http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/06/28/obit.byrd/
Robert Byrd, longest-serving member of Congress, dead at 92
June 28, 2010
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Byrd: "When I am dead ... they will find West Virginia written on my heart"
Byrd was a nine-term Democrat
Known as the "King of Pork" for steering federal funding to his home state
Said his greatest mistake was his 14-hour filibuster of 1964 Civil Rights Act
Washington (CNN) -- West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd, the self-educated son of a coal miner who became the longest-serving member of Congress, died early Monday at age 92, the senator's office said.
Byrd, a nine-term Democrat, was known as a master of the chamber's often-arcane rules and as the self-proclaimed "champion of the Constitution," a jealous guardian of congressional power.
His speeches were laced with references to poetry and the Greek and Roman classics, often punctuated by the brandishing of his pocket copy of the national charter.
He was also known as the "King of Pork," using top positions on the Senate Appropriations Committee to steer federal spending to his home state -- one of the nation's poorest.
Byrd relished the title.
"Pork, to the critic, is service to the people who enjoy some of the good things in life, and I've been happy to bring to West Virginia the projects to which they refer. I have no apology for it," he said.
"When I am dead and am opened they will find West Virginia written on my heart."
West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin -- a Democrat -- has the power to appoint a replacement for Byrd, whose current term is set to expire in 2013.
When Byrd entered Congress in January 1953, a postage stamp cost 3 cents and American kids were clamoring for a new toy called Mr. Potato Head. Harry Truman was president, Winston Churchill was Britain's prime minister, and Josef Stalin was still the Soviet Union's leader.
In November 2009, two days before his 92nd birthday, Byrd passed Arizona Democrat Carl Hayden's record to become the longest-serving member of Congress.
His health problems mounted in his later years, putting him in the hospital four times between February 2008 and September 2009.
Under pressure from fellow Democrats, he announced he would step down as chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee after the 2008 elections.
"I have been privileged to be a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee for 50 years and to have chaired the committee for 10 years, during a time of enormous change in our great country, both culturally and politically," he wrote in a statement announcing his intention.
"A new day has dawned in Washington, and that is a good thing. For my part, I believe that it is time for a new day at the top of the Senate Appropriations Committee."
Robert Carlyle Byrd was born Cornelius Calvin Sale Jr. on November 20, 1917, in the North Carolina town of North Wilkesboro. His mother died when he was a year old, and he was adopted and renamed by his aunt and uncle, Titus and Vlurma Byrd.
He started his political career by running for the state House of Delegates in 1946, while working as a butcher and welder. He won a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives six years later, was elected to his first Senate term in 1958, and won his ninth in 2006, three weeks shy of his 89th birthday.
"If it's the Lord's will, the people will send me there. Why? This Constitution needs a champion," he said before the 2006 vote.
As the senior senator of the majority party, Byrd served as the Senate's president pro tempore -- third in line of presidential succession, behind the vice president and speaker of the House.
While he set two endurance records in Congress, he was only proud of one in the end. The other was for his 1964 filibuster against the Civil Rights Act, when he spoke for 14 hours and 13 minutes in an effort to derail the law.
He opposed civil rights when he first ran for office, a stance he came to regret later in life. He blamed "that Southern atmosphere in which I grew up, with all of its prejudices and its feelings," for his opposition to equal rights, which included joining the Ku Klux Klan in the 1940s.
He called the move "the greatest mistake of my life," an "albatross" that would always shadow his career.
"It's a lesson to the young people of today, that once a major mistake has been made in one's life," he said, "it will always be there, and it will be in my obituary."
Byrd was married to his childhood sweetheart, the former Erma James, for nearly 69 years before her death in 2006. They had two daughters.
"I have met queens and the wives of shahs and great women from all over the world, (but) to me now, this was the greatest woman I ever met in this world," he said.
He did not complete a college degree until 1963, when he earned a law degree from American University in Washington after taking night classes -- the only time a member of Congress has earned a law degree while holding office. He also received a political science degree from West Virginia's Marshall University in 1994, at age 76.
He rose through the Senate's Democratic ranks in the 1960s, and became the chamber's majority leader in 1977. He kept the party leadership when Republicans won back the Senate in 1980, serving as minority leader for six years, then spent two more years as majority leader after the 1986 elections.
In 1989, he became chairman of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee -- one of the most influential posts in Congress, with extensive control over the federal government's purse strings.
Years later, Byrd explained to CNN the power of that unique position.
"In the forest there is a water hole," he said. "All the animals have to come to that water hole sooner or later. The Appropriations Committee is a water hole."
He spent the rest of his career as the panel's chairman or ranking Democrat, steering an estimated $3 billion in federal projects to West Virginia since 1991, according to the watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste.
Byrd said he was looking out for the interests of his Appalachian constituents, nearly 20 percent of whom live below the federal poverty line.
"My memory is as good as it ever was, and it's stock full of recollections about the poor people of West Virginia, how they were laughed at," he told CNN in 2006.
But in the same interview, Byrd said it was his October 2002 vote against the resolution that gave President George Bush the authority to launch the invasion of Iraq "of which I am most proud."
He was one of 23 senators to oppose the authorization, warning that Congress was abdicating its constitutional power to declare war by giving the president what amounted to a blank check.
"We are rushing into war without fully discussing why, without thoroughly considering the consequences, or without making any attempt to explore what steps we might take to avert conflict," he said.
Four months later, with an American-led army poised to move across the frontier and U.N. weapons inspectors reporting no sign of Iraq's suspected weapons programs, Byrd returned to the Senate floor to condemn a "hauntingly silent" chamber.
Four years after casting that vote, he called the invasion "the blunder of the age."
Though he promised to support U.S. troops "to the last breath, the last dollar," he told CNN that he and other opponents of the war had been right.
"History will prove it was wrong to invade another country without provocation. That is wrong. That was wrong then, and it would be wrong 50 years from today," he said.
Byrd's records
-Longest-serving member of Congress, with 20,996 days
-Only person elected to nine full terms in the Senate
-Presided over the shortest session of the Senate (6/10ths of a second; February 27, 1989)
-Presided over Senate for longest continuous period (21 hours, 8 minutes; March 7-8, 1960)
-Cast 18,689 roll-call votes; more than any other U.S. senator
-Held the most leadership positions in Senate
Source: U.S. Senate Historical Office
CNN's Dana Bash, Mike Roselli and Candy Crowley contributed to this report.
Showing posts with label West Virginia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label West Virginia. Show all posts
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Thursday, April 29, 2010
At memorial service for West Virginia miners
http://wsws.org/articles/2010/apr2010/obam-a26.shtml
At memorial service for West Virginia miners
Obama preaches reconciliation with coal bosses
By Jerry White
26 April 2010
President Obama delivered a eulogy on Sunday for the 29 coal miners killed in the April 5 explosion at the Upper Big Branch Mine in Montcoal, West Virginia. The remarks, filled with religious and patriotic rhetoric, were aimed at concealing the criminal responsibility of the mine owners and the complicity of federal and state agencies that allowed miners to work in a deathtrap.
The audience at the Beckley Convention CenterSome two thousand people—including co-workers, family members, friends and workers from other mines—came to the Beckley Convention Center, about 35 mines from the scene of the disaster, to honor their fallen loved ones and comrades. Obama and the state Democratic Party establishment, however, had other motives.
Billed as a service to promote “hope and healing,” the event was aimed at dissipating the anger of miners and their families against Massey Energy and other mine owners. The talk was of reconciliation and forgiveness. The miners, Obama declared, died in pursuit of the “American dream.”
“All of West Virginia is in pain and not without some anger,” US Senator Jay Rockefeller said before the president’s remarks, “But we will bind together as a community because that is what West Virginians do. We will find a way to go on.”
This was an unmistakable appeal to “bind together” with the coal bosses, including Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship who rather than being tried and sentenced for the deaths of 52 miners at his operations over the last decade sat in the audience.
In addition to Rockefeller, US Senator Robert Byrd and Governor Joe Manchin, both Democrats, were also in attendance. The West Virginia Democrats, like their Republican counterparts, have long been in the pockets of Big Coal. If the miners were to conduct a mass struggle to defend themselves, these politicians would quickly shelve their sympathy for “hard-working miners” and dispatch the state police to arrest them.
In his remarks, President Obama repeated the self-serving theme stated over and over by the media to justify the continued carnage in the coalfields: that mining is a dangerous occupation and disasters are a just a normal part of life in the Appalachia coalfields.
“Most days, they would emerge from the dark mine, squinting at the light,” Obama said. “Most days, they would emerge, sweaty, dirty, dusted with coal. Most days, they would come home. Most days, but not that day.”
“They knew there were risks,” he said, “and so did their families. They knew their kids would say a prayer at night before they left. They knew their wives would wait for a call when their shift ended saying everything was ok.”
Such a presentation is designed to conceal the fact that there were real people responsible for the deadly conditions in the mines. The explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine—the deadliest coal mine disaster in 40 years—was not an “Act of God,” but the inevitable result of the willful disregard of the most basic safety precautions by Massey management, which was determined to extract as much coal out of the mine as possible. Moreover, federal Mine Safety and Health Administration regulators, appointed by the president himself, are also responsible because they allowed the mine to continue operating despite ample warnings of an impending disaster.
Corporations look at the death of miners as little more than collateral damage in pursuit of ever greater levels of profit. For Obama, however, the miners died while trying to realize the “American Dream.”
“All the hard work. All the hardship. All the time spent underground. It was all for their families,” Obama said. “For a car in the driveway. For a roof overhead. For a chance to give their kids opportunities they never knew; and enjoy retirement with their wives. It was all in the hopes of something better. These miners lived—as they died—in pursuit of the American dream.”
It would be more honest to say they lived and died as part of the American nightmare. Miners in the area were forced to take their lives in their own hands in an effort to escape the poverty that prevails in West Virginia, the third poorest state in the nation, lagging only behind Mississippi and Louisiana.
In an interview with the New York Times, a foreman at the Upper Big Branch Mine described the brutal conditions workers faced in the mine, where each day methane levels were double or triple the allowable levels. “Have you ever been scared for your life, when you go to work in the morning—daily. That’s what went on down there. Daily. I’ve had guys come to me and cry. Grown men cried because they’re scared,” he said.
Describing Massey’ s top management, he added, “They don’t care about nobody down there. I heard them make a statement that a man is like a roof bolt. You bend him till he breaks, then you get another one.”
Miners and friends attending the service related similar experiences to the WSWS.
The president made no reference to this damning evidence or the accumulated safety regulations that were ignored by Massey and not acted on by federal regulators. Knowing full well that these deadly conditions would continue not only at Massey but throughout the industry, he continued, “How can a nation that relies on its miners not do everything in its power to protect them? How can we let anyone in this country put their lives at risk by simply showing up to work? By simply pursuing the American dream?
“We cannot bring back the 29 men we lost,” he added. “They are with the Lord now. Our task, here on Earth, is to save lives from being lost in another such tragedy. To do what we must do, individually and collectively, to assure safe conditions underground. To treat our miners like they treat each other--like a family. Because we are all family and we are all Americans and we have to lean on each other.”
Miners have heard such pronouncements time and again. After the 2006 disaster at the Sago Mine that killed 12 West Virginia miners, Democratic and Republican politicians swore to improve safety conditions and hold the coal operators accountable. Instead, measures were taken that provided the owners a vast loophole to escape fines and continue operating their unsafe mines. Nothing of any substance has changed in the transition from a Republican to a Democratic administration.
Obama’s remarks make clear that there will be no attempt to hold accountable those responsible for the deaths of the 29 miners, including Massey Energy and its CEO Don Blankenship. The investigation launched by the federal government will merely be another whitewash.
While various politicians and the news media have attempted to present Massey as a “bad apple” in an otherwise safe and conscientious industry, deaths and injuries are occurring in other mines as well.
On Friday, a 28-year-old miner was killed just eight miles west of Beckley, in Eccles, West Virginia, when he was crushed between a continuous mining machine and the mine wall. The mine is owned by International Coal Group, which also owns the Sago Mine.
At memorial service for West Virginia miners
Obama preaches reconciliation with coal bosses
By Jerry White
26 April 2010
President Obama delivered a eulogy on Sunday for the 29 coal miners killed in the April 5 explosion at the Upper Big Branch Mine in Montcoal, West Virginia. The remarks, filled with religious and patriotic rhetoric, were aimed at concealing the criminal responsibility of the mine owners and the complicity of federal and state agencies that allowed miners to work in a deathtrap.
The audience at the Beckley Convention CenterSome two thousand people—including co-workers, family members, friends and workers from other mines—came to the Beckley Convention Center, about 35 mines from the scene of the disaster, to honor their fallen loved ones and comrades. Obama and the state Democratic Party establishment, however, had other motives.
Billed as a service to promote “hope and healing,” the event was aimed at dissipating the anger of miners and their families against Massey Energy and other mine owners. The talk was of reconciliation and forgiveness. The miners, Obama declared, died in pursuit of the “American dream.”
“All of West Virginia is in pain and not without some anger,” US Senator Jay Rockefeller said before the president’s remarks, “But we will bind together as a community because that is what West Virginians do. We will find a way to go on.”
This was an unmistakable appeal to “bind together” with the coal bosses, including Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship who rather than being tried and sentenced for the deaths of 52 miners at his operations over the last decade sat in the audience.
In addition to Rockefeller, US Senator Robert Byrd and Governor Joe Manchin, both Democrats, were also in attendance. The West Virginia Democrats, like their Republican counterparts, have long been in the pockets of Big Coal. If the miners were to conduct a mass struggle to defend themselves, these politicians would quickly shelve their sympathy for “hard-working miners” and dispatch the state police to arrest them.
In his remarks, President Obama repeated the self-serving theme stated over and over by the media to justify the continued carnage in the coalfields: that mining is a dangerous occupation and disasters are a just a normal part of life in the Appalachia coalfields.
“Most days, they would emerge from the dark mine, squinting at the light,” Obama said. “Most days, they would emerge, sweaty, dirty, dusted with coal. Most days, they would come home. Most days, but not that day.”
“They knew there were risks,” he said, “and so did their families. They knew their kids would say a prayer at night before they left. They knew their wives would wait for a call when their shift ended saying everything was ok.”
Such a presentation is designed to conceal the fact that there were real people responsible for the deadly conditions in the mines. The explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine—the deadliest coal mine disaster in 40 years—was not an “Act of God,” but the inevitable result of the willful disregard of the most basic safety precautions by Massey management, which was determined to extract as much coal out of the mine as possible. Moreover, federal Mine Safety and Health Administration regulators, appointed by the president himself, are also responsible because they allowed the mine to continue operating despite ample warnings of an impending disaster.
Corporations look at the death of miners as little more than collateral damage in pursuit of ever greater levels of profit. For Obama, however, the miners died while trying to realize the “American Dream.”
“All the hard work. All the hardship. All the time spent underground. It was all for their families,” Obama said. “For a car in the driveway. For a roof overhead. For a chance to give their kids opportunities they never knew; and enjoy retirement with their wives. It was all in the hopes of something better. These miners lived—as they died—in pursuit of the American dream.”
It would be more honest to say they lived and died as part of the American nightmare. Miners in the area were forced to take their lives in their own hands in an effort to escape the poverty that prevails in West Virginia, the third poorest state in the nation, lagging only behind Mississippi and Louisiana.
In an interview with the New York Times, a foreman at the Upper Big Branch Mine described the brutal conditions workers faced in the mine, where each day methane levels were double or triple the allowable levels. “Have you ever been scared for your life, when you go to work in the morning—daily. That’s what went on down there. Daily. I’ve had guys come to me and cry. Grown men cried because they’re scared,” he said.
Describing Massey’ s top management, he added, “They don’t care about nobody down there. I heard them make a statement that a man is like a roof bolt. You bend him till he breaks, then you get another one.”
Miners and friends attending the service related similar experiences to the WSWS.
The president made no reference to this damning evidence or the accumulated safety regulations that were ignored by Massey and not acted on by federal regulators. Knowing full well that these deadly conditions would continue not only at Massey but throughout the industry, he continued, “How can a nation that relies on its miners not do everything in its power to protect them? How can we let anyone in this country put their lives at risk by simply showing up to work? By simply pursuing the American dream?
“We cannot bring back the 29 men we lost,” he added. “They are with the Lord now. Our task, here on Earth, is to save lives from being lost in another such tragedy. To do what we must do, individually and collectively, to assure safe conditions underground. To treat our miners like they treat each other--like a family. Because we are all family and we are all Americans and we have to lean on each other.”
Miners have heard such pronouncements time and again. After the 2006 disaster at the Sago Mine that killed 12 West Virginia miners, Democratic and Republican politicians swore to improve safety conditions and hold the coal operators accountable. Instead, measures were taken that provided the owners a vast loophole to escape fines and continue operating their unsafe mines. Nothing of any substance has changed in the transition from a Republican to a Democratic administration.
Obama’s remarks make clear that there will be no attempt to hold accountable those responsible for the deaths of the 29 miners, including Massey Energy and its CEO Don Blankenship. The investigation launched by the federal government will merely be another whitewash.
While various politicians and the news media have attempted to present Massey as a “bad apple” in an otherwise safe and conscientious industry, deaths and injuries are occurring in other mines as well.
On Friday, a 28-year-old miner was killed just eight miles west of Beckley, in Eccles, West Virginia, when he was crushed between a continuous mining machine and the mine wall. The mine is owned by International Coal Group, which also owns the Sago Mine.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Obama's Appalachian problem
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2004415452_whitevoter15.html
Obama's Appalachian problem
By JONATHAN TILOVE
Newhouse News Service
Thursday, May 15, 2008
WASHINGTON — According to exit polls, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton won 67 percent of the white vote in West Virginia, America's third-whitest state. Sen. Barack Obama in early March won 60 percent of the white vote in Vermont, the nation's second-whitest state.
What gives?
America is learning a lot about race this year, most recently that not all white voters are alike. There are enormous regional differences in how whites vote, differences with deep historical roots.
Clinton's romp in West Virginia, and in all likelihood another in neighboring Kentucky on Tuesday, do not prove that Obama has a problem with white voters generally or that whites have turned on him. He is expected to win in Oregon on Tuesday — it's 21st on the list of whitest states. His campaign noted Wednesday that he is doing better with white voters in national matchups with Sen. John McCain than either then-Vice President Al Gore or Sen. John Kerry did in their campaigns against President Bush.
But Clinton's West Virginia landslide does mean Obama, for reasons that go beyond race, has a problem with Appalachia's whites and the Scots-Irish who settled there and forever branded its culture.
These are people whose ancestors lived and fought along the brutal borderlands between England and Scotland, and later in Northern Ireland (they are the Protestants of Ulster). Unlike other British settlers, Scots-Irish migrated "directly to the wilderness of the Appalachian Mountains, bypassing even the rudiments of colonial civilization," Sen. Jim Webb writes in his 2004 book, "Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America."
Frequently occupying the lower rungs socially and economically, they always have been the most likely to fight and die for their country, Webb writes. They don't cling to guns; they proudly pass them on to their young sons as a rite of passage that Webb likens to a "redneck bar mitzvah." Webb, of Scots-Irish descent, says his father gave him his first rifle when he was 8 and his first boxing gloves when he was 6.
Around the same time, his father laid out "the eternal ground rules for street fighting," now echoed in the last days of the Clinton campaign: "Never start a fight, but never run away, even if you know you are going to lose. ... And whomever you fight, you must make them pay. You must always mark them, so that the next day they have to face the world with a black eye or a cut lip or a bruised cheek, and remember where they got it."
Keeping score
Enter Obama. With his Harvard pedigree, mellifluous voice and high-minded talk of moving beyond the politics of confrontation, he is totally out of place in Appalachia.
"What people don't understand about Appalachia is that we've heard all this 'hope' and 'change' stuff since the English kicked the Scotch-Irish out in the 1700s. We're 'hoped' out. Nothing ever changes out here," Dave "Mudcat" Saunders, a Virginia political strategist who worked on John Edwards' campaign, told The Politico on the eve of the West Virginia vote.
For those keeping score, seven of the 10 whitest states have held primaries or caucuses. The Illinois senator has won five and the New York senator two — New Hampshire by an inch and now West Virginia by a country mile.
Stretch it to the 20 whitest states and the tally is 12 for Obama and five for Clinton, with three to go. If you limit it to primary and not caucus states, of the 20 whitest states, Obama has won four — Vermont, Wisconsin, Utah and Missouri — and Clinton has won five — New Hampshire, West Virginia, Indiana, Pennsylvania and Ohio.
Appalachia reaches from western New York and Pennsylvania down through eastern Ohio, all of West Virginia, stretches of western Virginia and the Carolinas, eastern Kentucky and Tennessee and on into north Georgia and Alabama and northeastern Mississippi. As Josh Marshall noted in a posting on Talking Points Memo after the West Virginia results were in, the map of Appalachia lines up pretty well with a map of counties where Clinton has won more than 60 percent of the vote.
"She's won the Appalachian region of every state contested," wrote Dana Houle, who in his postings on Daily Kos has dissected how Obama's difficulty in Appalachia does not necessarily translate into a broader or more permanent problem with white voters.
"No, Obama doesn't have a racial problem," Houle concluded. "It appears that Appalachia has an Obama problem."
Unlike John Kennedy who, with charm and money won the West Virginia primary in 1960, Obama barely contested West Virginia and seems to be taking a pass on Kentucky as well.
While his being black, or biracial, didn't help Obama there and elsewhere in Appalachia, ascribing racist motivations to Clinton supporters ignores the obvious, according to Michael Lind, a senior fellow at the New American Foundation. They could go with the newcomer Obama, who in April explained to some wealthy San Franciscans — their cultural arch-enemies — that small-town folks like them weren't with him because they were "bitter" about their lot. Or they could stick with a Clinton.
"Bill Clinton won Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky and West Virginia in 1992 and again four years later," Lind wrote on Salon. "Is it at all surprising that these very same voters, facing a recession, would choose another Democrat with the last name Clinton?"
More like John Adams
In his classic work, "Albion's Seed," Brandeis University historian David Hackett Fischer described the four distinctly different British migrations that made America.
Obama appeals more to whites like those in New England (although he lost Massachusetts and Rhode Island decisively), who inhabit the lands first settled by the more intellectual and moralistic Puritans, and the places from the Great Lakes to the Pacific Northwest where those New Englanders migrated.
In other words, Obama is more in the John Adams or John Quincy Adams mold, and voters in Appalachia are Andrew Jackson Democrats, for whom John McCain, with his Scots-Irish heritage and temperament, may appear to be the real McCoy.
"John McCain is very true to his Southern Highlands Mississippi origins," said Fischer, the historian.
Or as Patrick Ruffini, a Republican strategist, wrote on his blog back in February, "I've heard more than one guy mention McCain's volcanic temper as a positive. They equate this with toughness against our enemies."
Webb says the Scots-Irish — who were once Democrats — created the "core culture around which Red State America has gathered and thrived." But he does not believe they are irrevocably lost to the Democrats.
"In fact," Webb wrote in The Wall Street Journal in 2004, "the greatest realignment in modern politics would take place rather quickly if the right national leader found a way to bring the Scots-Irish and African Americans to the same table."
It's an intriguing statement from a man who two years later was elected to the Senate and now is mentioned as a potential running mate for Obama.
Obama's Appalachian problem
By JONATHAN TILOVE
Newhouse News Service
Thursday, May 15, 2008
WASHINGTON — According to exit polls, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton won 67 percent of the white vote in West Virginia, America's third-whitest state. Sen. Barack Obama in early March won 60 percent of the white vote in Vermont, the nation's second-whitest state.
What gives?
America is learning a lot about race this year, most recently that not all white voters are alike. There are enormous regional differences in how whites vote, differences with deep historical roots.
Clinton's romp in West Virginia, and in all likelihood another in neighboring Kentucky on Tuesday, do not prove that Obama has a problem with white voters generally or that whites have turned on him. He is expected to win in Oregon on Tuesday — it's 21st on the list of whitest states. His campaign noted Wednesday that he is doing better with white voters in national matchups with Sen. John McCain than either then-Vice President Al Gore or Sen. John Kerry did in their campaigns against President Bush.
But Clinton's West Virginia landslide does mean Obama, for reasons that go beyond race, has a problem with Appalachia's whites and the Scots-Irish who settled there and forever branded its culture.
These are people whose ancestors lived and fought along the brutal borderlands between England and Scotland, and later in Northern Ireland (they are the Protestants of Ulster). Unlike other British settlers, Scots-Irish migrated "directly to the wilderness of the Appalachian Mountains, bypassing even the rudiments of colonial civilization," Sen. Jim Webb writes in his 2004 book, "Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America."
Frequently occupying the lower rungs socially and economically, they always have been the most likely to fight and die for their country, Webb writes. They don't cling to guns; they proudly pass them on to their young sons as a rite of passage that Webb likens to a "redneck bar mitzvah." Webb, of Scots-Irish descent, says his father gave him his first rifle when he was 8 and his first boxing gloves when he was 6.
Around the same time, his father laid out "the eternal ground rules for street fighting," now echoed in the last days of the Clinton campaign: "Never start a fight, but never run away, even if you know you are going to lose. ... And whomever you fight, you must make them pay. You must always mark them, so that the next day they have to face the world with a black eye or a cut lip or a bruised cheek, and remember where they got it."
Keeping score
Enter Obama. With his Harvard pedigree, mellifluous voice and high-minded talk of moving beyond the politics of confrontation, he is totally out of place in Appalachia.
"What people don't understand about Appalachia is that we've heard all this 'hope' and 'change' stuff since the English kicked the Scotch-Irish out in the 1700s. We're 'hoped' out. Nothing ever changes out here," Dave "Mudcat" Saunders, a Virginia political strategist who worked on John Edwards' campaign, told The Politico on the eve of the West Virginia vote.
For those keeping score, seven of the 10 whitest states have held primaries or caucuses. The Illinois senator has won five and the New York senator two — New Hampshire by an inch and now West Virginia by a country mile.
Stretch it to the 20 whitest states and the tally is 12 for Obama and five for Clinton, with three to go. If you limit it to primary and not caucus states, of the 20 whitest states, Obama has won four — Vermont, Wisconsin, Utah and Missouri — and Clinton has won five — New Hampshire, West Virginia, Indiana, Pennsylvania and Ohio.
Appalachia reaches from western New York and Pennsylvania down through eastern Ohio, all of West Virginia, stretches of western Virginia and the Carolinas, eastern Kentucky and Tennessee and on into north Georgia and Alabama and northeastern Mississippi. As Josh Marshall noted in a posting on Talking Points Memo after the West Virginia results were in, the map of Appalachia lines up pretty well with a map of counties where Clinton has won more than 60 percent of the vote.
"She's won the Appalachian region of every state contested," wrote Dana Houle, who in his postings on Daily Kos has dissected how Obama's difficulty in Appalachia does not necessarily translate into a broader or more permanent problem with white voters.
"No, Obama doesn't have a racial problem," Houle concluded. "It appears that Appalachia has an Obama problem."
Unlike John Kennedy who, with charm and money won the West Virginia primary in 1960, Obama barely contested West Virginia and seems to be taking a pass on Kentucky as well.
While his being black, or biracial, didn't help Obama there and elsewhere in Appalachia, ascribing racist motivations to Clinton supporters ignores the obvious, according to Michael Lind, a senior fellow at the New American Foundation. They could go with the newcomer Obama, who in April explained to some wealthy San Franciscans — their cultural arch-enemies — that small-town folks like them weren't with him because they were "bitter" about their lot. Or they could stick with a Clinton.
"Bill Clinton won Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky and West Virginia in 1992 and again four years later," Lind wrote on Salon. "Is it at all surprising that these very same voters, facing a recession, would choose another Democrat with the last name Clinton?"
More like John Adams
In his classic work, "Albion's Seed," Brandeis University historian David Hackett Fischer described the four distinctly different British migrations that made America.
Obama appeals more to whites like those in New England (although he lost Massachusetts and Rhode Island decisively), who inhabit the lands first settled by the more intellectual and moralistic Puritans, and the places from the Great Lakes to the Pacific Northwest where those New Englanders migrated.
In other words, Obama is more in the John Adams or John Quincy Adams mold, and voters in Appalachia are Andrew Jackson Democrats, for whom John McCain, with his Scots-Irish heritage and temperament, may appear to be the real McCoy.
"John McCain is very true to his Southern Highlands Mississippi origins," said Fischer, the historian.
Or as Patrick Ruffini, a Republican strategist, wrote on his blog back in February, "I've heard more than one guy mention McCain's volcanic temper as a positive. They equate this with toughness against our enemies."
Webb says the Scots-Irish — who were once Democrats — created the "core culture around which Red State America has gathered and thrived." But he does not believe they are irrevocably lost to the Democrats.
"In fact," Webb wrote in The Wall Street Journal in 2004, "the greatest realignment in modern politics would take place rather quickly if the right national leader found a way to bring the Scots-Irish and African Americans to the same table."
It's an intriguing statement from a man who two years later was elected to the Senate and now is mentioned as a potential running mate for Obama.
Monday, September 3, 2007
California cities fill top 10 foreclosure list
http://money.cnn.com/2007/08/14/real_estate/California_cities_lead_foreclosure/index.htm
California cities fill top 10 foreclosure list
Stockton, Calif. records highest foreclosure rate among nation's metro areas according to a new survey.
By Les Christie, CNNMoney.com staff writer
August 14 2007
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The binge that many housing markets went on in the early- to mid-2000s is over, and some of the hottest markets like California are now experiencing the worst hangovers.
But other areas, especially many that recorded slower home price growth earlier this decade, have seen little increase in foreclosure rates, according to the latest data released Tuesday from RealtyTrac, the online marketer of foreclosure properties.
"While foreclosure activity has skyrocketed over the past year in many cities, particularly in California, Ohio and the Northeast," James Saccaccio, RealtyTrac's chief executive, said in a statement, "foreclosure activity seems to be subsiding in parts of Texas, South Carolina and other states."
"Still," he said, "the overall trend is toward escalating foreclosure rates, with 82 of the top 100 metro areas reporting year-over-year increases in the number of homes affected by foreclosure."
Stockton, California now leads the nation in foreclosures. Of RealtyTrac's top 10 metro areas for foreclosures, four are in Central California.
Coastal California cities are doing relatively well, although foreclosures are up there too. San Francisco had one foreclosure for every 263 households, a fairly low rate, but up 83 percent from the first six months of 2006.
Stockton city drew thousands of home buyers to the Central Valley area from the prohibitively expensive Bay-area markets during the housing boom and saw home prices nearly double in the four years ended December 31, 2005, according to the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight.
Because of California's outsized home prices, option and hybrid adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) interest-only loans became widespread. They enabled home buyers to get into properties they could not otherwise afford.
But often these loans were time bombs; hybrid ARMs, for example, reset to much higher rates - and payments - after the first two or three years of low fixed rates.
Many buyers were also approved for expensive mortgages based on applications in which income or assets went unproven, the so-called no- or low-doc loans, AKA "liar loans."
Lenders underwrote mortgages for these borrowers based on their income or asset claims without proof and many times the claims were exaggerated. When hard times hit, these borrowers had fewer resources to fall back on than the lenders anticipated and foreclosures followed.
Mortgage meltdown contagion
Seven of the nation's top 10 metro areas are in the Sun Belt. Only three are in economically hard-hit areas, historically the kinds of places that once produced the highest rates of foreclosure filings.
Stockton recorded one foreclosure filing for every 27 households during the six months ended June 30, a 256 percent increase compared with the first six months of 2006.
Number two in the nation was Detroit, where job losses in the auto industry drove foreclosures higher. One of every 29 households recorded a foreclosure filing there, almost double the rate of a year ago. Las Vegas (one of 31, up 142 percent) was third.
The other California cities in the top 10 were Riverside/San Bernardino (one in 33, up 198 percent), Sacramento (one in 36, up 231 percent) and Bakersfield (one in 47, up 222 percent).
The lowest foreclosure rate recorded by RealtyTrac among the 100 metro areas surveyed was in Richmond, Virginia. It had just one for every 2,319 households, about the same as a year ago and a rate barely more than 1 percent of Stockton's.
Other low foreclosure metro areas included Greenville, South Carolina (one in 1,721, down 66 percent), McAllen, Texas (one in 1,494, down 35 percent) and Honolulu (one in 1,151, up 68 percent).
California cities fill top 10 foreclosure list
Stockton, Calif. records highest foreclosure rate among nation's metro areas according to a new survey.
By Les Christie, CNNMoney.com staff writer
August 14 2007
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The binge that many housing markets went on in the early- to mid-2000s is over, and some of the hottest markets like California are now experiencing the worst hangovers.
But other areas, especially many that recorded slower home price growth earlier this decade, have seen little increase in foreclosure rates, according to the latest data released Tuesday from RealtyTrac, the online marketer of foreclosure properties.
"While foreclosure activity has skyrocketed over the past year in many cities, particularly in California, Ohio and the Northeast," James Saccaccio, RealtyTrac's chief executive, said in a statement, "foreclosure activity seems to be subsiding in parts of Texas, South Carolina and other states."
"Still," he said, "the overall trend is toward escalating foreclosure rates, with 82 of the top 100 metro areas reporting year-over-year increases in the number of homes affected by foreclosure."
Stockton, California now leads the nation in foreclosures. Of RealtyTrac's top 10 metro areas for foreclosures, four are in Central California.
Coastal California cities are doing relatively well, although foreclosures are up there too. San Francisco had one foreclosure for every 263 households, a fairly low rate, but up 83 percent from the first six months of 2006.
Stockton city drew thousands of home buyers to the Central Valley area from the prohibitively expensive Bay-area markets during the housing boom and saw home prices nearly double in the four years ended December 31, 2005, according to the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight.
Because of California's outsized home prices, option and hybrid adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) interest-only loans became widespread. They enabled home buyers to get into properties they could not otherwise afford.
But often these loans were time bombs; hybrid ARMs, for example, reset to much higher rates - and payments - after the first two or three years of low fixed rates.
Many buyers were also approved for expensive mortgages based on applications in which income or assets went unproven, the so-called no- or low-doc loans, AKA "liar loans."
Lenders underwrote mortgages for these borrowers based on their income or asset claims without proof and many times the claims were exaggerated. When hard times hit, these borrowers had fewer resources to fall back on than the lenders anticipated and foreclosures followed.
Mortgage meltdown contagion
Seven of the nation's top 10 metro areas are in the Sun Belt. Only three are in economically hard-hit areas, historically the kinds of places that once produced the highest rates of foreclosure filings.
Stockton recorded one foreclosure filing for every 27 households during the six months ended June 30, a 256 percent increase compared with the first six months of 2006.
Number two in the nation was Detroit, where job losses in the auto industry drove foreclosures higher. One of every 29 households recorded a foreclosure filing there, almost double the rate of a year ago. Las Vegas (one of 31, up 142 percent) was third.
The other California cities in the top 10 were Riverside/San Bernardino (one in 33, up 198 percent), Sacramento (one in 36, up 231 percent) and Bakersfield (one in 47, up 222 percent).
The lowest foreclosure rate recorded by RealtyTrac among the 100 metro areas surveyed was in Richmond, Virginia. It had just one for every 2,319 households, about the same as a year ago and a rate barely more than 1 percent of Stockton's.
Other low foreclosure metro areas included Greenville, South Carolina (one in 1,721, down 66 percent), McAllen, Texas (one in 1,494, down 35 percent) and Honolulu (one in 1,151, up 68 percent).
The Richest (and Poorest) Places in the U.S.
http://finance.yahoo.com/real-estate/article/103432/The-Richest-(and-Poorest)-Places-in-the-U.S.
The Richest (and Poorest) Places in the U.S.
by Les Christie
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Maryland knocked New Jersey out of the top spot this year, while Mississippi and West Virginia were the poorest states in the Union.
Maryland is now the wealthiest state in the union, as measured by median household income, according to the latest stats from the Census Bureau.
The typical Maryland household earned $65,144 in 2006, propelling it past New Jersey, which came in second with earnings of $64,470, but had led the nation in 2005. Connecticut finished in third place both years, recording a median income of $63,422 in 2006.
Maryland's income was nearly double that of Mississippi, which, with a median of $34,473, was the nation's poorest state. West Virginia, where the median household earned $35,059, was second poorest and Arkansas, at $36,599, was third.
The median income for the United States as a whole came to $48,451.
Income growth was highest in the District of Columbia, where it rose 6.4 percent for the year. Median income in both Nevada and New Mexico jumped 4.5 percent. Delaware, down 2.9 percent, took the biggest dip, followed by Rhode Island (down 2.0 percent) and Maine (down 1.6 percent).
Among places with 250,000 or more residents, the affluent Dallas suburb of Plano, Texas, boasts the highest median income: $77,038. San Jose came in second at $73,804 and San Francisco was third with $65,497.
The list of the 10 poorest cities was filled with mostly old, northeastern and mid-western industrial locales. Cleveland had the lowest median income of any city in the nation with more than 250,000 residents; households there earned just $26,535. Miami was the next poorest at $27,088, followed by Buffalo ($27,850), Detroit ($28,364), St. Louis ($30,936) and Cincinnati ($31,103).
Other poor sun-belt cities included Memphis ($32, 593) and El Paso (33,103). With median income of $33,229, Philadelphia was the only city among the nation's 10 biggest that was also among the 10 poorest cities.
Among towns of between 65,000 and 250,000 in population, Yorba Linda, California, where six-figure incomes are the rule, had the highest median income at $121,075. The Orange County town is considerably wealthier than the second place city, Pleasanton, California, in the Bay area, which had a median income of $105,956.
The lowest income town of any with more than 65,000 population was Youngstown, Ohio at $21,850, which finished last by a large margin. Muncie, Indiana was its closest rival for this dubious distinction, with residents there earning $25,859, a difference of 18 percent.
Top 10 wealthiest states
Here's where the median household income is highest
State Income
Maryland $65,144
New Jersey $64,470
Connecticut $63,422
Hawaii $61,160
Massachusetts $59,963
New Hampshire $59,683
Alaska $59,393
California $56,645
Virginia $56,277
Minnesota $54,023
Source: U.S. Census Bureau
The 10 poorest states
The states with the lowest median household income
State Income
Montana $40,627
Tennessee $40,315
Kentucky $39,372
Louisiana $39,337
Alabama $38,783
Oklahoma $38,770
Arkansas $36,599
West Virginia $35,059
Mississippi $34,473
Source: U.S. Census Bureau
CNNMoney.com
The Richest (and Poorest) Places in the U.S.
by Les Christie
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Maryland knocked New Jersey out of the top spot this year, while Mississippi and West Virginia were the poorest states in the Union.
Maryland is now the wealthiest state in the union, as measured by median household income, according to the latest stats from the Census Bureau.
The typical Maryland household earned $65,144 in 2006, propelling it past New Jersey, which came in second with earnings of $64,470, but had led the nation in 2005. Connecticut finished in third place both years, recording a median income of $63,422 in 2006.
Maryland's income was nearly double that of Mississippi, which, with a median of $34,473, was the nation's poorest state. West Virginia, where the median household earned $35,059, was second poorest and Arkansas, at $36,599, was third.
The median income for the United States as a whole came to $48,451.
Income growth was highest in the District of Columbia, where it rose 6.4 percent for the year. Median income in both Nevada and New Mexico jumped 4.5 percent. Delaware, down 2.9 percent, took the biggest dip, followed by Rhode Island (down 2.0 percent) and Maine (down 1.6 percent).
Among places with 250,000 or more residents, the affluent Dallas suburb of Plano, Texas, boasts the highest median income: $77,038. San Jose came in second at $73,804 and San Francisco was third with $65,497.
The list of the 10 poorest cities was filled with mostly old, northeastern and mid-western industrial locales. Cleveland had the lowest median income of any city in the nation with more than 250,000 residents; households there earned just $26,535. Miami was the next poorest at $27,088, followed by Buffalo ($27,850), Detroit ($28,364), St. Louis ($30,936) and Cincinnati ($31,103).
Other poor sun-belt cities included Memphis ($32, 593) and El Paso (33,103). With median income of $33,229, Philadelphia was the only city among the nation's 10 biggest that was also among the 10 poorest cities.
Among towns of between 65,000 and 250,000 in population, Yorba Linda, California, where six-figure incomes are the rule, had the highest median income at $121,075. The Orange County town is considerably wealthier than the second place city, Pleasanton, California, in the Bay area, which had a median income of $105,956.
The lowest income town of any with more than 65,000 population was Youngstown, Ohio at $21,850, which finished last by a large margin. Muncie, Indiana was its closest rival for this dubious distinction, with residents there earning $25,859, a difference of 18 percent.
Top 10 wealthiest states
Here's where the median household income is highest
State Income
Maryland $65,144
New Jersey $64,470
Connecticut $63,422
Hawaii $61,160
Massachusetts $59,963
New Hampshire $59,683
Alaska $59,393
California $56,645
Virginia $56,277
Minnesota $54,023
Source: U.S. Census Bureau
The 10 poorest states
The states with the lowest median household income
State Income
Montana $40,627
Tennessee $40,315
Kentucky $39,372
Louisiana $39,337
Alabama $38,783
Oklahoma $38,770
Arkansas $36,599
West Virginia $35,059
Mississippi $34,473
Source: U.S. Census Bureau
CNNMoney.com
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