timeOday wrote:

I dont have a problem with it. Last year, CA finished with a $3 billion
deficit. Arkansas finished with a $919 million surplus. Why? Just some
of the reasonss:

A high tech strip city emerged along I-540 in NW Arkansas that has a net
immigration from Silicon Valley and other such regions. Turns out,
engineers like the low mortgages that come from land prices running more
like $1000/acre. There is no building code in Arkansas, so you can build
whatever house suits your fancy without paying off inspectors. There's a
lot of innovative design that results. Then too, professionals dont work
all the time, and like the hunting and fishing.

And schools that work for their kids. ZERO rates of violence. dropout
rates in the single digits, graduation rates near 90%%, attendance at
95%%, college remediation in the teens.

They have been developing the Fayetteville Shale gas field. Arkansas, if
it seceded from the Union would have all the natural gas it needed to
both heat its homes and, with cheap propane conversions, fuel all the
cars and trucks on its roads. For the next 100 years.

Because of the fertile delta soils, the exports to Asia of soybeans and
rice means it has a POSITIVE trade balance.

FWIW, so many transnationals have invested in towns and small cities
that there has been a net INCREASE in manufacturing jobs.

Last spring, when the National Guard could not respond appropriately to
some tornados because of all the equipment left in Iraq, the Gov. said
the state would take over the funding of the National Guard, and none of
its equipment would leave the state without his consent. Creating ad de
facto independent army to defend the interests of the citizens. To the
very wide approval of the electorate.

Its worth noting as well that the NW, the Ozarks, never had plantations,
so it never had slaves, so it seceded from the Confederate government in
Little Rock, not wanting any part in the Civil War. And it has not since
imported any significant numbers of Blacks. The population is still what
it started out to be, 99%% white or Cherokee hybrids.