Word: breathitt
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...Turner family of Eastern Kentucky's Breathitt County, politics comes as naturally as breathing. Ervine Turner, who died last year after a 40-year career as state senator, school superintendent and circuit judge, first became a power in the mountainous area when he brought Breathitt the benefits of the New Deal. His death did nothing to weaken his family's Snopesian hold on the county. His wife Marie served as county school superintendent for 38 years until her retirement last June, and still remains president of the Citizens Bank of Jackson, the county seat. Their son John...
...however, the family's dominance of Breathitt County's affairs is being challenged by the state's Republican administration. Alarmed at what he considers partisan abuse of the poverty program, Governor Louie B. Nunn has vetoed a $177,000 Office of Economic Opportunity grant to the Middle Kentucky River Area Development Council (MKRADC). The organization, headquartered in Jackson and run by Mrs. Howell, is responsible for administering sorely needed poverty projects worth $2,000,000 a year in Breathitt and three neighboring counties. Two-thirds of the region's families have incomes of less than...
...days last week, Bobby and a caravan of 36 cars crammed with out-of-state reporters, committee staffers and electronic gear burned up the dirt-topped back roads of eastern Kentucky's poverty-blighted Wolfe, Breathitt, Knott, Harlan and Letcher counties, halting in hidden hollows at weather-bleached wood and tar-paper shanties sagging with neglect. And in spavined one-horse communities named Neon, Grassy Creek, Mousie, Fisty, Jackhorn and Cody, ragged, slack-eyed men and women and listless children with bellies taut from hunger spoke of their need...
Responding to the complaints, the state in recent years has adopted ever-tougher curbs on the strippers. Most stringent of all was the order signed this month by outgoing Governor Edward T. Breathitt ten hours before turning over his office to incoming Republican Louie B. Nunn. The order forbids strip miners from working slopes steeper than 28°. Straight up in the air went the industry, thundering that it would be driven out of business, which was exactly what it said last year when the maximum slope was put at 33°. Since then, new operations have doubled...
...industry predictably asked Kentucky's courts to erase the new ruling, counted on at least moral support from Louie Nunn, whose gubernatorial campaign they had supported. They were in for a disappointment. Not only did Nunn go along with the order, but he also persuaded Ned Breathitt's director of reclamation, Elmore Grim, who had helped draw up the regulations, to stay on the job. When a restraining order against carrying out the regulations was knocked down in court, Grim pledged strict enforcement...