s skippy the bush kangaroo: bad news from the anti-gummit front

skippy the bush kangaroo



Wednesday, September 23, 2009

bad news from the anti-gummit front

a census taker was found hanged to death in kentucky:


a u.s. census worker found hanged from a tree near a kentucky cemetery had the word "fed" scrawled on his chest, a law enforcement official said wednesday, and the fbi is investigating whether he was a victim of anti-government sentiment.

the law enforcement official, who was not authorized to discuss the case and requested anonymity, did not say what type of instrument was used to write the word on the chest of bill sparkman, a 51-year-old part-time census field worker and teacher. he was found sept. 12 in a remote patch of the daniel boone national forest in rural southeast kentucky.

the census has suspended door-to-door interviews in rural clay county, where the body was found, pending the outcome of the investigation. an autopsy report is pending.

investigators have said little about the case. fbi spokesman david beyer said the bureau is assisting state police and declined to confirm or discuss any details about the crime scene.

"our job is to determine if there was foul play involved — and that's part of the investigation — and if there was foul play involved, whether that is related to his employment as a census worker," said beyer.
we'd suggest that being hung from a tree w/some word or words scrawled on one's body might indeed be "foul play involved."

tho as dougj @ balloon juice sez:

update. a little bit more detail:

lucindia scurry-johnson, assistant director of the census bureau’s southern office in charlotte, n.c., said law enforcement officers have told the agency the matter is “an apparent homicide” but nothing else.
i would still caution against assuming that this was anti-government right-wing violence unless and until more details emerge.
w/all due respect, doug, we doubt that the killer wrote the word "fed" on the victim because he had just had a big lunch.
posted by skippy at 8:05 PM |

10 Comments:

don't forget that there's a lot of meth and pot down there, and they're less than a generation removed from active moonshine operations. "Fed" has been a dirty dirty word in KY for a long, long time. (Which is not to say it doesn't have Bachmann's & Beck's fingerprints all over it. I mean, that stuff they spout is just the right kind of crazy to stick in a meth-head's brain.)
commented by Blogger escoles, 5:36 PM PDT  
Clue #1
"had the word "fed" scrawled on his chest,"
Clue #2
"he was found sept. 12 in a remote patch of the daniel boone national forest in rural southeast kentucky."

Clue #3

690,000 acres of eastern Kentucky are remote, sparsely populated, very accessible, and possess ideal soil and climate conditions for cannabis cultivation
commented by Blogger nunya, 6:41 PM PDT  
This sure is awful stuff.
commented by Anonymous Texas Liberal, 7:59 PM PDT  
Or it could be misdirection. Here's the deal. The Census Bureau hires people from the communities they're caucusing. The majority of their workers are teachers from that community who are making extra money during the summers. I know this because I was one of them. I'll tell you, I was kind of nervous going some of the places I went to in the piney back woods of Louisiana, we're talking about places just as inbred as anyplace in rural southeast Kentucky, but I was always secure in the knowledge that once I opened my mouth and came out pure backwoods Louisiana and got asked "who's your folks?" and could reply with two very large extended families scattered throughout the area, things would be okay. It was getting the chance to open my mouth that I was nervous about, some of those folks shoot first and ask questions later :).

Anyhow, it could be someone whose kid had been flunked by this teacher. Or there are feuds that have been going on for generations in some of these places, the teacher could have been a member of one clan or extended family and whoever killed him had a beef with that clan. Deal is, the way the Census works, the way the Census recruits people to poll in, err, "difficult" communities (i.e., from within those communities), it's as likely that he got killed for local reasons as it is that he was killed for being a Census worker. Then the word 'Fed' was scrawled on him to confuse the issue, to draw attention away from whatever locals might have some other reason to kill him...

So I'm with the "let's wait and see who dunnit and why" crowd. If it turns out to be some inbred cretin whose kid was flunked by this teacher I won't be any more surprised than if he really *was* shot for going to work for the Census (probably by one of those shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later types that I was always nervous about)...

-- Badtux the Census Penguin
commented by Blogger BadTux, 9:18 PM PDT  
murder in remote area, word fed written on his chest FBI have to take some fast steps to find the killers
commented by Anonymous Limo, 10:21 PM PDT  
FBI's going to definitely be involved. You kill a Federal employee who is engaged in his duties, that's a FEDERAL crime, and the Feebs don't like it, not at all... we were trained to immediately report any crime against us as we tried to perform our duties to our supervisors, who would then contact the FBI and local law enforcement. It was repeatedly emphasized that an assault upon us that happened on the clock or that was in any way related to our professional duties would be a federal crime (and the word 'fed' definitely would tend to indicate that it was related to his professional duties) and that if we were threatened with bodily harm we should quietly remind the person of that fact and then try to withdraw while the person digested that fact, and notify our supervisor immediately. A different census worker would visit that person next, not mentioning the first visit but implicitly emphasizing the fact that he wasn't messing with a single person, he was messing with a very large and powerful organization that, if he harmed one of its workers, would fuck him over in so many different ways he'd never see daylight again.

You think Census workers are just pencil pushers. But we went into some damned dangerous places, folks. Census is *not* a job for wimps -- one reason why they rely so heavily upon veteran school teachers, who generally have seen it all and are pretty damn hard to intimidate, and who are experts at de-escalating violent situations. Remember, Census workers visit *every* home. Even in neighborhoods where most of you here wouldn't last an hour before your car was jacked and you were beaten and left for dead on the pavement. The wonder is that more Census workers aren't killed...

- Badtux the Former Census Penguin
commented by Blogger BadTux, 10:48 PM PDT  
Watch this clip of Beck & Bachmann serving up their Voodoo of whipping people into a frenzy.
(if you can stand it)...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZS9UW0okY4&feature=player_embedded

A chat about the Census, is spun into a discussion about gun control & illegal immigration.

Is that enough innuendo to get people fired up , paranoid & ready to kill?

What they are doing is irresponsible.

Bachmann is an idiot as well.
The census does not ask if you are a citizen.

Maybe because they want illegal immigrants to participate w/o fear of retribution...
and did it occur to her maybe just maybe the Federal Government has access to such things as-
Social Security numbers
Work Taxes
Property tax & home ownership
Credit records
School records
DVM info
Immigration & travel Visas

To know who is a citizen & their general whereabouts??? Hell, new passports even have en electronic chip that works w GPS satellites.

Newsflash Bachmann: The Government does not rely in once every 10 year Census results to know who is a citizen.

In their own sick way, they continue to incite
fear & hatred.

This is a real tragedy, and sadly, one of the points of conducting the Census is to gather current info re demographics to know where financial help is needed for areas in deep poverty.

For the record, I hope Glenn Beck fails to do his Census form & gets both jail time & the $5000 fine. Bastard!
commented by Blogger Fran, 8:33 AM PDT  
No way, how terrible is that? I hope the FBI can get more details. That word FED scrawled on his chest is gruesome. What kind of person would do that?
commented by Anonymous abbee lee, 12:55 PM PDT  
FBI is not lead organization investigating, supposedly Kentucky Police are leading the investigation...
really odd,....usually if you need leads and info- you leak info to the Media ...instead...these people sat on the story since 9.12.09- he supposedly died 911...
that is plenty of time for people to get away with a crime....

I know kentucky got folks there ...
alot of what Badtux said- yup...clans and battles..and I know now certain counties are indeed very meth loaded....( moonshine to meth..) but the area he was killed..not really near homes...the Daniel Boone forest..and near a cemetary...he was planted there..someone wanted him found..
and he was engraved with FED....now NO ONE thinks there is anything normal about this death...no one...

( and if it was related to his teaching or boyscouts ? there would be clues..)

even his friend who was an Ex trooper and was on Rachel was worried...
commented by Blogger enigma4ever, 11:55 PM PDT  
CSI Dogpatch: Who Killed Bill Sparkman?

The scene: eastern Kentucky.

The time: today.

The corpse: Bill Sparkman, a census taker hanged near a Kentucky cemetery, the word “FED” painted on him.

Cue theme music: Squeezebox by the Who (all CSI shows must begin with a Who song, and that’s the only one with a banjo in it. Sorry).

So, who lynched Sparkman?

Let’s do a profile of the killer, beginning in his operating area, Kentucky.

America has known for decades that the people of Appalachia live in appalling conditions: sky-high poverty rates, short life spans, cancer, depression and other serious mental illnesses, and alcoholism all feed off of each other. In this region, one in ten is completely toothless – yep, not a single tooth. A doctor who moved there said that the Appalachians were poorer than the people back where he had come from -- India. Kids in the area are hit particularly hard – heavy alcohol abuse, smoking, mental illness; a toddler with a dozen cavities is not unusual.

Appalachia has higher drug abuse rate than cities like New York and Miami. Oxycontin is a major driver (no wonder they love Oxycontin-poster-boy Rush Limbaugh out there), and job-related injuries in coal country drive up the demand for prescription painkillers. Eastern Kentucky has had a rash of hundreds of drug abuse deaths. The drug epidemic is draining the economy, destabilizing families, hurting education, hurting the economy. And again, kids are leading the way – abuse rates are higher among kids than adults; one doctor who tried to educate the adults about the problems among their kids showed them Oxycontin and found that a lot of the adults were so clueless that they didn’t even recognize it, but the kids knew all about it.

Across the decades, Appalachia has slid a long way down the slippery slope: all of this misery and isolation from the rest of the world paved the way for decades of moonshiners, pot growers and meth lab operators, ultimately evolving into underground economies, corrupted blind-eye local governments, and fear that contact with the federal government can lead not only to trouble with the feds but retribution from the locals. Appalachians despise outsiders connected with authority and the government, and not just the snooping revenooers, either: farm country folks see little point to teachers or book learning, and there is a stigma against seeking help for psychological problems. The federal government is not, of course, giving up: among other things they set up a special task force to fight the epidemic of drug activity and related crime out there.

These people are, of course, the people who need affordable health care the most. And they are the ones who re fighting it the hardest.

So our profile of the killer: young, unemployed adult white male, uneducated and short on teeth, drinks and abuses Oxy, works either farming pot or cooking up meth. Almost certainly a gun owner.

And Republican, obviously. Probably a dittohead, possibly a teabagger. This will be a person who listens to Rush, watches Fox, and clings to an almost religious belief that the 2010 census is part of The Big Plot. He gets a thrill up his leg to hear people like Michelle Bachman screeching that the census will be run by ACORN (read: scary Negroes) and will be the first step to invasions by foreign troops, concentration camps, drone-plane attacks against conservatives, and indoctrinating children, Neal Boortz screaming that the census will be used to take away your house and give it to the “moochers”, Michelle Malkin bellowing that the census is part of a plan to let all aliens vote so that the Democrats have an unfair electoral advantage, and so forth.

So a white male loser dittohead with no teeth. We’ve neatly narrowed down our search to…the whole state of Kentucky. And western West Virginia.

Dang.

Time to call the feds. Because that will definitely settle the situation.
commented by Blogger HelloDollyLlama, 4:00 PM PDT  

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