Appalachia

[maxrandb]

In a nice way, we have to tell Coal Miners that folks who used to build Horse-Drawn Carriages and deliver ice had to move on to bigger and better things.

[Agnosticsherbet]

1. We need to legislate a program to help them move to 21st century jobs.

[Hortensis]

18. I remember the recalcitrant loggers in the Pacific

Northwest when the big logging companies shifted operations to the South. It's not just jobs but self image and lifestyle. Many of these tough, rugged guys living in blue states with plenty of assistance offered refused it and chose to veg on welfare than re-educate and possibly move.

Of course, welfare is no longer so available, but I've read that Appalachia has an especially vigorous black market in food stamps that allows people to convert them to cash for other things they need. A way of saying that being well accustomed to poverty as a way of life won't encourage change.

Literacy is sure to be a problem for plenty of ex-miners here as well. Almost everyone "can read," but only half the nation can read good enough for mos of the decent-paying jobs.

But, yes, we need to bump up our efforts to offer various types of assistance and retraining, with jobs rewards clearly visible.

[bemildred]

2. They need help, not sarcasm. nt

[maxrandb]

8. No sarcasm intended

My grandfather helped organize Coal Miners in Corning, OH way back "in the day".

I'm simply saying that we need to find a way to help them transition to new jobs, and I also think that those jobs should move to their area, not vice/versa.

A good start would be a large infusion of capital for infrastructure and schools.

These folks and our folks that leave in inner-city areas all over this country have been left behind.

America shouldn't have slums and ghettos. Imagine the jobs created if we took the money we used to cut taxes on the wealthy over the past 35 years and used it to upgrade, modernize and rebuild our cities?

[bemildred]

9. Well stop talking about horse-drawn carriages and such then.

You accuse them of being backwards. like it's their fault they have shitty jobs.

There are people there who do drive horse drawn carriages, and they ought not be ridiculed.

[1StrongBlackMan]

30. You can't have it both ways ...

You can't argue the need to save the planet from climate change AND argue for continued employment in the coal industry.

[tularetom]

27. Jobs? We ain't got no steenking jobs

Yes, those who have been displaced by the slow demise of the coal industry could be trained. The question is, trained to do what?

Most American industries are in decline, a condition which will only get worse as all these crappy trade agreements kick in. Teenagers have glommed onto the burger flipping jobs and Wally World can only absorb so many greeters.

[Brickbat]

3. Which, in this day and age, are...?

[Glorfindel]

4. Also, the whalers are pretty much out of business, since whale oil is not much in demand

Very few telegraph operators or Gregg-Shorthand stenographers left, either. It's a shame about the shorthand. I was really good at it.

P.S.: No sarcasm intended. As a hillbilly myself, I have a lot of compassion for the unemployed coal miners.

[Go Vols]

29. +1 for Hillbillies

[FLPanhandle]

5. Give solar panel companies incentives to build plants in Appalachia

Coal mining is their way to support themselves and their families. Instead of abandoning them, as the energy industry shifts, use that shift to help these areas.

[Maeve]

7. this ^^^^^

The people of Appalachia love the land, love their homes, have deep roots...don't tell them to move to where the jobs are, find ways to bring the jobs to them. And good paying jobs they can be proud of.

[snooper2]

32. Well, since they already leveled the mountains the land is prepped

[Fuddnik]

6. They have been for years.

They move up to Cleveland.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

31. And Pittsburgh, and Detroit ...

... back when industry was booming.

Not so much now.

[KamaAina]

34. There's a joke about Hazel Park, the Detroit suburb where many of them went

A car full of hillbillies drove up from Kentucky to Michigan. When they got there, they saw a sign that said "Hazel Park, Left."

So they turned around and went back to Kentucky.

[appalachiablue]

36. What other group jokes you got, plenty more or just hillbillies?

[KamaAina]

38. Plenty. The Hawaiian version of a Polish joke is the "Portagee joke".

'Kay, get these t'ree guys bustin' out of OCCC (county lockup), one Hawaiian, one haole, an' one Portagee. All the lights and sirens go off. Hawaiian guy looks arounds, sees a tree, climbs it, and says "Pueo!" (the onomatopoeic word for owl) Haole guy finds one odda tree, climbs it, and says "Cheep cheep!" Finally da Portagee guy climb his tree, and says "Moooo!"

Then there are the Texas Aggie jokes. The average Texas family has 2.1 children. The .1s all go to A&M. The Loop 610 freeway which circles Houston is known as the "Aggie evacuation route". And so on.

The point of the original joke was not to insult the hillbillies but to illustrate that their northward migration is the stuff of popular culture.

[appalachiablue]

39. Not to insult..but to illustrate their..migration. Try it with other immigrant people, no don't.

[KamaAina]

42. I just did.

Portuguese are not considered haoles in Hawai'i, due to immigration patterns. They often worked as lunas (bosses; overseers) in the cane fields, which put them a level above the actual laborers but well below the haole planters on the social scale.

[appalachiablue]

43. What you refer to as 'popular culture' isn't so popular with particular groups,

especially the discrimination, exclusion and ridicule they receive in terms of employment, housing and acceptance which is what I'm talking about. The general public also isn't ready for CPT 'jokes/references' either, as the president recently said at the WHCD. Haoles I know from being in Hawaii, and there is real Portuguese heritage in our family.

[KamaAina]

44. Must be a Hawai'i thing.

I have been known to laugh at haole jokes. 'Kay, dis haole guy is in one bar knocking back drink after drink. Hawaiian guy next to him is nursing his beer. Every time the haole guy takes a drink, he says "T.G.I.F.!" Then the Hawaiian guy says "S.H.I.T." This goes on for round after round. "T.G.I.F." "S.H.I.T." Finally the haole guy's curiosity gets the better of him, so he asks "What's S.H.I.T.?" "Stupid haole, it's Thursday!"

[alarimer]

10. Condescending bullshit

This is what Thomas Frank is talking about, exhibit A, right here.

[abelenkpe]

26. Exactly. nt

[appalachiablue]

37. Only elite professionals need apply, the 'creative' desk class. No workman, physical labor types,

including those who process the coal that powers electricity for your laptop in DC, NY, Boston and elsewhere.

[ileus]

11. Problem is one coal miner doesn't equal one job.

So for every coal miner out of a job you have to create 2 or 3 jobs, and with each coal job you'll have to create a second or third, maybe a fourth job to get back the tax base a single 100-125k job pays.

Basically in the coal fields you just need to figure out how to get those people to move, other than timber or gas field jobs there's nothing, and nothing will ever going to be there. Anyone claiming otherwise is a lying.

There's no roads, no public utilities, minimum education population...

[GeorgeGist]

12. Even slide-rule makers had to move on ...

after they helped put a man on the moon.


http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2014/10/22/356937347/the-slide-rule-a-computing-device-that-put-a-man-on-the-moon

[B2G]

13. What are they supposed to move on TO

in the near future?

Because that's what they care about...putting food on the table now and in the very near future.

Solutions that are years down the road won't help them. People live in the here and now.

[sofa king]

14. Many of them will be fine where they are.

West Virginia's greatest resource was always on top of the coal: its amazing, huge forests. Those forests have been largely wrecked, except of course anything that can be seen from the highways. It's a giant facade that barely conceals thousands of square miles of environmental devastation.

We need those forests back, to create regular rain patterns for the rest of the Atlantic seaboard, to sequester carbon, to foster dozens of species of endangered wildlife, to build value.

The answer is simple, and quite Democratic. One has to be well-schooled to properly regrow and tend forests, to clean up acidic tailings and to accurately observe and record the recovery of flora and fauna, to manage and control the massive influx of tourism which will result ten or fifteen years later. It's an educational solution, a university based solution, a long-term and slow solution. The money at first is probably going to have to come from taxes, from outside the state.

The conservative fools who think otherwise are already being demographically expunged and displaced into a dozen cities as their stupid beliefs catch up to and devour their health and finances, victims of their own hateful myopia.

The coal industry was absolutely awful to West Virginians in every way: it made them poorer, ruined their health, stole their future, and then packed up and left them in a wasteland of their own creation. Whatever money some handful of them made was a pittance compared to the damage caused. But we can easily repair the damage by simply focusing on inexpensive higher education, proper environmental management, and regrowth--literally--of the region's most important renewable resource: trees.

[maxsolomon]

21. Restoration and migigation is needed, but who pays?

the companies that wrecked the landscape will just fold up their tents and declare bankruptcy if forced to pay.

then it falls on the taxpayer, per usual, but the GOPs intransigence would block any large-scale effort. socialism for corporations but not for people.

[sofa king]

45. Like I said, a Democratic solution.

So the solution starts with, "first, fire all the Republicans." That's not as unrealistic as one might have thought only six months ago.

[Tsiyu]

15. No fucking body coal mines if they don't have to, smart ass

The only ones who make any money are the rich owners.

I know old guys who used to walk hours and hours over mountains to get to mines only to walk those miles back home at night. Poverty is real, and poor people do whatever they have to do to feed their families.

Appalachia has been left to rot by the rest of the country. It's fun to point your fingers and laugh, but every single one of your states has shit jobs that fuck up the world.

Wasn't there JUST another chemical explosion in Houston? Is everyone in Houston too stupid to stop industry and move on to bigger and better things?


Edit to add link: http://www.click2houston.com/news/red-substance-runs-off-into-water-after-spring-branch-warehouse-fire

Edit 2 to add: I don't think that Houstonians are dumb; it was a rhetorical question. Also, tourism is one way these areas can regroup, because customers visit and then go home. But many of the Appalachian states have leadership making decisions that turn tourists away.

Also, people need education, transportation, health care, dental care, vision correction, etc to be fit to work.


I did the math. Our governor is worth 3 billion. He could buy a dental bus for every county in the state and it wouldn't even put a dent in his wealth. Instead, Haslam shuts down much-neded public transportation and other programs to benefit poor and working class people.

We have plantation owners here in coal country, not elected representatives or leaders. Billy Boy Haslam is the plantation owner of Tennessee, and he has to keep the poor down or Jesus and Billy Boy's rich diddy will cry.

[maxrandb]

16. Dumbass???

Did you really have to go there...Dumbass!!!

and let's just talk for a minute about your nonsensical "No fucking body coal mines if they don't have to" horseshit.

I guess nobody wanting to fucking mine coal would apply to those folks who tell Clinton "not to come to our State because EPA policies are killing coal mining jobs".

Maybe the "nobody wants to mine fucking coal" mantra applies to the folks that will come in droves in a few days and vote for a nimrod like Donald Trump, because he tells them he's "gonna mine the fucking shit out of coal in your state"? Hell, he's gonna mine so much shit it's gonna be terrific!

and... if "people need education, transportation, health care, dental care, vision correction, etc to be fit to work.", then maybe they should quit voting for a fucking Republican Party that could give a rats-ass about any of that shit.

Your anger towards me, is about as misplaced as their anger toward Democrats.

Instead of telling Democrats that "they aren't welcome", they should be taking Pitchforks and Torches to the RNC Headquarters.

Give me a break!

[Tsiyu]

17. lol

Cool story, bro


You patronize and insult an entire section of the country but you are now the long-suffering, wounded victim.

My post was hurled back at you with more smart ass than you can muster. Sorry you're so jealous. As for the miners, of course people will scramble for those nasty, life stealing jobs when there are no other jobs. Nuance is not your strong suit, is it?

Please learn to read as well. Smart ass is not spelled D-U-M-B-A-S-S. Again, two entirely different words the un-nuanced would tend to lump together.

Oh, and if you can't take the GD heat, don't come on the forum and make smart ass statements designed to be flame bait.

[maxrandb]

19. Sorry

but the word "smart" just didn't fit when responding to your post.

BTW - only a few days before the primary on Tuesday the powerful West Virginia Coal Association has jumped in with an endorsement of Trump.

I regret that you don't think we need to work to help transition these folks to jobs with a more viable future, or work to improve their schools, infrastructure and health care.

[Tsiyu]

22. I regret that your Straw Man work is exceptionally strong today

Very juicy.

[dembotoz]

20. if you got a lemon you have to figure out how to make lemonaide

perhaps retirement oasis?

cheap housing, cheap land, beautiful landscape.
florida is sinking, arizona is broiling, warmer than the northeast but not the ez bake oven of further south.


perhaps tourism

maybe already developed...i do not know...when i think vacation i sure as hell do not think Appalachia....
legalize pot....that sure as hell has increased tourism in colorado. maybe legal distilleries...make your own moonshine?
part of the original 13 states....they got as much history as any place is gonna get.

just gotta be creative. there will be no on solution. No silver bullet maybe just hundreds of regular bullets.

[maxsolomon]

23. beautiful landscape? once upon a time, maybe

Mr. Peabody's coal train has hauled it away.

[ileus]

24. Like you say most all of WV is beautiful.

Tourism dollars used to be #2, now maybe they'll be #1.

Problem is changing trashbags at the rest stop doesn't pay 100k a year. Just like the rest of the world, it takes money to make money here.

[dembotoz]

28. lord i hear you on that one. folks gotta figure out how to make a buck

i have gone thru a number of career and industry changes.

what is the saying? the only constant is change?
another saying from monty python....and now for something completely different.

gotta figure it out
its awful
it really is
but if the boat is sinking you need to figure out how to swim or how to drown.
and this is not pull yourself up by the bootstraps gop bullshit

maybe wpa or ccc again...but if the mines were plan A and plan A is going away...better find a plan b

[KamaAina]

25. Xposting to Appalachia group

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=forum&id=1272

so as to get the view from the inside.

[ileus]

33. Not a very active group...

[A Little Weird]

35. Have you moved on to bigger and better things?

Last time I checked electricity in the U.S. was nearly 40% coal-generated. That's not something to be proud of - we need to be going to renewables. But if you think coal miners have the power to make that happen then you're as delusional as you are condescending.

For now, whether they like it or not, a lot of people are forced to work in these dirty, dangerous, and depressing job so they can live a decent life and you can have cheap electricity. But by all means, if you have ideas of how we can transition our economy from coal to something else so people can actually move on to bigger and better things in eastern Kentucky then come on down and share them!

[appalachiablue]

40. +10. Plenty of scolding, arrogance and ridicule. Offering solutions, nada.

[yortsed snacilbuper]

41. The mine in my home town is closed down!

The superintendent's office at the Bobtown mine of Shannopin Coal Co.