Kathy, and great diary, as usual.  Lisa and I did a study of demographics and economic statistics in the 5th a while back. What you have mentioned is part of the reason why it is hard to appeal to all of the 5th; the disparity is real, and it is huge.

One thing I would say here, is that 'metes' is how that word is spelled. As a former land surveyor, that term was ingrained in my memory, especially when I came to Virginia. Nearly everything in Virginia is described in this manner, unlike western states and Texas, which are surveyed mostly rectangularly. Thomas Jefferson instituted the Rectangular Survey for Federal Lands starting in Western PA and westward.

Recommended.

At dailykos, bonddad wrote a diary on Income Inequality in the US that talks about the Gini index.

I wouldn't want to do the work, but I'm pretty sure that a Gini index for the 5th would be much closer to Brazil's.  And it would be interesting to see such a thing for Virginia, too.

A surprising number of people in the north of the 5th really are unaware of the poverty in the south.

Most people who live in the Charlottesville area don't often travel south of Lynchburg unless there is a UVA game of some sort in North Carolina. Why WOULD they know how terrible the citizens of that part of the 5th District have had it?
These poor folks have endured layoff after layoff in the factories where many of them have worked for years. Living in Lynchburg we hear the news of Danville, South Boston, Martinsville and the high rate of unemployment trickles over and up to us as well.
Tobacco farmers have struggled. Few have switched to other crops.Mills have shut down. There is no industry and training for other jobs is available but not as much as it should be.
Please help Al Weed get elected. Please support the New College in the Southside area. Kathy, please keep writing about the 5th District and its needs!
Thank you!

In part it's the inconsistency how a person can be well-versed in some European or Asian culture and not have a clue about parallel communities in their back yard.

Alright, that sounds like a rail against elitism or something and it isn't what I mean.  More like it's a kind of ignorance or education gap.

This is near and dear to my heart, as I grew up in Prince Edward County. There was horrible poverty throughout, I think in my elementary school about 40% of the students were on the free lunch program. As bad as things are, they are actually getting better, as the schools in Prince Edward are suprisingly good and Longwood University is really spurring economic growth. Nonetheless, we need someone in Congress who cares about the underprivileged in the 5th, and that person is Al Weed.

I think it's the advice he gave W in the 80's when he was struggling through his 4th stint in rehab.

Where are the metrics that demonstrate that another state college - in Southside, will provide a boost to local economic growth?  I keep hearing this theory, but I don't really see it happening in the small/mid size college towns. Don't mean to disparage the dream, but in places like Radford, and Harrisonburg, these small schools  generate sprawl development - strip malls and mega apartment complexes that service a transient population. And despite RU, Pulaski County, or Radford, are no engines of local commerce.  I'm not sure that this meets the needs of Southside's agrarian tradition. 

My view is that Southside could get a bigger bang for it's restructuring dollar by leveraging the agricaulture/technology power of VPI, JMU and ODU.  Starting and supporting a whole new state university just seems an odd fit.  Applied technology through the community college system seems a better way to go.

have been addressed already.  Here's one link

http://www.governor.virginia.gov/MediaRelations/newsReleases/2006/Jun06/0614.cfm

The endeavor is funded in part by challenge funds put up by local groups and guided by local leaders who are sensitive to the traditions of the area are involved. I don't know all that much about it but somewhere I read that the existing universities play a role - at least Tech is.

They are starting small in a way that is integrated into the community.  I did have such an image of giant ivory towers in a corn patch surrounded by pizza outlets, and it isn't like that at all.  Maybe I'm overly influenced by the Thomas Wolfe novel where he sees his culture and community all but destroyed by the Biltmore crowd and the accompanying rapid growth.

And I haven't seen much written on "space"  And I'm hoping that's because it isn't really all about space.

But there are many references to the fact that we're in a knowledge economy. And part of the problem is with several generations in an environment based on textile mills, mines and plants there was a strong disincentive to complete even high school.  By the way, I started poking around about that and found a bunch of material on the  Hamlet, NC tragedy which was worse than I realized.

So part of the effort needs to address the relevance of higher ed as consistent with and not inimical to cultural identity and heritage. 

Another important part of the culture is that people do not want to leave.  Their ties to the land and community are stronger than many of us experience, and hopefully we can develop an approach where those values can be respected and integrated into security and productivity without excessive strip malls.

And I don't believe that anyone expects direct booming economic growth to take place and make the community unrecognizable, but there will certainly be continued economic diminishment in quality of life if there is no educational opportunity to such a large region beyond basic votech.  Maybe Emory and Henry would be a better starting point for a model when it comes to scale and community integration.

It will be a 4 year institution and in the most literal sense it actually will be a true community college.  I would love to work in such a "start up."  Only problem is that *I* really don't want to move either :)

Factories closing, not enough training for new jobs. New jobs where? In India? Education alone is not the answer; far too often it seems that when people are trained for "new" jobs those jobs, too, have disappeared, and the education doesn't do what it's supposed to.

The jungle capitalism of the conservative system has flourished, and been called "inevitable" globalization by pundits, who then add as an after thought: too bad about the resultant labor arbitrage and decline of the middle class. The fact is, all those trade treaties and the WTO have encouraged and in many cases enabled this destruction of our manufacturing base and, thus, the middle class.

We need Jim Webb and his doctrine of Fairness for All Americans to re-negotiate some of those treaties and include environmental and worker protections as a requirement for other countries' selling their products to us, and to restore economic vitality to depressed areas.

Of course, as the American economy slows and our enormous personal and Bush's national debt begins to crush us, we may not be buying so much from abroad after all. The great American consumers may be nearing the end of their frenetic race, financially exhausted, bankrupt, in debt to their eyeballs with no credit left to continue world-class consumption. Then what? The slower paced pockets of rural poverty like the other half of the 5th CD may begin to look like an attractive way of life. Bargains galore at your mom 'n' pop thrift store, pay me with a dozen eggs--- in a bargain-type economy... Who knows?

I believe that it is important to ask how much "economic development" and employment is driven directly and indirectly by **public sector** spending. Direct employment by various governmental entities and employment via contractors and subcontractors to public entities is not at all an accurate reflection of the state of the U.S. economy or true job market.

In fact, I continue to note that a large number of the so-called "private sector" jobs in the much ballyhooed high tech or IT sectors of NOVA are either direct hires of the U.S. government or contract jobs. How many pure private sector jobs are actually being created for American workers? I think that some extreme skepticism is in order here.

We know that corporate interests are lobbying hard to increase the numbers of non-immigrant visa "guest workers" here in the U.S. to fill our best "knowledge jobs" in IT (but not exclusively in IT). George Allen is a leader in this effort as the co-sponsor of the so-called "SKIL bill" in the Senate.

Perhaps some others on this blog will share their observations about the numbers of foreign guest workers filling middle class "knowledge jobs" in NOVA? I would also like to hear from others who can point out that much "private sector" IT work is actually paid for by tax-payers. And, of course, there is a generally well-paid contingent of American IT workers directly employed by the U.S. government.

If we were to subtract these segments from the NOVA workforce along with other similarly situated non-IT people working under similar conditions of direct and indirect public sector employment, I wonder how much true "private sector" employment there really is and how it breaks down in terms of income?

Destroying our industrial/manufacturing jobs base combined with offshore outsourcing and NIV worker replacement of the white collar *private sector* jobs is a situation which needs close scrutiny -- the sort of scrutiny the Bush/Allen corporatists do not want.

We need a "blue and white" alliance: white collar and blue collar workers who want to maintain a middle class society.

Someone was talking just today about a growth speck - 6 or 7 really nice jobs with one company in a nearby state.  And they were all driven by gov't contracts come to think of it.

A dual long term commitment to education and retaining sufficient number of jobs in this country is required.

Bio desil, alternative energies anything.

Yes a college would help. I have no idea about the research done to show it but when you do have a college in your area it brings a different mind set along w/ hope.

Unless education leads to employment and improved standards of living, there is no purpose served. As I indicated in my previous posting, the vigor of the white collar jobs base for American workers is questionable. Why would anyone invest in education unless there is a clear benefit? If "knowledge jobs" in white collar professions are now being outsourced or filled with imported "guest workers" -- in preference to Americans, there is NO economic reason for more people to enter colleges -- no reason to retrain.

The middle class jobs base in the U.S. is shrinking -- not growing. The number of jobs in the U.S. available for Americans requiring advanced education is shrinking. BLS statistics for several years have shown this trend. Economist Paul Craig Roberts has written about this repeatedly in articles published on Counterpunch.com

But I was ready to argue with you because sometimes education is for fun :)  That means I am too tired and better quit writing.

Education comes in many forms but fun is a luxury if one must struggle for economic survival. Pushing the living standards of more Americans downward essentially guarantees that education without immediate economic justification will become more restricted to the wealthiest and therefore narrowest segments of our society.

I don't think that education will cease but the financial incentives for education are being eliminated. As our becomes increasingly more like a Third World nation, the bitter divisions of class evident in these nations will become more pronounced in the U.S. as well. Jim Webb sees this happening now...

You are quite correct that education is fun; it's tremendously satisfying. It's a tremendous shame that our national leaders now create disincentives for Americans to undertake real education -- as distinguished from "skills training".