Congress Turns Its Back on Rural America

[xchrom]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/06/14




For fifteen years in Neodesha, Kansas (population 2,486) there were only two options for early childhood education services in town: a program for at-risk 4-year-olds operated by the school district, and a Head Start Center for children ages 0 through 5 run by the Southeast Kansas Community Action Program (SEK-CAP).

SEK-CAP offers a range of services to twelve counties, responding to the housing, utilities, transportation, employment, medical care, child care, education and nutrition needs of low-income people in southeast Kansas. The counties have a combined population of approximately 192,000 people and the child poverty rate is nearly 26 percent — an increase of 13 percent in the past year. The past three years have also seen a rise in unemployment, food and housing insecurity, as well as agricultural and natural disasters.

Due to sequester cuts, SEK-CAP decided in May that it could no longer afford to operate the Head Start Center in Neodesha, which served 17 children and their families, and employed five staff members. The rental and maintenance costs of the building made this closure the obvious choice for the agency to find the savings forced upon it by Congress.

[annabanana]

1. The sequester is hurting ALL Head Start programs..

and all meals-on-wheels, and all daycare programs

Every damn federal nickel that goes to help the poor, the young, the old is being shunted to where shortages won't inconvenience the richest and most powerful interests.

crickets from the CorpoMedia

[CanonRay]

2. Well, Kansas has been voting Republican almost exclusively for decades

so I guess they got what they voted for. That doesn't alleviate the suffering, but for some reason a lot of rural people can't seem to figure out who is on their side and vote accordingly. They've been bullshitted to the point of lunacy.