Well, this is only mildly depressing:
When Mike Sylvester entered a career training center earlier this year in southwestern Pennsylvania, he found more than one hundred federally funded courses covering everything from computer programming to nursing.
He settled instead on something familiar: a coal mining course.
“I think there is a coal comeback,” said the 33-year-old son of a miner.
Despite broad consensus about coal’s bleak future, a years-long effort to diversify the economy of this hard-hit region away from mining is stumbling, with Obama-era jobs retraining classes undersubscribed and future programs at risk under President Donald Trump’s proposed 2018 budget.
Trump has promised to revive coal by rolling back environmental regulations and moved to repeal Obama-era curbs on carbon emissions from power plants.
“I have a lot of faith in President Trump,” Sylvester said.
WHY?????
What many experts call false hopes for a coal resurgence have mired economic development efforts here in a catch-22: Coal miners are resisting retraining without ready jobs from new industries, but new companies are unlikely to move here without a trained workforce. The stalled diversification push leaves some of the nation’s poorest areas with no clear path to prosperity.
Federal retraining programs have fared better, with some approaching full participation, in the parts of Appalachia where mining has been crushed in a way that leaves little hope for a comeback, according to county officials and recruiters. They include West Virginia and Kentucky, where coal resources have been depleted.
But in southern Pennsylvania, where the industry still has ample reserves and is showing flickers of life, federal jobs retraining programs see sign-up rates below 20 percent, the officials and recruiters said. In southern Virginia’s coal country, participation rates run about 50 percent, they said.
“Part of our problem is we still have coal,” said Robbie Matesic, executive director of Greene County’s economic development department.
Even if you thought coal was going to maybe one day come back (it isn’t), why not take job retraining to keep your options open. If only there had been a candidate in 2016 who had a serious plan to address the coal issue in Appalachia.
Yutsano
“Because it ain’t what mah daddy did!”
Tim C.
One of the things to remember is there is almost every single American has many many ancestors who understood that sometimes you need to move on to a better place to find a better life. Migration… it’s a thing.
Elizabelle
What a dumb ass. No wonder employers are staying away in droves.
Derelict
To an extent, I can’t blame these guys (and gals) for passing on job retraining into fields they know nothing about EXCEPT the fact that there are no jobs in their area in that field. They’re looking for something that will lead to paying work, and mining has been made to sound like it has a future.
Hillary did have a better program for these people. But, you know, evil Democrats and she was a woman AND a Clinton. So bring on the generational welfare. At least until the next Republican congress decides that these lazy moochers in the now-idle coalfields need to bootstrap themselves some more, and all of those programs get slashed.
Elizabelle
@Tim C.: Agreed.
Looking for a link about the coal industry trapping workers in place. And if there are not jobs there, the people need to move their butts out. It would be a good government investment to help them do so. (For a sane national government, anyway.)
Lit3Bolt
If 2016 taught me anything, it was white ignorance was a stronger monolith than anything Arthur C. Clarke could dream up.
Also, white fee-fees are supremely delicate.
Major Major Major Major
I am completely fine with him not being in charge of computers that somebody else might use or somebody else’s health.
waspuppet
Because Trump was on TV. For 10 years he was in millions of living rooms, projecting the carefully manicured image of a wildly successful businessman with impeccable judgment. The rest of us looked at his real-life record and found a lifelong failure who clearly doesn’t consider this country his favorite. People who know him from TV bought the image.
I feel like this is something people kinda know but still underrate.
germy
Why is the federal gov. funding such a course?
JPL
The Trump Presidency is proving the old, not so old adage, stupid is as stupid does.
Miss Bianca
Reminds me of a conversation I had with a school official in Delta County, CO, where coal mining was and remains, A Thing (altho’ a much smaller thing than it was 20 or even 5 years ago). I was lamenting the intellectual incuriosity of the majority of my students, and how hard it was to get them to take their studies seriously, since most of them seemed to presume that there was going to be an endless supply of coal-mining and nail-tech jobs for them once they got out of high school. He looked at me, leaned in, and said confidentially: “Education may be respected respected in Delta County – but it isn’t very well-liked.”
This was the assistant superintendent, by the way, who went on to be the superintendent. Take *that* for what it’s worth.
TenguPhule
@germy:
Senators and House Reps from Coal Mining States.
Mnemosyne
Well, now we see why there were just enough dumbasses in Pennsylvania to get Trump elected. Thanks a lot, assholes.
Nicole
@waspuppet: I think you’re absolutely right. Trump lost the Republican primary in Manhattan, because Manhattanites have had to put up with him for 30 years and we knew already what he was.
rikyrah
Lips pursed while reading this.
NO.SYMPATHY.AT.ALL.
Karen Potter
I saw that same thing when Milwaukee area shut down manufacturing plants; some of the union workers had been making $25@hour watching machines, even though the union was one offering full ride for training they could only see that they would start out at $12@hour. They tried the small shops but those shops wanted skilled workers not one step workers; they weren’t willing to work for a small shop that would start them at apprentice level which was then $15@hour. Many plants that stayed in business switched to robots and the union retraining included the skills needed to program, repair and service those robots but still it was at less money than they had been making. These were the blue collar workers who had 4 or more weeks paid vacation, summer homes on lakes or hunting cottages up north, they had boats and other toys; they wanted to keep what they had and not lose. In the long run they lost everything and ended up as unskilled workers at places like WalMart.
Chyron HR
Another noble member of the white working class who craves democratic socialism and only votes Republican because the Democrats are too right-wing.
SenyorDave
I’m currently finishing up my Masters in buggy design. Any suggestions as to where I should be applying for jobs?
gbbalto
There’s surely much more to a modern coal mining course (machinery, etc) but I had to think of the classic –
“I could’ve been a judge, but I never ‘ad the Latin… I never ‘ad the Latin to get through the rigorous judging exams. They’re very rigorous, the judging exams, very rigorous indeed. They’re noted for their rigor. People come out of them saying, “My God, what a rigorous exam!” And so I become a miner instead. I managed to get through the mining exams. They’re not very rigorous. They’re no rigor involved really. There’s a complete lack of rigor involved in the mining exams. They only ask you one question. They say, “Who are you?” And I got 75 percent on that.
“Of course it’s quite interesting, gettin’ out lumps of coal all day. It’s quite interesting. You’re given complete freedom to do what you like, an absolute free ‘and, provided you get out a two-ton of coal every day. But the method you do it, you can use any method open to you. Hackin’ and hewin’ is the normal one. Some people prefer the hackin’, others the hewin’. Some people do the combination. I’m a combination man myself. I do the hack an’ hew both. Then there’s running at the coal face with your ‘ead – one of the worst methods, know as the Bad Method of getting out coal. There there’s scrabblin’ at it with you bare ‘ands, the Almost as Bad Method of getting out coal. And there’s myriad others.”
Brachiator
I don’t get it. Coal has been declining since the 1940s. In what universe could coal ever make a comeback?
I’m curious as to whether these areas have seen a significant economic rebound. Are the new jobs good jobs?
Major Major Major Major
@SenyorDave:
Pennsylvania, actually.
Droppy
I blame people like this fellow a lot less for being willfully blind than I blame the right-wing overlords for encouraging the willful blindness, for telling them the lies that make them believe they can have the lives their fathers had. The overlords are doing that in service to their overlords, as they do everything, so Mr. Coalowner has another couple of years to scrape some profit out of the ground. In the meantime, the racist Trump-loving is fanned and this dumb schmuck ends up with a boat and tattoos and no skills to do anything.
NotMax
Phlogiston is the future!
Chris
And this right here is why so many liberals from other parts of the country simply throw up their hands when it comes to this. What the fuck can they possibly offer that’s going to penetrate something this dense? I know, I know, it’s just one guy…
Miss Bianca
@SenyorDave:
With these guys. You’ll need to apprentice to an actual master buggy maker first, however, and serve an apprenticeship. Your fancy degree ain’t gonna mean shit in the real world of buggy-making, mister!
Yarrow
I think it’s going to take the government bribing some company to build a new plant or factory or office there in an up and coming industry. Subsidize the hell out of it and get them to hire former coal workers. Then those people will be trained and another similar industry might want to move in. Plus, once the first people are working in fairly good (government subsidized) jobs, the rest of the populace will see there’s something besides coal.
The Moar You Know
Coal is a shit job. Absolute shit. A relative had a daddy who worked coal, died when my relative was 14 of some horrendous coal-related disease. This, according to him, was pretty typical. None of his old friends had fathers that lived to see their kids become adults.
My relative (who is lifelong GOP and a HARDCORE Trump supporter) would kill with his bare hands anyone who tried to talk his kids into working coal. He got the hell out of coal country and is a firefighter. So, he’s stupid (he’d probably laugh and agree with me about that) but he’s not so stupid as to think coal is any sort of realistic future or job.
trollhattan
Most everything I do and the tools I do it with didn’t exist when I was in school. Excepting my beautiful wurds, natch. Lifelong learning or lifetime sentence to live in a singlewide. Choose, morans.
Scotius
@SenyorDave:
I would recommend record stores and Barnes & Noble bookstores. You might want to look at getting a certificate in typewriter repair as a backup.
TenguPhule
@The Moar You Know:
But Trump is trying to persuade his kids exactly that.
TenguPhule
@Brachiator:
A universe where human life is worth less then a pound of coal.
bemused
People on the right can’t deal with, can’t accept reality. Reality isn’t how things should be, ought to be, must be. Reality just doesn’t FEEL right. Therefore, ignore it and go with your gut feelings.
I’m thinking of Gen Kelly’s recent reveal of his real feelings. He heard what he wanted to hear while sitting in the audience listening to Rep. Wilson spoke on the dedication of building to fallen FBI agents. He read what he wanted to read on the Civil War. He tunes out what he doesn’t want to see or hear.
This is what rightwingers do. Very few can give up their fantasies for facts.
TenguPhule
Chicken and egg.
Maybe offer Amazon their first born children to move some warehouses over there.
delk
Don’t call it a comeback!
Felony Govt (formerly Old Broad in California)
While I was in high school, I worked the summer of 1969 (I think) for the Fuel Division of the NYC Board of Education. We tallied the fuel which had been purchased the previous school year to heat a few of the schools. A very few used coal; the vast majority used gas or electric heat. We added up our sums on those huge old calculators that looked like cash registers. All of which goes to show that (1) I am older than dirt (2) the use of coal as fuel was dying more than 40 years ago.
Jeffro
Just let morons be morons and move on…people dumb enough to enroll in a coal-mining course instead of learning how to install solar panels (and especially people who take. Trumpov’s. word. that “coal’s coming back”) deserve everything they have coming to them. Or rather, don’t have coming to them.
Chris
@bemused:
Yep.
(And the fact that this guy rose all the way to general with such a mindset doesn’t exactly inspire confidence).
ETA: not that this is unique to right-wingers, but their full-scale cultivation of the phenomenon deserves mention nonetheless.
catclub
@bemused:
This is what EVERYBODY does. We just notice it in them. They notice it in us. Projection. See Barry Ritholtz for the financial version of this truism.
Motivated reasoning.
Brachiator
@waspuppet:
Yeah, I think you nailed it. Trump oozed confidence and success, like the phony snake oil salesman he was.
Booger
@SenyorDave: Microsoft? Aren’t they world-renowned for buggy design?
Jeffro
Btw, not a cure for stupid, but a new way of looking at things: “America is not a Center-Right Nation“. Really worthwhile read.
Being anti-1% plus registering the heck out of minority (and younger!) voters…I’m good with that!
hueyplong
Fuck Mike Sylvester. He’s aggressively and malignantly stupid. A bunch of Mike Sylvesters gave us Trump. Glad he’s going to shoulder a portion of the harm that arises from his vote. Why on earth should I feel sorry for him? Because he’s white?
MisterForkbeard
@TenguPhule: No. Trump is trying to persuade *other people’s kids* to work coal, which is totally moral and okay.
SiubhanDuinne
@gbbalto:
Be very careful not to drop that great ‘eavy lump o’ coal on your foot, haw haw haw.
frosty fred
@Yutsano: One of my cousins in Maryland still insists that tobacco is coming back.
The Moar You Know
@catclub: You are correct.
And with money you always see the truth; everyone’s an idiot.
bemused
@Chris:
It’s as if they have a language scrambler brain implant. Any inconvenient facts are instantly translated into their rightwing fairy tales.
Brachiator
All together, now
Workin’ in the coal mine
Goin’ down, down, down
Workin’ in a coal mine
Oops, about to slip down
Workin’ in a coal mine
Goin’ down down, down
Workin’ in a coal mine
Oops, about to slip down
Five o’clock in the mornin’
I’m already up and gone
Lord, I’m so tired
How long can this go on?
Barbara
My grandfather was a coal miner and he would not let his kids go into coal mining. For most of his mining career, he did not have union benefits, which started covering miners only gradually. So that might have influenced his view, but he was an immigrant who mined because it was the only job he could get. His kids went to college. That was in the early 50s, just to put it in context. One of the problems with coal is one of the things that we often celebrate with labor, and that is, it paid so much better for so much less investment in education that there really are people who saw it as just about perfect — live really well, in a low cost of living jurisdiction without having to study things that they didn’t really find interesting. A lot of unionized blue collar jobs were like that. And the reality is, as my mother has told me, lots of people have retrained, so that those who are still going into mining or who need to retrain are those who have been resisting it for quite a while. The steel industry collapsed in the 70s. Coal mining has faced a more gradual decline, but if you are 33 and born in 1984, graduating from high school and becoming a miner in 2002, you are not like my grandfather, born in 1885, almost exactly 100 years before you, who was very smart but with limited English and an education that stopped at the age of 11, highly constrained in the jobs he was eligible for. It’s hard to change, but there was a point in time in this person’s life when he had to choose, not change.
Amaranthine RBG
@Tim C.:
I know, that’s why I just can’t understand why teh blacks don’t move out of inner cities of Chicago/ St. Louis/ Detroit/ etc.
So much safer and so many more jobs elsewhere!
Major Major Major Major
@Jeffro:
Well, other than the fact that this would never work, I’m fine with pursuing a liberal economic agenda. We can advocate things like tax cuts for working families and tax hikes on corporations, raising the minimum wage to $15, ending the corrosive effects of big money in politics, single-payer healthcare, hundreds of billions or even close to a trillion dollars in stimulus and infrastructure projects, and all the other shit they’ve been ignoring for years.
raven
@Barbara: Mine too. His father was killed when a cable snapped in the wheelhouse and he still worked in the Majesty for 30 years. My dad was a WW2 Destroyer sailor in the Pacific. After the war he went down in the mine with my grandfather (maternal) and said “never again”. When grampa died we found all his black lung documents. He never got a dime.
Major Major Major Major
Jeffro:
Well, other than the fact that this would never work, I’m fine with pursuing a liberal economic agenda. We can advocate things like tax cuts for working families and tax hikes on corporations, a $15 minimum wage, ending the corrosive effects of big money in politics, single-payer healthcare, advocating hundreds of billions or spending close to a trillion dollars in stimulus and infrastructure projects, and all the other shit these voters have been ignoring for years.
The Moar You Know
@TenguPhule: About 90 places down the list from his main concern, blacks in mobs shooting white police officers. He’s the perfect GOP voter. We don’t discuss politics. I like the guy otherwise. He’s a lot smarter than he thinks he is. Just needs to lose some lifelong cherished beliefs (easy, right? Guess not.)
Chyron HR
@Amaranthine RBG:
You’re right, the glorious white working master race ARE the Bernssiah’s chosen people! We SHOULD kneel before their glorious Confederate flag (but in a respectful, non-uppity way). Thank you for setting us straight, o mighty one.
The Moar You Know
@Major Major Major Major: There was a candidate last election who was on board with all that shit, some woman as I recall.
And the brutal reality: if her name had been anything but “Hillary Clinton”, subject of a thirty-year long smear campaign, she would have won over 70% of the popular vote and taken every state outside the Deep South, and probably a couple of those too.
TenguPhule
@The Moar You Know:
At the rate white police officers are murdering people, this is probably uncomfortably closer to becoming true then it should be.
TenguPhule
@The Moar You Know:
Nah, the Rightwing smear machine combined with Russian vote rigging would have resulted in the same conclusion. Just a closer vote count.
Major Major Major Major
@The Moar You Know:
Check my links ;)
Brachiator
@frosty fred:
Dude must be smoking something.
trollhattan
@Brachiator:
You load sixteen tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to the company store
And they’re from coal’s “golden age.”
Hey, might as well pick up smoking while you’re at it.
Yarrow
@TenguPhule: Speaking of the rightwing smear machine and Russian propaganda, sounds like DiFi wasn’t too happy with the corporate counsels the tech companies sent. Click through here to see the whole transcript (it’s an image, so I can’t copy it):
Mediate has a summary of it, but the whole thing (in image above) is better.
There’s also video at the Mediaite link.
tobie
I’ve seen several links to this article about coal miners resisting retraining all day. I wish I could say it surprises but it doesn’t. Large swathes of this country are convinced that everything bad is the result of a liberal conspiracy. Why else would people deliberately rig their cars so they can breathe in exhaust/rolling coal? They’re convinced science is a conspiracy. What kinds of jobs exist for them? Only low-skilled or no-skilled jobs that could just as well be done in third world. These people really want to destroy this country so the only jobs we’ll have are as cheap labor for Canada and Europe. Tearing the economy down would be their comeuppance.
jl
In partial defense of the workers, the story said that there is no stipend to help the workers support themselves during the training. So, they have to balance working and training, for those currently employed. For those unemployed, might be problems with retaining unemployment insurance if they take more than a few units. I have seen that problem here in CA. I don’t know how that varies state by state.
But thing that caught my eye was, no job guarantee. What are the placement rates from the programs? In CA, public community colleges have very pro-active outreach to local communities and many courses have explicit tie ins to on-the-job training, paid internships, and apprenticeships. So, if the students does well in the course, a path to employment develops during or immediately at the end of the course.
I also notice mention of the attitude of companies, which is that they shouldn’t bear any costs or risks of training new employees at all. Amazon was mentioned. It can’t afford to participate in the training programs? No, I guess not. It is rolling in cash (if not actual profits), but it is going to sniff and pick around for employees that are exactly what they want, perfectly trained as they like at no cost to them, but to the union or the public?
Some blame goes to the workers, but some may also go to miserable dysfunction of our current economic and social policies and environment.
trollhattan
The Gorsuch career pathway is being restocked.
Gelfling 545
@Tim C.: True. For some that can be the answer. Still, there can be several good, practical obstacles to relocation, among them being having a house mortgaged for about twice what it will now sell for. Then there are elderly or disabled relatives who depend on one for help, a spouse who does have a job in your current location, relatives you depend on for child care, etc., etc.
eschneider
@Major Major Major Major: Buggies aren’t cheap, and there _is_ a market, albeit a small one.
Not me, though. I might be willing to ride a horse in Boston traffic, but I draw the like at driving a buggy. :0
trollhattan
@jl:
This bit emphasized by Cole is the crux.
It’s as much relying on the magical appearance of non-existent jobs as the shittness of the job itself. These people are still his marks, there’s virtually no hope.
Robert Sneddon
The US burned about 730 million tonnes of coal last year. It’s on course to burn about 730 million tonnes this year and maybe 740 million tonnes in 2018 (figures from the EIA). That’s about the same coal consumption per capita as the Chinese and Germans, maybe a little more. The death of the coal industry in the US has been predicted for over a decade but doesn’t seem to be happening much.
Coal JOBS are dying out as the industry applies more and more automation to getting those black dollar bills out of the ground and on their way to the power stations in the east. The jobs that are left are usually well-paid, skilled electrical and hydraulic fitter and engineer posts to keep the machines working rather than labouring underground with a pick and shovel. There’s a lot of coal that can be extracted for a couple of dollars a tonne from places like the Powder River basin assuming enough machinery is thrown at the job and a few workers being paid $60,000 a year to keep the coal flowing is barely a bump on the accounting sheet.
If the guy in the article can get a job in the coal industry locally he can expect a decent pay check and he probably won’t have to move himself and his family to work at Amazon for ten bucks an hour.
Major Major Major Major
@trollhattan: Not that surprising, one of their flagship members is after all a doctor who invented his own accreditation board.
sunny raines
because “proud to be stupid” is the modern republican phenomenon.
Miss Bianca
@Yarrow: yeah, but we should be primarying the hell out of DiFi because she’s, like, old, and has ladyparts, and isn’t progressive enough and shit.
Major Major Major Major
@Miss Bianca: I’d rather the top two finishers in the jungle primary be democrats than a democrat and a republican.
Roger Moore
@Scotius:
I was thinking of slide rule sales.
ruemara
If you wonder why women and POC joke about mediocre white men, Mike Sylvester is your guide. Because a coal miner taking a class on coal mining is the absolute textbook definition of a lazy-ass motherfucker for whom mediocre is a bleeding step up.
dogwood
@Yarrow:
I didn’t see DiFi’s bit, but I did enjoy watching the Facebook lawyer stumble and squirm during Al Franken’s and the R from La’s questioning. They were both pretty brutal.
jl
@trollhattan: Sure. Trump’s fantasies and lies are also partly responsible, and some of those white workers for still falling for it. And McConnell too, until Trump called his bluff and McConnell has to softly and implicitly admit that his own BS about coal jobs could come back was, in fact, BS.
But that GOP BS has been a know known for a long time. It doesn’t absolve the educational system and other organizations’ training programs from doing all they can to attract workers with training programs that the students can finance and can calculate chances of getting a job. The article is too superficial in its analysis (a point I almost made in my previous comment) to really make sense of the sad situation. It implicitly blames the workers without giving enough information on how attractive those training programs really are. Why the superficiality of the reporting is almost worthy of some of what the NYT pumps out.
I talked up the CA community college approach, though it is very uneven, and some campuses don’t do a good job. But in many areas, company buy in, and company provided instructors,are there at the community college courses along with college personnel, contributing teaching and equipment, giving career counseling advice, and as the course proceeds, actively recruiting the best students. It makes a big difference.
tobie
@jl: I call bull. Millions of people ‘pay’ for retraining in the hope of better job prospects but with no employment guarantees. If you haven’t noticed, online courses from both reputable schools and fraudulent outlets are going gangbusters. Yes, it would be nice if companies would also pay for retraining. I agree. But to suggest that retraining is not something that millions undertake on their own dime and without certain employment is just untrue. Why does the white working class always expect special treatment? These courses are being offered for free to unemployed coal miners or would-be miners, who still refuse to accept that industry has changed since the time of their grandfathers.
Tim C.
@Gelfling 545: @Amaranthine RBG: Get what you are both saying, and in fact you both have a point. But a couple things:
RBG: True to a point… but these are rural Whites. They have way way way more mobility and since a good chunk of the country is white and rural and conservative, I’m sure they can find a place that will welcome them. There are nowhere near the number of cultural and other barriers (defacto redlining etc.) that Urban non-whites face.
Gelfing: Yup, this is a better reason. Housing values, borrowing, etc. But if your job is gone, your job is gone. The rest of it? You got a strong point.
Guess what it comes down to is the fact, as many have said already, that there’s a lot of magical thinking going on with the idea that preparing for more coal mining jobs is just a terrible strategy. Automation and market forces matter a lot more than what weak environmental restrictions are in place.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
I can fix Appalachia, but it requires money and will.
The money is in subsidies for people to relocate from counties which have unemployment rates that exceed 20% across 8 consecutive quarters and to create state incentives to consolidate such economically moribund counties and eliminate fiefdoms of local government officials.
The will has to appear in the form of pulling back infrastructure spending from the extremities of the least productive zip codes in those counties and I the local consolidation efforts. In other words, if granny can’t get groceries into the holler by car, and electricity and cable get cut off, and good ol’ painkiller prescribing Dr Smith and the local pharmacy are now three counties away, granny is Incentivized to leave the holler in order to follow her kids and grandkids to a place that is better.
My plan depopulates it by about 30% in 5 years time, as the minor roads fall apart.
Miss Bianca
@Major Major Major Major: I keep forgetting you guys have that weird jungle primary thing.
donnah
Mining was a steady job with pay for people with limited options. My grandfather was a coal miner and was an electrician in the mines. My uncle, his only son, also was a miner. Both of them worked underground and both died of Black Lung. Countless other relatives of mine also died with cancer and other diseases related to coal mining.
My other uncle, who married into the family, worked in the mines but rose up into training and management. He retired last year and still qualified for Black Lung relief. He and my aunt, who have lived in W Virginia all their lives, are leaving the state and moving to western Ohio to be closer to their kids. My uncle said small cities like Beckley will be ghost town. I can’t believe they can leave a place they’ve always loved, but they say it’s difficult to keep pretending the area isn’t rotting away.
It,s simple to tell people to just leave and find something else, but it’s hard to do.
jl
A fun side note is that the mechanism by which Trump and GOP proposed rich man’s and corporate tax slash will produce a jobs boom with average increase of $4K income per working class job, will blow a huge hole in trade deficit, mostly in trade commodities like coal.
One problem is the the new and improved Trump/GOP (aka GROMP) cons are just pumped out too damn fast to keep track of.
Major Major Major Major
@Miss Bianca: It’s OK, so do we.
Frankensteinbeck
Because the black man had to be lying.
@catclub:
It is baked into the human brain. It’s Psych 101, I’m afraid. Decisions are made with emotions first. With effort and training, humans are capable of overriding that, but make no mistake, the default path is going with your gut and ignoring reality.
Major Major Major Major
@jl:
The stupidest part of that figure, to me, is that it’s counting all eight fucking years he might be in office. It doesn’t even make sense. I know, I know, nothing does any more. Still.
jl
@tobie: OK, your call of BS is noted, and I don’t care about it all that much I hope you please note that I merely noted that some important details were left out of the article, and it was difficult to judge. I didn’t run around calling BS, with no hard numbers to back it up, as you did.
Haydnseek
@Scotius: @Scotius: Three words: artisinal whale oil.
Amaranthine RBG
@Tim C.:
I completely agree that, since the USA is a profoundly racist country, minorities will encounter more barriers in moving, getting a job, etc. than their white counterparts. No argument at all on that. That said, one need look no farther than this thread to witness the utter contempt even ostensibly liberal or progressive people have for the white working class poor in this country.
But I would submit to you that racism is down the list of reasons that keep the urban minority poor from moving.
At the top of that list would be lack of money to move, desire not to leave family and friends, etc. They share these with the poor whites who refuse to leave parts of the country where there is no economic future for them.
Kathleen
@hueyplong:
But my pure progressive betters tell me it’s Hillary’s/Obama’s/Dems’ fault that Democrats ignore WWC and hurt their feelings. I’m assuming those programs were supported by the Obama Administration and Democrats (Rethugs haven’t wanted to spend money on anything except drug addiction the past 8 years). And the classes were full but no one was doing anything for them. Zounds!
Major Major Major Major
@Haydnseek: Hey, whale oil might make a comeback, you never know!
Chyron HR
@Amaranthine RBG:
Yes, I agree, it’s deeply unfair that Democrats were allowed to have undue influence over the 2016 Democratic primary results. Hopefully Our Revolution will get some traction on their demands that all of the 2020 primaries be opened up to Berning Man’s Republican base.
Libarbarian
@The Moar You Know: lol.
I met a guy at a coal show who was pissed that his kids wanted to be a dentist instead of a miner. I was representing my company so I could not express my true feelings.
Barbara
@donnah: The irony is that it’s easier for people in southwestern Pennsylvania to continue living in mining towns — many of them anyway — and retrain into a different field. They might have longer commutes, but the Pittsburgh area has substantially rebounded economically in ways that were not anticipated when I left the area. West Virginia, Kentucky and southwestern Virginia are remote by comparison.
Kathleen
@Brachiator:
Travelin’ down that coal town road
Listen to my rubber tires whine
Goodbye to Buckeye and White Sycamore
I’m leavin’ you behind
Oh I’ve been a coal miner all of my life
Layin’ down tracks in the hole
Got a back like an ironwood bent by the wind
Bloodveins blue as the coal.
ETA: Coal Tattoo performed by Kingston Trio
Written by Billy Edd Wheeler, a fabulous songwriter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehRHFTu5xi4
geg6
John, these idiots live here, too, just up the road from those stupid hillbillies in Greene County. Only they are shunning training for jobs that will be opening due to the giant cracker plant being built here to wait for the steel jobs that Dolt 45 promised them. Even though there are no longer any steel mills here, not even their skeletons. They want construction workers and, more than anything, welders. My ex teaches welding here and can’t fill his adult ed classes. The certified welders that come out of his class are pretty much guaranteed good paying jobs, both building the plant and working there once it’s built. But Drumpf promised them that the steel mills will be back and they believe it with all their might.
Amaranthine RBG
@donnah:
Yep.
I grew up in southern WV with many family members working in mining. One uncle died in the mines and another died behind the wheel of a coal truck. By sheer dumb luck I had a caring teacher who pointed me towards various programs in HS and steered me to a good college that I would have never even applied to on my own.
It breaks my heart every fucking day that I had to leave behind family and such a beautiful place.
Brachiator
@trollhattan:
Qualified or not qualified, the Republicans are jamming in anti-women, anti-abortion judges. Including women.
Amaranthine RBG
@Kathleen:
Here’s Hazel’s take:
There ain’t much that’s left here that ain’t all run down.
Gone all the echoes of old familiar sound.
Families are scattered, parted, and gone.
Left a lot of good things to wither away back home.
Can’t you feel that touch of home?
And don’t you wish you’d never gone?
There are some things memories can’t bring home.
Hills of home, hills of home,
Families scattered off and gone.
These old hills that have been passed by,
Well, they’ve seen their share of leavin’ in their time.
Old familiar dirt roads wind through the piney glade,
Where all the longing of childhood dreams were made,
Where we passed the mossy mounds where I could run and play,
Never a care to cross my mind all the livelong day. (Chorus)
Yes, they’ve seen their share of leavin’ in their time.
Roger Moore
@The Moar You Know:
Sadly, I don’t think that’s true. If she had been somebody other than Hillary, she probably would have won rather than just losing, but I think our politics is too polarized to let somebody win like that no matter what their policy positions.
Amaranthine RBG
@Chyron HR:
Give it a rest you silly twatwaffle.
Kathleen
@Barbara: My grandmothers’ father picked coal in Pennsylvania mines when he was 7 years old. My dad’s father (an Irish immigrant) said in 1969 that the biggest mistake unions made was trying to keep black people out. Union members have hurt themselves in many ways.
ruemara
@Amaranthine RBG: They ain’t my people. They’re yours and they were more than willing to destroy this country to get me. No empathy, no quarter.
Major Major Major Major
@Brachiator: Tim Kaine?
satby
@Karen Potter: The same refusal to face job market realities but Fortran and Cobol programmers back in the day, and lots who refused to believe they needed retraining in new skills were left out in the cold. People cling to what they know and hate to have to admit things are changing around them. Not just blue collar workers.
Barbara
@Amaranthine RBG: I didn’t want to leave the city I grew up in. I had a large extended family there and probably most of them felt the same way I did, except that most of us moved anyway. There are real barriers to moving, but how do you respond to the idea that people just want things to be the way they were? Once upon a time that was me, too, but I got over it because I had to.
That’s really what Trump was tapping into. Being free to hate other races and religions might be part of that too for many, but the desire for things to just be like they used to be is intense among many blue collar rust belt workers. That he would never change things and that he didn’t even care about those things is something that will be hard for many to admit.
Major Major Major Major
@satby: A lot of programmers nowadays have the opposite problem, always chasing after the shiny objects. I’m looking at you, every javascript framework.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
NBC News interviewed people in Kenosha, Wisconsin and one of the diners (probably late 50s) said he loved Trump because he’s gonna bring back steel mills real soon..
It’s just an alternate reality, fueled by gop media propaganda.
Chyron HR
@Amaranthine RBG:
That’s a good point. I guess if African-American voters refused to recognize that the Berninator was the leader of the civil rights movement, they SHOULD have their voting rights revoked. Thanks for being so patient with us filthy subhuman Democrats, Arby’s!
Bago
http://rameznaam.com/2016/09/21/new-record-low-solar-price-in-abu-dhabi-costs-plunging-faster-than-expected/
Kathleen
@raven: Have you heard Billy Edd Wheeler’s music? (I provided link to Coal Tattoo in #95).
Here’s Judy Collins with Red Winged Blackbird:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydx21LtudpM
Link to all things Billy Edd:
https://www.google.com/search?q=billy+edd+wheeler+red+winged+blackbird&rlz=1C1GGRV_enUS751US751&oq=billy+edd+wheeler+red+winged+blackbird&aqs=chrome..69i57.11880j0j8&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
Brachiator
@Amaranthine RBG:
You are an idiot. Apparently illiterate, too.
debbie
Because he cares so much about diversery and wants to kill suspected criminals much more quickly?
Amaranthine RBG
@Barbara:
I can’t really speak to that since I, too, left. But you’re absolutely right that lots of people in Appalachia (and elsewhere) are just longing for some hazy “good old days” that never really existed. I mean, for fuck sake, even when coal mining was a “great” job with job security and incredible pay, miners were still killing themselves a little bit every day that they were in the mines breathing that dust.
But I think it is a profound mistake – in both political and moral terms – for progressives to just write off such people.
debbie
@geg6:
That is ridiculous. Get the training as insurance if nothing else. Have abilities in two trades. Doesn’t anyone think ahead more than 5 minutes in the future?
Roger Moore
@Yarrow:
That’s the kind of threat they need to hear.
geg6
@jl:
Dude, the same thing happens here. I’ve worked in higher ed here, from the community college level to the major university level and know that there is plenty of funding for retraining, student employment programs and job placement that is NOT BEING USED because these idiots like Mr. Sylvester live in a dream world where they will do exactly what their dads did and live just as high on the hog as their parents did. Steel died here in the early 80s. The local Sylvesters are still convinced it will come back, so why go back to school? Fuck them. I know and live among too many of them. Just fuck them. They are responsible for their fucked up lives. No one else. Just them.
Brachiator
@Major Major Major Major:
Surprised me, too.
I don’t know if this was some kind of weird compromise. From HuffPo
Given her beliefs, I wonder how this woman can even be a judge. Are men telling her what her opinions should be?
Amaranthine RBG
@Brachiator:
Yeah, I ain’t too brite. Could you tell me what a sentence fragment is when you have a minute?
Bago
@satby:
Pfft. If you’re a geezer who can fix a bank’s mainframe, you can charge thousands an hour.
Major Major Major Major
@Brachiator:
His inclusion on that list made me wonder if some senatorial bullshit wasn’t going on, yeah.
debit
Any front pagers want to let me know why this comment is okay?
Gerald Parks
Willful ignorance is not BLISSful …just plain stupid!
Seems ya can’t fix stupid!
Major Major Major Major
@debit: I think we’re allowed to insult each other? I have ARBG pied though, I highly recommend it.
Timurid
In other news, the pivot hunt has resumed…
Gin & Tonic
@Bago: COBOL forever!
Vhh
@MisterForkbeard: Not quite–he is waving an imaginary future working coal to get votes. It’s the Trump U. scam all over again.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
Obviously this guy is making a stupid choice, but what this discussion drives home to me is that we need a more just distribution of the wealth that work generates. We need jobs with living wages and benefits. Unless we have a new wave of unionization, I don’t see that happening.
Gin & Tonic
@debit: There are very, very few forbidden words. I think that’s a good thing.
Major Major Major Major
@Timurid: Maybe this time he can refer to Shinzo Abe by the correct one of his names.
Mnemosyne
@Karen Potter:
That’s definitely part of the problem: people are being told to retrain for jobs that pay less and don’t seem to have much advancement so they can get paid more. I don’t entirely blame people for being unwilling to take a permanent $10 an hour cut in pay.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@debit:
Because you hate freeze peach, that’s why!
Corner Stone
@Gin & Tonic: COBOL forever, PASCAL never!
debit
@Major Major Major Major: Personal attacks are now okay? Calling someone a twat is also now okay?
raven
@Kathleen: Thanks!
jl
@geg6: OK, fine. If someone can get the details on what’s going on in the WV programs (more than was given in the Rueters article) , we can argue the details of how much these losers are to blame, and how much is due to problems with costs of training and reasonable expectation of job interview or placement.
I did a search ‘California Community College industry collaboration’ and looked at details of some of the programs.
so, I want to see
whether there are loans or grants for stipends while the students are training?
how many courses are integrated with paid internship or entry level apprenticeship, so people can earn while they learn?
are any job, apprenticeship, paid internships interviews guaranteed for top slice of class?
Are there X number of job openings for graduates who achieve minimum standards?
Are there reliable data on placement rates for the graduates?
I am just mentioning that details like that are important before we lay all the blame on the people who seem to be sitting out a chance.
debit
@Gin & Tonic: Really? Because I have been asked not to use the word “cunt” and that wasn’t even directed at anyone here.
ETA: Let me make it clear: my goal is to age into the foulest mouthed old woman on earth. I don’t have a problem with bad words, but I do with personal attacks.
Timurid
@Major Major Major Major:
If he makes it through that trip without eating somebody’s face on live TV the MSM will be all “I think he’s getting the hang of this.”
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Brachiator:
Same with steel and I have realtives who have been waiting for steel to make a comeback since the 1960s. It’s like dispair is in the air there.
Czanne
I want the mining rights on that guy’s head. A substance that impenetrable and dense has got to have practical applications for something.
I hear the same effective thing from farmers in the family, about climate change (and pesticides). They know summers are hotter and drier, that rain falls differently than it did 40 years ago, that we’re not getting as much snow, that more wells seem to have way too much nitrate… but it’s not about fertilizer or climate change, and just because almost every retired farmer in the area has Parkinson’s doesn’t mean they shouldn’t keep over-spraying.
@Kathleen: My grandfather said the same thing about UAW. (Also that UAW shot themselves in the foot for refusing to switch to the NUMMI method in the early 80s.)
Chyron HR
@Mnemosyne:
Yes, it sucks that human civilization fundamentally changed in a way that made it impossible for them to continue having productive jobs that pay a living wage. They probably shouldn’t have voted for the party that explicitly opposes providing money and/or food to unemployed people.
Gin & Tonic
@debit: That’s one of those very, very few bad words.
Kathleen
@raven: I had forgotten how many great songs he’s written. Coming Of The Roads is lyrical poetry.
different-church-lady
Trump’s Razor: because it’s stupid, that’s why.
Amaranthine RBG
@debit:
Maybe while you’re in the Vice Principal’s office complaining about your classmates, you can also ask why it would be okay to follow someone from thread to thread attacking them for off-topic viewpoints they’ve never expressed.
You silly douchecanoe.
debit
@Gin & Tonic: Why is it worse than twat?
SiubhanDuinne
@trollhattan:
If you see me comin’ better step aside
A lot of men didn’t and a lot of men died.
One fist of iron, the other of steel —
If the right one don’t get you, then the left one will….
Gin & Tonic
@debit:
SP&T sets a very high bar.
Major Major Major Major
@debit: OK in the sense of not banworthy, yeah. And it’s my understanding that ‘twat’ is far less offensive than the c-word.
A few people here have said mean things to me personally, and they are now in my pie filter. ARBG is one of them. It’s there if you want to use it. Personal attacks are off-limits for me, but Cole has not deemed them banworthy.
Gin & Tonic
@debit: The tides come in, the tides go out….
Kathleen
@debit: I’m with debit. I can throw the F bomb with the best of them, but I agree that comment was a personal attack.
p.a.
You can’t stop stupid, you can only hope to contain it.
debit
@Amaranthine RBG: I don’t recall addressing you.
different-church-lady
@Mnemosyne: As a freelancer, I am frequently faced with a decision that goes something like, “Do I want to make (normal rate – $150) doing this job, or do I want to not make (all of normal rate) not doing this job?”
The answer is different each time.
Kathleen
@Timurid: FFS. And you’re absolutely right. One reason why we’re in this mess.
Kathleen
@SiubhanDuinne:
St. Peter don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to the company store.
different-church-lady
@Roger Moore: Agreed: the appeal of racism runs much deeper than we imagined (hoped?) before November 2016. Even if Trump had lost we’d still be here thinking, “How the hell can 44% of the country be so stupid and hateful?”
debbie
@debit:
I agree with G&T, but I think it’s all personal preference. Also, calling someone a name is not the same as an attack.
different-church-lady
No argument is more important to liberal progress than the acceptable use of words. None.
-ly Ballou
@raven: @Libarbarian: Coming from a white, rural, blue-collar background myself, I was always struck even as a kid by the divide between those of us whose parents wanted us to do better than they did (not just materially but educationally, etc.) and those of our peers whose parents were equally determined that, goddammit, they were dirt-eaters, and their parents were dirt-eaters, so, by Christ, being dirt-eaters oughta be good enough for their kids. Whether or not that was what their kids wanted to do — shit, whether or not the parents themselves liked or hated their dirt-eating jobs — seemed to be utterly beside the point.
I think some people are just natural reactionaries at heart, and think the way of life you’re born into is the way of life that God has willed you and yours to be part of forever and ever, amen.
Amaranthine RBG
@debit:
Nor I you. But you decided to insert yourself into an exchange I was having with someone else and now you’re whinging about me addressing you?
Hardeefuckingharhar.
By the way, Twatwaffle and twat are two different things. One is excellent with maple syrup.
Mr Stagger Lee
In my old stomping grounds of the Mohaning Valley Oh, you got Trump voters convinced that steelmaking j hiust Pappy used to do is coming back even the last blast furnace was being torn down.
Amaranthine RBG
@different-church-lady:
Please, please please, don’t give him that much credit.
Many people don’t vote so the actual percentage of people in this country who voted for Trump is “only” something like 24 or 25%, I believe.
Mnemosyne
@Chyron HR:
Oh, I agree. They were faced with a generational problem and decided to repeatedly slam their hand in the car door rather than seek a real solution.
I’m just re-emphasizing that there is a genuine problem that exists out there, even if the people most affected decided to do the exact opposite of what would actually solve that problem.
SiubhanDuinne
@debbie:
I know you know the SATSQ to that.
Brachiator
Pictures worth several thousand words: The Decline of Coal in Three Charts
Gin & Tonic
@Amaranthine RBG: True. There were 245M voting-age people in November. He got 62M, which is 25%.
Mnemosyne
@different-church-lady:
Meh. I’m sensing a larger issue here than just the use of a specific word.
different-church-lady
@-ly Ballou:
…and everyone else in the world, for that matter.
Amaranthine RBG
@Brachiator:
Fuck, the four largest coal companies have a market cap of only $45M?
Why doesn’t somebody just buy them and donate the lands to the Nature Conservancy or something?
Seems like that would be easier and cheaper than trying to legislate them out of existence.
different-church-lady
@Amaranthine RBG: So we assign all non-voters to Hillary?
Amaranthine RBG
@different-church-lady:
Well, apathy is one thing. Actively voting for Trump is another.
Kathleen
@-ly Ballou: I love your nym! I grew up listening to Bob and Ray.
Brachiator
The coal industry’s small economic footprint
SiubhanDuinne
@Gin & Tonic:
Yes, but one of them is “shoes.”
different-church-lady
@Amaranthine RBG: Is it apathy or ignorance?
[waits for punchline]
Amaranthine RBG
@Brachiator:
There are more nurses in WV than coal miners.
When I was back there in the summer before the election and people were nattering on about how Clinton is going to destroy coal mining and how important that was to WV etc. – I would just ask people which candidate would be best for healthcare? I mean shouldn’t we protect nurses’ jobs since there were more of them than coal miners…
Amaranthine RBG
@different-church-lady:
Okay, I give up – what is the punchline?
HeleninEire
Sorry, not sorry. These people are too stupid to live. I’m tired, as a (former) blue state high taxed person, I am tired of their bullshit stupidity.
Again sorry, not sorry. Bored with their problems.
Major Major Major Major
@Brachiator: I always think back to the fact that coal employs fewer people than Arby’s.
Karen Potter
@satby: I lived in Sunnyvale back in 70’s, but my ex worked R & D so most of the people I knew were busy changing and changing things. I can still hear in laws pushing other son to get into electronics or something that would get him out of being a security guard
different-church-lady
@Amaranthine RBG: I don’t know, and I don’t care.
SiubhanDuinne
@Kathleen:
Adored that, TEF back in the ’50s.
Karen Potter
@jl: I know that when Milwaukee area closed some manufacturing plants that a number of tool and die shops were willing to hire people who had been machine operators as apprentices; but that meant about $10@hour pay cut, they didn’t look at the fact that after a couple of years of training they would be making as much or more than they had been just the immediate pay cuts
LongHairedWeirdo
re: coal country, this is one of the things that really bugs me. The GOParty-of-layoffs. doesn’t even have to tell *good* lies.
“Clinton said WE are going to put people out of work! She means HER and the rest of the LIEberals, not ‘all of America who no longer needs coal, and if they did, they can mine it with a tiny workforce’!
“And not only that, *we* will bring back coal jobs, by letting coal companies poison you, your air, your water, and your land, and by cutting their taxes so it’s even cheaper to replace you with a machine! Then they’ll have PLENTY of money to hire you if they were planning to, but they’re planning to pocket the money and *not* flip you the bird… where you can see it, I mean.”
It’s frustrating. If they had to *work* to lie, it would almost be fair, you know? “Wow, we can’t spin the lies like they can, and it really is kind of impressive for all that it’s evil”
But the truth DOES NOT MATTER. At all.
SiubhanDuinne
@Amaranthine RBG:
I don’t know and I don’t care.
You really do live in a cave, don’t you?
Amaranthine RBG
@different-church-lady:
Damn, heard that one so long ago that I had forgotten it.
@SiubhanDuinne:
A cave woulda been a palace to me.
Yutsano
@SiubhanDuinne: A bubble. A great white sociaIist bubble.
Gin & Tonic
@Amaranthine RBG:
Obligatory.
Karen Potter
@-ly Ballou: I read somewhere, no clue where or when – I read so much that lose track, that the differences between those willing to pack up and move, to change, to learn new skills verses those who will stubbornly cling to what family has done for generations might be coded into DNA.
Kathleen
@SiubhanDuinne: I think it was the biggest record in 1956. Great song and performance. Remember his TV show?
Another one of my favorites from that era (1959) was El Paso by Marty Robbins. Powerful story telling.
NorthLeft12
And this is example eleventy billion that shows that a lot of people only believe what they want to believe, and really, really don’t want to hear the truth.
Reminded me of the scene in Stranger Things 2 when the guy investigating Carole’s disappearance explained that people, in general, do not want to know the truth if it upsets their perception of the world and how things work.
Libarbarian
@-ly Ballou:
Inside I was floored. Dentists make more than coal miners and don’t get black lung. The fact that a dentist is much more likely to be able to help support you when you are old should appeal to the “worst” and most selfish part of the parent. But here was this guy complaining to a stranger, in front of his kids, about how his kid was a disappointment because he didn’t want to follow the family profession.
Libarbarian
@Brachiator:
Yup. Coal got fucking hammered in 2015 & 2016. Lots of mine closures.
Amir Khalid
@Amaranthine RBG:
Bad writing or speech is that which fails to convey meaning. Sentence fragments are fine when they convey meaning in the given context. Apparently you don’t read widely enough to know that.
jefft452
@raven: “My dad was a WW2 Destroyer sailor in the Pacific.”
Mine too, what ship?
J R in WV
@raven:
Mine too, worked in Eccles # 5 from early 1900s until he died in 1951 from Black lung and Lung Cancer. I saw his final hospital bills, 2 weeks, $137, mostly for oxygen, which did him no real good. My grandma helped his only son, my uncle, run ‘shine into town before WW II rather than see him go into the mines.
Then my brother went into that mine, worked a couple of years in the 1970s, saved it all, lived with my Grandma (how that must have felt to her!?!) to pay his own tuition to WVU.
I’ve been underground in coal mines, but never was hired to be a miner. Took pictures, filmed the work, got back out.
J R in WV
@frosty fred:
There used to be a lot of tobacco farming here, I’ve helped neighbors with all aspects of growing ‘baccy, as they were getting up in years and could use the help… I wouldn’t take money, as they were teaching me all about being a farmer.
I know one guy who grew 20,000 pounds of tobacco, at $1.30 a pound or so. He put kids through college doing it. Floyd was a hard worker, leased hundreds of acres of tobacco allotments.
Now it’s just people who garden doing a little as a hobby. Without quotas and federal support it doesn’t pay enough to make a living. Really it didn’t pay a living wage before with quotas and support.
J R in WV
@donnah:
Beckley won’t be a ghost town, because there are federal institutions based there, and tourism for the New River National River is picking up steam every summer. Otherwise, right on. Beckley may shrink some, but lots of people, older people, have pensions, own their homes, won’t move unless they have to!
I would move, but wife won’t. I like Denver, Pittsburgh, even NYC, though we can’t afford that. We could probably afford Pittsburgh, maybe buy a house and live with others, what used to be a commune, now is roommates.
J R in WV
@Kathleen:
Your ancestor was dead wrong, The UMWA has a non-discrimination article in their constitution, has had since they were founded. There were many black miners back when the mines were running coal 24/7, but their kids went away to college, and the number of blacks in the union dropped steadily once integration got started.
My wife’s cousin (a couple of times removed) was Superintendent of schools in McDowell county, and the school board was 50/50 black and white, back in the 1930s or 40s… The black kids worked hard in school, and went away to college, and to real careers, mostly in DC.
jefft452
My Granddad was a teamster (a real teamster, as in teams of horses or mules), he learned how to drive a truck
Dad was an electrician, he ended up repairing printed circuit boards
I started out as a records clerk and jumped into Database Administration way back when we had punch cards – because I knew that filing paper bills of materials wasn’t going to last
Since then I’ve worn almost every hat you could wear in IT – but I probably couldn’t do any of the jobs I used to do because they have changed so much
My own current specialty most likely wont exist in 10 years. OK, I’ll be retired by then – but my line of work is going through some drastic changes, if I want to keep it till I retire I have to learn new ways of doing things
I don’t by the “its human nature to want to do what you always did in the past” excuse
If that were true the human race would have starved to death when we ran out of mammoths to eat
I also don’t buy “waiting for a $25/hour job in the steel mill instead of $15 in another field” either
My bet is that if you are sitting on you but waiting for a high pay/low skill job to fall from the sky – you would find some excuse that it wasn’t good enough even if you were offed one
Sorry, but I see way too many people busting their hump for far less both in pay and respect to listen to the whining from “the white working class in the heartland”– when the former is offered a hand UP they take it, the latter spits in your face and says they deserve a handOUT
donnah
JR, you mentioned Eccles #5. We used to drive by there on our way to my aunt and uncle’s place. My mom grew up in Whitesville, but I don’t know which mine my grandfather and uncle worked in. My aunt and uncle just sold their place outside of Beckley in Glen Daniel, by Lake Stephens.
Now that my aunt and uncle have moved to Ohio, we have no reason to go back. It’s such a beautiful place; I’ll miss it very much. And I hope the state can figure out how to keep itself going.
Elizabelle
Found it: Washington Monthly: What J. D. Vance Doesn’t Get About Appalachia
A new history shows how Big Coal created a culture of dependence.
J R in WV
@donnah:
“And I hope the state can figure out how to keep itself going.”
Me too, that’s my pension!!!
J R in WV
@Amaranthine RBG:
I had taken you out of my pie filter list, but sadly, you didn’t deserve that. So back in you go!!! Never to come out again!!!
Yum, hot sticky cherry pie!!! Sour cherries from the tree in the corner of the garden!! and Ice Cream!!!
J R in WV
@Amaranthine RBG:
All those companies have been through at least one bankruptcy. Those companies lost $44 billion in capitalization since 2011… ’nuff said! Coal is dead.
I refer everyone to a link already posted, the lowest bids for solar plants are less than the cost of natural gas for already built power plants.
J R in WV
@donnah:
I learned to drive on St Rt 3, which I was surprised to learn runs past our farm in Lincoln county just over the ridge from our farm. From West Hamlin east to the Virginia state line, through the southern WV coal fields, down into the New River valley, across the farms of Monroe county.
Beautiful country all the way, since strip mine permits were issued more easily for sites not visible from a public road! Mining is about gone, and I’m glad.
J R in WV
I want to refer everyone to a link already posted, but worth posting again for people to take a look. The price of solar electricity is now less than the cost of fuel for a natural gas powered generating plant.
I posted this link in a reply to a poster whom many have pied, so I’m posting it again, the total of three times I think. It’s amazing data. Take a look!
Kathleen
@J R in WV: Thanks for that info. I did not know. I think he was talking more about some of the other unions, who IIRC were quite reactionary in the 60’s and 70’s.