Re: Starting things off.
  By: Mike Powell to Allen Prunty on Tue Mar 07 2017 07:00 pm

Mike,

 MP> With Louisville being traditionally Democrat-leaning, is your opinion that
 MP> the Democrats are doing so in order to weaken Republican areas, or is your
 MP> opinion that some Republicans are doing this so as to break up the
 MP> downtown stronghold(s)? Curious since I used to live there but have not
 MP> kept up with this kind of thing.

The SouthWest end of Jefferson county has always leaned towards republican. 
The Metro Council rep for our area is a Democrat (Cyndi Fowler) because lately
all the republican party can run was the owner of Pepper Tackle that only has
an 8th grade education and the last run was by a young man who was Cyndi's
legislative aide which made things interesting.  Plus I know Cyndi very well
and she has voted against the Democrat majority on the Metro Council whenever
it would negatively effect our community so I have no problem with her.

Downtown will always be a Democrat Stronghold... we are not importing
republicans in there to fill the vaccuum.  In fact I'm sure that those
multi-million dollar condos that they built on the waterfront that used to be a
housing project in Nu-Lu (New Louisville area) are occupied democrat.

With that said, when they tear down a housing project those residents are
relocated somewhere... and they are building a lot of low income apartments
that do section 8 in PRP, Valley Station and that area... it has and will
continue to shift the area from Republican to Democrat.  All you have to do is
look at the historic polls for the past 20 years in our districts and see that
the votes have increased in the D column... the R column has stayed
consistently the same.  It corrleates with the population increase in our area.

 MP> Here is the thing, and this crosses racial boundaries... the government
 MP> has tried to get more people owning homes. That is not at its roots a bad
 MP> thing, but an unfortunate side-effect is that you get people owning homes
 MP> that probably should not be. They are not responsible enough, stable
 MP> enough, etc., to do so. Part of the housing fiasco was greedy banks and
 MP> lenders, but part of it was the fact that the government encouraged this
 MP> stuff and didn't check-and-balance it at all.

Yes... and there have been a lot of foreclosures here in the area as well. 
Especially in the neighborhoods that were built by Dominon Homes, the prefab
areas off of Greenwood Road and Terry Road were part of that program.  Many of
them are empty and from what I'm told by a friend who is a realtor, they are in
very bad shape when the forclosed people leave they trash the home.

We also have identified a few landlords in our area that have profited greatly
from the section 8 program.  They have been purchasing forclosed homes below
marked value in areas that were traditionally the upper middle class area of
Valley Station, PRP in Sun Valley and Windsor Forest and converting them to
section 8.  There are a lot of new homes and condos out here that were built
when the housing boom hit.  Many are empty... and have been converted to
rentals.  I can take you to at least 5 subdivisions where they paved the
streets and installed the underground utilities and the front entrances have
been blocked by large concrete barriers becuse the homes were not built... some
of the streets have deteriorated even though no cars have been driven on them. 
One subdivision off of old third is even quite large, streets, utilities, fire
hydrants and street lights (some even work) are there but no houses have been
built. 

 MP> Heck, even people who are reasonable and stable enough these days may not
 MP> have a long-term income stream that would support home ownership. Being a
 MP> single, public-sector employee in a not-very-rich state, I am honestly
 MP> starting to feel like I probably fall into this category. I can afford to
 MP> own one, and can afford to keep one up, but I am no longer so sure I can
 MP> afford to do both. 

I am disabled... I have 2 years left on my home loan and I own it.  I am
struggling to meet all my bills now and in order to keep my home I sometimes
have to rely on whatever help I can get to do so.  I do qualify for LIHEAP but
not SNAP or any food assistance.  I've managed to keep my head above water and
once this place is paid off I am pretty much secure.  Until then the struggle
is real.

 MP> Now, Louisville-specific, back before that area fell under control of a
 MP> larger regional office centered in another, quasi-far-off city, the HUD
 MP> Louisville regional office consistently had the lowest, or next-to-lowest,
 MP> default rate in the country. So for anyone who thinks the next-to previous
 MP> paragraph was government bashing, or Louisville bashing, no it was not. 

Main reson why Louisville has not had so many defaults is that most of the
people placed in the HUD program are blessed by some of the programs here in
Louisville that assited them with their loan payments.  I do not qualify for
HUD because I owned my home before I was disabled.  Plus my loan payment is
pretty low.  If I were to get behind on a loan payment (which I never have)
then I probably would qualfiy for assistance.  However, I've never had to get
behind on a loan payment.  I don't want to trash what good credit I have just
to get assistance.

 MP> Over the years Louisville got some praise for their busing program, but
 MP> they also got sued for it in more recent years, IIRC. At one point, they
 MP> had some sort of "block" program where suburban white kids could go to
 MP> their neighborhood school so long as it was not deemed "full." If it was,
 MP> tough, they might have to go another school school in their "block" that
 MP> was likely all the way across town... think Lyndon or St. Matt's to Valley
 MP> Station... and the school system would NOT provide transportation.

The probelm is, it is racial.  It's all about racial balance... they have a
neighborhood school in West Louisville.  Shawnee high school is one of the
biggest high schools in the city and it uses only 1/2 of its first floor as a
high school and they use the other half as a middle school.  Floors 2-4 are
unoccupied.  That school could easily serve the community... and it does have
an aviation magnet that allows the students to get an avaiation certification
and their pilot's license.  My cousin did go to that magnet and it was a very
demanding program.

However the mostly black kids from the West End are bussed all over creation. 
Central is also a neighborhood school but it has white kids from all over the
city bussed to it, mostly from the Okolona and Fern creek areas.

However if you look at the schools in the fat wallet area (aka rich white
Louisville) they are mostly kids from the neighborhood.  Ballard and Waggner
are two that come to mind that are full of the white upper class students. 
They do bus in blacks for racial balance but bus them in from the Chamberlain
Lane area off of West Port Road or the nicer housing project right off of West
Port road and the watterson that everyone forgets exsists.

The saddest thing is that in Norton Commons the Norton family donated land to
JCPS with the understanding that an elementary school -must- be built on that
land by 2015 or it reverted back to the Norton Foundation.  JCPS built the
school... and it had to be built to the Norton Commons specifications so it's a
nice large school.  But the Norton Commons (a very rich neighborhood) students
are not enough to sustain the school... so they have shut down more elementary
schools in the west end to bus students to Norton Elementary.  The ride from
the west end to Norton Elementary is pretty much from the farthest boundaries
of the city... those kids ride the bus for more than an hour every day just to
get to and from school.

What makes the kids suffer the most is it takes time that they could be
studying at home away from them.  I've heard "do your work on the bus" when I
was bussed... yeah right not going to happen too many distractions and those
school busses are not exactly a smooth ride.

The question I'm throwing out to others on the echo that live in other LARGE
cities is does your school system bus kids around to maintain "Diverstiy"?
Our school system spends nearly 2 million dollars a year just on fuel to bus
our kids around.  We have a population in Louisville, counting the large metro
area, of around one million.  If you don't count the metro and only the urban
city area it's much smaller... but we are talking the entire Jefferson County
area.

 MP> That was another stab at promoting diversity (maybe middle class vs.
 MP> lower-middle, rather than racial) and I don't think it lasted long.

There isn't much middle class left here in Louisville.  I'm sorry but I know
what middle class is.  It's now either lower Upper class (orange is the new
black they could be called middle but it's offensive to them) or upper lower
class.

The true Middle class has gotten tired of Louisville's bullshit and that's why
Bullitt and Oldham counties have had so many people move to them.

If you go to Bullitt county and look at any of their schools you can see where
that county is investing their money... the schools are much nicer than
anything in the Louisville/Jefferson metro across the board and they don't
spend money moving their kids around all over the county.  And then we can talk
about performance... How many principals in Louisville have made the news were
they were fired due to lack of performance.  You don't hear that in other
counties... PERIOD.  Heck Mike, I believe there's a few reasons you benefit
from for NOT living in Louisville.

 MP> LOL, you have to love the hardened Democrats like those. They'd probably
 MP> raise a stink, and maybe some $$$, if it was some rich Republican trying
 MP> to keep those poor folks out. But, give them the choice of having them in
 MP> their own backyards, and having it affect their property values, and they
 MP> throw the same hissy fits. It is OK to help those poor folks, just as long
 MP> as they stay downtown or on the Southend where they belong.

No and when the Home of the Innocents, our "orphanage" / shelter wanted to
relocate to the East end for a better environement for the kids in their
custody they were blocked... "Not in my neighborhood".  But it's not racist or
classist when they donate millions when they purchased their new facility over
an old stockyard in Butchertown.  The buildings are nice and the facility is
beautiful, but it's still in a higher crime area... and what do the kids smell
when they go out to play on the playground?  They smell the slaughterhouse's
stink and the smell of the Fischer and Swift meat packing plants.

 MP> Norton's Commons is actually outside of Prospect, but that is still a
 MP> near-adjacent, mostly rich-folks area. I can remember when most of
 MP> Norton's Commons was still farmland and open fields.

It's outside of Prospect but on the border.  It's become it's own zone.  If I
hit the lottery that's where I would reloacate mainly because it's designed for
"health" most of my Doctors are at the new Norton Brownsboro hospital in the
commons district.  I've been hospitlaized in every hospital in Louisville at
least three times.  That is the caddillac of hospitals :-)

 MP> I wonder what excuse those rich snobs use for that?

It would disrupt the "traffic" in the area causing a higher volume in the area
off of Brownsboro site... that's one of the reasons another is they feel a six
story hospital would disrupt their pretty neighborhoods.  But when you boil
it down, they don't need an economic boost in that area.  That's one reason why
we would love to see it out here in the Dixie Highway area.  It would serve the
communities of Radcliff better since many of their patients travel from
Radcliff and that area of Hardin County.  Fort Knox resulted in many veterans
settling there.  Heck we would welcome the senior tower but don't have the
retail access and activity access the seniors would have in Prospect.

Unfortunately the Guvhment has aleady spent $30million on the Brownsboro site. 

http://tinyurl.com/zl9phu3

Here's the Curious Jumble's article on it.  And the Liberal lady in the
photograph looks like she has been sucking lemons for the past 25 years. 

I'm attending a lot of these meetings when I can and I see it every time...
I've heard every kind of sugar coated "not in my neighborhood" usually by women
like this.  I've asked to speak and was silenced quickly.  The poor HAVE NO
VOICE in these meetings and you can bet your ass that it's usually packed with
liberal well to do women who do not work that get up there and speak... in fact
the meetings rarely happen when the working class people -can- attend them.  I
can not always attend as I do not drive much anymore due to my vision.  But
when we have one in the Southwest end I am there... so much now that more than
one metro council person knows me by name and I have three of them on speed
dial in my cell phone now.

 MP> Now, wait and see... someone will dispute the existance of "rich, snooty
 MP> Democrats." <GRIN>

Look at the picture in that newspaper article of the woman holding the "graph"
I think she might possibly fall in that category.

Allen

... Don't hit me, Mr. Moderator! I'll go back on topic, I swear!
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