NEW YORK (AP) – South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford has been the leading voice among Republican governors who have criticized President Barack Obama’s $787 billion economic stimulus plan as a pork-laden boondoggle that will plunge the country further into debt. It’s won him praise from many conservatives and boosted his national profile, fueling speculation he will run for president in 2012.

But the governor’s announcement this week that he may reject nearly a quarter of the money headed to South Carolina has stirred criticism in the state and elsewhere that he has placed his own political future ahead of the needs of the state’s most vulnerable citizens.

Several GOP governors, including Rick Perry of Texas, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Haley Barbour of Mississippi, have said they would reject a portion of the money that would expand unemployment benefits to those not currently eligible to receive them. Sanford says he will also reject those funds, but he has threatened to go much further, requesting a waiver to spend some $700 million targeted for education and other programs to pay down some of the state’s debt instead. — [ READ MORE ]

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Does it surprise? …..that these SLAVE STATES have a high concentration of BLACK constituents.

From Salon.com’s Joan Walsh:

……. is it just an accident that it’s mostly GOP governors in the party’s narrowing Southern stronghold who are threatening to reject stimulus funding, particularly aid that requires them to expand unemployment benefits? I don’t think so. The rejectionist GOP governors just happen to represent a large swath of the traditional Black Belt. And who do you think is disproportionately unemployed in Mississippi, where Gov. Haley Barbour told Salon’s Mike Madden: “We do not, in our state, pay unemployment compensation to people who are not willing and able to work full time?” Mississipi’s black unemployment rate is 11.2 percent; the white unemployment rate: 4.3 percent.

DNC Attacks South Carolina Governor – Mark Sanford

How about Gov. Mark Sanford’s South Carolina, the state with the nation’s highest unemployment rate, at 9.5 percent? In 2008, South Carolina’s white unemployment rate was 5.3 percent, while the black rate was 10.1 percent. Things are even more stark in Sanford’s Lexington County, home of the state capitol: The county is 85 percent white, and its unemployment rate is only 6.5 percent. But in Allendale County, which is 71 percent black, the unemployment rate is roughly 20 percent.

You get the picture. Bobby Jindal’s Louisiana? The black unemployment rate is 9.4 percent; the white rate is 3.3 percent. Rick Perry’s Texas? The black rate is 9.7 percent; the rate for whites, 4.3 percent. — [ READ MORE ]

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