Grubstakers - Ep 247 Jim Justice, Governor of West Virgina

Episode Date: August 27, 2021

The biggest CEO and Governor in both size, width, and breadth. Jim Muthafuckin “Boy Uh I say I say boy” Justice. So Jim, do you really, like reaaaally actually act as a CEO over 100 companies? Oh… really? I mean seems like that’s a lot on your plate while also being a Governor… oh you also coach a High School girls Basketball team? That sure is a lot time that you could be fixing your states economy, or I don’t know maybe improving Health and Welfare… OH Infrastructure yeah that’s failing and uhh… Wait, Did you say High School girls Basketball team?! Oh no… oh no no no no no. Here is a link to the Forbes Article Sean mentioned, if you’re into the whole reading thing. (There is also an audio version in the article, so don’t worry) https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2021/03/30/gov-jim-justice-no-longer-a-billionaire-after-850-million-debt-to-insolvent-greensill-capital-revealed/?sh=52f6649e433b Don’t forget to check out Yogi and Sean in Seattle and Portland if you are in the year 2021 in Late September. Although if this is in the future. You should just check out their standup whenever. They’re pretty damn good at it.

We find people that basically can't make enough to eat before they go into the fields. I don't believe that. I think that you're looking at other places that are not Central Romana. People actually who focus on and who like getting an orgasm never get one. Pull up your socks and figure out what you're going to do. Any chance we'll ever get to be a complete red state? Oh, yeah. For the future, it's always uncertain. But more uncertain now.

And listen, Blue Ivy is six years old. Beyonce's days, she tried to outbid me on a painting. Everybody in Atlanta right now at the Louis Vuitton store, if you black, don't go to Louis Vuitton today. In five, four, three, two. the louis vuitton store if you black don't go to louis vuitton today in five four three two hello and welcome to grub stakers the podcast on billionaires my name is yogi polywall and joining me on this episode are my fellow mountain mamas andy palmer steve jeffers sean p mccarthy and today we will be covering the west virginia governor jim justice

uh by the way that name jim justice very generic uh to have controversy sick you you look up like jim justice scandal and it covers everything from like the justice to jim crow laws like it's just such a beautifully generic name that more like jim injustice okay all right it's a bit of an irony is that that the only justice in West Virginia is the governor. Certainly not the labor laws. Certainly not. To begin our episode on him, Jim Justice, let's... What is injustice that the order and the society is centered?

He actually became the governor by eating the previous governor. I forget if I probably made these jokes on our Illinois Pritzker episode. The fattest man in Illinois or West Virginia just gets to be the governor. But you know what? Let's bring it back. I think the country would be in a better state if the fattest person in each state was able to lead the nation. That's why Yogi's leading this episode. You know what I think it is?

You dirty mick. If you're a billionaire no one wants you at high levels of power like bloomberg got close with new york city because you can buy that position but if you're like running for a governor and uh like california and you're skinny people are going to be like go yourself you've already got everything you need but if you're like a flubby dipshit like you know pritz Justice, they'll be like, okay, fine. He's like us. We have a different rule for mayor.

Whoever's the richest person in New York City is automatically mayor. And they struck down that law. Well, that is a decent question. That like, okay, who controls things more? The person that's elected in power or just the richest person in that area because in west virginia it's technically both right now but for the rest of the country it is a decent question to ask who runs shit more your local representatives or someone that just has the most amount of money in each state oh it's the money like amazon is just kicking the you know

seattle and washington state governments around like i, I think when someone wants to run for governor, it's like, well, they want to sweeten the pot a little more. Or maybe they just want an extra edge in their dealings. It is always fun when I go back to Seattle and visit my parents. I'm like, I don't remember growing up in an Amazon.com company town, but apparently this is an Amazon.com company town now. For listeners that haven't looked jim justice off he is six foot seven and a 350 pound man uh he has got to get those numbers up those are rookie numbers uh he is has a sandwich named after him at the local arby's but at hardy's

there hangs a handwritten note hardee's gals, please take care of Big Jim, a great guy. Signed, Donald J. Trump. So, you know, just great company, this Jim Justice guy. Imagine you work at a fast food restaurant, you have to walk by a fucking handwritten note by Donald J. Trump that this other fat ass

is a decent guy. The governor ever comes in here, treat him differently than all of your other customers. I mean, much better. Right, right. Don't spit in his food twice. Just once.

He doesn't pay and he doesn't tip. Right. We're going to get to it, but obviously Jim Justice made his money off coal mining. So, you know, his sandwich,

it's the only one that'll give you black long after eating it. Why's it got to be black? Briefly, before I continue this episode, I want to make clear that for all the dunking and making fun of Jim Justice we'll be doing on this show about his weight and just everything else about this man-child, trust-fund kid.

He's a good man, and he's got a good soul deep down. We like the guy. We only joke about the ones we love. We roast the ones we love. Every billionaire we love. But the thing I want to make clear is that Jim Justice is in a state that is in dire conditions. Like, there's poverty in every state of this country and around the world, but some of the worst of it currently exists in West Virginia.

But, Yogi, that's unfair. It's not like he can do anything about that, being only the richest man in West Virginia and also the governor. I like how you begin this, like, as fat as he is, West Virginia still has problems, though. His BMI is not the biggest problem of West Virginia. It's crazy. The voters are getting together like, we elected the fattest guy we could find. Why won't these education scores go up? You know that he's never been inside like one of his own mine shafts.

Yeah. Because that is an occupational hazard. He can't fit in there. He used to, but now not anymore. That's actually when they want to seal him up for environmental purposes. They just stick him in there. He's a coal man. Coal's been in his family for a while, right?

No. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It's been there for generations. Yes. So, you know, from all the coal jobs that were lost to the temporary cessation, which we'll talk more about this episode and obviously how the opioid crisis is affecting the citizens of West Virginia to the fact that they rank nearly last in infrastructure economy and in healthcare and education. Like for every dig you'll hear on Jim Justice today, I want the audience to remember that the state is in dire condition. Counties such as McDowell County, West Virginia are being gutted around the country. And so as much as I'm shocked that they put their faith in a fat ass coal billionaire for governor, I'm not surprised that people who didn't see progress in the system that existed chose to put their faith in a local rich boy who they hope would do them right.

Because it's like, if you're living there and shit's just been terrible from floods to the pandemic to everything, and you're just like, well, you know what? That rich guy's always been rich. Hopefully he fucking can help me out because none of these other fuckers have done shit. Yeah, and it's interesting. I mean, first of all, West Virginia is very, when we talk about the opioid crisis in the United States, that's obviously ground zero. You know, there's towns in West Virginia where like a hundred people live there and 10 million fucking Oxycontin pills were sent. And it's also a state that had some of the most militant labor action in all of the United States, like actual pitched battles between Pinkertons and coal mine workers and stuff.

And apparently Justice's ancestors were on the other side of that. But you can just see how like... They were flying like the first biplane ever invented in order... Okay, they weren't flying the right flyer but you know yeah yeah the first bomber ever invented was like his family to drop on striking miners right it was a guy just using his hand to drop bombs right right of course so yeah it was justice's dad that's what i'm saying so jim justice is clearly a trust fund baby whose family's wealth got him in the position he's in with his power he's turned reputable

companies and his own state into a charlatan's wonderland with a worker's injury rate that is four times higher than other coal mines. That's just at his companies? Yes. The four times injury rate? Yeah. I mean,

coal mining is a notoriously safe thing, so it probably can't be that much if it's four times higher than the other ones you know as governor during covid he has these hour-long plus weekly youtube addresses to the state where he'll read the covid information and like read people's names that have uh gotten in uh infected by covid and he has a bulldog named baby dog and like the man's a fucking joke is what i'm trying to say there's a clip of him and baby dog if you won't do it for your family you've got to get vaccinated for baby doll now she wants you vaccinated so badly and she's going to absolutely be the one to lead us through on this all these incentives

and without any questions she'll give you a high five right now he looks like he's already get vaccinated for you for your family for your loved ones and absolutely for this little cute little face you know i gave you this is this is the man that we're talking about tonight. Could be worse, I suppose. I like how he's promoting vaccinations with the same voice and cadence. It's like, well, you know, my employers say I'm crazy

for selling rugs so cheap. Right, right. It is nice having a bulldog. He gets to have something near that has worse breathing problems than he does. I thought he was going to go on to brag about getting vaccinated once a day. He doesn't know

that you're supposed to stop it too. Apparently, West Virginia had higher numbers, but then now they somehow suck for some reason but the incentives uh jim justice has offered are he'll three hits of oxycon you get vaccinated in west virginia he's like giving away a 150 000 wedding of your dreams, free gas for 10 years if you win the lottery of the vaccine, choose WVU football or basketball season ticket package for two, premium ATV or side-by-side, top-of-the-line zero-turn lawnmower, or luxury high-end cars, weekly prizes for those 18 and plus, obviously. If you're younger than 18, sorry, he's not going to give you any of this shit,

basically. But I mean, the man is a bit of a goof if you ask me just listen to his voice prediction on the uh on the super bowl outcome and i i've got my little buddy here and everything and this i've got to reveal the expert that has uh led me to this prediction and come here little baby dog he's using his dog to do the super bowl prediction okay and here's how she did it she said tampa bay he moved the dog one two three one 31 and kansas city I'm not going to watch it. And then she mailed the players a bag of cash that says, you can throw this or your wife can have a sniper laser on her head should you decide to take a different route.

It's like we're New York City kids. It could sound like we were making fun of, you know, the Southern accent and all that, but it's just like, it is honestly, when you're like a trust fund kid like this guy, you know, your dad owns like one of the most profitable coal mines in all of West Virginia. Right. The accent, it almost makes, it's like a shield.

It makes you seem like more of a down-home boy. Of course. Where as opposed to like, you know, your typical like Williamsburg Trust fun kid. No, of course. With their, you know, Minnesota accent. It's a way of being, the accent protects the rich people

and makes them look down to earth, essentially. This is like George W. Bush. Yes. Definitely. Who grew up in what? Connecticut. Yes. I remember the old Conan joke,

first state court, it was like, Connecticut, where presidents from Texas are born. I mean, yeah, Jim Justice is clearly a trust fund baby whose family's wealth got him in the position he's in. And with his power, he turned reputable companies in his own state into a charlatan's wonderland with workers' injury rate that is four times higher than other coal mines uh... it would be very easy to summarize jim justice as a trump light politician with a foghorn leghorn personality now who's responsible for this yeah he uh... he actually owns he's governor of the Looney Tunes universe.

I was going to ask, though, would you say the workplace injury rate four times higher, so that's Jim Justice's companies or the state of West Virginia? No, Jim Justice's mines, which he owns in West Virginia, Kentucky, and a few others that we'll cover in a moment here, the injury rate at those mines is four times higher than the other coal mines. When they were operating. When they were operating. When they were operating, which we'll also cover in a moment.

Yeah, he's a bit of an environmentalist in some ways. You call him that, sure. I want to thank the user who sent us this episode, Brendan M. the Wise Man, for sending us this billionaire. I know people have sent us suggestions and I assure you we are working through them all.

We have them on a master list that we have etched in blood. If you have a billionaire suggestion you want to send it our way, send it to us on Twitter or Gmail or if you want to stay undetected, email us at our proton email. If you want to know who's blood,

just try to figure out which host goes silent halfway through the episode. That's why we don't do a video is because when we tell you guys that we uh we have a master list and a giant plan we're actually all winking we don't just throw these episodes together last minute that'd be ridiculous oh no of course not um so to begin this thing uh before we do our bio, I want to open with this article from 2011 that really spells out the Governor Jim Justice's lifestyle. It's by Neely Tucker from 2011. Baby Dog doesn't like that article you wrote about me. You know, dogs, they're a bunch like pigs. They eat human flesh. You wouldn't want to be left alone with a baby dog. I think you should make some corrections. I like how your Jim Justice is a little Elvis-y.

He really has more swagger than Jim Justice. He's got more of a southern drawl that's literally diabetes bringing him back to reality every few seconds. Is that even what West Virginians sound like? It's sort of similar. Does he sound like them? Notable West Virginians sound like? It's sort of similar. Does he sound like them? Notable West Virginians are Steve Harvey, Randy Moss, and Bill Withers. I don't know if you know how any of those people speak,

but they have a similar cadence. The difference is... Oh, Lord, Jim Justice done shot the baby. The difference is Jim Justice has never had to change his voice to appear more professional or more like a business person. So you just sound as much as himself as you want to. Right. He goes in the other direction. That's right. It's funny too because his dog is a bulldog.

I used to think those were intimidating dogs until now I know that if one ever got excited enough to attack a person, it would immediately die of a heart attack. Speaking of which, open bed on the podcast the listeners can participate who dies first jim justice or his dog oh that's good that's a decent one yeah

that's one dog is like you say it's like three years old or something i mean it's not that old but jim justice also doesn't look that good and there are rumors about his health that uh we'll cover in a little bit but uh a lot of people think always are thinking that he's gonna die basically and he's always like the the rumors are not true i'm doing fine my health is just okay it's like that doesn't mean good seeing fidel castro's doctor and he says i'm gonna live to 110 i've received over 50 Pfizer doses. And I won an ATV. It's incredible that he makes his living off of profiting off of people who have to destroy their bodies just to put food on the table. And then he used that money to just destroy his own body

living it up it's true and you know jim justice if you're listening to this we will take this episode down if you rig the vaccine lottery for us who's responsible i say who's responsible for this unwarranted attack on my person it's him talking to the creditors he's on the phone with a Luxembourg banker right we're going to get to this but when we say he's like Trump

he's like Trump in the sense that he does not pay his bills and that's how he's a billionaire it's his house words we do not pay we do not pay our debts. By the way, we should mention, you know, Jim Justice was a billionaire, but he's not now. I mean, we'll get to the reasons why, but his estimated net worth, it used to be 1.5 billion. Now it's like, I think 450 million. But I believe when he was elected, he was literally the only billionaire in West Virginia.

And he's probably still the richest person in West Virginia. Most likely, yeah. Yeah. But he was, when he first came on our radar, I believe, he was a billionaire. That's correct. If we'd done this episode sooner. But we put it on the back burner and this fucker lost a lot of his money. We wanted to honor some interest from the listeners and we're doing it.

This will be something we cover, that he's certainly not a billionaire anymore, but does that matter in terms of how much power he's lost? Certainly he's lost a lot of capital, but as governor, what has he retained that he doesn't with this massive amount of money he's lost, which we'll cover in a moment here. All right, to cover this beginning, this opening of this article from 2011, like I mentioned,

it spells out the Governor Jim's lifestyle. Late on November 30th, a man named Jim Justice walking into Applebee's Restaurant in this town in the southeastern corner of one of the poorest states in America. He was just up from the Walmart on Route 219 and hard by Interstate 64.

He had a few friends and family members with him and a sheaf of papers in one hand. Justice, coach of the local high school girls basketball team, was celebrating a season-opening victory, an 81-43 blowout. This is a man who coaches high school girls basketball, and when he does, he tells them when they're 20 points up, hey, keep going, which is the spirit of high school sports, to just blow out the other team. Tim Justice walks into the Applebee's

and they're like, no, sir, please, we don't have any more. We don't have any more food. Justice is off the charts in terms of size of a human being. He stands 6'7 and weighs a good 350 pounds, 368 by last count, and he looked the part of a post-game coach a shock of tousled white hair slumped shoulders loosened tie dress shirt coming untucked under a rumpled blazer i was surprised to see what's his what's his bite strength that one i was surprised to see him there for a couple of

reasons one although we'd spent the day talking we'd made no plans to meet here after the game, picking over $1369 entrees. Two, Justice is a, at this time, 59-year-old billionaire, one of the wealthiest people in America, a West Virginia native who makes his money from corn, timber, and coal. He coaches as a release for his competitive streak, which, by the way, coaching high school girls and calling it a release, I don't like

that at all it fucking feels wrong and weird that reminds me i i've been um searching brainy quote dot com for uh uh justice quotes and here's one i'll say it in jim justice's voice our judges are the weakest link in our system of justice and And they are also the most protected. And that is a quote from Alan Dershowitz. Oh, wonderful. Yeah. Brainyquote.com. Jim Justice is like Frank Underwood,

but all the episodes take twice as long because he's breathing so heavily. Continuing on with the historical, but the thing that made it truly spectacularly odd was the big man tucked in the tiny booth is the sole owner and proprietor of the green bar greenbrier resort a few miles away in white sulfur springs the sprawling 710 room white lace and patis for icon of american history that has been a destination of presidents, celebrities, and society darlings for more than 200 years. He's the owner of every Dorothy Draper curtain, every column portico.

It just describes everything there and the restaurants. It's got the hotel has nine restaurants and room service. He could reserve a suite. He could do anything in the glittering Jay Gatsby lights below. And yet here he sat beneath the dim lights in a wiped down leather booth at a spot that bills itself as the neighborhood, the Applebee's. He looked up and saw me at the bar.

He laughed and held up the sheaf of papers. He tapped his watch and then made a gesture with his hands as if writing the papers. I realized where the contractual documents for a land deal we'd been discussing earlier in the day. He had until midnight to sign or it fell through. The deal was for 4,500 acres near Charlottesville, Virginia, near the homes of presidents Monroe and Jefferson. The price was $23.75 million. I looked at my watch. It was 1143 p.m. In the world of Jim Justice, 17 minutes to close on a $23 million and change deal while

munching on mozzarella sticks at a chain restaurant beats the great Gatsby every time. So to me, this is a portrait of a man that we'll be covering today. A guy who runs up the score in a high school basketball game, shows up minutes before a restaurant closes and orders food and waits till the last minute to finish paperwork. That's akin to me writing this paragraph minutes before we started this episode. I mean, this is to continually dispel the idea that a billionaire works hard. Like, they're just procrastinating

just as much as us. This motherfucker's showing up at Applebee's at 11.30 and getting food and being like, I gotta sign these papers real quick. If I don't do it by midnight, I lose this deal. And they're like, look at his work ethic as though, like, as though, like as though like you could have a job as a normal person where you just eat mozzarella sticks and sign your name and you wait

till the last minute in fairness based on his bmi signing paperwork is extremely difficult this should be considered the equivalent to running a half marathon for the rest of us okay so the more average workers on the other side of that deal, so he's just making their lives hard for no reason. Oh, no reason at all. It's right to the deadline, and there's probably some closing attorney who's just like, where the fuck is this guy? There's also, I'm pretty sure there's not a fax machine in Applebee's,

so it's not like it matters whether he signs it at 11.45 or 2 a.m. or even 7 a.m. the next day. I'm sure there's some sort of like you take a photo with your cell phone, send it maybe. But point being, though, that like, you know, how many deals were delayed because he was like, I got to go coach high school basketball tonight. I got to really focus on this.

Just today, actually, there was an article that put out that the high school boys basketball team the school board voted against having jim justice as the coach and when the students that were protesting about this were asked it was because jim justice doesn't show up to practice he only shows up to coach the games that's how half-assing this guy is. He's like, I can't show up for practice. I'll just be there for the games. In his defense, a gym

justice half-ass is still a lot of ass. This is a full ass. I read this Forbes article, just something kind of related to that. There's a 2019 Forbes article by Christopher Hellman. It's perhaps the only article I've ever that is that two dozen ninety four article by a christopher helman uh... but so perhaps the only article i've ever read where the senator joe mansion from west

virginia is the voice of reason he he he he he he they barely hate each other and so he's quoted in this forbes article of saying of jim justice quote he just won't work he doesn't show up you can't run the state from Greenbrier. That's just not the way it works because Jim Justice refuses to live in the governor's mansion. He lives in his own private residence. There's actually, I think, a state

senator in West Virginia who's proposed a bill to make it the law that the governor actually has to live in the governor's mansion so that he can do the fucking job. staircase doesn't have the automatic chair. So that's actually ableist of them.

He wears three life alerts, one around his neck, one around his waist, and one near his ankle. Yes. I don't think the West Virginia governor's mansion is scooter accessible.

They're being ableist, actually. That's right. Yeah, this is fat phobic. But it's just so funny because it's like, so we're going to talk. He owns all these coal, like Yogi mentioned, coal and other companies. He hasn't divested from any of them. He's barely put any of his assets in a blind trust. So he's still running all his companies. And he's

the governor. And he's a little league coach. And he apparently doesn't show up for any of these things. No, he's at fucking Applebee's eating mozzarella sticks yeah no i mean i i get the distinct impression that he he'll watch like basketball on tv and see the coach like throwing the clipboard and he's like all right that's what coaching is you show up you yell you throw a clipboard you say you go in you come out and then you uh go to applebee's there there's a short clip of him coaching from what i saw and uh i know they will shock you he's sitting the entire time and while he's sitting he's holding his hands up going girls go on the other side go on the other side and it's like

that's not how you coach uh a coach that sits is a team that loses i was gonna say like just imagine you know running practice drills what else could motivate you besides jim justice so as of today jim justice's net worth is currently 453 million oh actually i think i've got some insight into uh his his coaching strategy in the words of plato a justice means minding one's own business and not meddling with other men's concerns. Well, that's a convenient quote for a pedophile. Does he do the halftime speeches? I bet. While sitting?

He does half of them. He runs out of breath. I mean, like, you know, he's doing it to as a general PR move oh why should we trust Jim justice with anything well he coaches the high school girls basketball team he couldn't be that bad the homegrown West Virginia boy right and yeah he's like we elected he got in trouble because he called a different high school thugs and that high school happens to have more black people than different high school thugs and that high school happens to have more black people than his high school oh wow i would never have guessed that when you

from the first half of that sentence and he like he plays it off like i i thugs means people that commit violence and i saw the other team get into a fight with some of the people in the stands and so that's why i called them thugs this guy is the worst it's say, who's responsible for this unwarranted attack on my person? It's not because they're black. It's because they look like violent people. I can't pinpoint why, but it is not about their race. It's like Foghorn Leghorn doesn't show up to half the Looney Tunes episodes. He's coaching girls soccer and running his company and shit.

So, you know, we're not amending our billionaire rule on this show. I just believe that in this episode I'll be able to show you why I think Jim Justice could very well become a billionaire again in no time with no real opposition. As of right now, the only remaining billionaire as we covered is Governor J.B. Pritzker, who we did an episode on. It's episode 168 and his sister, Penny Pritzker, episode 169. Nice. And now he's like a good governor and people like him. Yeah, I mean, compared to the rest of the fucking garbage.

It is like, I think we talked about this a bit on the Pritzker episode and a bit with Bloomberg. It's like like if you have a bunch of money because that's like that's how corrupt u s politics is now like especially since citizens united if you're in politics and you have money you can throw your money around in order to get your agenda dot right and that's kind of what has made you know pritzker and uh... it to it in a different way different way Michael Bloomberg effective they were able to get their agendas done because they have so much fucking money and then you know Jim Justice I mean if he has a lot of money he also owes a lot of money and but but

what I would just say is when we were first looking at this episode he was a billionaire 1.5 billion now he's not a billionaire, 450 million net worth. I do think it is reasonable as you are saying, Yogi, that he will be a billionaire again, because if you are in state, if you are a governor and you have not divested from any of your companies, if you cannot become a billionaire, you might be the stupidest person on the planet. Like you literally have the power of a state to make your companies work. What the fuck are you doing? I mean, you saw that dog video.

I wouldn't rule that out. He uses the dog to choose his investors. Jim Justice, if you're listening, we need you to become a billionaire again so that we're not breaking our rule by doing this episode. So get cracking. I mean, he doesn't just have money. He's got...

Great cash, homie. It might be more fun. I think what he's doing might be more fun than making smart investment decisions. Just like eating your way to an early grave. The drop you just heard was Rain Moss one of the greatest also West Virginia native so to continue on with the bio of Jim justice born James Connolly justice the second in April 27th 1951 currently 70 years old.

He is the 36th governor of West Virginia since 2017. I was able to find the obituary on Jim Justice's father, James Justice Sr., who died at the age of 68 in 93 when Jim Justice would then take over, which we'll cover later on. James Justice Sr. was president of Bluestone Industries, Inc. and Bluestone Coal Corp. of Beckley. He was the founder and past chairman of the West Virginia Mining and Reclamation Association and a former director of the Bank of Raleigh and a member of the National Coal Council. He was an engineering graduate of Purdue University and a U.S. Air Force pilot in World War II. He would also graduate from the Greenbrier Military School in 1943. And I couldn't find anything on Jim Justice Sr.'s father outside. But I mean, him attending private military school,

you know that they had money. It's not like they grew up poor, which they might have. Military school, how could that be relevant for dealing with labor disputes um but yeah every single minor lawsuit or issue when it comes to black lung to worker conditions with everything i've just told you about the companies and the reclamation associations and the former director of the bank, like Jim Justice Sr. knew all that shit going on. It's not like they're like, oh, it's just a thing that's going on. Like, no, their blood is in coal and their money is in their blood. It's funny you mentioned Black Lung because we were wondering earlier how despite having one of the highest vaccination rates, West Virginia now is doing so bad under coronavirus.

Yeah. I mean, maybe there might be something affecting their lungs. I don't know why this respiratory disease is doing so well in West Virginia. Yeah. You know, when it comes to those vaccine numbers, I, you know, I've watched more content on the poorest, uh, populations of West Virginia and, you know, for two decades, they've just been hosed in every way in terms of, of what politics have done for them and making sure that any of this shit from getting jobs back to the quality of life is just fucking piss poor. And so I can empathize and sympathize with them

for being like, maybe the rich kid Jim Justice can help us because I'm not shocked that right now they're like, fuck the government in terms of vaccinations because the government ain't done shit for them. You know, I'd also wager that like, because the government's fucked them over so much, most people are probably just staying home. And the people who would vote, maybe not the brightest bulbs in the world, and so they're going to turn on their TV. And the guy who's buying the most ads is, you know, the billionaire.

Sure, of course. So that's where they're going to be like, oh, well, he's on TV. Vote for him. Yeah, and I think we've, I'm trying to remember the actual episode, but I know we've talked about Black Lung a bit. There's a very good frontline documentary about kind of the, there's been like a major resurgence of Black Lung, and part of that is fracking. That's right.

You know, and like these other new mining techniques where essentially they're just going deeper down and a lot of the dust particles are not the same as it was when the coal mines were less developed basically. So a lot of these miners are more likely to have health problems today. And then it's like

these people have been getting literally killed by Pinkertons and fucked over by their bosses for more know more than a hundred hundred plus years and then now we're in this situation where the global economy is changing coal is on the way out and it's like they're out of work and we just don't the united states is not a government that's going to help you nope when you lose your fucking job you're out of work you got health problems or black lung or whatever and, you know, so it's like, I feel all the sympathy

in the world for the people of West Virginia because they've just been fucked from every single angle possible. Yeah. I mean, it's something that, you know, I can't imagine

how shitty the fucking life can be to be the poorest population in West Virginia right now. I think they could benefit from some classes on how to start a small business. And entrepreneurialism. Learn to code. Yeah, I think if they

spent all this energy they put into moping around and coughing out the black sludge, if they took all this energy they put into moping around and coughing out the black sludge, if they took all that energy and put it into JavaScript and React and... Startup Code Academy. Two hours might change your life on there. HackerRank, man. Solve some problems.

If you're poor and listening to this in west virginia you'll have yourself to blame because grub stickers will pay you seven twenty five an hour to do asio for a website and moderate our forums well i will say this the people west virginia cock and be very proud of their coal mining past uh... such as one person that now hosts several t b shows was being challenged when it came to their state's sexiness level hi steve a recent survey revealed that hawaii is the sexiest state but your birthplace of west virginia is least sexy how can you get

your fellow west virginians to up their sexy meter? Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. What you mean West Virginia ain't sexy? You know. Oh, oh, oh, oh, Hawaii. Oh, you mean just because we ain't got beaches? Oh, I got nude for you. Let me ask you something.

Have you ever seen a coal miner before? You ever seen a man covered with soot from head to toe? Sweaty, muscles shimmering in the light. You ever been with a mountain man, being down to his stomach? You don't even know what you're missing. Have you ever... Let me ask you something.

Have you ever been to the Bluegrass Festival? Have you ever been to a hog slaughtering? You don't know nothing. Stop looking like you're going to throw up. You don't know nothing about sexy. Girl, you ain't seen sexy. West Virginia got it going on. My daddy was a coal miner.

I'm from West Virginia. Girl, don't make me open this me bill gordon make me open his jacket i wouldn't have been very nice jacket soon as you meet you west virginia may mary hill right away what's the greatest sexy West Virginia sexy I hope he becomes like the Matthew McConaughey and runs against Jim Justice for governor I would love that I think that would be fantastic

Governor Steve Harvey What's his platform West Virginia sexy I'm already committing voter fraud to vote for him for governor off of that alone. I mean, a man who's got the balls to go on TV and argue for sexiness. Have you ever seen a hog slaughtering?

Oh, Lord, Steve Dunn shot the hog. But alas, we're not talking about Steve Harvey. Today, we're talking about that's right steve harvey get your bread up if you want a grub stakers episode okay oh i i think i've got some insight into how he uh want how he became a governor um here's here's a quote finally let us understand that when we stand together we will always win when men and women stand

together for justice we win when a black white and hispanic people stand together for justice we win that's a quote from Vermont Senator Bernieont senator bernie sanders

i don't know not as good as what's the the parents go back to the biome you know west virginia sexy is also also on the sign outside of the brothels where people traffic themselves to afford their OxyContin. Continuing on with the bio of James C. Justice II, C stands for Conley. He was born April 27, 1951 to James Conley Justice and Edna Ruth Justice.

He attended Raleigh County Public Schools and graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School in 1969. He, like his father, attended Greenbrier Military Academy as a postgraduate. That's good that he kept up the workout routine. Governor Justice went to Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia, and was captain of the golf team for two years before entering his undergraduate degree and a master's in business administration. The governor joined his family business in 1976. Because of his strong interest in nature and the outdoors, he started Justice Family Farms in 1977 in beautiful Monroe County, West Virginia. Under his direction, just as farming operations grew to the biggest

agriculture enterprise, his companies farm more than 50,000 acres of corn, wheat, and soybeans in West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. So this man owns the Southeast. It's not like he's just got West Virginia in a lock hold. He's the biggest farmer east of the Mississippi River. Yeah, I don't know if you're going to get to it, but I read some stat about his dad sold a lot of the coal mining properties for some crazy number, like several hundred million or something. I mean, I don't know if you have a number for his dad's approximate net worth, but when we say he's like a trust fund kid he definitely started out like an inch from home plate yes i don't have a number on his dad's net worth but are you referring to

the mecca russia deal that might have been it yeah that's that's jim justice that's this guy that's not his dad that's later on we'll talk about that um yeah but he's so fat that even an inch from home plate will make him wheeze and cough because he's fat. He's a longtime member of the National Corn Growers Association and a seven-time national corn growing champion. I don't even know they had that shit, but I'm sure that Jim Justice just bought his way to those positions. Oh, are you questioning the integrity of the National Corn Growing Championship? Yeah. Oh, yeah. I think Jim Justice decided to give them a whole bunch of...

Great cash, homie. He was toiling in those fields. Plowing by... He did not even have an oxen to push his plow. He pushed it by hand using his giant frame and just leaning against it. He rigged up the plow. He pushed it by hand using his giant frame

and just leaning against it. He rigged up the plow to him? Yeah. Is that what you're saying? Yeah. And then after it was all plowed, he went back and he scattered the seed. Now who's responsible?

I say, who's responsible for this unwarranted attack on my person? They just like... They put him in the grain silo to just like, they put them in the grain silo to just like keep the, keep the balance going. The lack of grain is made up for with his heft.

Right, yeah, yeah. That's how they rip off when they're wholesaling grain. They just put them on the scale to see if they don't notice. Well, I did want to say uh jim justice according to forbes uh he has a self-made score of four out of ten oh which means that his father had 10 billion dollars that's right because i think we've learned any self-made score less than seven means their father was literally a billionaire yeah i mean

adjusted for inflation i think you're probably 1000 is that like kendall jenner is more self-made than him that's right yeah i think according to forbes yeah you know i did look into jim his dad the justice senior and that guy has like three to seven different coal mining uh patents and so you know in terms of jim justice juniors like you know prowess in all of the other states for mining and and farming and stuff it's just name recognition your dad helped us do all that shit sure we'll let you do whatever the fuck you want in the southeast corridor yeah i was gonna say for our listeners like uh you might not know jim justice's dad but like any uh woody guthrhrie or Pete Seeger song about labor, that's actually about Jim Justice's dad.

Yeah, definitely. So Jim Justice is a member of the National Corn Growers Association and the National Corn Eaters Association. He's fat, ladies and gentlemen. Profile on him. We got another half hour of these. He's a passionate ladies and gentlemen. Profile on him. We got another half hour of these. He's a passionate sportsman himself. He developed Stony Brook Plantation.

Now wait a minute, Yogi. People trust us to say facts on this podcast. It connects to the fact that he owns a 15,000 acre hunting and fishing preserve in Monroe County, West Virginia. He fishes with bombs. It's like a survival of the fittest thing. Any pheasant that can get more than 10 yards away is safe. He just uses grenades.

He sits the entire time. Well, in 2016, Jim and his great bird dog companion, Lily, bagged 73 grouse in our mountain state He lives on the smoke up. This guy's ass is a lot because it's a big ass And so you really need to blow as much smoke as the ass can take So in 93 Jim Justice senior dies and Jim justice our

West-Virginian governor becomes the president and CEO of Bluestone Industries, Inc. and Bluestone Coal Corporation. Over the next 15 years, Jim launched a massive expansion of multiple businesses, which included significant coal reserve expansions, Christmas tree farms, cotton gin, turfgrass operations, golf courses, timber enhancements, and land projects, projects to mention a few before becoming governor he was the president and ceo of 102 different companies so he doesn't just have like the governor's seat this motherfucker had the fucking entire southeast area by the balls if you ask me like that is an insane amount of companies just be like i run all this shit.

I wanted to ask, like, just to kind of back up a bit. So I know his dad owned the coal mining company. You looked a while back on his family tree. I mean, like, how far back does coal go in the family from what you were able to find? From what I found, it just goes to his dad. I don't think that his grandfather, who I did find Conley James' obituary. He lived till 1883, if I'm not mistaken, or no. He was born, I can't remember. But basically, I couldn't find shit on that guy. His last name from that patriarch does link to a Kentucky Conley that's now a politician,

I think a judge or something. The point I'm trying to make is the Conley family, the Jim Justice Conley family in that region, they've just run shit. If I was able to look far enough back, I'm sure I could have found plantation-owning whatever. They survived the Civil War because Union soldiers thought they were too fat and funny to execute.

They were doing fatty arm buckle routines for Sherman's troops. And they were like, yeah, we won't put him against the wall. So he's born 51. And like his dad, do you have the date his dad like founds the coal company? No, I believe that I don't have those dates, no. Okay. But it probably goes back to like near his birth, basically. Basically.

The thing that's frustrating is you look up Bluestone Coal Corporations or Bluestone Industries, and you find a thousand different companies. I tried to find dates on some of these facts that you asked, Sean, but the biggest problem is that it's so generic sounding that you find Bluestone operations that are completely unrelated to the ones we're discussing. Well, I mean, it's an interesting thing with coal mining to me, like, or being a coal mining billionaire or whatever, because it's like, yeah, this was a fucking great

racket for the longest time. This is like where energy in the United States came from. And, you know, as we all mentioned, all the butchering of the union organizers and this kind of stuff, like it was a great racket. And now, like that Jim Justice has inherited, it's not as much of a great racket anymore but it's uh it is it is just interesting to put put in perspective like how how far ahead of the rest of us this guy started out certainly i mean it you know that that military school he went to greenbrier it's a museum after a shutdown like how many schools you know when they're closing down, they become

museums to what they once were? It's a perfect example of the amount of wealth required to be into these circles. That's what Fidel Castro did to the mansions of the sugar farmers. No, the sugar plantation owners in Cuba. Any place that's like really horrific throughout history eventually becomes a museum oh yeah certainly or like a location for a wedding like a

bunch of plantations are in the south oh yeah I mean that thing he mentions for the vaccine being the 150,000 dream wedding it's just him putting on a wedding at one of his locations like it's not it cost him nothing to be like, yeah, we'll open a date for your

future wedding lottery winner. The man half-asses everything. It's a lot of ass, but it certainly is half-ass. To recover a bit of Jim Justice, when he after college would become involved in the family business, in 1977,

these are additional companies after Bluestone Coal and Bluestone Incorporated. He started Bluestone Farms, an operation that grew to more than 50,000 acres in four states and is the largest grain producer on the East Coast. During this time, he also developed... He was fired for eating half the grain.

Well, he had to start it to make sure he'd be fed. He misunderstood sell the best, drink the rest. I wish I got Jabba the Hutt drops. He also would develop Ah say, ah say. Ah say, Jedi. Jim Justice has been tragically strangled

by Princess Leia. I'm i'm sorry we gotta end the episode you go into jim justice's mansion he has the the blue elephant playing music and uh there's like a little weird bird animal sitting on top of his belly that's like that's what his bird dog is or lady bird what's his dog's name uh a baby dog baby dog yeah that's one of them baby dog laughs at all his jokes so yeah so his dad dies in 93 and he just inherits all of the companies and just becomes here's the keys to the empire kid uh in he would establish the James C. Justice Companies Inc. to acquire additional mining operations. The business moved into Kentucky in 2007

Tennessee in 2009 and most recently into Wise County Virginia it was Bluestone Industries and related companies West Virginia mining interests that Justice recently sold to the Russian company. I did just want to mention one anecdote from the Chris Hellman article in Forbes that Jim Justice tells about his own father, which maybe this will give you some idea of both their personalities. Jim Justice says that he was working at his dad's company at 19 years old, and he goes into his dad's office and he talks about like i have some sort of problem i don't know what to do and he says his father explodes up from the desk grabs him slams him against the desk and says there's always something to do remember that you damn well better remember that so it's like that's the kind of man his father was yeah i mean i'm not shocked that that

dude was a psychopath like uh there's a photo of his dad from the greenbrier military and like you just know that that dude was like you can punch your way out of every fight right yeah that is true like oh four years of military academy made his father into a psycho who could have seen that coming like jim justice uh the governor he goes to that military academy post-graduate so i don't even know why he's necessarily there like his dad was there like at the school like you know learning the thing but it says it goes post-graduate i don't know man it's just a weird fucking thing well they say that that military justice is to justice what military music is to music. That is Groucho Marx.

And so, you know, moving forward to some of the scandals, we're going to talk about one of the first things is the loophole that Jim Justice uses to leave mines and workers idle. This was an article from 2018 that talks about the temporary status to defer environmental cleanup and leave miners in limbo, in some cases for decades. There's this thing thatim justice has exploited it's a regulatory loophole that allows him to leave mines idle and defer environmental cleanup uh this from climate home news in virginia only one of justices approximately 20 mines still produces coal instead of closing the operations and restoring the land his companies often place their minds into temporary cessation under the status

regulators allow miners to pause both production and land reclamation. Temporary cessation is meant to be used as a short-term response to low coal prices. In Virginia and other states, it must be re-approved every six months. Records compiled by this article show that coal mines belonging to Justice have been idle for years at a time. Unreclaimed idle mines means ongoing pollution and community health impacts while miners are put out of work indefinitely. Yeah, but kids get to get murdered by a cool clown if they go in there. So that's

kind of cool. That's true. The practice is not illegal nor is it confined to Justice's companies. They discovered many companies, particularly in central Appalachia, using temporary cessation for extended periods. The thing that's crazy is that this one guy, Bob Mooney, spent 20 years as a coal regulator, first with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources Division of Reclamation, and then with Federal Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement. Temporary cessation is a very big loophole in the law that essentially allows a company to leave a site unreclaimed for long periods of time, he said.

I mean, so the loophole as I understand it is like when you're done with a coal mine you're legally required to like seal it up and do all this environmental stuff but essentially they all just pretend like yeah we're going to get back to it any minute now we're going to get back to it and they just don't.

Yeah essentially. It's supposed to be in response to, like Yogi said, the lower coal prices temporarily make it uneconomical to operate the mine. It shuts down for a while. Things pick up. It goes back online. Mine.

And it's not when the mine is just depleted or it becomes unusable for some other natural reason, like a flood or something. And so a lot of the mines are nearing depletion. And it's been basically proven by the... There are environmentalists who say there's stuff left in there to get that would be economical even with higher prices. So therefore, you're just using this weird loophole.

Yeah. The reason why they're really concerned with it is because just because they're not using it doesn't mean that Mother Nature will just slowly take it over as it does.

That will happen but on a much longer time scale than we need it to because like the coal like the way that they make these coal pits they have to completely deforest it and like they're and also de-irrigate

it so like there's no like water sources going in so they can mine stuff without having to pump out too much and so you need to actually actively reforest it right and how you start that process is usually saying like all right it's depleted and then they start the environmental cleanup and stuff legally right right and it seems like his plan is just to uh avoid those costs which i think are supposed to go to the the owners of the mine uh after they're depleted maybe it's the government but it seems like his strategy is just let it sit there until um he just uh has that company declare bankruptcy and then someone else

has to eat the costs yeah i think i think why he's not doing it is because it's kind of valuable to choose when you pay things. Yes. And so he effectively gets to choose when he pays the cleanup costs to initiate that. And there's some tax breaks and stuff for invite if you if you willingly relinquish your property to the environmental cleanup authorities you get some tax breaks and whatnot but it's still expensive and he doesn't want to pay that i wonder if those tax breaks um if there might be a government effort to make them a little nicer a little sweeter if maybe there's someone advocating for that in the government.

Yeah, that's another. The reason I was puzzling over why doesn't he just pay it? I'm like, well, that's because there's an option value to it because he was literally part of the government for a while. He was probably thinking maybe I can just make it sweeten it, the deal through Congress or something.

I mean through the parliament yeah the uh the Forbes article I was citing earlier uh we'll link it in the show notes I do recommend because it's basically just like a series of anecdotes about bills Jim Justice has not paid oh yeah and it's a long series of anecdotes but the uh the author Chris Hellman he makes this uh interesting point. This is as of 2019. It might have changed. The entirety of Justice's empire rakes in some $450 million

in annual sales. That's their number, so we're taking their number. About $450 million in annual sales, mostly from mines, farms, and the Greenbrier. The biggest chunk, the decades-old Bluestone Coal Mines, which will extract an estimated 2 million tons this year, is fetching in the neighborhood of

$270 million. It's a low-margin affair. Annual profits to the Justice family are probably on the order of about $20 million. So it's like, yeah, he takes in $450 million, his number, but because I think in a large part because of larger

trends regarding coal, it is such a low part, because of larger trends regarding coal, it is such a low margin affair that it's like, yeah, it makes sense for him to fight over every single fucking penny. There's actually another legal deployment of temporary cessation as it relates to fracking technology. So, in

2020, when oil prices went to like zero or negative, and it was like really funny right um it became uneconomical for a lot of like the refineries that receive their product to keep running but they were allowed to through temporary cessation laws they were able to convince like there are a couple refineries that went bankrupt, basically. Right. And they were allowed to keep running, though, because it was too expensive to shut it off. Ah, gotcha.

And so they were like, well, we're going to temporarily keep running. So it's kind of the flip side of this. Right, right. In order to keep them employed and working and also emitting hydrocarbons into the atmosphere because it's too expensive for us to shut off the plant. Right, right. And so we'll just keep going through that.

Yeah, that makes sense. It's kind of wild because there is a technical reason to do it. It's like a judge who hates polar bears and he issues an injunction, you have to keep going. You cannot shut down this operation. Yeah, I mean, going you cannot shut down this operation you know like uh yeah i mean well in the case of in the case of fracking or coal it's like i mean climate change you kind of a moral imperative to

not do it anymore but there are some i can think of some scenarios where the law would be useful sure but he's obviously taking advantage of it you know continuing with this piece to see how much he's been taking advantage of it uh while his, continuing with this piece to see how much he's been taking advantage of it, while his companies have idled mines in West Virginia, Kentucky, his Virginia operations rely the most on temporary cessation. Records from the Virginia Department of Mines,

Minerals, and Energy, DMME, reveal permits belong just as his largest companies operating in the state. A&G Coal corporation have been approved for temporary cessation 20 times since 2012 one of the ang's permits have been idle nearly continuously since 1984 another of his company's black river coal llc owns a mine currently in temporary cessation that has been in and out of the same status since 1997.

Well, that's called climate justice. I mean, so... I guess it's good that they're not running, but also it's incredibly unfair to not begin the cleanup. I guess if there's no coal, it doesn't really matter. Like, if they're not, like, operable,

it's kind of. Yeah, it wouldn't be running anyway. Yeah. Well, this is the other angle of it, though, because as much as the environmental impact that you guys are describing, the fact that there's no coal in there. The other aspect is that the the actual miners, they're in this limbo where they're idling because employment would plummet after these mines became inactive. A&G employed 418 people in Virginia as recently as 2010, but now only accounts for 89 jobs. And if most of the fucking mines are in this position, then you just have the tiniest sliver of population that are employed by the mines themselves. And from what I understand, a coal mining individual

doesn't necessarily travel to jobs, but there is sort of like a, we're done here, let's move on to the next one type of thing. And if they can't do that, they're kind of stuck. And they could probably, if he did initiate the cleanup procedures,

he probably could just hire back the same people that do it. Of course. And it would take like, you know, three or five years or so. So you could have people who wouldn't have a job suddenly would, and it would be doing something good for the environment.

But as we've covered, Jim Justice hates giving out. Great cash, homie. Yeah, the Forbes article, and you know, when I say it's like a series of bills he won't pay, I do not have time to go through all the examples listed here but specifically on the question of mine reclamation they give this stat as of 2019 the Virginia's Department of Mines minerals and energy estimates that justices coal companies

based 200 million dollars in mine reclamation liabilities. Justice claims it will cost closer to $10 million. So the state of Virginia says you owe us $200 million to clean up these fucking mines. This guy's like the king of not paying debts. Oh yeah. He's fucking eating mozzarella sticks. He doesn't fucking have time

to do shit. A graph from this article. Remember, if you don't pay back your your student loan debts for uh spending fifty thousand dollars on a communications degree it will be garnished from your applebee's paycheck i'd like you know we should spend an episode just going through all the lessons from rich people we've gotten from this podcast because i think one of them is like if you're rich don't pay any of your bills and make them take you to court oh yeah and you know obviously trump and jim justice and others but it would be funny if like you know like let's say

local podcasts started doing that like you know the most successful ones like chapa were like yeah hey we'll pay you like 50 bucks for this idea and then just don't pay up just be like yeah sue us We have the number one Patreon. What are you going to do, motherfucker? I mean, I've been advocating for Grubstakers to just take out a bunch of massive loans, you know, have some executive bonuses, and then declare bankruptcy,

and then Grubrakers LLC will open up and take some massive loans of its own. You know what I'm legitimately mad about is when COVID started a year and a half ago or whatever, we were joking on the podcast, like, let's take out PPP loans for Grub Stakers. And then just a few months ago, I talked to various stand-up comedians who just took out multi-thousand dollar PPP loans

and never had to pay them back. What? Really? Yeah. I don't want to name names, but there are comedians I know who took out 5,000 or 6,000 PPP loans. Great cash, homie. And just your money.

It gets annoying. The amount of things we've done as a bit on Grubstakers that we should have just actually done. We should have just been like, this pandemic is fucking our money. We need 10 grand for Grubstakers. And we might have gotten it. There's a graph on this article that shows the dwindling jobs. In 2008, A&G Coal had 450 jobs.

And in 2017, they were down to 28 jobs. So I think a part of this from what you guys are talking about, why he doesn't just set up shop outside of just paying them bills, he gets to then say, I'm CEO of 100 companies, when in reality, let's say 40% of them are not really doing anything anymore. It is almost a ghost corporation, similar to a shell corp of like, it exists,

but not really. And, uh, yeah, well, it is funny. Like it is, it seems like a Marx brothers routine,

like him, like running his creditors through his million different shell companies. Like when we talk about him having a, you know, a hundred different companies, there's another anecdote in the Forbes article, which is basically like at some point a judge got sick of his shit and said, okay,

you have to pay up and order to us marshals to seize this company's accounts at like chase and some other bank. And they went into the accounts. It was like, they were empty. Yeah. Like he just bounces his money between like whatever company owes money. He takes money out of of and then there's

nothing to pay the creditors you know it's it's yeah like you're saying it's all a shell game and it's like you know this affects generations of people you know um it's not like okay well a coal miner doesn't have work well you know his kids are going to do something that they're they they're fucked you know um from the same same article this guy chuck nelson a retired union member said his time in the mines left him with one kidney and a myriad of health problems he now worries for his grandchildren's future as well as for his colleagues still fighting for a living in these mines the quote from this guy chuck nelson there's no security there whatsoever it's tough trying to

make a living in these mines these days one of of Justice's idled operations, A&G Mines on Looney Ridge, has stripped 590 acres of forest in Wise County, Virginia. The mine entered temporary cessation in April 2013, and the state set a deadline to reclaim the mine by 2014. This article, they visited the mine in 2017 and confirmed that four years after the original deadline, the mine was far from reclaimed one instance in a pattern violations the state government registered at the site what was once

a rolling tree covering landscape was barren several trucks set inactive on the large mine the site was neither backfilled nor revegetated and a high wall cut to reach the coal mine remained untouched um capitalism fucking rules man the employment logs they had 160 people in 05 now have 36 and i'm showing the guys a photo of this fucking pit that just exists there now right that used to be like a green hill and then they just stripped the hill but think about he's like preventing people from getting lyme disease yeah destroying all those forests sure so he's actually preventing people from getting Lyme disease. Yeah. Like destroying all those forests. Sure. So he's actually saving lives. But the thing that's worse about it is it just refrains from my man, S.H.

West Virginia sexy! I mean, not like this. It's just fucking gutted. Yeah. It is like, you know, another point that I think we've made before, we have made before on resources episodes, but I think it's worth mentioning when we talk about oil, coal, whatever natural resource,

the United States has a policy where we've decided that these belong to individual capitalists instead of the broader public. Just as an example, Norway, they put all their oil wealth or at least a percentage of their oil wealth into a sovereign wealth fund that's shared among all citizens of Norwayway so it's like this is just a very specific way we've done it with the resources that exist in the earth that i think all u.s citizens should have some shared stake in and these are the results we get this this horrible strip mining right but norway

is all white people and so you know of course they're able to make it work. Whereas America is multicultural. And, you know, if you want that kind of, if you want that kind of welfare state, you know, kind of making you look a little racist. A little racist. Continuing with this article, a water scientist and community organizer with the NGO Appalachian Voices, Man Helper keeps a close eye on Justice's companies.

He has seen almost no reclamation on Looney Ridge, which he calls a visual blight on the land. This is the place that I just showed you all. The great concern, a quote from Matt Helper, the great concern is people feel that Wise County and other counties are going to be left holding the bag for this cleanup, he said. Justice is not the only operator warehousing mines and extended inactivity. CHN, the article source, identified 59 cases in central Appalachian in which a currently idle permit has been inactive for more than five straight years and neither reclamation nor production required by law, including several

that have been halted since the 1980s it's 40 years like this isn't you know for four years it could be early 30s if it's from the 1980s but which is still young in fact some would say that it's the new 20s. Oh, sure. Yeah. Yeah. Certainly not these minors. Still.

Well, okay. Yeah. But I mean, you know, the point is, though, is that like this problem is not being solved. And with Jim Justice becoming governor of West Virginia, the problem is not going to get any fucking better. And the idea that he's lost a lot of money in a Greensill scandal that we will cover in a moment here, it doesn't mean that his power has dwindled because he still holds the bag to all this stuff. Because technically, I think that were he to pay all of his fines that Sean mentioned in the four

piece and this among a few other things, he only have a couple million like it's like literally that close and so the reason for Jim Justice to continue dealing out Jim Justice's large behavior is that if you motherfucker's gonna go broke if he doesn't you know well that reminds me of a quote um from brainyquote.com i am a strong believer that without justice there is no peace no last in peace in a way and that was from the the great angelina jolie oh i thought it was martin luther king that was angelina jolie according to brainyquote.com she was endorsing jim justice for governor well yeah all these quotes are endorsing jim justice for governor that was actually his campaign slogan it said no justice no peace you know because he was going to have

his goons burn the state to the ground if he didn't vote for him. Yeah, his campaign poster was like those murals in Belfast that show like Torion and Felicia's. Just a bunch of people in ski masks. No justice, no peace. And so this problem that's continuing in the southeast

corner of the United States is one that, you know, for Nelson, the guy in the article, he says the bottom line is when they get done mining here, the coal companies are going to pack up and leave. We're not their concern here. And he's right. The coal companies have fucked these people and made it so that they're just in limbo and fucked. Sean, you got another piece when it comes to Jim Justice? Right, yeah. I mean, just from the same Forbes article, and again, I can't go through all these examples,

but I think this one's a little bit amusing. So I'll just, I'll read it here from Forbes. It's about a company he has called Kentucky Coal, and Forbes calls this a particularly instructive case. It's one of more than a dozen mining, or sorry, Kentucky Fuel. calls this uh... particularly instructive case uh... it's one of more than a dozen mining birds are kentucky fuel uh... it's what it's more than uh... one of the dozen coal mining companies owned by jim justin his children and run out of rowan oak virginia in two dozen fourteen justice personally signed

an agreement with the state of kentucky promising that he would quote unconditionally irrevocably guarantee that reclamation work on Kentucky Fuels mines would be completed by November 2015. In return, Justice negotiated $4.5 million of civil penalties down to just $1.5 million. And of course, he didn't follow through on that.

He did it in October of 2015. That's right. He did it even before the deadline. Under cost, on time, and under budget. No, fast forward to 2019. The work is still not done. Kentucky's Energy and Environment Cabinet, which is the state's CPA, has asked a judge to snap back the remaining $3 billion in fines plus interest.

The agency says it no longer trusts Justices' companies. It seems it has reason. Kentucky Fuel was also caught mining without a permit in an area where the state had ordered work halted three times my god quote Kentucky fuel removed coal as if the Commonwealth cessation orders did not exist unquote so the state ordered them to stop work three times and they just fucking ignored it uh... command that is the punchline

justices competent justice companies have filed personal lawsuits against kentucky state employees alleging in one case quote malicious closure of a justice on mine the agency says justices attempting to quote intimidate the kentucky government into re renegotiating the two thousand fourteen deal so the agency has advises employees to to be careful quote because justice defendants have no apprehension about filing personal lawsuits based on

falsehoods and fabrications cabinet employees have been instructed to avoid speaking with the defendants without a cabinet attorney present. Unquote. Agency attorneys have expressed awe at the mendacity, arguing in court filings that, quote, few will choose public service if coal billionaires are allowed to intimidate state employees with impunity. And then Justice says Kentucky should, quote, be forever most appreciative for the work he's already done. So this fucking guy, like guy ignores state orders three times

then starts suing individual Kentucky employees who try to enforce orders against him. That sounds like justice has been served. Who's responsible? I say, who's responsible for this unwarranted attack on my person? So now we're going to move on

to when he lost over $700 million because of green cell capital another topic we've covered previously steven so you might remember we've covered lex green cell before in his company green cell capital in 2020 it was revealed that they had a shit ton of bad loans. Green Cell Capital, that is. Right. And so they're an international supply chain finance company.

So they collateralize people's receivables that they get and then make loans based on that. Right. And they did this. The only sort of innovation they did is they just made it really, really easy to do that for companies with an app, pretty much. And it was kind of this niche finance area that exploded into the multi-billion dollar industry. And Greensill was at the middle of it. So that kind of exploded at the last quarter of 2020

and then we did an episode on it. And well, anyway, Justice was caught up in that. And how they were caught up was Justice and his wife personally guaranteed a loan of $700 million to his coal company bluestone coal and they um once that was in 2018 and he's kind of arguing he didn't know Greensill was fucked up. I didn't realize Greensill was a bad company.

So Greensill filed for the EU equivalent of bankruptcy in the EU and the Greensill version, the Greensill company based in the US also filed for bankruptcy recently. And Governor Justice is trying to sue Greensill right now, saying I didn't know they were fucked up, but they were.

And they tricked me. I was defrauded. I was forced into a fraudulent loan. I say, who's responsible for this unwarranted attack on my person yeah no sense a governor but when i signed this agreement with green seal i thought they were supposed to pay me so um if it just went through like that he would be liable for up to $850 million because it was the principal in interest.

the main thing, his saving grace in all of this is that Greensill was indeed fucked up in their underwriting practices. He might possibly have a case against them, but the only thing is one of the creditors of Greensill is trying to claw back the money

and that namely that's Credit Suisse so Credit Suisse and a consortium of banks and investment companies among them SoftBank also in 2019 and 2020 invested in Greensill's business

and now they're trying to claw back a bunch of capital that they lost through the bankruptcies, etc. And part of the fallout is basically, just as his mistake was he got involved in bigger

international capitalists instead of his national level one. And it just exploited on him and so now he owes up to 850 850 million dollars and that's sort of the main reason why he's not no longer according to forbes a billionaire anymore i'm sure he'll pay though because it's well i'd say it's a legal contingency and you know you know you don't you never know what will happen in the court but it's probably the case that he'll owe at least i don't know half that sure and that would make him still not a billionaire right so that um that lawsuit the lawsuit that justice filed against credits

sorry against greensill right to say that there was a fraudulent loan is ongoing and we'll see what happens with that. It's so nuts hearing these stories about these Goliaths of the economy fighting against each other, trying to scrape every little bit of each other's scam out of the other

and the upshot is like, well yeah ultimately what this means is in a few years there's going to be a bunch more people living on the streets. Basically. Yeah. It's. Yeah. What an apt way to look at billionaires fighting.

It is. I mean, it is. That story is so funny to me, too, because it's like so his net worth one point five billion. And he basically guaranteed he signs paperwork that puts him on the hook for half of his net worth and it's like yeah you should have waited till midnight at the Applebee's on that one buddy shouldn't have been so punctual

about that paperwork he was at the Taco Bell for this week how many of us let he who hasn't binged on mozzarella sticks and made a bad decision now who's responsible for this unwarranted attack Let he who hasn't binged on mozzarella sticks and made a bad decision. Now, who's responsible?

I say, who's responsible for this unwarranted attack on my person? I was just reading this Forbes article. It's like, this is the cheapest guy on earth. Oh, yeah. He's just like, yeah, half my net worth. Sure, Lex Greensill. You pitched me. I will put half my net worth on the line. He thought he was a big fish.

Yeah. my net worth on the line i just uh he thought he was a big fish yeah but when he went into the international arena he just encountered these like fucking like deutsche bank level people oh yeah basically who just fucked him up so you remember when you guys were saying earlier like either he's gonna get his billions back or he's the dumbest guy on earth. I'm not sure he's going to get his billions back. Well, and it's like, again, like this Forbes article, so like one anecdote, there's a town in Kentucky, population 15,000, desperately needs money for its underfunded schools.

They are suing his companies for $2 million in back taxes that he owes, and he's, of course, like fighting it. It's like, okay, yeah, $2 million for the schools schools i can't do that but 700 million for green still fucking give me the paper i'll sign it right now well here's the thing uh a justice is merely incidental to law and order you know and not just the two million from that town in Kentucky. This piece from NPR in 2015 shows him owing 15 million in taxes and fines. And since then, some of these have been, you know, argued in and out of court. But like everything from this, like in the past 16 months, while fines and taxes were not paid, Justice personally contributed nearly 2.9 million in interest-free loans and in-kind

contributions to his governational campaign according to his state campaign finance reports so he's being like penalized for 15 million and then is also putting millions in his campaign to run for governor at the time like the man is just a giant fucking chooch well it is appropriate his name is justice because he spends so much time in court this this guy, Billy Shelton, attorney for justice, responded to him not paying $2.6 million in delinquent federal mine safety penalties,

which are levied by the Federal Mine Safety and Health Administration. They obtained data by NPR show that he paid $675,000 this year as part of a payment agreement, but the agreement covers less than half of the total amount owed. Like Sean said, there are a whole bunch of him just not paying his bills on time.

Another thing I found was that he had $1.38 million in new unpaid mine safety penalties, and delinquent justice mines also continue to have worse than average safety records, like I've mentioned before there's a so in june 2017 the irs filed more than like a million dollars worth of judgments and loans against him which is like this is like right when he was getting elected governor and the fucking irs yeah coming after his ass uh but i just wanted to read i think it's well it's not like the voters are like yeah get him irs right right uh but it's like yeah i would clearly he was putting like campaign ads on the air and he can't like fucking dig money out of his mattress to pay the fucking irs uh but i wanted to read in my opinion the funniest paragraph from this forbes article

uh and i'll just i'll just read it all for you and and you can tell me if my judgment of like what is humorous is accurate don't there's a long history of creditors trying to get their hands on justices money even his own attorneys phelps dunbar which represented justice in a two thousand eleven case in louisiana suit one of his companies for four400,000 in unpaid fees.

The case was settled. Billy Shelton, who represents Kentucky Fuel, had to get a court judgment in 2013 for $85,000. Incredibly, Shelton continues to represent the company. So his own fucking attorneys had to sue him for like their back pay and some of them still represent this fucking guy the last few details on this npr piece the date msha data showed that the mines were cited for 3 657 violations while they were delinquent including 699 violations that are classified by msha as

factors in mine fatalities fatal mine accidents in major disasters msha mine inspectors issued dozens of citations for excessive coal dust which can feed mine explosions and roof and wall violations which can lead to mine collapses one justice mining company company, Kentucky Fuel Corp, which we've talked about, owed more than $709,000 in delinquent penalties according to MSHA data and was admonished in an April decision by the Federal Mine Safety and Health Commission with adjudicates penalty disputes.

The mob is insane. I feel so stupid that we paid taxes for grub stakers this year. This is the first year we've paid corporate taxes. And clearly that was a mistake. Because like that's the other, like going through the article,

that's like the entire Jim Justice strategy and, you know, Trump too and some of these other people's is like, if they just don't pay it, they can settle. So it's like he's like, they quote justice, you know, like he says, or Virginia says that he owes 200 million in mine reclamation. So he says it'll be 10 million. And they quote him at various points, like Forbes quotes him saying, you know like he says or virginia says that he owes 200 million in mine reclamation so he says it'll be 10 million and they quote him at various points like uh forbes

quotes him saying you know you owe 800 000 for this he says i can settle it for 100 000 so it's just like if you're just like if you just don't pay these bills you can just pay less yep you know i mean it is a good business strategy i'm not going to argue that the thing about like from when this npr article was written in 2015, some of these things that we're talking about ended up becoming resolved. But this is literally happening as the motherfucker's running for governor. Like, it's not like, oh, you know, it's just a random bill. It's like, no, this guy that's on the TV saying, I can do a great job,

is fucking shown being a terrible employee and boss. Well, also, I mean, he's just pumping money into all the news. Pretty much every news company in West Virginia, they're not going to run an article being like, check out what this asshole's also doing. It's kind of the hush-hush thing in political like, political advertising in news media is that, you know, you pump a lot of money and they're going to give you positive coverage. And I know they don't have access to all this information, but it is funny to imagine, like, the voters of West Virginia being like, well, this guy only pays one-tenth of all his bills. I can trust him with my kids' school. He's going to take care of the education budget. Well, I'll tell

you what. Equal justice means that there's not one set of rules for the powerful and another for everyone else. Those are the wise words of former New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. What happened to that?

Brainyquote.com. Continuing on with the Greensill story though, Stephen claims that it's more than the $700 million that brainy quote.com continuing on with the green cell story though steven claims that it's more than the 700 million that we just discussed so he's also liable for up to 368 million jeez to a virginia bank called carter bank and trust and this, well, this was to a combination of his coal company and his farming company, his agricultural company. Right.

Again, personally liable through his guarantee ship. Oh, really? Yeah. So he guaranteed a billion dollars? Yeah. Bloody Jesus. Right?

You all right? I did the math right. I'm just like, this is like literally my job and i'm like green so i guess oh my god green still must have got him like the fucking deluxe mozzarella sticks or something i just like that when he got him to sign this he thought he thought he was such a big fish and then like just random german and luxembourg bankers just totally fucked him. Yeah, basically. Well, he's got a few more years left in his term. I'm sure he can make the money back.

What if he passes a law in West Virginia that's just a debt jubilee? But then if you're poor, the paperwork doesn't quite make it through all the red tape. Let's see. Can you absolve international debts as a governor? So you might be thinking to yourself, okay, well, he clearly has stubbed his toe in all of these other fields. But as governor, he must be doing something right, right?

All I can hear in the press is how great West Virginia is to live in right now. Ever since 2017, they've been attracting all these people fleeing New York. They're moving to West Virginia is to live in right now. Ever since 2017, they've been attracting all these people fleeing New York. They're moving to West Virginia. Of course. I once started a GoFundMe to build a cult compound. And I mean, GoFundMe deleted it almost immediately for some bullshit about terms of service and a violation.

But I did plan out all the pricing and I said, I'm going to buy property in West Virginia because I was the cheapest. And I was not going to rip off my donors that never materialized because of some terms of service bullshit. What was the terms of service thing? What did they say you were doing wrong?

They didn't really specify. They just said, you can't do this. Even though I was very clear about all my expenses, property, guns, construction. What was the budget for guns? Probably higher than the property budget. It said right there on the GoFundMe, we have to have a budget for the gynecologist on staff

for my seven wives. Here's a cult. Okay, I say cult, but I was joking. I said very clearly wives. This is a cult. No, this, well, okay. I say cult, but I was joking. I said very clearly this is not a cult. It is a lifestyle for improving

mental acuity. See, I love satire. I love parody. But you gotta be specific about what's a joke and what's not because these things, they get out of hand. hand well what's not a joke is I didn't get any money that's a fair point well so you are you you have something in common with Jim Justice's creditors well to close out this episode there's one more story I want to cover and to open it up we're going to go to uh Stephanie Mueller I think, from MSNBC, talking to Jim Justice about one of the things he's done as governor.

I want to ask you about other families. The law you just signed banning transgender female athletes from playing on women's school sports teams. Can you name one example of a transgender child trying to gain an unfair competitive advantage at a school there in West Virginia? Well, Stephanie, I don't have that experience exactly to myself right now, but I will tell you this. Not yourself, your state, sir. Can you give me one example of a transgender child trying to get an unfair advantage, just one, in your state? You signed a bill about it. No, I can't really tell you one,

but I can tell you this, Stephanie. I'm a coach, and I coach a girls' basketball team. And I can tell you that we all know what an absolute advantage boys would have playing against girls. But, sir, you have no examples of this happening. Why would you take your time to do this? Let's talk about other things that I can give you examples of in your state. According to U.S. News & World Report,

West Virginia ranks 45th in education, 47th in health care, 48th on the economy, and 50th in infrastructure. If you cannot name one single example for me of a child doing this, why would you make this a priority? I just named four things that would seem to me like a much bigger priority. Well, Stephanie, I didn't make it a priority. It wasn't my bill. You signed it. I mean, it's just come to me, and I have absolutely signed it because I believe, from the standpoint of a coach, I believe that girls work so hard to obtain Title IX. And I do not have any idea now why we are trying to disadvantage them in participating in the sport that they put so much into.

I don't know why we're doing that. This is not like it's a big priority to me. In fact, I think we only have 12. No, Stephanie, listen. I think we only have 12 kids maybe in our state that are transgender type kids. I mean, for crying out loud, Stephanie, I signed hundreds of bills, hundreds of bills. This is not a priority to me. And but but within with all that, I would say I think that it would impose an unfair disadvantage on the girls.

And so from that standpoint, I support it. All right, then, sir. Thank you. And please come back when when beyond anecdotal feelings as a coach, you can show me evidence where those young women are being disadvantaged in your state, because I can show you evidence about how ranking that low in education is disadvantaged young women and men in West Virginia. Hey, thanks for watching our YouTube channel. You should know that you can follow today's stories and break news and catch up on your favorite

KLSNBC show. Oh, sure. Listen, she sucks. I'll tell you what. I coach girls basketball and they are dog shit because they do not have a penis between their legs and

that is essential for free throws. He did like what she'd asked him, for example did become foghorn leghorn oh yeah oh yeah it was pretty uncanny i mean but this is a man that runs as a democrat and then trump gets in office and goes i'm a republican now like the a spineless fucking jellyfish trust fund man child baby that's eating mozzarella sticks at midnight and and is procrastinating on paperwork you know jim justice is a blight on west virginia and the fact that we can rightfully say that he's a fat ass idiot is you know gosh i can't even imagine what the fucking life of jim justice would be like if he's being held accountable for every fucking thing that's going on right now and we're allowed to

fat shame uh at least yogi and i sean's like 90 pounds so that that's uh that's borderline 95 what about me though uh i you also aren't allowed to we have the same dog shit diet and somehow you have abs um we both ordered pizza today but you're the one with abs i don't get it uh we're roommates uh so i've seen his abs but uh i'm sorry for saying on the podcast you have abs it's okay any maker points uh so okay so i don't remember where I was leading to with what I was just saying but there's this story recently of

an 11 year old trans girl who is now suing the state of West Virginia because they banned her from girls cross country they said she had to run with the boys and like there's a whole argument over you know the age that someone can identify or whatever and i'm not going to touch that but

if like you're 11 years old trying to run in cross like did the 11 year olds can barely run like half half of the 11 year olds aren't even going to stay on the track some will go backwards yeah some will go backwards some will stop and like eat a snack halfway through a run and but because of this thing that he signed into law this 11 year old girl is banned from running with the girls cross-country team yeah which is just like it's it's absolutely ridiculous. And like you mentioned, we're not going to go into the finer details of what it means to be a trans athlete, but in terms of being a human being like I just want to fucking play a sport and I can't do it in this shithole state because my fat ass

governor doesn't understand that a human being there's more than 12 fucking trans people in the goddamn state and that maybe you know listen are there issues with how this this uh should be handled sure i i don't have full solutions i personally think all sports should just be done on merit because to say that they need to be fair in any sense doesn't it's a sport there's a clear winner and loser what do you it should be there shouldn't be any fucking division that's my own fucking personal thing all the sports who gives a shit there was a fucking fox show about like oh look it's a woman pitcher who's uh breaking the glass ceiling and then they're like airing this while also airing uh mlb without any or women women where I'm sure

there are lots of women who could compete in the MLB. What I would say to the trans people of West Virginia is if you want your governor to ignore you, just become opioid addicts. Now who's responsible? I say who's responsible for this unwarranted attack on my person? The only other thing I would say is

the last bit from from that forbes article again i have another correction to bring in oh no uh just like about like this fucking guy because it's like you know nobody will disagree when he came into office as west virginia governor in 2017 we don't know his like personal feelings as to why he ran i would i would imagine it is to enhance his own business empire not not to give back in any way. But it's like, yeah, nobody will argue. West Virginia was a fucked up place in 2017. That's not his fault.

It's probably his dad's fault, but not his fault. But it's like, what the fuck has he done since 2017? Nothing. He's not even been doing the job full time. He's been coaching. He's been running his businesses. Well, okay.

Justice is to be found only in imagination. West Virginia is sexy! According to inventor of dynamite, Alfred Nobel. Yeah. But so, apparently part of his campaign was like, I'm a businessman. I'm a billionaire. I'm going to attract investment.

I'm going to attract investment to West Virginia. So the Forbes article quotes a uh... a republican com there before vertical quotes like a republican state representative who points out that you know business owners and entrepreneurs expect a level playing field they're probably like less likely to invest when the governor doesn't divest or put any of his assets into a blind trust and is apparently just like ignoring orders and all this shit.

Why are you going to invest somewhere where the governor has a competing company against you that he's clearly stacking the deck in favor of? Of course. But when I say, and so that's one point. But then the other point, I want to issue a correction. When I said that there's a West Virginia delegate who filed a law to make the governor live in the mansion. I was wrong about that.

It's actually a requirement of West Virginia's constitution that the governor is required by the West Virginia constitution to quote unquote reside in Charleston, the state's capital. Jim Justice refuses to. So this delegate, Isaac Spanogle, is actually suing the governor to force him to abide by the Constitution and live in Charleston, the capital, from Forbes.

I mean, I will say, what is that guy, a delegate? Yes, he's a delegate from West Virginia. A Democratic delegate from West Virginia. Like, get a better hobby. He's trying to make him live in a mansion.

As of 2019. Do you really want Jim Justice to be more proactive as a governor? Are you like... You want him to seamless the mozzarella sticks at the mansion? Yeah. I want this guy to do more stuff. That's the thing when people are like,

Trump's golfing all the time. Good. Do you want him working? Yeah. But yes, he has filed this lawsuit. And Justice's excuse, according to Forbes, Justice says he doesn't need to live in the governor's mansion when he's perfectly comfortable in his modest house in Lewisburg. Quote, I'm not going to throw the state's money away and I don't need

somebody taking care of my laundry, unquote. And so this is like he doesn't want to spend taxpayer money. He takes a salary of a dollar. Right. He wants to be close to his business empire. I did. Does he think that like if he just doesn't show up at the mansion they're just gonna I mean maybe they just fire the staff and save I don't know probably going by what I'm guessing are West Virginia wages maybe $200,000

a year we don't have anything to do let's just get paid for nothing maybe they go to work and play Switch Portable is it Gardner who's juster who doesn't have anyone fucking up in his business. Oh, the gardener's definitely got to go to work. Yeah, he's got to do stuff.

Well, he doesn't have anyone watching him. Yeah. That's good. Yeah, unless he's planting food, then Jim Justice is watching him. He's planting corn and grain. Looking at that picture of Jim Justice is watching. He's planting corn and grain. Looking at that picture of Jim Justice, I don't think he's eating corn or grain just because those have nutrients in them.

And that is not... That face telling people to get vaccinated does not look like it has touched a nutrient in decades. Jim Justice has like accidentally inhaled a vegetable like once a year. It's like we eat like 20 spiders a year. Yeah, it's like a spider.

That's how he gets his protein. Occasionally a vegetable just gets through. Oh, I did want to mention also I had that quote from us Senator Joe Manchin about how a Jim justice won't work. Um, this like, uh, apparently like the defining feature of West Virginia politics is like Joe Manchin and Jim justice fire, uh, fighting each other. This is relevant because apparently in 2018, Jim justice fired Joe Manchin's wife from

her job as the state secretary for education and the arts. No, as much as this episode has run long, there is so much to cover with Jim Justice. I think it's fascinating. And I mean, this is like, what do you want to call this? I mean, it's a well-worn phrase, but late stage capitalism. Oh, yeah. Where it's just like, obviously, the billionaires buy the politicians, and now they're realizing, let's cut out the middleman.

Let's just be the politicians. And so you get all their little foibles and their own little fucking personal hangups and beefs with state power invested. And then you get these guys like Trump and Justice who are like, yeah, I don't't have to abide by ethics i don't have to divest my companies i don't have to put shit up on trust i can just use government power to make my company that much more powerful and you know what good on them for fucking recognizing the moment we're all living in

so listen i know that we've spent nearly two hours sitting on the city at and uh... like i the beginning, it's not just that he's a piece of shit. I want to quote from... I mean, we spent two hours shitting on him, but we want to be clear. He is still one of God's children. That's right. I want to close this episode, play this one audio drop from this piece called Discovering McDowell County, West Virginia.

It's on YouTube and it's this older couple that runs like a charity pantry where people can come get like pots and pans and diapers and clothes and stuff and that doesn't have very necessary in West Virginia and they they talk about what what's they've learned from dealing with the poorest population in West Virginia. Can you give us an example of a time when maybe someone poor taught you something or made an impression on you or said something? I may think. All the time. Eugene.

Yeah. Lots of different stories. Okay. Eugene was a guy living in a house by himself, and he was a retired minor, disabled, living on what, not even $600 a month probably back then. And Eugene had a leaky roof. And when I went to check, and I needed help with,

and when I went to check the roof, this wasn't just a leaky roof. I mean, it was like it was encouraging the rain to come in. So he couldn't use his bathroom. He couldn't use his bedroom. He couldn't use his kitchen. He basically was left with one room with a coal stove in the corner. The room was covered with black because of the coal stove. And he had a very bad back, that was his disability from the mines, and he slept on a ratty couch with a piece of plywood on it.

And we, a group of volunteers, not necessarily myself, went in there. And I kept saying to Eugene, so you went in to fix it. But anyway, when I visited Eugene, I had to be very careful. I kept saying, well, I don't know if we can afford to fix this. I don't know if we have the people to fix it. I don't know anything. Don't count on anything. And in this mess that he lived in, sleeping on this plywood in this soot-covered room with a pan of potatoes,

just boiling potatoes. That's what he lived off, these potatoes. Eugene said to me, he looked at me, he said, I don't care if you fix my roof. I thought, what do you mean you don't care if I fix your roof? He said, the only thing that means anything to me is that somebody cares. Now the rest of the story. They did a good job on the roof, the volunteer group,

and it was not cheap. About a month or two later, I hear that Eugene has died. And, of course, being very practical, I said to myself, Darn, and we just spent all that money on the roof. But then I realized, they said, Eugene had died and they found him dead in bed. I thought, that was the greatest thing I've done in years. Eugene died in bed not on that ratty couch

on a piece of plywood that's the story of eugene oh so when we talk about who's got a zinger jim justice and let's get some drops like you know i know that's fucking harrowing to hear and uh technically didn't need to put that at the end there but the point being that jim justin what the fuck he gets to be this fucking foghorn leghorn piece of shit existing going on youtube every week with baby dogs saying baby dogs need you to get the vaccine and he has people in his state that that are there that are dying because he doesn't want to fucking work well and you know what like we've been doing this podcast three years now and every single billionaire i think without question every single billionaire we have an angle where we go here's how they're dodging their taxes and it's like yeah it's true you

know federal taxes some of that goes to like blowing apart afghani pine nut farmers and you know the war machine and all that but also a lot of it goes to health care a lot of it goes to education a lot of it goes to social services a lot of what these billionaires are dodging is help for people like Eugene. And it's just like when we talk about a guy like Jim Justice, the end of that Forbes article that I've been quoting all this episode, the end of the article is two years into his term as governor in August, I believe, 2019. He calls a press conference to announce that he has finally paid back the taxes he owes to the state of West

Virginia. So the governor, two years into his term, finally pays his taxes to West Virginia. I think we've found a good billionaire. He pays his taxes to Credit Suisse. Yes. The article ends by saying, quote, as for his obligations outstanding in other states, he says, quote, it may take a little while unquote while so it's like you know when we talk about these people being just like relentless tax dodgers these are like the literally the most powerful most comfortable people on earth

and they can't just give back that tiniest little bit of scratch so that people with eugene can have something approaching a decent life and with that uh... what you mean was the june sixth uh... only just because we got beaches that's what they don't tell you about Eugene he died because he fucked too hard on the bed

it was like I got the bed back now it's time to get on tinder and with that this has been Grubstakers we really appreciate you supporting us on Patreon and listening to our free episodes on SoundCloud please rate and review. And once again, thank you to Brendan

who sent the suggestion of Jim Justice. Please follow us on Twitter and reach out if you have a billionaire suggestion. And if you see us on the street, give us a little kiss on the cheek. Okay, well, I don't know about that, but sure. Maybe two kisses. If you want to see our sources, we put them on grubstakers.net when we're

not lazy. And with that, this has been Grubstakers.net when we're not lazy. And with that, this has been Grubstakers. I'm Yogi Poliwag. I'm Andy Palmer. I'm Steve Jeffries. I'm Shumpy McCarthy. Yogi and I will be in Portland September 16, Seattle September 17, 18. Thank you for listening.

Thanks for supporting. Goodbye. You got to name the venue, dude. The Rendezvous, September 17, 18. In the time. Siren Theater at September 16, 8pm. 8pm for all these shows. And Annex Theater, David Borey, Maddie Smith, September

24, 25th at the Annex Theater. West Virginia, sexy. Alright. Doodles. Oh, my audacity crashed. That's not great. Recover projects, please. Goodness.

I hope that works. Save projects. I was about to say your audacity wouldn't crash if you were using Linux. Okay. But that's probably not true. You had the audacity for a minute. Oh, my goodness. Chris, cut all this out.

Yogi, don't you even let me get started on my Microsoft Arc mouse, which was not compatible with my Surface Pro. Oh, no. Even though I returned it. And then I got a new one and the same fucking problem. Really? Maybe a driver issue. Yeah.

You are the driver. No, I spent an hour on support with Microsoft. And? No resolution. I'm going to return it to Amazon and get a different mouse. Get the Surface mouse. The one that breaks. No, but that's the one I had. I got the Arc Surface mouse. It didn't work?

It worked for a minute and then it stopped working. Were you using Bluetooth headphones as well? I was. Yeah, that's the issue. You can't do both. You can't do both? I don't know why. What a great product. Oh, yeah. You know, the one thing that works on every computer, a wireless mouse, does not work on the surface.

Yeah, it works on Bluetooth, I'm pretty sure. So you can only have one Bluetooth at a time on the surface? I mean, yeah, it sucks, but yeah, probably. Interesting. Anyway, back to the show. Told you to put Linux on on it chris leave all of this in west virginia sexy hey give me some i don't want some fucking props on that chris i i love that drop that's a good job thanks ma'am