TBD on Ning
this gives an insight into a certain segment...
facts? we don't need no stinking facts.
Poor Kentucky has no stomach for Obama
Jackson (United States) (AFP) - Jim Feltner's days are empty. He is a poor man in the poorest county in the United States and lives off government aid.
But the Kentucky resident has nothing but scorn for the head of that government, President Barack Obama, who has made the fight against economic inequality one of his battle cries.
Feltner sits in a plastic chair outside his ramshackle mobile home, surrounded by rusty cars and car parts. He has no television.
People around here, he says, are "just surviving, barely. I know, because I'm one of them."
A victim of two heart attacks, he lives off disability checks, and $105 a month in government food stamps.
Feltner voted for a previous Democratic president, Bill Clinton, but now says: "I will vote for anybody against Obama.
"I don't care who runs against him, I'll vote for him. I don't care if it's a Democrat, a Republican, an Indian, a Pakistani, even a Frenchman!"
The first reason is coal. He accuses Obama of dooming this mining region of the Appalachian mountains with environmental regulations.
Since 2011, 30 percent of the mining jobs -- around 4,000 -- in the region have vanished. Competition from natural gas is another factor in the decline.
"Here's what he said about the coal business: 'go ahead, build your coal fired energy plants, we will shut them down,'" Feltner alleged.
"Is that something for a president to say?," he added. "He's got a problem with the poor people."
Eastern Kentucky, a region that has long depended on the welfare state, is the epicenter of the war on poverty launched right here in 1964 by Democratic President Lyndon Johnson.
But 50 years later, Obama, another Democrat, is held in contempt in these parts.
Nationwide, 63 percent of low-salary workers, those making under $30,000 a year, voted for his re-election in 2012.
But here in Wolfe County, 60 percent of voters backed Republican Mitt Romney. In neighboring countries Romney's score surpassed 80 percent.
Wolfe County has the lowest average income of all the 3,146 counties in America -- $31,000 dollars per household annually.
A massive 41 percent of its inhabitants live below the poverty line -- defined at $11,670 per person per year -- and 35 percent receive food stamps.
- Conservative Christians-
The same aversion to Obama is heard in Jackson, 21 kilometers (13 miles) down the road.
Eric Miller, 28, with bad teeth and an accent as thick as his tattooed arms, says he does not care about politics. He voted once, but can't remember for whom. But one thing is clear: he does not like Obama.
"I guess Democrats just worry about money in their pocket, what they and their friends are doing. They're not worried about us small people," Miller said.
"The Republicans, they are the ones that know… raised up like we have, you know. Know what it's like, what we need, what shouldn't been taken away," Miller added.
"If there weren't government programs, it would be a ghost town," Miller said. He gets $380 on the sixth of every month, and with that he has to support himself and his girlfriend.
The money is loaded onto credit cards that are accepted at certain stores, just for food, although there is a black market in which goods thus bought can be exchanged for cigarettes and painkillers.
"It's unfortunate, when the checks come out, there's a festival atmosphere in Jackson," said Mike Bryant, chairman of the Breathitt County chapter of the Republican Party.
"If someone dared say, maybe we need to rethink this food stamp program, they're going to hang you from the nearest tree," he said.
So why is Barack Obama, who supports food stamps and whose Democratic allies in Congress tried an failed to stop a Republican-backed cut in the program, so deeply unpopular?
Racism is a taboo subject that simmers just under the surface of many a conversation here.
Jackson is 98 percent white, and the region has checkered past. In late 2011 a church further to the east triggered an uproar by barring mixed race couples.
But Bryant says voters' main motivation when they go to the polls are coal and social issues: abortion, guns and gay marriage, which he labels "the three biggies." This is conservative Christian country.
Political scientist Stephen Voss of the University of Kentucky says the only thing that sets local voters apart from conservatives in the rest of the country is that people here are not anti-government.
Otherwise, their values are in line with those of the Republican Party.
"Abortion, coal, the issue of energy policy, they're certainly issues that, depending on the county, push those voters toward the Republican party. Not food stamps," he said.
"We're talking relative conservatism," Voss added.
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by P.A. on
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Just another case of people voting against their best interest because they are racists.
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Permalink Reply by ProblemAgain on
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what that story and many other stories about these dolts show is that they have no logic skills. in their world, 2 + 2 = whatever the fuck they want to believe.
Bundy Supporters Drove ATVs Through Native American Ruins
By Sara Morrison May 11, 2014 11:15 PMIf there's one thing that will get your point across and persuade the general public to support your cause, it's driving a bunch of ATVs through Native American ruins and burials.
That seems to be the logic used by anti-Bureau of Land Management, pro-Cliven Bundy protestors who drove ATVs through a Utah canyon trail where motorized vehicles are banned. The rally was organized by Phil Lyman who, believe it or not, is actually a commissioner of San Juan county, home of Recapture Canyon. Hundreds of years ago, it was also home to the Puebloans, as evidenced by the ruins of their homes dug into the canyon rock. It is currently on federal land.
In 2007, an illegal ATV trail was discovered, sections of which ran right through some of these archaeological sites. The BLM then ruled that motorized vehicles were illegal in the canyon, and ATV and anti-federal enthusiasts have protested ever since -- well before the Bundy Ranch debacle.
"For 130 years people have been using that canyon as a highway," Lyman told the Salt Lake Tribune, apparently not realizing that 130 years ago, motorized vehicles were only just being invented and were certainly not in mainstream use.
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Ryan Bundy addresses the crowd (Reuters)
Bundy Ranch put squabbles with the BLM in the national spotlight, and so Lyman's rally for the right to potentially destroy Native American artifacts brought several Bundy supporters -- including Bundy's son, Ryan. Also people wearing camouflage and a guy with an assault rifle, according to the Tribune. There were also American flags, which makes no sense.
Both the BLM and the sheriff's department came to the rally, but whatever skirmishes the ATV riders were anticipating/hoping for didn't come to pass. The BLM simply recorded the proceedings to prosecute offenders later. The sheriff's deputies said they were only there to keep the peace, and any punishment would have to come from the BLM, since "they're the ones that closed the road." Thanks, deputies.
Lyman won't have to worry about any federal repercussions, as he ultimately did not drive on the trail. Bundy did ride on the illegal trail, but I guess he doesn't think there will be consequences for his actions for some reason.
A Navajo Warrior ceremony for returning veterans was scheduled for the area that weekend, but the rally forced organizers to reschedule it for October. So the rally was a slap in the face of Native Americans from the past and the present.
"Damage to archaeological sites is permanent and the information about our collective past is then lost forever," said Jerry Spangler, director of the Colorado Plateau Archaeological Alliance. "It is sad that irreplaceable treasures of importance to all Americans would be sacrificed on the altar of anti-government fervor. It is worse that protesters would be so blinded to their own insensitivity as to what others consider to be sacred treasures of their past."
In other Bundy news, the FBI recently opened an investigation into last month's showdown at the ranch.
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