Fact #1:

Two young children who had been left in a hot car while their mother was at work were later found dead, their bodies wrapped in trash bags under an apartment sink, authorities said Tuesday.

Autopsies were scheduled Tuesday to determine what killed 1-year-old Triniti Campbell and her 4-year-old brother, Shawn Campbell Jr., Berkeley County Deputy Coroner George Oliver said.

The children's mother, Sametta Heyward, had taken them to work Monday in downtown Charleston and left them in her car all day as the temperature outside rose to 88 degrees, Oliver said.

That is what is known.  It is not a fact that the children died in the car.  It is not a fact that Sametta Heyward was a good mother or a bad mother - only that she was a mother.  It is not a fact that these children came from a poor family or a wealthy family.  It is a fact that they are dead.

Fact #2.  Last November, a woman by the name of Sametta Heyward (a rather distinctive name), who was a resident of Charleston County SC had her mobile home scheduled for sale due to tax deliquency.  She owed $169.75.  Let that figure sink in.  This is all from public records.

Fact #3:  The lowest price I could find for a one-bedroom apartment in Charleston SC was $590/month.  A two bedroom apartment, at its cheapest, was $699/month.  I found this by searching on Rent.com.

Fact #4:  According to the US Census Bureau, South Carolina ranked 4th in the country for total persons below the poverty level (19.9%) and third in the country for the number of children below the poverty level (31.7%).

Fact #5: South Carolina ranks 35th in total tax burden (Federal, State & Local) in the country.  That means 34 states pay more taxes than SC.  Although not necessarily a causal relationship, it's interesting to note that South Carolina ranked 32nd in the "Smartest State" analysis.  This ranking includes a variety of educational measures such as public high school graduation rates, average class size, student reading and math proficiency, and other measures.  Not for nothing, Massachusetts was THE smartest state.  Damned elitist liberals.

A final note on facts:  I tried and tried to find statistics on child care cost and investment in South Carolina, or find any mention of where South Carolina rates with respect to other states for affordable child care.  Nada.  If it's out there, it's in a place I haven't found and/or is found using search phrases I didn't think to use.

My Version of the Story:

CAVEAT: What I highlighted above is what is known.  What follows, unless otherwise noted, is where my mind took me when I thought about why a woman would leave her young children in a hot car and why they would later be found dead.

When I initially saw this story on CNN, I reacted the way I think most people would react.  We've had a few stories over the past days about mothers being accused of abuse, neglect and murder.  I thought, "what's wrong with people?" and shook my head.

Yet very shortly thereafter I was reminded of a series I watched on (I think) F/X.  It was Morgan Spurlock's (of Super Size Me fame) 30 Days.  The show was fascinating - each week, there would be a certain thing Spurlock would have to live out for 30 days.  The very first episode had Spurlock and his fiancee living in Columbus for 30 days on minimum wage with no access to outside funds.  They took their credit cards, insurance cards, etc., and Spurlock et al had to find a minimum wage job and a place to live and make ends meet for 30 days.  Needless to say, they wound up making choices: eat or go to the doctor?  Walk or take the bus?  You get the picture.

On the heels of that, I thought of Michael Moore's piece in Bowling for Columbine, where he tells of Tamarla Owens, a minimum wage mom who has to ride a bus to the suburbs to work off the welfare she received from the state.  From the script:

This is the bus that she was forced to ride every day in order to work off the welfare money the state had given her.  She, and many others from Flint who were poor, would make the (?)-mile round-trip journey every day, from Flint to Auburn Hills, in Oakland County, one of the wealthiest areas in the country.  Tamarla would leave early in the morning and return late at night, rarely seeing her young children.

::snip::

Even though Tamarla worked up to (?) hours a week at these two jobs in the mall, she did not earn enough to pay her rent.  And one week before the shooting, was told by her landlord that he was evicting her.  With nowhere to go and not wanting to take her two children out of school, Tamarla asked her brother if they could stay with him for a few weeks.  It was there that Tamarla's son found a small (?)-calibre gun and took it to school.  Tamarla did not see him take the gun to school, because she was on a state bus to go serve drinks and make fudge for rich people.

Although the death of Sametta Heyward's children doesn't seem to have anything to do with firearms, I find the parallels between Spurlock's 30 days at minimum wage and the story of Tamarla Owens' choices (or lack thereof) instructive.

So rather than judge Sametta Heyward a bad mother unfit to have had children in the first place, I thought instead about the life she may have led before her two children were found dead.

Perhaps Sametta had a job - a minimum wage job - and it was one that she worked at with dignity, although with very little appreciation.  Maybe she worked at it for 40 or 50 hours a week, trying to keep up with the bills.  At the previous minimum wage, she would have brought home $206/week before taxes.  She had a 60x14 ft. mobile home, but she didn't have the $169.75 to pay the taxes on it and it was sold by Charleston County.  If she was lucky, she got a respectable one-bedroom apartment for $590/month.  That works out to $136.15 per week in rent, leaving her $69.85 per week for ALL OTHER EXPENSES - food - utilities - phone - gas - car - insurance - clothes - for her and her two children.  Even if she qualified for and received state and Federal assistance for these expenses, under $70 a week is not enough money to pay for child care for a 1- and 4-year old.

I picture her asking friends, family, neighbors to help out with her two children.  I picture those people helping her whenever they could.  But there came a day when no one was available to watch these two kids.  Sametta couldn't take them into work with her, and she couldn't leave them alone.  She didn't figure it would be so hot that day, and she knew tht if she didn't show up for work - at best - she would lose a day's work and money to eat; and, at worst - she would lose the job entirely.  So she figured that leaving the kids in the car was the only option she had.  And so she did.

I repeat: this is just speculation on my part.  It's difficult to envision a rational person leaving her two young children in a car period, et alone during the summertime in South Carolina.  I'm not defending leaving chidren in cars.  I'm not defending even the mildest form of neglect of child.

But let's face it - these kinds of trade-offs are going on every day (and right this moment) in America.  Despite the incessant touting of our "strong economy", the number of people and particularly children below the poverty level is growing.  Real wages are not growing.  The cost of living is growing.  More people, and particularly children, are going without basic health care.

So I ask you: are the Sametta's of this world simply bad parents or are they being placed in positions where a bad choice is their best option?  

People are responsible for their actions.  But in cases like these, you have to wonder - does the government bear responsibility on some level for the way it has utterly turned its back, financially and socially, on those at the lower end of the income scale?  Is the choice to leave two children in a hot car so that you can go to work driven by the policies and fiat of a government that reviles the working class?  Is it, indeed, at least a partial case of "death by government"?

I'm inclined to think so.