They're Back

Surprise, surprise. Yet another offer on my house, preceded by 3 days of telemarketer calls and immediately followed by a higher offer, contingent of course on when their house sells and of necessity all done without either party ever seeing the other.
If they are who I think they are, their family has millions packed away. I'm just looking for a few tens of thousands to pay off my mortgage at this point. Stop being jerks. Although, I guess Good Fella types can't help themselves, and it's all about the big win with them. 

Curiouser and Curiouser

Things are getting more curious with my abandoned house lately.
One of the big names I was talking about previously made an offer of $15,000. It doesn't matter that house is assessed at $77,000. When your relatives run the banks, you can do things like that.
The curious part is that this is the second time this month he's made this offer. Both times, a mysterious party from Arizona also expresses an interest in the house.
This time, when he made his offer, the party from Arizona offered to rent the house at half of the going rental rate and said they would pay the full asking price when their house in Arizona sold. Ordinarily, nothing suspicious, except that 2 times now, the timing has been identical, and the people from Arizona cancelled their appointment with the realtor, and so made this offer sight unseen.
I begin to suspect made up people and my problems entering a new phase of stupid and corrupt.

The Panic Is Spreading

I think I've managed to scare my real estate agent. He seemed a bit shaken the last time I talked to him. I believe he's finally figured out what's going on.
You see, he seems confused that people keep looking at my house, expressing an interest, even entering into contracts, and then mysteriously disappearing. Last week though, two people with important names approached him.
One of the names has connections all the way to state government. They also run one of the local banks.
Now for those of you who aren't used to corrupt, third world, pest holes, let me explain.
1) All my financial transactions are instantly known. Not, my transactions at the bank run by the family member, but anything done locally. It sounds illegal, but try proving anything.
2) Every time someone looks at the house, I get inundated with telemarketer calls. Okay, so this one is just middle school idiot level.
3) This is the worrisome one. Every time an offer is made, my phone usually gets hacked. It works intermittently and makes all sorts of calls on its own. This is the one that brings visions of state level interference to mind, but again, try proving anything. It might just be some hackers out to get me and several years of coincidental timing.
4) Of course, an offer has to be made first, which usually entails a second visit. Except that most times, the second visit returns to a broken into house with dog droppings on the floor. The droppings are always new. How do they know how to time it? Obviously, myself, the realtor, and probably others are being watched that closely. Who has the kind of time to do that?
Let's look at the second name.
Just read my blog on the doctor and church deacon who get sent to jail for drug dealing. Name number two was one of the people who stood to benefit from the situation. Again, it might just be coincidence.
Honestly, it feels like I'm being driven into bankruptcy by the Sopranos, while the police from the state on down are all bought off. Of course, I might just be imagining things. That's the worst thing about this. Every single coincidence might point in the same direction, but at the end of the day, they are just that. Low level coincidences with no proof.
I suspect my realtor just felt it too.

Hacked

It looks like the contract fell through on that house I've been trying to get rid of for the past 3 years. How do I know? I still have a phone.
You see, every time a contract is placed on the house, my phone gets hacked. Phone calls and texts get lost. My phone calls people at random. Often emergency services. My icons get placed everywhere. My phone starts providing a wireless hotspot for everyone. It's very annoying. Worse, it really doesn't do much good to fix the problems, because they reappear as fast as I can fix them.
It seems someone with a degree of technical ability and the ability to gain more information on my activities than is good for me or even legal, really doesn't want me to sell the house.

Police Don't Social Distance

What to do when those who are supposed to enforce social distancing refuse to social distance themselves?

The other night a police officer in Albany, Kentucky decided to explore the local talent in his squad car. No one would have been the wiser, except that this individual was a hillbilly as well as a law officer. Something was bound to go wrong. In this case it involved the radio mike being keyed during his amorous interlude. Now, bear in mind, that it a rare hillbilly home that doesn't have a police scanner. So, the other night, a large portion of Albany, Kentucky was treated to cop radio porn. From all reports, they were rather loud.

Nothing to See Here or a Tangled Web

In my previous posts, I have raised questions about law and rural Kentucky. In this post, I revisit the issue.
People tend to think that drug dealing is the provenance of the trailer park crowd. Often, but not always. In the following diatribe, you can read about the high and mighty falling to the temptation of quick money.
You can read the official version by clicking on the link below.

https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdky/pr/clinton-county-doctor-sentenced-30-months-prison-illegally-prescribing-opioids

Let's see what the news isn't talking about. The doctor in question came from an old and respected family. He was also the deacon at a local church. He had a prosperous practice. He was a local landowner and church bigwig. Why would he become a drug dealer? It's pretty obvious that he did, but look at the numbers of drug sales involved. Why would someone in his position, with his income, risk everything for what amounted to penny ante, street dealer levels of profit? Greed? Maybe. He has lost his practice and his farm over this. Either way, it was a stupid move on his part.
The government also put the owner of the pharmacy who filled the prescriptions away. He was also from an old and wealthy family. There are two main drug stores in town and he owned and ran one of them.
As you can see, wealth and position are no guarantee.
You might be saying, don't deal drugs and you won't have a problem. Again, maybe.
Let's look at how this bust went down. The good doctor was reported by the county coroner for a suspicious number of opioid deaths among his patients. On the surface fair enough, but this coroner let's a lot of suspicious deaths occur without question. Are they just stupid? Can they not really notice anything unless it's on the government checklist, like opioids are now? Well, these are the hills, so that's a definite possibility.
After the report, the feds came in and cracked down. Again, fair enough. Except, that you would have expected them to extend the net a bit and see what else they could find. After all, they were already in the neighborhood. There are plenty of drugs around. Almost anyone they stopped on the street could have given them a good lead. Did they even ask or did they just arrest the people who were complained about? That's just curious.
Did the amount of drug trafficking decrease? No, it appears to have gone up. Did the feds not notice this?
Sorry, but this does not appear to have been an operation to clean up the hills. It appears to be the feds operating on behalf of the locals taking out unwanted competition. I could be wrong, but that would imply that the good doctor was the main problem in the county, which I find hard to believe.

Can't Even Give It Away

I've been contacting local churches to see if they know of any homeless people who would want to live in my house in Albany for free in exchange for maintenance. At least then I wouldn't have the squatters and I might be eligible for a tax write off. Both good things. I got responses, but as soon as they found out the address, they disappeared. I guess being a car bum is preferable to living in that neighborhood.

Return to Stupid

I went back to my house in Albany the other day to clear some junk out. I had meant to bring a truck load of garbage to the dump, but that was not to be.
Since I don't have a pickup truck, the plan was to rent a U-Haul van to move the old furniture and construction debris, but that was not to be.
I've rented U-Haul vans before. The procedure isn't too complex. That is until you get to the hills. You see the local nobility thinks they should just sit back while everyone else does the work and then gives them money for the privilege. Consequently, I arrived at a deserted group of storage buildings to pick up the truck. The rental company told me to call when I arrived there. Silly me. I thought that meant they lived next door, and when I arrived, they'd come over in 5 or 10 minutes to hand over the vehicle. No such thing. When I called, they told me the key was in the back of the truck. Well, there was only one U-Haul truck so it wasn't too hard to find. Of course it was backed against the wall of a storage unit and the freezing rain the previous night had frozen the door shut. It soon became obvious that the door wasn't going to budge without some serious work. Added to the fact that I would have had to do said work with about 1 foot of free space, it did not seem like a good idea. After a few minutes of telling the rental agent that the door was stuck and receiving the same response of "the keys in the back", I told them to forget it. They then told me that they could come out in 3 days to fix the problem and I could get the truck then. Yeah, right.
So far, typical hillbilly efficiency.
Of course by this time I has attracted the attention of a neighbor's dog, who decided that I didn't belong there.  Now I got to deal with a snapping, frothing at the mouth dog. Fortunately, I've dealt with such types before, so I managed to convince the dog that I was in charge, and we parted amicably with the dog wanting to play. Of course, I wasn't feeling too happy about hillbillies by this time.
Since I was in the area anyway and I had help coming, I figured that I should go to my house and at least put all the garbage in the barn.
As I approached my house, the neighbor from hell pulled into the left hand lane of the road to check his mail. Did he do it because he saw me coming, or was he just clueless? Who knows? Anyway, I came to a stop and waited for him to get his mail and drive on, but he refused to budge, so I had to drive around him. No big deal, but I was batting 1000 with the hillbillies this day. It was really annoying.
The spooky part came after I pulled into my driveway and was taking some tools out of my car. There was a lot of barking and when I looked up, there was the neighbor from hell driving slowly by and checking me out with another neighbor's dogs snapping at his tires.

Here's a picture of said neighbor watching me through binoculars. This happens to be a good day, but I've seen him stand outside and watch like this in the pouring rain for 45 minutes. Why 45 minutes? Because that was when I was done doing what I was doing, and staying there to see how long he'd stand there seemed pointless.
Why not call the law? You're looking at the law. Yes, Clinton County Kentucky made someone with a criminal record a deputy jailer. Not quite the same as a deputy sheriff to be sure, but still spooky in a small town when you have one behaving like this.
I was just lucky that I had someone over to help me move stuff or who knows what stories he would have made up. That's the lesson for today. Never go anywhere in Appalachia without a witness.
Those of you who get to move stuff out of your old house and take it to the dump. Can rent a truck to do so, and have a neighbor who is nice enough to help, count yourselves lucky. In other parts of the country, even throwing out old mattresses can get complicated.

Return to Clinton County Kentucky

My situation in Clinton county Kentucky seems to be getting worse. I'm simply not going to be allowed to sell the property. It all started when my real estate agent showed the property. I showed up the following weekend to find the house broken into and dog droppings all over the floor.
Of course there were no dogs. They'd been left in the house for a few days to mess it up right after the hillbillies saw someone look at the house, and then removed.
When I showed up to the house, the neighbors three dogs came over to visit and the trailer people all came to their doorways and glared at me. When I went into my house, I saw the droppings of said dogs. Now, if I did anything to the dogs, who were on my property, and obviously the perpetrators of the mess, I'd be in jail for animal cruelty. Of course, that's better than showing up when the dogs are in my house. Then I'd have half a dozen hillbillies calling the cops and claiming that I stole them. In case you hadn't guessed from my previous posts, there is no real law in Eastern Kentucky. The law just wants to keep their numbers up and protect their buddies, so I be in the wonderful position of proving the hillbillies wrong.
In any event, when the law showed up, they gave me their standard answer. You have bad neighbors, move everything with any worth off of the property, get some cameras and get us pictures of them breaking in, and then we can do something.
Can someone explain to me why I'm paying taxes? I'm obviously not getting any benefit for my money. And Eastern Kentucky wonders why they can't break the generational poverty cycle. News flash. When people aren't secure in their property unless they are actively guarding it, then you are going to end up with a poverty stricken area.

More On The Welfare Crowd

In the last installment, the welfare crowd was breaking into my vacant house, squatting there, and stealing things. I went back there yesterday to fix the hole in my wall that they left when they pulled out the air conditioner and found a new level of insanity had started.
First, they are very cleanly squatters. They always pick up after themselves. There is just enough movement of the items in the house, so that you know someone has been there. They even fold and replace the blankets on the bed they are sleeping in.
The really strange thing, is that items are now reappearing in the house. Not the expensive stuff like the air conditioner or the bicycle, but little things. Specifically, the dog bowls they stole and 3 pieces of firewood. Seriously? Why would anyone return those items?
The freaky part is the fact that when I returned home, my realtor called and told me that someone had put an offer on the house for $22,000. Now, since the house has been on the market for over 2 years and has only had one other offer, and since similar houses in the area are selling for around $70,000, the timing and the amount just seem suspicious. 

Welfare People

The welfare people of Appalachia form a unique and distinctive breed. They also form a violent cancer in society. I'm not speaking of city folk on welfare here. I know little of them. I'm talking about their country cousins.
It looks like I'm headed into bankruptcy soon, because the local welfare types have decided that the house I have up for sale is theirs, and I can't afford to pay $600 a month to give them a place to squat.

Here is a view from my driveway of a standard hillbilly welfare cluster. No, I didn't buy into this neighborhood. When I bought the house in 2005, it had older people and young families. Then the patriarch of the family died, the young families all divorced, and the drug/welfare crowd arrived. It happened over the course of a couple of years. I never realized that hill families relied on their patriarchs so much, but here's the proof. 

Anyway, it's all about clan for these folk, like it's all about gang for their city cousins. Let me explain what you are looking at. The mobile homes you see are owned by some relative or other. You see, everyone is related to everyone, and if you have land, instead of selling or renting, you let your welfare relations live there. You arrange a payment schedule from their welfare check under the table and it's win-win. You get tax free money and an army of minions. The minions get a really cheap place to stay, and with their welfare checks and benefits, free food and utilities, a pretty good lifestyle. You can't really see it, but the cars in the driveway are all late model. 

Now comes the fun part. There are probably at least 8 adults living in these buildings. And no, you're not going to get a count. Aside from the fact that they lie, this is the area where the census worker was found dangling from a tree. These people don't like questions. Welfare will pay you more for each child up to a maximum of 6. So, since they are unwilling to work, each pair of adults can be counted on to have 4 - 6 children. That adds up to a lot of people. 

Now for the part that would be amusing if it weren't happening to me. I went to check on the house the other day, and found that it had been broken into and an air conditioner had been torn out of the wall. Every time I go there, they seem to show up the next day and do enough damage to let it be known they are there. Naturally, my realtor is afraid to go there anymore. It's annoying and no one is going to buy a house that is constantly being robbed by the neighbors. 

I called the local sheriff, and not getting a response the state police. When I arrived, the neighbors all stood there and glared. When I called the sheriff (and understand these people all have police scanners) they stood there and glared. When I called the state police, within 10 minutes, 3 different cars sped up to first house, filled up with people and drove off. They left a preteen boy. You can't see him, but he's under the tree in the center. He went and sat under the tree with a cell phone and watched the house until I left about 90 minutes later. And, no, he wasn't alone, there was an adult watching him from inside, so he had backup. I swung back 5 minutes later just to see  and the neighbors were coming back. So, I have about 20 people, with no jobs and nothing better to do, just watch my house and see what damage they can cause. That puts them at a great advantage. Of course, if I even try to talk to them, I'll get 20 people swearing that I'm violent and the sheriff will be there within 5 minutes. And people wonder why I'd rather live in a world without police. They are really counter productive at the moment. 

The state police called after a half hour and took a statement,. They weren't willing to come out and take fingerprints either, but that's understandable. They can't really get a conviction unless the value is over $500, and they were 1 trooper, who was 70 miles away. I wasn't willing to wait 4 hours until he could get there, and he wasn't to keen on the idea either. At least he called back. 

The sheriff? About 7 hours later, my wife posted about the incident and lack of response on facebook. Remember, everyone is related to everyone in the county and connected via facebook. The sheriff called and took a statement within 5 minutes. 

Really? The sheriff responding more quickly to facebook than a call to dispatch. That pretty much tells you what you need to know about him.

So I have the sheriff, who will only respond to the calls of the welfare people. The state troopers, who are rare and busy, and 20 people who are out to seize my property and have nothing better to do. What chance do I have?

By seize I mean get the house into forclosure. Then the bank sells the house at auction. The only bank that will really give a loan on the house is run by the rich part of the family, so, they will set the price. Thus the usefulness of minions. 

Buford T. Justice Lives

It is time once more to poke fun at the government of Clinton County Kentucky. As the title implies, I am casting aspersions on the local law enforcement community. The community that had me fill out a complaint on a post it note. But that was two sheriffs ago, and believe it or not, it has been downhill ever since.
This time I tried to report a theft, but it didn't go well.
Going to check on the house, the door was open. Of course the sheriff was called. It took 3 hours to respond. That would be understandable if I lived in Alaska or Montana, but 10 minutes from the courthouse? They said he was busy leading funeral processions. I thought a theft and a possibility of the intruder still on the premises would have been more important. I guess I was wrong. Three hours wrong seems a bit excessive though. And Europeans wonder why the people in Middle America will never agree to limits on firearms. Would you, if you had such stellar enforcers of the law to protect you?
Anyway, no thieves were there, but a gun safe had been professionally drilled into and opened and everything of value had been taken. A bit of a backstory, never use US Bank. Once they find that you aren't living there, they get worried about protecting their investment, and their property protection teams are less then professional and don't hesitate to seize the property with no notice. If you want the situation resolved, then you get to try to get two call centers to talk to each other. It's great fun. Anyway, at the time of this incident three people had keys to the property; myself, my realtor, and the bank's property protection contractor.
The door was opened with a key. There was no breaking and entering. The safe was professionally drilled into and everything of value was taken.  The sheriff replied that it was the work of squatters. Apparently, there are a lot of empty houses in Clinton county (I wonder why), and the sheriff can't spare the manpower (be bothered to) remove them or check on the houses. The fact that the door was opened with a key didn't seem to register. Neither did the fact that the beds weren't slept in and there was no trash in the house. Just an entry with a key and a professional clean out job. It was squatters. Of course, no fingerprints were taken. It was claimed that the county couldn't afford a fingerprint kit. Of course, the sheriff wouldn't call on the sate police to take fingerprints either, even though he retired from that force (makes you wonder about them to). The annoying part is that everyone who had key, has fingerprints on file, being bonded in some service or another. The door was opened with a key. It seems like a slam dunk. But I guess such things aren't important to law enforcement in Clinton County Kentucky.
Of course, although one shouldn't judge by appearances, I think the sheriff's photo says it all.

Just remember, this is the photo he provided the local newspaper when they did his welcome aboard article. 

If you want to buy a 19th Century farmhouse in rural Kentucky, just let me know. I can get you a good deal on it.

A Tangled Web

I've written a lot in this blog about selective justice in the hills of Appalachia. It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. After all, everyone is familiar with Smokey and the Bandit, Billy Jack, and The Dukes of Hazard. Everyone knows how these small towns and counties get, and it comes as no surprise that Person A can be caught doing 90mph in a school zone and get a talking to while Person B get caught doing 30mph in a 25mph zone and gets hit with a $150 fine. Just par for the course in Appalachia. Everyone gets it. The worrisome part is that there are levels above the corrupt county level. The "first family" concept gets spread across entire regions. The even more worrisome part is that at the county level, you can tell who the "first families" are. At the regional level, there is a lot of guesswork involved. I guess because cockroaches hate the light or something.

This brings me to today's story. You see in the image, the Clinton Center of Somerset Community College. It was built in 2004 to help stimulate economic growth in the area. It's an impressive building for the area. It had up to date classrooms, state of the art nursing labs, a training center for day care workers, a cosmetology lab, and shops for vocational careers. In short, it has everything that a community college needs to help improve the educational and economic level of a depressed area. Naturally, it couldn't be allowed to survive.

The web starts with the construction of the center itself. The money for the center was obtained through the hard work of then state senator David Williams. Of course, he insisted that the center be placed in his own district. This did not go over well with Somerset Community College. They has a center already operating out of an abandoned elementary school 30 minutes north. It was centrally located, and Somerset wanted the center to be put there, but David Williams was adamant, his county or nothing. Somerset agreed. At first glance, nothing to see here. Just a politician getting pork for his district.

The next thread of the web occurs a couple of years after the center started operation. At first, there were a lot of non-locals there. You see, no locals were qualified to run the place, so foreigners were brought in (foreigner in a hill context means someone from outside the county). Never the less, the center thrived and all was well in the world, well, with the exception of the vocational programs. For some reason, the local Board of Education wanted a monopoly on that, so no tech programs for Clinton Center. Then the "first families" obtained the required degrees to reach critical mass at the college, arrived on the scene, moved into management positions (often over others), and things changed rapidly. They might have had the power to kill vocational programs before, but their power was limited. Now things were different. Through an interesting refusal to provide support for the center, moving the scheduling to two days a week, and farming out classes to local high school teachers, the administration of Somerset Community College managed to destroy the center, which they promptly sold to the local Board of Education.

Now there might be nothing to see here. It might just be a tale of pork and bad administration. But consider: First we have an time of unprecedented educational growth, which starts the first families getting the degrees needed to move in and take over. Then we have a state senator putting a state of the art facility, which his county wants, in his district, even if they don't have control of it yet. Thirdly, we have the "first families" moving into positions of control at an amazing rate and then handing the senator's county exactly what they wanted all along. It may be coincidence, but too many coincidences at once all moving in one direction tends to indicate a Quid Pro Quo, especially since all the actors who have created the situation are from the power broker families.

Hillbilly Law

I like that title. Hillbilly Law. There should be a reality show with that name. It would probably be a huge success.

Apparently, Clinton county, Kentucky, has a new deputy sheriff. Sheriff Jim Guffey took his 10 year old son with him to serve an arrest warrant. I can understand taking your 10 year old son on a ride along. Clinton county isn't that dangerous. Dressing him up like a deputy and taking him to serve an arrest warrant on drug charges seems to be crossing the line of common sense. Letting him sign the prisoner into the local jail seems to imply a lack of any brain activity whatsoever.  I really don't know why the jailer deputy who let the paperwork get signed and the sheriff aren't out of work, but this is Kentucky and no one cares. Then they wonder why all the drug dealers move to Clinton county. I keep imagining officer Cartman on his Big Wheel.

Respect my Authoritah!!!

The news story can be accessed here:

http://www.wkyt.com/content/news/Clinton-sheriff-took-his-10-year-old-son-to-work-let-him-sign-jail-paperwork-377491201.html

Strange Hillbilly Vandalism

Sometimes it just gets strange in the hills. I was changing the oil on my car the other day when I noticed that someone had drawn an anarchy symbol on the bottom of my oil pan. WTF? I can understand breaking windows and cutting brake lines, but avoiding security cameras, risking a confrontation with an armed homeowner, and crawling underneath a car just to draw a gotcha on an oil pan? Curiouser and curiouser.

It Mine!!!!!

My new neighbors have a pet. A cute little hound dog. Well he would be cute if his ribs weren't showing and he wasn't covered with scabs. Taking care of your animals is not an Appalachian trait. Only collecting large quantities of them.

Of course the dog spends its days wandering the neighborhood and his nights chasing the cows of the farmer over the hill. I don't know why he hasn't been shot yet. He started off with a collar. For those of you not from Appalachia, that does not mean a license and rabies tag. A collar alone denotes ownership. Licenses and rabies shots are for foreigners (meaning anyone who lives outside of the county and in some cases anyone who lives off of the street). Of course he slipped his collar. This not being allowed, he next was put in a training harness and left to run free. It was kind of pathetic watching him get caught on things and struggling to get loose. He eventually got out of that and the neighbors freaked.

I was kind of amusing to watch the family drive up and down the street in an attempt to get the dog. They finally caught him and drove him home. Not wanting him to run off again, they stayed outside and watched him for a half hour. Then they got bored and went inside. It's hard to believe that anyone can be that stupid, but you can't ignore the evidence.

More Hillbilly Burning Rituals

Apparently, my neighbors decided to do a very thorough spring cleaning, which included doing more than barbequing their dogs. The next morning, they decided to burn more trash.

Yes, that is a Coleman cooler chest that Beavis is setting on fire. The fact that he was using a butane pocket torch, the kind you see on TV associated with meth pipes to light it makes me kind of curious about what kind of evidence he was trying to destroy. You can see the cooler burning in this picture.

You may also notice how close the fire is to the trailer. Not content with this, aerosol cans were next on the list. They seemed to find it most amusing.
At this point I called the law. Silly me, I called the State Police first, and when they suggested I call the fire department,  I informed them that the fire department here refused to respond to illegal burns, that being a state issue. They said they would handle it. When I latter called county dispatch they seemed very angry at me for some reason. Could it be that I called the state first? They demanded to know who it was that told me they wouldn't come out for illegal burns. When I gave them the name of the person in charge of the fire department, they seemed even more annoyed with me. I guess an apology for the wrong information being given to me would have been too professional of them.
Whatever the reason, the fire department arrived promptly and behaved in a professional manner.
The amusing part was, before the fire department arrived, I had Beavis strutting around and glaring at my house.

 

 

If you saw someone dressed like this, bouncing around in an uncoordinated fashion, using a lighter associated with the drug crowd to set a cooler on fire, what would you think? Amazingly, just before the fire department arrived, he ran inside and changed into something more presentable.

 



 

 

That's him in the red t-shirt. Of course he was also full of yes sir, no sir, I didn't know the law sir Appalachian politeness, even though the state had been out there multiple times for the same problem last spring. You just have to love police scanners. Law enforcement should probably stick to cell phones around here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

More Appalachian Burning Rituals

In my last post, I wrote about the wonderful smell of burning that the residents of Appalachia are subjected to as a result of the mentally challenged using wood heat. It is now springtime and the wood stoves are going out. Regrettably, they are replaced by another form of burning. Everyone here will burn all the growth that has accumulated in their yards and all the trash that has accumulated in their houses while they were hibernating rat like around their stoves.

 

Of course, Kentucky only allows the burning of yard waste, but everyone knows yard waste gives off clouds of black smoke. Since the county refuses to enforce state laws outside the city limits, there's not much that can be done. Before I moved here, I didn't know that a county could refuse to enforce state laws. Then I moved to Clinton county and learned better. Here the law depends on who you know and who your kin are rather than anything so mundane as the law.

 

I would say that these people are just totally selfish and have no respect for their neighbors, but they tend to treat themselves just as badly.

 

 

What's scarier about this picture? The fact that your friendly neighborhood redneck seems intent on cooking his dogs, or the fact that there's an infant in the trailer and the person who started the fire took off and left the fire unattended?





Police Fail

The sheriff of Clinton County, Jim Guffey, draws a lot of controversy. Those who are protected by the system tend to think of him as a moral good old boy, those who aren't tend to think of him as a corrupt son of a bitch who should be behind bars. What the truth is isn't clear, like many things in Appalachia.

I mentioned in  a previous post about how he sent a large number of drug dealers to jail as soon as he got into office, but none afterwards. It almost seemed like he was cleaning out the competition for his friends, but it might have just been coincidence. Of course, most people would be inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt, unless they had to live next to one of the sheriff's friends. When said people run around screaming and brandishing firearms, when they weave down roads on four wheelers with one adult and three children clinging to it, when you're the subject of vandalism and get to fill out a police report on a post it note, you begin to think there may be some corruption going on somewhere. That or a level of incompetence usually not seen in the Western World.

One of my neighbors had it even worse. She stupidly moved in with one of these friends who was a known druggie. Of course, the relationship went like all such go, so I got to hear second hand reports of drugs and threats of violence against multiple people. Amazingly, even when these threats were made publicly, in front of witnesses, the law enforcement response was still, "meh". It ended in the usual way, with the neighbor getting a broken nose and the druggie saying that, "Jim Guffey would never put him in jail". So she called a deputy who did. She's lucky it wasn't worse. Whether or not Jim Guffey is corrupt or not is unknown, but seriously, when violent druggies claim to be under your protection, that really should be a red flag to the rest of the law enforcement community. This is especially true since about 6 months previously while witnessing possible druggie activity and talking with the state police, I told them that I had either wandered into one of their sting operations or they had some corrupt cops around here. Of course, not being a fellow law officer, they totally ignored me. Of course they also told me that I had reasonable suspicion, not probable cause and to call them back when I did. Silly me, I thought building a court case with documentation was what my tax dollars were paying for, I guess I was wrong.

Now we get to the fail. One of the main problems here is prescription medicine abuse. Pills seem to be more popular here than meth. Of course, the official police response is to try to get unused pharmaceuticals disposed of properly. To this end they create collection points where these drugs can be turned in and stored until being disposed of properly. Guess who is in charge of prescription drug collection in Clinton county. You guessed it, Jim Guffey. So, there are known pill heads who claim his protection and no one in law enforcement sees a problem with him being in charge of pills?

Of course, Jim Guffey may be what he claims, a hard working public servant, or he may be as corrupt as a previous sheriff of McCreary county. No one knows. The problem is, no one seems to care.

What is a citizen to do when all the police appear to be either corrupt or riding the short bus?

Noisy Neighbors

Last night was Halloween. A time of pumpkins and ghosts. It's also a time when my windows shake with the excessive bass of my neighbor's music system. When your windows are shaking from a building almost 1/4 mile away, you have to wonder about the eardrums and the respect for others that the originators of such music enjoy. This particular music wasn't so bad. It came from the local church and only lasted a couple of hours and they don't do it often. You have to wonder about Christian Rock turned up to that volume, but this is also the church that moves street signs to suit themselves, the church whose deacon was under investigation for narcotics peddling, and the church who bought their rec center with lottery winnings. Such is the Baptist religion.

Despite the title this blog is not about the music the occasion for it. Fall Festival. Yes, Fall Festival. No one here is allowed to use the words Halloween. That would be sacrilegious. When Christians tell you they don't want a theocracy, bear that in mind.  Admittedly, the thought behind the church fall festival is good. Get the kids off the streets and give them something to do to keep them out of trouble. That's all well and good, and they are well intentioned. Unfortunately, that's where it all falls apart. They set up a church fair in their rec center and let anyone in free, feed them, and even give goody baskets to the kids.

My first year here, when I went with my kids it was a lot of fun, although I did have some explaining to do about the comic book that showed knights fighting dinosaurs, because everyone knows they existed at the same time. However, that's in the realm of amusing local tradition, not a problem. No the problem is that as Clinton county has become more and more a center for antisocial behavior, so to has the churches fall festival. It was bad enough when 18 year old jocks from the high school were sent through rides with 5 year old kids and no one seemed to care, but when the drug dealers stop off there to get fed and set up connections before the rest of their night, there's a problem. The amusing part is the place has cops there for security, and the druggies are operating in plain sight, but no one will say anything. I guess Christians don't like to judge. Or maybe they're involved in the trade. I really can't figure this place out.