Great Pains

The Associated Press reports today on the strapping good health of what the article calls "A slice of the central US." With characteristic factual ambiguity the article seeks to assure those poor huddled masses around the country, that their lucky country cousins are basking in the fine fortune of financial fitness.

According to the AP, a swath of contiguous counties extending from Montana and North Dakota, through Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma, before terminating in northern Texas comprise an economic "safe zone." A zone where unemployment is low, foreclosures are rare, and household incomes are up.

What utter nonsense. I'm sure the proud residents of this region are meant to feel honored that some AP reporters deigned to remember that these states exist at all. Perhaps someone was staring out of an airplane on a particularly clear day only to realize that there is more than clouds between LA and NYC. In any event, the article couldn't be a better example of what happens when journalists fail to report on all the facts.

Perhaps some background may have helped the story. Perhaps the gumshoes on this beat could have reminded their readers that this "slice of the central US"--which I thought we still called the Great Plains--has been undergoing systematic decline for the better part of 100 years. A region that supplied a young nation and much of the world with food has seen its population collapse as less and less labor is required to grow more and more food. It has seen national farm and environmental policies dating back to the New Deal create an ever increasing bureaucratic nettle bed within which to work. It has seen the farm economy increasingly jerked around like a yo-yo on the end of Washington's string.

For decades the region has seen some of its brightest citizens flee for the cities and the coasts, where they fueled commerce and innovation through their tireless work ethic and home grown integrity.

Those that remained were thanked with schools that had to consolidate or close. Clinics without doctors, pulpits without pastors, and storefronts without businesses. They were privileged to drive hours for the conveniences and supplies the rest of us take for granted. They were forced to brush off their status as a national punch-line, and endure the indignity of being considered fly-over country. Yet they worked hard. Kept their focus on their businesses and farms and families. Mostly they just wanted to be left alone, but occasionally they could use a little help.

They didn't build McMansions, they refurbished "the old Such-and-Such place." They didn't spend their weekends accumulating frivolous gadgets at the malls that no one built in the towns no one has heard of. They didn't hop from job to job seeking ever better wages only to get caught up in their own rat race. In short, they largely lived within their means. They don't have a housing crisis, because they didn't build many houses. They don't have a commercial real estate bubble, because they don't have any new commercial palaces.

In return they once again witness a government trying to destroy one of their main industries through misguided energy restrictions. They get the privilege of paying exorbitant gasoline prices, though they cannot avoid the long miles and large vehicles required for life on the prairie. They have the opportunity to bear the cost of health reform through reductions in Medicare.

After all the contributions the Plains have made to the country: food, labor, soldiers and energy, and all the hardships they steadfastly endure without complaint, I think the AP should have spared them the added insult of suggesting that they are better off than the rest of the country. I guess the good thing about being at the bottom of a hole, is that it is hard to keep falling.