Appalachia

Rural America Under Attack By Republicans And Donald Trump, Undermining Their Future

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It is ironic that Donald Trump has declared war on Rural America, the part of the nation which put him over the top in the Electoral College.

Rural America is dying, as its portion of the national population is rapidly declining, but they still have enough impact that they could help to put Donald Trump over the top, with the hope that his pledges to revive dying industries would occur, such as the coal industry in Appalachia.

Now these rural citizens are discovering that the so called Trump Health Care plan will cut their medical benefits dramatically, and close down rural hospitals, and therefore, insure many more deaths over time, all due to the obsession with destroying ObamaCare, rather than work to improve it.

Trump’s promotion of the race and religion cards skillfully manipulates the rural citizens of the South, Midwest and the Great Plains, and Mountain West to vote Republican, while their state legislatures continue to favor the elite wealthy, and cut back on education, health care, and protection of the elderly, sick, and disabled.

Donald Trump and his party are the most right wing they have ever been, and they are further undermining the future of Rural America, but only when the citizens finally understand what is happening, will there be any chance of bringing Rural America forward into the 21st century, while Trump and the Republicans are preventing any progress toward a more unified America.

Is it any wonder why more and more young people are fleeing the rural areas of the nation toward the urban areas, which have rejected the right wing philosophy of the GOP?

The hope is that over time the Republican Party will finally pay for its sins against Americans who are too naive and ill informed to recognize it in the present.

Kentucky: Heavily Poor White State With Two Senators Who Wish To Gut Medicaid And Obamacare, Which Benefits Their Struggling Constituents!

Ronald 1 Comment

Kentucky is an extremely poor state, especially in the eastern Appalachia counties, heavily poor whites, who have high levels of preexisting health problems, and depend on Medicaid and ObaamCare, and are now scared to death that they will lose their lifeline, and all because of the mean spirit, lack of empathy and compassion, and selfishness, of the Republican Party.

Kentucky has 60 percent of people in Appalachia on disability benefits, and overall one third of its people are dependent on government programs.

The Opioid crisis also affects Kentuckians at very high rates, due to depression over horrible job prospects, and high levels of unemployment, caused to be greater by the Great Recession, provoked by Republicans and their lack of concern about regulation of banks and Wall Street before 2008, and now ready again to make the same mistakes and repeal the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 to prevent such future economic disasters.

And in the midst of this issue of struggling constituents, Kentucky has two Republican Senators who do not give a damn about their own population.

Rand Paul, with his crazy libertarian ideas, wants to destroy ObamaCare and gut Medicaid, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is even more the villain, as he undermines his own state, having utilized racism and misogyny to keep his Senate seat and the power of the Majority Leader, and to destroy everything Barack Obama did, which benefited Kentuckians and the nation.

How much more evil could two men be, but also, how ignorant a population, that they would be manipulated and tricked into supporting the reelection of, arguably, the worst two Senators combined in any state of the Union?

The Total Loss Of Humanity, Compassion, And Decency In The Republican Party Unprecedented In Modern American History!

Ronald 4 Comments

So here we are, a few days away from a Senate vote on the most atrocious possible bill ever devised on health care!

22 million people will be knocked off health care over the next decade, the vast majority in 2018.

Medicaid will be decimated; the disabled will be repudiated, as if they do not have a right to exist; the elderly in nursing homes will lose Medicaid coverage; many rural hospitals will be shut down; millions upon millions of Americans with preexisting conditions will no longer have health care; prescription medications will no longer be covered at a reasonable rate; the poor in Appalachia, the Rust Belt, and in the cities of America will only have inadequate emergency room care, if the hospital near them stays open.

All the major medical associations have come out against the legislation, which it seems clear, will cause thousands upon thousands of premature deaths of people at all ages and racial and ethnic backgrounds.

And why? So that the top one percent can get a massive tax cut that they do not need, and in most cases, have not asked for!

This is greed and selfishness beyond redemption!

It is a total loss of humanity, compassion, and decency by the Republican Party, unprecedented in modern American history!

There is absolutely no justification for this outrage, and is an attack on life, by a so called “pro life” party, that insists that every fetus must be taken to term and born; but once born, if not healthy or if not wealthy, to hell with you, and you are on your own!

If there is karma, then one can say that every single Republican who votes in favor of this obscene legislation will pay a price in the future as one does not tolerate evil without retribution!

So Senators in the Republican Party, think twice and have a conscience before you sign onto such evil, disgraceful legislation, a true crime against humanity!

Rural, Blue Collar, Poorly Educated Vs Urban, Suburban, White Collar, Well Educated: The 19th Century Vs. The 21st Century

Ronald 11 Comments

After the British vote to leave the European Union, and the support that Donald Trump has gained in the United States, one thing is very clear!

We are in the midst of a revolt of the rural, blue collar, poorly educated against the urban, suburban, white collar, well educated who promote modernization and tolerance on the issue of immigration and race.

It was urban Londoners against the rural parts of England who voted to exit Europe, as it is the major urban centers and surrounding suburbs of America against the hinterland of Appalachia, the rural South, the Great Plains and the Mountain West, who love Donald Trump.

It is really nostalgia for the 19th century against the modernization of the 21st century, and a desire to isolate oneself from outside influences and nations.

The effort must be made to prevent the narrow mindedness of what happened in the United Kingdom from spreading, like a disease, to the United States in this year’s election.

All progressives must unite around Hillary Clinton and help to shape her progressive agenda, assuredly more than under her husband, Bill Clinton, in the 1990s!

Donald Trump Is The New “Southern” Demagogue: Combination Of Huey P. Long, Strom Thurmond, George C. Wallace!

Ronald 2 Comments

Anyone watching Donald Trump’s Presidential campaign will notice, if they are using their brain matter, that his greatest appeal is among Southerners who want the “glorious past” returned to them, a time of racial discrimination and prejudice against any minority group which is not white Christian!  Thousands flock to see Trump in Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and other Southern states.

The Trump supporters are poorly educated, including many high school dropouts and barely graduates of high school; lower income whites living in rural areas of the South, Appalachia, and the Midwest non urban areas bordering on the South; heavily racist and nativist and blaming minorities for their own shortcomings and inability to earn a decent living; and those who admire narcissism, bullyism, and braggadocio, due to their own mentally unstable and insecure personalities.

The Trump supporter base want a strong man, who promotes obedience to authority and to those, whether religious or political demagogues, who have an appeal that simplifies all of the problems that most people without education and knowledge find appealing.  They want women to go back to the “good old days” when they focused on the bedroom and the kitchen, rather than compete with men.

The Trump supporters also support action to put African Americans, Latinos, and Muslims under control, working against their basic human rights and civil liberties, so they want a return to the days when white male Christians (fundamentalist and evangelical) were in charge, not having to deal with the rise of Catholics and Jews who started to become influential in the time of the New Deal of FDR and since.

So Trump supporters want a return to pre 1930s government intervention, so would support erasing much of the New Deal, Great Society, and Obama reforms,, even though they would be far worse off without Social Security, Medicare, and a multitude of programs that help the white poor and working class!

They want a new “Southern” demagogue, a combination of Huey P. Long, Strom Thurmond, and George C. Wallace, even if its leader is a multi billionaire New Yorker, who only vacations in Florida, and really has no respect or regard for the typical Trump supporter, who he looks upon privately with disdain!

Paul Ryan Self Destructs Any Chance To Run For President!

Ronald 10 Comments

Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan, who this blogger spent a lot of time working to undermine his Vice Presidential candidacy in 2012, and got blasted for it by right wing websites and bloggers, has again shown further evidence of what a terrible choice Mitt Romney made in his Presidential race, in selecting Ryan to be a heartbeat away from the Presidency!

Ryan, who knows nothing about budgets, except that the poor, the elderly, the disabled, veterans, and the young should see cuts in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps, and other social programs; and there should be no extension of unemployment compensation for desperately unemployed people; and there should be no rise in the minimum wage, now has gone off the “deep end” with his assertion that those who live in the “inner cities” have no sense of the importance of work, and have not worked for generations!

This is a direct and racist assault on African Americans in particular, but also on Hispanics and Latinos, who are a majority of the poor in the urban areas of our nation.

But Ryan acts as if it is only minorities who are poor, and are unemployed, and in some cases, have not worked in a long time. From this statement, one would think that whites are not poor, that they all work, that they all have a heritage of understanding the point of work, and nothing could be further from the truth!

It is a fact, and always has been, that the vast majority of the poor do not live in cities, and are not minorities, although one would think so from a stereotype!

The fact is that there are millions of whites who live in the rural and suburban areas of the nation, and many are them do not work, have no hope of work, and live in depressed conditions often worse than urban slums. Many of these people are living in “Red” states, where Republicans vote to hurt their own constituents, while making it seem as if only minorities do not work, or have no work ethic. They live in Appalachia, the Great Plains, the Rockies, in comparatively sparsely populated areas, as compared to the urban areas on the East and West Coasts.

More whites receive food stamps, and the level of poverty percentage wise is higher in such places as Kentucky, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, and Alaska.

It is the lack of education; the tendency to have large families which are also dysfunctional; the reality of drugs and alcohol; the refusal of these state governments to give a damn about their white poor, along with minority poor; and the tendency to turn poor whites against poor minorities so that the GOP can keep power in the House and in the state legislatures, which is destroying generation after generation of deprived people of all races!

Only when there is a REAL war on poverty, instead of exploiting the issue based upon race, as Paul Ryan has now done, will we ever be able to guarantee a good future for millions of whites, as well as African Americans and Latinos!

And Paul Ryan, your potential Presidential candidacy is dead in the water, and while you might run, you have forfeited any realistic chance to be President of the United States, but that was clear, anyway, in 2012!

Economic Reality Grim For Most Americans, Whether Based On Race Or Education Level!

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Growing evidence shows that the effects of the Great Recession, and really the policies of Republican Presidents and Congresses since 1980, have created a grim reality for a vast majority of Americans—likelihood of poverty, deprivation, and lack of opportunity, even for college graduates in large numbers for a long period of years! And where one lives does, and will have a dramatic effect on the long term futures of millions of citizens!

A study shows that four out of five adults in America will struggle with joblessness, near poverty, or reliance on welfare for part of their lives! 76 percent of whites will experience such a situation by the age of 60!

15 percent of the American people, nearly 47 million of the population, are in poverty, with higher percentages of African Americans and Hispanic-Latinos, but in absolute numbers, whites are 41 percent or 19 million of the poor, double what African Americans are in numbers. Most of these poor whites live in Appalachia, the industrial Midwest, and the heartland of Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma and the Great Plains, areas of rural communities , and even in many suburbs, in areas where 60 percent of the poor are whites.

So working class whites, those without college degrees, are in a terrible state, unable to look forward to the accomplishment of the “American Dream”!

But the problem is that even those who have a college education are facing a horrible job market. Many are unemployed, while even more who are working, are underemployed, working part time, and also, many are working in jobs that do not require a college degree, so are wasting years trying to break in to the job market they planned for, but are unable to engage in, due to the Great Recession and its aftermath!

Additionally, it has been demonstrated that where one lives has a dramatic effect on climbing up the income ladder! Social mobility up the income ladder is MUCH harder in the Southeast and industrial Midwest, including such cities as Atlanta, Charlotte, Memphis,. Raleigh, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, and Columbus!

At the same time, social mobility and rising up the income ladder is best in the Northeast and the West, including New York, Boston, large areas of California and Minnesota, and Pittsburgh, Seattle, and Salt Lake City.

It is extremely disturbing that earlier studies of social mobility demonstrate that a smaller percentage of people escape childhood poverty in America than in Canada, Australia, France, Germany, and Japan.

Affluent children tend to remain so, achieving a lot of success by as young as age 30, while children from poverty rarely see much improvement, and that is not just a race issue, as whites have the same results, based on how they were born, rich or poor!

The need to deal with social mobility and opportunity, for working class whites and minorities, are the agenda that Barack Obama is pursuing as he travels the nation, calling for an economic plan for the future, including improvements in education, infrastructure, new technologies, and environmental challenges to overcome climate change!

There is no more important agenda for the nation than the providing of economic opportunity, in a nation where the middle class has been decimated, from its high point, 40 years ago, in 1973!

Pockets Of Opposition To Barack Obama In Democratic Presidential Primaries: What Does It Mean?

Ronald 2 Comments

Barack Obama may be popular among most Democrats, and is ahead in many polls nationally against Mitt Romney, but there certainly are areas where he is extremely unpopular, a lot of it based on his race, but also on cultural issues affected by religious beliefs, including gay marriage, abortion rights, and the role of women, and also based on backing of gun rights in the hinterland of the nation, with fear that Obama is out to take away one’s guns.

So we saw Oklahoma and West Virginia strongly against him earlier, and last night, we witnessed Arkansas and Kentucky also having strong opposition against him.

However, this must all be seen in perspective, as the lowest percentage Obama has received is the 57 percent in Oklahoma. Obama gained 58 percent in Arkansas and Kentucky and 59 percent in West Virginia.

If anyone running for any office gains between 57% and 59% of the vote, that is considered a landslide by any measure. The fact that the next lowest percentage was 76 percent in Louisiana, 79 percent in North Carolina, and 80 percent in Alabama tells us Obama has nothing to be worried about.

With only seven states yet to vote in Presidential primaries, the likelihood of any of those states voting lower percentages than these seven states mentioned above is extremely low.

So, yes, Barack Obama is opposed in portions of the country, primarily the South and Appalachia, but that is not a measurement of his overall popularity nationwide!