rural poor – Rural Tompkins County

“The World According to Doctrine” — “Factory Farm Days”

“Old MacDollar had a Farm” – what very few people realize is that the non-farming population in New York State is living under Agricultural Law. What’s “Agricultural Law”? Think of the Sheriff of Nottingham in the Robin Hood movies. It’s the lock-step power and influence of rich Agricultural interests, along with the lack of money and political power of the poor non-farming rural residents; that have resulted in an overwhelming bi-partisan support for “farms.” Rural areas now have “Ag Ghettos” – with the same drugs, crime, and hopelessness as their urban counterparts — but nobody knows they exist. What do you know about what goes on in rural America? It’s a story that nobody has the courage to report.

“The World According to Doctrine” — “The Future of Rural New York”

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 World According to Doctrine” — “Who’s Janet Fitchen?” Bumper sticker

Caring about people because they’re poor, disadvantaged, and underserved is no longer an acceptable reason – they must pass a demographic hurdle as well.

Rural people are too “white,” too different, and too . . . well, rural – to be the objects of anything but urban ridicule, bigotry, and racist profiling.

Rural communities across the country are being destroyed to fulfill the expansionist dreams of the New Urbanism: Urban Colonialism.

Who’s Janet Fitchen? The answer to that; is the answer to many questions.

“All Roads Lead to Cornithaca” – “Integration in Tompkins County” Bumper sticker

“Put the poor urban blacks and the poor rural whites together – somewhere else.” The County Comp Plan calls it “balance the burdens” – but it’s another name for the County’s policy to move everything and everyone they don’t want in Ithaca – somewhere else.

When a drug rehab center marred their vibrant downtown – they found a better home for it in another municipality. Necessary public works in Ithaca’s “jungle” displaced the homeless; but they were found new housing – elsewhere. The County’s urban housing authority merged with rural providers and absentee landlords turned rural homes into subsidized housing apartments for the urban unwanted — and since agriculture is the only rural activity and land use that the County considers of any importance – those people [and their problems] effectively disappeared. Clever. And there are other words for it . . .

“All Roads Lead to Cornithaca” – “Rabid Lemmings: The Musical – I’ve Got A Sheriff”

I’ve Got A Sheriff

(To the tune of I Shot The Sheriff by Bob Marley and the Wailers)

I’ve got a sheriff, but I could not spot a deputy
I’ve got a sheriff, but I could not spot a deputy

All around my rural town
They’re driving up and down
They say they want to bring in the guilty
But there’s no sign of a deputy
There’s no help from the deputies
But I say

I’ve got a sheriff, but I must rely on self-defense
I’ve got a sheriff, but he never helps no matter the offense

The County always hated us
For what I don’t know
Every time that they do us down
They say, “If you don’t like it; why don’t you go”
They say, “If you don’t like it; why don’t you go”
I say

I’ve got a sheriff, but I had to buy a chain-link fence
I’ve got a sheriff, but I must rely on my own defense

Money came my way one day
And I started out of town
All of a sudden I see the Tax Assessor
Aiming to do me down
So I shot, I shot him down
I say

I shot the tax man, and I finally see a deputy
I shot the tax man, and I finally saw a deputy

Reflexes got the better of me
And maybe that’s as it should be
Every day those fuckers go to the well
But one day the bottom will drop out
Yes, one day the bottom will drop out
But I say

I shot the tax man, now they’re suiting up the deputies
I shot the tax man, now they’re shooting up what’s left of me

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A seventh song for “Rabid Lemmings: The Musical” – I say “God Damn the Tax Assessor Man.”

“All Roads Lead to Cornithaca” – “Poverty is more than color” Bumper Sticker

Poverty may be more than color; but public policy isn’t. Unfortunately, there aren’t enough blacks living in rural New York for the community to be worth caring about.

Even the pretense of equal worth has been replaced by an openly dismissive “somebody has to take the hit” philosophy, and disguised with an over the top ladling of “the greater good.”

After all; when “somebody” has to take the hit — it’s always a campaign decision.

“Rise of the Evil Ones” – “URB INVADERS”

“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.” — Janet Fitchen, “Poverty in Rural America”

In rural New York; No one can hear your scream.

“Cornithaca County” Book Preview – “Cornithaca Billboards 4”

“Doctrine, Doctrine everywhere, and not a drop of love.” to paraphrase the poem. Cornithaca’s Elite have run a relentless hate and fear campaign since I can remember — and as to their love; any examination of the county’s poor and needy shows that it must have evaporated decades ago.

When I wrote to the local college where the noted Rural Sociologist Janet Fitchen taught and authored Poverty in Rural America, requesting their help in publicizing the county’s current rural poverty and neglect: The response I received was; “She lived in simpler times.”

A year ago, Cornithaca gave a quarter of a million dollar tax let-off to the largest privately owned corporation in the US. Why? The corporation said they needed it.

What’s complicated about that?

It’s OK: they’ll simply increase our taxes to make up the difference.

“Cornithaca County” Book Preview – “The Hog Farm and the Hurricane”

If there is any bi-partisan agreement in this country, it’s the importance of “Big Ag” [a conglomerate of corporate Agribusinesses, Industrial Farms, the “Food industry,” and Politicians].

It’s not surprising that a group with that much money and power [coupled with a “City-centric” media and a government policy that claims to eschew race, gender, and national origin in their forward looking society, and yet uses them as the basis of every decision and piece of legislation] is able to suppress what is being done to rural families in our country.

It’s also not surprising that in Cornithaca County, a place so Liberal that their feet scarcely touch the land they hold dominion over; their mouths overflow with a dismissive contempt — reviling the rural community as “hillbillies,” “good old boys,” “trailer trash,” “ignorant,” “bigoted,” and “Lily Whites,” without ever having met or spoken with one.

This bigotry will be exposed, and well documented, in Part 2 of Cornithaca County.

Does changing the target, change the act? If so, where does that thinking come from?

“Cornithaca County” Book Preview – “Crocodile Tears” Hopscotch

The Victim’s Fault of “being in the wrong place at the wrong time” could very well refer to Cornithaca County in 2020: where the elite of Revealed Church of Secular Self-interest believe that goodness is not a way of life, but a way to make a very good living.

In a county that practices outreach as a way take, not to give, the poor rural families are being forced out by high property taxes and repressive municipal codes while its government concerns itself with creating a template for How People Must Live. Cornithaca County is a New Religion dictatorship, and as its full extent is revealed, you may be frightened to see how much of it is already being put into place where you live.

You know you live in a Cornithaca County: When the public can’t ask questions at a public meeting.