North Carolina legislators' salaries are far below their counterparts.

A comparison of base salaries in the 23 state legislatures that the National Conference of State Legislatures considers comparable to North Carolina shows their pay is at the bottom.

State lawmakers here have a base salary of $13,951 per year. Only Nebraska ($12,000), South Carolina ($10,400) and Texas ($7,200) give less, while Alabama and Kentucky do not have an annual salary.

The median is $24,012, the amount Alaska pays. The highest is $48,708 in Hawaii.

The NCSL divides legislatures into three categories based on the time they spend on the job, their staff size and their pay.

North Carolina falls into the middle category, where legislators spend more than two-thirds of their time on political work and have a medium-sized staff, but do not make enough to be full-time politicians.

California's full-time legislators are the highest-paid, with $116,208 as a base salary. South Dakota legislators have the lowest pay, at $12,000 over a two-year term, although 11 other states pay only by the day or week.

Verenda Smith says Kentucky, Louisiana and Arkansas are in the Southeast, but not West Virginia.

The interim director of the Federation of Tax Administrators says she would use climate, history and economy to define the region. She says Southeastern states have muggy weather, often border the Gulf of Mexico or the Atlantic Ocean and were in the Confederacy.

That last quality would eliminate Kentucky, which did not secede, but Smith argued as a native of the state that it was divided by the Civil War. She would include Louisiana and Arkansas because of their warmer climates and Confederate membership.

"West Virginia is harder because they are geographically different from the rest of the Southeast, up there with Pennsylvania and Ohio," she said. "They don't have the growing seasons and the cotton, and they were on the Union side."

Still, Smith said it's an academic exercise.

"The question has no single answer," she said.

John Shelton Reed says the Southeast is a concept, not a region.

The retired UNC-Chapel Hill sociology professor said that the Southeastern United States is a loosely defined "post-historical region" centered around Atlanta.

"It's an economy; it's not a culture," he said. "You talk about Southern music and Southern cooking and Southern women. You don't talk about Southeastern music and cooking and women."

As a general rule, Reed said the boundaries do not necessarily follow state borders, but he would use the Mississippi River as the dividing line between the Southeast and the Southwest and the usual borders between the North and South.

That would include: Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia.

It would leave out Arkansas and Louisiana. He said West Virginia would be a borderline case.

"These boundaries are kind of indistinct," he said. "You don't cross a border, you sort of move into it gradually."

Hat Tip: awbeal 

Who needs the federal government? We've got football.

Though the U.S. Census Bureau does not define the Southeastern region in its reports, another major — more important? — agency does: The Southeastern Conference.

The college athletic conference headquartered in Alabama has its own roster of states it considers to be in the Southeast:

Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee.

It does not include North Carolina or Virginia, which are part of the Atlantic Coast Conference but are undoubtedly in the Southeast. It also skips West Virginia, a borderline case.

The definition is important because a recent political ad compares tax rates in the Southeast, which obviously differ depending on which states you include.

North Carolina has a higher tax burden than most Southeastern states.

But it has not been ranked the highest among the dozen states considered to be part of the Southeast by the Tax Foundation, a Washington-based nonprofit.

Using as its guide the states considered Southeastern by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, the foundation has ranked North Carolina between the fourth and second Southeast states in terms of tax burden since 1977.

A recent ad targeting Democratic Senate candidate Kay Hagan cited research by the Tax Foundation, among others, to back its claim that budgets she helped write "pushed North Carolina to the highest taxes in the Southeast."

In 2002, the year before Hagan became a co-chair of the Senate appropriations committee, the Tax Foundation ranked North Carolina the third highest state in the Southeast, below Kentucky and Arkansas.

Over the following five years, North Carolina remained in the top three, but it was never in the top spot.

In 2008, it dropped to fourth, below Arkansas, Georgia and Virginia.

Still, it was close. The differences between the rankings were often based on a tenth of a percent and the states were only a few slots apart in the overall rankings.

How do you define the Southeast?

We here at Dome headquarters have been poring over some tax data this morning as part of a fact-check, and we came across this interesting epistemological problem.

The general consensus of our group of reporters was that it includes the following states:

Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia.

We did not include West Virginia, but the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis does in its regional breakdowns. That means a number of other groups, such as the Tax Foundation, also use it.

The U.S. Census Bureau does not define the Southeast.  

Kentucky is not among the early primary states.

And the small town of Columbus, population 229, is not first on any politician's itinerary.

But former U.S. Sen. John Edwards stopped by the town Thursday to hold a campaign rally — because the residents asked him to, the Washington Post reports.

The visit was part of a contest by the presidential campaign on the Eventful Web site, which allows users to petition entertainers to visit their hometown.

This summer, Edwards pledged to visit whichever town got the most vote. Columbus won, with 1,870 vote, and 1,500 showed up for the rally.

It beat out cities such as Los Angeles, Dallas and Seattle.