The Financially Broke City of Louisville and Commonwealth of Kentucky Part Two

Long having been a city ran by an incompetent government and business community Louisville, Kentucky has long been ran by incompetent yes men and bureaucrats. This type of quisling behavior has long been noted by those who aren't from the local political class and business community that talks a good game but delivers very little. Of course, that of which they can't steal from either the public treasury or their employees by skimming the little they get in decent pay and benefits from their increasingly smaller paychecks. Maybe that's why Louisville has one of the largest homeless populations in a city with only 770,000 people and a metro population of 1.2 million over several surrounding counties including Louisville Metro but also in Southern Indiana and Central Kentucky also called Kentuckiana.

The interesting thing is that Louisville is supposedly a crossroads of the lower Midwest and upper South but can't seem to get its act together and be able to get out of its own way. This can be noted in the fact that Louisville has a lot of things going for it including a large navigable river, one of the larger airports that could be used for increasing the level of shipping via air of which there is some done. Not to mention near the middle of the Eastern US with links to surrounding cities such as Cincinnati, Nashville, St. Louis, Indianapolis, Chicago, Columbus and many others within a days of driving distance of 12 hours.

Yet it remains a stagnant economic backwater in the Commonwealth of Kentucky which is a state that has long ranked at the bottom of the economic spectrum with ranking 47th in personal income, 47th in family income, 47th in median income, 47th in educational attainment, 43rd in quality of its universities, 41st or worst in K-12 education which it has ranked near the bottom of US states for decades. Even worse is that Kentucky schools are such cesspits of total incompetence that only about 44 percent of high school students in 2018-2019 were proficient or better in high school level reading. Mathematics and science scores are even worse with scores respectively about 40 percent and 36 percent in each category. That's the extent that Kentucky schools have been mismanaged for years along with a state government which has been mismanaged to the extent that its considered the worst ran state government in the entire United States by Governing Magazine.

Even worse is that Kentucky despite billions in revenues over the past decade has been unable to manage its state finances to the point that it has the 3rd worst state pension problem in the United States with a shortfall of 37 billion in 2018 dollars. Considering at that time being only better than California and Illinois who have worse pension problems but also state populations 8 times that of Kentucky in the case of California and 2.5 times that for Illinois. Here's a nice article that discusses this.

https://theintercept.com/2018/10/21/kentucky-pensions-crisis-hedge-funds/

Interesting that Kentucky continues to kick the can down the road while the common people suffer from lack of investment, horrid educational outcomes, a third world infrastructure that is billions overdue on basic investment just to get the road infrastructure graded at an C level by the various engineering societies that grade roads in every state. Despite this, Kentucky just partnered with the neighboring state of Indiana on a 4 billion dollar project to build two new bridges over the Ohio River in Louisville that is relying on tolling existing interstate crossings to pay because Kentucky is so fiscally busted that it cannot afford to pay for it out of existing revenue.

Even worse is that Kentucky's roadways and bridges were ranked at a D level in most of the past several years having received a C- for the year 2019. Here are a couple of articles that discuss this problem of how Kentucky has basically let its infrastructure go to pot so to speak.

https://www.wvxu.org/post/kentucky-receives-c-grade-its-aging-infrastructure#stream/0
https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/state-item/kentucky/

Of course in Kentucky, priorities are seriously skewed when cities such as Louisville received a brand spanking new basketball arena in 2010 that has never been able to pay for itself out of the TIF financing bonds that were issued and paid for by TIF tax dollars of the Louisville downtown restaurant and bar district. Interestingly though that Louisville between 2010 and 2020 was scheduled to only pay the 15-17 million dollar a year payments just on the interest yet the arena authority and the TIF district fell way below these projections.

Even worse is that the city of Louisville for most of the decade had to pay to keep the arena and the Louisville Arena Authority district financially solvent by the tune of the city first starting payments of 7 million a year which later increased to over 10 million dollars a year over 30 years for whopping total of 300 million dollars. Of which the city of Louisville doesn't even have the money to fix its city employees pension problems as well as fixing city streets and infrastructure. Here's another article about the burgeoning debt of Louisville and its Arena Authority. Of course as usual Louisville strikes out again. These following articles show just about how smart the current and past leaders of Louisville Metro are and how none of the so-called Metro Council political butt kissers do nothing about it.

https://www.constructiondive.com/news/debts-for-kfc-yum-center-stadium-in-louisville-swell-to-1b/527917/

https://www.wdrb.com/news/despite-refinancing-louisville-arena-authority-to-make-higher-annual-kfc/article_60bcdd5b-c141-5f62-8105-819849c21ef9.html

I might also add that Lexington also spent a great deal of money on renovating the 44 year old Rupp Arena over the past several years in order to give it a new look and makeover at a time when the government in Kentucky couldn't pay their debt obligations and started to look for new taxes and fees with which to soak the citizenry. Nothing says priorities more than having two top twenty basketball programs in Kentucky while only 44 percent of students can read at grade level and 1 out of 10 adults have no teeth and have lost all of them due to lack of dental hygiene and poverty. Only in Kentucky could you be so incompetent in a supposedly first world nation.

Meanwhile, Kentucky's politicians of both parties have proven to be such losers that they cannot even stem the tide of the state losing money and becoming increasingly a poverty stricken economic basketcase with limited opportunities for its citizens that they have to increasingly go to other states in order to work and live. Meanwhile the population of Kentucky still increases with now about 20 percent of the state being functionally illiterate at a time of widespread literacy and 90 percent high school graduation rates. Of course, we know that many people pass through school due to social promotion and authorities just having to cover their rear ends to justify keeping their jobs and glossing over those left behind.

Of course, the 120 fiefdoms that consist of the 120 counties of Kentucky have a large number of incompetent and often stupid public officials that shouldn't even be in government to begin with and only get in due to name recognition and family ties. Here's looking at you in making Kentucky and even shittier place to live than it already has been for several decades. Its a good thing that Kentucky residents don't travel a whole lot outside of their little bubble in most rural areas because if they actually got out and experienced much of the United States other than the South they would realize how badly they've been getting screwed over the years.

Imagine.......The Financially Challenged City of Louisville, Kentucky is Financially Busted Again

After decades of financial mismanagement Louisville, Kentucky is showing up again with its hand stretched out being the incompetence based city that it has been for many years. Of course with its hand stretched out trying to squeeze the last nickel out of the pockets of the taxpayers in a city that is the 4th highest taxed city in the US. Don't believe me......it's right there in the type in the articles listed below. Of course, since its Louisville and only about 35 percent of the recent high school students can read at their grade level tested and then graduate from the system that produces more illiterates I shouldn't expect much out of the Louisville schools or society.

https://www.wdrb.com/news/lmpd-officers-applying-elsewhere-amid-concerns-about-pension-pay-low/article_9a2c767c-370f-11ea-a610-db36353726e0.html

https://www.wdrb.com/news/louisville-s-nonprofits-in-battle-for-funding-as-city-s/article_ceda1c3a-33ea-11ea-ac09-f78a49657d01.html

This time it is going to have a serious effect on city services and the competence or must I say incompetence of city government is astounding that they have known for years that the city is on precarious financial straits even though the national economy is relatively strong and unemployment is low. It just shows the type of incompetent government that exists in Louisville, Kentucky and overall the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Not to mention that Louisville regularly ranks among its regional cities as being less than favorable when it comes to people making living wages and having quality jobs and incomes.

In fact, Louisville, Kentucky in a recent year ranked 18th out of 20 peer cities in the Midwestern and Southern United States when it came to various factors in the socioeconomic realm including personal income, family income, median income, quality of jobs, educational opportunities, educational achievement and much more. Behind regional cities such as Nashville, TN, Cincinnati, OH, Columbus, OH, Indianapolis, IN, Charlotte, NC, Kansas City and countless others. Even including the crime stricken community of St. Louis, MO which despite its crime problems in the North City and North County still came out far ahead of Louisville, Kentucky when it came to economic growth, unemployment and various income based statistics as well as educational achievement.

It's a quite pathetic indictment when a city like Louisville ranks far behind all of these other cities when it comes to job creation, economic growth and overall incomes. Then again, its the Louisville mentality and the mentality of the Commonwealth of Kentucky to be at the bottom of the barrel and refuse to do the work necessary to improve by attaining improved education, financial management and improving job quality and overall economic indicators. Louisville has long been a city that sits on its laurels and makes excuses from its business community and so called civic leadership.

After decades of making these excuses and continually allowing the infrastructure and quality of life in Louisville and surrounding areas to deteriorate, one would think that Louisville would have a major wake-up call and start addressing these things. Then again, its more of the Louisville mentality and things that wouldn't be allowed to fester elsewhere totally get ignored by the ignoramuses on the Louisville Metro Council and Louisville Metro Mayor's Office.

Now the police are starting to figure out what a mess that Louisville Metro financials are and with the morale problems by local government allying itself with more criminal elements of society and refusing to allow police to do their job the crime issues are starting to spiral upward while the crime issues such as murders and violent crimes and all other forms of criminal activity are being tolerated.

Increasingly, the Louisville Metro Police Department and its officers are having their hands tied by the Louisville Metro Government and Louisville Metro Council as well as the local right to know media and Metro Mayor Greg Fischer and his handpicked "yes man" Steve Conrad and his lieutenants padding their pensions while doing nothing about fixing Louisville's crime issues.

So accordingly the police are moving off to other jurisdictions either within Louisville/Jefferson County such as Anchorage or surrounding police departments in other counties near Louisville if not other states. All because the pay and working conditions is better in other locations than financially strapped Louisville. More on this in part Two.....Louisville is basically broke again.

Reply To Another Kentucky Bully That Think's He's Going to Shut Me Down Part Number 3

By the way, since you think I'm so angry well you can think what ever you want because I'm living rent free in your head.

Let's continue.....

Kentucky schools and Louisville schools just about mirror each other when it comes to overall performance issues. For example, Kentucky ranks anywhere from 41st to 47th just about every year when it comes to the quality of Kentucky schools (or as the uneducated hilljacks of Kentucky spell sometimes SKOOLS) as they must have been thinking about Skoal.

Even more laughable is that the JCPS is now in the bottom 15 percent of the schools in Kentucky at 138th out of 159 while about a decade ago it was 118th out of 154 KY School systems. In 2017, it was 127th out of 158 but that's the type of mental morons going through the Louisville school systems and the JCPS.

Even better is that only about 54 percent of the JCPS students can actually perform at English composition and literature at a 12th grade level in the 2017-2018 school year. Now in 2018-2019 only 37.2 percent of the JCPS students were able to be proficient or distinguished in reading. Of course, the article didn't mention writing skills in this case. Which is probably about 40 to 50 percent can actually write at a 12th grade level.

Which means that if they get accepted into college or some higher education, they'll have to take all kinds of remedial classes to pursue further education and its not guaranteed the Bubba youth of Kentucky can successfully navigate basic English skills. Guess that reading, writing and arithmetic isn't so important in Kentucky school relying on social promotion and passing along the future and present morons into the system.

Even funnier is that our country cousins from Kentuckistan finish even worse when it comes to math education and overall math skills. Obviously Jebediah and the Bubbas didn't do much counting growing up and counting your fingers and toes doesn't really count. Only 30.5 percent of the JCPS high school students were proficient at math as well as only 37.2 percent reading. That means between 63 and 69 percent of the student attending JCPS school aren't proficient at one or another even after 10 plus years of education and perhaps as many as 12 years of primary school plus kindergarten.

Even better is that regularly Kentucky students and JCPS students finish at about 36 percent when understanding science. How's that for you yokels? So basically you're paying for kids to go to school from age 5 or 6 until 18 or 20 whenever they flunk out enough times they get passed out of the system. That's the Kentucky schools for you and JCPS is right there along with the biggest losers when it comes to education.

Even in Kentucky overall only 44.5 percent of the high school students were proficient at reading and 35.3 percent were proficient at math. How's that working out for you in the 47th ranked state in the country and either 47th to 50th in just about every socioeconomic category? That's Kentucky style education where the people can barely count using their fingers and toes and then wondering why they're still one of the poorest 3 or 4 states in the entire country.

Even more embarrassing is that Kentucky doesn't value education even though the state government in the Commonwealth of Kentucky 30 years ago passed the Kentucky Education Reform Act and they've had 30 years to show how much of a failure they really have been over 3 decades. Very good show Kentucky, you can start your own Hee Haw version of Kentucky Life.

Looks like the Kentucky educational system failed again and maybe that's why dumb Kentuckians are increasingly the rule not the exception.

So you can think about that one and chew on it for a while since you think I'm supposedly the unhealthy one when your own students are largely dolts and morons and every family graduates at least a couple of them over the years.

Now if its with the Kentucky mentality rather than fix the problems and produce smarter people you'll sit on your asses and bitch and moan that someone is calling out your state showing you what a human trash pit it really is. Just remember don't burn down your trailer parks because they don't pass out federal aid for arson cases and they don't allow insurance claims for people that commit arson for their hovels.

Reply To Another Kentucky Bully That Thinks He's Going to Shut Me Down Part 2

Since I'm at it, I can discuss some more about the sordid city of Louisville and the sordid culture as well as city government that exists in that place. A city that it takes over a decade and they still can't synchronize their traffic lights even though Louisville Metro took over the duties from the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet in 2009. A city that has problems maintaining its roadways by properly paving them and fixing potholes and rough patches even though it took over the duties again on state numbered roads in Louisville Metro back in 2009.

A city that has 4.2 billion dollars in debt ran up by the Louisville Metro Sewer District over the past couple of decades that it has to constantly raise rates on its customers while it mismanages money and awards contracts to people in less than favorable terms for the taxpayers, ratepayers and the city at large. Even funnier is that Loserville Metro Sewer District hasn't even the money to fix the existing infrastructure for flood control without asking the federal government or issuing more debt to keep the city from flooding. In order to get the existing flood control system into decent shape, it was stated 2018 and 2019 that it would take another huge loan in order to try to fix all of the pumping stations and deficiencies in the current system. Guess you better get your rubber duckies ready to float down the river?

In fact, the system is so dire that if you read the Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports for Loserville MSD and Louisville Metro you would find that the city is running short in a lot of areas including city finances because of the malfeasance and criminality of Louisville Metro Government over the years including all of the lawsuits that the LMPD had to settle over the years because of police brutality, police repression and criminality in their ranks. Not to mention various lawsuits that the city of Louisville had to settle with their own employees because of various violations of employment law, firefighter overtime pay, sexual discrimination and nepotistic hiring practices. Obviously the people of Louisville don't pay much attention or have the attention span of 8 seconds which is why there are so many automobile accidents in Louisville, Kentucky on a daily basis.

Let's add in the fact that Louisvlle has probably the worst drivers I have ever seen and I've been to over 40 states now. People that aren't smart enough to merge on the interstate on ramps much less learn proper signaling and lane changes. Is that why the cars in Louisville look like they've been playing expressway pinball? Add in the fact that Louisville car insurance is just about higher than anywhere else around the Midwest and Upper South. In fact, my premiums dropped several hundred bucks in one year when I left Louisville which was a smart move on my part. Even better is watching Louisville drivers try to use turn signals and understand how traffic signals work along with proper lane changing. I'm surprised that most of the provincials and Bubbas don't live in Mayberry.

Even more funny is how the provincials and hicks of Louisville don't really know much about their community other than the little area in which they live like say Bon Air or the Highland or Middletown. They can't be bothered with getting out of their little element of an area and actually seeing how other people live and educate their kids and interact with the rest of society. It's like they're still living in some hollow in Appalachia and scared to go to the other side of the mountain to see what is over there.

Maybe that explains why Louisville residents don't travel much and especially Kentuckians at large don't travel much. Otherwise, they would see what a backwards and largely wretched place in which they live and then accordingly start educating themselves by reading books, watching documentaries and learning these stubborn things called facts. Then again, its going to be hard when a state ranks 47th in educational attainment and usually between 43rd and 45th in college quality. Not to mention that 40 percent of the Kentucky population has low literacy levels that are an impediment to further educational progress. In other words, Kentuckians are pretty dumb overall. While I am at it, I might also mention that Kentucky generally over the past 30 years since KERA has ranked between 42nd to 46th in overall K to 12 education and finally got this last year to 38th which is still 15 to 20 places below most of its neighbors.

The best part though regarding education in Louisville is saved for the last though. The Louisville Jefferson County Public Schools ranked last year as 138th out of 159 Kentucky school systems and its the 12th straight year that its been in the bottom 25 percent of all Kentucky schools let's see that would be the bottom 15 percent in the case of the JCPS currently in 2019-2020. That's some heavy duty failure there.

Reply To Another Kentucky Bully That Thinks He's Got the Power To Shut Me Down

Poor guy trying your bully boy act complaining about me stating what I think. Guess what......too bad so now if you don't like it then by all means you can call your mama. By the way, I'll continue posting here whether you like it or not. So I'll continue calling out the trash mentality state that Kentucky is and has been for quite a while.

Your problem is that you don't like what I am saying and obviously you're not intelligent enough to take it however and then run along to your other activities. Too bad. I'll continue calling out the crooks, crooked politicians, slumlords and others in Louisville and Kentucky that screw decent people living their lives

I perfectly understand the meaning of free speech and I'll continue to say what I feel like saying whether you like it or not, I'll guess you'll have to get over it and moan about it from your practice during work hours or you'll have to go back to Dumpster City and have a conniption.

You find me obnoxious...great..good and here's the kicker for you tough crap. I think I'll stay here a while and keep putting out more of the truth about Louisville that the good old boy network and butt kissers don't like.

As far as unhealthy, strange, that you would comment about unhealthy because you live in one of the unhealthiest states in the country that ranks 1st in the country in percentage of depression issues, a state that ranks 1st or 2nd nearly every year in cancer deaths per capita, near the top in diabetes cases, near the top in heart attacks, etc. When I look at half of the people in Kentucky I almost want to pity them rather than call out the issues because many Kentuckians look like they are one step from kicking the bucket.

Not to mention for most people the lower quality of life they have in the Commonwealth of Kentucky versus most other states especially in the North, Northeast, East and West even in some southern metro areas.

Even more laughable is that the Commonwealth of Kentucky ranks 47th in educational attainment along with being 41st in the quality of their universities. Imagine, a state with two top 20 basketball programs being just about the only thing they can crow about while they don't have any universities ranked in the top 100 anytime in the last 10 to 15 years in US News and World Report or any other objective publication that ranks universities. U of L did make it to 98th one year in the quality of the Brandeis School of Law but that's just about it. Not even the esteemed Speed School at U of L ranked in the top 100 engineering programs in the United States. That's a quite damning indictment of the Kentucky university system that between University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, Murray State, WKU, EKU, Morehead and others that NONE of the Kentucky universities rank in the top 100 out of US universities. Obviously, U of L isn't all that great to start with.

However, if you do a little bit of research you'll find that Indiana, Illinois and Ohio all had at least one or more top notch university system such as Purdue, Indiana, Notre Dame, University of Chicago, probably Ohio State and countless others. Not one though in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. But you're got two top 20 basketball programs even though they've both been under probation including Hooker University at Belknap who lost their title of 2013 and the University of Kentucky, the second most penalized program in NCAA history. That's Kentucky pride for you and the rest of the denizens of Kentucky.

Since I'm at it and knowing how much it ticks Kentuckians off let's talk about Kentucky being the 2nd most corrupt state after Illinois when it comes to public officials being convicted and doing jail time. Or a state that can't pay for its pension program for teachers and public employees because its fiscally broke to the point that it has to spend 1 billion dollars just to get roads and bridges in a state up to a C level. Sounds like Kentucky has fiscal problems and major cash flow problems caused by the fact that it has had a lackluster economy for decades which is why we find plenty of cars with Kentucky plates far into Indiana and other states because they have to leave Kentucky for jobs elsewhere.

Let's add in the fact that Kentucky has a huge population of functional illiterates in Kentucky as much as 20 percent of the population. In a state with 4.5 million people that means that 900,000 Kentuckians at most are functionally illiterate. Isn't that a shame? Stuck in poverty level jobs if they can get one or ended up on government welfare projects that do nothing but perpetuate the same cycle for generations and nothing ever gets done about it in Kensucky.

Does that explain why Kentucky ranks 47th in personal per capita income (per person for you Davey) and 47th in median family income meaning that half of Kentucky families make below the state median income and half above. Or the fact that Kentucky also ranks 47th in household income

Dixie Highway and Incompetence of Louisville Leaders

Welcome to Louisville where incompetent government leaders love to waste money and do stupid things that end up costing more money. Dixie Highway has been a mess for 25 plus years and they didn't really do anything other than beautified it a little bit. Of course, its not going to change the fact that Shively, PRP and Valley all have a crime rate that is 3-5 times that of most of the rest of the Louisville Metro depending on the area. I lived there earlier this last decade and it was a mess then and its a mess now and frankly its like putting lipstick on a pig.

Louisville government and largely Louisville society is like someone going to a bonfire and trying to urinate on it in order to get it put out. Half measures, government bureaucracy, poor planning, engineering snafus and lack of ability to have a vision or at least some strategic plan.

They want to make Dixie like Hurstbourne or another Shelbyville Road? Good luck on that because that's one of many things that have screwed up both stretches of those highways is over-development and lack of planning and thinking ahead. Back years ago, they put two malls on Shelbyville Road in the the mid to late 1960s and never envisioned that it would explode into the traffic fustercluck that it is now and Hurstbourne is the same way. Now in either one of those areas, you get to deal with Louisville's famously incompetent traffic management systems and get to sit at lights that aren't properly synchronized and haven't been since they were taken over in 2009.

Another Billy Bob mentality thing that Louisville did was to have the city of Louisville which was the old city area or properly called now Louisville Metro take over traffic management and road repairs and construction. Much that used to be under the purview of the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet under the state government. Instead, the city of LouBilly decided to take it all over on all of the State numbered routes of Louisville which comprise a great deal of roadways, highways, byways and 4 lane roads like Preston, Greenbelt, Dixie, Hurstbourne, Shelbyville etc...etc..etc.

They didn't have the quality of people and quality of the system in order to manage hundreds of miles of state highways in Louisville and that was done during the Jerry Abramson regime. Just like Louisville residents conveniently forget that the stop lights all over the city were supposed to be synchronized way back in 2009 when I was living in the city. Oops, they blew it again because after this many years the lights are still a mess and traffic control in Louisville is basically incompetent. Same goes with the condition of the roads and highways in much of the city. Looking as if bomb craters were all over the place. It reminds me when our son was born in 2010 going home from the hospital in downtown Louisville only to be jarred awake at 5 am hitting multiple potholes in the streets. It really hasn't changed all that much other than the city promising to fix various problems that never get fixed.

In fact, when I moved out of state I ended up getting a bunch of suspension work and alignments done to my main vehicle and then buying something cheap to go to Louisville in. That way I wasn't having to spend countless money on fixing stuff because of the poor shape of the roads in Louisville and in Kentucky.

Dixie Dieway is just another victim of the Louisville mentality where thinking small is praised and anyone that questions your worldview because they've got more experience or better knowledge base is to be avoided. Same goes for criticizing local SO CALLED leaders in Business or Government because if you want to get anywhere in Louisville its more about who you know or who you are chummy with than what you know. I've seen it over a 20 plus year career and most places there is always some of that but in Louisville all you have to do is breathe and be incompetent and they'll make you upper management and the same works for city government in Louisville.

One more thing, you can thank the people that made Frankfort Avenue and other Louisville thoroughfares under road diets for this current state of affairs. See back several years ago the morons in city government got this idea that if they made the streets more narrow and constricted traffic that it would slow down people and make it more safe. Even though these people had to slow down it causes more congestion because the more areas that have this problem will be avoided by more people.

The same philosophy is what they did by putting in bike lanes in Louisville. They put in the bike lanes which constricted the roadways by making them more narrow and of course less safe all in the name of riding bicycles around in a city where fewer people by far are riding some two wheel bicycle in 90 degree heat to their office job or something they have to look respectable for. They think that by doing this they'll seem progressive and thoughtful instead of making everything a fustercluck and then leaving the mess for intelligent people to fix someday. Louisville thinks that its Portland or some liberal West Coast city with daily temperatures in the 60s to 80s when its a Eastern valley city with high humidity rivaling the Deep South and 90 plus degree temperatures that often last from May until sometime in September or maybe even October.

That's Greg Fischers Louisville though. I can just see the huge poster with his face on it prominently hung from a Lousyville building with that jack bump protruding from his upper lip area. Greg Fischer's Louisville. Something everyone can get behind in the truest sense and be proud of. If you believe that then I've got swampland in the middle of Las Vegas for you as well.

Louisville NIMBY Mentality Along With Provincialism and Tribalism

Louisville suffers from the NIMBY mentality and has for years whether its the inconsequential overpriced area that Hurstbourne truly is or even in the Highlands and other areas around the city. That's why smart businesses don't waste their time on a fifth rate city like Louisville in a 4th rate state that is about 20 years behind the rest of the United States in economic development, job creation and common sense.

Louisville is a city that is living on its past rather than reinventing itself for the future and that's why no one outside of the Louisville area actually takes it seriously because people in the know realize that Louisville is severely backwards. Same with the local economy and job market in Louisville. Same with the fact that Louisville incomes and pay are 20 to 25 percent lower than the national average for the so called privilege of living in the ghetto known as Jefferson County.

Louisville suffers from the low mentality attitude that because we're Louisville you must kiss our feet and praise us for being a so called progressive city when cities the same size as the Louisville Metro area like Indianapolis, Nashville, KC, Charlotte and others have blown by and passed up Louisville not over just the past decade but the last couple of decades.

It won't get any better either when you have an education system in the JCPS producing high school graduates that after 13 years of school K-12 can only read at 54 percent of a 12th grade level of proficiency. Not to mention the 8th grade math and science scores are only about 36-38 percent which is why Louisville and largely Kentucky is doomed to a future of being a place of low wage jobs and less economic creation.

Hopefully Topgolf and a lot of other businesses will begin to see what an economic and educational cesspool that Louisville is and start pulling their operations out of the city and state and start looking at other locations north and south where they don't have to deal with a bunch of old geezers that think that their city should be living back in the sixties. In Louisville its questionable whether that is the 1860s or 1960s with the type of backwoods mentality that exists in the so called as of a few years ago 16th largest city. Which was nothing more than a ruse because Louisville hasn't been a top city for almost a century as other Southern cities passed it up a long time ago.

That's why other cities have long ago passed up Louisville when it comes to economic creation, job creation, educational issues and socioeconomic qualities of life standards. All you have to do is put some gas in your buggy and leave Louisville for a couple of weeks or even bother to live elsewhere than the Possum Billy City aka Possibility City and see for yourself. Much less bother to read and learn something other than basketball or getting drunk on Saturday night.

Way to go Louisville, you're increasingly becoming irrelevant and the Detroit of the Ohio Valley or maybe even the New Orleans of the area without the cultural charms and history that at least New Orleans exhibits.

Kentucky Hates The Facts

Kentucky is also one of the worst states based on statistics regarding incomes, education, poverty and healthcare. Kentucky ranks 47th in personal income and has been 44th or worse in the USA EVERY YEAR since 1939. Not to mention 47th in median and family income, 47th in educational attainment, recently ranked 50th out of the 50 states in government efficiency and management, etc.

Kentucky ranks 41st in quality of post secondary education, worst state for retirees by Wallet Hub, Forbes, etc. Senior care it also gets low marks being one of the three worst states regularly for seniors as well as being a state with a rapidly increasing crime rate due to economic inequality, joblessness and lack of educational achievement.

Let’s just say that Kentucky schools are so bad that the state wants to take over the Jefferson County Public Schools system in Louisville the largest city. The only problem is that the schools in the rest of the Commonwealth of Kentucky aren’t really faring any better when it comes to achievement.

In the recent few years, the average Kentucky 8th grader only was proficient in science at grade level at a rate of 36 percent. In mathematics among 8th graders and 10th graders the rate of proficiency at grade level was only 40 percent. Even more pathetic is the fact that Kentucky schools not only in Louisville the most well off school district for funding have horrible reading comprehension/English skills and writing rates.

In 2017, the rate for 12th graders in Kentucky being proficient at grade level 12 in English composition/grammar/comprehension was a paltry 55 percent and even worse in Jefferson County aka Louisville about 52 percent. So in essence only about slightly half of the high school graduates can even function at grade level or better. Which means that when they get into some sort of Kentucky college they usually end up having to take all kinds of remedial English classes in order to catch up to where they should be in other states that value education more.

Not to mention that Kentucky has the highest rate of drug abuse in the country and highest percentage of meth users and meth busts. Add in being #1 state for child abuse and number #1 for animal abuse laws being so lax. Not to mention very low rates for elder abuse and taking advantage of the elderly. As one insurance company employee of high stature once told me, that she was in business to make money and if you can do it to basically con older people because they are easy to talk into things. Not my type of people to hang around with and definitely people I wouldn’t do business with.

Kentucky is also horridly governed and has been for generations including huge pension debt as proportional to its size and population as a state. Roadways that are increasingly becoming dilapidated or simply not maintained especially in more rural counties away from the cities. As well as a culture of corruption that makes Kentucky one of the most corrupt states along with Illinois.

If anything that should set off warning bells when your state is one of the most corrupt states in the country based on being that close to Illinois when it comes to convictions of politicians and crooks. Look up Operation Boptrot which was one of many Kentucky criminal cabals that have been running over the past few generations. Some of the good old boy system again showing its perennial propensity for corruption.

By the way, before the Kentucky readers downvote me I lived there for the better part of a decade and traveled the entire state east to west and frankly there are better and more productive areas of the country in which to live and work and play. Don’t fall for the so called hospitality and charm because much of it is fakery anyway and you’ll understand when YOU as an outsider either marry into someone’s family or move to someplace that people say “You’re not from around here are ya?”

Just be forewarned that Kentucky is not for everyone and culturally its just a microcosm of some of the worst things of the American South. 

#Kentucky #Louisville #LouisvilleKentucky 

The Loubilly Mentality-Louisville Society and Culture At It's Finest

This is my reply to someone that wanted to know if they should consider moving to Louisville. 
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As someone that lived there 5 plus years and then lived in areas about 50 miles or so from there for 2 decades plus I would tell you to stay away. Don’t do it because the quality of life and quality of services and people that you find in the Louisville region is horrendous. The medical care that you receive there while much of it is hyped as a medical center is in many cases substandard. It’s like the professionals and physicians and people fields like that are totally clueless when it comes to new procedures and ways to battle infirmities.
Another problem with Louisville is that its suffering from too much NIMBYism to get anything done because no one wants anything to change all that much. Its calling itself liberal or progressive and maybe it is in Cherokee Park area or Highlands some of the central and eastern areas of the city. However, its largely populated by conservative acting dirt pluckers that are only a couple of generations away from Appalachia. You’re dealing with people even in professional jobs and educational pursuits that act as if they’re some of the Beverly Hillbillies but at least that show was funny. Its the whole Billy Bob mentality even in Eastern Louisville/Oldham County.

The further South you go from the river expect people to be even worse than it is in the East End. Its like the worst trash from Kentucky and Appalachia decided to move there at some point. Their communities in Southern Jefferson County look like someone emptied out their vehicles on people’s yards. The educational level is purportedly about High School graduate level but I’ve spent plenty of time in the Northeast, Midwest, West, etc and the average High School graduate in those places has more common sense than the average Louisville resident. It particularly gets bad in Southern Jefferson County in places like Shively, PRP, Valley Station, Fairdale, Okolona, Hillview and further into Bullitt County.

Bullitt County is somewhat of a jobs center because of its proximity to the Louisville airport but the problem is that most of these jobs are lower wage and lower mentality warehousing jobs. In fact, even though its only 15 or 20 miles from Louisville and U of L and Jefferson Community College-KCTCS as well as Bellarmine University, its the worst educated county in the whole state of Kentucky. In fact, it was also where Louisville businesses in the paint and resin industries among others sent their toxic waste for decades starting in the 1950s through the mid 1980s that leached into the local water supplies as well as creeks and streams and ultimately probably the Salt River.

The educational system in Louisville and Bullitt County is largely garbage as well. You have 20 something year old adults that can’t spell basic words and compose at least some sort of a sentence. No one expects 100 percent perfection but the facts are that the general area around Louisville is severely uneducated and that’s being a snob that simply calling it like it is. Kentucky as a state ranks 47th in educational attainment and most years K-12 education ranks in the low to mid 40s usually between 41st to 45th. 

Even worse is that the Louisville Jefferson County Public Schools ranks 127th out of 158 Kentucky school systems in a recent year seems like it was 2017 or 2018. Just look it up. It’s been that way for decades though to the point that even high school graduates get to grade 12 and can’t pass the basic skills to graduate but they are passed into the system anyway. For example in a recent year, only 52 percent of the JCPS graduates were proficient at 12th grade English literature and composition. Something like only 40 percent were considered proficient as 10th graders at basic math skills and science was even worse if I recall correctly about 36 percent were proficient at scientific education.

That doesn’t speak well of the educational system in Louisville. That’s the real negative of Louisville along with the provincial population and largely who you know based local job market. You can do so much somewhere else if you have the ambition, education and background than staying in Louisville or even moving there. Start a business elsewhere that you really want to live or get a career path going that pretty much guarantees you the ability to basically sign your own paycheck by having the skills that employers want. What you’re dealing with in Louisville is poorly educated people often end up running the businesses they started with. Even funnier is when one of the Louisville local yokels scrutinized my resume once and started circling what he presumed where spelling errors. The funny thing about it was that I was a school spelling bee champion and participant in every contest for several years as well as going nearly an entire 2 years in 7th and 8th grade without missing only one spelling word on tests weekly over those 2 years. I haven’t lost anything either.

Oh and before I end this diatribe, one more thing that I will tell you about Louisville is that you’ll hear this out of the Loubilly media regularly how Louisville is different and Louisville is unique and Louisville is this or that. Don’t believe it. It’s just another way of them pumping themselves up locally while their local economy, educational system and other socioeconomic issues are ignored. Its like the mentality of the Louisville population. They really think they are culturally and educationally smarter than they truly are when in fact most of them act as if they just came out of the hills after wearing overalls and then jumped into a three piece suit.

Louisville talks about pride in community but much of the city is ran down and looks like a dump. It’s not the worst place I have ever seen compared to say Memphis or New Orleans or North St. Louis or Detroit but there is a serious lack of awareness of environment and cleaning up after themselves. Not to mention the 2018 Hepatitis A outbreak which got thousands sick in Kentucky and Southern Indiana because people aren’t smart enough to use soap and water after they have sex or use the bathroom because it was transmitted by the fecal oral route. That doesn’t say much for common sense in Louisville.
Add in the overrated horse race in May that had its name trademarked by Churchill Downs and its really nothing to brag about. A couple of outdated cheesy museums of old firearms and the Ali Center and that’s about it. The zoo is nice but there are only so many times you can go to the zoo in Louisville. Cincinnati has a much better zoo as does St. Louis and Chicago. Alcohol is a big problem in Louisville as there are a lot of people that rely on alcohol just to survive the crappy existence they just above homelessness in Louisville. That’s another thing that Louisville has a huge problem with homelessness and did far before 2017 or 2018 when other parts of the country like LA, San Francisco, Seattle started to. It’s largely linked of course to drugs but also to lousy companies in Louisville relying on low wage jobs and temporary employment policies. Add in the fact that Louisville has a large homeless shelter right downtown it attracts people like flies. Nothing against the homeless but Louisville doesn’t have any concrete ideas of how to house these people and get them off the streets.

Interstate underpasses look like encampments in various areas of the city where trash, needles and other refuse is allowed to pile up leaving very unsanitary conditions for the general population. Louisville prides itself in being a so called compassionate city but its really a moniker and not the truth in any way or form. It’s actually a place where the people by and large are uber narcissistic to the max. Just with a slight coating of so called Southern hospitality to make people think they’re actually decent, honest and respectable people. Look behind the coating and you’ll find mentalities of people that simply don’t give a darn about anyone. Most of them don’t even like themselves and where they live at. However they refuse to do anything about so they choose to live in the personal dung heap that they exist in. Expect to deal with people who are entitled to the max even in regular jobs. People that refuse to do their jobs because they know no one really cares. Plus in the 1980s Louisville got the reputation as being Strike City because of all of the labor problems. Some of that was due to lousy employers but most of it was because people wanted to be able to run the show and screw off at their jobs. In a high percentage of cases, Louisvillians are seriously lazy and its even worse in the hotter months because that means effort and most people can’t hack it. Even factory workers were that way when I lived there that they didn’t want to do anything expect get paid to complain and whine which doesn’t cut it where I grew up.

The whole Derby experience is a bunch of people mostly well off from outside of Louisville that come to experience the race and make some money and hob nob with each other. The Derby Festival committee regularly pays out appearance money to various celebrities just to get them to come to Louisville and we’re talking appearance fees of 25k, 50k and perhaps more. Otherwise they wouldn’t even bother showing up in Louisville for a horse race that only last a couple of minutes. The Derby Experience is laughable in that its the same lousy events every year including a boat race, balloon launch, marathon and fireworks. It lasts two weeks and the riverfront area is filled with trash not only from the people at the fireworks but also from the Ohio River regularly getting near or out of its banks in February to April. Its amazing the amount of junk from Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky and WVA that ends up along the river as pollution and no one picks it up until close to Derby time.

That’s another point that I must make is that Louisville will look like an overturned garbage can in the middle of the street for 10 months of the year. Trash on the streets from fast food bags, plastic cups and bottles, glass bottles, paper waste, wooden junk and plenty of other refuse just left there. Including needles. Then about late March or early April the City of Louisville will jump into action and have community volunteers and jail inmates make sure to clean the city up right before all of the Derby visitors show up in late April for Thunder. So the city will look much better from mid April until mid May. Then by June it starts looking like toilet bowl all over again.

Back in 2016, Louisville native Muhammad Ali passed away and the city had jump into action in early June to prepare his funeral route and procession and of course the funeral ceremonies including the Yum Center. The first thing they did according to local media was to send people out to clean the streets again even though it was only one month from the local famous horse race. See that’s the Louisville mentality in a nutshell only to keep up appearances but behind the scenes it looks like crap most of the time. Its all about keeping up appearances or keeping up with the Jones family in Louisville even though the quality of life is severely lacking. Even suburbs in other metro areas are nicer and more clean and orderly than what I’ve experienced in much of Louisville. Unless its a high level neighborhood it lacks a level of cleanliness that most people would expect.

Loubilly- The Biggest Billy Bob City in Kentucky

I don’t care for Louisville because I don’t care for the entire clique based society that Kentucky 

largely is where knowing things isn’t en vogue and knowing someone is more important. Kentucky is a majorly screwed up place due to massive amounts of nepotism and I’ve been to 90 out of 120 Kentucky counties and pretty much most of the state is the same. I lived in Louisville, worked in Louisville and lived there 6 years plus another 26 years about an hour away from Louisville that is totally different than Louisville. In fact, we are in a different state and we really couldn’t give a crap about Louisville even though its only about an hour away maybe a bit more.

If we want to jump in the car or SUV we can go to Indianapolis is just over 1 hr and 30 minutes. Its actually even though has some worse crime problems than Louisville a more up and coming city than what Louisville has to offer. One of the best cities for careers, getting jobs and making a living. I prefer my smaller community which is less cliquish can you believe than Louisville. If we go the other way we can be in Bloomington, Indiana which is a nice sized college town of 81,000 and 175,000 county population with plenty of activities, stores, cultural events, sports, walking paths, nature trails and approximation to a couple of nice state parks. Plus, little Nashville in Indiana has a lot of walkable areas where you can go shopping for tourist type things and various items as well as visit Brown County State Park.

Lexington, I never really cared for and I’ve spent the equivalent of a couple of months there over a several year period. People seemed to be rude, standoffish, unable to make conversation unless it was about Kentucky basketball and just generally an unfriendly place with a snobbish sort of mentality. Even in that sense Louisville is slightly friendlier because you’ll find the guy at the bar or in a restaurant to talk to you and even the servers are largely friendly though they get crapped on by people. Lexington acts like its a high class Kentucky city in some oasis in the middle of massive poverty of Eastern Kentucky and even some areas not far from Lexington. The same sort of mentality always struck me as existing in Woodford County and Versailles and even other areas around Lexington.

One thing I have noticed about Lexington is that a lot of the people from the small towns surrounding Lexington and I’m talking about driving distance of a hour that might work there is that they don’t care very much for Lexington. I’ve heard this more than once from people in the hour vicinity of Lexington of driving distance and its the same. They don’t care for the attitude of Lexington that you get in the workplaces, the stores, the whole environment. I’ve heard this from people in Frankfort, Nicholasville, Georgetown, Paris, Richmond, Berea, etc. I used to do sales calls and travel quite often in rural Kentucky for a number of years. A lot of people don’t have a good opinion of Lexington.

In fact I find that Eastern Louisville especially the Hurstbourne up to Prospect over the the edge of Jefferson County has a lot more in common with Lexington than it does Louisville even though its in the same county. There is a big difference between Southern and Western Louisville and the East End. Its a cultural divide, educational divide, attitude divide. While you’ll find friendly people in some extent in all areas, you’ll find a lot of East End versus South End angst. In general the East End doesn’t care for the South End because of educational and income differences and its vice versa that the South End thinks the East End is a bunch of snobs. However, they both of general disdain for anywhere close to downtown all the way over the Ohio River in many cases.

The issue with the East End is that they have a so called higher class mentality than those in the South End because of educational issues and incomes and class mentality. In other words, they think because they are higher up on the food chain that their bathroom doesn’t stink. In reverse, the South End doesn’t care for the East End because they feel the East End gets the nicer homes, better incomes and better neighborhoods and amenities of Louisville.

Both the East End and South End have issues with Western Jefferson County both as a racial animus that is right below the surface. It generally won’t be talked about in terms of someone using vulgar language about minorities. But it does exist and it existed in the 1990s, 2000s, 2007, 2012 and now. It sits below the surface because its not considered polite to make those sorts of comments these days even though the same basic racial attitudes exist in Louisville to this day. It’s the whole divide between Bardstown Road down to Fern Creek and further east being the richer area. The South End is considered pretty much anywhere from the Airport down to the Gene Snyder and further into Hillview, Fern Creek, Okolona, Fairdale, PRP, Valley, Auburndale and then over to the River. The West End is roughly the 9th Street, 7th Street Road divide and over to the river including Russell, Shawnee, Portland, Chickasaw, Lake Dreamland, Shively, Victory Park, Churchill Downs area which is a South End border area. The areas of Germantown, Preston Street, Baxter, Broadway, Downtown, Old Louisville are pretty much considered largely downtown with some influence of the West End and South End and Baxter Avenue on the fringes of the East End along with Cherokee Park, etc.

Neither city really stands out among the top 50 US metros even though Louisville is allegedly by its own standards considered the 16th largest city as of 2003 (pop 694,000 now 750,000 2019 stats) but now probably not even really in the top 25. Its even more provincial than that. Lexington is not even in the top 50 US cities in population but comes in at 60th with 323,000 people. Neither city is a top US destination nor a top business center. They really don’t even register at top US cities for jobs and careers and the pay is about 20 percent lower than the rest of the United States.

The Universities in Louisville and Lexington are nothing to really write home about. In fact, they don’t even rank in the top 100 universities in America despite U of L in Louisville having one of the largest financial endowments and UK supposedly being Kentucky’s largest research university and getting all kinds of state funding. The only thing that either school could really brag about is their sporting programs especially basketball and somewhat in football or baseball. U of L does have a relatively decent law school which in a recent year was ranked something like 95th in law school quality and the engineering school has the potential but its not well ran and the university has it actually in a couple of nondescript buildings on the South side of the campus. By the way, I have a family member that works in the Engineering educational field at U of L so I’ve got a relatively good grasp at what goes on there plus I keep up with their programs and info. Personally, you could go to Purdue or some other Midwestern university and get a better engineering education than you would get at U of L. Sad but true. Probably even the case at any other major Midwestern University or institution like Rose Hulman, somewhere in Ohio or Illinois or some other state. It’s nothing to really write home about these days.

The schools in Kentucky are horrid to say the least. When I left in 2012 with my two year old, the schools in Louisville itself were ranked 127th out of 154 Kentucky School Districts. This said with a state whose school system regularly ranks in the bottom 20 percent of states when it comes to education. Kentucky usually ranks 41st, 44th or 47th in education and has been that way for decades when measured against the metrics of other states. My current state of Indiana isn’t great but its right near 20th most years when it comes to getting a public school education and districts vary like they do everywhere. I wouldn’t send my worst enemies children to the Jefferson County Public Schools and probably not to the Fayette-Lexington schools. What a lot of people do in those cities is send their kids to parochial schools and private schools as well as Christian schools which are sometimes better. The only school systems in this region worse overall for being larger city schools are the ones in Cincinnati and Indianapolis has some issues as well but nearly not as bad as Louisville overall. Louisville is the type of place where you can get by but you generally won’t thrive living there and for someone that wants a lot better elsewhere is a vast improvement.

Louisville is an Ohio Valley version of New Orleans. Corrupt cops, corrupt public officials, a broke Sewer District, high taxes, a water company that will screw you anyway they can, 4th highest taxed city in the US, horrible roadways with bomb craters in them half of the time, etc. Not to mention a city that built a basketball arena that will cost 1 billion dollars over the next 30 year to pay off without ever putting anything in it other than the U of L Cardinals. No professional teams, constant bickering between Cards and Cats fans about who is the KING of the Trailer Park and little to no REAL culture. Get prepared to be asked by the local yokels which high school you went to. Not which college and not what type of trade school but which high school because that is their way of relating and knowing where you are from. If its Ballard or Jeffersontown or Trinity or maybe St. X you’re East End and better heeled than someone from Male or PRP or Valley or Fairdale or Southern which is considered lower class. No matter what your true level of education is.

Louisville is like a dysfunctional city that really can’t get its act together. Its like having a circus with a bunch of elephants getting in the way stomping on each other or running to the rest of the animals. Of course from behind are the carnival workers and pooper scoopers that come up from behind and occasionally run into a bowel and get their head stuck someplace dark. It’s kind of like a trailer park with a trailer park mentality just with people with a bit more money and a bit more in the way of resources for decent housing.

It’s kind of like the Louisville way of putting lipstick on a pig but its still a pig and you wouldn’t want to hold it or give it a kiss. They try to dress up the city as much as they can for a few special events primarily that nondescript 2 minute horse race held on the first Saturday of May. They also have a Thurby race on Thursdays as well as Oaks race of 10 or 12 cards on Fridays. The funniest thing about Louisville though is that they actually have to pay celebrities 25k-50k to make appearance fees to show up in Louisville to attend the horse events and then the different parties and galas around the city just to keep up appearances.

Another laughable thing that Loubilly City does is to clean the streets and usually dumpy roadways of Kentucky and especially Louisville proper right starting about April 1st or so every year and then it will remain clean until about June 1st when it starts getting piled back up with burger bags, wrappers, roadside trash, bottles, cans, paper and plastic cups, rubbish, wood that fell off a bubba truck without a tarp, junk thrown from car windows, etc. See the issue is that Louisville looks like a big fast food bag emptied out for 10 months out of the year and then turned around and they make up appearances for the other 2 months of April and May when the bulk of the tourists show.

About 2016, Louisville native Muhammad Ali passed away in Arizona and the city of Louisville decided to have not only his funeral but a funeral procession through the streets of Louisville all over the city. Well, this being June 2016 the streets were already brimming with trash floating across the streets, pop cans and bottles on the sidewalks and streets, food wrappers, cigarette butts, broken bottles, fast food bags and debris everywhere. Only one month after that WORLD FAMOUS horse race the city had to get volunteers and city works employees running triple time in order to get all of the junk picked up to make appearances as usual. So all of the event dignitaries and VIPs showed up and it went off without a hitch. Give it another month or so you could drive down to Louisville and it started looking like someone emptied out the contents of the floorboards of their junk car after a binge week of eating fast food and drinking soda pop.

The same goes for Louisville and its homeless problems. The Mayor of Louisville, Greg Fischer, talks about Louisville being a compassionate city which is the most laughable thing going. Even worse is the fact that the only reason its a compassionate city is because they have a huge hotel used as a homeless shelter right in the middle of the the city. Despite the fact that during 2008 to 2016 they had thousands of boarded up homes that went to rot and government finally got the money to tear them down no one considered fixing the homeless problem. Now the homeless problem is worse because there is less housing and less decent housing and jobs don’t pay often enough to keep people housed, fed, clothed, etc. So instead what you have in Louisville are various shantytowns that have popped up especially around areas just outside of downtown in harder to get areas. Also underpasses under the interstate in Portland, downtown and elsewhere. So the city goes in and talks about compassion then sends in the bulldozers, trash collectors and backhoes to pick up belongings, trash, needles and other unwanted materials. All at a time the city should have been coming up with ways to fix homeless issues and try to help those downtrodden. All the while calling itself a Compassionate City.

That is Louisville in a nutshell always talking about progressive ideas to improve the community, doing absolutely nothing to achieve anything that would improve lives including better jobs and education and delivering nothing but more taxes, poverty and ignorance. Like I call it, Its the Louisville Mentality or (Loubilly-The Biggest Billy Bob City in Kentucky)