[binreadin]

I admire the way you are willing to hang in there and put forth your ideas, although you can see they aren't very popular today on this forum. My own thought, having spent time living in Louisiana, Texas, NC and Virginia, and a lot of time in E Kentucky, Mississippi and S Carolina is that you may be over generalizing about the South and Central USA, as what you describe certainly exists, but there are a lot of other communities with proud, hard-working citizens who don't meet your description. There is no question, however, that drugs and government give-aways are taking a huge toll on our population.

If you are in E Kentucky make sure to check out the Knob Creek Gun Range Machine Gun Shoot. You'll either love it or die of shock. Being from Seattle perhaps the latter, but it's a unique experience.

[Mr. Douglas]

I think I am over-generalizing.

I really do love the people here. It’s one of the reasons I moved here. The real problem I’m trying to point out is that there are, for the sake of this discussion, three types of people here:
1. What I earlier called “riff-raff” (using the term a little jokingly as Faulty Towers always comes to mind when I say that). These people are, from the corporation’s perspective, a waste of space and worse. They suck the productivity from an area.
2. Good, hard working people that are either not well educated or just plain not very smart, due to pre- and post-natal care, upbringing, etc. This actually includes a lot of my friends.
3. Well educated and up on the times regarding technology, and have the training to bring true value to these high tech companies.

The problem is that there just are not all that many members of group 3. And most of them either own their own business or commute to the cities (I’m a member of the latter). And more and more are telecommuting, which I’d like to do.

Put it all together and there is just not that much motivation for large tech companies to move to places like this.

However, the author is really bigoted in her article. It’s as if she is saying that if we embraced sexual perverts and welcomed in all the muslims we could fit we’d somehow meet her requirements. Yet those are some of the reasons I moved here - to get away from that baloney. My neighbor with an 8th grade education mows my hay to feed his livestock that he does for extra money because his job making wine barrels that he has done for 22 years only pays $16 an hour.

And I bush hog the field of my other neighbor who lives in a single wide with a meticulously mowed lawn, but inside there is a 2 foot hole in the living room floor that is covered with a 1/4 inch steel plate and the interior looks literally like a garbage dump. And he lives with his wife, his son and step son on disability. Oh, and they have no indoor plumbing.

And the cost of living is so low here that you CAN live on disability. So a lot of people do.