Alec MacGillis, NY Times Opinion: Who Turned My Blue State Red
MacGillis looks at eastern Kentucky and finds that it is the addicted relatives who are stuck on welfare that drive animosity to social programs. As in black neighborhoods, reservations, and declining rural, the real culprit is the stigma of chronic unemployment.
Looking at this reality, it is clear that the Blue Dog Democrats and New Democrats by not focusing on full employment like their New Deal predecessors have destroyed the strength of the Democratic Party.
It will take more than a Presidential candidate to turn this around. At this point every Democratic candidate should be outlining their plans for reducing the number of people on social programs by restoring a full employment economic policy. Then see what the nay-sayers say. Infrastructure repair, school funding, health care (community clinics in rural areas and urban neighborhoods for example), work programs for people released from prison — all of these are proven ways to get full employment. And all work so long as you administer them through government agencies that operate with a service ethic and provide salaries and dignity that are motivating. And hire enough administrators to keep people from spending all day at the agency, which is just another attack on dignity.
Administration restores the employment base in rural areas and local neighborhoods for people who are currently educated and working at just-as-job to get by. Federal money restores local economies in small communities.
All true, and as a resolution for a short-term economic dislocation, it’s not unreasonable. However, as long as the GOP controls the purse strings at the state and federal level, it is unreasonable to expect that it will be implemented. They may or may not be cruel and have no empathy for the less fortunate, but it’s not in their interest to increase voting participation that benefits Democrats.
Let’s also be honest that hire enough administrators to keep people from spending all day at the agency, which is just another attack on dignity easily give the right another line of attack. Easy to see more resentment develop from “More government dollars spent to reduce the amount of time that people without jobs spend applying for benefits.” Plus, should such new jobs materialize, few would actually end up being filled by those currently standing in the long lines.
My question is if there’s any realistic future growth opportunities for the region. Ones that could absorb the entrenched surplus labor population without creating a new surplus labor population. Immigrants enter the country everyday and somehow manage to find employment, but they don’t migrate into chronically depressed regions.
Improved transportation to overcome the barrier that the mountains create is essential, or some revitalization of agriculture, such as paying for trees whose sole purpose is to fix carbon into the ground without harvesting.
Funding to clean up mine wastes is very much needed and could provide lots of jobs for some of the people who worked in the mines.
Having an plan for jobs that people find credible (and infrastructure, even federally financed infrastructure is still credible) would be a way to defeat Republicans at all levels of government (unless they turned and supported infrastructure–pork barrel–too).
Planting trees and bushes to repair the scarred landscape from strip mining is a very good idea that provides employment and environmental repair. Long term, the population needs to go down or another industry found. The federal government needs to find a way to facilitate movement to job centers. That presupposes there are any job centers after TPP.
There cannot be an accomdation between the Roosevelt Wing (if it still exists) and the Clinton Wing. They are mutually exclusive with mutually exclusive goals. as the King James bible says, “You cannot serve both God and Mammon” (paraphrased I’m sure). In this case “one cannot serve both Main street and wall street” or “You cannot serve both the 99% and the 1%”.
Mobility elsewhere is not a problem in most Appalachian counties. That is what has keep most populations low.
Well Democrats would be good to kill TPP despite their President going through the motions.
It would also help to have a full-employment Fed policy (it is part of their mandate) instead of the one they have.
Yep the unwillingness of the Clinton wing to face the need for New Deal type policies is the major risk to the continued existence of the Democratic Party.
I thought attachment to the land was a problem. I don’t think I ever saw Eastern Kentucky. I’ve passed through one my way from Chicago to either Florida or Alabama which I think brought me through Western Kentucky. Mostly on the interstate between Bowling Green (I remember the Corvette Museum) through Lexington. There really is a lot of tourist spots on the way, the aforementioned Corvette museum, Mammoth Cave, the Jim Beam distillery and I’m sure more.
For those who still have good land, attachment to the land (otherwise known as being land poor) is a problem. But many families are not about to let their originally granted land loose. Others have already because of economic hardship. Children, especially those who don’t want to try to make the land or business profitable or those who want to get out go to college somewhere and move to where they can find a job or take up a trade and move to where they can find a job. People from East Kentucky in Atlanta, Nashville, Cincinnati, and Chicago. People from southern West Virginia in this area.
Tourist spots on main roads seek to make a business from people who don’t usually stop except for gas or food or major attractions–some organic like Mammoth Cave, other contrived, like Rock City or the Corvette Museum, others spin-offs of other businesses, like the tourist business around the Jim Beam distillery. In North Carolina and Virginia, the Blue Ridge Parkway was created during the New Deal to be a tourist highway bringing money into the mountain regions.
I remember the Blue Ridge Parkway. Beautiful, except for the year that tent caterpillars dominated the landscape. Virginia is the most beautiful state that I’ve seen, but I have seen them all. In particular, I haven’t seen the Carolinas. I don’t count the layover at Raleigh-Durham airport.
For North Carolina, you need at least to drive US 64 from Murphy to Manteo. That gives you a great cross-section of the state in 550 miles. Blue Ridge Parkway from Cherokee to Virginia. A week in Ocracoke.
For South Carolina, the mountains along SC 11, the cities of Greenville, Columbia, and Charleston – each different in character, historic towns of Cokesbury Pendleton (including Clemson), and Ninety-Six. Congaree National Park.
The RDU airport is not one of the scenic places ever since they took down the observation platform for watching the airplanes take off.
Saving this as a text file on my hard drive. I’ll get there one of these days. I used to stop at RDU on my way between DC and Florida in the ’70s. One of my neighbors moved to Myrtle Beach SC about twenty years ago. I might try to look them up, even though they were older than us and may have died.
My wife would like to move back to NoVa. I tell her we can’t afford the real estate any more. Maybe NC or SC would do. I never did get an official snowfall yesterday, but by just sticking a yard stick into the snow; it was 12 inches. I’m damn well sick of snow, but worried about Hurricanes, sure wish I could afford San Diego where it is 70 and dry 99% of the time. Yes, one day I was there at it was 106, but I’ve hit the same (with humidity!) in the Chicago suburbs.
Our daughter lives in Anniston AL and would like us to move there. Honestly, it was not as benighted as I’d imagined. But it was hitting the high 90’s and it was only early May. Soil looked just as crappy as Virginia, except the red clay wasn’t as red or tight.
I might consider it if they at least had Blue Dogs instead of Klansmen for politicians.
Durham-Chapel Hill or Asheville are alternatives for you although Chapel Hill gets regular snow and has mountains to drive in. Durham-Chapel Hill gets 1-2 snows a year and occasionally a big dump; last and biggest was 24 inches – I think over 5 years ago. Last significant hurricane was in 1996.
Thanks! Got a foot here Sunday, although the news says it’s the second worst November on record.
There’s not a great deal of public lands in those states. What does exist may not be in need of restoration, reclamation, revitalization. But say it does, who gets and does the work, assuming contracts are let by a federal agency? There will be the (out of town) environmental contractors and (out of town) engineering contractors. How many locals would be hired? Not many because they don’t have the required skills.
The mines are privately owned. Are you proposing that we nationally buy out the owners of lands they have decimated? Lands that they are supposed to reclaim when the mining is done?
A new CCC would be okay, but what comes after?
You’re skirting the issue that Republicans currently control the purse strings. They are not going to fund programs that improve the lives of unemployed people that Democrats then expect will vote for Democrats.
This region has always been poor. Roads (Bobby Byrd – WV) had some positive impact but I’m not sure it was a net positive. The TVA was definitely a net positive for a portion of the region. The UMW improved the lives of miners and the region for a while — but once it stopped being a radical force, it was relatively easy to take it out of the equation.
Here’s a rundown on WV agriculture. 95% of the farms are family owned.
A new CCC is what I had in mind. And when making plans you shouldn’t assume Republican control forever. If you do, you might as well become a Blue Dog.
The subject was “What can be done for the people of Kentucky”. If you wait until Democrats are in control to propose anything, you will be waiting forever, unless you believe in the demographic wave.
I’m not skirting the issue that Republicans control the purse strings, I’m arguing that a credible plan for providing jobs is a way to strip the Republicans from the purse strings.
Giving the stripping of industries by trade agreements, the family farms are pretty much what are keeping the region going. And the coal mining that is left. And tourism in the areas in which it is heavy.
In the Kanawha and Ohio River basins, there is much clean-up necessary to return clean water and productive soil. That clean-up can be done over a long time period with agroecology, but that is labor-intensive technology — exactly what the region needs.
Ownership of polluted land and strip-mined land is the issue. Yes, unlike many places in the West, the land is private rather than public and leased to mines. There are Constitutional and legal ways of acquiring land necessary to protect the health and safety of the public. Abandoned strip mines, deep mines, and mine tailing areas seem to qualify.
There are sufficient expertise in universities within the states do the environmental specifications for ordinary local contractors. And sufficient numbers of civil and mine engineers to accommodate sufficient projects to soak up the available unemployed people able to do this work.
As I mentioned in another comment, what comes next is improving transportation. One set of projects would be upgrading existing railroad tracks to carry higher speed trains and double-tracking or double-routing tracks to provide the capability to carry more rail traffic. This is a substantial long-term construction project that would reach into all parts of the mountainous region. It potentially revitalizes small towns that were bypassed as trucks could compete in speed and volume with trains as a result of the interstate and Appalachian highway programs. This will require public funding because the current railroads are too risk-averse to start building this level of service. Amtrak has been spurring some double-tracking along its routes already.
The next piece is better transportation within counties to the county seat. That need not mean additional paved roads. Construction of health clinics and other medical facilities and financing of outlying medical staff is another issue that could be subsidized.
The region has always been poor primarily because of the cost of transportation through the mountains. The Appalachian Regional Commission installed a lot of necessary infrastructure in the 1960s and 1970s–highways, water and sewer systems, rural electric lines, and public buildings. The gradual austerity of infrastructure programs since 1980 has meant less extensions of infrastructure and more maintenance and now even maintenance is suffering. Both Republican and Democratic officials used to seek these funds and seek the appropriations for them. The program still operates and the FY2015 budget request was $62.4 million.
I notice that Hillary Clinton has floated a proposal for investment in Appalachian areas again–multiple billions over an unstated time period.
I’m not opposed to any federal investment plan in the region — if it can be shown to be a long-term and viable investment that is a plus for the residents, region, and nation. Too often outsiders come in and dictate what is needed and then after spending the money (usually not as much as actually needed) leave and everything crumbles back near where it was to begin with.
This is a substantial long-term construction project that would reach into all parts of the mountainous region.
Why? What is the point of reaching into all parts of the region? Maybe nature without people encroaching on every nook and cranny would do better than human efforts to restore what has been wrecked.
If there’s nothing in the region that will allow the people to sustain an economy that will prosper and thrive after the boom of public infrastructure, etc. dollars, the effort would be as misguided as Pruitt-Igoe. There are lots of poor counties in the US. Pew How the geography of U.S. poverty has shifted since 1960. Since 1960 decreased in rural areas and increased in urban areas.
I think there are some misconceptions about the environment in the mining regions of Appalachia. Enforcement of the Clean Air and Water Acts have really cleaned up the streams and rivers. As I was growing up there were open burning slate dumps and the rivers ran black.
Now, the streams are clean enough to be stocked with trout, fly fishermen are in the rivers and wildlife have increased. Bears are in my residential neighborhood raiding garbage. Of course some of this is reflected by a decrease in population.
The only real pollution is run off from MTR. the occasional weeks of rain will cause flooding down hollows from the removal of vegetation. Since MTR is fading away, the cleared land is quickly regaining brush and trees.
Are the rivers pure? No and there is room for improvement. There is some heavy metal run off from mines but “eyes on the ground” show vast improvement. A study of past and current EPA reports would show the difference and levels.
As for infrastructure, the Appalachian Corridor road system has made a real difference by cutting travel time and making shipping products or merchandise easier. They act as feeder systems to the Interstates. But because of the terrain, it is slow and expensive to build. About a mile a year. That and uneven budgeting has taken almost 20 yrs to build 12 miles.
I glanced at HRC’s program and it looked a little superficial, not addressing the core problems.
R
Thanks for the update from a resident. I remember television from the ’80s that looked like moonscape.
Don’t all of her programs look like that?
I remember DKos fawning over her response about BlackLivesMatter. The only response I heard was “We have to do something about that.” What an amazing program!
Some of the HRC bullet points-
-Guaranteeing pensions and health plans for miners.
Guess what, the only people who have pensions are retired, older UMWA members; everyone else is on their own. Once the union allowed 2 tier hiring and stopped nationwide strikes, it has died in the coal fields and membership is just a small fraction of what they had. As a force for worker protection, its dead. Health plans with existing companies changes or disappears with every change of hands or you create a company, dump all the liabilities on it, then declare bankruptcy (Patriot Coal)
-Infrastructure
No crap, but its better in some areas than others. Road construction we have discussed. Better electrical service would be nice, but that means spending money on right away clearing; and that cuts into share holder dividends.
Verizon dropped land line for wireless, and Frontier bought up the business. They got govt money to upgrade DSL and its 24 mps in some towns near the switching station. Cable companies offer broadband as well. Lack of broadband is not that much of an issue in the coal fields.
-Reclamation
Wait a few years and Nature does a lot of it. Pretending that you can do heritage fruit or vegetable farming, bee keeping, or hog farming on old Mountain Top Mines is an interesting concept; once you truck millions of lbs of top soil up the hill side, I guess you could raise tomatoes.
-Education
Definitely. Money needs to go in to replace the Coal Severance tax, start assessing more on land held by out of state corporations and really start pushing the public schools to perform. Community Colleges are already trying to fill the gaps, not sure what else they can do.
It all comes down to attracting jobs. Just not sure what. Over 100 yrs of coal have warped the economy. Its like the textile towns of NC and VA. Once they pulled out, not much could be done. Not until the Tobacco lawsuit fed money back into those communities to try and change their direction. The same is going to have to happen in the coal fields.
R
Curious, how much has hunting/eco-tourism been developed? Are some 12-16 million hunters and fishermen our there that are not picky about infrastructure and you are a central location. Hospitality is job intensive, too. You certainly have the scenery and the potential for good wildlife numbers. Could become a destination market like South Africa. Many rural spots of Europe are being discovered by tourists through rewilding.
Ecotourism misses the point. Jobs and infrastructure rather than continue to be a 3rd world resource (first extraction, then a “lost paradise) for others to come and wonder at the native’s quaint ways and rural environment.
Tourism was tried in SW WV, with the Hatfiedl-McCoy atv Trail system. It was instituted as a way to diversify the economy for the coal region; but its success made it a political football and its expanded past its original focus area to encompass a large portion of the state, diluting its effect. Its still an adjunct, but not as helpful as it was.
Hunting is a big industry, just in the non-coal areas. Eastern counties are a mecca for hunting trips from the western part of the state and the more urban areas of Va and DC. Some hunting in the Western part of state, but bow-not gun.
The real problem for WV is that it is the only regional state that is totally in the Appalachian Mts system. Others have competing geography based economic interests which moderated the hold of the extracting industries (VA, Tenn, KY, NC, Penn, Ohio). Not WV, the Coal and Gas industries have run the show for the last 100 yrs and they are running out of steam.
R
Here is link to the Rewilding the Adirondacks page…http://www.adirondackwildlife.org/Rewilding_the_Adirondacks.html
You might also be poised to take advantage of Carbon market with this approach.
Tomatoes, and peppers and squash/pumpkins. These native American plants need sun and water, not much in soil tilth. I was so advised by my Virginia agricultural agent and the zucchini (and grapes, forgot them) grew like weeds in the red clay. They are doing well here in Illinois also with thick gray clay, the consistency of modeling clay, although I’m told we have plenty of minerals, just no organic matter or percolation. I think these were all originally Central American plants and rainforests are notorious for having no nutrients. They are all bound up in existing vegetation.
Not just keeping people from spending all day at the agency but also reducing the time required to get people off of jobless benefits entirely.
A lot of the disability issues are with employer perceptions and working times and conditions; those could be done differently as well, but it is going to take certain kinds of staff to do it. And a full-employment economic policy.
Republican politicians are going to grouse no matter what. Democrats should figure out how to answer those attacks so that people support realistic solutions instead fantasy kicking people to the curb.
Having spent all day at the Social Security office to file for benefits, I can relate. Had to come back, too. My number wasn’t called the first day.
Imagine doing it every week for unemployment benefits or every month for welfare or food stamps or every illness for public health clinics. Deliberate understaffing by cutting budgets.
Those are state and county administered programs — although the federal government pays for approximately 50% of the administrative costs for SNAP.
Thankfully in Illinois (2001) you only had to go the first day, then call in to an automated phone system.
I’m told you can do the whole thing on line now.
Probably part of Clinton’s “reinventing government” which was basically cutting federal employees.
No, I applied in 2011.
I live in Southern Appalachia and the expereiences related in Pike Co, KY are correct. People I work with say the same thing and want to throw able bodied people off welfare. “I work to pay my bills, why shouldn’t they?”. Unlike the Reaganistic ranting about non-white “Others”, these people KNOW the welfare, food stamp recipients. They know they can work. It is “Cousin Bobby”.
Now is cutting them off assistance the best course? No, but they don’t have an answer except resentment.
Its interesting to see comments about the article in places like Washington Monthly, where they argue about particulars or policial strategy. They don’t live around here and have no concept about the daily lives of folks.
Yes, they have to be reengaged politicaly, but they have to have a reason to be engaged. Its not necessarily Limbaugh, or Fox News; its the economy, stupid.
Coal industry is declining. Nothing is ready to take its place and provide jobs. Infrastructure and education is terrible as tax rates on the large portions of land held by out of state corporations (75% in some counties of WV) is almost Zero, comparatively.
Programs of jobs for infrastrucure repair would go a long way, if the money could be squeezed from the Defense Budget and increased taxation. If local Democrats could be a conduit for those jobs (yes, Democratic machine politics), that would go a long way toward rebuilding the party in these rural states. That’s they way they used to do it.
Ridge
Thanks for pointing out the county and state sweethearting of out-of-state corporations on tax rates.
Are there still local Democratic officials in mountain counties? Most serve-all-people infrastructure funding goes through states and states typically send it through counties. So whatever machine is in power generally gets that.
What could be routed through Democratic officials would be mine clean-up projects, since the courts and strategic bankruptcies vitiated the SuperFund for financing. It looks like it’s going to be the general taxpayer paying for what the mineowners should have paid for in order to get the landscape put back together so that people can appreciate their mountains again.
Carbon sequestration through planting and forest management projects could also provide employment.
Population in most mountain counties are small enough that it doesn’t take many jobs to make a significant economic impact and even get Cousin Bobby on his feet again.
Reclamation is an industry but limited. Mountain top removal was only economically feasible if you didn’t enforce the Clean Water Act of 1972. That’s why it took off under Bush Admin and died slowly under Obama. Most companies walked away from the projects but they didn’t own the land, just had coal leases and the owners (out of state) are usually not responsible.
Because of the terrain, you now have large areas of flat land with access to high voltage electrical service. The best use the Coal Assoc. can think of for this land is cattle farming, bee keeping, parks; because the land companies, coal, and out of state corporations Never, Never, Never give up mineral rights. I mean Never. And no one would build an outhouse on this land without mineral rights, Without mineral rights, anything built could be plowed under if the price of coal goes up a few cents. You can’t deny the mineral rights owner access and they take priority over surface rights.
So let’s be clear.
There will be no economic development in Southern Appalachia until you break the hold of the land and coal companies on the physical land of the region. This land has been passed around like Monopoly cards for over 100 years in board rooms and lawyer offices up and down the East Coast. The only time its pried out of their hands is by Eminent Domain (or sweat heart deals) for jails and schools.
The best way to start to do that is begin to get some community benefit for that land by taxing it at a realistic rate. When it becomes too expensive to hold for generations, then you could see it begin to be used for something other than tree growing and waiting for the price of coal per million btu to go up 30 cents. And won’t happen until the glut in Central Appalachia Natural Gas goes down.
so what to do? And how can the people in the region be reengaged with the political process?
Use of this land with industrial electrical service could be attractive to wood based light industry, solar farms, and the great demand for housing. Begin to see hope from political activity. Something positive. If it could be gotten out of out of state hands and back into local control.
Carbon sequestration by planting trees? This area is a temperate rain forest already. If you don’t cut your grass, you turn around and find a stand of trees in your yard.
There are possibilities for tourism of different types or light industry; but once again that depends on infrastructure, which requires money- either from Washington or local. I think the potential is there for a political leader willing to take on “Wall Street” and be a voice for non-millionaires and non-advanced educated. The ground is shifting. A coal baron is on trial in Charleston, for the first time, and he is guilty as sin. Another is going to run for WV Governor as a Democrat so we will see more “war on coal” rhetoric. But by seeing the need to run, shows the industry’s influence is really on the wane. Hopefully something good will come from it.
R
The mineral rights laws in Coal country (which have been extended recently into fracking country and elsewhere) effectively are a means to purchase the entire land for less, a form of theft.
Yes, that legal regime has to be broken before the land can be freed for other uses.