Volume XIV, Issue VIa
Conference on Rural Prosperity
White House Conference Addresses Heartland Issues
Terry Kelley, Beverley Manor Magisterial District Supervisor attends the White House Conference on Rural Prosperity.
How do we arrive at such things as the lowest minority unemployment rates in history and a strengthened economy in the Heartland? Behind the scenes work like this conference attended by Beverley Manor Supervisor Terry Kelley are part of the process of returning America to the people who make her robust. Indeed, our local supervisor attended a meeting at the White House recently that is indicative of the real news coming out of Washington these days!
The White House Conference agenda included remarks from Vice President of the United States Mike Pence,as well as discussion with federal leadership including U.S.Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue, U.S.Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke, and Food and Drug Administration Commission Scott Gottlieb. The conference focused on the Agriculture and Rural Prosperity Task Force,which was chaired by Secretary Perdue. The Task Force was tasked with identifying legislative, regulatory, and policy changes to achieve rural prosperity in seven areas: rural American agriculture, economic development, job growth, infrastructure improvements, technological innovation, energy security, and quality of life in rural America.
Minority unemployment is at an all-time low. Manufacturing and energy production are coming back. The President’s 2018 State of the Union Address is reporting the numbers of the miracle the previous administration deemed ‘impossible.’ And so, this billboard I saw in coal country in West Virginia in 2012 tells me that the Heartland’s faith has been rewarded! Those were dark days. The ‘War on Coal’ was in full swing. My business had dried up significantly. One major client simply stopped paying. It was a time for Faith, to be sure!
As four years of stagnation dragged on, the 2016 election brought an unlikely result. The brash ‘outsider’ rose to the top of the Republican pack, but the ‘swamp’ he promised to drain had its own presumptive winner. Newsweek even published its ‘Madam President’ special commemorative issue ahead of the election. It looked like Barack Hussein Obama, or ‘Barry Soetoro,’ was going to get his ‘Third Term.’ To say that many of us were discouraged would be an understatement. The media didn’t take Donald Trump seriously. To them he was good theater and nothing more. They underestimated. The Heartland, however, saw something more.
To those of us who were left out, be it coal miners in Pennsylvania or industrial workers in hundreds of little despairing towns across the nation, water was about to be turned to wine!
Donald Trump was brash and direct. He was the antithesis of the polished politicians of the ‘swamp’ and in a thousand forgotten places in this country, he became their champion. Many of us had hoped for a true gentleman like Ben Carson or a Constitutionalist like Ted Cruz, but the ‘swamp’ was too deep. The ‘deep state’ was too embedded. He brought forgotten America back into the electoral process and the rest is history. This ‘Miracle on Pennsylvania Avenue’ was controversial. Donald Trump may not be a perfect man, but his own love of this country truly became the ‘water’ that could be turned into wine!
Vice-President Mike Pence addresses the delegates.
