Striving to Replace Detroit...

as the worst-governed entity in the world, Illinois is running a close second.

http://www.ijreview.com/2012/06/7273-miniature-horses-for-disabled-pass-but-pensions-fail/

This is the pervasive legacy of long-term democratic rule across the country. You think California is a great place to be? Think again. California is broke and clamoring for a bail-out. Illinois is not far behind. New York is not far behind. Look at the differences in Maryland and Virginia - next door neighbors. Maryland is about to join the ranks of the insolvent due to powerful public employee unions while Virginia is solvent.

West Virginia is among the most solvent of states with a per capita public indebtedness among the ten least indebted states. Is this the rule that proves the exception? Are our democrats smarter than the East Coast and West Coast academics (I'm not condemning all those in the academy, Sheik)? No, we have a meal ticket in the Marcellus Shale.

I agree that WV Democrats are preferable to Democrats in Illinois, Maryland, and California, but I'm not terribly sure why.

What makes me absolutely flummoxed is that we have a working laboratory of states (stealing an idea from Justice Louis Brandeis) in which we can see, in real time, how certain policies put states on solid footing (and nobody dies horribly, as is immplied) and others drive states further to ruin. Here in Illinois, the state income tax (flat due to Article Eight of the Constitution, but that's about all in the Constitution they are paying attention to these days) went from 3% to 5%, and yet the shortfall is still in the billions. Chicago already has the nation's highest sales taxes and the property taxes in Cook County are astronimical (in part due to there being 550 taxing bodies in Cook County alone).

ALL that to say that if you look to fiscally solvent Wisconsin and Indiana, right next door and not particularly wealthy, I just can't see how anyone would turn around and clamor for the policies that are bankrupting Illinois. Folks who are into social services just don't get that if there is no money, there won't be cuts in social services, but rather no social services at all. If Walker is somehow recalled tomorrow, Wisconsin deserves exactly what it's getting, but hopefully enough of them are not as foolish as loving-eyed academics who look at Indiana vs. Illinois, and yet do not see.

Jimmy, I think the Christian ethic (if not always applied personally, but always acknowledged) of many WV Democrats may be the answer that you are looking for, but I'll have to chew on it some more.

I agree that WV Democrats are preferable to Democrats in Illinois, Maryland, and California, but I'm not terribly sure why.

Because West Virginia lacks a viable two-party system, many WV republicans self-identify as democrats. If anybody has a means of contacting Shermangeneral, please do not tell him I agreed with him. It would only go to his head...

Perhaps, Jimmy, but I think it more likely that conservatives, particularly social ones, are not nearly as appalled by the state democrats in West Virginia than they are elsewhere.

Even here in Illinois, where I am in the relative sticks (80 miles southwest of Chicago) the Democrats are, at least in appearance, far preferable to their Chicagoland brethren. The southern Illinois Democrats have precious little use for the Chicagoland variety.