tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16566243714975880382023-11-16T07:16:01.838-05:00THE STATE OF MY STATEWest Virginia culture, economics, and politicsSean O'Learyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01287734264328253814noreply@blogger.comBlogger219125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1656624371497588038.post-43061704365711330182021-12-22T11:34:00.002-05:002021-12-22T12:00:01.335-05:00Cookie Monster Explains it All: Donald Trump, Joe Manchin, and The Rest of Us<div class="separator"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgVXsvGRsobT6nyaZ-5Gz0T96f0c3DfQ-AcLWnARp1UJkD-qa_i94dZ3ugAvnjIxzdRl60hZaI4kAeO9Xbv8ipbR66TIne8HzUyWYMT7ooqSkmDXkRYoL0vAuZw7TmCrZ87-kcyYrqA0NfK_VH2qky3jAzvdw_TEaoOlsIjutuqq1utNzTPvhncVQWr=s1340" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="828" data-original-width="1340" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgVXsvGRsobT6nyaZ-5Gz0T96f0c3DfQ-AcLWnARp1UJkD-qa_i94dZ3ugAvnjIxzdRl60hZaI4kAeO9Xbv8ipbR66TIne8HzUyWYMT7ooqSkmDXkRYoL0vAuZw7TmCrZ87-kcyYrqA0NfK_VH2qky3jAzvdw_TEaoOlsIjutuqq1utNzTPvhncVQWr=w431-h267" width="431" /></a></div><br />When you were a kid, did you ever sneak a cookie? Most of us probably did and felt a little exhilarated, but also a little guilty. We may have rationalized our crime by telling ourselves that taking the cookie didn’t really hurt anyone and reassured ourselves that we never would have taken the cookie if it had. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">We may even have felt guilty enough to admit our crime to our parents. But whether we did or not, most of us have lived in more or less the same way ever since, trying not to harm others, making amends when we do, and generally adhering to society’s rules . . . except for breaking a figurative or literal speed limit from time to time.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">For Donald Trump, sneaking his first cookie was an altogether different experience. Trump wanted the cookie, it was in his self-interest to take the cookie, and, if his parents didn’t want him to have the cookie – if it was in their self-interest that he not take it -- then it was their responsibility to stop him, not his.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">While the rest of us may not live in a Hobbesian world in which the only force governing human behavior is competing self-interests, that’s very much the world in which Trump lives all the while thinking you and me fools for not doing the same.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Then, there was Joe Manchin’s first stolen cookie. Manchin felt justified in taking the cookie, not because he believed like Trump that it was in his self-interest to do so, but because he believed it was in everyone’s self-interest that he take it. A cookie that sits uneaten spoils, it becomes inedible and worthless, squandering the hard work of the person who baked it and wasting the money spent to buy it. In fact, even though Joe’s parents and the cookie’s baker may not have known it, he did them a favor by taking it.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">And thus Joe Manchin has lived his life ever since, as a state legislator, as governor, and now as a United States senator, doing that which is best for his constituents as determined by . . . well, by Joe himself.</div><div><br /></div></div><br /><br /></div><p> </p><br /><p></p>Sean O'Learyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01287734264328253814noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1656624371497588038.post-70328512633273362332021-11-15T00:16:00.000-05:002022-05-21T09:26:38.920-04:00HILLBILLY WHISPERERS: J. D. VANCE, ELIZABETH CATTE, AND REALITY IN APPALACHIA<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Elizabeth Catte, author of “What You Are Getting Wrong About
Appalachia”, doesn't like J. D. Vance’s wildly popular memoir, “Hillbilly
Elegy”.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div>
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With a brief nod to Vance’s “harrowing personal story”, Catte
accuses him of innacurately portraying Appalachia as “a place of alarming social decline,
smoldering and misplaced resentment, and poor life choices”. A few pages later,
apparently feeling she hasn’t fully captured Vance’s disdain for the region and
people from which he comes, Catte <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>more
damningly calls his imagined Appalachia, “monolithic, helpless, and
degraded”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br />
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It is, she charges, a scurrilous remaking of Appalachia in Vance’s
own flawed image.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But, rather than
counter Vance’s portrayal with a more objective and accurate one, Catte begs
leave to “let me do the same and create a volume with an image made in my own”.
And so she does, giving us an Appalachia she describes as “radical and diverse”.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
But Appalachia generally and Central Appalachia in particular -- the region comprised of parts of Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia from which Vance comes -- is neither radical nor is it diverse. It is, however, poor, an issue both authors largely sidestep.</div>
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That writers who hold such diametrically opposed viewpoints -- Vance's from the right and Catte's from the left -- should avoid the problem that has shaped the region for decades is peculiar and, as we shall see, telling.<br />
<br />
Also telling are their very different forms of expression.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Vance gives us a movie on paper (and soon to
be on screen) in which we vicariously share his wrenching childhood, growing up
in a fractured and fatherless hillbilly family that lives in a state of
material but not social modernity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Catte
delivers a lecture.<br />
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<u>J. D. VANCE’S APPALACHIA<o:p></o:p></u></div>
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Vance’s affection for the people and place from which
he comes is manifest if tortured. Relationships in his childhood homes in
Breathitt County, Kentucky and Middletown, Ohio were not of the intimate,
supportive, and sharing kind most of us hope for.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His family members, friends, and acquaintances were volatile, often funny,
occasionally intense, and <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>always prepared for conflict that could easily turn violent -- at
least if thrown household objects count as violence. By the standards of Vance’s
family, they might not. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The mayhem was only slightly tempered by an intense but odd sense of family loyalty that could drive the men to beat and even disfigure outsiders who disrespected the same wives and mothers with whom they regularly fought and sometimes betrayed. Season that broth with the many social and economic ills that
afflicted Vance's Appalachian holler -- drug addiction, joblessness, poverty, and a
setting in which the rule of law is only a sometimes thing -- and you get damaged
lives and souls.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And, as Vance and his
family learned, fleeing their Appalachian holler for more prosperous southwest
Ohio was only a partial escape because their pathologies traveled with them.</div>
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Vance’s pre-adolescent years were spent with his sister, his
drug-addicted single mom, and a succession of would-be father figures, none of
them very promising. But, in his teens Vance was saved by his grandparents,
particularly his gun-toting Mamaw (grandmother) whose hillbilly form of
tough-love was characterized by insults, occasional threats, and much
profanity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>None the less, she provided love
and stability during Vance’s high school years allowing his intellect to blossom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That respite launched Vance on an improbable journey, first becoming
a Marine Corps grunt, then an Ohio State undergrad, and eventually,
transcendentally, a graduate of Yale Law School.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus ensconced as a member a class that folks
from his Kentucky holler would deride as “elites”, Vance uses “Hillbilly Elegy”
to take stock of his origins and explain to the world at large his people whose
lives and political choices can seem self-defeating and irrational to outsiders
and often to Vance himself.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
His analysis doesn’t dwell much on government programs or
policies, which play such a prominent role in the region. As a conservative, Vance views government programs suspiciously and as possible enablers of dependency. Nor does he have much to say about the coal industry and its
turbulent, troubling, and recently diminishing role in the hollers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He seems to be of the opinion that, if some industries are abusive and times are hard, that’s the free market at work and it’s our job to adapt, not try to override its judgment.<br />
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Since neither
government nor industry can be held responsible, that leaves the people of Central
Appalachia who Vance unashamedly calls “hillbillies”. Recalling friends and
acquaintances who carelessly squandered well-paying jobs or
descended into drugs, begging, and theft, despite the suffering of their own
children, Vance counsels personal responsibility, discipline, and hard workas the best and probably only route to salvation
for the region and its people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<u>CATTE’S COUNTER VISION<o:p></o:p></u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This is all too much for Elizabeth Catte.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whereas Vance’s narrative concentrates on the
Appalachian everyman, or more precisely the Central Appalachian everyman, as represented by members of his own family and the need to assume responsibility, Catte puts the focus squarely on those she sees
as Appalachia’s exploiters, which, in addition to the coal industry and its lackeys in government, includes journalists pandering to popular prejudices and right-wing
academics.
Against them she champions Appalachian environmental and community activists.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Catte paints a picture of a place in roiling conflict and has much
to say about injustice, but not much about peoples’ suffering. In fact, if
anything she avoids discussing poverty apart from its voyeuristic value to those
who have, in her view, unfairly stigmatized Appalachia in order to make its
residents seem “other” to the rest of Americans.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1SSnB8J6_8VobVzeko8mNCU6HkDffaLXFGh4CP6Xzfm6HtlGfwp_ekekyYn9XevHlRwCDCtStlMzK3no3xJO_Vk8AnlWv2uZitkWOytW5TXrZd5YqidOcgrJRTab9bdNftGsrXMJpI6w/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-01-26+at+7.59.13+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="466" data-original-width="312" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1SSnB8J6_8VobVzeko8mNCU6HkDffaLXFGh4CP6Xzfm6HtlGfwp_ekekyYn9XevHlRwCDCtStlMzK3no3xJO_Vk8AnlWv2uZitkWOytW5TXrZd5YqidOcgrJRTab9bdNftGsrXMJpI6w/s320/Screen+Shot+2019-01-26+at+7.59.13+AM.png" width="214" /></a>The word, “other”, has both figurative and literal
significance for Catte.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The literal
significance stems from Michael Harrington’s 1962 book, “The Other America:
Poverty in The United States”, which, along with John and Bobby Kennedy and
assorted magazines, revealed for the first time to many Americans the isolation
and desperate conditions in which their Appalachian countrymen lived.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
While these exposes were almost uniformly sympathetic to the
people of Appalachia, Catte sees them as reflective of racism and soothing to
white America’s sensibilities that welcomed impoverished blue-eyed,
white-skinned subjects upon whom they could bestow their <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>sympathy and compassion.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Not that the skin color of Appalachians improved their standing
in the eyes of mainstream America, which still regarded them as stereotypical
hillbillies, an impression Catte believes the stories and books did little to dispel.
At their worst they even lent creedence to early 20<sup>th</sup> century
theories of genetic inferiority whose echoes Catte tells us are still heard
today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="background: white; color: #333333;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">Inevitably Catte’s
criticism of America’s great awakening to Appalachian poverty extends to the
1960’s <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>War on Poverty and the Great
Society <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>programs it engendered.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She says of these efforts only that they “failed”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s an
astonishingly abrupt judgment of an immense and multi-faceted
effort, many elements of which continue to function in the present day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s also wrong.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">However
corrupt or misguided their creators might have been, Great Society programs helped
cut the rate of poverty in America by half in less than a decade.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In Appalachia nearly a third of households
lived in poverty in 1960.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By 1970, the
figure had been reduced to 18%.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In 1960
scarcely more than 40% of Appalachian households had complete plumbing or
telephones.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In little more than a decade
those figures grew to over 70%. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">Catte may not
approve of the provenance of Great Society programs, but to deny their
contributions to the wellbeing of millions of people requires looking at the
era through an ideological lens as thick as the bottom of the proverbial Coke
bottle.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">For Catte,
“Hillbilly Elegy” is just the newest installment in a genre that<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>suggests the people of Appalachia are, if not
less intelligent than other Americans, largely responsible for their own plight
– a perception that gained greater currency when Donald Trump won large
majorities of the vote in Appalachia despite championing policies, such as the
abolition of Obamacare, which would work to the region’s disadvantage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5HJnFP_hF8YUmAvxwKa6fiFpzzYWZ7rK9Lo6_1rAmLc_k00sareXFpHY556nr_J7ODUd3peX8cNvgjRHQraq97KqyMrV0Nt1emb5qD6cln0Ng9BMoCgb7CO3hqhm7I114SVNrA4TzDDU/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-01-26+at+8.46.33+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="279" data-original-width="388" height="230" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5HJnFP_hF8YUmAvxwKa6fiFpzzYWZ7rK9Lo6_1rAmLc_k00sareXFpHY556nr_J7ODUd3peX8cNvgjRHQraq97KqyMrV0Nt1emb5qD6cln0Ng9BMoCgb7CO3hqhm7I114SVNrA4TzDDU/s320/Screen+Shot+2019-01-26+at+8.46.33+AM.png" width="320" /></a><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">At the same time,
sympathy in blue-state America for Central Appalachia is also undercut by a widespread
belief that racism is rampant there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Certainly, Appalachia is much less racially diverse than the nation as a
whole.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the most recent population figures, white non-Hispanics
made up 61% of the population nationally.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In Appalachia as a whole, the number was 84%.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And, in Central Appalachia, the region from J. D. Vance comes and on
which Catte focuses her discussion, the number is nearly 95%.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Figures like
these pose a problem for Catte who, you will recall, wants to give us an
Appalachia that is “diverse and radical”. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The other problem for Catte is that, while she
introduces us to present-day activists who bravely battle coal companies and complicit
state governments, they are still relatively few in number in Appalachia and
their victories are rare.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">So, to buttress
her claim for Appalachia as a seat of activism, Catte falls back on previous
eras.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the 1920’s coal miners and
their families fought “the mine wars” -- armed battles between coal miners
seeking the right to unionize and thugs employed by mine-owners who were often
backed up by county sheriffs and state police.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It’s the conflict that inspired John Sayles’ movie, “Matewan”, and the
labor organizer Mother Jones to declare, “When I get to the other side, I shall
tell God Almighty about West Virginia!”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Catte also reaches back to the late 1960’s and early 70’s
when job losses due to automation, the devastation caused by black lung
disease, and a series of deadly mining disasters produced a decade of labor activism
and strikes, some authorized by the United Mine Workers of America and many
not. The documentary, “Harlan County, USA” explores a Kentucky mining community
during this period and remains an important reminder and touchstone for both
how callous and abusive corporate interests can be and the courage and
resilience of communities that resisted them.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But, it’s also the case that, in the fifty years since that
era, a period during which mining job losses continued, environmental
destruction worsened with the expansion of strip mining and mountain-top
removal, and peoples’ health deteriorated due in part to the opioid epidemic
and a ferocious comeback by black lung, Appalachia has become less militant.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In Kentucky, there are no more union mines. On environmental
issues, the weakened United Mine Workers of America often sides with industry.
And the union has not endorsed a candidate in the last two presidential
elections after ferociously opposing President Obama over administration
efforts to rein in air pollution and greenhouse gases.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Meanwhile, Republicans have successfully turned the politics
of Appalachia upside down, making it nearly solid red.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In 2016, Donald Trump won the vote in 95% of
Appalachian counties and lost none in Central Appalachia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
None of this diminishes the admirable effort and dedication
of the present day activists Catte highlights.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Occasionally they succeed in winning over public sentiment, as West
Virginia teachers did when they went on strike for better wages in 2018.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But, that was the exception in a region that
is at this stage largely defensive and reactionary in its politics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<u>THE UNEXPLORED QUESTION<o:p></o:p></u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The question is why?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Why have people whose condition is in many ways as bad as or worse than
it was in the 1960’s become quiescent instead of angry? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And why do they elect candidates who serve the
interests of those Catte would classify as Appalachia’s exploiters?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s a hard question for which neither Vance’s nor Catte’s
narratives can account.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the answer
poses inconvenient truths for them both.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
First, it must be said that Appalachia really is different. To
understand why, we must address the issue of poverty.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQa9zw0mqpofLPoQ53oz1CSkyAS3ZTTUDt5-2mmrdqmG8Ue_bl7UO0v1atqeQomHxBAZbiY1pbEmlA4i2uLUPn50qQmQRR9v87XBWflxg8FJp7WSIyl34Qu1zsBap8goubR8qjdziTJTY/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-01-26+at+9.30.01+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="287" data-original-width="441" height="208" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQa9zw0mqpofLPoQ53oz1CSkyAS3ZTTUDt5-2mmrdqmG8Ue_bl7UO0v1atqeQomHxBAZbiY1pbEmlA4i2uLUPn50qQmQRR9v87XBWflxg8FJp7WSIyl34Qu1zsBap8goubR8qjdziTJTY/s320/Screen+Shot+2019-01-26+at+9.30.01+AM.png" width="320" /></a></div>
People in Central Appalachia are poor . . . really
poor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The median household income from
2012 to 2016 was only $34,602 per year, almost 40% below the national median
income of $55,322.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That’s worse than any state. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And we’re talking about a region whose
population is greater than that of twelve states and the District of Columbia.
Incomes are so feeble that a few years ago, the nation’s twenty-five highest
earning money managers were paid more in a single year than all 1.9 million
people in Central Appalachia put together.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Of course, where there is an absence of income, a variety of
ills fills the void.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just under a quarter
of residents live in poverty, a quarter are disabled, and only 13% have a
bachelor’s degree or higher. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>23% never
graduated from high school.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Central
Appalachians lead the nation in deaths by drug overdose and they have the nation’s shortest life spans, which are getting shorter.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And one more thing . . . they get the hell out.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the period from 1950 to 1970 America’s non-Appalachian
population grew by almost 40%.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Central
Appalachia’s declined by 15%. Today, the state of West Virginia, the only state that falls wholly within the bounds of Appalachia, has a smaller population than it had in 1950. The nation’s population has more than doubled since then.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Young people flee in search of education, jobs, and a better
quality of life, leaving behind a population that’s largely middle-aged and
older, in generally lousy health, and to which death comes early. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But, why don’t those left behind leave as well? Why are they so loathe to change and so resistant to outside influences, even well-intentioned ones?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s here that Vance invokes the concept of “Hillbilly
Culture”.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<u><span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">THE SOCIAL
DARWINIST<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">Vance tells
us that he and many other Appalachians are descended from Scots-Irish stock
who he describes as clannish, anachronistic, and resistant to outsiders. Hence
their attraction to remote Appalachian hollers rather than the burgeoning east
coast and frontier cities and towns that attracted the bulk of 18<sup>th</sup> and
19<sup>th</sup> century immigrants to America.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">Stephen
Vincent Benet eloquently expressed this take in “John Brown’s Body”, which won
a Pulitzer Prize in 1922.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: #fafafa; color: black;">“They are a curious and most native stock, the lanky men, the lost,
forgotten seeds spilled from the first great wave-march toward the West and set
to sprout by chance in the deep cracks of that hillbilly world of laurel hells
. . . And if you yearn to meet your pioneers, you’ll find them there, the same
men, inbred sons of inbred sires perhaps, but still the same . . . They are
misfit and strange in our new day.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-themecolor: text1;">Some commentators even romanticized Appalachian isolation
and provinciality. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In 1916, Josiah Combs
declared that the secluded Appalachian hollers harbored the last vestige of
Elizabethan England.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: #f9f9f9; color: black;">“The Southern mountaineers are the conservators of Old, Early and
Elizabethan English in the New World. These four million mountaineers of the
South from West Virginia to northern Alabama from the body of what is perhaps
the purest Old English blood to be found among English-speaking peoples.
Isolated from the outside world, and shut in by natural barriers, they have for
more than two centuries preserved much of the language of Elizabethan England.”</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-themecolor: text1;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">As
entertaining as these portrayals are, they are wildly exaggerated with respect
to the homogeneity of those who migrated to the region, the degree of isolation
in which they lived, and the social heritability of Vance’s “hillbilly
culture”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">That Vance calls
upon the political scientist Charles Murray’s research to support his views
does his case no credit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Murray is best
known for his research into the differences between human cohorts including
races, sexes, and even socio-economic groups.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In 2000, he wrote:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black;">“Try to imagine a GOP presidential candidate saying in front of the
cameras, "One reason that we still have poverty in the United States is
that a lot of poor people are born lazy." You cannot imagine it because
that kind of thing cannot be said. And yet this unimaginable statement merely
implies that when we know the complete genetic story, it will turn out that the
population below the poverty line in the United States has a configuration of
the relevant genetic makeup that is significantly different from the
configuration of the population above the poverty line. This is not
unimaginable. It is almost certainly true.”</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-themecolor: text1;"> <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-themecolor: text1;">Catte rightly takes exception to all of this and condemns
it as a transparent attempt to deflect attention from the desperate conditions in much of Appalachia, which she attributes to capitalist exploitation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span>Whether she believes capitalism is inherently
exploitative or merely unusually so in Appalachia is never made clear.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whatever the case, the outcome is, as was
noted earlier, a condition of rampant poverty.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<u>RATIONAL ACTORS<o:p></o:p></u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To appreciate why folks who have little remain in a place
where their conditions aren’t likely to improve, you have to consider the
alternatives.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>First, some people in
Central Appalachia have middle-class incomes and, therefore, less reason to
leave.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But, for many people who are really poor, flight to surrounding
metropolitan areas such as Columbus, Charlotte, Washington, DC, Pittsburgh, and
Richmond, poses more risk than promise.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>At home in the hollers they have at least some social capital – family
members, friends, and other people who may not be particularly close, but who
have known them since childhood and will, in a pinch, help.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Indeed, in my native West Virginia, it’s not unusual to be
reminded by preachers, politicians, and even insurance agents and attorneys
promoting their services that “we’re all West Virginians”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some may invoke the phrase for self-serving
reasons, but the sentiment underlying it is genuine. Meanwhile, in places like
Charlotte and Columbus displaced hillbillies often have little or no social capital.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the economic prospects in those places aren’t
always great either. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If you’re a Central Appalachian homeowner, the price you can
get for your house won’t begin to touch the cost of comparable houses in metropolitan
areas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And, if you have an underwater
mortgage, relocation may be a financial impossibility.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For the disabled, who are more prevalent in
Appalachia than any other part of the country, better job markets are
meaningless. And even for the able-bodied, but poorly educated and unskilled,
the jobs for which they qualify very likely won’t cover the cost of housing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I wonder how many of the homeless people who haunt our major
cities are economic emigrants, who did what economists tell us is the rational
thing by going to places where opportunities are supposed to be more plentiful,
but for whom the promise didn’t pan out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And, of course, the risks are compounded for those with young families.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In short, rather than being some imponderable “other”,
Appalachians are generally economically rational actors at least to the degree
other Americans are.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<u>CHARACTER<o:p></o:p></u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The difference that mass emigration makes isn’t only quantitative
or economic. It also colors the character of a people and a place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Imagine how the vibe of your community would
change if in a short period of time most of the young and well-educated people
were to leave.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Imagine what happens in
your own house when your kids go away to college or the military.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Things change culturally, attitudinally, and
politically.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Polling consistently shows major differences between the
attitudes and voting patterns of people of different ages, educational levels,
and income.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So, given the large-scale
abandonment of rural Appalachia by the young and well-educated, it would be
surprising if political tendencies hadn’t evolved.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s also the case that militancy, particularly progressive
militancy, is less pronounced among the older and less educated, which is why,
the protests of Elizabeth Catte notwithstanding, Appalachia isn’t a radical
place. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Still, there is something afoot in Appalachia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>J. D. Vance called it a loss of a sense of
agency – the absence of confidence or faith that we control our own
destiny.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Elizabeth Catte derides this
notion as a form of blaming the victims of exploitation for their own
condition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But, whatever the case, Vance
is on to something and he’s far from the first to notice.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Michael Harrington’s 1962 book, “The Other America”,
contains this passage.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“Tens of millions of
Americans are, at this very moment, maimed in body and spirit, existing at
levels beneath those necessary for human decency.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If these people are not starving, they are
hungry, and sometimes fat with hunger, for that is what cheap foods do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are without adequate housing and
education and medical care . . . But even more basic, this poverty twists and
deforms the spirit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The American poor
are pessimistic and defeated, and they are victimized by mental suffering to a
degree unknown in suburbia.”<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Fifty years later I discussed something similar in my own
collection of essays titled “The State of My State: A Native Son’s Search for
West Virginia”.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: #fafafa; color: #333333;">“As the
nation’s poorest state, any explanation of our plight must begin with the issue
of poverty and what comes with poverty -- an endemic absence of aspiration or
belief that we can control or significantly alter our destinies. It’s a disease
called fatalism and we suffer from it prodigiously. You don’t need a survey to
recognize that poverty wearies many West Virginians into surrendering to
circumstances even as we anesthetize ourselves with pain killers, cigarettes,
and Ho Ho’s . . . sometimes the only luxuries we can afford.</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br />
<br />
<span style="background: #FAFAFA;">“Inculcation in that barren attitude begins at
a young age. At first it’s almost romantic. As teenagers an absence of
expectations allows us to be easy and carefree. But, by middle age it looks
more like carelessness and, by old age, it morphs imperceptibly into
powerlessness and resignation – the disease of the soul.”</span></span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If fatalism is more prevalent in Appalachia, it’s in part
because many of its most able and aspirational residents have left. A
consequence is that children who are born and raised there often lack role
models from whom they might discover paths to health and prosperity of which
they are otherwise unaware and they may have little or no social capital in the
larger world. Sometimes the weight of this comes upon us unannounced. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A few years ago, while living in Boston, far
from the fading West Virginia town where I grew up, I happened into a Tex-Mex
restaurant in Harvard Square and noticed a group of Harvard students at a
nearby table.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One of them wore a
T-shirt emblazoned with the name of the county high school into which the tiny
high school I attended had been collapsed when the student count dwindled below
a viable level.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Wondering if the student really was from back home, I
approached the table, introduced myself, and asked if he had gone to the high
school whose name he wore.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He told me he
had and we soon discovered that his home was only a couple of miles from where
I grew up and where my parents still lived.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I thanked him, congratulated him, and went back to my table
where I began sobbing, partly in joy because a fellow hoopie had finally made
it and partly in despair for the many other kids with whom I grew up who might
have made it but didn’t.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s easy to confuse fatalism and laziness and, to a degree,
I think Vance does.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At its core,
fatalism is a defense mechanism that protects us from the emotional toll of
disappointment and dreams crushed, but it also has a practical dimension by
protecting us from squandering what few resources we have on pipe dreams.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Fatalism is even recommended by the Serenity Prayer, which
asks God to help us accept the things we cannot change even as we try to change
the things we can.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Where the dividing
line lies between the two is a judgment call.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But, if you come from a place that’s isolated, economically and
culturally impoverished, afflicted by drug addiction, and bereft of role
models, the realm of things you cannot change really is greater than it is for
people from more encouraging circumstances. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Also, the price to be paid for misjudging and
trying to change things we cannot is no less. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In many ways it’s greater. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And what of those of us who do leave and find more
prosperous lives elsewhere? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Is it
because we’re bolder in exercising personal agency or do we merely have more
resources to fall back on than our peers?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In most cases, I suspect <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>it’s the
latter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s probably why we
Appalachian ex-pats often feel a tinge of guilt, as though by leaving we’re in
some way complicit in the continuing deterioration of the place from which we come.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<u><span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">COAL (<i>and now natural gas as well)</i></span></u><br />
<span style="color: black;">Appalachia as a whole and especially Central Appalachia have for a century and a half been identified with coal -- an identification the coal industry has been all to willing to encourage.</span><br />
<span style="color: black;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: black;">Once upon a time, the coal mining employed more than 100,000 people in Appalachia, eight times as many as it does now, and it was responsible for more than a third of Central Appalachia's GDP. Those days are no more . . . and in a way they never were. For, while coal was a much larger and more prosperous enterprise, that was rarely true of coal mining communities whose economies never diversified or expanded much beyond what the mines could provide. The reasons are endemic to the industry.</span><br />
<span style="color: black;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: black;">Whereas most businesses prefer to operate in thriving, growing communities, affluence and population growth pose problems for the coal industry by driving up property values and raising demands for a healthy environment and higher standards of living. In short, aside from a shared interest in keeping the lights on, coal mines and people do not coexist happily. </span><br />
<br />
In this and in other ways, the coal industry is an economic dinosaur -- primitive, large, and not easily adaptable to a diverse modern society and economy. Even the marketplace in which coal companies compete is unique.<br />
<br />
Most businesses compete on multiple fronts -- price, quality, innovation, and customer service among others. But, coal is a commodity, so prices are rigidly set by the market with little or no opportunity for product innovation or differentiation. That's an economic disadvantage because it precludes the kind of success that companies in other industries achieve by introducing breakthrough products and services.<br />
<br />
As a consequence, coal companies' primary focus is on minimizing costs, which has devastating consequences for workers, local economies, and local ecosystems. Now that the coal industry is dying, those consequences are being compounded. And they're worsened by the fact that, as Catte points out, the owners of coal companies are overwhelming out-of-state interests meaning that neither management nor ownership has much of a stake in the wellbeing of the region.<br />
<br />
Sadly for the parts of Appalachia that sit atop the Marcellus and Utica natural gas fields, which are changing the face of energy markets both in the US and globally, the same dynamic applies. As a result, in the last decade during which natural gas production boomed in the Ohio River valley, West Virginia, which is ground zero for the boom, has seen zero job growth and no business expansion.<br />
<br />
There is, in short, little prospect that extractive industries will lead Appalachia out of its decline and a much greater prospect that, before they run their course, they will continue to crowd out other kinds of business and despoil more of the region than they already have.<br />
<br />
<u><span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">RACISM</span></u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">In the
present day, any discussion of Appalachia must address the problem of racism
and bigotry in general.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Vance and Catte
do so, but only parenthetically.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">Appalachia
is, as was noted earlier, a place of overwhelming whiteness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That fact, combined with a string of elections,
including Hilary Clinton’s Appalachian victories over Barack Obama in the 2008
Democratic primary, Robert Dole’s decisive win over Obama in that year’s
general election, Mitt Romney’s substantial win over Obama in 2012, and
especially Donald Trump’s nearly 70% landslide win over Hilary Clinton in 2016,
caused some commentators to declare Appalachia the most racist place in the
country.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">That may or
may not be the case, but, if true, then the margin by which Appalachia holds
the distinction is pretty thin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the 2008 presidential election, white voters in Appalachia distributed their votes between McCain and Obama in about the
same proportion as white voters nationally, especially after adjustments are
made for age, income, and education. In fact, white voters in West Virginia
gave Barack Obama a greater share of their votes than did white voters in
nineteen other states, including North Carolina, a state Obama won.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">By that
measure, whites in Appalachia aren’t much more racist than white voters
nationally . . . it’s just that there are a lot more of them relative to people
of other races.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">Historically,
Appalachia’s record on race is ambiguous.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Appalachian regions in the Civil War south were notoriously sympathetic
to the union.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>West Virginia seceded from
Virginia during the war to become a free state.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Kentucky was a border state.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And Appalachian
East Tennessee and Western North Carolina were widely regarded as
insurrectionist by Confederate leaders resulting in at least one massacre of
civilians by Confederate forces in the mountainous Shelton Laurel region of
North Carolina.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">But,
according to most historians, Appalachian dissent had little to do with
compassion for the slaves and more to do with socioeconomic and political
differences between the plantation-based economies of the old south and the
hardscrabble economies of the mountains where large-scale agriculture was
largely non-existent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">That said,
voting patterns and history are neither the best nor the most important indicators
of racism in the present day because they don’t speak to the lived experience of
Appalachian people of color or for that matter, of LGBTQ people and members of
religious minorities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As a white heterosexual
male, theirs are perspectives that I can’t accurately reflect and I won’t try
to do so. I’ll merely observe, as Elizabeth Catte does, that people from those
Appalachian communities receive far too little attention in the region’s political
discourse, in local news outlets, and in national media as well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">Meanwhile, commentators
from outside the region, especially those who know little of Appalachia apart
from polling and election results, should exercise humility and defer to those
for whom life as a non-white or non-heterosexual is a lived experience.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<u>RENEWAL <span style="color: red;"><o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In general books shouldn’t be criticized for what they’re
not. But, given that Vance and Catte both try to diagnose Appalachia’s afflictions, it’s odd that <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>neither suggests much of a strategy for overcoming
them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Vance’s admonition that people become more responsible and
exercise greater agency is at best a necessary condition, but nowhere near a
sufficient one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And, like the Occupy
movement that briefly flared and just as quickly evaporated, Catte’s criticisms
of exploitative capitalism and the stigmatization of the people of Appalachia may
be accurate, but they offer little in the way of direction or policies for
improving the situation.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What does offer direction is the realization that
hillbillies, Appalachians – call us what you will – are rational economic
actors who often lack attainable economic and social opportunities and the
resources to pursue them.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If this sounds like a plea for handouts, it’s not.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With only a few exceptions, the Appalachian
people about whom we’re concerned – both working and non-working --<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>are poor or near poor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Resources are meager, options are few, and
the risks of pursuing aspirations are often overwhelming because they have little
chance of being attained and also because failure to attain them can land the
unfortunate aspirant in an even more horrific situation.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What’s needed to correct the situation is money, a measure
of security, and realistic options for improving one’s situation. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Creating those conditions is the business of policymakers.
And, if the people of Appalachia can be blamed for anything, it’s for electing officeholders
who are mostly unable or unwilling to alter laws, tax codes, and investments to
do so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That doesn’t mean such strategies
don’t exist, however.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
First, Appalachian state governments need to put more money
in workers’ pockets.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Raising minimum
wages, implementing earned income tax credits, enacting prevailing wage laws,
repealing right to work laws, and above all, reforming tax structures to shift
more of the burden from income taxes that hit residents to businesses particularly
the out-of-state interests that dominate the coal, forestry, and natural gas
industries, can significantly boost discretionary income helping both
individuals and also local merchants.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To those who argue that these policies will drive away
businesses and the few job opportunities that exist, there is little if any
evidence that is the case.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And there is
much evidence the points in the opposite direction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Before Kansas Governor Sam Brownback famously took his state
down Arthur Laffer’s supply-side yellow brick road, the strategy was tried in
West Virginia with results that were every bit as devastating as those in
Kansas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But, unlike Kansas, policymakers in West Virginia didn’t
learn.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For a decade, the state has cut
business taxes and climbed Tax Foundation rankings for states with the best
business tax climates.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The results have
been a series of budget deficits and cuts to state services, especially higher
education.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Meanwhile, job and business
creation withered.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>During a period in
which the nation as a whole added more than 20 million new jobs, West Virginia
added none. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
State and local governments need to pour resources into
treatment for the opioid crisis, provide greater access to mental health care
and higher education, and defend the natural environment against industries
that have used strip mining, fracking, pipeline construction, and mountaintop
removal to destroy potentially valuable natural assets and turn large parts of Appalachia
into a toxic industrial zone that’s stricken with polluted water and air. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
They also need to equip the region for participation in the
modern economy by making high-speed internet service available and repairing
and replacing chronically deficient infrastructure. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Finally, Appalachia needs to hear a new political
narrative.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That will be difficult in a
place where extractive industries are dominant and where the media environment
is monochromatic so that people rarely hear interpretations of news and events
apart from those supplied by Rush Limbaugh, the Koch brothers, and their local
imitators and disciples. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It doesn’t help that the national Democratic party has
largely given up on voters in Appalachia. The problem is compounded by factions
within the party that actively oppose outreach to Trump supporters, who
predominate in Appalachia and who they view as irredeemably racist.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Why Appalachia lends itself to such blinkered views is a
mystery.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But, what is certain is that <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The reality of Appalachia isn’t found in the pages of either
J. D. Vance or Elizabeth Catte.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nor does
it lie somewhere in between their ideologically polarized views.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rather, it is beyond them and begins with the
realization that the people of Appalachia, even if their circumstances are dire
and peculiar, are pretty much like everyone else. They just have so little that
choices that are rational for you or me are not so for them.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<u>YES, BUT WHY DO THEY SUPPORT DONALD TRUMP?<o:p></o:p></u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Finally, I asked why have people whose condition is in many ways
as bad as or worse than it was in the 1960’s become quiescent and supportive of candidates like Donald Trump who seem to serve the interests of
their region’s exploiters? <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The answer is that most of those who are left in Central
Appalachia and the vast majority of those who vote still have something to
defend.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They look to the past fondly
because it was stable compared to the social and economic unraveling currently
taking place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That unraveling is in
distinct contrast to the rest of the country, which over the last decade has
enjoyed consistent if moderate economic and job growth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Although individual families may be doing all right, when
people in rural Appalachia look around many see their communities being undone by the opioid crisis, job loss, and population loss. It feels like they're approaching an
abyss.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They remember that in the last
century West Virginia saw more than half of all its towns disappear when the
mines that supported them were tapped out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Now they see the same thing happening again, but more randomly and,
therefore, more frighteningly than before.<o:p></o:p></div>
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These are fears – legitimate fears – to which the candidate
Donald Trump spoke. Trump’s apocalyptic vision of America is a wildly exaggerated and
inaccurate portrayal of the nation as a whole.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But, in this one little pocket of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>America, it’s pretty much dead on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Meanwhile, national Democrats seem and in many cases are oblivious.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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Of course, Trump’s policies on healthcare, taxes, worker
rights, and the environment, will, if enacted make conditions worse in the
nation as a whole and in Central Appalachia in particular.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And policies like those mentioned above will
help.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But, that case has yet to be made
to the people of Appalachia.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br />Sean O'Learyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01287734264328253814noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1656624371497588038.post-34205574626091330232019-10-26T13:05:00.000-04:002020-02-07T17:53:48.181-05:00How Elizabeth Warren thinks about economics<h2 style="text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #38761d; font-size: x-large;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgosJLin3H-NLPq2oETKWvh7dCnQgxA5MHQvKUI17pUez5N-vSzNZ-LLerjRntx8z5lMCvwRt56151SpxPkVdM_dwqhkHApXM-5u0QXeQaOucNGZZnfRq_U_Aaa-smeBEtdelGXDEXMliM/s640/105347620-2ED1-REQ-WarrenHarwood-072318.jpg" /> </span></span></h4>
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"I am a capitalist"</h4>
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<span style="color: #38761d;">How policymakers like Elizabeth Warren develop solutions that are just, equitable, and often market-based</span></h3>
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In the fall of 2018, tens of thousands of protestors jammed the streets in California to oppose Governor Jerry Brown’s efforts to enact a Cap & Trade bill designed to reduce the state’s greenhouse gas emissions.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYsvxgv09k74HsifsWSNo2pLurKwmWNs80djYyRXTZZSJ_BA87V5BUecJXO0nwOfibIAUC4jPFk_0W5fVOTHPEJkqr0CppjgWy9TN73QQEAVUzWFllRSTZwPt-SPjKEqPZFJn6PX0NrtI/s1600/dont-trade-pollution-270x300.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="270" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYsvxgv09k74HsifsWSNo2pLurKwmWNs80djYyRXTZZSJ_BA87V5BUecJXO0nwOfibIAUC4jPFk_0W5fVOTHPEJkqr0CppjgWy9TN73QQEAVUzWFllRSTZwPt-SPjKEqPZFJn6PX0NrtI/s320/dont-trade-pollution-270x300.png" width="288" /></a>While some were protesting because they thought the bill didn’t do enough to cut emissions or because it unjustly burdened communities of color and those with low incomes, for many protestors an equally upsetting feature of the bill was that it employed a market-based mechanism – the buying and selling of carbon credits – that would allow companies to “pay to pollute”.<o:p></o:p></div>
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This distrust or even abhorrence of market-based solutions is showing up in debates about a range of issues including healthcare, education, and climate change. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And it threatens to create fissures in the progressive movement.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But, the fact remains that we live in a market-based economy and some of our most progressive policymakers, notably presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren, describe themselves as capitalists and believers in the market.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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Warren is hardly a capitalist in the same sense as, say, David Koch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Where Warren views markets as a tool to be used to achieve positive outcomes, Koch views the market as something like a god to be worshipped and whose outcomes we should accept on the ground that the invisible hand knows better than we what’s best.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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How does someone like Warren reconcile her belief in capitalism and markets with her commitment to justice and equity that she shares the demonstrators?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or, put more precisely, when confronted with a public policy problem, how does Warren decide whether it should be addressed using market mechanisms or government or through some combination of the two?<o:p></o:p></div>
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Warren's first option when figuring out how best to allocate a good or a service is to allow the market to do it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because the market is easy, efficient, and generally affords people maximum choice . . . except when it doesn’t.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Just as geometry imagines frictionless surfaces that don’t exist in reality, the perfectly functioning markets imagined in economics text books don’t exist either.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So, while market-oriented liberals’ first inclination is to rely on the market, before deciding to allow the market to do what it will, they ask themselves four questions:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><u>Is the market competitive?</u><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That is, are there a number of suppliers of the good or service engaged in actual competition with each other so as to minimize price and maximize quality and variety?<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><u>Is the market efficient?</u><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Do the buyers and sellers have the information they need for the market to operate rationally?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And are there any external barriers that complicate the relationship between buyers and sellers?<u><o:p></o:p></u></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">3.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><u>Are negative externalities minimal or non-existent?</u><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Externalities are costs associated with a transaction that neither by the buyer or the seller bear and which, therefore, fall on the rest of us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For instance, the illnesses and climate destruction caused by burning coal to generate electricity, for which neither the coal company that supplies the coal or the utility that burns it pays.<u><o:p></o:p></u></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">4.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><u>Is the good or service in question a basic right to which we should all have adequate access regardless of our ability to pay?</u><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Healthcare, education, food, and shelter are items most progressives would include in a list of basic rights and more could be added.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><u><o:p></o:p></u></div>
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If the answer to any of these four questions is “no”, the market-oriented liberal will then ask whether the market solution can be tweaked by regulation to mitigate the shortcomings.<o:p></o:p></div>
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If the problem is that markets aren’t competitive because they’re dominated by one or just a few players, regulation can be used to break up the players.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If markets aren’t competitive because it’s costly or inefficient to duplicate the requisite infrastructure – the delivery of electricity for instance – monopolies can be granted and can then be governed by regulatory bodies that simulate the effects of competition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And, if markets aren’t competitive because of network effects, as in the case of social media platforms such as Facebook, then regulations can be used to break companies apart or to require interoperability of platforms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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Similarly, if markets are rendered inefficient because buyers or sellers don’t have equitable access to sufficient and accurate information, regulation can be used to require disclosure and/or restrict behaviors that would tend to give some parties advantages over others. Adverse externalities can be addressed through regulations that minimize them, as in the case of clean air legislation, or that compensate for them, proposed carbon taxes being one example.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Finally, if the service or good is a basic right, regulation can be used to assure affordable and adequate universal access.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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Sometimes though, the cost of regulatory intervention is too great or its results so inadequate that it becomes necessary for the government to directly provide the service or good. The government can do so as the sole provider of the service or good, as in the case of national defense.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or government provided services can co-exist with privately-provided services as in the case of education or as a purely supplementary role as in the case of nutrition support.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Policymakers must also decide whether the good or service should be administered at the local, state, or federal level.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And they have to figure out how to fund it, whether through fees, taxes, or some other mechanism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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As we see in the case of the candidates’ differing plans for healthcare, answering these questions can give rise to plans containing all kinds of variety and nuance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But, beneath the variations on this and other policy matters, lies an abiding and fundamental belief in the value of the market as a tool that, properly regulated, can be used to achieve just and equitable outcomes that maximize the public good.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p><br />
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Sean O'Learyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01287734264328253814noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1656624371497588038.post-63811171969635750402017-08-06T09:56:00.000-04:002020-03-21T13:34:36.212-04:00PIKETTY'S "CAPITAL IN THE 21st CENTURY" . . . IN WEST VIRGINIA<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCg0Dajv91w-IzSA1bUHP-fvMNlQv86GkoYkpkD8qTW55MXVNAhnKW1O27IDR8c2e2GGDRcTA03xK6vTAO-NF0tmjqWSyWRnpdwO3rOE6r8-xcftaVidISmI9aUY6V6SH71yjrVVoHZIM/s1600/bw0330051395440401.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCg0Dajv91w-IzSA1bUHP-fvMNlQv86GkoYkpkD8qTW55MXVNAhnKW1O27IDR8c2e2GGDRcTA03xK6vTAO-NF0tmjqWSyWRnpdwO3rOE6r8-xcftaVidISmI9aUY6V6SH71yjrVVoHZIM/s200/bw0330051395440401.jpg" /></a>French economist Thomas Piketty's new book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Capital-Twenty-First-Century-Thomas-Piketty/dp/067443000X">"Capital in The Twenty-first Century"</a> is being hailed as an instant classic by many reviewers and economists because it thrusts issues of wealth distribution and inequality into the forefront of the economic debate and because of the depth of quantitative evidence that Piketty brings to bear in support of his assertions. But, for residents of West Virginia, Piketty's book should have even greater resonance because the dynamics of economic growth and prosperity that Piketty describes go a long way toward explaining why West Virginia's economy, both historically and in the present, can achieve strong growth as measured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP) while utterly failing to generate economic prosperity as measured by indicators such as jobs and population growth.<br />
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Indeed, the following two charts show the degree to which this is the case. The first chart shows that, while between 2009 and 2013, West Virginia's GDP performance was significantly greater than that of the US economy as a whole, the state not only failed to add jobs as fast as the nation, the number of jobs actually declined slightly. The second chart shows the same pattern is true of population growth. Again, West Virginia outperforms the nation for GDP growth, but while America's population grows steadily, West Virginia's is almost flat . . . and Piketty provides a plausible explanation for how such anomalies can arise.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0PBwyBUOx23jN7-BFipj8sfzT1kDTBdsU7UVXnz7C0KrI05q1EbU8vsyKNOQX9wt9o0WHH0GovEG4HHlNGHu95BFOXxTgrs9mx577uSu0_zTQMeNvPPRtfo_RHs7zKJw05dS0nkq-Rfc/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-04-10+at+1.07.49+PM.png" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0PBwyBUOx23jN7-BFipj8sfzT1kDTBdsU7UVXnz7C0KrI05q1EbU8vsyKNOQX9wt9o0WHH0GovEG4HHlNGHu95BFOXxTgrs9mx577uSu0_zTQMeNvPPRtfo_RHs7zKJw05dS0nkq-Rfc/s400/Screen+Shot+2014-04-10+at+1.07.49+PM.png" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAFAUsa9KHLnT3gjJ9r8LoW3lPfcuvLvZyHOGa4t4yAFRA-D8nkmc8pQnm2Qea_LSAog5YhdbmCGtk343SW5dZOSDr5Z_oSZ4wk9ksmfH0oiZthXa-mtJdXLyG3fXP02b_311sXC_Jy8s/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-04-10+at+1.08.17+PM.png" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAFAUsa9KHLnT3gjJ9r8LoW3lPfcuvLvZyHOGa4t4yAFRA-D8nkmc8pQnm2Qea_LSAog5YhdbmCGtk343SW5dZOSDr5Z_oSZ4wk9ksmfH0oiZthXa-mtJdXLyG3fXP02b_311sXC_Jy8s/s400/Screen+Shot+2014-04-10+at+1.08.17+PM.png" /></a><br />
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Piketty points out that, for the global economy as a whole, two of the metrics he studies -- total output (GDP) and total income -- are always equal. That which is created must be consumed. But, when we drill down to national, regional, or state economies, the equivalence may not hold. That's because, while some of the income derived from output flows to labor, the rest flows to the owners of capital and capital ownership isn't equal in all places. <br />
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Residents of wealthier regions often own, not only a fair share of the capital in the areas where they live, but also in regions where less wealthy people live. Consequently, if enough of the proceeds generated by growth are allocated to capital and if enough capital is controlled by non-residents, it's possible for the local economy to stagnate or even decline despite overall economic growth.<br />
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That is the case with West Virginia. Because so much of West Virginia's natural resources -- especially coal, timber, and natural gas -- and the companies that exploit them are owned by out-of-state interests, most of the income allocated to capital from those enterprises flows to non-resident owners and never enters West Virginia leaving the state's economy stagnant even when the industries prosper.<br />
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In that way West Virginia's economy may be described as "colonial" and the need is for policy-makers to recognize that fact and understand that, as a consequence, policy measures whose goal is to drive general economic growth by supporting West Virginia's extractive industries are destined to have little or no effect on the state's economy nor on the well-being of West Virginians. And that will always be the case until West Virginia enacts tax and other policies that assure that more of the wealth created by its extractive industries remains in the state where it can increase incomes for West Virginians and sales for West Virginia's merchants. <br />
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This can be accomplished through changes in tax policy at state and local levels, but such changes will not come about until West Virginia's political leaders at long last grasp the underlying dynamics that drive the state's economy.Sean O'Learyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01287734264328253814noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1656624371497588038.post-78480949243022991662017-08-05T10:35:00.000-04:002017-08-05T10:35:09.764-04:00JERRY WEST AND WEST VIRGINIA'S DISEASE OF THE SOUL<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsHxltTgZKI5wL6YG1g1SA19kLnY1k8Hl9mXAlOeRBIl3uBH6xsDt7nGsN57qS3ZHLCoGPJziZMnJLyvyn1G7R0szau7IxkM6jkQG0aDqIN7NMhVMf7OP80wIwQDpD8TBKQatxyPGKTno/s1600/jerry.west.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 128px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsHxltTgZKI5wL6YG1g1SA19kLnY1k8Hl9mXAlOeRBIl3uBH6xsDt7nGsN57qS3ZHLCoGPJziZMnJLyvyn1G7R0szau7IxkM6jkQG0aDqIN7NMhVMf7OP80wIwQDpD8TBKQatxyPGKTno/s200/jerry.west.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5691762219754196386" /></a><br />
Jerry West is the most famous West Virginian ever to wander from these hills. He was an all-American basketball player at WVU, the ninth greatest professional player of all time according to Bill Simmons’s encyclopedic “The Book of Basketball”, and he remains a literal icon of the National Basketball Association, which uses the silhouetted image of Jerry West driving hard to the basket as its logo. <br />
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Jerry West is also a tortured soul. In his recent autobiography, “West by West: My Charmed, Tormented Life” (written with Jonathan Coleman) this man who has earned virtually every reward and accolade society can offer an athlete tells us he is incapable of enjoying very much of it, that he cannot experience love in the way we all at least hope to, that he is, in short, a tortured and incomplete human being. <br />
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Although he doesn’t use the term, one could say that Jerry West is mentally ill. <br />
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Does that sound harsh? Some of us, perhaps West himself, will recoil at the phrase because mental illness carries a stigma. But, it shouldn’t, especially in cases where the causes are all too understandable. For West it was a father who beat -- not “hit” he tells us pointedly – beat him repeatedly. Meanwhile, West’s mother chose not to see the abuse taking place in their barren, wood frame house in 1950’s Chelyan, West Virginia. <br />
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Afraid to go home, young Jerry would spend endless hours on a dirt-patch basketball court, shooting baskets and fantasizing about game-winning buzzer-beaters -- imagined moments of triumph followed by the adulation and love he didn't find at home. West calls his relationship with basketball then and now an addiction. In therapeutic terms, he was using basketball to dissociate from his pain and its causes. <br />
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Jerry West’s story of abuse and his consequent behavior is unusual only in that, in the absurd lottery that is life, his chosen means of dissociation, playing basketball obsessively, happened to intersect with a freakish athleticism to produce a magic carpet ride that took him first to college, then to the Olympics, and eventually to Hollywood, far, far away from the sources of his pain. It’s the one-in-a-million coincidence of which all addicts dream as they anesthetize themselves with booze, gambling, junk food, cigarettes, pain killers, assorted drugs, and still sometimes basketball. <br />
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Although Jerry West remains emotionally damaged, he escaped at least partially. Most who are similarly afflicted don’t even have that. Their lives aren’t saved by miraculous coincidence and their dissociative behaviors, far from being a means to prosperity, are more likely to cripple and occasionally destroy them and sometimes their families as well. It’s an important issue for West Virginia because it happens here more often than in most places. <br />
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The National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control rank West Virginia among the leading states for the prevalence of depression, anxiety-related disorders, and, inevitably, suicide. We’re nearly five times more likely to kill ourselves than we are to be killed by someone else. And suicide combined with accidental drug overdoses (usually prescription pain killers) kills more of us than even traffic accidents. <br />
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Of course not all premature deaths associated with mental illness are sudden and traumatic. Some play out over years of gnawing misery in the form of diabetes, heart disease, and cancers -- conditions often caused or nurtured by chronic apathy and disinterest in our own wellbeing. All of this results in West Virginia ranking 46th among the states in life expectancy, more than six years behind the leader, Hawaii, and only seventeen months better than last place Mississippi. <br />
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It’s a crisis, yet as a state we offer little support to those in need of help. Per capita state funding for mental health care is a third below the national average and we have less than half as many psychologists, social workers, and psychiatrists per capita as our neighboring states.<br />
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Instead West Virginia has largely narrowed and recast the problem of mental illness as one of drug abuse and attempted to counter it through policing and legislation designed to disrupt the illegal drug trade and punish perpetrators. However, these steps, although legitimate, address only symptoms of what is at its core a disease of the soul. The result is that, in West Virginia, prisons rather than hospitals and community-based programs are the primary repositories for many of our mentally ill while most go untreated at all. <br />
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Why do we choose not to address the underlying causes? A large part of the problem is our attitude toward mental illness. Many, including some political leaders, see depression and addiction not as illnesses, but as shortcomings of character – a lack of self-discipline, a failure of resolve, or even a dearth of religious faith – traits for which they believe people should be admonished or punished rather than treated. Even Jerry West, who has yet to escape the shadow of abuse six decades after it ended and who asks our understanding, admits that he only briefly tried therapy and quickly rejected it. <br />
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Until West Virginians dismiss the stigma surrounding mental illness and embrace depression, addiction, and other conditions as treatable diseases for which a sufficient number of qualified professionals are required, the statue of Jerry West that stands outside the WVU Coliseum will be as much a monument to West’s and West Virginia’s disease of the soul as it is to the athletic achievements it’s meant to celebrate. <br />
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Sean O’Leary can be contacted at seanholeary@gmai.com.Sean O'Learyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01287734264328253814noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1656624371497588038.post-86803856284864309642017-08-05T10:33:00.000-04:002017-08-18T09:01:11.084-04:00HENRY LOUIS GATES JR's "COLORED PEOPLE" AND WEST VIRGINIA'S "NEGRO PROBLEM"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjThI2AbdExfA9_zcdXDejZf0I5lrXaGTE9Co0JLYKbhyphenhyphen_LH7-S1q-7aUVw2EzOClnuODgQWPWsKnjwq4_SI9C7RANda42QZBebtS6KCITntZrSuwnDKNAn6W0EKeLyrlLLnsoMxYCkWGs/s1600/GATES.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjThI2AbdExfA9_zcdXDejZf0I5lrXaGTE9Co0JLYKbhyphenhyphen_LH7-S1q-7aUVw2EzOClnuODgQWPWsKnjwq4_SI9C7RANda42QZBebtS6KCITntZrSuwnDKNAn6W0EKeLyrlLLnsoMxYCkWGs/s400/GATES.jpg" width="260" height="400" data-original-width="324" data-original-height="499" /></a></div>Senator Hillary Clinton was desperate prior to West Virginia’s 2008 Democratic primary. A surging Barack Obama had erased Clinton’s delegate lead and shattered the aura of inevitability that surrounded her candidacy. Trying to build a fire-wall, Clinton turned to West Virginia.<br />
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Some commentators seized upon Appalachia’s reputation for ignorance and poverty and castigated Clinton’s strategy as a cynical appeal to the uninformed. “The electorate’s lowest common denominator” one pundit called Appalachian voters. Others suggested a darker appeal to racism which was thought to pervade West Virginia. So, when Clinton won with 67% of the vote, the suspicion was confirmed in the eyes of some. <br />
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“West Virginia voters revealed they are the most racist in the country”, John K. Wilson said flatly in The Huffington Post.<br />
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But, if Wilson was right at the time, then white West Virginians experienced a miraculous transformation because in the general election they gave Democratic nominee Barack Obama more than 40% of their votes, a figure that exceeded Obama’s share of white votes in twenty other states including two, Virginia and North Carolina, that he won. Were West Virginia’s black population proportional to its size nationally, Obama might have won here as well. <br />
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While the election results exposed as myth Wilson’s claims of rampant racism, stereotypes and exaggerations such as his, even grievous ones, require some basis in fact. Those facts are supplied by Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. in “Colored People”, a memoir of his childhood in Piedmont, West Virginia. <br />
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Gates, a Harvard University professor, has written numerous books and hosts a PBS television series, but he’s probably best known for last year’s confrontation with a white Cambridge, Massachusetts policeman that ended up being resolved with President Obama over beers on the White House lawn. <br />
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Gates was born in 1950 when West Virginia was racially bifurcated. Restaurants, theatres, jobs, and public transportation were segregated as was the educational system. After the Supreme Court’s 1954 “Brown vs. The Board of Education” decision, West Virginia University waited until 1962 to welcome its first black varsity athlete. <br />
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Gates notes the collective impact of institutional racism and he discusses the more subtle forms of discrimination that continued after integration and to this day. But the power of his narrative is in stories about individuals and relationships damaged by a forced separateness that bred mistrust and misunderstanding, truncated friendships, smothered aspirations, and kindled a corrosive resentment on both sides of the color line. <br />
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It’s stunning to think that this is the lived experience of people only in their 50’s and, while racism is hardly extinct, remarkable that there has been so much improvement. The point was driven home when, not long after reading “Colored People”, I visited the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis Tennessee, site of Dr. Martin Luther King Junior’s assassination. <br />
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The exhibits are supplemented by a succession of closed circuit TV screens that run a continuous loop of contemporaneous newscasts ensuring that Bull Connor will turn dogs and fire hoses on peaceful demonstrators from now until eternity.<br />
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Amid those images of dignity and chaos there appeared a young Senator Robert Byrd whose luscious pompadour was even then three years out of style in New York and Washington, but not in Charleston and not at the WWVA Jamboree. His softly rounded nose and chin defeated the chiseled cracker look to which he aspired, but the pompadour was flawless, a signal as certain as Sarah Palin’s dropped “g’s” that its owner was a tribune of the common man . . . the common white man.<br />
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Byrd was a former Klansman and backslapping raconteur of the Dixiecrat persuasion. On screen he was playing the brooding Cassandra, warning of the sinister Communist hand lurking behind the trouble-making “coloreds”. <br />
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Suddenly the screen cut to another image and Byrd was gone. I emerged from the museum wondering if it had been a dream and how such a man could have evolved to become what some now call “the conscience of the United States Senate”. And how could we white West Virginians have evolved from enthusiastic segregationists to become an electorate that gave a black presidential candidate more than 40% of our votes? <br />
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One of Gates’ stories suggests an explanation. His older brother, Rocky, then an eighth grader, had apparently qualified to become the first black student to win a Golden Horseshoe Award . . . the state's Nobel Prize for achievement in West Virginia history. But, Rocky was denied not by legal discrimination, which was then past, but by the personal prejudice of a school board member. The injustice was reported to Gates’ father by another board member who was moved to remorse by his conscience and too much to drink.<br />
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It seems fitting, even necessary, that change began in such small, squalid ways and gradually evolved into something greater and more principled. <br />
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Robert Byrd has said that his greatest regret was his vote against the 1964 Civil Rights Act. He has since compensated mightily. Perhaps by voting for a black presidential candidate at nearly the rate of white voters nationwide and possibly in proportion to the way we would have voted for any Democratic candidate, white West Virginians have acknowledged our regret. And we and our senator, whose pompadour remains flawless, can know we have grown.Sean O'Learyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01287734264328253814noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1656624371497588038.post-33515980368551714452017-08-05T10:22:00.000-04:002019-01-23T11:48:30.828-05:00MAY ADRALES: STRANGER IN A FAMILIAR LAND -- The Contemporary American Theater Festival production of THE WEDDING GIFT by Chisa Hutchinson<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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You could argue that the genre started with Homer driving poor Odysseus from one horror to another. Jonathan Swift picked up where Homer left off with “Gulliver’s Travels”. Then, Robert Heinlein’s 1961 novel, “Stranger in a Strange Land” gave the genre a name. So that, by the time Charlton Heston donned a loincloth in “Planet of The Apes” and made “the stranger in a strange land”, a pop-culture phenomenon, we were accustomed to bonding with unfortunate outsiders struggling to adapt to alien cultures where convention as they or as we know it is turned on its head.<br />
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Why do writers employ the now-familiar trope? Sometimes to promote visions of a better life and a better society, sometimes to warn us against unforeseen dangers to ourselves or the environment, often to expose society’s absurdities and hypocrisies, and sometimes just to entertain (“Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore”). But, regardless of their literary goals, authors do it because they understand that our tendency to identify with helpless strangers is spontaneous and profound and that it causes us, along with our endangered heroes, to sharpen our senses, become more alert, and experience more intensely the worlds into which they plunge us.<br />
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It’s that last quality – intense sensation – upon which playwright Chisa Hutchinson seizes in her new play, “The Wedding Gift”, in which she uses a stranger in a strange land – a really strange land -- to help us empathically grasp the experience of being oppressed by a society that regards you as not just lesser, but as an object to be employed or dismissed on a whim; to be treated as sensate, but not altogether human; to occasionally be the object of sympathy, but of a mostly condescending kind . . . in short, to experience a new world as African-Americans often experience this world and our society today.<br />
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Any play dealing with issues of race in this time and place enters a fraught territory where what should be a vicarious theatrical experience can, if not handled deftly, deteriorate into polemic. The challenge facing the cast and crew of “The Wedding Gift” is to deliver Chisa Hutchinson’s play in a way that immerses us not in message, but in visceral sensation. And the responsibility for managing that high wire act falls primarily on the play’s director, May Adrales.<br />
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May Adrales comes to us from the borderlands of our social and cultural divide. Her parents immigrated to this country from the Philippines and settled in southwest Virginia in the Appalachian foothills, where racial and cultural diversity begin to recede into a sea of whiteness. Her parents are professionals – her father a surgeon and her mother a nurse – so she enjoyed an economically comfortable childhood. At the same time, as a child of immigrants whose Asian heritage is evident in her features, Adrales, was aware of and was occasionally reminded of her status as an outsider. <br />
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From that milieu emerged a young woman determined to “be the change you wish to see in the world”. After a flirtation with becoming a lawyer and an abortive stint as a staffer at The Council on Foreign Relations in New York City, Adrales succumbed to a passion at which she had been dabbling all along. <br />
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Introduced to theater while in high school, Adrales continued to exercise her nascent interest by spending evenings and weekends writing and directing what she now describes as “very political plays” and “feminist diatribes” – just the sort of thing that will earn you a nasty comeuppance once a reviewer deigns to pay attention to what you’re doing. And that’s just what Adrales got. Fortunately for her, the reviewer also recognized that, while her writing was a tad tendentious, her skill at directing was evident. And Adrales was humble enough to realize the reviewer might have a point.<br />
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So, the advocate for social justice who at that point had no formal theatrical training decided to dedicate herself to pursuing a career in directing. And that change in direction enabled her to discover something about theater, about audiences, and about herself – We’re all suckers for a great story. <br />
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Any actor or wannabe actor who has ever trod the boards discovered with her first step on stage that the imperative is to connect emotionally with the other characters and with the audience because, without their empathic support, you’re alone, naked, and in irredeemable misery. And when that fear burns in your gut, peripheral concerns about the play’s message, its insights into the human condition, in fact any abstract consideration whatever, completely evaporates. It’s all about human beings caring with and for each other in the moment . . . or it’s nothing.<br />
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For some activists who try to make the transition to artist, that leap is impossible. It takes them too far from their real passion, it may feel like an abandonment of the cause, or it’s simply too frightening a place to go. But, for those who do make the leap, a revelation awaits them. In telling stories, the kinds of stories over which human beings bond, insight and even ideology just emanate and, in a few triumphant instances, they are internalized by audiences who may not have the slightest idea they’ve been infused with a new or expanded outlook.<br />
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Generations of people have gone around humming “Wouldn’t it Be Loverly” and “On The Street Where You Live” from “My Fair Lady”, utterly unaware they’ve just seen and, more importantly, assimilated a commentary that savages class-dominated society and insists on the intrinsic nobility of us all. Even George Bernard Shaw, whose play “Pygmalion” was the basis for “My Fair Lady”, might have winced at what some people have derided as a cheesy bowdlerization of his work. But, my guess is that he would have recognized that while, the sugar coating of “My Fair Lady” makes the pill go down more easily, it doesn’t diminish the way in which it’s digested. It just makes the play and its message accessible to a far wider audience. <br />
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But, while audiences may be oblivious to the trick being played upon them, the artists who create the trick cannot be oblivious. So, in a play like “The Wedding Gift” that endeavors to empathically bridge the gap between the lived experiences of two groups of people who share the same society while encountering it from radically different points on the spectrum, it’s appropriate and maybe even necessary that we have a director from the borderlands like May Adrales – one who is not an immigrant, but is the daughter of immigrants; one who is not African-American, but neither is she Caucasian; one whose family was not impoverished, but neither were they rich; and most importantly one for whom both sides in America’s most searing and entrenched divide are emotionally and intellectually accessible. <br />
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Those experiences and the resulting sensibilities probably account for why May Adrales often finds herself directing “stranger in a strange land” types of plays in New York and in regional theaters nationwide. They include Katori Hall’s “Whaddabloodclot!!!” at the Williamstown Theater Festival, David Henry Hwang’s “Chinglish” at Portland Center Stage and Syracuse Stage, Kimber Lee’s “Tokyo Fish Story” at the Old Globe and at the Manhattan Theater Club, Lauren Yee’s “Ching Chong Chinaman” at Pan Asian Rep, and most recently “Qui Nguyen’s “Vietgone” at South Coast Rep and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, which won the 2015 Harold and Mimi Steinberg/American Theatre Critics Association New Play Award. <br />
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It’s an astonishing body of work that has brought May Adrales innumerable awards including the Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation’s inaugural Denham Fellowship and the Paul Green Emerging Directing award.<br />
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In short, May Adrales is highly esteemed and in even higher demand, which is testimony not just to the popularity of her work, but also to its importance for us as individuals and as a society. So, in the end, by telling stories, May Adrales has become the social activist she always intended to be.Sean O'Learyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01287734264328253814noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1656624371497588038.post-79784808383424615442017-08-05T10:19:00.003-04:002017-08-05T10:19:22.415-04:00WHERE'S THE OUTRAGE?<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhuv5xJy48OChBv7WnUgOR-nWTHa6aphigKQYerZT5Clle9N3j3tw7ez8ak5jnt-dBEV7y_7gyhRD3xLKb35VnLvWHfMmQOnE27wlgqUCr4JW-bYOuxyMKV6gTNuK4_dJq3SZOhEejwKU/s1600/priceofjustice.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhuv5xJy48OChBv7WnUgOR-nWTHa6aphigKQYerZT5Clle9N3j3tw7ez8ak5jnt-dBEV7y_7gyhRD3xLKb35VnLvWHfMmQOnE27wlgqUCr4JW-bYOuxyMKV6gTNuK4_dJq3SZOhEejwKU/s320/priceofjustice.jpg" /></a> A few days ago Laurence Leamer, author of the new book "The Price of Justice: A True Story of Greed and Corruption" (Times Books, 448 pages), tweeted, "Why hasn't the West Virginia (press) asked why Don Blankenship has not been indicted for his role in the Upper Big Branch disaster?"<br />
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Leamer’s question is rhetorical and in the haiku of Twitter might be read simply as an attempt to shame journalists and prosecutors into action. But, Leamer knows West Virginia too well – its publishers, lawyers, judges, and people -- to expect so simple and righteous a reaction. He understands our political culture of accommodation and the tendency of an economically and culturally deprived people to slip into unknowing acquiescence. Thus Leamer’s tweet is a provocation, but one tinged with despair, because he grasps the human toll taken by our lassitude – the lives impoverished, stunted, and lost. <br />
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“The Price of Justice”, is a nearly up-to-the-present account of Hugh M. Caperton’s lawsuit against the former Massey Energy Company and its chairman, Don Blankenship, for using deceptive business practices to drive Caperton’s firm, Harman Mining Company, into bankruptcy presumably so that, rather than purchase the mine directly from Caperton, Massey could buy it out of bankruptcy for a fraction of its actual value. <br />
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Caperton v. Massey famously landed before the US Supreme Court over the question of whether West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals Justice Brent Benjamin, whose election was bankrolled by Blankenship, should have recused himself when the court considered a lower court verdict that awarded Caperton $50 million in damages. The case became the inspiration for John Grisham’s novel , “The Appeal”, about a company that attempts to buy a state supreme court decision. But, Massey, unlike Grisham’s fictional company, succeeded when Benjamin cast the deciding vote in a 3-2 decision. <br />
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The judicial scandal didn’t end with Benjamin who was rebuked by the US Supreme Court and had to recuse himself from further involvement in the case. Also joining the rogues gallery was former Justice Elliot “Spike” Maynard whose impartiality was compromised when he was photographed vacationing on the French Riviera with Blankenship. Fellow justice Larry Starcher, had to recuse himself for prejudicial remarks he made about Blankenship. But most disturbing was Justice Robin Jean Davis who, as portrayed by Leamer, connived to throw the case Massey’s way. <br />
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During oral arguments Davis mischaracterized the lower court record. Following oral arguments she pre-empted any discussion of the case by the justices and proceeded directly to a vote. And, in rejecting the appeal, she and her allies did so “with prejudice”, meaning the case could not be retried or reheard. Finally, in finding for Massey, Davis’s majority did so on apparently specious legal grounds. <br />
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Why did they do it? Why have West Virginia politicians historically accommodated coal interests even when they run counter to the interests of citizens and, as Leamer shows was the case in Caperton, when they destroy lives?<br />
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Does Leamer fully prove these charges? No. But, he makes a compelling circumstantial case that warrants – nay, screams for – intensive scrutiny by reporters and politicians. This is why.<br />
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In attacking Harman Mining Company, Blankenship and Massey reneged on a contract to purchase coal at a specified price because it saw the possibility of driving Harman out of business and then acquire it for a song. That doing so would bankrupt Caperton, stiff creditors, and throw hundreds of workers out of jobs was unimportant. <br />
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Contractual obligations were similarly unimportant when Massey shorted Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel on coal deliveries so the coal could be sold at higher prices elsewhere. Wheeling-Pitt sued and won a $220 million award, but the victory proved to be pyrrhic since the damage done to Wheeling-Pitt drove the company into bankruptcy, destroying hundreds of jobs and putting a nail in the coffin of a firm that once was the anchor of the upper Ohio Valley’s economy. <br />
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Then, of course, there were Massey’s thousands of violations of safety rules that produced the deaths of dozens of miners culminating in the tragedy at Upper Big Branch. <br />
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It’s important to remember that all of these tragedies resolve themselves in people. Leamer shares with us the anguish of the widows of dead Massey miners, the shattered life of a young man who became collateral damage in Blankenship’s drive to elect Brent Benjamin, and the Candide-esque tribulations of Hugh Caperton whose continuing search for justice and financial solvency is now in its fifteenth year. These tragedies are only partially offset by the inspiring perseverence of two attorneys, David Fawcett and Bruce Stanley, who strive to stop Blankenship. The suffering and efforts of all of these people are necessary because businessmen such as Blankenship are predators.<br />
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With customers and suppliers alike, Blankenship seized on any weakness to wring out maximum return. In doing so, adherence to the law and to human decency was seen not as a matter of principle, but as an option to be weighed on the scale of profit and loss leaving concerns about legality and ethics to those who are charged with enforcing such naïve concepts. Blankenship reminds us that, try as we might to make the cost of illegality and injustice greater than the gain, we can never anticipate all the means and rewards of malefaction. <br />
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That’s why the relative silence of journalists and politicians about Massey is deafening and why Leamer’s tweet and its implied question are so important. <br />
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Where’s the outrage? Sean O'Learyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01287734264328253814noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1656624371497588038.post-54957689051766531262017-08-05T10:17:00.000-04:002017-08-05T10:17:02.363-04:00REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS NOT PAST: THE CATF PRODUCTION OF "THE ASHES UNDER GAIT CITY" <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiq1mzwBp7h0c-lI3pV0Yr3v5kw3iuC5PLXp91mODml6Y8F2op59hNtJgSXRBKHWQQepYHMvQf3RYqWE69I8u8-bdtHcgSYprtK5ridv2vmXmaryxO4eLPlI2kcdTJXDUSKmWUQLB_xYes/s1600/CAnderson+Headshot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiq1mzwBp7h0c-lI3pV0Yr3v5kw3iuC5PLXp91mODml6Y8F2op59hNtJgSXRBKHWQQepYHMvQf3RYqWE69I8u8-bdtHcgSYprtK5ridv2vmXmaryxO4eLPlI2kcdTJXDUSKmWUQLB_xYes/s200/CAnderson+Headshot.jpg" /></a></div>When they want to forget, some people turn to the bottle, but when we seek to forget as a nation, we increasingly turn to the Supreme Court, which has conveniently gotten into the habit of setting aside things of which we would rather not be reminded – most notably our descent as a nation into the practice of slavery and the long shadow it casts to this day. <br />
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How else are we to interpret recent decisions concerning the Civil Rights Act and college admissions policies than as an attempt to erect the façade of a color-blind society in which slavery and its consequences are considered appropriate subjects for private study and discussion, but which may no longer be considered when we are engaged in our most noble collective endeavor, the making of laws?<br />
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It's as though a majority of the justices on the Supreme Court are leading us in an exercise of collective forgetting.<br />
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That’s why Christina Anderson’s new play, “The Ashes Under Gait City”, which premieres at this year’s Contemporary American Theater Festival in Shepherdstown, is as timely as it is enigmatic. Without ever referring to the Supreme Court or to the political issues mentioned above, Anderson’s play explores a struggle all Americans, black and white, have in trying to comprehend the meaning of slavery and its legacy in the present day.<br />
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CATF’s publicity blurb describes “The Ashes Under Gait City” this way. <br />
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<i>“When a devastating fire burned Gait City to the ground, the community decided to rebuild, an enduring and noble and gesture, but with one crucial oversight –they forgot the black people. An Internet guru, Simone The Believer, launches a campaign amongst her followers to encourage black Americans to migrate to this town and reclaim their roots.”</i><br />
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But, what does the phrase, “they forgot their blacks” really mean? It’s an issue that bedevils Simone The Believer and her followers in much the same way that today we are bedeviled by the palpable presence of slavery’s ill-effects, but the absence of the people or laws that were responsible for that barbaric institution and its not much less barbaric offspring, Jim Crow. <br />
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The thirteenth amendment ended slavery and the Civil Rights Act accompanied by other pieces of legislation more or less ended other forms of legal discrimination ostensibly making us all equal and yet we plainly are not equal as demonstrated by comparative measures of wealth, income, and educational attainment not to mention arrest and incarceration among the races. <br />
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So, what are those seeking justice for those wrongs to do? Where can those who continue to be damaged by the legacy of slavery and of Jim Crow turn? Is it realistic to believe justice can be found in what the Supreme Court apparently has concluded is the only remaining allowable battle: the one for peoples’ hearts and minds -- a battle in which the court seems to believe the government ought not play a role? <br />
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That’s how some people would like to see the problem, but an article in the June issue of The Atlantic magazine by Ta-Nehisi Coates and titled, “The Case For Reparations” reminds us that, although the laws that enforced racism have long since been eradicated, there is still the possibility of legislative action to provide compensation for damages that continue to afflict the descendants because, as Coates points out, those damages are emninently quantifiable. <br />
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The only problem is that we haven’t quantified them because we choose not to and show no signs fo changing. Another form of active forgetting?<br />
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So Simone The Believer, her followers, and all who wish to see justice done are left to fight a ghost. No living person they are reminded is responsible for slavery and you can’t sue the dead. Yet the damage is real, present, and still attenuating, crippling, and occasionally destroying lives.<br />
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It’s a case of a wrong seemingly without a perpetrator against whom to claim justice or strike back. But, it’s not the only such case. In a world in which forces sometimes operate on a global scale, many, many people are victimized by the ineffable and unaccountable -- workers whose jobs evaporate and can’t be replaced, former homeowners who were upstanding citizens one day and were made deadbeats the next by falling housing values, 18 million Bangladeshis whose homes are about to be swamped by rising sea levels. <br />
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Inevitably some of these people feel a compulsion to act, to strike back against the ineffable, if only they can identify it and name it. Sometimes they are successful and form movements, but sometimes their efforts to identify their oppressors yield no answers, so they turn to speculation, and speculation morphs imperceptibly into fantasy giving rise to great and moronic conspiracy theories.<br />
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Such are the origins of militias, cults, and other malign shelters for the justly aggrieved, but sadly misguided. <br />
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Is that to be the fate of Simone The Believer and her followers? Or will she and her followers eventually tire of jousting with the ineffable and simply go home? Or will the leaders of Gait City and of America own up to what Ta-Nehisi Coates calls their moral debt and, by doing so, provide a locus of responsibility and with it the possibility of repair and reconciliation? <br />
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We don’t know, but CATF’s production of “The Ashes Under Gait City” gives us the opportunity to wonder and explore these questions, which our courts and our lesser angels want us to forget. <br />
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“The Ashes Under Gait City” by Christina Anderson, directed by Lucie Tiberghien, July 11 – August 3, 1014, The Contemporary American Theater Festival. Tickets at www.CATF.org/tickets. Phone orders at 800/999-CATF or 304/876-3473.Sean O'Learyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01287734264328253814noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1656624371497588038.post-9440147661499658582017-08-05T10:12:00.000-04:002017-08-05T10:13:52.160-04:00OF INCEST & AUTHENTICITY“They are a curious and most native stock, the lanky men, the lost, forgotten seeds spilled from the first great wave-march toward the West and set to sprout by chance in the deep cracks of that hillbilly world of laurel hells . . . And if you yearn to meet your pioneers, you’ll find them there, the same men, inbred sons of inbred sires perhaps, but still the same . . . They are misfit and strange in our new day.”<br />
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Thus did Stephen Vincent Benet describe the people of Appalachia in his book-length poem, “John Brown’s Body” that won the Pulitzer Prize for literature in 1922. <br />
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We can be reasonably sure that West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin has never read this passage because, if he had, the campaign to rescind the Pulitzer Prize would be well underway. <br />
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There are few slights of Appalachia and West Virginia that don’t draw the Governor’s ire. His targets have included NBC television for contemplating a reality show called “The Real Beverly Hillbillies”, Abercrombie & Fitch for selling a T-shirt that featured a map of West Virginia and the slogan, “It’s all relative”, and even then-Vice President Dick Cheney who found himself in the Governor’s cross-hairs when he remarked that he had Cheneys on both sides of his family, "and we don't even live in West Virginia." <br />
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But, does any of it make any difference? Perhaps. <br />
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A few years ago the artistic director of a major theatre told me that, if I wanted my play, “Rain in The Hollows” (since retitled “Claudie Hukill”), to be produced in New York, I should change the play’s setting from the hollers of West Virginia to the west coast of Ireland. He even offered suggestions about how the play’s dialogue might be tweaked . . . no major revisions, mind you . . . to lend it the necessary “authenticity”.<br />
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What the artistic director didn’t explain was why a change in setting unaccompanied by any change in the play’s substance should make theaters and audiences more receptive. On reflection, it’s fairly clear that he felt “Rain in The Hollows”, a play that employs magical realism to explore the nuances of family relationships, would be more “accessible” to audiences if it were set in Ireland.<br />
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Why should that be the case? One answer is that Ireland, unlike West Virginia, has produced a stream of playwrights– Synge, O’Casey, Friel, McPherson, and others – who have written highly nuanced works in this vein, so perhaps audience members are able to relate more readily to the “Irish peasant experience” than they are to the less frequently staged, “Appalachian mountain experience”.<br />
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That’s the polite way to describe it. There is, however, a darker interpretation that goes like this. Audiences either can’t or don’t want to identify with characters whose lives they associate with ignorance, provincialism, and bigotry. In other words, audience members might not be able to get past their caricatured notions of Appalachian hill people to find their underlying shared humanity.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDchQydj1cTVGGTH698AQBeTwg3iiRdsh21hnX35pVEzlpSMUtPqngn7ytoVTWOPgTjENkpoGhk2fFLOw5Ua3ZUh8zpjXoM-kEvNgn7Rj0KSLM5d4IP_RWux_ObWolOFdXtgEiUHr295E/s1600/RITH+IMAGE.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDchQydj1cTVGGTH698AQBeTwg3iiRdsh21hnX35pVEzlpSMUtPqngn7ytoVTWOPgTjENkpoGhk2fFLOw5Ua3ZUh8zpjXoM-kEvNgn7Rj0KSLM5d4IP_RWux_ObWolOFdXtgEiUHr295E/s320/RITH+IMAGE.png" width="210" height="320" data-original-width="397" data-original-height="606" /></a></div>Whichever interpretation is more accurate, the episode reminds us that the mere mention of place can evoke waves of emotions, images, and preconceptions, a phenomenon that good playwrights use to imbue their plays with color, texture, and context without having devoting pages of dialogue to tedious description. That’s a good thing, but it’s a good thing that can have a distressing consequence.<br />
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Calling upon preconceptions also means calling upon prejudices. And, by willfully employing audiences’ prejudices, playwrights, whether intentionally or unintentionally, validate them. <br />
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An example is the frequently produced play, “The Spitfire Grill”, in which a young woman recently released from prison travels to a remote lake town in Wisconsin to start over. When we hear that the crime for which she was imprisoned was murder, we are also told that she killed her father at whose hands she was the victim of incest.<br />
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Normally this kind of revelation is the proverbial hand grenade that a playwright can’t simply roll on to the stage and leave unexploded. INCEST! My God! The audience wants to know. <br />
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But, if that’s not really what the play is about and the playwright needs to move on, what does he do? The playwrights of “The Spitfire Grill” (James Valcq and Fred Alley) simply added a line explaining that the young woman is from West Virginia.<br />
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Why does that simple factoid bring closure to the issue of incest . . . defuse the hand grenade so to speak? Because incest is what audiences expect to happen in West Virginia. No further explanation is required and, in fact, the playwrights give us none. Would further explanation have been required had the young woman hailed from New York, California, Florida, or other more presumably cosmopolitan places? Certainly.<br />
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I won’t go into statistics showing that incest is no more prevalent in West Virginia than it is elsewhere, but will merely observe that the writers of THE SPITFIRE GRILL weren’t deterred by statistics either. But, does this tiny exploitation of audience members’ preconceptions do any damage? I don’t know, but I wonder if THE SPITFIRE GRILL might have been seen by a woman I met in New York recently who, upon being told that I live in West Virginia, looked at me with furrowed brow and asked plaintively, “Why?”Sean O'Learyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01287734264328253814noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1656624371497588038.post-41771696561754311202017-08-05T09:50:00.000-04:002017-08-05T09:50:21.011-04:00JOHN PATRICK SHANLEY'S "DOUBT" WITHOUT CONSCIENCE<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSudvYuD5sXcdj1VeylB4D14lQpITKwuUk4heL_HbTwLzQjblqmx9rpIp8zMUs417fXBDM13QBrIR6Y1q4UFMQ_0UgGWMkqLXy98q91UWABw9gVa2YD_n0kGsqGmXawLj_ed-NPxd6A9Y/s1600-h/1Doubt2.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 184px; FLOAT: left; HEIGHT: 200px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5292259085246201922" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSudvYuD5sXcdj1VeylB4D14lQpITKwuUk4heL_HbTwLzQjblqmx9rpIp8zMUs417fXBDM13QBrIR6Y1q4UFMQ_0UgGWMkqLXy98q91UWABw9gVa2YD_n0kGsqGmXawLj_ed-NPxd6A9Y/s200/1Doubt2.jpg" /></a>Football coaches are fond of portraying their sport as a microcosm of life – an endeavor that tests and builds character by demanding dedication, perseverance, sacrifice, and humility among other qualities. But, the analogy only holds to a point because football, unlike life, is a contrived struggle in which the question of which team wins and which team loses is devoid of moral significance. An uninterested observer has no reason to prefer either the home team or the visiting team in football any more than he has to prefer white over black in chess or black over red in checkers.<br />
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That absence of moral significance is important because it relieves the players of games of responsibility for doing what all of us must or should do in life: question the virtue of our endeavors and struggle with the necessary and inevitable uncertainty . . . or doubt.<br />
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On the face of it, that seems to be what John Patrick Shanley’s play and movie, “Doubt”, is about. He gives us two characters – a pedophile priest and a suspicious nun – upon whom circumstance thrusts far more than the usual amount of reason to engage in serious reflection and self-assessment. Yet, strangely neither do.<br />
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The priest, Father Flynn, is perfectly comfortable with his pedophilia, although he dares not acknowledge it no doubt fearing what he views as the irrational reactions of intolerant people such as the nun. And the nun, whose evidence of what Father Flynn has done is circumstantial and weak at best, none the less is so convinced of her accuracy in judging others that early on she declares her certainty of the priest’s abuses when such a declaration is unnecessary even as ploy. And so these two bull elephants of certainty clash each trying as football players do to achieve their purpose without once questioning the virtue of their chosen tasks.<br />
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Only in the play’s final scene, after the battle has ended with the priest having been removed to a higher post at another parish by the Monsignor, does the nun finally exhibit doubt and then it is doubt about her faith in a God and a church that would allow, even enable such an outcome. But, of course, her crisis of faith, the first real doubt to be witnessed in the play, is one that will be played out only in a fictitious future.<br />
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Shanley has not given us a play about doubt or conscience. He has given us a premise for such a play, which if it is to take place at all, will do so only in our imaginations.Sean O'Learyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01287734264328253814noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1656624371497588038.post-41013260741780661602017-08-04T10:15:00.000-04:002020-05-02T10:19:34.021-04:00WEST VIRGINIA UNDER THE KNIFE <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXqOT73xZ0k64chLWKStmemYyoS1NeHIANmnrkMd6qaH_jsbNCri4W0qapMesK0MEZfhdHgOZFzJqantPhBtKO88INbuxZdhWoa-a5w4nWvSEKB_mTvO340NOLW9xXO2wXZ5KdCdo7q18/s1600/austerity.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5698227973001679906" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXqOT73xZ0k64chLWKStmemYyoS1NeHIANmnrkMd6qaH_jsbNCri4W0qapMesK0MEZfhdHgOZFzJqantPhBtKO88INbuxZdhWoa-a5w4nWvSEKB_mTvO340NOLW9xXO2wXZ5KdCdo7q18/s200/austerity.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 160px; margin: 0 10px 10px 0; width: 200px;" /></a>In December 2006 Curtis Dubay, Senior Economist for the Tax Foundation, delivered a briefing from the floor of the West Virginia House of Delegates in which he admired Ireland’s Celtic Tiger economy and announced, “West Virginia should aim to be to the United States what Ireland is to Europe.” <br />
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A year later the Irish real estate bubble burst and Ireland became the first of the anvils that still threaten to drag the European Union under. But, we shouldn’t pick on Mr. Dubay because we were all insane that autumn.<br />
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In September of that year the Federal Reserve Board held a rollicking meeting at which Dallas Fed president Richard Fisher dismissed rumors of a housing bubble gleefully proclaiming, “the only subject that has been more analyzed than the housing situation is the birth of Brad Pitt’s baby. (Laughter)”.<br />
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The parenthetical “laughter” is in the actual transcript reminding us that we didn’t just drive the economy off a cliff, but we did so with our foot on the accelerator and our eyes wide shut. <br />
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Ever since we’ve been trying to choose between two strategies for picking up the pieces -- the Keynesian approach, championed by President Obama, which prescribes fiscal stimulus to reignite the economy, or the Austrian approach, championed by Republicans, which prescribes austerity and a reduction in the size of government.<br />
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So far Obama’s strategy has generally held sway, but with major compromises forced on him when Republicans gained control of the House of Representatives in 2010. The result is a tepid recovery that pleases no one. <br />
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But, this election year gives Republicans realistic hopes of winning the presidency and the Senate while holding the House. Should that happen, something close to Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan’s austerity-focused alternative federal budget, called the “Path to Prosperity”, will probably be enacted. The question is, what would it mean for West Virginia?<br />
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On the spending side, the centerpiece of Ryan’s plan is entitlement reform, which would change Medicare into a voucher program and reduce Medicaid. On the revenue side, Ryan would end the payroll tax cut and return those rates to previous levels while preserving the income tax cuts first enacted under President George W. Bush. <br />
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Before calculating the cost of these changes to West Virginia and to appreciate their significance, consider that a few weeks ago it was front-page news when the state announced $56 million in tax cuts for 2012. So, it’s sobering to realize that, of the measures listed above, the one that would have the smallest impact – terminating the payroll tax cut -- would take more than $500 million out of West Virginians’ pockets – a loss almost ten times more than we saved with the state tax cut. <br />
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Cuts to Medicaid would cost West Virginia another $690 million annually. Finally, because changing Medicare to a voucher program would force recipients to pay market prices for medical care, beneficiaries would see an average cost increase of $6,250 annually. With more than 20% of West Virginians on Medicare, the cost to our state would be $2.4 billion.<br />
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The Ryan proposal contains other cuts as well, but these three items are sufficient to make a point. Taken together, they would remove more than $3.6 billion in discretionary income from West Virginians – more money than our entire coal industry pays in wages and severance taxes combined, $2,000 for every man, woman, and child in the state.<br />
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In short, it’s huge and it would take immense economic growth to offset so large a hit. So, how much growth are places that have pursued government austerity achieving?<br />
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Back to Mr. Dubay’s romantic Ireland. In the aftermath of the crash Ireland imposed huge government layoffs and pay cuts in a maniacal effort to reduce public debt and shrink government, hoping to reassure investors and spark growth. It hasn’t happened.<br />
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Before the collapse, Ireland’s unemployment rate like that of the US was about 4.5%. But, while our unemployment rate doubled before declining in recent months, Ireland’s rate more than tripled. And rather than spike and fall like the US rate, Irish unemployment has stayed above 13% for two years and currently sits at 14.3%. Similarly, whereas American gross domestic demand (GDD) for goods and services returned to pre-crisis levels last year, Irish GDD has fallen for 14 consecutive quarters and the economy is expected to shrink further in 2012.<br />
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In fact, all of the countries where austerity policies have been implemented -- Ireland, Greece, Spain, Italy, and Portugal -- are listed among "The Economist" magazine's ten fastest shrinking economies of 2012.<br />
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In other words, the notion that cutting government will trigger economic expansion is at best a wish and, from all available evidence, not a likely one. What is certain and frightening are the reductions to West Virginia incomes and the increase in out-of pocket-costs that the Ryan budget would impose. <br />
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None the less, when the Ryan budget was considered in congress last year, Representative Shelley Moore Capito voted “yea”. On the other hand, first district congressman David McKinley was one of just four House Republicans voting against the bill and specifically cited its impact on Medicare as the reason. <br />
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Hopefully this year Capito and other members of our congressional delegation, including Senator Joe Manchin who is a wild card on this issue, will put dogma and political expediency aside long enough to look at the numbers, see the amount of money that an austerity budget would cost West Virginia, and realize the false promise and threat that austerity poses. <br />
Sean O’Leary can be contacted at seanoleary@citlink.net.Sean O'Learyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01287734264328253814noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1656624371497588038.post-22149841645673476462017-01-29T18:39:00.000-05:002018-12-17T18:16:33.929-05:00CHRISTOPHER LLOYD AS EZRA POUND -- NYC, SEPT 18TH<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4ZRkOnmAtPuW0_tlYgbsN2dff0vYdNRd0BfkoZ6D0XE_63ktxulAioOOVB89BoVItGtxZFQuVDz4hkSz46PcvD30xhnB8q8hTIIOo73E1zpPMyh8hSuWKpsaZSqSLsz9hBQBpoaz31GY/s1600/christopher-lloyd-12-monkeys.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="421" data-original-width="620" height="217" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4ZRkOnmAtPuW0_tlYgbsN2dff0vYdNRd0BfkoZ6D0XE_63ktxulAioOOVB89BoVItGtxZFQuVDz4hkSz46PcvD30xhnB8q8hTIIOo73E1zpPMyh8hSuWKpsaZSqSLsz9hBQBpoaz31GY/s320/christopher-lloyd-12-monkeys.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Actor Christopher Lloyd, best known for his work in "Back to The Future", "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest", and the TV series "Taxi, will headline a public reading of my play "POUND" at the Vineyard Theater, 108 E. 15th Street in New York on Monday, September 18.<br />
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The reading is being produced by Trimuvirate Artists who plan an off-Broadway production. You can learn more about POUND at <a href="https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/Christopher-Lloyd-to-Headline-Reading-of-POUND-in-NYC-20170907">BroadwayWorld</a>. And let me know if you would like to attend the reading. Sean O'Learyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01287734264328253814noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1656624371497588038.post-62359651377252733502016-06-15T07:40:00.000-04:002016-06-15T07:40:24.029-04:00SLASHING GUN VIOLENCE: A PUBLIC HEALTH CAMPAIGN CAN SUCCEED WHERE LEGISLATION FAILS<a href="http://bit.ly/1Q42F8S"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi44utOzqPEQzDDU1fcuO6MhadPHdQQCzAUP8DVq4y2KRA97o1aG6xN0mz4HrrU_eV6YOOz5ZMjc93jm9TipRUv5t6XSNut1VD0bebY4h3x-n6EMWzXVtIFM7MzPbS-kdomErKxe1PuQnA/s1600/Screen+Shot+2016-06-15+at+4.37.10+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi44utOzqPEQzDDU1fcuO6MhadPHdQQCzAUP8DVq4y2KRA97o1aG6xN0mz4HrrU_eV6YOOz5ZMjc93jm9TipRUv5t6XSNut1VD0bebY4h3x-n6EMWzXVtIFM7MzPbS-kdomErKxe1PuQnA/s320/Screen+Shot+2016-06-15+at+4.37.10+AM.png" /></a></div></a>The most compelling case against guns isn't being made. We fight endlessly about gun control and gun rights, but rarely does anyone talk to us about the personal choice and personal risks of owning a gun. Here's how and why it should be done.<br />
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<a href="http://bit.ly/1Q42F8S" target="_blank">Slashing Gun Violence: The Untried Best Path</a>Sean O'Learyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01287734264328253814noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1656624371497588038.post-34776826298415316042015-12-16T16:55:00.000-05:002016-02-25T00:32:40.744-05:00WEST VIRGINIA NEEDS MORE THAN ECONOMIC GROWTHNow that we're in political campaign season, it's routine to hear candidates tell us their policies will create economic growth and jobs. But, as voters, we have to confront them with the fact that, while West Virginia has in recent years gotten lots of economic growth, we've seen almost nothing in the form of jobs or prosperity proving that the former doesn't always cause the latter.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivNEVw4hffQZDKupf2sB2x5cNmCweR6CL-GCm6RuD2pU_fFjPCyn_j7yR57dKVk0mm2kZeUXSlUAwVVLUxgI2YuO3k5x4cIcmKrxSgqcpiPLfiIPIFBCZfTD68kyK1blrlechvZhTSMlg/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-12-16+at+1.12.57+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivNEVw4hffQZDKupf2sB2x5cNmCweR6CL-GCm6RuD2pU_fFjPCyn_j7yR57dKVk0mm2kZeUXSlUAwVVLUxgI2YuO3k5x4cIcmKrxSgqcpiPLfiIPIFBCZfTD68kyK1blrlechvZhTSMlg/s640/Screen+Shot+2015-12-16+at+1.12.57+PM.png" /></a></div>Last September news outlets heralded the fracking-induced economic boom in Wheeling, W. Va., which had the fifth fastest growing economy of the nation's metropolitan areas in 2014. But, as has been <a href="http://www.the-state-of-my-state.com/2012/12/the-emperor-has-no-natural-gas-boom-pub.html">pointed out before</a>, that expansion has done little or nothing to bring prosperity to West Virginia or even to communities where activity is greatest. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNEEyZbHKoyLwDuFVAp4G_5IpZ5GjEtGEaDFdNHIzJNruQbtGY60QOM_abqIJtQugrRXNne4_ckJUXXPe0QegXKBLVtzQhSN2z2NVak70LHeq58mkdV6kahYxagVYf8X17ydSeDJSZdGY/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-12-16+at+12.44.57+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNEEyZbHKoyLwDuFVAp4G_5IpZ5GjEtGEaDFdNHIzJNruQbtGY60QOM_abqIJtQugrRXNne4_ckJUXXPe0QegXKBLVtzQhSN2z2NVak70LHeq58mkdV6kahYxagVYf8X17ydSeDJSZdGY/s400/Screen+Shot+2015-12-16+at+12.44.57+PM.png" /></a></div>Employment data show that, since the dawn of the fracking era in 2007, the Wheeling metropolitan statistical area (MSA), which includes parts of eastern Ohio, has actually lost jobs even as natural gas production and GDP have skyrocketed. The decline is evident in two different surveys, the CES survey which looks at company payrolls, and the CPS survey, which questions individuals about how many people in the household are employed.<br />
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The fact that both employer and resident-based surveys show declines in jobs suggests that, while factors such as out-of-state workers taking an unusually large share of drilling and pipeline construction jobs may have reduced employment opportunities for West Virginians, to a large degree employment opportunities never grew in the numbers that were expected in the first place.<br />
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So, the challenge we have to lay before wouldbe officeholders is to, first, explain why the economic growth experienced in Wheeling and elsewhere in West Virginia have failed to produce jobs and prosperity, and, second, tell us how their policies will re-establish the link between economic growth and jobs and prosperity. Or, put another way, they must tell us how their policies will make sure that more of the wealth that's generated from West Virginia resources and West Virginia labor will stay in West Virginia. Sean O'Learyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01287734264328253814noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1656624371497588038.post-63767447068747863922015-12-08T16:58:00.000-05:002015-12-08T16:58:43.445-05:00IF GUNS DON'T MAKE US SAFER . . . AND THEY DON'T . . . WHY DO WE WANT THEM?To be clear, owning a gun doesn't make owners or their families safer. And it's remarkable that there's any debate about the question since the evidence is overwhelming. Where there are lots of guns, there are more gun deaths . . . lots more.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM_yanhh9SX8jA12fzhIN5gFmQh-RICbdlP8TvajHZjL3UbltbfaeoVRLtAhj-FkzUK7ReYHRysRMXZH4Io_0zUbw387gDVyBiTGEztrGDM3qcyv_YE4tBAHWANGoWbAMLpagWyHeBIPk/s1600/own.death.by.+state.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM_yanhh9SX8jA12fzhIN5gFmQh-RICbdlP8TvajHZjL3UbltbfaeoVRLtAhj-FkzUK7ReYHRysRMXZH4Io_0zUbw387gDVyBiTGEztrGDM3qcyv_YE4tBAHWANGoWbAMLpagWyHeBIPk/s400/own.death.by.+state.png" /></a></div><br />
Having a gun in the household means that the owner and family members are three times more likely to be shot to death than they would be if there were no gun in the house. <br />
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What's fascinating though is that, on a state by state basis, the presence of guns doesn't seem to increase the likelihood of murder, although neither does it reduce the risk. In fact, nationally there is zero correlation between the percent of households that own guns and the murder rate.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUoDzbcUiYLC5pYWIkZehSbScutTkoCBDbmNPxTw_3AntMXMeammSLSP8Ve_ELZfdgeANQHrPENw5qK3TcqWnN27MfHqH-6frX6CqxyHkmJmMzZvWFBa468hWhSAjMNnTgH_5KgLJwnqs/s1600/own.murder.by.state.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUoDzbcUiYLC5pYWIkZehSbScutTkoCBDbmNPxTw_3AntMXMeammSLSP8Ve_ELZfdgeANQHrPENw5qK3TcqWnN27MfHqH-6frX6CqxyHkmJmMzZvWFBa468hWhSAjMNnTgH_5KgLJwnqs/s400/own.murder.by.state.png" /></a></div><br />
So, if the murder rate is the same regardless of the prevalence of guns, how come death by firearm is far more common in states where gun ownership is high than in those where it's low? In a word, the answer is "suicide". Overall, suicides are two and a half times more common than murders. And guns are used to commit the majority of suicides.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRA4f3loncWUR3-OF8GLp5exq7Lk8ZjSdw_jYzhcM_xjcSZEs4zQ4z1tXDJAor8uFJZy2kQPBdeA0_gm5iDfVdexEHbxE9FynXOdBiDXIO3XbUul4zT9_D_B289SQxKu30RFqyZP58cSA/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-12-07+at+7.10.50+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRA4f3loncWUR3-OF8GLp5exq7Lk8ZjSdw_jYzhcM_xjcSZEs4zQ4z1tXDJAor8uFJZy2kQPBdeA0_gm5iDfVdexEHbxE9FynXOdBiDXIO3XbUul4zT9_D_B289SQxKu30RFqyZP58cSA/s400/Screen+Shot+2015-12-07+at+7.10.50+PM.png" /></a></div><br />
That's why, where there are more guns, there are more suicides.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZn1aXrv93O_4RIxDSoO7WKrXOzuLWPITpcg0TL9daB5Vuz1XHVEYZJTCSXXzEaN4Y577m_60cc2TEVsptHiD_Pr6-OFfU1M73-6ZDSDZgVoZqhLgN1CPAnfoCcAGz2E_IFsa33R8s3eA/s1600/own.suicide.by.state.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZn1aXrv93O_4RIxDSoO7WKrXOzuLWPITpcg0TL9daB5Vuz1XHVEYZJTCSXXzEaN4Y577m_60cc2TEVsptHiD_Pr6-OFfU1M73-6ZDSDZgVoZqhLgN1CPAnfoCcAGz2E_IFsa33R8s3eA/s400/own.suicide.by.state.png" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNQ-iSs9srujdKUOD2ju3yixDtXbjsZIfGIwCip9ugWo32OxMj4-wqf87UX2PBN3crSZXS4HJetSQTtGUcpXyw2KZ-t8aUdvo-XsGzVqgHZpHn7w0r9sbQk9Taj1DOgh0z95TsAW8TmSE/s1600/Harvard.suicide.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNQ-iSs9srujdKUOD2ju3yixDtXbjsZIfGIwCip9ugWo32OxMj4-wqf87UX2PBN3crSZXS4HJetSQTtGUcpXyw2KZ-t8aUdvo-XsGzVqgHZpHn7w0r9sbQk9Taj1DOgh0z95TsAW8TmSE/s320/Harvard.suicide.png" /></a></div><br />
Suicide is almost twice as common in the states that have the highest prevalence of guns as it is in those with the lowest prevalence. And in those states, gun suicides in particular are nearly four times as common. <br />
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That brings us to an important realization. When you combine the number of suicides with the number of gun accidents -- about 1,250 annually and which, like suicides, primarily afflict guns' owners -- you're confronted the sobering reality that, when guns kill, two times out of three, the victim is the owner. <br />
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Of course, gun owners typically scoff at the risk of suicide and accident, confident that, although others may be susceptible, they certainly are not -- an argument that may accurately be characterized as the Lake Woebegone Effect adapted to the gun debate. The fact is that nobody believes they're going to commit suicide . . . until they decide to commit suicide. And when people commit suicide with a gun they render the argument that "the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun" totally absurd. <br />
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But, in this time of crazed gunmen, terrorist attacks, and carjackings, at least carrying a gun can save us from being killed by strangers . . . doesn't it? Well, if it does, it doesn't happen very often. Of the 16,121 murders committed in 2013, in only 4,000 was a stranger involved. The other twelve thousand times, the person responsible was an intimate partner, a family member, a friend, or an acquaintance of the victim -- probably not the people gun buyers think about deterring when they make their purchases. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4lhKKL2RS5nwjTRnohXRE7P8S_Od1S9FD6bLI4cJgn7f8RFWM9k82wUiJESi7X4oZdP0ACUDAQ44vL37AKEXS2mo3XiX6YRj70OAyPWCL2bVsA7D4Rn0ozbGrdqdskmOfVvYIN30vcTE/s1600/deaths.by.gun.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4lhKKL2RS5nwjTRnohXRE7P8S_Od1S9FD6bLI4cJgn7f8RFWM9k82wUiJESi7X4oZdP0ACUDAQ44vL37AKEXS2mo3XiX6YRj70OAyPWCL2bVsA7D4Rn0ozbGrdqdskmOfVvYIN30vcTE/s400/deaths.by.gun.png" /></a></div>So, when the data for all gun deaths from suicides, accidents, and murders are put together, it turns out that, when a gun kills, 92% of the time the victim is the gun's owner or a family member, relative, friend or acquaintance. Of the 33,636 people who were killed by guns in 2103, only 2,690 of them involved a stranger as shooter or victim.<br />
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In summary, keeping a gun in the home triples the risk that a member of the household -- and most often the gun's owner -- will be shot to death. And, if the gun kills anyone, nine times out of ten, the victim is likely to be someone the gun owner know and about whom they care. <br />
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That's a fact . . . now what precisely is the offsetting benefit?<br />
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Sean O'Learyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01287734264328253814noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1656624371497588038.post-43637502347112530002015-12-06T19:44:00.000-05:002015-12-06T19:46:55.250-05:00WHEN THE COAL INDUSTRY SAYS IT'S FIGHTING FOR JOBS . . . IT'S NOTAmerica's coal industry has done a remarkable job of persuading large parts of the public -- particularly miners, mining communities, and coal country politicians -- that its fight against environmental regulation is a fight for jobs. That's ironic because, since 1985, coal production in the US increased by a third and even today remains greater than it was then. Yet, while production was growing by a third, the industry purged more than 60% of its employees, a result that may have swollen profit margins and pleased shareholders, but that was devastating to people and communities where coal is mined. <br />
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(Click on image to enlarge)</i><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcvyQFv9JR8pwqU0ttNHrHbFn1jIBC-SzVkdP8ZRBmve9LwXf1pUXr8yqdbHM_tWIsa90WfPztvf1NPjvcSuken8i_1OzjsGYYJNOZ0WC4KyFLZIRvjruJDGQIhP-C2vCVrTVQxnjVvrw/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-12-06+at+4.14.03+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcvyQFv9JR8pwqU0ttNHrHbFn1jIBC-SzVkdP8ZRBmve9LwXf1pUXr8yqdbHM_tWIsa90WfPztvf1NPjvcSuken8i_1OzjsGYYJNOZ0WC4KyFLZIRvjruJDGQIhP-C2vCVrTVQxnjVvrw/s400/Screen+Shot+2015-12-06+at+4.14.03+PM.png" /></a></div><br />
The massive job loss was driven by mining automation and the widespread adoption of new, less labor-intensive mining techniques such as strip mining and mountaintop removal. But, by the mid 2000's labor-saving innovations in mining pretty much dried up and the depletion of coal seams in one of the nation's oldest and largest mining regions, Central Appalachia, which consists primarily of southern West Virginia and eastern Kentucky, caused worker productivity to plummet and costs to increase just as the natural gas fracking boom was taking hold. At the same time, a consolidation was taking place in the industry in which large companies were buying up coal reserves, but taking on a great deal of debt in the process. Then, all of a sudden the industry was faced with high debts and rising costs at the same time a low-cost competitor was emerging. Companies responded the only way they could, by closing mines and blaming the government's "war on coal" for their woes in the hope of winning tax breaks and political favors in order to squeeze the last remaining profits from a declining business. <br />
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It's of no comfort to the remaining 75,000 or so miners and their families in the US, but the fact is that the industry has always worked assiduously to minimize employment so much so that it eliminated more jobs when times were booming than are even left to be lost now that the industry is in trouble. <br />
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Sean O'Learyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01287734264328253814noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1656624371497588038.post-12657271231522236282015-12-04T15:36:00.000-05:002015-12-07T11:16:34.776-05:00HOW WEST VIRGINIA CAN FIX ITS BUDGET AND CREATE REAL PROSPERITY<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRY_JBOkJz9eBjeqoeaSzAmv2yuvw60PhR42-aYo83Cvq220U7xcG6QNGwM3JPIUMU6s2chyphenhyphen4LYQhy11oSPl_RSXgt-n6xbyOwm49UGCtslw3l_LU666E6iu2NiAIlvb5zcYcfcI40mb8/s1600/Creating-Effective-Tax-Reform.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRY_JBOkJz9eBjeqoeaSzAmv2yuvw60PhR42-aYo83Cvq220U7xcG6QNGwM3JPIUMU6s2chyphenhyphen4LYQhy11oSPl_RSXgt-n6xbyOwm49UGCtslw3l_LU666E6iu2NiAIlvb5zcYcfcI40mb8/s200/Creating-Effective-Tax-Reform.gif" /></a></div>The numbers are still vague and the details are many and unresolved, but in broad strokes a clear strategy for state tax reform has emerged that would close West Virginia’s gaping budget deficit, spur local prosperity by giving state residents the largest tax cut they’ve ever received, and it would do so without requiring budget cuts or reductions in state services.<br />
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Sound impossible? Just watch.<br />
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First, let’s take stock of the problem. Yesterday <a href="http://www.budget.wv.gov/reportsandcharts/revenuereports/Documents/RGRnov15.pdf">the State Auditor’s office reported</a> that, five months into the fiscal year, tax receipts are more than a hundred million dollars behind projections. The main culprits are declining severance tax revenue, which, amid rock bottom prices for natural gas and the collapsing coal industry, is running more than fifty percent below projections, and consumer sales tax revenue, which is also running below projections, but , unlike severance tax revenue, has not declined from where it was a year ago. A third contributor is the Corporate Net Income and Business Franchise tax, which, although meeting projections, has declined 17% from a year ago thanks to the latest round of business tax cuts. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKFiZ5Wih7eZEmWqlRnG5H_fEnIl1XX46oGRHpDEk5SR6bZUO8G-DKZTU70Wcjj_grovj1pjeQ4haFJedPxv_dfzkI6PTY7VMSC5QHf5fL7PO2LRCpD40ZPrZ5Orbqku0K8609vNKrPxc/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-12-04+at+12.29.20+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKFiZ5Wih7eZEmWqlRnG5H_fEnIl1XX46oGRHpDEk5SR6bZUO8G-DKZTU70Wcjj_grovj1pjeQ4haFJedPxv_dfzkI6PTY7VMSC5QHf5fL7PO2LRCpD40ZPrZ5Orbqku0K8609vNKrPxc/s200/Screen+Shot+2015-12-04+at+12.29.20+PM.png" /></a></div>If the trends of the first five months continue, and there’s no reason to expect they won’t, West Virginia will face a nearly $280 million shortfall by the end of the year. And, while the amount of the deficit is larger than in recent years, the presence of deficits is becoming routine. Since 2011, the year in which the nation’s recovery from the Great Recession began, West Virginia has run a budget deficit every year, the primary cause being a series of business tax cuts that began under Governor Joe Manchin and that have utterly failed to stimulate the growth in commerce, tax revenues, and jobs that proponents said would result. Instead we’ve gotten hiring freezes, cuts to higher education, and other budget reductions.<br />
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In short, West Virginia is now in a chronic state of deficit and the problem is structural, not random or episodic. That’s why the state legislature has convened a tax reform task force that is expected to submit proposals in the coming legislative session. But, rather than discuss what that task force is likely to propose, which from all indications is likely to be an exercise in continuing the recent trend of shifting more of the tax burden from businesses to West Virginia residents, let’s talk about what the task force should propose.<br />
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Conservatives and liberals argue about how much money the government should take in taxes, but their fights about how the tax burden should be allocated between the wealthy, the middle class, and the poor are even more fraught. Still, there is one thing about which all parties agree, putting money in peoples’ pockets stimulates commerce and jobs and removing money from their pockets does the reverse. That’s why it’s odd that in all the debates over who should pay how much in taxes, there is one dividing line that almost never comes up – the degree to which the tax burden falls on residents of West Virginia versus out-of-state individuals and interests. <br />
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The resident vs. non-resident divide is important because, when taxes are cut for one group – West Virginia residents – the money they save becomes disposable income that largely finds its way into the state’s economy, increasing commerce and prosperity. But, when taxes are cut for non-residents, the savings leave West Virginia and mostly stimulate economic activity elsewhere. And, guess what, different taxes act differently in the way the tax burden and tax savings are allocated between residents and non-residents. <br />
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The state of Minnesota conducted a <a href="http://www.revenue.state.mn.us/research_stats/research_reports/2013/2013_tax_incidence_study_links.pdf">tax incidence study</a> in 2013, which showed that nearly all of that state’s Personal Income Tax (95%) and residential property tax (98%) were paid by residents and that a large majority of the General Sales Tax (80%) was as well. But, the story was entirely different for non-residential property taxes and corporate taxes, of which state residents shouldered less than half of the burden. <br />
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The lesson to lawmakers was clear. To the extent possible minimize reliance on taxes that are primarily shouldered by Minnesota residents and put greater weight on those whose impact falls primarily on non-residents. Because, by doing so more money stays in the pockets of constituents from which it is far more likely to enter the state’s economy. <br />
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That guidance should be even more compelling for West Virginia tax writers. Although West Virginia has never conducted a tax incidence study like the Minnesota one, all available data suggests that the prevalence of out-of-state ownership of real estate and resources and the significance of out-of-state corporations in commerce and employment are greater – perhaps far greater – in West Virginia than in Minnesota. <br />
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That raises the question, what would happen to West Virginia’s economy and the amount of money West Virginia residents could save in taxes if the state embarked on a concerted effort to reallocate the tax burden by, for instance, replacing either or both the state’s Personal Income and Consumer Sales taxes with a statewide Property Tax? <br />
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At present West Virginia’s Personal Income and Consumer Sales Taxes generate about $3.1 billion in for the state, or about 72% of total annual revenue. Assuming that West Virginia residents pay the same share of those taxes as their counterparts in Minnesota, $2.75 billion of that amount comes from their pockets. So, what would happen if, instead of collecting that $3.1 billion through personal income and sales taxes, West Virginia did so through a statewide property tax?<br />
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Again, based on the Minnesota data and remembering that available data suggest that out-of-state interests own more than half all private sector real estate in West Virginia and that virtually all of the state’s major employers are based out of state as well, it’s not unreasonable to assume that as much as 50% of a statewide property tax would be shouldered by non-residents of West Virginia. <br />
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If that were the case, instead of paying $2.75 billion annually in taxes, West Virginia residents would pay only $1.55 billion – a tax cut of $1.2 billion without any loss in revenue to the state.<br />
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On an individual basis, that translates into an average cut of $667 for every West Virginia resident and $1,800 for the average West Virginia household. The state’s median income would grow by almost five percent and local merchants and communities would be the primary beneficiaries of the immense growth in disposable income. <br />
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Money doesn’t solve all problems, but that much of it would address a lot of the problems that money can solve. But is it really that simple? Of course not. The consequences of so fundamental a change in how state government is funded are numerous and myriad details would have to examined to assess the affect and identify ways in which the new tax structure should be tweaked.<br />
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Some people and interests would be concerned about business having to shoulder too much of the load, although it should be pointed out that most business owners who are West Virginia residents would probably find their personal tax liabilities reduced by far more than their business taxes would increase. Plus, their customers would have a lot more money to spend with them.<br />
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There would also be a concern about high taxes scaring away business investment, although it should be pointed out that a property tax would make it less appealing for property owners to hold vast stretches of West Virginia out of development.<br />
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Meanwhile, at the other end of the political spectrum, others would worry about replacing the state income tax, which is progressive, with a property tax that isn’t. That and similar concerns could be addressed by creating an exclusion for, say, the first $100,000 of taxable property. <br />
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The point, however, isn’t that West Virginia must repeal the personal income and consumer sales taxes and replace them with a statewide property tax, although that might turn out to be the way to go. It’s that state legislators should start paying attention to the issue of tax incidence and how existing and proposed tax policies allocate the tax burden between West Virginia residents and non-residents because the allocation greatly affects the economy and welfare of West Virginians.<br />
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With stakes as high as $1.2 billion annually that can either be kept in the pockets of West Virginians and in the state’s economy or exported to out-of-state interests where it does neither West Virginia nor its citizens any good, it’s a damn important issue.<br />
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<i>POSTSCRIPT: After posting this column it was pointed out to me that Scott Drenkard of <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2013/03/02/state-local-tax-burden/1937757/">the Tax Foundation</a>, a market-oriented think tank, noted in 2013 that of the ten states that have the lowest taxes, six of them are also in the top ten for the amount of the tax burdens they export to out-of-state parties and that all of them are well above the national average in the share of the tax burden they export. Also, four of those states -- Alaska, Wyoming, Louisiana, and Texas -- are like West Virginia in that they are home to vast natural resources and large extractive industries. </i><br />
Sean O'Learyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01287734264328253814noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1656624371497588038.post-86091023657611530642015-12-02T09:04:00.000-05:002015-12-05T10:30:33.675-05:00THE OPPORTUNISTIC COMPASSION OF PAUL TICE<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmfv3C2PIiPYDLGQMSGxzbVZwJPgu6idMWAqSmb6m9kaKsywooiHMWj250GXinakIqkOjQJlCaLio3gLahz5YdZFFHATc2w8xAlMGduauW8egl5LH3hHVHbK97hNIMPyA43-_m2UwOshI/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-12-05+at+7.29.46+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmfv3C2PIiPYDLGQMSGxzbVZwJPgu6idMWAqSmb6m9kaKsywooiHMWj250GXinakIqkOjQJlCaLio3gLahz5YdZFFHATc2w8xAlMGduauW8egl5LH3hHVHbK97hNIMPyA43-_m2UwOshI/s200/Screen+Shot+2015-12-05+at+7.29.46+AM.png" /></a></div>Many of us who come from West Virginia develop a nose for opportunistic compassion – expressions of sympathy and concern for the poverty-wracked people of central Appalachia that arise now that the coal industry finds itself threatened, but that were nonexistent when King Coal was riding high and conditions for residents of the coalfields were just as bad and in some ways worse.<br />
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It’s very much in the spirit of opportunistic compassion that Paul Tice writes caustically in the pages of <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/obamas-appalachian-tragedy-1448928062">The Wall Street Journal</a> about the economic destruction of Central Appalachia and increasing poverty that he says are being brought about by the Obama administration’s regulation of greenhouse gases and by liberals who pursue “the climate-change agenda” while doing their best to keep the reality of economic devastation hidden from the public. In his surfeit of concern for the poor, Tice even quotes sympathetically from the socialist Michael Harrington’s book, “The Other America”, an act that couldn’t have come naturally for a former Lehman Brothers hedge fund manager.<br />
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Still, Tice has a point. Economic conditions in West Virginia are abysmal and are especially so in the state’s southern coalfields. The questions are how much of the misery is attributable to the recent demise of the coal industry (Tice says a lot) and whether the coal industry’s demise is mostly attributable to market forces – primarily intense price competition from natural gas – or to environmental regulation (Tice says the latter)?<br />
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First, it must be acknowledged that the recent closings of mines in southern West Virginia are inflicting real hardship. That said, the loss of jobs in coal mining is nothing new in West Virginia and long predates the Obama administration and even public consciousness of global warming. In fact, coal mining employment in West Virginia dropped from over 130,000 jobs in 1940 to just 20,000 by the time Barack Obama took office even as annual coal production remained almost unchanged. The drop, which was as steep before enactment of the Clean Air Act in 1970 as it has been since, was attributable to increases in automation and the adoption of new techniques such as strip mining and mountaintop removal. <br />
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So, whereas the coal industry once provided over a quarter of all jobs in West Virginia, by the end of the twentieth century the figure had declined to less than three per cent. And the ongoing decline no doubt contributes to West Virginia’s elevated levels of poverty. But, the important point that Tice fails to make is that poverty in West Virginia has always been elevated. In fact, poverty is no greater in West Virginia now than it was in the year 2000 when George W. Bush was elected president, the coal industry was booming, and regulations to stem global warming weren’t even on the radar screen. <br />
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The same is true of unemployment in the state, which has historically been higher than that of the nation as a whole and which, even amid the throes of recent mine closings, is still relatively low by historical standards. <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1da06ngA3-8O0HP4JklIzJspXFM_6SN-NaRKt8wa9pSgZA7KjNb3MJq203P4fQdXwwLvCykNCGXSWleX8KipGM1DWCZzrE5unmxahF6MkIEzBlwXb4v4W9YLEJqchY13toWcLiTqFH3o/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-12-02+at+3.58.29+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1da06ngA3-8O0HP4JklIzJspXFM_6SN-NaRKt8wa9pSgZA7KjNb3MJq203P4fQdXwwLvCykNCGXSWleX8KipGM1DWCZzrE5unmxahF6MkIEzBlwXb4v4W9YLEJqchY13toWcLiTqFH3o/s400/Screen+Shot+2015-12-02+at+3.58.29+AM.png" /></a></div><br />
A final point that Tice fails to note is that, in the past as now, the areas of West Virginia most steeped in poverty and unemployment are the state’s southern coalfields. The abiding reality in West Virginia is that, the regions of the state where coal is mined are the places where economic and social misery are the greatest. That was true when coal was booming and it’s true now that it is no longer.<br />
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In short, Tice’s implication that West Virginians prosper economically when the coal industry prospers is simply empirically wrong. For him and politicians to suggest otherwise and to imply that rollbacks of environmental rules would trigger a coal industry comeback that would produce an economic renaissance for the state and its people is to traffic in myths that are as cruel as they are self-serving. <br />
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They are myths both because of the historical failure of prosperity in the industry to trickle down to communities where coal is mined and because the forces taking down Central Appalachian coal really have little to do with the actions of the Obama administration to reduce greenhouse gases.<br />
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Tice argues otherwise insisting that the historic plunge in the price of natural gas, which is gobbling up share from coal in the electricity generating market, has little or nothing to do with coal’s demise. As evidence he claims that, prior to the early 2000’s and for decades before, the ratio of the price of natural gas to that of coal was about where it is now, yet there was no abandonment of coal as the primary fuel for generating electricity. This claim, however, is also simply wrong.<br />
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In the decades preceding the year 2000 and up until the fracking of shale formations to extract natural gas, the cost to generate electricity from natural gas was three times or more than the cost of generating electricity from coal. Only in the last three years have the lines crossed so that natural gas now offers a significant cost advantage to utilities.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhosZ1ak7EoYLaAhJ3DMCjjKl59bbrN8pyCW-LcHc4s00TZL4Ww_1ntiynqa1XVlB7A0u7EjbhsvdzZzmk3MfNuFYDXDU5opq50Kj20yNRLI8O63Yx9a5ABxXIDR5jXfPiadR8T4_vLC4/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-12-02+at+3.47.59+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhosZ1ak7EoYLaAhJ3DMCjjKl59bbrN8pyCW-LcHc4s00TZL4Ww_1ntiynqa1XVlB7A0u7EjbhsvdzZzmk3MfNuFYDXDU5opq50Kj20yNRLI8O63Yx9a5ABxXIDR5jXfPiadR8T4_vLC4/s400/Screen+Shot+2015-12-02+at+3.47.59+AM.png" /></a></div><br />
Plus, fracking has opened up vast quantities of natural gas, increasing known reserves by more than two and a half times assures utilities that costs will be reasonably stable for a fuel that in the past has suffered from extreme price volatility, which at least as much as expectations of future regulations gives utilities a reason to make the long-term switch from coal to natural gas.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7wayuZa3WOrySUtK2ZPLJYxUjRDpPHZCIag3-nH7g7M7GXuqEMGkV0rpzi88A1EQvUkG64Z9LW5qNcPmmj91i1qR5op2E6_u2bkFn8XV_led5vprG_5pfSDgTsoR8T71tWqQNaD-rC1I/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-12-02+at+4.09.43+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7wayuZa3WOrySUtK2ZPLJYxUjRDpPHZCIag3-nH7g7M7GXuqEMGkV0rpzi88A1EQvUkG64Z9LW5qNcPmmj91i1qR5op2E6_u2bkFn8XV_led5vprG_5pfSDgTsoR8T71tWqQNaD-rC1I/s400/Screen+Shot+2015-12-02+at+4.09.43+AM.png" /></a></div><br />
But, that’s only part of the story. The other factor contributing to mine closures in southern West Virginia is the fact that, because the most accessible coal seams have largely been mined out, the cost to extract the remaining coal has skyrocketed in recent years making Central Appalachian coal less competitive not just with natural gas, but with coal coming from mines in northern West Virginia, southern Illinois, and especially the Powder River Basin of Wyoming. That’s why mine closures are concentrated in southern West Virginia and are still rare in those other regions. It’s also why, even if demand for coal were to bounce back, Central Appalachia is the last place from which the needed supply would be sourced. <br />
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The bottom line is that for many reasons and foremost among them market-driven reasons, Central Appalachian coal is dying and to pretend as Mr. Tice does that a change in environmental policy will significantly alter that fact is disingenuous and cruel to the folks who live in that region. Finally there is one more distressing aspect of Tice’s column that cries out for comment.<br />
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In his professions of concern for the impoverished and vulnerable, never once does Tice mention the hundreds of thousands in this country and the millions worldwide who are harmed or will be harmed by the burning of coal. In this respect he is like most of the defenders of coal who scarcely if ever acknowledge the dire effects of coal on the health of those in communities where it is mined, of those who are downwind of where it is burned, and of those whose homes and livelihoods stand to be disrupted or destroyed by climate change. That omission as much as all of the facts cited in this column belie any claim Paul Tice makes to feeling real compassion for real people. <br />
Sean O'Learyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01287734264328253814noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1656624371497588038.post-83776357052105010332015-11-18T00:26:00.000-05:002015-11-18T13:15:39.216-05:00WV DELEGATE'S PETITION TO BAN SYRIAN IMMIGRANTS RECALLS WV SENATOR WHO EXCLUDED JEWS<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPs7wgijzXM8Rgo4qbvno1xWn1Yvh5QWAkJ3_ol20ZpuUEHDUAhQpa1TbEW9ipFflyAqVMO1FbJ8YB5PxjJg_OrJHKtIRC9Ewxv9MF36nu-a6B7BaANXgpwTQUTP3hoti-CZDknBGg80I/s1600/jewish+refugees.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPs7wgijzXM8Rgo4qbvno1xWn1Yvh5QWAkJ3_ol20ZpuUEHDUAhQpa1TbEW9ipFflyAqVMO1FbJ8YB5PxjJg_OrJHKtIRC9Ewxv9MF36nu-a6B7BaANXgpwTQUTP3hoti-CZDknBGg80I/s200/jewish+refugees.jpg" /></a></div>Parallels to the plight of Jews during and following World War II should never be made lightly, but as reported by the <a href="http://www.wvgazettemail.com/article/20151117/GZ01/151119540/1419/">Charleston Gazette-Mail</a>, state delegate Josh Nelson (R-Boone) has started an <a href="https://www.change.org/p/governor-earl-ray-tomblin-support-delegate-nelson-s-proposal-urging-gov-tomblin-to-refuse-un-vetted-refugees?recruiter=426247018&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=share_facebook_responsive&utm_term=des-lg-no_src-custom_msg&fb_ref=Default">online petition</a> to ban from the United States and West Virginia refugees from the war in Syria. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitmCA6eBAoN6oCktsG9N-L5Hg762V6AOKj-b6KScNC1QFFRfLktRMQlU_vXnA-C3q6yisC1k9ycchtkVoqQ_grF3WRZyFCSmBOmHqho8NC1DLZwxjQeRqkGwi0Jns47o2ZqNWBFLsUV6Y/s1600/syrian+refugees.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitmCA6eBAoN6oCktsG9N-L5Hg762V6AOKj-b6KScNC1QFFRfLktRMQlU_vXnA-C3q6yisC1k9ycchtkVoqQ_grF3WRZyFCSmBOmHqho8NC1DLZwxjQeRqkGwi0Jns47o2ZqNWBFLsUV6Y/s200/syrian+refugees.jpg" /></a></div>Nelson's ostensible motivating concern for the safety of Americans is unavoidably reminiscent of the motivation claimed by an even more prominent West Virginian, US Sentator Chapman Revercomb, who in the years following World War II authored the Displaced Persons act, which dictated the conditions that European refugees had to meet in order to be admitted to the United States. Revercomb fashioned those conditions specifically for the purpose of minimizing the number Jewish refugees from Hitler's Germany who would be accepted. The tale is best told by columnist Drew Pearson who wrote the following in his "Washington Merry-Go-Round" column from July 20, 1948. I reprint it here in honor of Delegate Nelson and all those who would add to human misery by using immigration policy as a weapon of bigotry.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlOmPXhAE4Ij78YY9uqTTZfwuLJz7JWqQof6e2uZXKXggphUeisGUOOj70OAguaeIkbF1L-n44Ok7fuhZH2Yq4dp_7Tdar5H4aWISsu-f3exTvxRX_LpfnuZrILnTkP7Mgf57-v5fntFM/s1600/revercomb.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlOmPXhAE4Ij78YY9uqTTZfwuLJz7JWqQof6e2uZXKXggphUeisGUOOj70OAguaeIkbF1L-n44Ok7fuhZH2Yq4dp_7Tdar5H4aWISsu-f3exTvxRX_LpfnuZrILnTkP7Mgf57-v5fntFM/s200/revercomb.jpg" /></a></div><i>Washington Merry-Go-Round<br />
By Drew Pearson<br />
From The Daily Illini July 20, 1948<br />
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DISPLACED PERSONS -- Senate Democratic leaders say that one of the first moves at the special session of Congress will be to revamp the displaced persons act. Many Republicans agree and are angry at the anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic restrictions. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTC-EHSDM2k_MMarEZQ3f0EaUz5xFYZ5gtIRUqn6gmgxIAFSwDrM2xhhxqplh2D0uVD7hgaz4L6l_1z-V3yHA6r-yRLgcOxjduWIxJLUWkakOcO6q9kpPTonMWVJ4FY-st2hZCGaxWBtQ/s1600/nelson_joshua.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTC-EHSDM2k_MMarEZQ3f0EaUz5xFYZ5gtIRUqn6gmgxIAFSwDrM2xhhxqplh2D0uVD7hgaz4L6l_1z-V3yHA6r-yRLgcOxjduWIxJLUWkakOcO6q9kpPTonMWVJ4FY-st2hZCGaxWBtQ/s200/nelson_joshua.jpg" /></a></div>The Senate accepted the bill in its present form, because it came up so late that to have fought for corrective amendments would have meant no displaced-persons legislation at all.<br />
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The bill is the handiwork of West Virginia s Republican Sen. Chapman Revercomb, and the methods he used to foist it upon his fellow senators are some of the most shameful in the history of the eightieth Congress. Soon after he was assigned to head a judiciary subcommittee to study the problem, Revercomb bluntly told colleagues: We could solve this DP problem all right if we could work out some bill that would keep out the Jews. That is exactly what he did. <br />
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By legalistic sleight-of-hand, he put through a bill admitting 200,000 of Hitler's victims to this country but on Hitler's terms. Those who entered Germany after December 22, 1945, cannot be admitted. It so happens that most of the Jews, now in refugee camps, fled into Germany from the Polish pogroms after the December 22, 1945, deadline. Revercomb s bill also assigns 50 per cent of the displaced-persons quota to the Baltic states for no valid reason, except that these states, are predominantly Protestant . Whats more, the bill requires that 50 per cent of those who come to this country must be farmers in spite of petitions from employers and labor groups, asking for trained garment workers to fill the shortage in that field. Few Jews are farmers, many are garment workers.<br />
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Two months ago Undersecretary of State Robert Lovett wrote Senator Revercomb asking him to move up the eligibility date from 1945 to 1947. Revercomb kept the letter secret from his own committee until his West Virginia colleague, Democratic Sen. Harley Kilgore, found out about it several weeks later. The state department recommendation, snorted Revercomb, in reply to Kilgore s protest, was made by the Jews. The department is full of them. Later, while the Senate-House conferees were debating differences in the bill, U. S. Ambassador to Britain Lewis Douglas sent an urgent cable to the state department, warning that Europe regarded Revercomb's bill as grossly anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic. He requested that his views be communicated to congressional leaders. The state department promptly got in touch with Sen . Alexander Smith , New Jersey Republican, who urged Revercomb to present Ambassador Douglas views to the Senate-House conferees. Afterward, Smith asked Revercomb whether he had done it. I did not; growled the West Virginia Republican. I didn't want to raise any racial or religious issues in the conference. <br />
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( Copyright , 1948 , by the Bell Syndicate , Inc . )</i><br />
http://idnc.library.illinois.edu/cgi-bin/illinois?a=d&d=DIL19480720.2.54<br />
</i>Sean O'Learyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01287734264328253814noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1656624371497588038.post-54964144636509803932015-11-16T20:03:00.002-05:002015-11-16T21:27:46.865-05:00WHY "RIGHT TO WORK" WON'T CREATE OPPORTUNITY TO WORK IN WEST VIRGINIA<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmdf4AafuBdiJKgFubg_G3TC9roV0qE5ABlWL6agyFdFr7p4JYoZrqejiuTzLkfjlnP5x5tSe6dP_jHpRmMr_gc4_snq-t2MuVMuv3fvI9bv9JJTTQRk3f0kHV1OyWxXByRkrMlFHdAUg/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-11-16+at+4.50.03+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmdf4AafuBdiJKgFubg_G3TC9roV0qE5ABlWL6agyFdFr7p4JYoZrqejiuTzLkfjlnP5x5tSe6dP_jHpRmMr_gc4_snq-t2MuVMuv3fvI9bv9JJTTQRk3f0kHV1OyWxXByRkrMlFHdAUg/s200/Screen+Shot+2015-11-16+at+4.50.03+PM.png" /></a></div>Supporters of Right to Work legislation in Charleston are calling attention to a new West Virginia University study that's titled, "<a href="http://www.legis.state.wv.us/News_release/documents/Right_to_Work_FINAL.PDF">The Economic Impact of Right To Work Policy In West Virginia</a>". In the words of the authors, the study examines "the way in which Right to Work (RTW) policy has affected economic outcomes across US states" and "consider(s) how the adoption of such a policy in West Virginia would likely affect economic outcomes in the state."<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtl3SdjWCL1HTV6iD9Wh1A3XMfJ-nWmudgMQHN-ZxtOhyFcYzdQMEDlah5LAC0U8rf2ewWxMqmOvHRdyCdKUHqMNQKY-RCS1hgQGdx5udB-3iI4Y4PNXXnUcNgDUGKXlce6qYCAD-N7a8/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-11-16+at+2.14.37+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtl3SdjWCL1HTV6iD9Wh1A3XMfJ-nWmudgMQHN-ZxtOhyFcYzdQMEDlah5LAC0U8rf2ewWxMqmOvHRdyCdKUHqMNQKY-RCS1hgQGdx5udB-3iI4Y4PNXXnUcNgDUGKXlce6qYCAD-N7a8/s200/Screen+Shot+2015-11-16+at+2.14.37+PM.png" /></a></div>As you might expect from the enthusiastic support the report has received from RTW proponents, the news is nothing but good. Based on the experiences of states that have previously enacted RTW laws, the report concludes that, if West Virginia follows suit, it can expect to see substantial increases in jobs and output as measured by gross domestic product (GDP) without any measurable decline in wages.<br />
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There is, however, at least one problem with this rosy scenario. The conclusions are, again in the words of the authors, "based on a careful examination of data from all 48 contiguous US states over the period 1990 through 2013". But, what if West Virginia isn't like the other forty-seven contiguous states? What if the underlying economic dynamics that influence variables such as employment and output work differently in West Virginia than they do elsewhere? <br />
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It sounds like a flimsy supposition, but in fact, it's not. <a href="http://www.the-state-of-my-state.com/2012/04/alices-adventures-in-wonderland-wv-pub.html">Previous posts</a> in this blog have observed that, in West Virginia, many economic dynamics produce outcomes that are both counter-intuitive and the opposite of those experienced by other states. One of those is the relationship between economic growth as measured by GDP and growth in jobs and incomes. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjikOYyOfCz0DtwPtkIhkUsvwNj8qIq042SLqnq0bdiMiCPZTJfV4Ucz7oEQ-cX4XTXOwUFT0myCdtBDbkRYC10cE_bNHQSVA3PGrHsZvKRAJvLKsDULx7sWFuvU0fzC4UfHdAjHLmxGg/s1600/GDP+2013.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjikOYyOfCz0DtwPtkIhkUsvwNj8qIq042SLqnq0bdiMiCPZTJfV4Ucz7oEQ-cX4XTXOwUFT0myCdtBDbkRYC10cE_bNHQSVA3PGrHsZvKRAJvLKsDULx7sWFuvU0fzC4UfHdAjHLmxGg/s200/GDP+2013.png" /></a></div>Conventional wisdom holds that, when GDP rises, so should jobs and incomes. And, in the world at large, that's generally true. But, lo and behold, when you examine West Virginia's economic performance in recent years, we see precisely the opposite. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOPmz0TiIXh8xefqcg3zNAeMAQSU9_Bf09bhYZ054Ty2jMBoBu5w4fBI7mhmboL0N4mdLiH3jI5kw3qypDq_flfnO6wf1ZqpJMcqh2-duUqyjvGDcRzXZCnCiFIzjkSoo5GLZvY231XRc/s1600/income+2013.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOPmz0TiIXh8xefqcg3zNAeMAQSU9_Bf09bhYZ054Ty2jMBoBu5w4fBI7mhmboL0N4mdLiH3jI5kw3qypDq_flfnO6wf1ZqpJMcqh2-duUqyjvGDcRzXZCnCiFIzjkSoo5GLZvY231XRc/s200/income+2013.png" /></a></div>Since 2007 West Virginia has been a leader among states in GDP growth, but in that time the state experienced zero job growth and median household income actually plunged. Indeed, in 2013 West Virginia's economy produced a truly mind-bending result by achieving the nation's third highest rate of GDP growth -- nearly twice that of the country as a whole -- while at the same time it added no jobs and came in dead last in income growth, which was actually a decline. Keep in mind that's a period during which the national economy was adding jobs at a rate of over 2.5 million annually. <br />
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The following chart shows that since just before the great recession of 2008 West Virginia GDP has grown significantly faster than that of the nation. In fact, as measured by GDP West Virginia never even went into recession. Yet over that same period and after the economic dive in 2008 and 2009, the nation has consistently added jobs and now has four precent more than it had prior to the recession. West Virginia on the other hand has actually lost jobs despite its superior GDP Growth.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDY0UOOrHnwkZjRAf3amEwjqpqQlSsRyOyrhy5hBiQoFSbrc9_C_025dWV_vHIh_6WL7me4lqKbN4s_8bZQtrr480qlXHGDCdSAkCUcJx8BbwjQggYS_8wPbIAom0-GVIbNbSJu0OlpX4/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-11-16+at+3.25.53+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDY0UOOrHnwkZjRAf3amEwjqpqQlSsRyOyrhy5hBiQoFSbrc9_C_025dWV_vHIh_6WL7me4lqKbN4s_8bZQtrr480qlXHGDCdSAkCUcJx8BbwjQggYS_8wPbIAom0-GVIbNbSJu0OlpX4/s400/Screen+Shot+2015-11-16+at+3.25.53+PM.png" /></a></div><br />
Superior GDP growth has also not stopped West Virginia incomes from plunging faster than those of the rest of America.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjbgMvjBdHk9WFSqbUs1Yd10MW44COg6_UVRJGMcsOIMS2DnYTglFlPlLHhgtWOlwz__ZBqclp_BnSP3Uqb3KZ2VUisqABVIo8LaPhVhdU9AoiEW3x1LrjtGeSo1zdTFtRR2s9AuGVW-c/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-11-16+at+4.02.50+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjbgMvjBdHk9WFSqbUs1Yd10MW44COg6_UVRJGMcsOIMS2DnYTglFlPlLHhgtWOlwz__ZBqclp_BnSP3Uqb3KZ2VUisqABVIo8LaPhVhdU9AoiEW3x1LrjtGeSo1zdTFtRR2s9AuGVW-c/s400/Screen+Shot+2015-11-16+at+4.02.50+PM.png" /></a></div><br />
In short, if the experience of other states were indicative of what happens in West Virginia, the state would have about 50,000 more jobs today than it has and residents would be much wealthier, which brings us back to the Right To Work study and its presumption that the experiences of other states are a reliable predictor of outcomes in West Virginia.<br />
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It can fairly be argued that the dynamics that have driven West Virginia's GDP growth since 2007 -- primarily the state's natural gas boom -- are unlike those that would be triggered by the enactment of RTW and, therefore, the results of that legislation would be more consistent with experiences elsewhere. But, as it happens, West Virginia has also had an experiment with the enactment of other public policies that actually pull many of the same levers and trigger the same dynamics that RTW policy would.<br />
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Since 2010 the state has enacted a series of business tax cuts that have collectively reduced the costs of businesses operating in West Virginia by hundreds of millions of dollars annually. Right To Work appeals to businesses because it is perceived as decreasing business costs by making it harder for workers to exert pressure on companies for higher wages and more rigid work rules. In both RTW and tax cuts, businesses see an opportunity to save money, which proponents of RTW argue will result in more investment and more jobs. But, again, there's a problem. West Virginia's business tax cuts have produced nothing of the sort. <br />
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This chart provided by the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy drives the point home powerfully. As West Virginia's business tax cuts have improved its competitiveness rank among states as calculated by the Tax Foundation, a right-leaning market-oriented think tank, the number of jobs in the state has fallen relentlessly.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdnhPI9sPZP4CHnWofCO35VWdBpfuX1VgsGhrugh914dJXH2tdKSFhODiZ9bfMWqDpGDVHeFu0h270AgxKGATVpgO7KarHyQOnSwZUYMYizKwZq5A8F8fNhdtSLES58ofGjbIUz3agudg/s1600/wvcbp+tax+cuts.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdnhPI9sPZP4CHnWofCO35VWdBpfuX1VgsGhrugh914dJXH2tdKSFhODiZ9bfMWqDpGDVHeFu0h270AgxKGATVpgO7KarHyQOnSwZUYMYizKwZq5A8F8fNhdtSLES58ofGjbIUz3agudg/s400/wvcbp+tax+cuts.png" /></a></div><br />
But, why don't measures that save companies money generate the results that proponents of those policies predict? It has to do with where the savings go. In 2010 the state of Minnesota conducted a study that concluded more than half of state business taxes were paid by out-of-state individuals and companies. Of course, that means that, when business taxes are cut, most of the savings from those cuts flow out-of-state as well. And, in West Virginia, where the problem of out-of-state ownership of assets is the stuff of legend and where nearly all of the state's major private sector employers are out-of-state corporations, the effect is probably compounded. For instance, the state's largest employer is Walmart. Any money that Walmart saves as a result of tax cuts goes to the company's corporate coffers in Bentonville, Arkansas where it's no more likely to be invested back in West Virginia than any other money Walmart has on hand. And there is no reason to believe that Right To Work policy would work any differently. Most of whatever savings it generates for companies would be exported out of West Virginia and lost to the state's economy and residents.<br />
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The bottom line is that Right To Work policy like business tax cuts are attempts by states to "discount their way to prosperity" by making it as cheap as possible for companies to do business. But, there is little evidence that doing so works. In fact, even without RTW, CNBC reports that West Virginia already has the seventh lowest cost of doing business in the America and where has it gotten the state? It's telling that the same study that ranks West Virginia seventh for cost of doing business ranks the state 49th for its overall quality of its business climate, which is an indication of how little leverage is gained by being cheap. And yet for a couple of decades that has been West Virginia's prevailing economic development strategy under both parties and it's time to stop because it demonstrably and manifestly doesn't work.<br />
Sean O'Learyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01287734264328253814noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1656624371497588038.post-37097518490236774882015-11-15T13:45:00.000-05:002015-11-16T16:23:09.884-05:00WEST VIRGINIA'S ASCENT CRACKER IS DEAD Someone send a note to the politicians who suggest otherwise<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdKBWOr8A0fDI2pmg7R2Z3ZODyVASk1jMq8YZmQViHFUz41UGOrTbrHGdfT2QxcqR3IkJF3kHBwM1NiIelc0EMc-c7EkewHGrowabMmqctEqp2fvL6KljVdz-SevicojDU0indtHa8L-M/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-11-15+at+10.43.31+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdKBWOr8A0fDI2pmg7R2Z3ZODyVASk1jMq8YZmQViHFUz41UGOrTbrHGdfT2QxcqR3IkJF3kHBwM1NiIelc0EMc-c7EkewHGrowabMmqctEqp2fvL6KljVdz-SevicojDU0indtHa8L-M/s200/Screen+Shot+2015-11-15+at+10.43.31+AM.png" /></a></div>The good news is that a spokesman for West Virginia Governor Earl Ray Tomblin <a href="http://www.newsandsentinel.com/page/content.detail/id/617828/SABIC-facility-being-razed--cracker-plant-still-in-the-works.html?nav=5061">said yesterday</a> that the governor “remains optimistic” that Wood County’s much ballyhooed ASCENT ethylene cracker plant will be built. The bad news is that the person who will actually make the decision, Braskem CEO Carlos Fadigas, <a href="http://br.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idBRKCN0SV2B120151106">told Reuters</a> that, given the low price of oil, there is currently “No reason to build a complex from scratch.”<br />
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While Fadigas allowed that “at some point the price of oil will go up again and the project will become important”, the vagueness of his phrasing suggested he doesn’t expect it to happen anytime soon and that, like most experts, he has no idea why it should.<br />
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Fadigas cited the price of oil because it is the single most critical factor in determining the economic viability of ASCENT. As oil prices fall so does the cost of the conventional process used to produce ethylene, which is a key element in the manufacture of plastic products. Cracker plants, like ASCENT, offer an alternative method for producing ethylene from natural gas rather than from oil. When the price of oil was over a hundred dollars a barrel and natural gas prices had plummeted from thirteen dollars per million BTU's to less than five, it was significantly cheaper to produce ethylene from natural gas making projects like ASCENT an economic slam-dunk. But then the price of oil also plunged by more than half to less than fifty dollars a barrel and the economic justification for crackers largely evaporated.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCHsXi_0uGp9NRmLIkzlOpPSdWWi_K9gWF8xI3_1CHZPzdFcO84_Nlb_-qR4UdofTBq0Vql2MI-5I7893i5n4jzuuWQdT_WrSsvVyQKI18IAPFEydOXR4145KzovRND9MLZJMLQS2GUBI/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-11-15+at+8.46.33+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCHsXi_0uGp9NRmLIkzlOpPSdWWi_K9gWF8xI3_1CHZPzdFcO84_Nlb_-qR4UdofTBq0Vql2MI-5I7893i5n4jzuuWQdT_WrSsvVyQKI18IAPFEydOXR4145KzovRND9MLZJMLQS2GUBI/s200/Screen+Shot+2015-11-15+at+8.46.33+AM.png" /></a></div><br />
The question now is whether the price of oil will bounce back and restore the competitive advantage to natural gas. According to both the <a href="http://pubdocs.worldbank.org/pubdocs/publicdoc/2015/10/22401445260948491/CMO-October-2015-Full-Report.pdf">World Bank’s</a> and the International Monetary Fund’s October forecasts, it won't do so anytime soon.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRU8P0Cxl_wGZZByWzvqQQLobCebLm_a0VgJV8TVqvckac7V8Ih2cdSzTJYZO4LWUkBML6yvTBFCpfRLa9Yhht0Wk2ltpnOukzQf7z4ddUfyM2Ww0UiIpkheswK4e7GHR_AfAVddl24ik/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-11-15+at+9.00.57+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRU8P0Cxl_wGZZByWzvqQQLobCebLm_a0VgJV8TVqvckac7V8Ih2cdSzTJYZO4LWUkBML6yvTBFCpfRLa9Yhht0Wk2ltpnOukzQf7z4ddUfyM2Ww0UiIpkheswK4e7GHR_AfAVddl24ik/s400/Screen+Shot+2015-11-15+at+9.00.57+AM.png" /></a></div><br />
Economists are pessimistic about oil prices for a number of reasons. First is the advent of fracking, which caused oil production in the US to skyrocket to the point that, for the first time after decades, we are within hailing distance of energy self-sufficiency and of breaking the back of OPEC. But, we’ve also created a huge glut of oil and now have excess inventory and production capacity.<br />
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Another barrier to rising oil prices is the imminent re-entry of Iran into the market. Iran holds the world’s largest reserves of oil and natural gas and, thanks to the upcoming removal of sanctions related to that nation’s nuclear program, Iranian oil is about to hit the market in a big way, which will further increase supply and exert downward pressure on prices.<br />
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Then there is the worldwide movement to curb carbon emissions and global warming, which means countries will be working harder to reduce their consumption of oil or, in the case of emerging nations, to reduce the rate of growth in their consumption.<br />
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None of these factors is temporary or short-term. They will be with us for the foreseeable future as will yet another factor that will harm the prospects of West Virginia crackers. In the next few years, competing cracker projects that were started in the Gulf Coast before the collapse of oil prices will come on line <a href="http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=19771 ">raising US ethylene production capacity by 40%</a> and will further dilute the need for crackers in the Marcellus and Utica shale regions.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8oluStzXfmhxLIEM62FVZGBl0BKoyGjOK_DG-8bu-vklxmq03OTHj8CbcWsZotgzI3E6TKe508oUPeGcp4K1aD1BG-SnZm3-Hi2VpmQDs9xPB-MKZlVOVqh-V2OxEAvMde0e-sjq-ilY/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-11-15+at+9.53.30+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8oluStzXfmhxLIEM62FVZGBl0BKoyGjOK_DG-8bu-vklxmq03OTHj8CbcWsZotgzI3E6TKe508oUPeGcp4K1aD1BG-SnZm3-Hi2VpmQDs9xPB-MKZlVOVqh-V2OxEAvMde0e-sjq-ilY/s400/Screen+Shot+2015-11-15+at+9.53.30+AM.png" /></a></div><br />
There is also a final irony associated with West Virginia’s hopes that one or more crackers will be built and will trigger an associated boom in manufacturing. Not only must all of the previously mentioned barriers be overcome, but natural gas prices will have to remain at something close to their present depressed levels in order for natural gas to achieve a competitive advantage over oil. That means that while on the one hand state politicians pray for a recovery in natural gas prices and the accompanying severance tax revenues to fill the state’s yawning budget deficit, on the other hand, if they get their wish, the already crippled prospects of crackers ever being built in West Virginia will be further undermined.<br />
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Sean O'Learyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01287734264328253814noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1656624371497588038.post-25303261948501068342015-08-14T15:36:00.000-04:002015-08-18T14:40:41.741-04:00COAL COMMUNITIES AND THE VICTIMS OF COAL'S DEMISE<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMoR4T29Us-88wbnGqSRlFbvsByZcz4nuk0QFX9x7ExvZBQXQf_rDU2OsJ0I2ElhYP8tn2XLnfT4A3JDvsFc-GIxOC4zYK7KLtB4buxIxRrMsaqhd47aHg9W3wEAjVgOE92qKJNWMi06Q/s1600/Mount_Hope_West_Virginia.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMoR4T29Us-88wbnGqSRlFbvsByZcz4nuk0QFX9x7ExvZBQXQf_rDU2OsJ0I2ElhYP8tn2XLnfT4A3JDvsFc-GIxOC4zYK7KLtB4buxIxRrMsaqhd47aHg9W3wEAjVgOE92qKJNWMi06Q/s200/Mount_Hope_West_Virginia.jpg" /></a></div>There is small “c” coal – the combustible black mineral extracted from the earth – and there is big “c” Coal, the one used in headlines and in slogans such as “Coal is West Virginia”, and, most notably, “the war on coal”. It's a linguistic bundling of coal companies, executives, investors, miners, and their families into a confederacy of common interest in which what is good for the industry is presumed to be good for all – a community rising or falling together.<br />
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This picture of common cause is quaint, touching, even a little romantic . . . and extremely convenient for the coal industry in its efforts to exert political influence and resist environmental and safety regulations that would lessen demand for coal and increase costs. The problem is that the communitarian picture is almost entirely myth.<br />
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The notion that the interests of coal miners are aligned with those of coal operators would have been laughable to early 20th century unionists who literally had to fight mine owners to win even basic safety provisions and workers' rights. Still, it's argued that jobs and communities often wouldn’t exist at all were it not for the mines. But, what kind of existence is it that coal affords? What kinds of communities does it sustain?<br />
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Despite the higher-than-average wages paid by coal companies, mining communities are generally isolated, sparsely populated, impoverished, culturally barren, economically undiversified, and the health of residents is often atrocious. While geography and topography contribute to these conditions, to a large degree they are brought about by the coal industry itself. <br />
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Whereas most businesses prefer to operate in prosperous, growing communities, affluence and population growth creates problems for coal operators by driving up property values and raising expectations for higher standards of living including a clean and healthy environment. That’s why now, unlike a century ago, coal mines no longer operate beneath large towns and cities. It’s too expensive, there are better uses for the property, and the populations won’t stand for the attendant environmental and health risks. In short, the coal industry is an economic dinosaur – primitive, large, and not easily adaptable to a diverse modern society and economy. Even the marketplace in which coal companies operate is antediluvian. <br />
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Most businesses compete on multiple fronts – price, quality, innovation, and customer service. But, coal is a commodity, so prices are rigidly set by a market that offers little or no opportunity for product innovation or differentiation. That absence of opportunity also compounds the pressure to minimize costs, which is the only basis on which coal companies can gain a competitive advantage. And the drive to minimize costs leads directly to the noxious practices for which the industry is so well known -- dangerous workplaces, environmental degradation, and an almost pathological disregard for the externalized costs of burning coal which include global warming and all of its ill consequences. <br />
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Aside from a shared interest in keeping the lights on, coal mines and people simply don’t coexist happily. Those who live in coal communities find themselves trapped in a state of economic dependency on what is usually the area's only major employer. So, despite the health and environmental risks with which they live, they can develop a kind of Stockholm syndrome with respect to the coal companies, which can be seen when they leave their communities to rally at state capitals and wave signs declaring themselves "Friends of Coal" and opponents of the EPA's "war on coal". <br />
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If the national press takes notice of the demonstrators, it's to pity and sometimes deride them for their ignorance, for their insensitivity to the global consequences of burning coal. And it's true that coal supporters rarely acknowledge and almost never discuss coal's victims -- the hundreds of thousands of who suffer and die annually of respiratory diseases, never mind the millions who stand do be displaced as a result of global warming. But, if coal's supporters are callous toward others, they're no less callous toward themselves, many of them miners or the family members of miners who are consigned to suffer and die from silicosis and black lung. If they offer no pity, neither do they ask for it. <br />
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Besides, they're hardly alone in their disregard. Opponents of coal are no less guilty of blinkered compassion, expressing endless concern for the planet and those affected by its degradation, but rarely acknowledging the plight of those whose lives will be upended when the mines close. Occasionally opponents of coal will excuse their disregard by pointing out that the rise of renewable energy sources is creating more new jobs than the number being lost in coal. But, it's a sterile argument that doesn't resonate in the real world in which almost none of those new renewable energy jobs will go to refugees from the mines.<br />
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Ultimately, the only humane and economically sensible solution to the conflict will be for the mines to close. In some cases it may be possible to diversify coal community economies to help them find new reasons for being. That's what the Obama administration is attempting with its <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2016/assets/fact_sheets/investing-in-coal-communities-workers-and-technology-the-power-plan.pdf">POWER+ Plan</a> that will invest in coal towns. But, it's also inevitable that many communities will be beyond salvation and residents who are not retired or disabled will eventually have to move in order to seek new livelihoods. They will face daunting barriers to finding employment. And housing prices will be two or three times what they've been accustomed to paying. As a result, many will see their already meager standards of living diminish even further. <br />
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Compared to the deaths and dislocations of hundreds of thousands or millions that will result from continuing to burn coal, it's a small tragedy . . . but a tragedy still.<br />
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Sean O'Learyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01287734264328253814noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1656624371497588038.post-21342543864576936622015-04-22T20:14:00.000-04:002015-12-23T10:55:52.168-05:00WEST VIRGINIA'S DAYDREAM BELIEVERS<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3fuvpf4jbaKJEUx5YU8O8cnAtB4hGKHzM24bkP0ZAdzHztBxX8x4MnhJnDNn0bf8cIe-QsPOZd1gFr3tv4GY10g9iQUewH5XZ_aE61BPyBmKCpLpCdvMmkfw93Zlk21HJrH_o2o0bm8Q/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-04-22+at+5.11.06+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3fuvpf4jbaKJEUx5YU8O8cnAtB4hGKHzM24bkP0ZAdzHztBxX8x4MnhJnDNn0bf8cIe-QsPOZd1gFr3tv4GY10g9iQUewH5XZ_aE61BPyBmKCpLpCdvMmkfw93Zlk21HJrH_o2o0bm8Q/s200/Screen+Shot+2015-04-22+at+5.11.06+PM.png" /></a></div>A couple of weeks ago the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) released its annual <a href="http://www.alec.org/publications/rich-states-poor-states/">ALEC-Laffer State Economic Competitiveness Index</a>, often called the "Rich States, Poor States" report, which ranks states for economic competitiveness based on the extent to which they have adopted a set of policies that ALEC says, "can lead a state to economic prosperity". So, when this latest edition showed that West Virginia had fallen in the rankings from 30th place to 36th, very serious people were all over it. Wheeling and Parkersburg newspapers <a href="http://www.theintelligencer.net/page/content.detail/id/630645/W-Va--Must-Move-Faster.html?nav=511">editorialized</a> on the need to accelerate the pace with which the state is adopting the report's prescribed policies, MetroNews host Hoppy Kercheval <a href="http://www.americanlegislator.org/rich-states-poor-states-covered-by-west-virginias-hoppy-kercheval/">devoted a segment</a> of his statewide radio show to the report including an interview with the report's author, and state senate president Bill Cole (R-Mercer) <a href="http://www.wvgazette.com/article/20150413/GZ01/150419767">cited the report</a> as a legislative committee prepared to explore the subject how West Virginia's tax structure should be reformed. <br />
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The problem with all of this focus and publicity is that the empirical evidence shows the ALEC-Laffer State Economic Competitiveness Index utterly fails at what it purports to do: predict states' economic performance. As gleefully demonstrated by Sean O'Leary, the smarter, of the West Virginia Center on Budget & Policy, there is no correlation whatever -- none -- between states' rankings in the index and any major indicator of prosperity -- economic growth, job growth, income growth, or increases in state and local government revenue. <br />
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In short, whatever the ALEC-Laffer State Economic Competitiveness Index predicts, it's not economic prosperity, which raises a fascinating question. Why does a report that demonstrably fails to fulfill its purpose command such attention and in some cases near reverence? The answer is a sad commentary not just on the quality of political discourse in West Virginia, but on the state of our democracy. <br />
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One reason Rich States, Poor States has such a following is because its sponsors have the financial wherewithal to inject it into public discourse and into the political process. But, there's a second and equally troubling reason. There are empowered and influential people who steadfastly believe in the report's policy prescriptions, raising again the question of "Why?", especially when the facts are there for them to see.<br />
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In many cases -- probably most -- believers haven't subjected the report to critical evaluation. Such carelessness, if that's what it is, can often be explained by believers' implicit faith in the report's authors and sponsors. But, it's also possible that political expediency and the possibility of private gain are factors. <br />
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That's not to suggest that people are baldly exchanging legislative favors for money, especially since there are more subtle and less legally risky ways for players on both sides of the transaction to achieve their desired ends. Reports such as "Rich States, Poor States" send to office-holders and would-be office-holders the unmistakable message that money is being spent and will be spent in support of certain policies and, therefore, on behalf of politicians who champion those policies. In the first instance pliant candidates understand that, if they espouse the favored policies, that aggressive PR and "issues advertising" will confer upon them a veneer of intellectual and moral respectability. And, in the era of unlimited "dark money", they may also infer that they'll benefit from "uncoordinated" attack ads that target their opponents. Finally, there are old-fashioned direct campaign contributions that roll in from out-of-state donors -- individuals and organizations -- of which candidates have very likely never heard. And it all happens without a meeting or so much as a conversation between the concerned parties. <br />
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There are also less tangible but no less meaningful benefits, such as membership in a community the likeminded that offers mutual admiration and support as well as opportunities to hobnob with assorted varieties of celebrities, from those recognizable to the general public to behind-the-scenes players who are virtually unrecognizable and, therefore, that much more compelling. Indeed, the nervous delight of three year-olds meeting Santa Claus for the first time pales in comparison to that of local politicians who find themselves shaking hands with one who until that moment they had known only through the grace of Fox News or the pages of the Wall Street Journal. <br />
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No wonder current and would-be public servants evince such little interest in critically examining policies that, when allowed to go unquestioned, provide so much. And, what are the policies? Again, Sean O'Leary, the smarter, provides a helpful summary.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7CJ7-fxSfzWjQbSmbJjyK6RtyIZ_ucZXJDR7pGm98F_6FY3XdlGxCy8L0-SSkGwW2eoHHZHf8catBEPKjhYIfCyAQUYuUaBy07jWQY6mSWmx6ZKfrkBO-WqqybsVTaeaO4GD9971DaAQ/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-04-22+at+4.14.44+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7CJ7-fxSfzWjQbSmbJjyK6RtyIZ_ucZXJDR7pGm98F_6FY3XdlGxCy8L0-SSkGwW2eoHHZHf8catBEPKjhYIfCyAQUYuUaBy07jWQY6mSWmx6ZKfrkBO-WqqybsVTaeaO4GD9971DaAQ/s320/Screen+Shot+2015-04-22+at+4.14.44+PM.png" /></a></div>The policies shown in the image are simply a prescription for minimizing government services and shifting the responsibility of funding those that remain from the wealthy to middle and lower class families, a strategy that as was previously shown has utterly failed to increase prosperity in the states that have most thoroughly adopted it and that, on a national level has contributed to economic stagnation and increased deficits to the degree it has been tried. <br />
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It's easy to understand why those consequences are acceptable to the people behind the policies' promulgation. They get richer -- much richer. But, what are we to make of elected officials such as Senator Cole who represent West Virginians? Are the incentives mentioned above really so appealing that he and others would willingly see their own constituents suffer?<br />
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Sadly, in some cases the answer is yes. But, at the end of the day many local politicians are guilty of nothing more than credulousness and incuriosity -- enough that they accept what they hear at face value. They are the true believers of American politics who serve as foot soldiers in cities, towns, hamlets, and hollows all over the country and who can be relied upon to champion the policy du jour so long as it comes wrapped in the appropriate rhetoric and is enunciated by the recognized priesthood. Vladimir Lenin coined a term for them -- useful idiots. <br />
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They are people for whom adherence to dogma is the paramount virtue, not because of the outcomes it produces, but often in spite of them. Adverse results and suffering constitute tests of faith rather than a test of understanding, the former demanding constancy while the latter would recommend change. So, as Abraham was prepared to sacrifice his son Isaac to demonstrate his faith, they remain prepared to double down on policies that have already caused West Virginia great harm, oblivious to the fact that they are serving a God who will not stay their hands. <br />
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Sean O'Learyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01287734264328253814noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1656624371497588038.post-17403099324818390332015-04-06T14:30:00.001-04:002015-04-07T13:35:37.929-04:00WEST VIRGINIA DEMOCRATS: NO DIRECTION HOME<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU-JO4Z-j0oKWjwwy8NYFL2cmRTDeK5PPRmydanAXvPlbBpALWvZx0L7tnFCR4EQ2MwUgHODBhn7ksgv3Ta860c2YecVkT1vEuPWTnXKA_9aiMqkkuyB54-CpIThXj1AV3XXWmXGZzumY/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-04-06+at+10.41.09+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU-JO4Z-j0oKWjwwy8NYFL2cmRTDeK5PPRmydanAXvPlbBpALWvZx0L7tnFCR4EQ2MwUgHODBhn7ksgv3Ta860c2YecVkT1vEuPWTnXKA_9aiMqkkuyB54-CpIThXj1AV3XXWmXGZzumY/s200/Screen+Shot+2015-04-06+at+10.41.09+AM.png" /></a></div>Last week, Belinda Biafore, newly named chairwoman of West Virginia’s Democratic Party, participated in a wide-ranging interview with reporters and editors of the Charleston Gazette in which she was asked about lessons learned from last fall's election debacle and the party's direction going forward. Democrats hoping for the ascent of a phoenix can put away their binoculars. <br />
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<a href="http://www.wvgazette.com/article/20150405/ARTICLE/150409649">A transcript of the interview</a> has been published and in it Biafore fails to identify a single policy or position that West Virginia Democrats should reconsider, much less change. More worryingly, she proves unable to articulate any semblance of a Democratic narrative that would save West Virginia from its ongoing economic decline or that offers a compelling alternative to the now ascendant Republicans. <br />
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Things got off to a rocky start when Gazette editor Rob Byers asked Biafore what Democrats should have done differently in the disastrous 2014 election. <br />
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“Raised a whole lot more money. Maybe worked a little harder to get out the vote.” <br />
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Maybe?<br />
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Noticing the obvious omission in Biafore’s response, Byers prods her. “Philosophically, though, any changes there?”<br />
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“We probably should have maybe done a better idea of defining who we were.”<br />
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Recognizing the challenge before them, the Gazette’s questioners then pose a series of questions that practically provide Biafore with step-by-step instructions for how to articulate a vision, message, and policies. But, it’s to no avail. Nor does the participation of Democratic Party Vice Chairman Chris Regan elevate the discussion above repeated platitudes about “getting out our message” punctuated by sniping about the legislature’s new Republican majority. Biafore and Regan even frame major issues in exactly the way their opponents want them to be framed. <br />
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Just like Republicans, Biafore talks about “coal” as though it’s a monolithic force in which the interests of the industry, of miners, and of West Virginia residents are identical. If current market conditions and West Virginia’s long and painful history have taught us nothing else it’s that (a) even when the coal industry has prospered, it has not led to job growth or prosperity for workers and communities, (b) the desire of the industry to reduce costs and defeat environmental and safety rules is diametrically opposed to the wellbeing of miners and to health conditions in mining regions, and (c) the future of the Appalachian coal industry is compromised not as much by EPA regulations as it is by economic forces including competition from low-cost coal in Illinois and Wyoming, low-cost natural gas and renewables, and a worldwide consensus that the health and environmental effects of burning coal are so dire and costly that its use must be reduced. <br />
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That being the case, West Virginia Democrats should forcefully distinguish between the interests of miners and communities on the one hand and those of the industry on the other because doing so would not only serve the public interest, but would also politically distinguish Democrats from Republicans who make hay by falsely declaring that opposition to environmental and safety regulations is a fight for jobs when in fact the primary benefit is improved margins for mine operators with little or no impact on jobs or prosperity in West Virginia. Stating these truths would also put to rest the delusion that West Virginia’s coal industry and jobs would see a rebirth if environmental and safety measures were weakened. <br />
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If Biafore’s articulation of Democrats’ position on coal is bad because it’s misguided, her description of party economic policy is worse because it appears there isn’t any. While she mentions tactical measures such as raising the minimum wage and efforts to promote pay equality, Biafore fails to articulate any kind of overarching economic philosophy or principles. <br />
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She certainly doesn’t criticize current state economic policy, which can be summarized as “cut business taxes and pray the natural gas industry saves our asses”, probably because, although the policy is Republican in nature, it was proposed and implemented by Democratic governors and Democratic majorities in the legislature. In any case, West Virginia has seen no growth in jobs and prosperity. What we have seen are regularly recurring state budget deficits.<br />
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The good news politically is that these policies are fully embraced by Republicans even more enthusiastically than by the Democrats who enacted them. So, Democrats are now perfectly positioned to pivot on the issue and denounce what has been a manifest failure. The denunciation should be accompanied by the presentation of an alternative progressive economic agenda that would expand West Virginia’s economy by (a) defending the wages of West Virginia workers against assaults from Right to Work laws and weakening of the prevailing wage law; (b) revising West Virginia’s tax code to stop the repatriation of hundreds of millions dollars annually from the state’s economy while doing nothing to increase jobs or commerce; (c) using the revenue gained from revisions to the tax code to reduce the costs of higher education, invest in infrastructure and jobs, and cut personal income taxes so West Virginians can keep more of what they earn; and (d) defending federal programs, including Social Security, Medicare, Food Stamps and other entitlement programs that provide desperately needed income for West Virginians and without which the state’s economy would contract even more. <br />
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It’s an economic policy and roadmap for greater wealth and prosperity that would powerfully distinguish Democrats from Republicans and leave Republicans holding the bag and baggage for the state’s current economic woes, which currently include thirty six consecutive months of decline in the number of West Virginians with jobs and chronic state deficits at the same time when jobs and the economy are growing at a healthy pace nationally. <br />
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Also absent from Biafore’s remarks is any mention of the environment, a truly remarkable omission in a state that perpetually lurches from one environmental crisis or industrial disaster to another responding each time with enhanced safety and regulatory measures only to see those enhancements rescinded months or years later as public apathy allows. From religious conservatives who believe we must be stewards of the earth with which God has blessed us, to environmentalists who observe the mounting crises caused by global warming, to residents and communities that see their health and property values destroyed by practices such as mountain top removal and the poorly regulated disposal of fracking waste, West Virginians will be receptive to a moral, economic, and public health argument that we must fight Republican efforts that would eliminate virtually any restraint on industry and that would also limit West Virginians’ access to the courts ensuring they will never be fully compensated for the damages they suffer. The question is, will Democrats have the courage to make the argument.<br />
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The same question can be asked with respect to the issue of healthcare. Obamacare or the Affordable Care Act (Biafore can’t bring herself to utter either name) has been an unmitigated blessing for West Virginia not just for the health of more than a hundred thousand West Virginians, but also for the economic benefits, which include more than $500 million dollars pumped into the state’s economy annually. <br />
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Finally, there are the gut issues that motivate many West Virginians – God, guns, and gays, and, lest we forget abortion and race. In her interview Biafore discusses the gun issue and correctly points out that many people who are generally supportive of gun rights are none the less taken aback by Republican legislation that would nearly abolish licensing and training safeguards and that would lead to weapons being present in nearly all places. Biafore also mentions Democrats’ successful effort in the last legislature to fight off Republicans’ attempt to pass a so-called religious freedom law that looked like a great deal like Indiana’s. But, pointing out Republican excesses isn’t enough. <br />
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While fighting for progressive positions on these issues individually, there is also an opportunity for Democrats to bundle social issues as part of a larger narrative accusing of Republicans of making West Virginia appear to the world, including people and businesses that might move and invest here here, to be a reactionary backwater of bigotry, ignorance, and resistance to modernizing influences that are shaping society. <br />
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West Virginians resent nothing more than being dismissed as rednecks and hillbillies and will understand the destructive consequences of such an image, which, along with environmental degradation and the absence of an educated workforce, constitute a far greater barrier to economic prosperity than do issues of taxation and government regulation. <br />
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In the wake of their 2014 electoral disaster, West Virginia Democrats have an opportunity to remake themselves by remaking their vision for the state. But, again, merely criticizing Republicans for their extremism isn’t enough. Democrats can and should be the party that speaks truth to West Virginians by acknowledging our shortcomings and by articulating a new economic and social narrative that explains how we got into the situation in which we find ourselves and how we can get out. <br />
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Honesty begets trust and vision begets hope and from those things votes will follow. The question is, can West Virginia Democrats find leadership capable of delivering either one. They haven’t yet. <br />
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Sean O'Learyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01287734264328253814noreply@blogger.com3