Many rural Ohioans find themselves down and out

[liberal N proud]

These are the people who are credited with wining the election for bu$h in 04 Southern, Rural Ohio

Families struggle as well-paying jobs vanish
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Barb Galbincea
Plain Dealer Reporter
Melissa Barringer loves living amid the ridges and hollows of Appalachian Ohio, where she unwinds in a backyard swing to a chorus of frogs and crickets, and her boys fish the Hocking and Ohio rivers for bluegill and a legendary catfish.

But the living isn't easy.

For the Barringers and others in rural Ohio, making ends meet can be just as trying as it is for families struggling at the other end of the state in Cleveland's central city.

With full-time work hard to come by, Melissa and husband Brian hold five part-time jobs to support themselves and their three sons. She works as an aide at a school for the mentally retarded and at a nursing home; he's a handyman and gas-field laborer and hauls junk.

Together, the Athens County couple make a little more than $400 a week.

<snip>
Scioto County, near the southern tip of Ohio, has one of the nation's lowest median household incomes ($28,348) among counties with at least 65,000 residents, according to recently released U.S. Census Bureau figures from 2005. Statewide, median income was $43,493.

<snip>

http://www.cleveland.com/poverty/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news/115813678140920.xml&coll=2&thispage=1

[misternormal]

1. Message from the * administration...

... "Fuck you very much."

Seems the companies with the money get all of the help from this administration, and the voters who put him in office get the shaft again...

Well, we're all getting the shaft in one way or another... I guess he really is the uniter :sarcasm:

[HughBeaumont]

2. Yep, of all the counties presented in that crescent . ..

(crescent, meaning the graph they had in the paper itself) . . . only Monroe, Jefferson, Belmont and Athens didn't go for Lancelot Link in 2004. Some were red as red can be. And it's no surprise that the article glaringly omits this.

You see this shit all OVER Ohio. Even in the northern, semi-suburban cities, plants are leaving in droves. Our high cost of resources and taxes are driving them out, yet the wealthy that run these places always get theirs. So it doesn't matter to them one way or the other.

Not saying "they buys the ticket, they takes the ride", but DAMN, does "God Guns and Gays" matter when you're economically paralyzed and can't feed yourself or your kids? The Pukes sell these people a moldy bill of goods and they fall for it every fucking time. When is it time to just say NO?

[tularetom]

3. They might be getting screwed but they still love *

because at least them queers can't get married.:sarcasm:

[AngryOldDem]

4. It's sad, but they ARE die-hard GOPers.

It's puzzling, it really is. I guess it's family history, or tradition, that keeps them tied to a party that has done more to hurt, rather than help, them over the past few decades.

I really wish that the next Democratic candidate take an extended tour of Appalachia as Bobby Kennedy did. Immerse him or herself in the poverty, and convince the people that there IS a choice. If memory serves, this area of Ohio was largely written off by both parties in 2004. I think That was a huge mistake on the Democrats' part.

[liberal N proud]

5. It blows my mind away how these people can vote against their

own best interest time and time again. Each time there is some damn moral issue that they are bamboozled into supporting.

[AngryOldDem]

6. Exactly

That's mainly the only thing they **think** they can depend on -- their faith. And with the abject poverty most live in, I can see why they may feel that way. But I don't think that they are so "unenlightened" (and I do not mean that as a slam) that they would not be open to hearing of another way.

It's a very beautiful, but isolated, part of the state. People need to begin paying attention to it. The residents of that area deserve better than to be "written off" by society at large and politics in particular.

[kurth]

7. Religion also plays a HUGE part

Most of the preachers there are RW, and they spout RW stuff at every opportunity. Yes, it is very sad. Appalachia is a beautiful region, with many good people.