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Maine is even worse off than Vermont when it comes to making it easy for deadbeats. And that is saying a lot. The Problem | Fix Maine Welfare
I'm convinced that more jobs would mean less welfare, and less welfare would mean that more citizens citizens would be contributing members of society with better reasons to get up every day than to check for the WIC box and score some weed. But no, "business" would harm that special quality of life that the LL Bean / Birkenstock wearing transplants treasure so much.
So let's just keep on making it hard for entrepeneurs to create businesses (unless of course they are of the type who buy up distressed single-family homes and convert them to multi-unit slums) and easy for deadbeats with criminal intent to live off public assistance. Maybe when the drug deals and gunshots make it to Montpelier someone there will wake up. But I doubt it.
Maine is even worse off than Vermont when it comes to making it easy for deadbeats. And that is saying a lot. The Problem | Fix Maine Welfare
I'm convinced that more jobs would mean less welfare, and less welfare would mean that more citizens citizens would be contributing members of society with better reasons to get up every day than to check for the WIC box and score some weed. But no, "business" would harm that special quality of life that the LL Bean / Birkenstock wearing transplants treasure so much.
It's really difficult to strike a compromise, and I wouldn't want to see every place take on the same qualities as every other place. There must be places for people who want to live a rural life without a lot of business and a lot of sprawl. If business gets its way everywhere, everywhere will be like some of the more congested and maddening parts of New Jersey.
The place I grew up in used to be a beautiful small town with employment for everyone who lived there. Now it's a vast suburban sprawl, with thousands upon thousands of housing developments, big box stores, chain restaurants and traffic lights seemingly every twenty feet. It's a terrible place to live, and everyone who lives there wants to escape from it. It's also a place where "business" always got everything it asked for, and this is the result. It's pretty lively economically, but everyone hates it and no one wants to live there.
I'm convinced that more jobs would mean less welfare, and less welfare would mean that more citizens citizens would be contributing members of society with better reasons to get up every day than to check for the WIC box and score some weed. But no, "business" would harm that special quality of life that the LL Bean / Birkenstock wearing transplants treasure so much.
Quote:
Originally Posted by angelo129
It's really difficult to strike a compromise, and I wouldn't want to see every place take on the same qualities as every other place. There must be places for people who want to live a rural life without a lot of business and a lot of sprawl. If business gets its way everywhere, everywhere will be like some of the more congested and maddening parts of New Jersey.
The place I grew up in used to be a beautiful small town with employment for everyone who lived there. Now it's a vast suburban sprawl, with thousands upon thousands of housing developments, big box stores, chain restaurants and traffic lights seemingly every twenty feet. It's a terrible place to live, and everyone who lives there wants to escape from it. It's also a place where "business" always got everything it asked for, and this is the result. It's pretty lively economically, but everyone hates it and no one wants to live there.
Addressing unemployment/underemployment in rural areas doesn't mean places like Vermont will become like a New Jersey surburb. Small towns near urban areas become surburban sprawl. Vermont doesn't have large urban areas. Suburban sprawl just isn't going to happen in Vermont, rest assured.
It's vitally important to acknowledge the importance of unemployment/underemployment in rural areas and the connection with rural drug addiction. The reality is that the rural way of life isn't the same as it was years ago. Technology replaced people. As a result, rural industries like farms and logging don't employ as many people as in the past. That leaves a large population with limited income. It's hard to become a "true adult" (your words) and be independently industrious when there isn't an economy to support an honest days work. Rural areas that resist change suffer the most.
We offer recommendations for programs and policies that can make a real difference—investments that work—by drawing on the strengths already in place in rural areas. But the problem of substance abuse demands a multi-faceted approach. Programs and policies that help rural families earn a living, save money, and invest in the future will help to reduce a number of rural challenges, including substance abuse. Stable jobs sustain stable families, and that is good for children and communities.
It's vitally important to acknowledge the importance of unemployment/underemployment in rural areas and the connection with rural drug addiction. The reality is that the rural way of life isn't the same as it was years ago. Technology replaced people. As a result, rural industries like farms and logging don't employ as many people as in the past. That leaves a large population with limited income. It's hard to become a "true adult" (your words) and be independently industrious when there isn't an economy to support an honest days work. Rural areas that resist change suffer the most.
I couldn't agree more, and my remark about the lack of adults in our culture wasn't intended to point a finger of blame at those who never get there. There are as many reasons as there are individual circumstances, although I stand by what I said about cultural attitudes that encourage an eternal adolescence.
I don't, however, believe that rural areas that resist change suffer any more than those that welcome it, though the latter may be more likely to get a prison in their backyards. The real problem, which no one wants to talk about because it's so overwhelming, is that technology, by its nature, eliminates more jobs than it ever creates. It doesn't just move them to another sector - they're gone forever. We've moved our manufacturing out of the country, we've moved most customer service jobs elsewhere as well, and now there's very little left. An economy like our present one has no jobs to offer for people of limited skills, and not everyone can be a doctor or a lawyer. The young addicts and drug dealers, as I know from having worked in social services, more often than not have grandparents who were solidly respectable and middle class. They had skills, a work ethic, a degree of security. In the interim since their grandparents were part of the working world, all of this has been lost, and the grandchildren are often just as firmly entrenched in the criminal class as their grandparents were in the comfortable middle class. Making beds at a hotel or handing food out the window at McDonald's doesn't really provide a living, and that's the BEST we have to offer many people. Is it surprising that they have a hopeless attitude, when in fact they have little to hope for? Until we make some fundamental changes, we're likely to continue having an enormous drug problem (not to mention the problems that result from vast numbers of unemployed and increasingly unemployable young men).
It's really difficult to strike a compromise, and I wouldn't want to see every place take on the same qualities as every other place. There must be places for people who want to live a rural life without a lot of business and a lot of sprawl. If business gets its way everywhere, everywhere will be like some of the more congested and maddening parts of New Jersey.
The place I grew up in used to be a beautiful small town with employment for everyone who lived there. Now it's a vast suburban sprawl, with thousands upon thousands of housing developments, big box stores, chain restaurants and traffic lights seemingly every twenty feet. It's a terrible place to live, and everyone who lives there wants to escape from it. It's also a place where "business" always got everything it asked for, and this is the result. It's pretty lively economically, but everyone hates it and no one wants to live there.
Exactly so...no one wants to live there, but that is where what few jobs that do exist for unskilled labor can be found, in the densely-populated areas. I am from Long Island, and spent years trying to figure out a way to leave the rat-race and yet still survive in a rural area such as Vermont. And I started in the 1970's, when things were not a whole lot better up here then for jobs than they are now...worse actually, because technology actually brought jobs to the Upper Valley. I went back to school when I was 40 so that I could find a job virtually anywhere. The point is that "getting away" from the grind of the densely-populated urban centers requires sacrifice for most people. Rural areas will never be able to offer what the cities and their suburbs can offer as far as employment and wages are concerned, but it isn't a recent phenomenon. If things are bad in the city, then they are worse in the country, with few exceptions.
Hopefully this will set a example in VT for future home intruders.
No charges against Vt homeowner in intruder death
Police say Garrett, 40, and his wife, were asleep on the couch when Ryan Morton-Lane, 30, entered their home through an unlocked door. Police say Garrett discovered Morton-Lane in his home office. The intruder from Connecticut threatened to kill him with a blade. Garrett got his hands on a paring knife and the two men started fighting. During the altercation Morton-Lane was fatally stabbed in the heart and breastbone. Prosecutors say the couple's young son called 911 while his mom held the dying man at gunpoint and his father pinned him on the lawn.
For nearly three weeks the question lingered: was the killing justified? On Wednesday Chittenden County's top prosecutor said yes
"I find that Shawn Garrett acted in self-defense and was justified in doing so," Chittenden County State's Attorney T.J. Donovan said. "Based on my review of this matter I decline to file any criminal charges against Shawn Garrett."
Garrett doesn't remember the stabbing, but police say both men had wounds consistent with a brawl. Prosecutors say forensic evidence at the scene backs up Garrett's version of events.
"Put simply there is no evidence to support that Mr. Garrett was engaging in some type of vigilante justice, which clearly would not be tolerated," Donovan said. No charges against Vt homeowner in intruder death - WCAX.COM Local Vermont News, Weather and Sports-
Was in law enforcement in southwestern VT and NEK Vt for a number of years. With the rest of our department in the small NEK town where I worked, thwarted several attempts by Latinos from Lowell/Lawrence MA to start a gang up there. These people never give up. Kept after them and when they committed crimes, either got arrest warrant against them and they fled or sent them to jail and the problem was solved at least temporarily. Had one operation going on in town the public at large didn't know about until the perps were busted. Task force got them. Had a heroin operation going and from what I remember they were from the Dominican Republic or somewhere similar. Read a number of years ago how two men were broken down on, I think I-89, in Vermont and when someone stopped to help them, they robbed him. Why does all of the crap come to Vermont to do their dirty deeds? Because they think no one will find them and law enforcement is stupid, but they always get discovered. It is just frustrating.
Was in law enforcement in southwestern VT and NEK Vt for a number of years. With the rest of our department in the small NEK town where I worked, thwarted several attempts by Latinos from Lowell/Lawrence MA to start a gang up there. These people never give up.
I've pointed this out before, but I think it bears repeating. We all have a tendency (I include myself) to think of the people in our immediate area as friends, neighbors and family, and people "from away" as the ones who are forever coming in, uninvited, trying to destroy our idyllic way of life. The truth is that "these people" give up quite easily under the right conditions. They're not nice and they're not philanthropists. Time is money, and if nobody bought what they're selling, they'd be someplace else in a heartbeat. There are people in Vermont who are providing the market, and as long as that happens, they'll come here to sell their product. I'm not going to pretend to know what to do about this, but I do know that if we all stop buying - they'll stop coming.
"these people" give up quite easily under the right conditions.
Yes angelo129, they did, when we gave them no other choice. What about the two from Connecticut that robbed the Vermonter after he stopped to help them. Will people like that not come if we stop "providing the product". I could go on and list other examples. My point is, Vermont has enough problems of it's own that are homegrown. It does not need to have them imported from elsewhere. Believe me, working in law enforcement and networking with other agencies I think I had a pretty good handle as to who was "friends" and who was "not friends" and I didn't determine it by who was in my immediate area and who was "from away".
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