Korean Job Discussion Forums

[sketchforsummer]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090924/ap_on_re_us/us_census_worker_hanged

http://current.com/1p42u4c

[Reggie]

Here's a local forum thread about it: http://www.topix.com/forum/city/manchester-ky/TQGJ7TDNKODRGMB1G/

[sqrlnutz123]

Yeah, it's very scary. Here's an article I read about a month ago about the new rise in militias:
http://www.splcenter.org/news/item.jsp?pid=414

[Triban]

[Rteacher]

It's safe to say they weren't Maoists who did it - I'd bet on right-wing militia types/ drug and gun dealers.

I worked for the Census Bureau (for the 2000 Census) in Osceola Co., Florida, and I encountered some hostile folks who wouldn't give any information at all. The standard procedure is to ask their neighbors for basic info about them, and I was informed in one case that federal agents had confiscated a big cache of arms from that house some time earlier.

[djsmnc]

[Reggie]

Although there are rumors of five or six different pairs of footprints under where the body was found, I doubt it had anything to do with militias or gun dealing. But I agree that it likely had to do with drugs.

I'm from the area and am somewhat familiar with the town/county where the crime happened. It's an impoverished area where the economy has traditionally relied heavily on coal mining and agriculture. It has always been a poor area, and the decline of mining in the area along with the decline of tobacco farming has made the region especially poor. The illiteracy rate is substantially higher than the national average.

Although gun ownership is extremely high here, with nearly everyone owning several, I've never heard of any militias. Moonshining is mostly a thing of the past. Marijuana production has been fairly rampant for quite some time now, but it hasn't been particularly violent compared to most types of drug commerce. But meth production and distribution has skyrocketed in the past 15 years. Fifteen years ago, it was unheard of around here. Maybe some long-haul truck drivers used it, but it was far from mainstream. Now, I would estimate that maybe 20% of the area's population uses meth and there has been an explosion in crime, including a disturbing increase in murders and home invasion robberies. Those used to never happen. Now, you hear about them all of the time. Several of the guys my father hired as farm hands when I was a teenager have since gone to prison for murder in separate cases, but all of them are walking the streets these days. They're very polite guys, all of them, and it's hard to imagine them as killers, but that's just the way it is around here.

I would not be surprised at all if meth was associated with the murder in some way. Since the victim was white, I don't know if racism was a factor, but Clay County is very, very white and having a black president is absolutely not going over very well with many here in rural Appalachia. Even though the victim was white, they could've been upset that he was, in their minds, working for a black man. Being a census agent and asking a lot of questions may have caused the people who killed him to believe he was an undercover federal agent investigating their drug activities.

In any case, he really had an unenviable job. If a census agent comes here, I'll politely refuse to answer any questions not relating to simply finding out the number in the household. If I'm not going to cooperate, I can only imagine the type of reception these agents get at most houses.

[Ya-ta Boy]

Rachel Maddow has an interview with a retired Kentucky State Trooper who was a friend of the victim. It's worth a view:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#33013149

Personally, I'm hoping for a drug connection because 2010 is a census year and things are expected to get really really weird over it this time, given how politicized the thing has become--particularly by the people who keep saying they want to 'get back' to the Constitution.

[ontheway]

[Ya-ta Boy]

[morrisonhotel]

[Ya-ta Boy]

[visitorq]

[ontheway]

[Ya-ta Boy]