I’ve somehow missed it until today, but apparently rumors are rampant that Greater Johnstown is poised for an influx of hundreds of migrant families, presumably from south of our national border.
It’s a different slant on a familiar tale for our area.
One political candidate and frequent critic of both City Government and the Greater Johnstown School District, not that long ago counted 14 low-income housing sites within the city limits.
This doesn’t include the growth of Section 8 housing dispersed through the metropolitan area.
Many of these facilities are kept occupied by advertising campaigns designed to lure those from much larger cities who are on the public dole to come here so their freebie dollars will go further due to our lower cost of living.
The critic’s point is that the resulting influx of people from Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and other urban areas hasn’t exactly resulted in us getting the cream of the crop of those residents.
Read the crime roundup in the local liberal house organ newspaper – whenever the chief propagandist decides to run one – and note how often there are references to people formerly from out of the area and/or still living in those areas, but coming here to pursue free-enterprise ventures such as dealing drugs. That is perhaps while bunking in low-income housing units occupied by associates from the old ‘hood.
These newcomers are bringing more and more crime into an area that, when I was growing up, used to compete for the lowest crime rate in the nation.
Admittedly, critics back then suspected numbers were being massaged, sort of like current-day national election totals or COVID-19 death figures, or the local newspaper’s phone bank, pump-up-the-vote approach to getting us named Hockeyville a few years back.
Regardless, now even a thorough massage wouldn’t get us within spitting (shooting?) distance of those low-crime days.
Looking at statistics on Neighborhoodscout.com, Johnstown is safer per capita than just six percent of cities nationwide.
We should be so proud!
Predictably, our largest area school district, which produces more than its share of unprepared graduates, thinks throwing more money at the problem will solve everything.
Already blessed with more money per pupil than other area school districts due to governmental handouts, administrators are universally Oliver Twist-like with begging bowls in hand asking various governmental agencies, “Please sir, I want some more.”
This is the triumph of hope over experience.
Much was made over Joe Biden’s messy retreat from Afghanistan, an exclamation point to the loss in America’s lengthiest war. That forgets that in the mid-1960’s President Lyndon Johnson declared his War on Poverty, the gameplan being to give, give, give taxpayer dollars to the impoverished.
Almost 60 years later, that “War” rages on, with results arguably worse that those achieved in Afghanistan, both in terms of dollars wasted and limited results achieved.
Certainly the Johnstown battlefield of the War on Poverty has been lost. What once was a small industrial city long on relatively highly paid workers in steel mills and mines, has devolved to an outpost that annually is ranked the poorest town in Pennsylvania with a population under 25,000 people.
Before the crime escalation, Johnstown used to be known as The Friendly City. Due to numerous natural disasters, it also had been called The Flood City.
Now, with poverty the only growth industry locally, we should be The City On The Dole.
Or, in a nod to rampant crime activity, we could be The Crime Capital.
Either fits, unfortunately.
Sam Ross Jr's site 