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When I was between jobs, right-wing extremists happily told me to basically chase contract work all over the nation, all for crap pay and zero benefits. Thankfully, it didn't come to that in my case... but I have no special sympathy for the coal miners since it was their kind - people in their party - who were the first to label me as some sort of "failure who deserved it" when I was run over in the Great Recession, and they were the first to basically tell me to "suck it up" and accept crap if that's all that's out there.
So, they can do the same. They can move away from Stumble-bum County, get a real education, and do something with their lives other than vote for bigoted swine like Trump who's fed them obvious lies covered with a healthy heaping of bigotry - which they also lapped up like gravy.
Yeah, sure, I know... they aren't ALL like that, but you know what I mean. The far-right doesn't offer a scrap of sympathy or mercy to anyone else who's out of work - and heaven help you if you're poor AND an unpopular minority. But they expect us to upend the nation because Billy-Bob and Bubba want to live in a dead county with no jobs just like the past 10 generations did... oh, we'll even get rid of the Muslims and gays for them, too!
Nope, that's just not acceptable.
Exactly.
Remember the fight over extending unemployment benefits in the midst of the recession, and how according to Republicans all those who were struggling to get a toe hold were a bunch of lazy layabouts and moochers?
Now we're supposed offer huge tax breaks and do away with EPA so a bunch of folks who've been sitting on their duffs and voting for Republicans can have a few more years of working in a dying industry.
Right and them thar hills (WV, western PA, western NY) are filled with out of work coal miners - and natural gas. Let's put the two of them together.
Right now my husband, who lives in Texas, commutes to WV to work every two weeks because though there are thousands of men and women up there with no jobs, none are trained in the oil and gas industry. Slowly some affiliated industries are cropping up but it's still hard to find local talent.
Things can change for the better. It is a matter of actually understanding that coal is not what it used to be. Yes, it is being used in the steel mills. However, natural gas is starting to be used in steel mills. As you say, there is natural gas in those hills. Changes have to be made. It will likely mean coal miners will have to be retrained to be in the natural gas industry.
I thought of something else. If natural gas starts being used more widespread in the steel mills, more steel could be produced in other places. Texas is a leading producer of natural gas. Texas might become the top steel producer in the USA if natural gas replaces coal for steel making.
Oh, come on. I'm also a Kentuckian, and I know what mountaintop removal does. None of those beautiful places you cite in your second paragraph are impacted by MTR. They are beautiful because of that. Those clean creeks are spectacular, too - but what about those which now run black, or orange, and which contain no life, and which dump their poison into the Kentucky (and other) Rivers? My drinking water comes from the Kentucky River, as does that of everyone in more heavily populated central Kentucky and much of the mountains.
Flattening a mountain and calling the resulting Gobi desert-like flat top an industrial development is not progress. Adding some fertilizer and sowing non-native fast-growing grass seed is not restoration. Covering up a wild stream and calling it progress - isn't. There are far more orphan banks - flat, barren shelves left behind by strip and mountaintop removal mines which have gone bankrupt and abandoned the mess left behind - than can ever be used for "industrial parks".
Local infrastructure is poor, so are many schools. Education levels of the locals run low. Access to health care is spotty. There are few amenities, and now the once-beautiful mountains are being destroyed. Drug addiction is rampant.
Tell me, just why would a new company or factory be drawn to such a place? Do you think we ought to destroy a few more mountains to act as incentives for industrial development? Can you see the absurdity of this argument?
We are in agreement about the trash problem - those who add to it are well, trashy. But plastic milk jugs can be removed and recycled, and people can be taught better - and it they can't be taught, they can be apprehended and fined or even jailed if their offenses are severe enough.
You can not put back the top of a mountain. Take a look at Google Earth - go down to SE Kentucky, and enlarge as much as possible. Take a very good look. Those plateaus and cliffs are not natural. Move over to West Virginia - see more of the same. Take a look at western Virginia - still more. East Tennessee - the same.
You can't put it back. What is the price of a mountain?
I really do think future generations are going to curse these coal miners for what they did to those mountains and streams.
But it IS a governmental responsibility to provide educational opportunities for folks to retrain. Community colleges and vocational education would be an obvious starting place. More such, closer to where unemployed and underemployed people live, or just rehabbing existing facilities to offer additional education/training, would be something I'd think most would support, regardless of political leanings.
Although we haven't yet touched on the frequency of political corruption and good ol' boyism in the coal counties, and how that impacts the local power structures and economies..
Why do you think it's the government's responsibility to "provide educational opportunities" for people to be retrained (in other words, retrain people)?
There already are grants and financial aid for people who are financially strapped. There's also military service, which offers veterans free college after service and during service in many cases.
Why do you think it's the government's responsibility to "provide educational opportunities" for people to be retrained (in other words, retrain people)?
There already are grants and financial aid for people who are financially strapped. There's also military service, which offers veterans free college after service and during service in many cases.
Its been a while but are not grants, financial aid, mostly Government. Veteran's benefits are just outright Govt. aid
My son in law wanted to get into the oil and gas industry. He got his CDL. He started at the bottom in oil and gas. Two years later, he's a field supervisor, making great money.
He changed direction completely at age 34.
Quote:
Originally Posted by KathrynAragon
Why do you think it's the government's responsibility to "provide educational opportunities" for people to be retrained (in other words, retrain people)?
There already are grants and financial aid for people who are financially strapped. There's also military service, which offers veterans free college after service and during service in many cases.
...and yet here we are in 2017 with millions of people not trained for 21st century jobs and a president elect picking and choosing industries to prop up. We can either spend money on folks getting new skills or pay more in food stamps, medicaid, etc..
It seems like military service is the government providing skills and money to be re-trained. The GI Bill jump started our post war economy in the the 50s, why not use federal money/the scale of the federal money to do something similar for non-military?
This. Not to mention natural gas is an important feed stock in many industrial processes. A growing world needs petro products that are now cheaper and being refined domestically. Coal merely isn't cheap anymore without subsidizing pollution and doesn't have as many industrial applications as natural gas.
Why do you think it's the government's responsibility to "provide educational opportunities" for people to be retrained (in other words, retrain people)?
There already are grants and financial aid for people who are financially strapped. There's also military service, which offers veterans free college after service and during service in many cases.
In case you've forgotten your American history and civics classes from school, Schoolhouse Rock is your friend:
We the people,
In order to form a more perfect union,
Establish justice, insure domestic tranquility,
Provide for the common defense,
Promote the general welfare and
Secure the blessings of liberty
To ourselves and our posterity
Do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
It is a well established fact going back decades if not hundreds of years large numbers of citizens, subjects or whatever living in poverty is *not* a good thing. Ask Louis XVI, Nicholas II, Paul von Hindenburg and most recently Hillary Clinton what a "revolt" by the "poor" can do.....
Appalachia region has been targeted for poverty reduction going back several presidential administrations. Some of it has worked, but there still remains a stubbornly high level of economic insecurity in that region that seems to defy all attempts to cure.
Remember the fight over extending unemployment benefits in the midst of the recession, and how according to Republicans all those who were struggling to get a toe hold were a bunch of lazy layabouts and moochers?
Now we're supposed offer huge tax breaks and do away with EPA so a bunch of folks who've been sitting on their duffs and voting for Republicans can have a few more years of working in a dying industry.
Give me a break.
I remember hearing a great deal about the 'makers vs the takers'.
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