Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

Chutkan laughs. Lauro sits back down.

Republicans in disarray!

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

The words do not have to be perfect.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

DeSantis transforms Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

I was confident that someone would point it out and thought why not me.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

Putin dreamed of ending NATO, and now it’s Finnish-ed.

Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

The willow is too close to the house.

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27Comments

  3. 3.

    The Republic of Stupidity

    Strip mining…

    What’s not to love about a process that can take a place that once looked like this…

    And turn it into a place that ends up looking like this… ?

  6. 6.

    PeakVT

    It’s a good piece, but a little predictable. One thing that strikes me about reports like this is how many people seem to have a terminal case of coal on the brain. Does no one in southern WV have ideas on how to generate economic activity other than coal (and tourism, which is usually cast as the alternative but missing in this piece)? Maybe the geography really does limit the choices to those two options. Dunno.

  10. 10.

    joeyess

    Jesco White? I watched a documentary on that entire family. What a mess. It was a case study in this country’s poverty and poor education. And a case study in the age old tradition of dividing the working poor along racial and political lines.

    It was funny and sad, triumphant and tragic.

  12. 12.

    joe

    Are JRTs the State breed of WV? According to the all-knowing Wiki, Jesco White now lives in Madison, Boone County, WV with his JRT named Patches.

    If I move to WV one day, will I too end up with a JRT?

  15. 15.

    trollhattan

    @PeakVT:

    Knowing next to nothing about the state myself, I wonder the same thing. Every industry built around extraction has a lifecycle that eventually leads to “bust.” I wonder the same thing about tribes: can they do anything other than building casinos for econimic development? Either the market is already saturated and they’re just snagging customers from one another, or they’re busy minting new gamblers. Neither is a “good thing” and most casino employment is crappy low-wage, low-skill service jobs.

    OT: somebody had fun at GE and AP’s expense today:

    http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2014761359_apusgetaxrefund.html

  16. 16.

    Violet

    @PeakVT:

    Does no one in southern WV have ideas on how to generate economic activity other than coal (and tourism, which is usually cast as the alternative but missing in this piece)? Maybe the geography really does limit the choices to those two options. Dunno.

    When I lived in the area it was coal and tourism. It is kind of isolated and the geography is somewhat of a deterrent, since every road has to go through mountains.

  17. 17.

    trollhattan

    [Crap, I’m in moderation, I suspect because I wrote “cas1no.” It’s usually “soc1alism”.]

    @PeakVT:

    Knowing next to nothing about the state myself, I wonder the same thing. Every industry built around extraction has a lifecycle that eventually leads to “bust.” I wonder the same thing about tribes: can they do anything for economic development other than build cas1nos? Either the market is already saturated and they’re just snagging customers from one another, or they’re busy minting new gamb1ers. Neither is a “good thing” and most cas1no employment is crappy low-wage, low-skill service jobs.

    OT: somebody had fun at GE and AP’s expense today:

    http://seattletimes.nwsource.c…..efund.html

  18. 18.

    slimslowslider

    Another vote for the awesomeness of The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia. And Hasil! Bleak!

  20. 20.

    The Republic of Stupidity

    @Aardvark Cheeselog:

    And the big, ugly bare spots are the mountain top removal sites…

    Lovely…

    I’ve seen the areas in the foothills of the Sierras where they did the water cannon mining back in the 1860’s & 70’s…

    Still looks like the surface of the frickin’ moon… 150 yrs later…

    And only in the last 10 years has all the sediment that washed down into SF Bay FINALLY cleared out…

    I believe the banning of hydraulic mining in CA was one of the 1st environmental laws passed in this country…

    Future generations are just gonna adore and worship us for the mess we’re leaving behind…

  21. 21.

    trollhattan

    @The Republic of Stupidity:

    Yup, ninteenth century tech run amok. The largest site is now a state park (for awhile until it gets defunded). Almost as impressive as this moonscape (I’ve been to the canyon bottom) are the tunnels and flumes built to bring water to the gold sites.

    http://www.parks.ca.gov/default.asp?page_id=494

    Eastwood’s “Pale Rider” does a convincing job re-creating hydraulic mining. IIUC the real impetus for halting the practice was it made the Sacramento River unnavigable (mentioned in your link). Shippers vs. mining companies must have been an interesting battleground.

    Also, too, we’re still dealing with untold tons of mercury left from gold extraction, as well as tens of thousands of abandoned mines. John Galt has a solution, if only he’d share it.

  22. 22.

    Dennis SGMM

    @The Republic of Stupidity:
    Pennsylvania governor Tom Corbett recently appointed energy exec C. Alan Walker to head PA’s Department of Community and Economic Development.
    There’s a joker in the deck:

    Walker, who has contributed $184,000 to Corbett’s campaign efforts since 2004, is CEO and owner of Bradford Energy Company and Bradford Coal, which was once among Pennsylvania’s largest coal mining companies. He also owns or has an interest in 12 other companies, including a trucking business and a central Pennsylvania oil and gas company.
    Walker was Corbett’s first appointee—he chose him to lead the Department of Community and Economic Development in December, before taking office. Now, as Corbett stakes much of the state’s economy on Marcellus Shale gas drilling, a paragraph tucked into the 1,184-page budget gives Walker unprecedented authority to “expedite any permit or action pending in any agency where the creation of jobs may be impacted.” That includes, presumably, coal, oil, gas and trucking.

  23. 23.

    Origuy

    John Prine sang about it years ago: Paradise

    O Daddy, won’t you take back to Muhlenberg County
    Down by the Green River where Paradise lay?
    Well, I’m sorry my son, but you’re too late in asking,
    Mr. Peabody’s coal train has hauled it away..

  24. 24.

    Walker

    How long before this story gets played out along the breadth of the Marcellus Shale?

    The issue is that there are places in the Marcellus shale with jobs. Like my town with its not-unknown university. Anti-fracking signs everywhere in the county, but not so much outside. The fights are downright nasty on the county line.

  25. 25.

    gene108

    @PeakVT:

    Took a field trip to WVa to study valley and ridge formations, for a geology class in college. I didn’t appreciate the jokes about people there marrying cousins, but before the highways and roads got built I could see it being true.

    People live in valleys. They have to go over the tops of the mountains to get to another town, in another valley. That’d be damn hard, prior to the late 20th century, when paved roads started getting laid.

    Even with the roads, the towns can be very isolated. Some of them have small winding one lane roads, that go up switchback, after switchback, until you get to whatever town you want to get to.

    We had stayed in a small town off the New River. They had problems with looters, which changed the way I thought of small towns being all Mayberry, NC and such. Anyway, a short walk from this town was an old, abandoned, town just off the railroad tracks, where the coal cars rode past.

    I’m guessing the town was abandoned in the early 20th century, since there was some date on the bank building, which was still standing. A very nice solid stone block building, with a big arched doorway. There were some footpaths, that went up into the hillside, above the bank. I remember we found some yellow flowering plants, off the switchbacks, which someone probably planted, when people lived on the hillside and those plants must’ve gone wild.

    It was a cool place to bum around for a couple of nights. Even got some coins flattened, as the coal cars went by.

    …and now I’m an accountant…

  26. 26.

    HyperIon

    @Walker wrote:

    Anti-fracking signs everywhere in the county,

    I watched a CSPAN hearing last night on fracking. The OK folks claim that no one in their state has ever been harmed by toxic fluids or gas in the water. Everybody (private sector, public sector, citizens) works together to achieve nirvana. It sounded great but begs the question: WTF PA?

    (Also, too, I’m not sure if I believe the industry guy.)

  27. 27.

    becca

    I knew several Boone county boys while attending Marshall in Huntington. Even dated one, son of black-lung stricken miner. They took pride in Boone’s reputation for toughness. For good reason, I believe.

    We visited my friend’s folks once. The roads were really hairy-scary in their narrow windiness. I remember the bullet-ridden road signs and the local bar that clung to a steep hillside. There was a hand-drawn church raffle sign in the rundown bar that featured a picture of the grand prize- a shotgun. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it still made me uncomfortable as I was a sissy city girl out in the wilds of West Virginia.

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