Monday, January 13, 2020

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



Kentucky Idiots

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.

Kentucky Idiots

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 Idiots

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 



Kentucky Idiots

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.



Kentucky Idiots

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)

Kentucky Idiots

The Great Ohio River Bridges Shakedown


Let's call it 10 years if not more of government incompetence, crooked state legislators, crooked governors and ran by a unaccountable company not even from this region. Much less the fact that Kentucky didn't have the funds available for their half of the Ohio River Bridges Project much less the money for the East End Tunnel that Indiana has to pay for even though its in Kentucky. Why do the taxpayers of Indiana have to pay for an asset that is in another state going under an old estate where someone supposedly famous might have stayed there 200 years ago or so.

Add in the fact that Kentucky has been fiscally busted for years and the fact it is still fiscally busted to the tune of needing hundreds of millions of dollars just to maintain the infrastructure at a D level grade for bridges, it speaks volumes about the fiscal mismanagement that has been occurring in the Commonwealth of Kentucky not only for 10 years but going back decades.

Considering that the East End bridges were formulated via the Interstate Road System maps back in 1970 or so and not completed until 2016-2017 speaks volumes about the incompetence of not only the government of Jefferson County/Louisville Metro but also the Kentucky governors and Kentucky transportation cabinet. Even more laughable is the fact that the approaches to the East End bridge was largely ready at interstate grade decades ago with 265 in Indiana ending just less than a mile from the Ohio River and this has been the case for decades.

Even worse is that the SO CALLED business leadership around Louisville including the whole Louisville chamber and the backers at the Courier and other institutions worked to scuttle the bridge plans that were known about going back to about 1970. Not to mention the cancerous effects of such things as River Fields and the like pushing an anti-transportation and anti-progress agenda only to protect the Mockingbird Valley crowd and those around Prospect that wanted to throw a fit because they couldn't have their way which finally ended this last decade.

Since 1970, there have been at least 6 Louisville Mayors with nearly 45 years of so called community service between all of them who couldn't get the job done. The business community in Louisville couldn't get the job done but that's because they are a largely feckless bunch still acting in provincial ways while the region faltered increasingly economically and was passed by years ago by cities like Nashville (smaller than Louisville), Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Charlotte, KC, etc. All cities in the same basic size and population as Louisville.

Now in 2020, we have an unaccountable para governmental private company managing the tolls for the varied bridges including the Kennedy, Lincoln and East End bridges. An unaccountable system where people get bogus bills for not even driving across those bridges because their vehicles weren't able to be driven in one case because the person was dead. Furthermore, the bogus charges and lack of management accountability whereas the people are paying as much 8.40 per trip across the bridges and in some cases probably pay much more in order to conduct business operations. All because of fiscal malfeasance of various parties including the Kentucky State Government, Louisville Metro and even in some cases Indiana though Indiana did have their funding already determined prior to the beginning of construction back in 2012-2013.

This isn't infrastructure improvement in a lot of ways that could have been done with responsible government spending and planning ahead. This is government gone amok with the ability to put another hidden tax on the population in order to do another governmental shakedown of the population. Not to mention government waste and inefficiency hiring a company in Texas to manage the local shakedown of the economy and taxpayers and users both in Indiana and Kentucky. That's the type of criminal government we should all be watching instead of remaining clueless about the type of people running this government.


Kentucky Idiots

Louisville Arena Fiasco

This is a great post I recently found on one of the local sites where a local pretty much called out Louisville and its idiotic politicians. I don't agree with everything but its pretty good analysis of calling out the clowns in Louisville government.

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Considering that Louisville has spent the better part of the last 20 years throwing away money that should have been spent on community necessities like roads, infrastructure, sewers, water, electrical maintenance its not going to get any better with the present regime. Of course, good ole Jerry hoodwinked the Louisville public into building a new basketball arena along with Tommy Turtleneck. Slick Rick, Jim Host and then Fischer took the reins. Everyone was all in marching and pecking order to make sure that a 350 million dollar arena was needed. Not to mention the millions they expected from the TIF financing that never quite materialized because the downtown bars and restaurants were dropping like flies in the large part of the decade. It might be a little bit better now in 2020 but wait until the next economic downturn hits in the next decade and you'll hear a squawling that sounds like someone being castrated.

350 million dollars for an arena and the bonds were sold to the public and investors by Goldman Sachs, some of the most financially dishonest people on the planet. That were involved up to their eyeballs in the 2008 financial crash and the resulting damage to the US economy when the housing bubble and stock market bubble exploded in the years of 2006 to 2011 and millions of jobs were lost. It will happen again as well because the central bankers and the Jamie Dimons and the rest of the banking central government officials around the world are living on borrowed time and huge amounts of borrowed debt. In fact, the debt how is 247 trillion dollars around the world which is 10 times that of the current US federal debt of 23.5 trillion.

Of course, the Hokies down in Louisville and with the city and state government from Papaw Steve to Ernie Felcher to Mayor McCheese to the U of L clowns all were in just as long as they didn't have to pay the debt. So instead, they passed it onto the taxpayers of Louisville because the Arena Authority finally had to admit that they weren't going to be able to pay interest of 15 to 20 million per year from 2010 to 2040 and then 17.5 million in principal over 20 years starting in 2020. Which is why the maturation and length of the bonds was refinanced so Louisville residents would have to pay for this white elephant until 2054 by which it will be 44 years old by then. That's some great strategic thinking of the various public officials and financial gurus in Louisville. By 2054, U of L will have pulled out and left the Yum Center and there still probably won't be an NHL or NBA team no matter how many of the professional head greasers experimenting with battery acid think that its going to happen. Probably not unless some ultra rich billionaire comes to Louisville to start or purchase an existing team.

Then again, that's Louisville which has been giving the Arena Authority anywhere from 7 million to 15 million a year for the better part of the decade plus trying to bail out from all of the public lawsuits over police brutality, public corruption, government malfeasance and such. Not exactly a winning formula for a city that is also about 4 billion in the hole for sewer debt made up by the MSD, Abramson and his handpicked lieutenants like Bud Schardein. Add in the fact that Louisville needs billions more just to fix the current system and it speaks volumes to the massive amounts of the money that will end up being wasted away because of malfeasance, mismanagement and downright government corruption. Which is why you have problems funding nonprofits, etc.


Kentucky Idiots

Tuesday, January 16, 2018

Louisville: Impossibility City Part 2

I love how Louisville has all kinds of signs around the city painted on buildings or hung on the buildings with these big placards stating how its Mary T's Louisville or someone else around the city that got some claim to fame even though most of them left Louisville to do so. In fact, some of them including Muhammad Ali spent decades away from Louisville despite it supposedly being such a great first class city. Just in the last 40 years or so before he passed, Ali lived in Detroit, Phoenix, and elsewhere but not in Louisville until he bought a place in Anchorage that ended up having mold issues and other problems. Ever notice, that a lot of these luminaries don't stay around Louisville after they've made it big time.

Even the formerly esteemed Louisville basketball coach left Louisville as soon as he got canned by the university because there's nothing all that special about Louisville and the surrounding area. It didn't take him more than a week or two to put up his home for sale and sell it off and then he was already in Florida ruminating whatever the hell else he's going to do with the rest of his life. I'm sure he won't be hurting though financially running away to the bank with all his money. I've noticed this constantly over the years that all these people are from Kentucky but they've moved far away from Louisville and Kentucky in general because there is nothing really all that redeeming either in the state nor in Louisville. That's why Louisville and the famous horse racing organization and its subsidiaries and community supporters have to recruit celebrities to come to Louisville during that famous horse race in May. They actually have to pay appearance fees to famous sports celebrities, movie stars, B listers, etc because there isn't anything else in Louisville that really is culturally redeeming enough to really visit there. Its nothing more in many areas than a skidmark on a pair of tighty whiteys. Look at downtown Louisville how it empties out after the latest concert or U of L game at the big chicken bucket on the Riverfront. Hell, Louisville couldn't even get an NBA/NHL team while even smaller cities and metro areas outside of Louisville have teams including real pissholes like New Orleans, Memphis, etc. Even minor ass cities like Salt Lake, Nashville, Buffalo, Raleigh, Memphis, Oklahoma City, Jacksonville, etc have some sort of professional sports or some other civic pride accomplishment. What does Louisville have? Not much unless you're into shopping at shitty strip malls and other outfits. Museums? Ali and Frazier? Nothing much there either. The only real attraction Louisville has going for it is the Zoo and I'm not talking about the crime infested West End which is a totally different issue. You call Standiford Field an international airport? Really? Despite the fact that it probably doesn't even have an international flight that goes anywhere directly out of the country. Even UPS about pulled out of Louisville back in 1994 because the local city government led by light in the loafers former Mayor Abramson couldn't even get the snow moved out of the city streets and highways around Louisville. Add in the incompetents of the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet not being able to properly clean roadways off and UPS your biggest employer would have been gone a long time ago. It continues to get better though because the truth is that Louisville was going backwards for decades and if you look at the history of Louisville, for those of us smart enough to know the difference and reading, you'll find that Louisville once had opportunities at having much more but they passed up on all kinds of opportunities such as NFL teams in the 1960s which went to Atlanta. The Colonels in the 70s were a big draw but the city of Loserville and the owners couldn't and wouldn't come up with 3 million dollars to pay for the franchise fee to join the NBA. Despite in 1976 having a pretty good basketball arena already there at the Fairgrounds that would eventually have to be replaced. Even the dirtball Charlie Finley wanted to move the Kansas City Athletics to the Fairgrounds old Cardinal Stadium but was rebuffed so Louisville didn't have anything to actually get its shit together. So its gotten better over the generations as one Democratic mayor after the next continued to ignore the problems in Mayberry as the local population continued to decline in intelligence and quality. It started with Harvey Sloane from 1973 to 1977 and again from 1981 to 1985. Then 13 years of Democrat Abramson first from 1985 to 1998. Followed by David Armstrong from 1998 to 2002. Then again followed by Abramson again from 2003 to 2011. Now you have Fischer who looks almost identical to his wife. Just to have to wonder if its a Kentucky trait to look like brother and sister? Louisville likes to talk big and deliver little. Which is why Louisville compared to other sister cities in this region of the Ohio Valley, Upper South, and Midwest is totally a joke and a farce of a city. Louisville acts not much bigger than say a dump like Owensboro or Bowling Green and maybe that's because its in Kentucky and they have nothing better to look up to. Even smaller cities like Nashville have long ago passed up Louisville in arts, entertainment, culture, sports, business opportunities and much more. Louisville still thinks its a bunch of great neighborhoods when in fact most of them from neighborhood to next look and act all the same. Add in all the run down buildings and crappy infrastructure in Louisville that looks like it was built about 100 years ago and more. Roadways with bike lanes that are so narrow that I'm surprised that more bike riders haven't been killed by the SUV driving public and those driving large trucks. All the while the streets look like someone forgot to pave them at any time this century. What's up with Dixie Die-way which was the roughest stretch of crappy road south of the Watterson for years. No one knows how to properly pave and structure a roadway? Louisville streets are an abomination for a city of its size and have been for years. It looks like something you would see in a run down city like Detroit or Cleveland neither of which are terribly well off or economically prosperous. At least they have much more bad winter weather for 5 months out of the year with freezing weather from November through March. Even the inner city of Cincinnati has better streets that Louisville and minus its crime issues, Cincinnati has more going for it than Louisville. Same goes for Indianapolis, Columbus, most of St. Louis metro minus the Central City of St. Louis, etc.

Nashville is a nicer city than Louisville and much more clean as if people can understand basic trash disposal and pickup. That's another thing about Louisville that's amazing is that you can drive in the West End or Dixie Highway and find trash everywhere along the streets and roadways. We're talking about glass bottles, needles, fast food bags, plastic bags, cups, etc. As if none of the Kentucky hilljacks actually understand waste removal and disposal in trash cans. Maybe they're too stupid to clean out their cars at a gas station or when they wash their jalopies. However, the trashiness isn't just in the West End or Southwest Louisville. Its down roads like National Turnpike, the Outer Loop, Preston Hwy, Bardstown Road, Newburg Road, etc. As if no one in Louisville bothers to clean anything during winter or around any other time of the year except for the world famous horse race which is Louisville's only real claim to fame. I remember countless times being on Preston Hwy and stopping at various places along the way and the whole roadside looks like a garbage can exploded with cups and cigarette butts everywhere. Kentuckians don't obviously understand cleanliness or being able to pick up after themselves. Its snowing again in Louisville and they've already got tens of slide-offs in Louisville because idiots drive way too fast. Watching this on the net and its laughable how bad Louisville drivers really are despite the fact that the city gets about 3 months of real inclement weather in an entire year. Especially from the first of December until March when it finally starts to warm up. I remember a couple of years ago watching the Louisville TV stations and how the morons in Louisville couldn't handle an inch of snow without having hundreds of wrecks because the inbred idiots aren't intelligent enough to drive slower and leave just a bit earlier to get to work, home, shopping etc. It can't even be the excuse that these are people from California or some other Southern state with dozens and hundreds of these slide-offs and wrecks. Anyway, back to Greg Fischer's Louisville and how badly the place is ran with criminal morons and degenerates being able to commit crimes and acts of violence then handled with kid gloves by the local police forces. All the while the criminal enabling mayor and his handpicked butt kissing police chief allows the criminal trash, violent thugs, and lifelong losers to continue to have a free pass. Not to mention every time one turns around and watches some level of gang violence and losers harassing tourists and walkers at Waterfront Park or around the Big Four bridge. Add in the fact that the Louisville schools are so pathetically bad that it creates generations of these useless eaters and lifelong morons incapable of holding even the most basic and menial jobs. Not asking a whole lot there but when about half of Louisville students can't even spell, read, and do mathematics at grade level when they leave school says a lot about what a totally fucked up system that is. When your metro schools in Louisville are so bad that you're 122nd out of 159 Kentucky schools including hillbilly schools in Eastern Kentucky and Southern Kentucky. That speaks volumes. In fact, I've been about everywhere in the United States or at least have talked to people from every state and generally every region and I've never seen people as dysfunctional as in Kentucky and Louisville especially. The sad thing is that this isn't just a few morons causing problems and being illiterate dirtbags but a large percentage of the local population. Every state has its scumbags and hicks and ghetto bangers, its just that Louisville, Kentucky and environs in the state of Kentucky has more illiterate morons than just about anywhere and that's in comparison to other states that have some major league horrible cities which are carbuncles on the ass of humanity. Kentucky could do so much better to at least keep the damage to its worst of the worst areas especially in places like Louisville Metro and even parts of Lexington. Instead it exports its crap to the rest of the world because eventually some of these morons leave Kentucky and end up populating other states around Kentucky which don't need the additional white trash. However, at least in our states, these people are seen and known as undesirables and scorned by the locals that live here. Where I live at now, if someone sees a Kentucky plate they got a good clue there are people either fleeing Kentucky or are up to no good and if you pull your Kentucky shit here you'll end up in jail. It doesn't fly here nor in surrounding counties and you would be welcomed if you acted like sensible and intelligent people but not if you're white trash morons from Kentucky. Another thing about Greg Fischer's Louisville is the rotting economic structure and increasing impoverishment of the local population which ends up only benefiting those in the higher realms of economic power. Kentucky has long allowed this crap to go on where its smaller communities lose massive amounts of population to Louisville, Lexington, etc. Essentially exporting people to other states and municipalities because the local yokels in places like Central Kentucky, Appalachia, Southwestern Kentucky haven't done anything for generations to create good paying jobs and they won't as long as they keep producing generations of morons incapable of being productive and intelligent citizens. That's why Kentucky continues to fail economically and have budget deficits, economic problems, government waste, and massive corruption. You're fooling yourself if you think that Kentucky doesn't have corruption in government and the local chieftains and family member running your various counties while the infrastructure and tax bases around you are collapsing. All the while more businesses and factories continue to escape the state or end up going broke themselves. Its like Louisville and why it looks like a bombed out post industrial mess in so many places because they've not bothered to keep up infrastructure and business development. I was once a member of Young Professionals of Louisville when I lived there and it was nothing more than a social networking organization that did very little that actually pushed for more growth and development in the Louisville region. They were more worried about pushing for ultra liberal feel good crap like smoking bans and social issues. Sorry but that doesn't take care of the economy, education system, or pay the bills to keep a roof over your head and your finances well off. Not to mention that doesn't help your state economically and socially progress into more intelligent and worthwhile endeavors and pursuits. That in a nutshell is why Louisville is a joke compared to many other metro areas that not only work on economic development and better wages all the while Louisville worries about left wing liberal crap like bike lanes, smoking bans, and other crap. All the while its roadways, infrastructure, business development are totally backwards and the city has nothing to really get and keep more people. Louisville though doesn't think that way even though their city has went backwards over the last 35 years or so. Once it had 36 percent of its jobs tied to manufacturing products which is a noble enterprise and should be encouraged. However, its now only about 10 percent of the jobs in Jefferson County, mirroring other cities in the United States especially in the Rust Belt as jobs have fled those formerly prosperous areas. However, where Louisville really fails is in its ability to attract and retain bright people because they end up running off to other neighboring cities and regions. Indianapolis and Cincinnati are prime examples where the best and brightest in Kentucky run off to in order to make a living and find decent employment and career opportunities. Every time I go to Indianapolis on business, I usually meet someone from Kentucky or Louisville proper and many of them would like to return home but they know that they would have problems getting suitable employment even in Louisville and especially in a harsher economic climate like what happened from 2008 to 2013. Even those people would wish to live in the Louisville area but they know that they would be economically deprived and held back by the horrid local Louisville economic structure where jobs for their skill levels and skill sets are often nonexistent. It reminds me of a friend from Southern Indiana that lived close to Louisville but refused to move back to his home area because of the local economy in the Louisville area and he decided to stay in Indianapolis and then later transfer to Colorado. Louisville doesn't value education, common sense, and basic intelligence in its businesses and companies. Which is why Louisville remains an economic backwater in the Midwest/Ohio Valley/Upper South. When dealing with the rest of Kentucky outside of part of Lexington, Louisville, and Cincinnati Metro, they don't anything to majorly look upward towards with the decrepit Kentucky educational system not to mention the poverty stricken state of Kentucky. A state that cannot even fund police cruisers and proper weapons for law enforcement which is an essential part of governmental activity. All the while, they can fund needle addicts and drug users with needles for them to shoot up with that end up in the roadways around Jefferson, Bullitt, Shelby and Oldham counties along with other Kentucky counties including parts of Southern Indiana where drugs have taken over now. Kentucky doesn't give a damn about education and it shows when the state ranks in the bottom third in public education and has for decades despite the fact that they currently spend 10,192 for every student every year. Even more ridiculous is that they spend more money than my local school district in the north but have worse economic and educational outcomes than my semi-rural district where at least the average high school student graduates with a decent educational background and basic set of skills they can move ahead for technical school, trades, colleges and universities or end up doing military service.

In Kentucky, the state could give a damn less about educating its citizens because if Kentuckians were actually educated they would start fleeing the great trailer park on the Ohio River and leave for better ran states. Therefore, that would leave Kentucky with a larger percentage of its population being morons even more than now because they smart people would readily flee Kentucky knowing about the economic deprivation they face daily. Greg Fischer's Louisville brags about attaining 55,000 new college graduates by 2020 but there is little evidence that has occurred much less that they will stay in Louisville to be successful and intelligent people. In fact, as soon as they see the crappy work environment and the crappy pay for jobs in Louisville they flee to other cities. In fact, years ago former Louisville Mayor Jerry Abramson was running around to other cities across the country trying to recruit people to come back to Louisville.

Most of them were polite but said no thanks because Louisville had very little to offer former residents who chose to stay in Texas, Atlanta, San Francisco, Denver, Phoenix, and many other locations. That's why Louisville had to do their publicly funded Impossibility City campaign properly called Possibility City which is laughable at best. Its so laughable in light of the economic and job opportunities in Louisville and even parts of Southern Indiana directly across the river. Louisville had to pull that sort of gambit in order to try to attract people back but as of 2006 to now in 2018, its pretty much been a failure as people with intelligence are fleeing Louisville and Kentucky in generation

In essence, Louisville is failing because of the stupidity of its population, its horrible educational environment, and the fact that its economy is essentially upside down. A true banana republic type of government on the Ohio River along with an incompetent state government ran by rubes and vacuous boobs incapable of creating the conditions that would make their state successful. A state which has 120 counties and various chieftains called state legislators who are provincial at best and just totally ignorant at worst. Which are elected into office by a population that is one of the worst educated in America to the point that even foreign students and residents of other countries have an education level in many cases much superior than the residents of the Commonwealth of Kentucky.

Monday, January 15, 2018

Feeding the Kentucky Trolls

One thing that I've never understood about Kentuckians at large is their ability to totally be oblivious to the garbage that their state truly is. Not to mention the fact that they are some of the most easily offended people in all of America. They get more upset over the smallest comments about their state. Instead of actually working hard to improve their state and quality of life, they either have to compare it to somewhere else in the United States that happens to have worse problems than they. In addition, they also have the thinnest skin and get the most upset because their state continually ends up being one of the worst states in the United States.

This despite the facts that on the Northern boundaries of Kentucky are Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana with Missouri to the west. So they don't have any real excuses for the fact that their state government and social systems have regularly been noted as being the worst run state in the United States. Not to mention that from 1939 to 2017, they have never went above 44th place in the 50 states in per capita personal income. NOT EVEN ONCE!

The laughable thing is that they are far enough north to never have really been a major part of the Confederate States of America and all of the issues spawned in the 152 years since the Confederacy was defeated by the Union forces. Instead of emulating their northern brothers in Ohio, Indiana, Illnois and even Missouri, they continue to be a lighter version of poverty stricken states like Arkansas, Mississippi, and West Virginia.

As one might expect, I get my fair share of hate mail from Kentucky residents. Which I don't know always how to react to either with scorn and derision or pity that these people many of whom simply don't know any better. I've stated this hundreds of times over the years when I both lived in Kentucky and outside of the state and its that there are good and decent Kentuckians but the mouth breathers seem to hold sway in the state. In that I've spent time in Kentucky during the 1990s, 2000s, and it hasn't changed that much over the years. I moved to Kentucky many years ago with no preconceived notions about Kentuckians and their society at large. However, I've been less than impressed when I've seen the type of society that Kentucky has continually devolved in over the years as in it seems to be going from bad to worse.

Not just in income and poverty statistics, but in the overall well being of said citizens of Kentucky. Yet when confronted with these painful statistics and truths, they suddenly become often enraged to the point of wanting to commit violence and criminal actions. Instead of logically and rationally explaining what they are doing to rectify the situation, most Kentuckians start by cussing their critics out or some other idiotic behavior. Rather than bucking up and fixing their problems, they choose to ignore what kind of a rotten place they actually live in. Then they'll in many cases start cussing someone out or talking about Detroit and its problems all the while Kentucky has more in common with Detroit or problem areas such as the South Side of Chicago income and poverty wise along with education.

So in essence, I get all kinds of nasty comments from Kentucky trolls and have for years so by this point it simply doesn't bother me. Maybe some of them I have truly asked for with my opinion of the average Kentuckian and their way of life. It seems as if their only real source of pride is either of their basketball programs at the collegiate level being the University of Kentucky and University of Louisville. Outside of that, there isn't much else to be proud of outside of bourbon production, some cars made in Kentucky, etc.

I suppose I could be easier on people from Kentucky but their often uneducated and idiotic responses are why I like to poke them with a stick and watch them get all kinds of upset regarding their plight. In which, they don't really have much in the way of rebuttals or explanations of why their state is overall a stinking fetid hole in the ground. Am I angry about it, no not really other than I am amazed at the level of ignorance and stupidity that many of the common people in that state exhibit on the everyday basis.

Anyway, I know this will get me the usual rants and complaints from Kentuckians along with the usual, I'll kick your ass comments because they can't say or prove or refute anything that I have really pointed out. Instead of focusing on their progress and achievements, overall they end up getting defensive about someone simply pointing out that lack of sense that exists in Kentucky. Kentucky Idiots