Duff says "WV is the Future of America"

http://www.playboy.com/articles/duffonomics-west-virginia-is-the-future-of-america/index.html

Idiot or savant?

AAAHH so, .... Huntington, the Western Tourist Gateway into West Virginia.

But all I saw on that afternoon were closed shops with “for lease” signs and boarded-up storefronts. To my eye, about 60 percent of the businesses were shut down.

Traveling to Huntington, West Virginia, from Augusta, Georgia, by bus takes you straight through the heart of Appalachia and its depleted coal towns and “hollers”—valleys known as hollows, or hollers in the local drawl. This area long ago got used to being ignored when it comes to government infrastructure help. Diane Sawyer did a two-hour expose on poverty in the Appalachian Mountains a few weeks back that was jaw-dropping. The stuff she documented just shouldn’t be happening here in the States—but it is.

Would Charleston have fared any better?

The dark of night hides a lot of sins in the Cities and Towns.

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Holy Crap!

Jimmy reads Playboy for the articles.

Look, I don't talk trash about West Virginia because WV regularly takes hits she doesn't deserve and because doing so doesn't "help" anything. Yet, I find myself compelled to make a couple negative observations about Huntington.

Huntington is the WV city that I avoid because of crime. Armed robberies, murders, rapes, and drug dealing abound. I can't help but think Duff was so enamoured with Huntington because he didn't have to look too far for his next high. I've traveled to at least a dozen high schools in WV this year and HHS is the only one with a gated campus in the bunch. It says something to me that when I dropped my daughter off to take the SAT on a Saturday morning I had to stop and tell a guard why I was there.

Finally, one shouldn't ignore the economic impact that 14,000 college students have on a city with a population of not quite 50,000 residents.

Right, that is 28% of the residents that are just spending money.

Glenville is similary blessed.

That "decrepit" fifteen story bank building could only have been the Guaranty National Bank. Don Chafin the Sheriff of Logan County during the Battle for Blair Mountain lived in the penthouse until his death in 1954. I don't recall anything decrepit about the building.

While it is true that the area around what was 16th Street and is now Martin Luther King Blvd is very undesirable and even dangerous, much of the city remains safe and highly liveable. It is laid out in such a way that anyone can find his way.