In the hit show, Green Acres, Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor portrayed a couple who move from New York City to a rural county. The plot line of the show usually consisted of Albert’s character’s attempts to fit in and his constant failure to be “one of the locals.”
It was a story about the 1% moving into the 99% before the Occupy movement made those percents famous.
To listen to some of the Bath Community Hospital’s Board of Directors talk, it would be easy to believe they just stepped down from the tractor and strolled over to discuss the weather, the Lion’s Club meeting and the fried chicken they had at the cafeteria after the preacher finished last Sunday.
If a person closes their eyes really tight, it’s almost possible to imagine the board member chewing on a blade of grass while he waxes poetic about Bath County and all that means to him.
Many residents of the rural county in western Virginia understand that the talk and the clothes don’t make the man. It’s the heart, mind and spirit that sets these mountain people apart. It’s a way of life that the 1 percenters just never will be able to wrap their minds around.
David Troast, one of the board members, is more used to dealing in the stuffy fields of corrupt New Jersey politics than the hills and ‘hollers of western Virginia.
David Troast
Ridgewood, New Jersey, Troast’s boyhood home, could be called the 90210 of the East Coast. A rich village of 27,000, Ridgewood’s driveways are filled with BMWs and Mercedes — and that’s just the cars the kiddies own. If there’s a Chevrolet or Ford seen, it belongs to one of the hundreds of housekeepers or yard men employed within the conclave of cash.
Located in Bergen County, Ridgewood sits close to Wykoff, Midland Park, Paramus and Glen Rock. At any of the 9 elementary schools, the kids are still going through an Abercrombie and Fitch phase but start to turn a little more “hipster” as they move into high school.
According to one source, which still lives in Ridgewood, the Ridgewood moms have always been about botox and fake boobs.. The mothers still hang out at Lilly Pulitzer over on East Ridgewood Avenue and gossip about any of the other moms who couldn’t make it that day.
Ranked #15 on Money Magazine’s 25 top-earning towns in the USA, most of the parents, especially the dads, work in New York City, about an hour away.
Growing up in Ridgewood gave Troast, a life-long Republican, need and desire to hang around the movers and shakers — no matter if their character was as fake as their boobs.
In the mid-90s, when living in New Jersey, Troast was one of the inner-circle of Governor Christie Whitman’s friends. When Christie needed a person to run an advisory council to study free needle-exchange programs, she turned to her buddy Troast.
Hardly sounds like a member of the 99%.
It can be challenging to talk to a person and see where the morals and political ideals are. A person can easily say one thing and do another. A litmus test though is to see in which direction their financial contributions flow. Look at the politician they support and it can be determined, with some degree of certainty, what a person believes politically.
According to FindTheBest.com, Mr. Troast has contributed $2500 to the Bob Goodlattee For Congress Committee — another member of the 1% club.
Bob Goodlatte
Bob Goodlatte is the U.S. Representative for the 6th congressional district of Virginia. Goodlatte was first elected to the office in 1993 and has stayed there for 21 years.
The office has been good to him. The latest figures available, from 2012, show that Goodlatte has a net worth of just upwards of $2.3 million. It’s a figure that is $1.4 million more than the average U.S. Representative. Definitely not one of the 99%.
The money hasn’t made Goodlatte more sympathetic to the people he represents though. Several groups periodically publish Congressional scorecards that rate each congress members’ position on several issues, and Goodlatte’s record isn’t stellar.
Based on the ratings published between 2012 and 2014, Goodlatte’s voting record shows that he is strongly against civil liberties, strongly against public education and strongly against environmental regulation which could improve the quality of life for many Virginians.
A fair assumption would be that a person that supports Goodlatte also is against civil liberties, public education and protecting the environment.
So, both Troast and Goodlatte fall comfortably into the 1%, despite the folksy, down home manner they try to present.
Who Are the 1%
Most people think it takes a million dollars to make it into the 1% club. According to newly released statistics from the Internal Revenue Service, it takes just $343,927 to join that rarefied group.
In 2011/2012, Occupy protesters railed against the Top 1% as they tried to raise awareness of the growing economic gap between the 1% and everybody else in America.
The households that comprise the 1% control life for the rest of us — the 99%.
It would be interesting to find out how many of the current Bath Community Board members — and the legislators they support — fall into the snobbery of the 1%.
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