"Her disability check was gone, and now the only option left was also one of the worst."

[bigtree]

After the check is gone
The underground economy has long been a part of rural America, where some receiving disability benefits are forced to work to survive.

MALLORY, W.Va. — For the people of the hollow, opportunity begins where the road ends, and that was where they now went, driving onto a dirt path that vanished into forest. It was here that they came at the end of the month, when the disability checks were long gone, and the next were still days away, and the only option left was also one of the worst.

The goal was simple. Get to the top of the mountain. Collect as many wild roots as possible to sell to a local buyer. Avoid the copperheads and rattlesnakes. Descend before the rains came again and flooded their way out.


Bobby Dempsey washes roots in a creek behind his trailer.


“My doctor gets on me all the time getting out here and doing stuff like this,” said Donna Jean Dempsey, 51, who had quintuple bypass surgery in 2011, as she gripped the passenger-side handle inside the truck. But what alternative was there? Her $735 disability check was the only steady money she and her brother Bobby Dempsey, who was driving, had coming in, and it was never enough. She didn’t have running water. She didn’t have furniture. For seven days in a row, she had worn the same gray flannel shirt and ripped jeans, muddy from the mountains.

“You can’t just sit still,” she told Bobby, 52.

“You got to keep going,” he replied.

And where they were going was deep into the underground American economy, where researchers know some people receiving disability benefits are forced to work illegally after the checks are spent — because they can’t hold a regular job, because no one will hire them, because disability payments on average amount to less than minimum wage, sometimes much less, and because it’s hard to live on so little...

read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/local/2017/10/06/her-disability-check-was-gone-and-now-the-only-option-left-was-also-one-of-the-worst/?tid=sm_tw&utm_term=.64048dcdf71a



Donna Jean Dempsey pauses after losing her train of thought while trying to recall the history of Mallory, where she lives in a tiny rented shed that has no plumbing. She gets water from a brother who lives in a trailer across the road.

[MFM008]

1. Keep voting republican

You'll be dead soon...........

[Ms. Toad]

2. I didn't find a single thing in the article

that suggested their voting preferences.

[MFM008]

4. what clowns but republicans

vote against their own interests?
What kind of fools put in a dangerous psychotic like the maggot in chief?
BESIDES RUSSIANS?

[Ms. Toad]

5. Why are you assuming they voted against their own interests?

That was my basic question. I don't see a thing that identifies who they voted for (by name or party).

Unless I'm missing something, you're making assumptons based on geography, appearance, education, etc. that they voted for Trump.

[mfcorey1]

3. WOW! Come on America. Your people are in dire straits while you pour money

into covering a serial golfer. Your ignorant congress is pondering how to take away the little money that people do have. Republican or Democrat....it is wrong and even criminal when it comes to hungry and starving children. Damn!