Great piece on the changing politics in my state, although one issue seems to be conspicuously absent when discussing the recent politics in the state. Wonder what that is?
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Great piece on the changing politics in my state, although one issue seems to be conspicuously absent when discussing the recent politics in the state. Wonder what that is?
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Jerzy Russian
You mean I have to read the piece to find out what is missing? You are a tough blog master.
mai naem
@Jerzy Russian: I don’t even have to read the piece to know that the blogmaster is talking about black blaaack blackity black black black blllaccckk.
sharl
Naked mopping?
dedc79
And when you line it up against Virginia and North Carolina’s transition from red toward blue (more in VA than NC), the missing “issue” is even more striking.
eemom
Old friend in your state once told me he was blocking that on his license plate. When I asked why, he said “cuz it’s stupid.”
Baud
@dedc79:
Interesting, given how West Virginia was formed.
BGinCHI
Safe, affordable Cole?
Warren Terra
I’d assumed this would be an opportunity to make a joke about how I was completely in the dark, and maybe someone could race to my rescue, to enlighten me. But the topic doesn’t get ridiculously shortchanged:
I’m not sure I completely agree with the author (fear of Blacks, Hispanics, and LGBTQ was a Republican staple even when the Democratic standardbearers were white (not to mention straight, and married), and it’s fair to say that among those susceptible to it racial prejudice has been whipped up over recent years), but she’s not ignoring it.
Oh, and marriage equality gets a mention, too, in passing, so it’s not that (and by extension not the radical notion of treating Teh Ghey like people).
Seriously, what is the issue you see as overlooked?
Boudica
The article does mention racism briefly snd discounts it. My advice to WV is… voal is dying. Go can choose to die with it or get your asses in gear and find another industry for your state.
Violet
Oh, it’s there:
Yeppers.
Cain
Er waht is missing? I don’t get it? In any case, their main problem is that their reliance on coal for jobs is what is causing the issue. Thanks to fracking and what not, natural gas has become the cheaper solution edging out coal. It’s not washington’s fault that this is happening, it is the free market. You can’t just keep on going with what you had in teh past and expect it to last forever.
In Oregon, timber is nothing like what it was and a lto of towns are hurting, but they are trying to convert themselves to something else since timber jobs are gone and they are not coming back. People need to stop blaming the government and retrain themselves and not bemoan the fact that life has changed. Besides, who the fuck wants to be in some dark cavern gtting out coal, killing your health and then have lack of healthcare. Sounds stupid to me.
Boudica
@Boudica: obviously Coal not voal.
Cain
@Violet:
The irony is that they are probably violating the 10 commandments somewhere just for the reason they are doing it.
shortstop
Oh, she dances around it.
“Even if racism is an influence….” Yeah, even if.
And then later (paraphrasing): “The right kind of Democrat can still get elected in WV…Bill Clinton or, if she runs, Hillary.” WINK, WINK.
Violet
Good thing they hate Washington so much.
Fluke bucket
BGinCHI
@shortstop: “The white kind of Democrat….”
Warren Terra
I think the article’s thesis that the central issue is the diminishing reliability of coal as a driver of the West Virginia economy is to blame isn’t completely terrible. As pointed out by @Cain, this isn’t mainly the fault of the government (we can argue it ought to be, given Anthropogenic Climate Change, but it isn’t) – but it is something that is happening, and is important.
Where the article and the author really fall down is in their credulousness, and in the author’s (presumed) desire to point no fingers and cast no aspersions. A lot of people in West Virginia see diminishing prospects in coal as a guarantor of economic prosperity: they see what they have slipping away from them, and they lash out in their anger and fear. The author tries to claim that this explains their political drift, quite apart from questions of Race, or Immigration, or Gay Rights, or Healthcare.
But the critical thing is that the shrinking value of coal mining is in no way separate from those issues – at least not the first three, and in the Fox News Narrative not even from the fourth! Sure, treating Gay folks as if they were people has nothing to do with the place of coal in our economy – but it’s got a lot to do with taking these people’s certainties and their superior social position away from them. They have a world they know, in which they can live off of coal and can bash Gays, Blacks, and Browns – and all of that is being taken away from them! Plus the Evil Big Government is going to do mysterious and malign things to their healthcare!
sharl
Yeah, what I get from that article is a smoldering rage, borne of feelings of economic frustration and hopelessness. A wonderful market for political talk shows I’m sure (probably with lots of ads for dick pills and prepper/survivalist kits to counter all the impotence), not to mention fertile ground for a certain kind of domestic political xenophobia.
They’ve been getting in the mood to blame someone for some time. Who better than that highly educated melanin-enhanced fella at the top, evidence-to-the-contrary be damned?
Keith P.
Cousin-fucking?
Ripley
Huh, wouldn’t have placed McArdle in redneck country, but it does explain some things. The salt is pink from the rusty top of the shaker, right?
WereBear
@Violet: And for the greatest irony:
nineone
If everybody is white then there can be no racism. The Republicans are correct; liberals and minorities are the real racists. Therefore Obama should just give up and surrender to West Virginia’s totes superior non-racist White majority and let them remake the country, nay the whole wide world, in it’s image. Forever and ever, Amen.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Cain: Didn’t Jesus have something to say about the most important commandment?
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
Obama hates coal because he’s black.
Matt McIrvin
@Boudica: Well, also voal, because my cat ate it.
PurpleGirl
@Cain: I forget where I read it but most coal these days, even in WV, is strip mined, with mountain tops being bull-dozed off to get to the coal beds. The economics are different and the environment damage is much worse.
pseudonymous in nc
@Baud:
But not unexpected, given the rest of Union-supporting Appalachia.
Honus
It’s demographics, too. In 1970, when I was in high school, McDowell county had a population of around 100,000 diverse citizens, nearly all union mine workers. Today, it’s less than 10,000. And those 10,000 are all white, and all on oxycontin and transfer payments. So they want to get the government out of their medicare, and worship the White Confederate Jesus, just like Devil Anse Hatfield.
sharl
Somewhat relatedly, here is a Matrix-inspired poster (original source unknown), I’m guessing created by a Tea Partier and/or Alex Jones fan.
As a Photoshop job it ain’t bad I guess (not a professional image analyst here), other than the colors of the pills maybe being reversed from what the creator intended.*
*Although maybe there is some kind of Freudian Slip-influence on the cognitive dissonance going on there.
Honus
“His most likely successor is Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, the daughter of a three-term governor, who would be the first Republican that West Virginia elected to the Senate since 1956.”
And if I recall correctly, in 1956, that Republican senator was Chap Revercomb, a civil rights advocate, who was defeated by Robert Byrd, running on a segregationist platform. Which for which Byrd, to his credit, later repeatedly and sincerely repudiated and apologized.
West Virginia University recruited and enrolled its first black athletes in 1966, without incident. I don’t believe that would happen today. I used to be proud to be a West Virginia native; now, not so much.
LeftCoastTom
As others have asked, not sure what you mean by the “conspicuously absent” issue…apart from the article’s explicit mention of Obama Derangement Syndrome, there’s this…
So…what exactly distinguishes the “right kind of Democrat” from one that can’t carry a single county in WV? It isn’t policy, there wasn’t much daylight on policy between Obama and Clinton in the 2008 primary. It isn’t ovaries, since Bill Clinton is also the “right kind of Democrat”.
What seems odd to me…to look at WV’s coal as a foundation of prosperity seems to ignore the fact that WV has never been known as a prosperous state. Whatever prosperity WV’s coal offered seems to have found its way to people from elsewhere.
AxelFoley
@BGinCHI:
What you did there, yeah I saw it.
RobertB
I remember a statement from one of my Economics professors, that went something like, “The businesses that are the least lucrative for your local economy are resource extraction and tourism.” I don’t know if that’s true, but those industries haven’t done WV any favors.
If you’re feeling in a _real_ tinfoil hat mood, Google up “Appalachian economic colonialism”.
I grew up in Huntington, and part of me loves that state. Another part of me would _never_ move back, if you paid me. The latter part is winning.
maeve
I was on my way to a gay gypsy bar mitzvah for the disabled, when I suddenlly though – let’s kill Hitler
Just thought I’d throw that in there.
Violet
@maeve: Was that before or after your mandatory abortion in the FEMA re-education camp?
COB
…although one issue seems to be conspicuously absent when discussing the recent politics in the state. Wonder what that is?
Joining the Big Twelve? Did they discuss the impact that geographical dislocation has had on West Virginia? You’re known by the company you keep.
khead
The town shown in the cover photo for the story – with the two large murals on the buildings – is my hometown.
Ben Mays
@Honus:
My folks all lived there too. Lots of Boyds, Days, Matneys, Lockhart’s, et al. I took my daughter to Welch 2 years ago, just to see from whence she came. It is so dismal. Empty home, storefronts and (seemed to me) lives. Just industrial waste products. sigh.
Ben Mays
@Honus:
My folks all lived there too. Lots of Boyds, Days, Matneys, Lockhart’s, et al. I took my daughter to Welch 2 years ago, just to see from whence she came. It is so dismal. Empty home, storefronts and (seemed to me) lives. Just industrial waste products. sigh.
khead
@Honus:
McDowell hasn’t seen 100K since the 50s. My old man graduated high school there in ’51 and it’s been dying a slow death for 60 years.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Yup, that’s Obama, sworn enemy of road-building
Chris
@RobertB:
That looks interesting.
There’s probably a thesis to be written (if it hasn’t been already) about how the entire United States was its own colony. Substitute the robber barons for the British, and local elites like Southern sharecroppers and urban machine politicians for local elites like Arab sheikhs and Indian maharajahs.
Citizen_X
Stout West Virginia men turning into stay-at-home cat ladies?
Violet
@Citizen_X:
The problem of disappearing mustard?
Citizen_X
@Violet: Ooh! I know! The scourge of home accidents.
I’ll stop now.
jl
@mai naem: yes, I glanced through the piece and figured that too.
I mentioned it during the 2008 campaign, but vividly remember a clip of a WV mountain man in full wild beard saying that he figured the rich white man been holding the black man down for so long, a black president would be dangerous, since his people (? Obama is mixed race IIRC) might lead to a black take over, and they would hold that white man down. So, points for honesty, I guess.
On the other hand, maybe what was missing was the famous WV Roadkill Cookoff of Pocahontas County. I think the guy who started that was the author of a roadkill cookbook written in verse. And he organized a statewide deer roadkill system that gives the meat to charity. Lost the links, so you folks will have to take my word for it.
West By God Virginia. I need to go back there someday and check out some of their rails to trails things.
LesGS
@Violet: In my mind, the 10 Commandments shouldn’t be engraved on or within the boundaries of our government’s courthouses because many of them are explicitly unconstitutional.
CONGRATULATIONS!
Feel bad for West Virginia. Bottom of the American heap by virtually any measure of civilized society and they full well know it.
I believe a man who’s occasionally known to say smart things called it correctly: “clinging to their guns and religion”. He forgot to mention oxycontin but that’s probably just out of politeness.
Don’t really know what else they could do. Large scale manufacturing isn’t going to fly, no good way to get mass quantities of goods in or out (little rail, no navigable rivers). You can only sell so much Fiestaware. I’m kind of a fanatic about having only US made kitchen stuff, so I’ve probably paid at least three months of some poor Fiesta worker’s salary, but once you’re stocked up on plates and servingware and cups you’re pretty much done. Tech? People who’ve spat on schools for generations aren’t going to be able to do that. King Coal is going away. They’re nice people, a lot of them, but that doesn’t pay anybody’s bills. Robert Byrd did ’em more good than anyone had before or will since, but he’s dead and gone. I feel for them even while cringing at how they’re going about dealing with their very, very real problems.
gnomedad
Who wants to carve?
hueyplong
“West Virginia University recruited and enrolled its first black athletes in 1966, without incident.”
I’ve got film of a pair of WVU-Davidson basketball games during the 1965-66 season. Because freshmen were ineligible back then, the black Mountaineers visible on the game film had to have enrolled in the fall of 1964 and were recruited before then.
Maybe the 1966 reference was to football.
Culture of Truth
natural gas?
amk
joe munchkin switching parties?
Citizen_X
And that’s because…Obama’s the Devil? Help me out here, West Virginia.
Felonius Monk
I don’t think the issue was absent from the article:
Isn’t that just code for “everybody in this county hates blacks”?
Baud
The state should officially change its motto to “I blame Obama.”
Baud
@Citizen_X:
Because the zeroeth commandment is “Thou shall not elect a black man president.”
amk
@Baud: I-hate-Obama would be more apt.
Roxy
So, I guess West Viriginia is not “Almost heaven” and “Growin’ like a breeze”
Matt McIrvin
@LeftCoastTom: On top of the Clintons being white, there’s also their connection with Arkansas, which is part of cultural Greater Appalachia. I think that actually counts for a lot. The Clintons did better in that whole region than a Northeastern liberal could. Of course, Hillary Clinton is from Illinois and later became a Senator from New York, but that connection still seems to exist in the minds of Appalachian voters.
pseudonymous in nc
Charles Blow’s map of Appalachia from 2008, showing the Clinton-Obama primary vote, deserves a glance.
Anoniminous
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Back in the 1870s Germany and West Virginia had coal. Germany spent money on edimacation and built a chemical industry that is still churning billions a year. West Virginia dug it out of the ground and shipped it off to be burnt as fuel. Both Finland and West Virginia have trees all over the damn place. Finland invested in education and built a paper industry; now that that is going down they have developed Designed cellulose-based products that will propel them into the future. West Virginia did and does diddly-squat with their trees.
West Virginians could get out of poverty if they would use their brains for something other than keeping their ears apart and head from imploding.
piratedan
@khead: my dad’s family was/is from just over the mountain in Oceana/Kopperston…. everyone who could, left. Only my uncle’s family remains in town from a family of six. The family never talked about about the coal wars but there are some rich rich veins of resentment that run through those hollers. It’s been a while since I’ve been back in Wyoming County.
sharl
It’s posts like this that make me miss WV-native Joe Bageant. AFAICT there aren’t many eloquent experts in the field of Appalachian Studies (or Redneck Studies for that matter) who write for the layperson, [e.g., Deer Hunting With Jesus – not very joyful reading there]. His pal (and fellow WV-native) Fred Reed is sometimes OK on this topic, but doesn’t have the focus on it that Bageant did.
piratedan
@Anoniminous: who owns the land? it’s one thing to have the resource, but means and access matter too and someone looking to make the investment.
JoyfulA
@Chris: Of all the anthracite mined in Pennsylvania, none of the money stayed anywhere near the mines, either.
The steelmill towns in western Pennsylvania, post-steelmaking, are broke, too.
Felonius Monk
Didn’t see any mention of Obamacare — maybe everyone has great medical insurance so they just don’t care about it.
hildebrand
@maeve: Any Doctor Who reference is always welcome. I would like to see Doctor River Song mow through some folks on the political scene like the she mows thorough the Silence, thank you very much.
? Martin
I lived not far from WV many years ago. Like many parts of PA and OH and KY and VA, they never wanted to leave the 1920s. In a way I couldn’t blame them, it was pretty nice there. But like it or not, the rest of the world disagreed. So rather than adapt to a changing nation and develop new industries and new jobs, they quietly complained and hid down the coal mine and hoped it would all look different when they came back up. Problem was that it had all changed decades before without them realizing. It’s like a voluntary North Korea.
Anoniminous
@piratedan:
I don’t have the slightest idea. It was settled before the National Forest Service was created so I assume it is in private hands.
Yatsuno
@Felonius Monk: Most of them are on Medicaid and/or Medicare. I’m not certain ACA affects them much at all except I think WV did expand it.
EDIT: They did.
Mike G
@gnomedad:
Is this the same quack who attested Cheney had a healthy heart without ever meeting him?
rikyrah
I’ll say it again..
CLINGING TO THE WHITENESS…
plain and simple.
and President Obama should waste one nanosecond on these folks, because?
scav
Reason they need all them there 10 commandments and crosses highly visible and CHREESTIAN greetin’s everywheres is their faith is so weak that it needs the constant buttressing. If the ten were engraved on their hearts (and their hearts, minds and hands working in accordance with same) they wouldn’t need them engraved on stone idols.
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: A lot of towns in Wisconsin are suffering from the same thing. The paper mill goes and there is nothing left.
Anoniminous
@rikyrah:
Because they send two votes to the Senate and three votes to the House.
lamh36
I’m let this bit from Booman on the subject speak for me:
The Real Deadbeats
by BooMan
hitchhiker
You do that, Melissa. You fight for your beloved stone marker.
I swear to FSM, the collapse of nominal Christianity can’t happen fast enough. These people are certifiable.
piratedan
@rikyrah: because they’re still Americans and he’s supposed to represent them as well as us?
Listen, just because we have a bunch of embittered old Appalachian folks that apparently have little in the way of jobs or a future and want to blame somebody, anybody for their plight doesn’t make their plight any less real. We need jobs, everywhere, from podunk small town USA, the inner cities, the indian reservations to the burbs. We all need more opportunity and while I can be incredibly unhappy with how they feel, or their lack of insight or whatever reasons that they have to be so bitter, doesn’t mean that they aren’t any less deserving of help.
Anoniminous
@Omnes Omnibus:
A lot, I dare say the majority, of towns all over the US are suffering from the same thing. The local economy was a one trick pony and when the pony died so did the town.
Ruckus
@rikyrah:
They are his constituents too, even if they don’t want to be.
That’s all I’ve got.
ETA Actually it isn’t. He’s a better person.
OK now I’m done.
TaMara (BHF)
Hi just setting a cookie…
Omnes Omnibus
@rikyrah: Because our side isn’t a bunch of assholes. Because Obama wants to be followed in office by another Democrat.
Anoniminous
@TaMara (BHF):
I thought you were supposed to be giving us recipes for cookies, not setting them.
Felonius Monk
@TaMara (BHF):
Chocolate chip or oatmeal?
ETA: Or more relevant to the discusion — a Black and White?
Yatsuno
@TaMara (BHF): COOKIE???
khead
@piratedan:
My Dad just passed away last year. He spent 76 of his 79 years in McDowell Co. The other 3 were in Germany while in the Army. Ironically, he worked in a bank for 40+ years instead of the mines – a coal mine is no place for a claustrophobic. My entire family left too. I’m one of 12 grandkids on Dad’s side. Only one of those 12 is still living in Welch.
khead
The two counties in this story have exactly zero miles of four lane roads. In 2013.
SiubhanDuinne
@khead:
There’s a great song lyric lurking in that casual throwaway line.
Honus
@khead: look up the 1970 census. McDowell’s population was over 90k
TaMara (BHF)
@Yatsuno: nom, nom, nom
Honus
@hueyplong: sorry, I was a year off:
First African Americans to Play Basketball at West Virginia University
In 1965 West Virginia University sport history was made as the university freshman basketball team listed four African American players- Jim Lewis, Ron Williams, Ed Harvard and Norman Holmes.
Ron Williams was the first varsity player to take the floor for WVU in 1966
khead
@efgoldman:
Never built them. Who needs roads for the people? The coal can travel just fine by rail.
James E. Powell
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Feel bad for West Virginia. Bottom of the American heap by virtually any measure of civilized society and they full well know it.
Are they any worse off than Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, or any of the other enclaves of 19th century economic and social values?
Honus
@hueyplong: Football was actually a bit earlier
First African Americans to Play Football at West Virginia University
The first African American athletes who played football at West Virginia were Roger Alford from Winterville, Ohio (offensive guard) (1963-1965) and Dick Leftridge from Hinton, West Virginia (running back) (1963-1965).
I always thought it was DeMatha’s Garrett Ford in 1965 who integrated wvu football.
Maeve
@hildebrand:
Would that it were that simple.
Chris
@lamh36:
Fucking WORD on all of this.
Cassidy
Nothing changes until you can break the cycle of being born knowing you will work until you die. That goes for any southern state.
Yatsuno
It also doesn’t sound like the state and local governments have done much to expand the business climate or change the diversity of the workforce. Sadder still is none of these folks interviewed mention the state government at all. If anything that’s also a glaring omission. What the hell are they doing in Charleston to improve this shit?
khead
More southern WV. Courtesy of the USATODAY.
khead
@Yatsuno:
King Coal runs everything.
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman:
It does.
cokane
THE SHERIFF IS A NI
catclub
@Warren Terra: “state where 94 percent of the population is white.”
The percentage is even higher in Vermont. Is it trending from blue to red?
Yatsuno
@Omnes Omnibus: Fair warning: wifey will probably be cranky with you.
Omnes Omnibus
@Yatsuno: I can deal.
James E. Powell
@catclub:
The percentage is even higher in Vermont. Is it trending from blue to red?
That’s one of those things that we are not supposed to notice, let alone start asking questions.
sharl
Jeez, this must be Mountaineer Day or something.
Just getting back from the grocery, and a 2009 rebroadcast of Bullseye with Jesse Thorn comes on the radio, and he’s interviewing Bill Withers, born in Slab Fork, WV.
They spent the first few minutes talking about the coal country of Mr. Withers’ youth, and he did in fact confirm that it was definitely a place you wanted to get away from if at all possible – at least the mine work (his escape was via the Navy).
I’m thinking everyone in that state should just get jobs at WVU or Bethany – problem solved!
Tripod
If Bill Clinton ran in 2012 he wouldn’t have carried any of those Appalachian states he won back in the day. Those yellow dog voters are dead and gone, their kids and grand kids split for some place else, or are bitterly clinging to their guns, guv checks and meth.
Sure Hillary polls better than Obama with these folks, but when 2016 rolls around, no fucking way she (or any other Democrat) carries any of these states.
sharl
@sharl: Man, Withers is one smart, wise and eloquent dude. I wanna be like him when I grow up!
Yatsuno
@Tripod:
Bet me. Unless the Republicans actually nominate one of the teatards, Hillary will get West Virginia easily. Hell she might get Kentucky and North Carolina as well.
fuckwit
@sharl: Oh gawd, Bill Withers. Absolutely love his music. A lot. A HUGE amount. Amazing stuff. Awesome stuff.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcFaVfTDWcs
fuckwit
@lamh36: The deadbeats are, and always have been, and always will be: THE IDLE RICH. Capitalists. People who sit back and don’t lift a fucking finger, and get richer and richer off of rents, interest, and “investments” (many of which, we’ve found out, are actually Ponzi schemes). They sponge off of people who actually work. Sponge A LOT, like billions and billions of dollars. The Vampire Squids. The takers are the rich.
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: Whatever else one may think of Matt Taibbi, he deserves credit for introducing that term.
Steeplejack
@pseudonymous in nc:
And Blow nails it in the accompanying article:
catclub
@Steeplejack: “whiter, poorer, older, more rural and less educated than the rest of the country”
I think Vermont has four out of those five. Much better educated.
pseudonymous in nc
VT’s 19th on median family income; WV is 49th. $14,000 difference. Cost of living’s higher in VT, of course, but probably not $14,000 worth of difference.
Appalachia is plain poor.
pseudonymous in nc
VT’s 19th on median family income; WV is 49th. $14,000 difference. Cost of living’s higher in VT, of course, but probably not $14,000 worth of difference.
Appalachia is plain poor.
catclub
@pseudonymous in nc: point taken
sharl
@rikyrah: I hear ya. The folks still living in those hills can be about as sympathetic as stink bugs (at least the ones the media seems to favor).
To respond to your last point first, I don’t think President Obama can help them much, and even if he tried to do so, and achieved some measure of success, sheer stubborn Scots-Irish* pride wouldn’t earn POTUS any thanks for it. That’s how those cranky assholes tend to roll. I think any help for them from the Federal government has to wait until the 2016 election, and even then it’s going to be a difficult long slog on several levels.
Those folks have been economically beaten up, broken down and convinced to accept their lot in life for generations. As people both here in comments and in my old neighborhood back in Rust Belt Ohio** can attest (**where a lot of these folks moved for jobs at now-disappeared GM plant), thems that could get out did so, leaving behind distilled despair and anger.
But for both ethical and long term (and self-serving) practical reasons, I think that region is worth putting some effort into. The angry, aging cranks currently living there will be dealt with by mortality (as will we all, eventually). But the absentee landowners and wheeler-dealers – y’know, the folks who made millions mining and shipping coal to the electricity-generation plants that power so many of our homes and offices – are likely to be coming for our turf someday. That’s how they roll.
It seems a matter of self-preservation to reign in these wreckers of the labor force and despoilers of the environment, and places like WV and the fracking fields of PA seem like as good as any to start. To varying degrees, our food, water, and clean air (e.g., lots of trees) come from these places, so preserving them, and the few people who live there, seems to me to be a matter for enlightened self-interest.
This is a damn hard sell, and I wish I were playing a stronger hand. Those hill folk could use their own version of a Moses, who I’m guessing would probably look something like Elizabeth Warren, an economic populist who could both relate to these folks and call bullshit on Wall Street destroyers. Give them title to their own lands, and some resources to clean things up. As noted upthread, geography would likely impose some limits on just how much economic development is possible there, but the land ownership issue would seem to me to at least offer a starting point (and – at least politically – that will be a plenty huge challenge by itself).
*Is it Scots-Irish, or Scotch-Irish? I seem to recall this being discussed in comments here a couple years ago or so, but don’t remember if any consensus was achieved.
BruinKid
Just last November, they voted out Attorney General Darrell McGraw (D), who’d been there for 20 years, and won the HUGE tobacco settlement against cigarette companies that helped keep the state from going bankrupt. And they repay him by kicking him out in favor of a completely unqualified Ken Cuccinelli-bootlicker who didn’t even have a law license to practice in the state!!! All because he billed himself as a Tea Partier. Oh look, he even went to Virginia to campaign for Cuccinelli THIS week. Way to back a loser.
(I may or may not be extra pissed about this because I’m friends with McGraw’s daughter.)
JGabriel
John Cole:
Ramps.
Not one goddamn mention of ramps in that entire article.
sherparick
@Anoniminous: West Virginia’s coal and resources were controlled by out-of-state capitalists in New York and Philadelphia. However, they did build a series of great chemical plants along the Kanhwa and Ohio rivers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanawha_River However, both the chemical and steel industries went into decline in the 1980s. New York finance decided that the U.S. did not need manufacturing and Wall Street would benefit from the strong dollar. Although race only got the briefest mention in the article, I think it was a lot more than the throw away line about the decline of unions and their industries, steel and chemicals as much as coal, as the brief mention of Weirton Steel being the largest employer in the state in 1997 and now it no longer exists, What happen in 1997? The Asian financial crisis and corresponding overvaluation of the dollar which made Weirton uncompetitive in world markets, followed by the 1999 admission of China to WTO. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISG_Weirton_Steel. So although race was not mentioned, the biggest subject not mentioned was how the economic policies of the last 33 years, Democratic as well as Republican, has basically leveled the West Virginia economy (and the Western Pennsylvania and Eastern Ohio) economy beyond coal.
This is very different than how Germany’s elite has dealt with maintaining a manufacturing base (although the coal industry is dying there as well, as my wife grew up in a German coal town whose mines have all closed.
The decline of unions left the evangelical church to fill the gap, to offer prayers and resentment again the feeling of helplessness with the economic forces demoralizing the state.
Matt
WV going Red? Good – fuck ’em. They can drown in the toxic cesspit the combined efforts of Big Coal and meth have turned their state into, and lax gun laws should provide an efficient exit for anybody who finally realizes what a terrible mistake they’ve made.
rikyrah
@Anoniminous:
they hate him because he’s BLACK-the one thing he can’t change about himself
rikyrah
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Washington sends more money to WV than WV sends to Washington.
MOOCHES
wvng
This, about my WV county. “What’s eating Appalachia? Many Democrats in the region seem to hate their president” http://www.economist.com/node/21558275
Another Botsplainer
This thread is probably dead, but here’s a story. In 2008 I was having lunch with coworkers. They are all Democrats, regularly went to the county meetings, which I think are held once a month. Byrd, Wise, Rockefeller, Manchin etc. would come to these county meetings, usually a lunch, and these folks would be in attendance. At the time the WV primary was late in the season and I believe Obama already had it sewn up. Anyway, at the lunch everyone one of these staunch Democrats referred to Obama as a ni-Clang and to a person did not want him in the White House.
Matt McIrvin
@efgoldman: My town in Massachusetts used to be the shoe-manufacturing capital of New England. Now… well, they commemorate it with public sculptures of boots. I think the biggest industrial employer is a hummus factory.
It had a rough few decades from the Depression through the 1970s or so; currently seems to be gradually recovering as, mostly, a bedroom community, with the old mill buildings along the river housing bars and restaurants. I don’t envy any place that is in the early stages of the process.
Anoniminous
@sherparick:
Just in case you venture back to see if I respond.
In short, in the 80s US plant needed replacing and it was cheaper to close down US manufacturing and ship it out of the country. The quixotic fools who tried to remain had their company bought out from under them and became part of a conglomerate or taken private by vultures, larded with debt, had the future of the company stripped, the vultures re-issued stock and went on their merry way.
The thing is, a manufacturer will return 4 to 8 (if they are lucky) percent return per year on total capital. A financial firm returns 8 (if they are lousy at their jobs) to hundreds of percent per year.
So, to an extent, I agree with your analysis.
However, all this is slightly beside my main point which was the basic problem with West Virginia is the culturally inherent disregard – approaching disdain – West Virginians have for education. Education is the only basis for the development and introduction of innovative goods and services and the better use of plant, etc., for ongoing production of goods and services. Case in point for the last, a friend of mine was getting his Ph.d. in Philosophy (Logic) and worked at a manufacturer during the summer to make some cash. He took his education in Logic, analyzed the work flow, re-arranged the machines, and increased plant production by 10%.
I’m not saying education is The Answer. I’m saying education is the necessary first step.
EthylEster
Saw Manchin on C-SPAN this weekend. Very inarticulate guy.