I myself was an accident of the Kansas public school/public university system.

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Dirty deeds done dirt cheap! Special holidays, Sundays and rates!

But if somebody in Tennessee accidentally somehow gets educated, the first thing they are likely to do is move somewhere else.

Which is why I am in Maryland. (Though many of my high school classmates who went on to complete college stayed in Knoxville, or at least East Tennessee. I was unusual in leaving the area.)

I keep thinking that education is the key to promoting support for progressive government. But if somebody in Tennessee accidentally somehow gets educated, the first thing they are likely to do is move somewhere else.

Randy hits the nail on the head. I've been engaged in some form of this conversation for the past day and a half online and offline with various friends.

The data we've been looking at and discussing seems to suggest that Tennessee is experiencing a very real "brain drain."

I see a general rise in xenophobia in East TN, mostly related to hispanics, but there is also some lingering suspicion of people who move here from elsewhere.

I moved here when I was 8, and because I don't have an accent I am often treated with some suspicion by those who do.

I went to highschool here, went away to college, came back, went away to grad school, came back and decided to stay because I just like it here better than IL, IA, DC, NY, MN, CT, OR, MA, CA, LA, GA, FL, India, Slovenia or any of the other places where I've spent a considerable amount of time.

I see the need for lots of changes here in East TN. None of my favorite ideas require any help from the feds. Most could occur if locals (leaders and just regular people) were less hostile to "outsiders" and more open to new ideas.

-Sugarfatpie (AKA Alex Pulsipher)

"X-Rays are a hoax."-Lord Kelvin

Actually, it wouldn't be quite the same -- Kansas does have a strong progressive tradition, Tennessee does not have one.

Except for Reverend James Lawson, Cordell Hull, W.E.B. DuBois, Estes Kefauver, Lizzie Crozier French, the Highlander Folk School, Robert Penn Warren....

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Dirty deeds done dirt cheap! Special holidays, Sundays and rates!

Would that arrangement also mean that all the federal mandates - funded and unfunded - would also be similarly reduced and/or removed? Federal regulations out the door as well?

I mean, it sounds like a fair experiment that we should run Tennessee on Tennessee money, but only if we were free to do it the way Tennesseeans wanted it done.

Seriously, though, one of the great opportunities we have as a federated nation-state is that we potentially have 50 different laboratories and incubators for new ideas and approaches to national problems. You'd think that, if smart people were running the show up in D.C., that when there's three or four or five different unproven ideas about how to approach a challenge, that somebody would suggest we ask for volunteers among the states to sign up for one of the possible solutions and give them all test drives before we put all our eggs blindly in one basket.