Owsley County in eastern Kentucky is one of the nation's poorest. Its 5,023 people scrape by on a per capita income of $500 a year, mostly from tobacco or moonshining. Unemployment runs at 24%. No trains or buses stop in Booneville, the county seat, and the people are largely left alone in their poverty. Then, in November, Frank Ashley of the Louisville Courier-Journal came to town.
The reporter was assigned to find out how a $50,500 federal appropriation to create jobs was being spent. Nobody argued with the need for such funds, but a few local citizens thought that County Judge Elijah...
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