Posted on 06/12/2017 1:53:57 PM PDT by davikkm
Laura Reston and Sara Jones wrote an April piece in the New Republic about why Appalachia needs big government.
In the article, they lay out why the Appalachian Regional Commission, or ARC, is an example of big government at its best. And with Trump’s budget taking aim at this extra layer of government bureaucracy, the authors declare that the president has abandoned this part of the country that helped propel him to victory last fall.
Places like Hancock County, Tennessee, have seen manufacturing jobs disappear over the last decade. Plants are moving to China. Coal jobs are vanishing. Since Hillary Clinton overlooked the Rust Belt and much of Appalachia, almost 83% of Hancock voted for Donald Trump, the highest of any county in Tennessee. This result also played out in rural Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan.
Reston and Jones think that since places like Hancock and other poor counties in these suffering towns in the once industrial Midwest rely on federal funding for basic services, this must continue in perpetuity. As if a commission funneling money from the federal government to the state government is the only way to take care of these folks who need the most help.
(Excerpt) Read more at investmentwatchblog.com ...
This is insane.
Keeping people on the dole for generations is like a pusher giving away free heroin..............
Right NOW Trump is in the process of making a steel deal to remove the rust from the rust belt. Government Regulations chased the steel jobs overseas.
Now a real reporter who took the time to actually research her article would know this. She however is a lying political hack.
Does anyone? Other than those who perpetrate it on innocent taxpayers?
Y'know, I seem to recall a certain President that said the exact same thing.
"The lessons of history, confirmed by the evidence immediately before me, show conclusively that continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fibre. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit. It is inimical to the dictates of sound policy. It is in violation of the traditions of America."
Ronald Reagan, you say? Nope, it's FDR, from the 1935 State of the Union address.
The Appalachian Regional Commission has been around since the days of JFK. It has had very little lasting effects when it comes to region improvements. It exist primarily as a money till for local career politicians to hand out patronage and cash to their friends. It used to be democrats ladling out the gravy now its careerists from both parties.
I could be president!...................
The appalachian regional commission started at the time of the war on poverty.
But has that region really benefitted? I know that many areas of Appalachia have seen new roads including interstate highways built, which make the area less isolated. But other than that, has real uplifting change come to Appalachia??
What Appalachia and the Rust Belt need is LESS government.
I’d vote for you.
I wouldn’t...................
Wow, so FDR WAS sane at one point. Who knew?
The problems of the region are largely the same as those of the blacks in the big cities: low self-esteem and no desire to make anything “nice” (buildings, parking lots, etc.), held back by the way they talk, the way they dress, the way they don’t cut their hair...parents with little interest in seeing their kids educated, (”Our kind don’t go to college”), too much thinking of getting rich quick with meth. or other drugs...too much smoking...they won’t pick up the junk around their houses, no pride in what it looks like, on and on and on...
Just look at the fiasco caused by government “help” in Michigan. The bailout of GM and Chrysler created no new jobs. In fact, there are FEWER auto jobs now than 15 years ago — before the “help” was given. Billions of dollars disappeared to God knows where for a negative result. We should have let those companies go. They would have been replaced in short order by non-union producers who would have hired people at a reasonable wage, not the UAW rate, which is ridiculous. $15 an hour plus benefits for drone assembly line work? And that is under the NEW contract! Some of the drones were grandfathered in at $30 an hour! Ridiculous.
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