AJAX callbacks fail on WP front-end pages

I have made a fresh install of 4.4.3 and Wordpress 3.7.1 and 4.4.3 and WP 3.8, in neither case do state dropdowns work. In addition "shortcode" selection of Contribution pages do not work within Wordpress either.

here is a javascript error (see attached).

WP sites running 3.7.1 + Civi 4.3.8 do not experience this problem. Drupal sites using 4.4.3 do not experience this issue. The WP+Civi demo site is down at the time of this filing.

I have spent nearly three hours debugging this and have not come to a solution. I believe this to be a serious technical issue I lack the skills to fix myself and request help. But I can offer my debugging efforts (attached) and my opinion that CiviCRM 4.4.3 with Wordpress is having trouble with the JSON "data" variable somehow being corrupted or misinterpreted as HTML when parsed through eval() and the Wordpress engine.

I offer my testing site as an example (freshly installed with no plugins except Civi)
http://wp.civiteacher.com/?page=CiviCRM&q=civicrm/contribute/transact&reset=1&id=1