...

NOt all. During the civil war, the northern Ozark counties *seceded* from
the Little Rock Rebels, and there were two governors for a while. The
rich delta land was owned by aristocracy and farmed by slaves; Ozark
hills homesteaded by Scots-Irish and farmed by sons as slaves.

The Rockefeller family has elected governors and politicians here for
decades. All thru FDR's time, Hot Springs was run by the Mafia, acting
in many ways like Las Vegas now. Arkansas has had a generally democrat
legislature, but the 3rd district has sent GOP dudes like Hammersmidt
to the US congress forever. The current, and many former governors is
GOP.

But- it was former Gov Clinton, who broke the back of the teachers union
to put in *teacher competency* testing, and that ended the nepotism of
local school boards hiring kin as teachers. Which resulted in, while the
state spends far less than the national average on education, the test
scores are *above*! The Ozark counties are dramatically above national
averages, and were they a state, they'd top the US academically. One of
the clues is in the fact that the convoluted landscape prevents transnat
agribusiness from moving in. There's no significant air or water
pollution either. There was a flap over Tyson Chicken, but that run-off
went west into Oklahoma.

The region, notorious for rednecks, is 99.9% white. But look at the
school numbers for these small town hillbilly schools: 0% violence year
after year; dropout rates in the single digits, college remediation
rates in the teens, with high school graduation rates about 90%. And
they do this with the *lowest* teacher salaries you'll find anywhere.

But walk into one of these small town schools, and you'll see why the
teachers like working there. the kids are well behaved. quiet. They use
a large wooden paddle on the bullies, so student to student abuse rates
are zero. Sometimes you havta pound brains in from the ***** end. We are,
after all, dealing with the kids of hillbillies. But when my son, class
of 1996, graduated from Leslie, (250 kids k-12) 25% of the class scored
above the 90th percentile on the ACT. A pretty typical year.

Income is one measure of success. But the school nurse is a friend. she
tells me that out of 1000 kids in the district, there are only 1 or 2
that are autistic. In areas typically polluted with what passes for
modern civilization, the rate for white kids is 4% to 8%; You'd expect
at least 40 autistic kids in the district. There's a similar absence of
kids with ADD, ADHD, or on Ritalin. What is that worth? 100,000$?

Another clue: Robert Kaplan, "Imperial Grunts" notes that in the Green
Beret, *HALF* of the nation's most elite corps grew up on family farms;
pretty much like what is going on in the Ozarks. that's *ONE PER CENT*
of the US population producing 50% of the best soldiers this nation has.
You'd think it'd be a national security issue to promote family farms
rather than agribusiness, which does not raise healthy kids.