Important corporations in Tompkins County: like Cargill and Cornell, receive tax cuts — while the rural areas receive cuts in services. Having basic services in rural areas, like Sheriff’s patrols, cut entirely; because they’re “too expensive” – is the definition of “unimportant” in Tompkins County’s Ivy-league-corporate planning – and it helps the bottom line – while the County’s rural tax assessments are the closest thing to Prince John since Robin Hood’s time.
Progressive thinking is always based on their own superiority – not the recognition of the worth of other people: and the foundation of their policy making is not having that superiority questioned – ever.
The lie of Biden’s Social Policies is their claim to be the instrument of equitable treatment for all those who are poor, marginalized, and underserved.
Tompkins County’s rural population, like rural communities throughout America, is the poorest, most marginalized, and underserved segment of the population — and is beaten, robbed, and disrespected in every trumpeted policy of its overwhelmingly Progressive government.
When a lie is the basis – like the Emperor’s New Clothes: anyone who claims to see through it is labeled “unworthy.”
To be worthy of “equitable” treatment; one must have the advantage of political recognition. Those people and groups who do not have this recognition are done down twice: rural people are done down because they are poor, marginalized, underserved, and unrepresented — and done down again because they are excluded from the government programs that would change this. In spite of documented need for a Rural Social Justice – not one step has been taken to politically recognize and address this need.
It’s a black urban overclass that receives the advantages of Equity – and a white rural underclass that is dying from crime, drugs, and a policy of neglect – victims of Urban Colonialism and political cronyism.
Categorizing and treating people differently is a defining feature of Progressive policy making — and kicking people when they’re down — an unreported abuse.
I was talking to a neighbor today about the weather and the state of things – and he announced that his family had made plans for leaving New York State. Since the County removed rural sheriff’s patrols as being “too expensive” – He won’t even let his kids ride their bikes on Lansingville Road. “I’m planning on leaving” is a phrase that crops up in almost every conversation with younger families – while “I can’t afford to leave” is the sad statement of the elderly just trying to survive.
The millionaire farmers who have taken over give criminals free rein; as long as they don’t cut into their profits – and our once neighborly and hard-working rural community has become a dumping ground of rentals for the county’s unwanted: an Ag Ghetto of drugs, poverty, and crime.
New York policy makers are like someone who refuses to learn to swim — but when they start to drown — they pull down everyone around them while trying to keep their heads above water.
The back of the bus – the end of the string – by putting rural people last; they’re able to oppress by exclusion – we get less, or nothing: because there’s nothing left – someone measured wrong – it’s unexpected – there isn’t enough money – enough workers – enough government interest. They always run out of everything; by giving plenty to everyone else first.
There are exceptions: the tax assessors are never too busy to give us the highest possible assessments. Tompkins County’s policies are forcing the same rural families that its roads were named after out of their homes. Does that mean that policies will be changed? Of course not — it means they’re working.
“Equity: Where does it leave those who are left out?”
There is no rural social justice – there is no such thing as Rural Social Justice in any government policy making.
Rural communities are excluded from our national consciousness: a vacant space in everything from “Cost of Living” calculations to cultural identity.
They are subordinated to political agendas, corporate profits, and agricultural pollution — bullied and deprived unseen in the shadow of a Black urban overclass.
“The real tragedy of these small enclaves of marginality and poverty is that people are playing a game of life that has been structured in such a way that they are required to play but prevented from winning” wrote Janet Fitchen in her groundbreaking “Poverty in Rural America” – four decades later: nothing has been built on that ground — and the poverty, neglect and drugs have long since taken it back over.
Even if you have the ethical “flexibility” to twist the principle of Equality into “unequally” – you still have to get around the continued existence of groups who are systematically denied this help.
In Tompkins County: there are so many mass transit busses in the Cornell campus that it’s hard to drive a car around – and there are bus stops every few hundred feet in urban and suburban areas – but there are no buses serving rural county residents.
Rural people are given the ‘separate-but-equal’ policy of requesting volunteer drivers [if available] in advance [and paying more] – for every trip.
Rural areas have no sheriff’s patrols – you call in incidents; and they’ll come out and write a report. I’ve twice has medevac helicopters land in my front yard to airlift road accident victims – and we’re still unable to get law enforcement or speed limits on our lawless road.
These are just two of the “equitable” policy solutions of Ivy League Progressives to the needs of the county’s poorest, most underserved and disadvantaged [and unrepresented] population.
Progressives that can toss off these inequitable policies with a “difficult” or “no money” in a single sentence.
They pretend that our rural communities, and our problems don’t exist – and create “equitable” policies to speed up the process. Equitabullshit!
You could say the NYSDOT response to our Town’s request for a speed reduction on Lansingville Road is the same as every other response we’ve received to our pleas for rural health, welfare, and inclusion: No.
Why would the NYSDOT refuse to reduce the speed limit on Lansingville Road? The answer, I suspect, is the same as why the County Highway Director claims – in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary – that all the truck traffic on Lansingville Road is agricultural.
The Ithaca-Tompkins County Transportation Council concluded: “the petition signed by residents and the letter of support of a speed reduction signed by the sheriff, and add our Traffic Count Report, which shows a marked increase in traffic along Lansingville Road in the past two years, as well as our Vehicle Crash Data Report, which includes the road segment of Lansingville Road from Rt.34B to Jerry Smith Road on its list of top 10 highest crash severity road segments between 2015 – 2019. These documents together seem to make a clear and simple case for the request.”
The NYSDOT refusal was “Based on the existing roadside development, crash analysis, and test drives.”
A bland and uninformative stone wall — the same stone wall that surrounds every rural community in New York State.
As rural America dies – a strange new society emerges from the carcass: Government Modified Organizations [GMOs] have ushered in a cycle of drugs and dissolution to replace the old neighborliness and caring that existed – Creating a community with all the death and despair of the urban poor — but with none of the hope. In rural America no one can hear you scream.
The rural paradigm is no longer centered around places that help others – it’s centered around places that help you — just like everywhere else.