NewPolitics
What drives the rural very poor into the arms of politicians like whose servility to large corporations and billionaires is so transparently obvious? Pike County in eastern Kentucky exemplifies, in extreme form, this confounding pattern as part of the second poorest Congressional district out of 435. It ranks lowest on a “well-being” index of all counties in the nation. Across the United States in 2021, the rate of deaths from drug overdoses in the United States was 32 per 100,000; in Pike County, the rate was 91 per 100,000.