Louisville As Well As Kentucky Is Not In The Midwest: Southern Culture On The Skids Mentality

It sits on the border of largely what is the Midwest and the South. People from Louisville area call it Kentuckiana since its part Kentucky and part Indiana. In my honest opinion, you don’t get to the true Midwest until you get about 1/3 of the way into Indiana or somewhere above Bloomington, Indiana and Columbus, Indiana. The same can be said for Ohio that you don’t really get into the Midwest until you get somewhere north of Cincinnati or closer to Columbus and then its definitely northern.

In Indiana, I notice a big difference in the cultural aspect of people whereas the Southern 1/3 of the state pretty much from US 50 on southward identify more with Kentucky than they do with the Indianapolis area or Northern Indiana. They might claim to be from Indiana but the truth is that a lot of their kinfolk came from the South and especially Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia and that area of the US.

So in my view you only really get into the Midwest once you get about 50 miles or 75 miles north of the Kentucky border depending where you are Indiana or Ohio and then you lose the Southern cultural aspects of things in many cases.

For example, my nearest very large city is Indianapolis which has a great many streets with Northern names for states and some of the main thoroughfares are New York Street, Massachusetts Avenue and although they do have some north south streets like Georgia Street or Kentucky Ave a great many of the downtown streets take their names from places in the north rather than southern states.

Louisville is definitely in the South. You can tell by the accents and by the cultural leanings even though it yearns to be a Midwestern city like Indianapolis, Cincinnati, or St. Louis its simply never going to be Midwestern. That goes doubly with the mentality that I’ve seen in Kentucky and Louisville over the years. They just have a lot of Southern mannerisms and attitudes. For example, when it comes to race in many northern locations such racial comments would be seriously frowned up but in places like Louisville or other Kentucky cities they have a pre-1960s mentality when it comes to civil rights and equality under the law.

That’s one of many issues that I think keeps Louisville into being a Southern city and Southern culture and attitudes being among the biggest factors. It’s probably also why Louisville really hasn’t graduated to being a top tier city even though its not going to ever be a large US metro area it could still be a lot better than what it really is. Which is a southern town with the Mayberry complex that doesn’t really know what it wants to be when it grows up. Most of that you can chalk up to Kentucky being one of the most backwards economically and socially as well as in the quality of education.

I spent a few years of life in the Chicago region and the difference between say Northern Indiana, SW Michigan and NE Illinois and what you will find in the Southern 1/3 of Indiana and Kentucky is like night and day. Of course, there are racists in all places but in Kentucky and Southern Indiana its more of a cultural stigma that we might get afraid of those people of different color in those big bad cities.

What’s quite hilarious is that I’ve been told by native Kentuckians and people in Southern Indiana that I should move to Chicago because I don’t share their Southern cultural values in this region. What’s comical about that is that they have more in common with the poorer parts of Chicago than I really do in that the South Side of Chicago is actually about equal in per capita income and family income as Southern Indiana and Kentucky. The only real difference is based on skin color and crime issues. The education level in most of the South End of Chicago is about equivalent to the educational achievement level that one would find in most of the Kentucky and Southern Indiana.

A person that befriended me a few months ended up in the part of South Central Indiana where I live and her city of origin is Chicago, IL. When I first met her she noted that I said nothing negative about Chicago or the area around the lake stretching from Wisconsin state line all the way through Illinois, NW Indiana to Michigan. I told her that the reason why I didn’t end up as sour grapes when she mentioned Chicago was my 6 plus years in NW Indiana so I went to the city many times for relaxation, shopping, travel, etc. She said when Chicago is mentioned in these parts its like most people get all disgusted and turn their nose about a place 90 percent of them probably haven’t even been much less a region that they are putting down.

The difference is that I’ve lived near and around Chicago before and I’ve also lived in Kentucky for about the same amount of time just under a decade at some point. The differences couldn’t be any more different than night and day between the two regions at least for most of those areas. The one difference is that most of Kentucky economically, socially and educationally is much like what one would experience in the South Side of Chicago and certain NW Indiana areas like Hammond, Gary, etc where the incomes are closer together than one would think considering that Kentucky is 47th in the US income wise, 47th in median family income, etc. Just having topped over 50,000 a year in recent years and the average income of places in South Side of Chicago are pretty close. In fact, the South Side of Chicago has an average household income of 54,000 a year while in Kentucky its about 50,250 dollars so in fact all those Kentuckians and Southern Indiana residents talking about how much better they are than Chicago need to look really hard in the mirror.

I’ve even heard these derogatory comments among a lot of people from Louisville which isn’t exactly a peach of a city and nothing to really brag about. If anything, Kentucky is definitely in the South and has more in common with parts of dirt poor Mississippi, Arkansas and West Virginia than anywhere in the northern 1/2 to 1/3 of the country.

Louisville’s claim to fame is stuff like bourbon distilling, the Kentucky Derby, Muhammad Ali and basically rolling up the streets by about 9 pm on most nights unless you can find a dive bar or one of the few upscale establishments opening up around the downtown area or Main Street.

As far as the music scene in Lousiville, its that it mostly consists of country and or rock with a mix of grunge or alternative type bands that practice in a garage somewhere and sound like they’ve never taken any music training or classes in their lives. That’s why you don’t find quality and talented musicians coming out of the hills and hollers of Kentucky versus what you would find in other urban areas like Memphis, St. Louis, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Atlanta or elsewhere.

Kentucky likes to think that its Midwestern but its not anywhere close to being Midwestern in attitudes, educational levels, personal sensibilities and common sense. Its like a place where common sense mixed with quality education was sent to die and the mentality is alive and well. I never had any preconceived notions about Kentucky until I had lived there for a few years and I started looking at what kind of places I was living in as far as the culture and the quality of state and local governments and I was like “What the hell is wrong with these people?”

I was raised up to tell the truth, be honest, work hard and have self discipline and I don’t find a whole lot of that in the character of a lot of the people from Kentucky. Its like having a bunch of people with such shady and narcissistic outlook on everything that it clouds their judgment and potential because they refuse to adapt to the outside world.

It’s kind of like the educational system in many parts of Kentucky especially around Louisville being generally of such poor quality that half or more of the kids in high school can barely read and write at a 12th grade level much less understand harder concepts that they will have to master in trade schools and college training. That’s why a good deal of them have to take remedial classes at the University of Louisville, UK, Kentucky Technical Colleges like KCTCS, etc.

The schools are so crappy that even my in-laws in Kentucky actually had to pay extra money to have their daughters children educated in a Christian type of school as the public education system in Kentucky is so bad that it ranks constantly in the bottom 10 states of the USA in most years. Not to mention that Kentucky ranks 47th in educational achievement which is at least a dozen places below or more than most Midwest states like Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, etc.

That’s another big difference between most Midwestern states and Kentucky and that’s the difference in quality of education and quality of colleges whereas the University of Louisville only ranks like 165th out of all of the top colleges in America and University of Kentucky is only about 125th. This despite those two schools being supposedly the best that Kentucky really has to offer and they can’t even make the top 100 colleges and universities in most every discipline. Not even in engineering does U of L rank in the top 100 and not even in law schools. That’s despite that university having one of the largest endowments in the entire nation that it can’t even place above many other schools with less in the way of resources.

It’s those sorts of things that really count along with the large state land grant colleges that were started in the North like Indiana, Purdue, Michigan State, U Michigan, Ohio State, Wisconsin and then other schools of good academic standing like Notre Dame, Northwestern, Iowa, Minnesota, etc.

Louisville, Kentucky: A Skidmark On The Underpants of Decent Society

This post is in response to some of the culturally inbred jackasses of Kentucky and especially Louisville where they think its cool and hip to be a total smartass and trash bathrooms and public facilities. I guess they don't think that other people use public facilities as well as people that have to clean them as part of their jobs or they simply don't care. Since, Louisville seems to exhibit this mentality with people dumping in toilets and then leaving a mess all over the floors and seats and trashing bathrooms its high time someone talked about the Louisville mentality that seems to be quite prevalent.

It reminds me of living in Louisville for several years seeing how even in big box stores like Home Depot, Lowes or other businesses located in Louisville the clientele if you can call them that would go to no ends to crap in a toilet and leave a mess for everyone else to deal with including the poor schmucks that had to clean up after these illiterate and often totally uneducated and mentally debased Neanderthals. The following is a Reddit post that was taken down by the Louisville/LouBilly moderators because they didn't like how I was pointing out how their colleagues from Louisville and other posters thought it was funny and cool that someone shit all over the place and left a mess for the employees to clean up. As if Louisville and much of its citizenry doesn't have enough common sense to use a bathroom correctly. Then again in a city where the average IQ is about 70 to 85 its not totally a surprise. 

Typical Louisville Mentality to act like a total jackass and then leave a mess for everyone involved. Not including your fellow patrons at the restaurant that had to see that sort of thing but also the person that had to go in there and clean up after this idiot. Classy.....then again its Louisville which might as well be a skidmark on the underpants of society. The best thing that could happen to Louisville by and large would either be the Ohio River bursting through the flood walls and some point and wipe the majority of the city off the map or a big fucking tornado going through most of it and cleaning the landscape like a scouring pad.

I seen shit like this when I lived in Louisville from about 2004 to 2013 and that's why I am glad I don't live there anymore. Hell, I feel sorry for the decent people and there are very few of them that still live in that urban shithole. Actually, I have nothing against cities, in fact I live in one with almost a million people now but the facts are that Louisville, Kentucky is a special kind of shitty place once you've really lived most other places in about 90 percent of the country.

The problem with Louisville is that its really one big white ghetto transplanted by people with hundreds of years passing through Appalachia who were mostly ignoramuses and morons that couldn't cut it anywhere else. If you took the far East End say from St. Matthews over to the Simpsonville area away and north from Prospect and Oldham down to the Bullitt County line what would you have? Mississippi or better yet some shithole in some other state like West Virginia or Arkansas.

The fact that some reddit people mostly from Louisville thinks this is actually cool tells me most of what I would need to know about Louisville as if I couldn't tell it by driving through on my trips to Tennessee, the Gulf Coast or elsewhere. That most people there really don't give a shit about their fellow humans that would have to clean up after them when they crap all over the place. So instead of being a real man and going to the manager to complain or simply taking the complaint to a higher level manager or corporate, you decided to be a LOUISVILLE DOUCHEBAG and then take a dump in the can and make a mess with all of the toilet paper.

Classy....and about as classy as the rednecks in Kentucky that burn couches in the middle of the streets in Lexington when Kentucky has its one shining moment in its only real claim to fame called basketball. SO the rednecks will throw trash all over the ground, break bottles, start fires and burn couches in the middle of the streets as well as flip over people's cars because they don't give a shit.

Right there you just showed me the LouBilly mentality which is why Louisville is nothing more than a bunch of undereducated, backwoods, bubba neanderthals that are just one step above gorillas and chimps throwing shit at each other in the Cincinnati Zoo or Louisville Zoo. It remind me of the last time I passed through Kentucky going South in 2019 with trash everywhere and the streets littered with plastic waste, cigarette butts, broken bottles and cans everywhere and looked like someone dumped out the trash from their jacked up jalopy of a car. Way to go Louisville!!

P.S. Since the KY Derby is coming up in a couple of months you better get cleaning the roadways around the sordid city of Louisville that way your guests and the high rollers coming from outside of Louisville won't realize what a major league shithole your city is. Just like you all do every year during March, April until the Derby and then by June 1st it looks like everyone in Louisville emptied the contents of their ride out into the streets all over again. What a bunch of damn pigs and morons exist in Loserville.

Kentucky In It's Real Cultural And Societal Context

Even as someone that despises Kentucky “culture” and society in general in Kentucky, I don’t think that’s a fair assessment and I probably dislike Kentucky and most of the people I’ve met there probably more than most people. I had the opportunity to visit about 100 out of the 120 counties of Kentucky and while it sucks there is no slave trading and such. The problem is the economy in Kentucky, the poor educational system that keeps people dumb and ignorant of the rest of the world and of course they double standards and hypocrisy that is all over Kentucky from the smallest towns to cities like Louisville. The problem with Kentucky is that most of it is a toilet with just nice scenery. If it was based on scenery in Kentucky I would live there in a heartbeat.

However, the people are generally D and F grade people overall with very few A and B type people that makes somewhere a good place to live. The schools are generally horrid and the people that graduate from them have virtually little knowledge of the outside world. Even in Louisville, much of the population can barely get out of its own area of the city which is only about 25 miles from east to west and 15 miles from North to South in Jefferson County.

You wouldn’t believe the amount and percentage of people in Jefferson County that haven’t been to the other parts of their own city area to see how the other 1/3 lives as Louisville is a city of about 3 or 4 different cities. There is the West End which is primarily minority majority population of African Americans. Then you have the South End which is mostly white with a mix of African Americans, Latinos and Asians. Then you have the East End which is mostly highly majority white with a sprinkling of other groups that can live there because of their income and social status that allows them a certain amount of economic independence.

However, you don’t see a lot of people in Louisville intermingling with people of seriously different backgrounds as they stick to their own tribal areas and largely tribal boundaries. You’ve got people that live in South End who won’t go to the East End and vice versa. Most people won’t go to the West End because of crime of course but also a racial element as most West End areas are 90 percent black as well. Furthermore you can have people that live in Louisville all of their lives and don’t know how to get across the city to other businesses, cultural events, social gatherings etc because they never get out of the 10 square mile area of the city where they live.

I’ve seen this plenty of times in the South End and the East End because in both of those areas there are enough retail businesses and other businesses to meet demand of the people in those areas. So what happens is that people get in their little cocoon of an area and rarely leave it. The goes for people in Kentucky not really knowing anything about surrounding states or other parts of America much less other countries. They don’t travel much unless its to the Redneck Riviera of Florida and Alabama for vacation and then of course for UK basketball or other sporting events.

In many cases, its a challenge for them to even make it as far as Cincinnati or Indianapolis or St. Louis or Nashville not because they can’t go to those places but because they don’t interested in learning about other cultures or places. The whole mentality that somehow Kentucky is the end all be all of human society and no one should criticize it or offer even constructive criticism of Kentucky and people get deeply offended over the smallest comment about Kentucky culture. I’ve never seen the mindset of a place where people get so offended over someone making constructive criticism of their state or the values of the people in that state. Much less actually present the facts about Kentucky such as it being 47th in the USA in just about every major category from things like personal and family income to educational achievement to health outcomes.

Don’t criticize Kentucky though is the general mantra you’ll get from native Kentuckians and others that are Kentucky centric type of individuals as they really do think they live in some sort of a heaven even though its quite apparent that economically, socially and educationally Kentucky is severely backwards. I didn’t have a negative view of Kentucky or any real preconceived notions about Kentucky before I moved there but after seeing the trash of Kentucky society in my face for several years from about 2005 until 2013 I can say that I wouldn’t want to live there again.

On the other hand if you like the good old boy system, vast public and social corruption, deadbeats who abuse the system and their fellow citizens and people with skewed moral and ethical values by and large then Kentucky is the place for you. I certainly wasn’t raised the way that obviously most people in Kentucky were raised and thank goodness for that because their values that they state and what they do is totally opposite in fact. Its funny too because you’re made to believe that Kentucky is a moral and religious society even though its quite apparent that the churches are largely places of social constructs rather than actually practicing ethical and moral values that would be in line with its religion.

Another thing you’ll be badgered about is your religion or church attendance or have someone constantly nitpicking about how you need to come join their congregation even though plenty of their own types don’t practice what they preach. Hypocritical of course but outright meanness at the best that despite of their religious talk they treat a lot of people like crap including religious minorities, blacks, Hispanics and anyone different than them. Not to mention the little cliques that you find in Kentucky society in people that should know better but if you’re not one of them then you’re either dead to them or they are going to be outright hostile.

It’s funny that they talk about Kentucky family values but I’ve seen their family values such as adultery on a grand scale, outright lying, bending the truth, theft and just general white trash type of behavior that most people with any moral and ethical scruples anywhere else would find abhorrent. If you like that sort of thing then Kentucky would be for you, if you’ve been raised with some sort of ethical and moral truth or in a community where such behavior is frowned upon then Kentucky is someplace that is foreign and alien to your ethics and morals.

Some of us especially in rural America and the Northern states weren’t raised that way and while we have our own problem with people misbehaving or being total leeches on society we also don’t smile upon it and look approvingly while some inbred yahoo shouts about Jay-Sus and either handle snakes or has some view that everyone that doesn’t follow their particular brand of hypocritical religion is going to hell.

The problem ties back into the fact that the educational system in Kentucky is so poor and backwards not because of lack of funding but the type of people in the state and the education system itself. Actually, school spending in Kentucky is about 11,000 dollars a year which is actually more than my current state of Indiana yet Kentucky regularly ranks anywhere from 41st to 47th in education for K-12 students not to mention 43rd in the quality of its post-secondary educational activities. Not to mention that Kentucky is 47th in the country in educational attainment.

Even worse is that Kentucky does such a bad job in educating its citizens that about 50 plus percent of Kentucky high school students actually fail to meet the standards of reading, writing, comprehension, math and science at grade level. In 2018, Kentucky students were proficient to excelling in English composition, vocabulary and spelling and writing at a 52 percent level. Which means that about half aren’t capable of reading, writing and communicating at a 10th to 12th grade level when these tests are given.

The same goes for math but its much worse as only about 44 percent of Kentucky students are proficient at 12th grade math skills as well as only about 37 percent are proficient at high school level science.

That explains a lot of things to me including the fact that Kentucky has about 900,000 people considered as functionally illiterate and incapable of doing basic tasks, basic jobs, filling out job applications, inability to write and reason intelligently to the point that the state knows this and it comprises about 20 percent of the population.

However, its much worse than that because I would say that as much as 35 or 40 percent of the people I’ve encountered in my travels to Kentucky and about 100 out of 120 counties were that way or you could tell that something was quite off mentally and educationally. I mean, the personal anecdotes and stories that I could tell you about my dealing with Kentucky society is just mind blowing in so many ways.

It’s not even based on emotion or arguments its based on facts and Kentucky is short on facts or at least the average Kentuckian is short on facts, figures, logic, reason and or common sense in many cases. What would go for common sense in most places in Kentucky would be considered as something not very intelligent people would do elsewhere. Yes, its really that bad that Kentucky seems to have serious problems using common sense, logic and reason to solve problems After most of that I just had to leave because I couldn’t tolerate in general such mind blowing stupidity in my everyday dealings with people from Kentucky.

I don’t find that to generally be the case in the North with most people having at least enough common sense to see through stupidity for being what it is. In Kentucky, its acceptable and celebrated to behave in less than dignified or often stupid ways and then act as if the other person has a problem. Of course, when you have a limited amount of intellect and common sense like so many in Kentucky have you’re not dealing with rocket scientists here. That is acceptable in Kentucky but it wouldn’t be acceptable in most other states in the West, Northern tier states and Northeast US. Maybe in some places in the South it would be acceptable but that’s much of the US South for you.

Add in the fact that Kentucky ranks so poorly in healthcare being one of the worst states, worst state for retirees, worst government state in the country and 3rd worst pension problem. You can also notice that Kentucky infrastructure development is about at 3rd world levels with thousands of bridges that are structurally deficient and gets a D grade from American Society of Civil Engineers.

Kentucky has a lot of issues with how they run government as well. For example one of the stupidest things is having the county clerks office issue drivers licenses and personal identification but then having to go to the Bureau of Motor Vehicles to register your vehicle so you have to go two different places to get an ID and the paperwork and then go to the BMV to register your vehicle, boat, or motorcycle, etc.

That’s plain stupid to have a system that has multiple redundancies of government. Add in that Louisville is one of the most taxed cities in the country being 4th highest in taxes and its no wonder the Louisville economy is backwards and underdeveloped in many ways. Their mentality is to create more low wage jobs and low wage warehousing positions because that is the only thing that most of the people can actually handle by and large.

Not to mention Kentucky is economically and fiscally busted in many ways without having money to fix its increasingly collapsing infrastructure and broken roadways and bridges. Not to mention having the 3rd worst funded pension system with huge billions of dollars shortfalls where the state legislators both Republican and Democrat have kicked the can down the road for decades and not funding pensions and allowing double dipping. The only two other states that are worse funded pensions are Illinois and California being the worst states for funding state pensions.

Add in the fact that Kentucky income tax for a family making between 8,000 to 75,000 is about 5.8 percent which is much higher than neighboring Indiana and its 6 percent for anyone making over 75,000 whereas Indiana pays half the taxes at just over 3.2 percent of total income. So you get twice as much of a tax burden out of Kentucky yet about half of the services and more inefficiency and stupidity when it comes to Kentucky government and society. No thank you.

Louisville is one of the highest taxed cities in the country rivaling places like Chicago, NYC etc when it comes to overall tax burden. In fact, the average Louisville resident pays state and local tax burden of about 8 percent and that’s just on income and property taxes are increasingly eating up more of ones income as well. In Indianapolis, Indiana at 110 miles away the average local tax burden is about 5 percent with the state taking 3.1 percent and the local city Unigov taking about 1.9 percent and property taxes are just about equal. 

All so you can deal with Kentucky and its archaic laws, backwards society and equally horrible school systems.

Those are the real problems with Kentucky which no one wants to really acknowledge and talk about which is why Kentucky remains in many ways in the dark ages as far as US states perform and work.

Louisville, Kentucky and the Scam of Reformulated Gas and Vehicle Emissions Testing.......Brought To You By Louisville......Definitely Possibility City or Possum Billy City

Louisville has been selling reformulated gas for as long as I can remember at least back in the 1990s and possibly a few years before that into the 1980s due to supposed smog and pollution problems. One problem though was that reformulated gas was sold in Kentucky for many years while Indiana did not sell reformulated gas and it was usually 20 to 30 cents cheaper by driving down the expressway 5 miles into Indiana and then getting the non-reformulated gas. Suckers!

Just like when Lousyville had vehicle emissions testing back in the 1980s and an older friend went to have his old vehicle tested. The first time it wouldn't pass so he took it back later and it wouldn't pass a second time and the next time it didn't pass but the inspector on duty went ahead and gave him the inspection sticker and passed it anyway. That's the type of corrupt crap that Louisville, Kentucky has been doing for a couple of generations. Maybe this eventually will pass the Kentucky State Cadavers (Legislature) and actually become law to at least save the increasingly stressed and impoverished Louisville residents some money. Of course, the ultra liberal talking heads and government officials in Louisville will have their heads explode but they haven't been using their brains much over the years anyway.

https://www.wdrb.com/news/business/bill-aimed-at-ending-reformulated-gas-in-louisville-takes-step/article_0387191e-3950-11ea-b1ab-037101a8a20e.html

Another Day In Kentucky......The Land of Villainy and Hypocrisy....all brought to you by the incompetentce of the Kentucky State Government and Louisville Metro

It's another day in Kentucky where standards are so low and virtually no one cares until someone important gets slapped over violating labor laws and various other things. Now if this is going on at one place in Louisville and one company that owns all of these businesses how many other labor and law violations are occurring at other businesses in the city of Louisville and Commonwealth of Kentucky?

https://www.wdrb.com/in-depth/restaurant-company-owned-by-louisville-s-bridgeman-family-hit-with/article_8fbed57a-3bc1-11ea-b763-576f9026e30b.html

Kentucky Sucks.......When It Comes to Public Corruption and Government Corruption......Might as Well Say that Louisville Sucks Too

Imagine this that Kentucky has the most corrupt government in the whole country. Just another indication that Louisville sucks and Kentucky sucks as well. 

https://louisvillefuture.com/archived-news/harvard-study-kentuckys-state-government-one-corrupt-country/

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.