "third world" environment.

[404.livejournal.com]

Good question, could it be the quality of the leadership and not the underlying political association? A good leader can smooth out major problems even if their stated policies may not be the best, whereas a bad leader even with good ideas will most likely never get them seen through to their liking.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Because New Hampshire has political leadership that's not clinging to a long-dead rebellion and that understands modern economics?

[nevermind6794.livejournal.com]

a.) Tiny states did relatively well in the recession, because they didn't have real estate bubbles or financial sectors and require fewer jobs to maintain high employment.

b.) New Hampshire works in the context of a wealthy Northeast because of tourism, so they piggyback off other states' investments. Not many New Yorkers vacationing in Jackson.

c.) New Hampshire has the seventh-highest median income in the nation; conservative policies are fine for maintaining wealth, not so much for lifting people out of poverty.

d.) Tons of political spending for the first primary goes a long way in a state of 1.3 million.

Those are a few reasons off the top of my head (and wikipedia for the income stat). It's very hard to do a true comparison across states for reasons already mentioned: natural resources; climate and agriculture and geography; history of settlement; tons of factors make it difficult to tell how much a given policy really results in success or failure.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

Contrary to the facts, Barbour has claimed, "There's nobody in Mississippi who does not have access to health care." While this is obviously not true (18 percent of the state currently lacks insurance)

health insurance =/= access to health care

Overall, conservatism doesn't seem to be translating into positive results for the Hospitality State.

Correlation =/= causation.

I can just as easily say that their problems are being exacerbated by the overall liberalism of the Federal laws being applied to them despite the best efforts of the conservative local gov't, in addition to being handicapped by the rating bias against agricultural and rural areas. That's as good (and possibly better) a hypothesis as yours.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Which is why blue states pay more into the Federal government than they take out of it, but Red States are leeches that take more out than they pay in and blame the Commie Jews in the blue states for their problems, eh?

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

Do you have any examples of these so-called conservative policies and their effects? State statistics need the context of the policies you claim have caused them. You're stirring up the bee hive here, but they're not going to listen without any evidence.

Then again, they're not going to listen with any evidence either.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

If they won't listen with evidence, why bother providing it?

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

If only there was evidence to listen to...

[eracerhead.livejournal.com]

I'm not particularly conservative, but the article raises many red flags.

For instance, they talk about hospitals with 20 beds, but do not indicate whether or not they are full. The real metric is beds per person. A 20 bed hospital could actually be more sufficient than an urban hospital with 1,000 beds.

They talk about the lack of advanced degrees, but do not mention that in order to use them you must move to a more metropolitan area, so the metric isn't appropriate.

Lower life expectancy can be caused by a number of things, one significant factor being that agriculture is a dangerous profession.

A better article would have compared agriculture in many states to see if the trend really is politics or circumstance. For example, NY and CA both have large agricultural communities. Are they any better? They could be but the article does not cover it. They are saying, look here are the poorest areas and then compare them against national standards rather than equivalent standards.

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

Funny you bring this up. America has actually some of the lowest hospital beds per person in the developed world.

I think there's a correlation between hospital beds per capita and hospital discharges, but I'll get back to you on this maybe.

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

Have you ever been confused for an intellectual?