How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live?

Unemployment rates rose in all 120 Kentucky counties between August 2008 and August 2009, according to the Kentucky Office of Employment and Training, an agency of the Kentucky Education and Workforce Development Cabinet.

Against that backdrop, it was good to see another story in the news of attempts to respond to Kentucky’s employment and poverty problems.

At almost 17%, Kentucky has one of the highest poverty rates in the nation. A 25-member legislative task force charged with developing strategies for combating the problem held its initial meeting this week in Frankfort. The U.S. Census Bureau now ranks Kentucky fifth among states, and the District of Columbia, when measuring poverty.

Just as FDR did in the Great Depression, here in Kentucky and across the United States, policymakers have finally started responding to the needs of its least healthy, least wealthy people. It is worth remembering that it was unregulated markets and Unbridled Greed that brought the United States to the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. It’s worth dusting off a song that was first recorded in 1929. Imagine where the United States would be today if its leaders were still ignoring those in need as it was exactly one year ago, and instead was simply bailing out the big banks.

There is a strong tradition among folk musicians of paying tribute to past artists by taking a song’s first verse and then writing three new ones to apply it to modern times.

The week after the great stock market crash of 1929, Blind Alfred Reed recorded this song. After Hurricane Katrina and George Bush’s infamous lack of response, in 2006, Bruce Springsteen kept Reed’s first verse, and wrote three more to express the rage and sorrow of the people of New Orleans.

Them who got got out of town,
Them who aint got left to drown.

As in the 1930s, once again our government is restoring hope, for a long hard road ahead.

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