Home
Electronics
Racism
Environmentalism
Islamic Fascism
Saudi Terrorism
Muslim Immigration
Appalachia

Contact
the Webmaster

Guestbook
Guestbook Archive

Religion
Religion Overview
Archive

Visitors since
March 2002
counter

Specific Religious Issues
Deism
Christianity
Judaism
Islam
Gnosticism
Unitarianism
Zoroastrianism
Pantheism
Fundamentalism
Evolution
Original Sin
Trinity
End Times
Apostle Paul
Apostle John
John Calvin
St. Augustine
Pelagius
Martin Luther
Jesus
Militia
Paganism
New Age Religion
Pat Robertson

www.coxandforkum.com
Social Apartheid in Tri-Cities Bristol Virginia-Tennessee Revisited
by Lewis Loflin

Welcome to Tri-Cities and Bristol VA/TN. We are part of Southern Appalachia, a region more like a third-world banana republic. Bristol, Virginia and Bristol, Tennessee is a divided city (by the VA/TN state line) symbolic of the division in our region as our many bickering local governments waste more tax dollars with the least results of anywhere in America. They maintain a system I describe as social apartheid; University of New Hampshire's Cynthia M. Duncan calls it Worlds Apart in her book on "Why Poverty Persists in Rural America."

To quote Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Governmental Studies: "The most corrupt region is Southwest Virginia - more indictments for political and public office corruption have happened in this region than all other parts of the state combined." According to a report from the Kingsport Times-News (May 22nd, 2010), "Tennessee named most corrupt state in the nation; Virginia listed as second." So here we have Bristol VA/TN located at the juncture of the two most corrupt states in the Union, and for Virginia, the most corrupt region of the state.

To quote the late Bill Deel, a retired English teacher from Clintwood, Virginia, "We're becoming more and more Third World here...The best and the brightest leave." We will explore the real side of poverty and how government programs have mostly failed and benefited the rich and connected. They failed because local government was given the money under the guise of "local control" and "community block grants" which ended up as golf courses, the arts, recreation, and public funding for shopping malls, corporate welfare for local business, and pork-barrel roads leading to nowhere. We spend millions on public education and have great colleges, but watch in dismay as our young people flee the region because local business refuses to hire them.

Let me be clear the people involved (government, non-profit, etc.) in what I'm presenting are not evil people or dishonest in any manner. I know many of them and as individuals I would attest to their honesty. They mean well and do the best they can. My criticism is a political system that would turn the most humble saint into Satan.

The public lets this happen as they put tremendous pressure on government to do things they shouldn't be doing, then refusing to pay the taxes or commit to the self-sacrifice to make it work. It's a type of "not in my backyard" on a social level. I can't say enough say good things about Bristol and this in many ways great community, but this is counter-balanced by the criminal indifference and apathy towards lower income working people.

That is what this webpage is about. I present the lives a sizable group of citizens we see everyday, but in many ways are invisible to the public. I have no concern for those that don't care, refuse to try, and won't try to better themselves. But somebody must begin to ask why taxpayers have spent $200 million for a Wal-Mart or spending $100,000 in subsidies for an $8 an hour call center job.

Quick navigation for this page:
Who are the poor people across Virginia and Tennessee?
What is Social Apartheid?
How the System of "Closed Session" Works
A Suggestion for Reform

(AP) BLUFF CITY, Tenn. June 8, 2010: A man who opposes police use of cameras to send speeding tickets snatched a bully pulpit when the Bluff City Police Department allowed its Web site to expire.

Computer network designer Brian McCrary of Gray discovered the police site was up for grabs, so he paid domain provider Go Daddy for the rights and is the proud new owner of http://www.bluffcitypd.com.

McCrary received a $90 speeding citation, took over the site May 22. The parody site McCrary put up shows a smiling cartoon police badge clutching green currency. It also posts gripes from other people who've been cited.

The website is at http://www.bluffcitypd.com/.

Bluff City Police merely made excuses as "the expiration slipped up on the department."

Announcement: RAM to return to Impovirised Bristol Region in 2010

Remote Area Medical will return to the Bristol region and will likely set another record in Wise Virginia. They serve many regions lacking in basic medical and dental services for those unable to afford them. They stand as proof the perhaps $1 billion spent in this region for economic development has failed and bypassed those it was supposed to help. Note that in Wise the taxpayers just spent $30 million for a music hall at Clinch Valley College and $7 million for an empty building to do "energy research." The schedule is a follows for this region:

July 23-24-25 Wise County, VA, at the Wise County Fairground
August 14-15 Unicoi County, at Unicoi County High School
October 2-3 Grundy, Buchanan County, VA, at Riverview Elementary School
October 8-9-10 Sullivan County, TN, at Bristol Motor Speedway


Their homepage is at www.ramusa.org.

2008 Remote Area Medical (RAM) in Wise Virginia
$8 Million Wasted on the Wise Inn
Grundy Virginia and the $200 million Bridge to Nowhere

Bristol Virginia has been ranked as one of the top seven "intelligent" communities in 2009.

To quote www.intelligentcommunity.org:
Bristol is located in a rural, low-income region whose traditional products - tobacco and coal - are in major decline. Starting in 1998, Bristol fought incumbent telcos in court and the state legislature to win the right to deploy a fiber network called OptiNet. It was conceived as a backbone serving government and schools but grew into a fiber-to-the-premises network for business and residents in Bristol and four neighboring counties. With a 62% market share, OptiNet has saved its customers an estimated $10 million. It has also attracted more than $50 million in private investment, including the region's first technology employers, and improved rural education and healthcare by connecting local providers to leading institutions.
I can testify myself as an Opti-Net customer the service is superb and this is real plus for the community.
Link: www.bvu-optinet.com

---------------------------------------------------------------

(11-21-2009) City Overview according to www.bestplaces.net:
As of 2009, Bristol's population is 17,593 people. Since 2000, it has had a population growth of 0.74 percent. The median home cost in Bristol is $126,290. Home appreciation the last year has been 2.30 percent. Compared to the rest of the country, Bristol's cost of living is 22.98% Lower than the U.S. average. Bristol public schools spend $5,686 per student. The average school expenditure in the U.S. is $6,058. There are about 139 students per teacher in Bristol. The unemployment rate in Bristol is 10.00 percent (U.S. avg. is 8.50%). Recent job growth is Negative. Bristol jobs have Decreased by 2.20 percent.


(2000) City Overview according to www.wise.virginia.edu:
The population of Bristol is less prosperous than the population of Virginia. The poverty rate in Bristol is 68% higher than the Virginia rate. The per capita income for Bristolians is only 72% of the per capita income for Virginians. The proportion of Bristol residents over the age of 25 without a high school diploma is 50% higher than in Virginia. Given the relative poverty and poor health status of the population, it seems clear that people in Bristol would benefit from increased access to primary care.
Things to consider with state statistics is Northern and Eastern Virginia are far more wealthy (due to massive Federal Government spending) than Southwest or Southside Virginia. The latter mirror in the economic sense states such as West Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee which I use for comparison. This does create a factor missing from these other three states is much better funding of Medicaid and other social and economic development programs in Virginia. Not so for other states.

---------------------------------------------------------------

poverty in Bristol Washington County Virginia

Who are the poor people across Virginia and Tennessee?

To quote a study from the Virginia Department of Social Services in 2009: "Virginia's poverty rate has not decreased substantially over the last 30 years." It's the same story in Tennessee as well. How can this be after spending perhaps a billion dollars in the VA 9th District alone over the last 20 years? To quote "Where Do All the Welfare Billions Go?" (Human Events, February 6, 1982) M. Stanton Evans points out:
One has to wonder how it is possible to spend these hundreds of billions to alleviate poverty and still have the same number of poor people that we had, say, in 1968...It prompts the more suspicious among us to ask: What happened to the money?...[A] tremendous chunk of these domestic outlays goes to pay the salaries of people who work for and with the federal government - including well-paid civil servants and an array of contractors and "consultants," many of whom have gotten rich from housing programs, "poverty" studies, energy research grants, and the like...
This is borne out from a jobs report May 5, 2010 from WJHL TV; "First quarter unemployment rates jumped more than a full percent from a year ago in the Tri-Cities region, measuring just a little over ten percent for January to March...However, one area of our economy is growing: government jobs increased in the Tri-Cities during the three month period." Who is likely to be poor in Virginia according to VDSS?
The "typical" or modal Virginian below the poverty line is a white female head of household, age 25 to 34, with less than a high school education, with children, who works. The fact that more Virginians in poverty are white than nonwhite and more are working than not working contradicts a common image of poverty.
The Virginia Department of Social Services also reports poverty is far higher in rural Virginia than urban areas. Most blacks in poverty are there because they do not work, while most whites in poverty do work. The Progressives one would expect would be the champions of the working poor are silent on this, but instead are obsessed with race issues (poor whites they seem to held in contempt) and environmental issues.

Why so much emphasis on urban minorities rather than the far more common poor rural whites? Whites tend to be conservative and Christian, thus are the political enemies of affluent Progressives because their vote can't be bought for liberal/Progressive causes. Virginia has a vast number of social programs, but the funds only create lucrative jobs for state workers, contractors, and consultants. I'd estimate less than 10 cents on the dollar gets to those that really need it.

Rural whites in most cases do work, but are under-employed and under-paid. Creating government jobs for the politically connected or in many cases for those imported into the region to get those jobs does nothing to address this core issue. To address that problem means taking on the business and social structure, a political non-starter in Virginia and Tennessee.

This is a situation that benefits the business community and they fight like hell to keep the system the way it is. What is the political solution to this mess? Economic development based on marketing the lowest wage scales in the state doesn't address the issue either. Simply put big government Progressives have joined forces with conservative local business leaders to create and maintain the social apartheid system.
General and Southwest Virginia
[ Bristol Archive 1 ] [ Bristol Archive 2 ]
[ Bristol Archive 3 ] [ Bristol Archive 4 ]
[ Home ]

What is Social Apartheid?

"...the environmentalists have been fighting the economic developers and vice versa for years and look what we have: high unemployment, high underemployment, high poverty rates and a host of environmental problems."
So says Anthony Flaccavento former head of Appalachian Sustainable Development. He should know this as a life-long political activist. Like many Progressives in Washington County Virginia he places "Green" before people. So how does a Progressive environmental activist team up with a far-right Republican lawmaker like Virginia Del. Terry Kilgore? To quote Mr. Flaccavento:
"If you're sort of a conservative Republican what you relate to is the self-help dimension, helping the family farmer, the entrepreneurial component. If you're kind of a liberal progressive it's the environmental values; it's the social justice thing. And it all kind of comes together in that way."
What about the average resident that would like a chance at a decent standard of living? The only problem was this cozy relationship bypassed the average citizen and was plagued by incompetence from the beginning. Mr. Flaccavento has no more in common with the typical resident of this region (he's from New York) than Virginia Del. Terry Kilgore of Gate City whose family owns Scott County, Virginia. It seems Mr. Kilgore was instrumental in getting government funds for Appalachian Sustainable Development. While all legal as far as I know, there is a question of judgment in regards to wasting tax dollars for over a decade with zero results.

What is the attitude towards the working poor in this region? To quote the Bristol Herald Courier February 8, 2003 on an incident in Wise, Virginia:
WISE - The Wise County Board of Supervisors could decide Thursday whether to rezone 3.4 acres along Coeburn Mountain Road, clearing the way for a $4 million condominium complex near the University of Virginia's College at Wise. Some residents of the adjacent Paramont subdivision expressed their opposition and concerns to the board during a public hearing Thursday night.

Don Green, the group's spokesman, said the multifamily housing proposal was a poor idea because the units would be available to anybody who can make the payments. Even people who receive housing assistance from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development could move in if the condos don't sell and end up as rental units, he said.
To quote Rex Todd of Winston-Salem, N.C.-based The Landmark Group, "Rather than have the working-class people sequestered on one side of town and the rich on the other side of town, the idea is to integrate people..." More here...

To quote former Washington County supervisor Paul Price, "The rich get richer, and the poor never catch up." More here...

This is a system where people are segregated by income, culture, and social class where economic and personal relationships are near totally severed between the higher income ruling elite and the typical working person. There's no social interaction and it's often outright hostility between various groups at times.

Here the massive gaps in income and education creates an often exploitative and socially disconnected economic system. We have one economy for the "haves," and an altering economy for the "have-nots" where many are under-employed, under-paid, and politically marginalized. Our local newspaper the Progressive Bristol Herald Courier cheers on the importation of illegal aliens as promoting 'diversity" even as local business uses these people to undermine the wages and take the jobs of an already exploited population. Unions are completely useless, or in several cases support the illegal aliens!

In Tri-Cities, Bristol and Southwest Virginia the "haves" are divided into an ideological war Mr. Flaccavento mentioned earlier that catches the "have-nots" in the crossfire making any efforts at solving social or economic problems, if they can be solved at all, simply impossible. The elites work together for their own mutual interests as the case of Mr. Flaccavento and Del. Kilgore illustrate. What we have is a system that might be called Corporate Progressivism. To quote Corporatism and Socialism in America by Anthony Gregory,
Indeed, corporatism, implemented by the state - whether through direct handouts, corporate bailouts, eminent domain, licensing laws, antitrust regulations, or environmental edicts - inflicts great harm on the modern American economy. Although leftists often misunderstand the fundamental problem plaguing the economy, they at least recognize its symptoms.

Conservatives and many libertarians, on the other hand, frequently dismiss many ills such as poverty as fabricated by the left-liberal imagination, when in fact it does a disservice to the cause of liberty and free markets to defend the current system and ignore very real and serious problems, which are often caused by government intervention in the economy. We should recognize that state corporatism is a form of socialism, and...(this) consolidate(s) wealth in the hands of the few.

...What is more often neglected is that the history of the American domestic welfare and regulatory state also corresponds closely to the rise of corporatism. It is no coincidence.

...In more recent years, corporate interests have often cheered on big government programs...(it) is also vitally important to make clear that America doesn't have a free-market economy, and indeed many of the ills associated with free markets are actually the result of state capitalism - or socialist corporatism. That the expansion of government regulations, often done in the name of combating corporate excesses, is frequently supported most enthusiastically by corporate interests...
The worst example in Virginia is this Public-Private Partnership (PPP) program that allows companies to lobby for billions in often no-bid contracts. This is a major source of graft and political corruption when these deals are conducted in "closed session" where the public/press are banned and no records are kept.


Typical Pork-Barrel Waste in Southwest, Virginia

How the System of "Closed Session" Works

In the coal counties north of Tri-Cities the poverty on paper did go down some because so many receive government money or government jobs. But it's more insidious than that. As much as one-third of the population in those counties work for or contract to government and the population has sharply fallen due to out-migration. Many getting those government jobs are brought in from outside the region. This greatly improves the paper average.

The real political power is who controls the government cash flow and that power is hands unelected, politically appointed boards often in partnership with local business interests. The potential for corruption is immense due to the stupidity of Virginia law that allows government agencies working with private sector business and consultants to call "closed session."

This insidious process of "closed session" bans the press and public from attending the meeting and where written records don't have to be kept. It's through these "closed sessions" that tens of millions in economic development grants, etc. flow into the bank accounts of private businesses and non-profits. Many of these non-profits are setup by these very people and local officials for the sole purpose of getting these grants. The grants are often state/federal, but can include local funds as well.

But notice Washington County Virginia, the only county in Southwest Virginia that actually had population growth from 1997 to 2007 and huge increases in government spending and government employment to boot. A lot of that increase was due to an influx of more affluent retirees while economic development went for leisure, recreation, and amenities for rich people along with generous corporate welfare. The poverty rate actually went up and it's no surprise between 1997 and 2007.

The simple fact is retirement communities, in particular those being subsidized by by tax dollars, only creates more poverty. Government jobs go to the affluent with political connections, inflation hits everyone, the poor in particular. This is made even worse as affluent move-in retirees, environmentalists, and local "Progressives" actively block a lot of other jobs and development seeking a "Green" community.

In 2009 they blocked a truck stop on I-81 that would have created 100 jobs for the general public with a company that wasn't seeking a penny in corporate welfare. They were blocked because it weren't a "Green" industry. Yet giving $10 million to strip mall operator was just fine with these very people.

Environmentalists don't give a damn about working class people, in particular poor white people wanting a real job or wanting off the government dole. They're too busy setting up their own non-profits to get big tax dollars to promote everything from "green energy research" to to taxpayer subsidized organic farming employing illegal aliens.

In summery the jobs and money go not only for corporate welfare, but to welfare agencies, universities, and non-profits. This shadow industry operates outside the mainstream economy and bypasses the vast majority of residents in need of basic services and a stable income. But by themselves the Progressives couldn't pull this off without help from the business community and local government.

Until we begin to address wage and labor conditions and break this corrupt Progressive-business-corporate complex, there is simply no hope of improving conditions in this region. No amount of money will ever work.

A Suggestion for Reform

As one regional economic developer pointed out, it's OK to criticise, but what about some solutions? Good question, here is my response. This is part of a discussion with a regional economic developer and I believe what is best for these Tobacco funds. My goal is to not give people money or a welfare check. And another is to assure poverty doesn't become an industry in itself. He said because of political considerations it would never go, but here it is anyway.

  1. Halt all government money going to EDAs, non-profits, etc. Keep funds out of local hands and keep it clear of local politics.
  2. Setup a general education fund for the region's residents. Pool all the funds going for tourism development, Tobacco grants, etc. into this. Use it as a conditional education grant to send the region's residents to school, redo high school, or community college. The focus must be general education, in particular high school math, science and English before any vocational classes or community college. It's open to anyone in the general public regardless of income as long as the funds last and they are in the workforce or are employable. This is not for art classes for retirees.
  3. This is voluntary and pays only for books and tuition and continuing funding for the individual depends on completing a class before they go to the next. The student must be held accountable and if they fail to perform they are out. Pay for this through a 2-year degree.
  4. Use existing high schools, community colleges, perhaps empty shell buildings, etc. There's plenty of volunteers willing to help. These must be public institutions, not another private diploma mill and not become a another government funded industry. The classes need to be oriented towards jobs or can be used for a job. If a student wants an art class they pay for it.
  5. If a student has a job, they can come to improve their skills. This would be plus for an established business that needs a better high school graduate they often use as an excuse for their low pay scales.

This system would weed out those unwilling to put forth an effort and a direct reward for those willing to strive for it. If an employer is willing to really commit to hiring people from college or vocational programs, I'd be willing to give them some sort of compensation or tax break, but only if they actually hire them and pay at least $12 an hour ($5 an hour above minimum wage, not the $2 an hour average now) to start and keep the worker for one year. That excludes bringing in outside workers and also excludes use of temp agencies. They get it at the end, not before. Illegal aliens must be barred from the program and the immigration laws enforced.

We can also setup a fund to assist those wishing to relocate for employment reasons to leave the region. This is better than leaving them trapped here on welfare. Either the private sector starts hiring the people they claim can't get or they can just shut up.

I worked with one local business (they paid for it) to improve their workforce skills in basic electricity. It worked well. Beyond that, the taxpayer owes them nothing. They (resident and business) must stand on their own two feet. Get a job, starve, or relocate. End the corporate welfare and pork-barrel waste.

Local Schools, Immigration impact in Tennessee, Liberal Racism
Muslims Killing Children Saudi Terrorism Islamic Fascism
Palestine Myth Arlene Peck on Islam Muslim Immigration Must be Halted

google
Search WWW Search www.sullivan-county.com