Paul Soglin: Waxing America

Thoughts on the Governor's Race: Take Two

It was meant as a pointed jab. With humor. When I posted A Most Serious Threat To The Wisconsin Democratic Party on Friday, I was trying to elevate the discussion about the need for a viable candidate for governor.

I did not expect the post to be most widely read Waxing America since the infamous bicycle post, Bicycling Madison Style: As Dumb As It Gets, which is exactly why, my friends, I would never be a viable candidate for Governor.

Not to mention that few are worse than moi at fund-raising, or staying on message. Or that Sara would never speak to me again.

On a more serious note, I am thankful for all of the well-meant words of encouragement and kind thoughts, some from very old friends, some from people I do not know.

Let me make something constructive of this post: when I defeated Joe Sensenbrenner in 1989, he was silly enough to think that his record on management would get him re-elected.

When I ran in 2003, I was silly enough to think that my record on management would get me elected.

There were other reasons I lost, but the point is that progressives must tend to the management and administration of government.

We must make a genuine commitment and not leave the field to the Scott Walkers. They hate government and public employees.  They want to privatize or close everything except the police and fire departments, and I am not so sure about the fire departments.

With improved management, we will have a better democracy, we will save money, the quality of services will improve, and the respect for our public institutions will grow.

Let's elect someone who embraces government, knows its limitations, and is committed to making it better.

A Most Serious Threat To The Wisconsin Democratic Party

The Democrats do not have a candidate for Governor. Jim Doyle, knowing he was not to seek re-election, announced early so that viable candidates might emerge and begin the long arduous campaign accompanied with the requisite fund raising.

As of today, no candidate has emerged.

Given the critical nature of the problem, if there is no viable Democratic gubernatorial candidate by Thanksgiving, I will announce my candidacy on December 1, 2009.

That will teach them.

Ed Garvey for Lieutenant Governor to provide a balanced ticket?

Update 6:51 PM. I will never make a decent headline writer. The meaning of 'serious threat' was misinterpreted by at least one person:  Former Madison Mayor Soglin issues a 'serious threat' to state Dems

Yikes.

The headline was meant to imply that my candidacy would be bad for the party and that my running was a serious threat to the well being of the Democratic Party.

Yankess Win 27th World Championship

You bet I'm bitter. There were twenty-nine other teams. If any of them won the World Series, it would be an improvement over the Yankees.

Phooey.

What did you expect today? Something about Obama?

Republicans continue to divide: Democrats cannot be smug

The fallout from the 2008 presidential election continues as right-wing conservatives continue to wreck wreak havoc within the Republican Party. As we noted in October, 2008, "The Greatest Danger to the Republican Party: Sarah Palin," this nation was founded on the basis of a social compact.

The problem for the Republicans is that Palin owns the "god, guns, and gays" element of the Republican Party. She locked up the base the way John McCain, Mitt Romney, George W. Bush or even Ronald Reagan could only pretend to embrace. They engaged the abortion issue, guns, and the religious right, and the hatred for American institutions because it was politically expedient.

A year later, ultra-conservatives march on:

Uncivil War: Conservatives to challenge a dozen GOP candidates

In what could be a nightmare scenario for Republican Party officials, conservative activists are gearing up to challenge leading GOP candidates in more than a dozen key House and Senate races in 2010.

Conservatives and tea party activists had already set their sights on some of the GOP’s top Senate recruits — a list that includes Gov. Charlie Crist in Florida, former Rep. Rob Simmons in Connecticut and Rep. Mark Kirk in Illinois, among others.

There is an unholy alliance between moderate business leaders and extremists from both the religious right and the libertarians who border on anarchy.

There will be a realignment as this drama unfolds and the Democrats play a key role. There are moderates who must make a critical decision. They must cast their lot with the extreme right or the Democrats. These are responsible people who are nor convinced that the investment Democrats wish to make in human capacity and infrastructure can be done efficiently and wisely. They share the objective but question the strategy.

There are Republicans who are pro-choice and are comfortable supporting real equal rights for all people no matter what their sexual orientation or preference. But these Republicans also question Democratic mandates in areas that compromise free speech, such as regulations that punish bigoted language.

Democrats can further this political realignment in a positive way, not by lumping all moderates and Republicans with extremists from Glenn Beck to Charlie Sykes, but by listening to the moderates, listening to their own moderate Democrats.

It does not mean that compromises need to be made on national health care or rights for gays; it does mean rethinking the 'enforcer mentality.'

More Rep. Paul Ryan Skullduggery

In his neverending quest to place himself on the national scene as a voice of confused conservatives, Paul Ryan (Republican-WI) penned another piece of silliness, this time in the Washington Times, Strengthening the budget: Establishing limits with an enforceable law.

With the basement taking on water and the foundation crumbling, Ryan like the misguided amateur that he is, decides to paint the house, figuring that a bad cosmetic solution is the answer. To make matters worse, if he ever does figure out the source of the problem, his ideological tools will prevent him from performing the proper repairs.

Wasting 600 words, Ryan and his partner in crime, Rep. Jeb Hensarling, miss the most elementary foundations of a budget. There is no mention of the need:

• to produce a separate operating and capital budget
• to make sure that the operating budget is funded from accurately projected revenues and not one time revenue sources
• to limit debt service (borrowing) to a reasonable portion of the operating budget
• to segregate revenues from enterprise funds and not use them to 'balance the budget'
• to responsibly show inter-agency charges
• to establish an undesignated fund with reserves to get us through years when recessions lower income tax payments.

The Shrine of the Eternals: Where Minnie Minoso, Roger Maris, and Shoeless Joe Jackson Get The Recognition They Deserve

Waxing America has been complaining about the Baseball Hall of Fame for years. No Minnie Minoso.  No Ron Santo. No Curt Flood. In Paul's words, "Phooey!"

But now, through Internet connections too obtuse to recall, we have discovered that there's an alternate Hall, where true baseball innovation and achievement is justly celebrated and revered: The Baseball Reliquary. Located in southern California, the Reliquary has created the Shrine of the Eternals, where,

Criteria for election shall be: the distinctiveness of play (good or bad); the uniqueness of character and personality; and the imprint that the individual has made on the baseball landscape. Electees, both on and off the diamond, shall have been responsible for developing baseball in one or more of the following ways: through athletic and/or business achievements; in terms of its larger cultural and sociological impact as a mass entertainment; and as an arena for the human imagination.

Since elections began in 1999, they've inducted: Jim Abbott, Dick Allen, Emmett Ashford, Moe Berg, Yogi Berra, Ila Borders, Jim Bouton, Jim Brosnan, Bill Buckner, Roberto Clemente, Steve Dalkowski, Rod Dedeaux, Jim Eisenreich, Dock Ellis, Mark Fidrych, Curt Flood, Josh Gibson, William “Dummy” Hoy, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Bill James, Bill “Spaceman” Lee, Roger Maris, Marvin Miller, Minnie Minoso, Buck O'Neil, Satchel Paige, Jimmy Piersall, Pam Postema, Jackie Robinson, Lester Rodney, Fernando Valenzuela, Bill Veeck Jr., and Kenichi Zenimura.

Justice! Roger Maris! Minnie Minoso! Buck O'Neil and Curt Flood! Why have we not known about this sooner? 

When Minnie Minoso was inducted in 2002, he traveled to Pasadena to gratefully acccept induction in person:

(Photo: Larry Goren, Baseball Reliquary)

This year's runners-up were Effa Manley, Casey Stengel, Don Zimmer, Charles M. Conlon, Dizzy Dean, and Luis Tiant.

But what about Ron Santo? And don't forget Gil Hodges.

Still, any baseball shrine that honors Bill Lee and Marvin Miller and Jim Bouton and Ila Borders is on the right track.

- Barry Orton

Damn Yankees

When Barry Orton listed both his Ten Best and Ten Worst baseball movies he omitted Damn Yankees, which merits special recognition. 

The film features the torrid Gwen Verdon singing "What Lola Wants, Lola Gets." a horrid cameo role by the detestable Mickey Mantle, an inspired performance from Ray Walston, and a forgettable performance by Tab Hunter.

Most importantly. this favorably reviewed film focuses on two heroic and memorable themes of biblical proportions.

First and most obvious, the premise is that a good person hates the Yankees, a righteous and pious calling.

Secondly, any man with a heart and soul past the age of fifty will gladly sell his soul to play a season of major league baseball. Actually, I would sign the contract for one game if I could get a line drive hit.

Worst. Baseball Movies. Ever.

It seems Waxing America readers are fans of fictional baseball movies, judging from comments on Paul's post about "Field of Dreams," which is on most fans' list of top ten best baseball movies. (Google "top ten baseball movies" to see the usual picks.)

My best ten list is pretty typical, except that I don't include "Pride of the Yankees" (hate the Yankees), or "Bad News Bears" (foul-mouthed cuteness is overrated), or "A League of Their Own" (Madonna and Rosie O'Donnell paying baseball? No.). My unranked ten best are: "Field of Dreams," "The Natural," "Eight Men Out," "Bang the Drum Slowly," "Bull Durham," "Major League," "The Jackie Robinson Story," "The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings," "The Sandlot," and "Long Gone."  My favorite is "Long Gone," an HBO film based on a wonderful Paul Hemphill novel that nailed the "minor league old guy on the way down and young phenom on the way up" story several years before "Bull Durham." Well worth a watch.

Anyway, here's my unranked ten worst:

1. "Fear Strikes Out" - Anthony Perkins playing Jimmy Piersall and not credible throwing or hitting. (thx commenter Ty O'Mara)
2. "For Love of the Game" - Kevin Costner as a sensitive, thinking pitcher worried about his relationship?  Nope. (thx Toni Morrissey)
3. "Mr. 3000" - Despite the Milwaukee locale, Bernie Mac is not a Robin Yount.
4. "Brewster's Millions" - How do you make an unfunny movie with John Candy and Richard Prior? This one manages.
5. "Bad News Bears Go to Japan," "Bad News Bears in Breaking Training," "Bad News Bears" (2005 remake with Billy Bob Thornton), "Major League II" and "Major League: Back to the Minors" - 5 dogs share one slot and don't make one decent film when their good parts are all added together.
6. "The Babe" and "The Babe Ruth Story" - Neither John Goodman nor William Bendix could do more than a bad home run trot.
7. "Strategic Air Command" - 47-yr old Jimmy Stewart as a Cardinals player recalled to the Air Force as a bomber pilot to help save the USA from the Commies, while June Allyson pines for him back home. Painful. (See also "The Stratton Story," another bad baseball movie with Stewart and Allyson.)
8. "It Happens Every Spring" - Ray Milland invents something that repels a baseball from wood, becomes a star pitcher and hilarity fails to ensue. (thx Marshall Cook)
9. " The Slugger's Wife" - Neil Simon wrote this bomb, which Janet Maslin called "...resoundingly unfunny..." (thx Tim Morrissey)
10. "Ed" - Matt LeBlanc and a chimp named Ed. The stupid hijinx are unwatchable.

The very worst?  A tie between "Fear Strikes Out," which has non-baseball scenes of parental abuse that are less fun than the painful baseball sequences, and "Strategic Air Command," which features dialog that General Curtis E. LeMay  may well have written.

Nominations for worse baseball flix to avoid?

- Barry Orton

Newsweek: A Wonderful Mystery

Black infant mortality has plummeted in one Wisconsin county. Why?

We wrote about this twice in recent months:

Apparent Disappearance of the Black-White Infant Mortality Gap --- Dane County, Wisconsin, 1990--2007

Health Care - The Real Story of Government Involvement: Saving Lives, Saving $Millions in Madison and Dane County

Here is, in part, what Eve Conant of Newsweek wrote last week:

Somehow, Dane County had achieved the holy grail—a reduction in the infant-mortality rate. But why? Another positive trend is almost certainly playing a role. "We're also seeing a big decline in the number of very early preterm births, which is unusual because nationally that rate is very stable and resistant to change," says Ferre. The Dane County decrease—from 2.8 percent to 1.1 percent—is dramatic, and no doubt related to the infant-mortality drop. Elsewhere in the U.S., the rate of preterm birth—a leading factor in infant mortality—has increased 36 percent over the past quarter century (to 12.7 percent), in part due to women having babies later in life and reproductive techniques that increase the chances of multiples, but also because black women across the country have a much higher risk of preterm delivery than whites...

... There is no quick or simple answer, not yet at least. But one area of interest is a former strip mall in a low-income part of Madison that, in the early '90s, was transformed from a bowling alley (and a cluster of jewelry and sub sandwich shops) into a hugely popular one-stop shopping zone for maternal care. Asked to name the facility, members of the community dubbed it South Madison Health & Family Center—Harambee, Swahili for "pulling together." Harambee, first created out of community grant funds and private donations, has developed and shifted over time, but is currently a collaboration of five different entities: three medical clinics, including county and city public-health clinics and Planned Parenthood; Head Start; and a public library. Some 600 patients a day visit the dozens of nurses and doctors at the clinics, or come for social programs, which range from parenting classes for soon-to-be fathers, breast-feeding seminars, and even bereavement groups for women who have lost infants or miscarried. Community volunteers, including elders, read to children in waiting rooms. "What is different in Dane County," says former Madison mayor Paul Soglin, who was instrumental in creating Harambee, "is that here a 19- or 25-year-old black woman finds a facility that is not the white man's institution—it's hers." As the center and the community around it began to grow, infant-mortality rates started to drop (though no data have yet proved that one caused the other). Does Ferre see a link? "Yes, I do. When you look at data from other one-stop centers, like in D.C. or Harlem, you'll see their infant-mortality rates have decreased too. I'm suspicious that this type of clinic—Harambee—could have affected the rate." (She points out that not all such one-stop clinics have these great rates, however, which warrants further investigation into what does and does not work in the one-stop-shopping plan for maternal care.) For his part, Schlenker doesn't think Harambee "is the whole answer by any means, but it is certainly part of the answer. It got agencies to work in a synergistic way, drew the community together, and made people feel valued."...

...Lorraine Lathen of the University of Wisconsin has been canvassing the women of Dane County for answers. "We're finding some non-health-related factors that actually seem to influence outcome," she says. Those factors involve a complex web of relationships between expectant parents and local medical care that Soglin (who is also investigating the Dane County results) describes simply as "access plus trust." Trust, in the words of many of the young black mothers Lathen interviewed, seems to translate into the absence of racial stereotypes...

...Other factors may have certainly played a role—including a system of devoted home nurses who work under Schlenker. There are some 60 public-health nurses in the county; at any given time a dozen are on duty for home visits before and after birth for high-risk pregnancies. But no one is exactly sure yet what did the trick. What they do know is that by 1996, says Schlenker, premature-birth rates in the area started to go down, and by 2002 the infant-mortality rate began to drop. Looking at a chart, Schlenker says, "The past six years have been a straight-down precipitous drop, like falling off a cliff." He still can't believe his own data. "It's shocking, for two reasons. One, you almost never see a graph like that in medicine. The second shock is that it's good news."

Vilas Zoo: Time To Contest the Restrictions and Charge Admission

For years I supported keeping Madison and Dane County's Vilas Zoo free. It all goes back to the restrictions made by the Vilas family in memory of their son.

Henry Vilas Zoo

The park was named in memory of the Vilas' son, Henry, who died at a young age due to complications from diabetes. In 1911, the first animal exhibits were created, representing the start of the Henry Vilas Zoo...In what has proved to be a defining and truly visionary move, the Vilas Family stipulated that the park always be admission free. As the zoo developed within the park, it too remained free.

In nineteen years I served on the city council and as mayor, and the subsequent years as a citizen, I supported a free zoo.

Given the demands on human services, and the limited revenues for county government, it is time to challenge the deed restrictions. Winning will not be easy.  The county should go to court and appeal to a judge to waive the restrictions. If the county goes to court and requests a release from the deed restrictions, the worst thing that will happen is the county will lose.

It is estimated that it will cost $2.3 million to operate the zoo in 2010. Over half of that ($1.3 million) comes from the taxpayers.  This is one instance where a fee makes sense, particularly since so many of the users are not county residents.

With an estimated 550,000 visitors,if  400,000 of those visitors paid an average $3 admission the deficit could be wiped out.

If the county prevails, all sorts of adjusted pricing structures can be adopted. One or more days a week can be free admission days. There can be a maximum charge for children in a group. School classes can be free or reduced. County residents can get reduced prices or even season passes. UW, Edgewood and MATC students could get special student admissions,

It's worth a shot.

Wisconsin Cable Regulation Back In Play

State-level cable TV regulation is back as a legislative issue. Representative Gary Hebl (D-Sun Prairie),  is gathering co-sponsors for a bill that would fix several of the major problems of 2007's Act 42, which deregulated the industry from local control and gave wired video providers perpetual franchises with no significant state oversight.

Jason Stein has the story on the front page in Sunday's Wisconsin State Journal. I like the on-line headline, "Price promises of backers of cable bill fall flat," much better than the print head, "Some prices higher under cable TV competition law." In either case, the story's focus is on a 2009 University of Minnesota Humphrey Center report, which found that cable rates in Wisconsin and most everywhere else went up significantly in the last few years rather than falling, even after the "competition" induced by state deregulation.

When interests such as AT&T pushed for a bill in 2007 to open up more competition in the cable television market, the proposal's supporters promised consumers would "see cost savings almost immediately."

Nearly two years after an intense lobbying effort helped push the controversial video competition bill through the Legislature, those lower cable prices haven't materialized. A recent study found prices for expanded basic cable increased nearly 28 percent from late 2006 to early 2009. Madison-area provider Charter Communications has said it will raise rates on its lower-tier cable-only customers by $3 in December.

"It was a form of puffery and everyone knows it," Barry Orton, a UW-Madison telecommunications professor who formerly did consulting work for cities opposed to the law, said of the predictions of lower prices. "And those rates prove it."

Back when the 2007 bill was partial-vetoed into law, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel encapsulated the key issues:

Legislators who fought the bill said Doyle's vetoes improved it but predicted that rural areas will not be helped by competition and new telecommunications products.

"People in many areas of the state won't see any competition . . . because companies such as AT&T have no plans to provide service beyond their existing service footprint, which covers less than half of the state," Rep. Gary Hebl (D-Sun Prairie) said in a statement.

Thad Nation, executive director of TV4US Wisconsin, which ran hundreds of TV ads statewide pushing the bill, predicted that "prices will fall, services will improve and companies will have incentives and bring consumers new, exciting technologies." (emphasis Waxing America)

So Stein now reports "A recent study found prices for expanded basic cable in Wisconsin rose between December 2006 and February 2009, in spite of a December 2007 law to promote competition among video providers."  Cable prices rose how much? Only 27.6% over the slightly more than two years, when the new law was going to lower them according to all the bill's sponsors.

Stein reports Hebl's draft bill would:

• Require cable outages to be repaired within 24 hours instead of 72.

• Allow all municipalities to charge up to 1 percent of video companies' revenues to pay for public access channels - not just the roughly 30 municipalities that currently collect such fees from cable companies.

• Require cable providers to give public access stations a prominent channel on the dial rather than one at the end of it.

• Require a renewal of currently permanent state cable franchises every five years and transfer the authority to award them from the Department of Financial Institutions to the Public Service Commission, which regulates utilities.

You thought Waxing America was safe from this topic at last?  Too bad; there's more to come, as this bill gains additional sponsors, and AT&T and the cable industry push back against it with their formidable resources. For now, what the Cap Times editorialized in 2007, just before the Wisconsin Senate voted to pass cable deregulation, still holds, with a little updating:

AT&T wants a license to turn a quick buck and is about to get got it. 

Cable wants to extract greater profits from Wisconsin by getting rid of community investment and is about to get got it.

Residents should be hopping mad.

- Barry Orton

Baseball's World Series: The Winter Classic

In a few years, baseball's fall winter classic will find the New York Yankees welcoming the Colorado Rockies sometime in the first week of December as Major League Baseball determines that not enough regular season and playoff games can be scheduled before Thanksgiving.

The most controversial matter will be the Steinbrenner insistence that the games be played in New York while the other owners suggest that sub-freezing temperatures warrant shifting the World Series to a domed neutral site such as Houston or New Orleans.

Purists note that the seven game classic in which the Brooklyn Dodgers won their first World Championship was concluded on October 4, 1955, and that another seven game series with the Yankees was made famous by Bill Mazeroski's game and series ending home run and concluded on October 13, 1960.

When asked about the greed of the owners as the main motivator in extending the season, the baseball commissioner replied,

Greed has nothing to do with it. As you know baseball has been imitating football for many years now. First came 'charge,' then the 'wave,' then horrible stadium music, then continuous game interruptions for commercials, and now we figure playing in winter is best for the game - fans love it.

Representative Ryan: 900 Words of Silence

Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan (WI-Janesville) on the pages of TheJournalTimes.com tells us about Inflation's Looming Shadow.

In this profoundly vapid, scholarly appearing article, Ryan uses charts and references to ominous sources to warn about looming inflation:

 One of my key concerns is on the inflation front...If inflation gets out of hand, the Fed will be forced to hike interest rates and we could end up with the worst possible combination: rising prices, high interest rates, high unemployment and weak growth, or stagflation.

So what else is new? Every economist and first year business major warned us of the specter of inflation when the first solutions to the Bush-Ryan depression loomed 18 months ago. 

Curiously Ryan's article is more noticeable for what he does not say:

• War contributes to inflation. As with Vietnam, when you spend hundreds of billions of dollars in Iraq for a military conflict, when those dollars are not used to produce values, housing, roads, educated children, hospital, inflation grows. Given the Bush-Ryan War in Iraq, we might as well tax the public and burn the money.
• Ryan was a principal leader in the effort to deregulate the financial services industry, an action that led to this economic crisis and the outrageous bonuses paid to Wall Street for no productive work, another source of inflation.
• Ryan was a principal leader in spending hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out companies run into the ground by his political contributors. He tells us that this bailout fuels inflation. He is silent as to his own role.
• Jobs were lost all right. They were lost to unregulated, rampant subsidies for American businesses to cease production and import products manufactured overseas by slave labor and under devastating environmental conditions at the expense of Ryan's union constituents. All orchestrated and paid for by Ryan's buddies.
• Ryan said nothing in 2008 when his buddies, the speculators, manipulated the price of oil, sending it from $65 a barrel to over $150 in three short months. Now that is inflationary.

Phooey.

Ryan is only interested in setting up a straw man so that when the inflation creeps into the economy he can say "I told you so," rationalize more cuts to government services, and deflect criticism of his own role in ruining the nation's economy.
 

Field of Dreams: A Kid and His Dad

This week I watched Field of Dreams two more times. The film mesmerized me when it was first released in 1989, and it continues to be fresh and powerful today.

The author W.P. Kinsella understood the game and what it meant to fathers and sons, and perhaps daughters.

The movie tells the story of the pure beauty of baseball and with it, the relationship of a father and son.

From the day I was old enough to throw a ball fifteen feet through my early teenage years, every opportunity to play catch with my father was a realization that I was accepted as his peer.  Baseball, fit for the backyard or an empty lot, elevates a six year old or a sixteen year old to a parallel plane in life with his father.

Free from owners and advertisements, garish uniforms, and drug-using professionals, the dad can throw to his son and realize the dreams of his youth, and the son can toss a fast one back to his father and still dream of the future.

I went over some old reviews, like Roger Ebert's, Variety, and one from Rolling Stone. There is barely a mention of Ray's relationship with his father.

Maybe I missed the point of the film. Or maybe these reviewers never played catch with their fathers.

Scott Walker: Peddling The Party Line on Taxes

Scott Walker is incapable of telling the truth about taxes and fees. 

The Milwaukee County Executive concluded this week that Wisconsin is 12th Most Taxed State is Unacceptable. Walker parroting the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance (WTA) asserts:

Rankings like these are unacceptable. 

Walker makes no mention of where Wisconsin ranks in collecting total taxes and fees for government expenditures.

Wisconsin is low when it comes to imposing fees.

When taxes and fess are combined, Wisconsin ranks in the middle of the pack of the fifty states. That means we are in the middle of the pack when it comes to total government expenditures on a per capita basis.

Taxes are progressive. Fees are regressive. Wisconsin, going back to the days of Bob La Follette, preferred to collect revenues from taxes not fees.

From Waxing America,  September 2, 2009: Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance Distorts - What Else Is New?

Is WTA accurate in portraying the burden placed on Wisconsin taxpayers by state government? No. Not by a long shot.

We have been over this. State governments have many revenue sources. They include not only income taxes, but fees, various licenses and other assessments. Some progressive states like Wisconsin rely more heavily on progressive income taxes rather than regressive fees.

When we look at all government revenues on a per capita basis, Wisconsin does not rank near the top, but ranks 17th. Using 2008 revenues and current population data, our state collects $2680 per capita. That puts us as close to 34th ranked Mississippi ($2252) as it does to tenth ranked Delaware ($3360).