Your Opinion: "Promise zone' politics

Dear Editor:

Are eight sparsely populated counties in southeastern Kentucky the only Republican voting area in the country where the economy is so bad that it needs to be classified as an Obama "promise zone"? Or is it a token area included so that areas that vote strongly Democratic aren't the only ones getting the promise zone handouts? Actually Obama, who is well on his way to fulfilling his promise to bankrupt coal-fired power plants, shoulders direct responsibility for much of the financial distress in eastern Kentucky.

I couldn't find voting statistics for the Choctaw Nation but Los Angeles, Bexar County, Texas (San Antonio) and Philadelphia all voted for Obama. There were 3,176,360 Obama votes from those areas (70.5 percent of the votes), versus 76,508 McCain votes (73.5 percent of the votes) from the eight promise zone counties in southeastern Kentucky. Promise zones certainly have the appearance of just another taxpayer subsidized way to pay off those who vote for Democrats.

I wonder how the 656,303 Obama voters in Wayne County, Detroit, missed out on the handout. Perhaps Detroit and other Democrat strongholds will be included in the other 15 promise zone area yet to be announced.

The voters in the Democratic strongholds should ask themselves why their leaders are doing such a poor job when compared to the leaders in Republican strongholds. Maybe, as long as the federal government keeps forcibly extracting money from others, and redistributing it to them, they don't have to ask. Bailouts are great, when you are always on the receiving end.

Flash: The unemployment rate is down to 6.7 percent, not because Obama's plan is working, unless his plan is to make sure at least a voting majority are on welfare. The "labor participation rate" is at a 36 year low. In December 2013 there were 144.6 million employed, the same as employed October 2008. Trillions of additional debt heaped on the shoulders of future generations, trillions of worthless paper money printed by the Federal Reserve and we have no more people employed that we did over five years ago.