An in depth look at eastern Kentucky that brings tears to my eyes. We as a Country need to just KISS (keep it simple stupid). We have got to do better. We simply must, and we can if we really want to. In business we talk about thinking "outside the box", We meet and roundtable ideas to try to formulate a strategy to change the paradigm.
Unacceptable results are in my book, unacceptable. Where is the Government sub-committee meeting with Business and Civic Leaders having this meeting? Where is the plan? It's been FIFTY YEARS- or is dependency now the norm?
It's no way to live, being poor sucks, make no mistake. Most folk want to work, be productive, it gives self worth after all. Come on man! America, we can do better! Job training! Job training, job training! Truck drivers, nurses, mechanics, plumbers, electricians, master carpenters, machinists, and all things internet related just to start with!
50 Years of Night in Eastern Kentucky: 'A lot of people here have just given up'
some excerpts: ...
Martin County alone has collected $2.1 billion in government transfer payments to residents since the late 1960s. Life improved, to a point.
The problem facing Appalachia today isn't Third World poverty. It's dependence on government assistance.
The
people of Martin County fell short of Johnson's plan to "support
themselves" rather than rely on handouts. In 2011, the county's largest
source of personal income wasn't wages and salaries, as it is in a
healthy economy. It was $143 million in government transfer payments,
direct aid from the American taxpayer for which no good or service was
expected in return.
Paul May, former principal of Blackberry Elementary School in Pike
County, said children as young as second- and third-graders take
government assistance for granted. This entitlement attitude is passed
down through generations, May said.
"Instead of talking about a
future of work, or a profession, they talk about getting a check," May
said. "That's what they've heard all their lives."
Fifty years into a massive effort to prop up these communities, they can't stand on their own.
"LBJ didn't do a damn thing," local historian and poet Rufus Reed, then
87, told the Martin Countian newspaper in 1982. "It was the coal
companies that brought Martin County out of poverty."
McCoy shook the president's hand in 1964 during Johnson's visit. He
was 8 years old. In hindsight, McCoy said, he wonders whether the War on
Poverty didn't afflict Martin County with a cure as bad as the disease.
"Seems
like after that visit, there was a sense of relief here because a
pipeline opened up from Washington, D.C., to the hollows. The people
said, 'Oh boy! Money!'" McCoy said. "The problem is, generations later,
the people still are saying, 'Oh boy! Money!' Public assistance has
become a way of life out here in a way that it was never meant to be."
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