The rate of violent crime in "white ghetto" Appalacia is half the national average

Via Matthew

 

"So much for an economic theory of violent crime…......."

Last year, 18 big-city mayors, Mike Bloomberg and Rahm Emanuel among them, sent the federal government a letter asking that soda be removed from the list of items eligible to be used for EBT purchases. Mayor Bloomberg delivered his standard sermon about obesity, nutrition, and the multiplex horrors of sugary drinks. But none of those mayors gets what’s really going on with sugar water and food stamps. Take soda off the list and there will be another fungible commodity to take its place. It’s possible that a great many cans of soda used as currency go a long time without ever being cracked — in a town this small, those selling soda to EBT users and those buying it back at half price are bound to be some of the same people, the soda merely changing hands ceremonially to mark the real exchange of value, pillbilly wampum.

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‘Oh, we’s jes’ pooooor folllllks, we cain’t afford no cornbreaaaaaaad!” So says Booneville police chief Johnny Logsdon, who has an amused glint in his eye and has encountered his share of parachuted-in writers on the poverty beat.

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