Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 112: No One Agency Should Have All That POWER

Episode Date: September 5, 2019

This week we talk a little bit about the Harlan County coal blockade, and then we dig in to Tarence's article in The Baffler about the Appalachian Regional Commission and the Obama Administration's POWER Initiative. You can read the article here: https://thebaffler.com/salvos/hollowed-out-ray Support us on Patreon! www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

I read the whole fucking article on the way back from Pirate World. Let me just go ahead and tell you, though. You'll be proud of me, Tanya. I think I've conquered the gender binary a little bit this week. I'm sure you haven't, but do tell. I'm experimenting with perfume. I smell it from here. Is that what that is?

That is what that is. I thought it was you. Not me, friend. Yeah, I've... Well, the thing is, is cologne doesn't wear very long on me and i kind of like to smell like a french whore a little bit and uh you know what is i stand corrected i have conquered it anyway so um yeah that's my story

what's wrong with natural smells i don't know why is everybody so opposed to natural you smell like a goddamn poke at who me i love the whole poke at reference i feel like that's mostly a Tennessee thing. I love that. That's a skunk. Look, you attract maids better with your own natural pheromones. Maids? Maids, yeah. You attract maids who come clean your house. If you're walking down the street, they're like, oh, is that the yo?

Domestic workers. Can I please come clean your house? Is that what happened to your cabin? It's yeah it's clean because i tried smells like shit he must need his cabin clean yeah amazing it looks good in here yeah yeah it looks great i could tell since i come in i've been spiffed up in fact i was able to spot something i needed on your table but before you know nothing was discernible. You couldn't tell what was going on around here. Well, you know, I have got my days down to, like,

I'm back in a rhythm again. Good. I go over to the coal blockade, to the Harlan County coal blockade. Like, who? Support your brothers and mine. For no other reason than, like, I'm like, yeah, man, I'm in the same boat as y'all. Unemployed. Unemployed.

Fucked by the man. No, I really do think that they are. Well, when they ask you what you do, what do you say? Ah, a little this, a little that. Oh, yeah, I tell them I don't have a job. I mean, like, it's funny. Like, you could tell, like, okay, so job i mean like it's funny like you could tell like okay so there's like several different classifications of people who go to the coal miner blockade there's like the

i don't know what you would call sort of like activists or opportunists people who like want to use it as a um you know valor valor yeah there's that and then there's like the tourists there's like woke tourists it's sort of like a tourist attraction like i guess were you there on sunday yeah and so somebody had driven all the way from california yeah i know they flew in somebody said some because i didn't meet them but i was sitting talking to another group of people and they were like yeah somebody flew here from florida i was like what and he was like yeah and but the guy was asleep in his van when i was like when i had walked florida guy yeah apparently but i heard one woman i never met her got near her but i heard her telling this other guy one of the miners he was saying you can stay here tonight we got plenty of camping gear and stuff

and she was like well i think we're gonna go to pikeville and get a hotel you know these photo shoots they last all day long and start really early so and i've got on tuesday wednesday and thursday so i really have to you know i have to get a good night's sleep what do you think she was a photo shooting i have no idea you know if i had cared enough i would have said oh what's your photo shoot for but i didn't give two rats ass about her photo shoot she wasn't a model i can tell you that i have no idea that's a shame it takes you three days to look like that she's like fuck you hate hate hate hate there's those so there's those two groups and then the third is journalists you know people writing about it or trying to film it or whatever.

Cousin to the Hobgoblin. I don't fall into any of those. Oh, is that right? I'm just kind of a part-time piece of that. You're the fourth group. What's the fourth group? Unemployed layabouts. Ne'er-do-wells.

Ne'er-do-wells. Just showing a little bit of unemployed solidarity. No, I'm in the group of passerby i have every time i've went over there it was on the way to something else or i'm on my way home and but i feel like i can't just drive by there it feels like it feels awful so i just stop every time i have to go through harlan which has been about eight times now i've drove past there and had to stop yeah i can't fucking pull whipping over. You can't drive past it. Well, I guess I...

I don't know. I guess, yeah, I don't fall into any of those groups. But I guess I could start carving out a fourth group as, like, Camp Jester. I could start... Just keep morale high with your humor. You know how they have, like, USO comedy things for the troops? I could start doing comedy for the minors uso but for the mind right let's just record live over there i bet we don't get

one life hey like hey like uh i i get here's some good material that would get you a laugh at that particular crowd man cell phones really ruin good fishing stories and And everybody would be like, oh, yeah. Do someone a clap. Because, you know, like, you've thought about this. You've been writing material for the USO trip to Harlan County. Amazing. Seriously, when you think about it, man. So what is the deal with cell phones and fishing trips, you know?

It is kind of fishy, you know? Like, cell phones have cut down on good fishing stories though i feel like because if you got if you caught a really good big fish you'd take a photo of it i'll tell you what they really like it's not a story anymore yeah it's a picture it's a picture and i don't know how this will play given their employment situation but i've noticed humor that really works well in eastern kentucky is humor about people's work ethic. Or lack thereof. Oh, they love it.

Won't eat pie in a pie factory. That'll get you a laugh every time. Every time. Effortlessly. Also, this is just unanimous anywhere. Dick jokes always hit. Yeah. Or jokes about people that actually have money. Like one of my favorite setups, you're at a restaurant and you send the bill.

Say,ff's got all the money you get mine jeff they love that that kills i think it's hilarious too but i can't figure out if i think it's funny because it's funny or because i just love their reaction to it or or or and this destroys any room what What is this, boys? A union meeting? I love that. Of course, I guess they kind of wish it would have been a union meeting. Yeah, too bad it wasn't a union meeting. They described it as that. One of the women yesterday was saying that she was like,

this is basically our own little sort of union that we tried to make. Donna? Stacy. Well, we're recording this on Tuesday. So by tomorrow afternoon, by Wednesday afternoon, we'll know something. We'll know something about what's going to happen over there. We should have recorded tomorrow. Well, we still can.

Because we only have Tom one more day this week, right? We may have to record tomorrow. Yeah, tomorrow will be here tomorrow. We may have to record tomorrow. Yeah, tomorrow will be the Patreon then. You have to tune into the Patreon to find out what happens. Let's go over there and I'll try all my Eastern Kentucky humor. You all do it. And I'll say, just everybody just by a show of hands here, we've been taking bets on who finds what funny here.

Terrence, go ahead with your fishing joke. He tells it. It's a smattering of claps. But Tom, you have to pull a wad of money out of your pocket like you did at the live show at Summit City. Be like, oh, we've got prizes. Prizes, people.

Remember? That would be good, but it would also feel very fucked up. God. Tom's ready to buy a laugh. Well. At the live show. It has been an interesting experience over there.

And, you know, without getting too into the weeds, I don't want to get into the weeds about it, but the thing that is interesting about it is that like i think i think you would point this out that like people really kind of wanted this to be a sort of pits and perverts round two you know what i mean like a sort of um you know 2019 version of the uh the welsh you know coal industry sort of collapsing in the 80s and people turning out for it. The big difference here is that what you're seeing now is, like,

what it looks like when an industry collapses that isn't unionized. You know what I mean? Like, what happens when an industry collapses and it's not unionized and it's just sort of, like, ad hoc, nor is it nationalized, and it's just sort of like ad hoc nor is it nationalized and it's just sort of like ad hoc things collapse here things collapse there and not just that in a society where there's like no social safety net like i was over there on saturday or friday and there's this german reporter there on my side yeah and he was like so you have uh you you um do you collect unemployment and they were like yeah you know, you, do you collect unemployment?

And they were like, yeah, you know, but you got to pay taxes on unemployment. And he was like, you have to pay taxes on unemployment? And it's less. Yeah, it's just like, you could take, like, and plus, you know, he was asking them about health care. They're like, yeah, we don't have health care. I mean, like, this country is so barbaric. It's insane. People with black lung are sitting over there without health care. without health care like little people that are fighting for their life absolutely

donna's husband i can't think of his name yeah not even like abel david yeah david david raleigh well she's got bad health uh lung problems as well i'm sure they're related i mean this might be an old wives tale but i've heard it multiple times that like in the like heyday of mine in here that women like the wives of minors often suffered worse lung conditions one because their like lungs were made differently and they hadn't worked they didn't work up the same tolerance but because they were doing all the laundry and like in such an intense situation with all this fucking dust and

bullshit. That's fucking crazy. And I'm like that's insane. You think that's insane like you think that's real or not real? I don't know. I love an old wives tale myself. I do love the image of like toiling away in the laundry room and it's so dusty that And they're just like cleaning everything.

Well there's like all kinds of like eastern kentucky folk tales about that like uh oh shit what is it called there's one famous one like that ash puppet ash doll i've not heard this anyway anyway ash doll i don't know it sucks so bad when you start telling a story and realize you can't remember any of the details because I've drunk myself stupid. Yeah. Well, and other East Kentucky news. Donald Trump Jr. was here last week. Did y'all see that?

Yeah, I saw it. I saw the pictures. I think there were more people last time Folk Soul Revival wrote their town. But yeah, they showed up anyway. Yeah. It was honestly, I was shocked. I mean, granted, it's not the OG himself. It's not the Donald.

It was Donald Jr. and our sitting governor, right? And Hal Rogers. All three of them. Yeah. Triple threat couldn't pull down a Sunday congregation. Yeah. And on that note, a lot of the attendees were dressed like it was a Sunday. It was literally a sea of blazers.

It was your quintessential. So, okay, here's what they were doing. It was your quintessential So okay Here's what they were doing They were announcing The opening of A new 360 job

Or 300 job facility In McCreary County Outside of Stearns Aluminum Fibrotex It is a It is a You can't make this shit up

I'm serious It's material That is being produced by the military Or for the military Classic Hal Rogers Yeah so Hal Rogers even said that in his press release He said Hal Rogers Used his position on the defense appropriations committee

Yeah this is his legacy Defense appropriations and prisons Remember he did the oil pans for the helicopters Made the New York Times Yeah Undeterred just kept doing that Recreations and prisons. Remember he did the oil pans for the helicopters? Made the New York Times. Yeah. Undeterred, just kept doing that. So that's what they were doing.

They were announcing that. I think they did several stops. I think they did like, I don't know. I guess they only did the one in Pikeville. But it was so sparse. I was shocked at how sparsely attended it was. Pretty amazing. What do you think it would have been if the real djt would have came through oh we would have been packed asshole elbow yeah i do i do people would have come from far and wide i think oh you think it would have dropped people

would have traveled for it yeah yeah well george bush came to my hometown when I was in high school He's a Texan though Yeah he said He's from Maine He said It's good to be back in a part of the world Where the cowboy boots outnumber the ties And everybody lost it They were like yeah

This is a man that literally wears a tie every day And it's from fucking New Hampshire Some intern who wrote that line got the biggest bump ever yeah yep yep but bill clinton came to hazard one time and it was a pretty raucous affair oh yeah i mean it was like well he came i guess while you were still living here too remember that time we went over there he seen... He did. He came like four years ago. But it wasn't to the same fanfare. Was it for Hillary? Lundergren-Grimes. He was. Oh, that's right.

He was campaigning for Lundergren-Grimes. Against Mitch McConnell. That means bro, they're gonna bring somebody big back for this 2020 Mitch McConnell. Yes. Watch it be Bill Clinton. But he just gets up there and just goes on about

like how he didn't know jeffrey epstein yeah i was gonna say i'm gonna leave epstein chance i've already dressed like we're at a fucking what's that saying at the back of the auditorium hey quiet back there. Shit. Wow. I hope. Well, I was asking the guys down at the blockade,

like, have y'all had any big politicians roll through? I guess Matt Bevin's probably the biggest one that rolled through. Offering selfies. Yeah. Thank Bernie for an opportunity. I don't know. Yes and no. I don't know.

Supposedly what they told me on the phone was that it was too far once they realized it was so far. Well, yeah. How many times have I heard that trying to get ass? Trying to get somebody to drive down. Too far.

My limit's three hours, but you're three and a half. What are we doing in this situation? Yeah, you're outside the booty call range. They're like, so let me get this straight. I have to fly into Tri-Cities Airport and then drive another hour and a half. Your dick pic wasn't that good, Terrence. Couldn't pull it down. Bernie and them did the same yeah they were like

i think they also told him because i guess there's been i missed this somehow but there's been some commentary trying to get trump to come there to the blockade or something who says that i don't know because what i heard was that they told him that he shouldn't get into a pissing match with trump yet they weren't at that point in the campaign yet. Bernie? Yeah. Interesting. I will go ahead and tell you right now the odds Trump ever comes to that blockade are less than... They're in the negative.

Firmly in the negative. He would find them disgusting. Surely he's already had more days off where he like was on vacation. He's had more vacation days as a sitting president than many presidents combined. Surely. But he came under fire this week for playing golf while the huge hurricanes he stays on vacation was trump ever even been around the plebs like in the other than his rallies no absolutely not what's the plebs you know like the lower class this is a guy that this is a guy that thinks like

homelessness is unsightly and like yeah you know i mean like huge problem facing our country homelessness but not like the actual crisis just the aesthetics of homelessness god damn listen folks we're gonna do something for these miners that they got this all this coal let's let's burn the coal let's burn it right now yeah let's burn the coal right now i bet he has had homeless people killed near his hotels just to get them out just fucking get them out of here totally that reminded me that german reporter snagged a piece of coal and was like i'm holding on to this harlan county coal that's going to be like a big collector's item one day people had this romanticized like image in their head of harland county totally

oh god when i was a kfdc i had to do you know those fucking mountain witness tours you know we still do them essentially but i had to drive a bunch of artists around show them a bunch of shit they insisted that we pull off on the side of the road where there was like it was like a processing plant near the blockade that went over there in cumberland we were driving through there and they insisted we pull off and i i said it 20 times do not you are stealing coal off the side of the road there are mounds of coal and i was like people go to jail for this to to try to trying to heat their homes this one you're taking around jim james from my morning

jack no it wasn't them do you imagine like louisville suburbanites getting black lung because they've like spent too much they were from louisville they were from louisville and they insist they were going to make art with it they were going to make all this art to raise consciousness and i was like you're stealing and i'm staying i said i listen i'm staying in the van and if you get arrested i'm not vouching for you. I told you not to do this. And they insisted. They got out and, like, scuttled up a bunch of fucking coal. These people also insisted on saying Appalachia.

And once I tried to gently let them know that people here say Appalachia for the most part, which I'm not on a high horse about it. But I just, like, you know, gave them a gentle, you know, this is, you know, most local people say it this way. And she then insisted on saying it the other way, just over and over. She said it 50 more times just so she could say, like, no, this is the way to say it. This is the correct way. She got out there and stole her Appalachian coal.

Well, I have to say, where I'm from, we benefit from The shit that comes Out of the ground Just being a liquid You know People can't steal It as a animal People bring their jugs Roll I'll get some At Texas Tea

That crude baby Black gold It's like that episode King of the Hill Where the guy From Massachusetts Comes down there And wants to do

All the cowboy stuff Is there that kind Of tourism In the southwest Not around Like oil Like people No not that kind of shit But people That want that kind of tourism in the southwest? Not around like oil. Like people that want, no, not that kind of shit, but people that want to kind of do the cowboy fantasies on the weekend.

Oh, absolutely. Like the whole Billy the Kid stuff. Yeah. That is a huge tourist trap. Amazing. I feel like this is kind of where the Beverly Hillbillies, this is like the Beverly Hillbillies thing is they struggle. That's the Jed Clampett.

He shot the ground and oil was so up came a bubble and crew yeah I love it it's like where cultures collide

that's right but that reminded me though you remember that movie Hillbilly we talked about it oh yeah

there's a weird part in that movie where like the woman who made it had never seen coal in her life isn't that the weirdest part about

that remember that she was from Pike County made it had never seen coal in her life isn't that the weirdest part about that she's that i remember that she was from pike county kentucky she'd never seen coal well i don't she obviously had um maybe she meant like it was a lie no i mean like you literally can't be from eastern kentucky and not see coal because it's like you can see the seams if you've never driven on every route right yeah maybe she just didn't know what it was. Maybe she never held it in her hand. I'm seeing it in a new way. Also, there's just fucking figurines, fucking coal-colored

figurines everywhere. Hillary Clinton losing made me see coal in a new way. Really? Yeah. I see it all entirely new now. That was the hillbilly movie. That's what you read when you buy it on Amazon.

That was a pro-Hillary movie. Absolutely. It was. It was a weird movie. I love that the climax of that movie is, you

know, like live. It's like a Blair Witch Project footage of people the night of the election. Literally. It's a found footage movie.

It's about these chain smokers on their porches just shivering in fear. That's so fucking funny. It literally is Blair Witch Project style. I love Blair Witch. I'm a Bell County witch. Bright camera lights on their faces

Their pale sweaty faces Just so good Just panting I can't defend them anymore I wasn't gonna do it Oh shit Nits Tom I was thinking about this earlier

You know how Moscow Mitch is like Alliterative things Kind of winning things I love alliteration Wow Is that what you're talking about? Yeah

Somebody had mentioned this on a tweet today Tonya Turner I got a cousin named Adam Adams That's a different level Anyway I do enjoy alliteration I got a cousin named Adam Adams. Now, that's too much. That's a different level. That's a different level. But anyway. I do enjoy alliteration. What about the... I don't know how people like the Libs think that the alliterative thing is what's really

resonant, sticking. Oh, that's their peak marketing scam. Well, yeah, it's because they think that the Moscow Mitch stuff is getting to Mitch. They think that it's like getting under the skin. Yeah, Soledad O'Brien thinks that, oh, obviously it's working. It's like,

that's all you have to do to fool these people. Yeah, right. I saw a tweet. Somebody was like, it's the alliteration. Yeah. I missed this,

but I do know alliteration. Yeah, they finally found the key to getting under Mitch's skin. The thing about Mitch is that he fucking fucking he's playing it like it's really getting to him a little bit call me my scale mitch is just too much it's just over the top he said that yeah because he because he knows it's weak as fuck but he's like trying to

act like it's like he's trying to get him on the ropes he's giving him enough rope to hang themselves with y'all really got me now. I'm nervous. I might spend half of my war chest on this next election. Yeah, maybe a quarter of it. Dig deep into my pocket. Jesus Christ. Yep. So

what else is going on? What else we got going on here? What else we got going on today? You had some notes over there. Oh, Terrence's article. I said I did the homework. Oh, yeah. For once.

Oh. Even though it was so many goddamn words, Terrence. It was good. I enjoyed it. You must be referring to my article in the Baffler. Yes, I am. That's crazy. You brought that up.

This is crazy. Well, I just returned from eagleton and i read it i was trying to read it aloud to michella so i wasn't just being an asshole on my phone the whole way back pocket you're getting the pocket app reads it to you oh yeah there's a what yeah plug in the url and it reads it to you a robot reads it to you it's pretty good it's pretty close is it a woman's voice yeah yeah whatever you want awesome whatever she want like that anyway i got we were we hit let your county and i was like let me see how much is left and i scrolled through real quick and it was over half and i was like fucking god i'm sorry baby i gotta read this to myself as

quickly as possible now reading it aloud wasn't gonna do i'm sorry i'm sorry he's wordy he is word they're paying him by the word, I'm sure. They were. Good job. I was getting paid by the word. A little Terrence-ism there. Yeah, well, you know, you gotta tell a story. You gotta tell a long story. Mm-hmm. Playing that long game. Yeah. Well, I thought

we could talk a little bit about it just because of how topical it is. And because I love talking about myself. This would be our 150th episode or something to prove that we do love talking. No, but really, there's some good content there.

So I wrote this thing. It's in the Baffler. It's called Hollowed Out. Wherever fine periodicals are sold. That's right. Bookstores. Go buy it and tell the cashier that you're kind of an old guy that wrote something. I know this guy.

It's a cool cover, too. It's a great cover. Where here can I get it? Anybody anywhere around here? There's no fine periodical carriers here. They don't even have it in Lexington. I'm going to go see if I can get it ordered at Cozy Corner. Yeah.

You probably could. But they may not want to do that. You know? He's drawn the ire of the transition movement. Say the least. Yeah. They're saying bad things about me on AppleNet. They're saying bad things about on apple net they're saying bad things about me on the apple net list sir you know you know that's when you know you're doing something

right you don't come back from bad being slandered i've been drugged for filth on apple net honey really fuck yeah i didn't even know it was still a thing though really i thought they had buried that fucking list sir same i didn't i also was not aware is on apple net and this the year of our lord 2019 handoff in the year of our lord 2019 um apple net no it's bleak so a few months ago i read something in the new york times and we talked about it at the time, but it was by former guest of the show, Campbell Robertson, about the MindMinds program. Yeah. You know what that is? Have you heard about it at all?

Yeah. Basically... It's not even the first of its kind. Yes, it wasn't even the first of its kind, and it wasn't even the first of its kind to get revealed as a scam, which is even more fascinating. But it is essentially a program that teaches ignorant coal-smudged-faced Appalachians how to code, basically. Remember the mines to mine? Oh, I remember mines to mine. Quite well.

Wait, a bullet was dodged there. Oh, I remember Minds to Mind. Quite well. Wait, a bullet was dodged there. Well, something also very similar to what happened at Mind to Minds also happened at Mind to Minds. This many people are now in tech jobs from that. That many. She's forming a zero with her hands, folks.

Not a one or a two. A big old goose egg. Not a 12, not a six or a three. Big Wattsburg duck egg. Big Wattsburg duck egg. Big Wattsburg duck egg, baby. So I saw, so like, it hadn't clicked, it had not occurred to me until I read that New York Times thing. Mind, minds.

Yeah. Oh, wow. I love it. That's what they were talking about. Here's my thing about the branding. Oh, that's true. That's why everybody thought that was a winner. Did stop thinking about how fucking insensitive that is especially the mind to minds i mean seriously like people that should know better were like yeah minds to minds or mind minds like that one was particularly that's even worse than mind minds because mind to minds is

is the essential the thoughtful co-miner you know it's like that it's like that's one of the other people right it's like a dichotomy you're either working in the minds or you got you got a ticker going all right it's one or the other you're either thoughtful or you're not and i'll just say this i'll just say this go spend an hour with any of those guys over in harlem county right now and you can tell that they all have way more fulfilling more rich interior lives than any of these fucking oh yeah who can't think about anything other than fucking pizza joints and how to get grants for goddamn pizza joints literally and what i love which goes back to your article is sunday when i was over there talking to who'd you say was dave dave he i was I was telling him about my brother-in-law.

We were talking about what all other people were doing that had been working for Black Jewel, like what people have been doing. And we were talking about, well, this is like a whole funny scam, but there's like only one person in all of eastern Kentucky thatucky that um gives the cdl driver test and so my brother-in-law my sister's boyfriend whatever um he got his permit but the last like five people in his class that they sent to take the test is what's been failed and once you get failed then you have to go to the state police and pay a bunch of money to get the test and so we were just joking about how such a scam and all this shit absolutely most things the police are yeah absolute scam this whole because this one guy in eastern kentucky i think it's maybe in somerset or somewhere it's like the montanopoli on it i guess he has a 90

percent fail rate oh so that so it's a racket yeah he fails 90 percent of seat of people who come up there to get their cdl license and all of them like out of work like at the end of the rope guys yep so this is so i showed up this past weekend to babysit and as soon as i hit the door jacob said guess what i was like what i thought it was gonna be something fucked up that i was going to deal with this weekend because i was already in babysitter mode because they were about to leave he's like i got my cdl permit and i was like oh fuck yeah man but then he told me that and i was like you ain't getting that license you might. You might as well piss that to the wind, my friend. Buddy, they saw you coming. But he said he's about to have to start 10-hour-a-day classes.

And pay for them. They're lineman classes, but he has to get a CDA on all this other shit. Who does the classes? Do you know? I think it's Southeast. That's who I thought. Anyway, it's all... Anywho.

It's all like the food chain. But anyway, the whole point was that Dave, what Dave said when I was sitting there just talking to him about it on Sunday at the blockade. He said, I'm one year away. He said, that's what they think. We're all going to get retrained for something. He said, I'm one year away from retirement. He said, I've got one year left to work before I can officially retire. And I ain't retraining shit.

Well, this is what what was so astounding to me um i had found this story in the mountain eagle because you know over the winter i spent a lot of time hanging out at the library reading old mountain eagles and i found this really great story in the mountain eagle from 1974 from a coal miner who said that he was approached by an arc bureaucrat and encouraged to learn how to be an elevator operator. And he was astounded by this because A, Hazard, he lived in Hazard, only had one building that had an elevator in it.

And B, the damn thing was push button. So all he had to do was fucking push, like that was it. So it's like it's been the same shit for 40 years. So when I read it, this years so wait when i read it i could this confused me because when i read it in my own voice i thought uh elevator repair person like he would be to repair the elevator operator actual operator which i can't even fathom that someone would stay i've only been in one elevator that had an operator did they think they were going to be like a boon of like 1950s style like someone it

was going to stand yeah in the elevator people do that now they you know they that's the whitesburg city hall elevator yeah that one is a that one is like a crank you gotta i'm scared to death every time i get into that thing let me out of here ain't been tested for efficacy 20 years no no no i don't even want, I guess they have it because they have to move such big shit up there. It's just a railing.

Yeah, I'll tell you what big shit's up there. Workout equipment. They have fucking, they have, Their own gym. Yeah, they do. They have like walking,

whatever. The haunted house. They used to use it for the haunted house. Yeah, yeah. They'd have Chris Cottle and a Jason mask on top of a little basket there

and you'd look up and you'd go, oh, shit. They have treadmills up there, I guess. The attic of City Hall was a haunted house. Well, the thing is, is that... You can't make this up. The part, basically the through line here was that ARC hasn't really changed since its inception. It still sort of operates on the theory that, like, yeah, retrain workers to better vocations and pour money into vocational education. The bleakest thing I've ever sit through was an ARC anniversary presentation about what they had done for the region.

And I think, was it 50 years? They just had their 50 years, like a few years ago. Yeah, 1965. So for the uninitiated, this is the Appalachian Regional Commission. was it 50 years they just had their oh yeah they were a few years ago yeah 1965 is when yeah so for the uninitiated this is the Appalachian Regional Commission yes in 2015 I had to go to one of those stupid ARC things for my for my job and it was in Moorhead at the college and it's the one of the bleakest things I've ever experienced in real life was the ARC 50 year just round up of all their accomplishments.

What was the thing they hung their hat on? Buckle up. I shit you not. Indoor toilets. So basic infrastructure was their like... Indoor toilets. Just plumbing.

They brought the statistic from like, I don't know, 60% or 40% in the 60s of indoor plumbing to like 96% or something. You know what's interesting about all this?

They couldn't even get to 100% indoor plumbing. Well, what's funny about this is now it's like a bougie hippie thing to have an outhouse in your house they worked so hard they rc worked so hard to curb that half the hippies got up and left here in the presentation just furious this is the whole thing this guy was in a fucking three-piece tailored suit

saying this out loud did you practice this did you hammer and earl gold it wasn't no no they had some young dumbass up there he was like he's a relic he's a dinosaur yeah it's so funny you go to these arc meetings and there's just all these like well in non-profit parlance you'd call them stakeholders but really what that amounts to is just who's got the money in the communities and they're all just chomping at the bit to get arc allotments to do like landfills prisons like i said with these guys from munfordville hart county which is like could only by the loosest definitions be considered appalachia they just kind of got sectioned in for political reasons back in the day many political count arc counties well i was sitting there paul nesbitt the big engineer in lexington and these guys from munfordville i think he's

maybe the county judge of hart county maybe the mayor of munfordville and they were just talking about all the landfill projects they got done together paul and these two guys and how like they just go to these things in glad hand uh-huh write the grants and get it and it was so funny because when i first came on like we were trying to um get uh money to redo the old water tank up by the hospital here and it's the same guys that were chomping at the bit to like help us with that grant just let us know whatever you need all this stuff because they know they can get there you know spend 20 of the money on that and then just line their pockets and admin and whatever else yeah it's just it's just a racket

it's like the road projects yeah what's his name lance lewis lewis the motherfucker who owned uh mountain enterprises i can see their little logo on the side of their trucks they've built every road oh yeah every road in and out. And it's like the biggest port project coming out of Frankfort. They get so much goddamn money. Well, that's the thing. That was the thing. Like, ARC's biggest.

So, the history here. And you can... Toilets. You can read about it in the Baffler. But just as a quick roundup. The war on poverty in Appalachia had two huge programs. Just as a quick roundup, the war on poverty in Appalachia had two huge programs. The first was the ARC, Appalachian Regional Commission. And it was like operated on this like sort of growth center strategy where you built roads to the growth centers in Appalachia like Pikeville.

Yeah. And stuff like that. And you get people to move into those areas because you don't want people living out in the countryside you don't want that that's not productive no it's not good for capitalism um and then so you know and so they they built roads and they were they were focused on vocational training and retraining minors and on tourism those were their big things the other big program to come out of the war on poverty for Appalachia

was the Office of Economic Opportunity. Yeah. And that was like, that's where you had the Community Action Program and that's where you had the VISTAs. Right. And that's why...

That's how Apple Shop was originally funded. Exactly. It was, it was, and it's why things blew up here in the 60s. Basically because it turns out that if you get a bunch of people in a room – and this is the thing with the community action program.

It was mandated that 60 or 70 percent of the community that participated had to be poor. And so – but it was premised on this liberal assumption that, like, oh, we'll just get everybody in the room together and everybody will get along and they'll they'll identify the problems in their community let me poke in here real quick and just say this is like i mean you can even see this today when people are just like we need to run moderates we need to get appeal to more people and all this these sorts of things yeah it's just the grassroots way it's the same fucking shit well for them it backfired spectacularly because it turns out if you get 60 or 70% of a community's poor people in a room and have them start talking about all the problems in their community, they're going to burn that fucking thing down.

And so this blew up in places like Appalachia and Chicago, where they couldn't keep the lid off on top of it. So that's why Nixon had to start dismantling it in the 70s. But the ARC remained. The ARC was untouchable because its project wasn't really political. And so that's how, you know, and its mission basically didn't change in 30 or 40, 50 years. As evidenced by the elevator antidote. And the toilet antidote.

You just swap in this new thing. You know what I mean? Right, right, right. And there you anecdotes. You just swap in this new thing. You know what I mean? Right, right, right. And there you have it. And so my piece specifically is about the ARC's latest hit. Like if this was like Aerosmith or something, they're now touring on their big, their latest hit, which is called the Power Initiative. their latest hit which is called the power initiative so the power initiative uh was started in what was it like 2015 i guess tom it was like uh 2015 2015 and 16 and um it was the subtext was it was an obama era program and the subtext was that it was kind of a response

to the war on coal right it was kind of like people are getting put out of work i mean it was the it was the basic question like what are we going to do with these coal miners since they're out of work they're now called displaced coal workers that's now the new non-profit word for coal miners by the way tanya okay displaced coal workers you have to obscure as much as possible what's going on that makes sense because one of the women who was from some ungodly place she wasn't the california woman it was like another older woman who was from somewhere very far away on sunday she was trying to get them to talk on her facebook live or some shit and the woman was like curtis and his wife

were talking and she was like so you know we're kind of just like this um i don't think she said the word displaced but she's like we're just like having to be out here every day because where else are we going to go what else are we going to do and she's like are you displaced from your home and the woman was like no we have a house but we i mean ain't doing no good over there either. We have a fucking house. They love that. Did you listen to that podcast I sent you on the dig with that John Patrick Leary? The damn thing I started. With the keywords of capitalism. And I wish I'd read his, I wish I was aware of it before I'd written this.

But like his basically. Was it Displaced, one of the? It was not, but Innovation was one. Human Capital was another one. You've got these words that are intentionally supposed to obscure the relationship between boss and worker. Or just the relationship of capitalism in general. So displaced coal worker is the perfect word because it doesn't answer it. Displaced by what?

What do they do yeah it's like they're like they're hurricane refugees or something like that one of the how rogers greatest hits that used to send me into a tizzy was when he would say we have the most competitive um competitive waged workforce which which is a fancy way of saying you can pay these motherfuckers pay nothing he said once that our like our our workforce um offers the big you know it was like our best that was our biggest value was our people but then he would you know slip up and say our competitive waged workforce yeah They dress it up by saying that we're these resourceful,

resilient, it's like the Grit Grif. It's the Grit Grif, for sure. Like we're talking about. But all that is, all that is, is a way to gas up people to work for shit. Yeah. Totally. Well, and so it's funny you mention Hal Rogers

because Hal Rogers was a huge proponent of the Power Initiative. Go figure. He co-opted the biggest piece of it. He did. He did. The reclaiming, I think this is what you're talking about. Yeah, which was power plus.

Right. You'd think in 30 some years we would admit to ourselves that he is not a fucking ally. And nothing with his stamp on it is good. Well, he loves the power. Here's the thing, Tanya. By virtue of being open to diversifying the economy, he was deemed progressive. You know?

That's the weird, twisted thing about all this. Which is the most... Diversifying the economy is the most capitalist thing you can possibly say. Exactly. But a lot of these progressives around here have convinced themselves that that is woke and progressive or whatever.

To, like, not want to like coal mono economy it's like congratulations like i mean when we were going to well when we did when we were when we were planning the protest just to hang up a banner in front of his face that sore the some of these progressives literally said the words just we have to work with these people why are you doing this we have to work with these people it always brings me back and i hate to echo the people who've stolen valor for the act for that very action said that yeah totally oh yeah the people who now claimed that we were they were on our side yeah yeah literally drug us for it i hate to echo breaking bad and this also the year of our lord 2019

but it's kind of like that when the guys are getting ready to shoot walt's brother dea cop brother in the head yes i know it's like you're the smartest man i ever knew and you're too stupid to see that it's like you you're like you're supposed to be like all these people that you know we're talking about here it's like they should know better by now that these people can't be worked with. Yeah, it's just a really- If your project is a progressive one or whatever that means. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it's because they're all fucking landlords and stuff.

That's true. I mean, they're all landlords and capitalists. They're all upwardly mobile people. And if you're not and you're earnestly working in world to like whatever, you're just a schmuck. Or they have second homes. Right, right. Well, so, all right. So like, but bringing it back to the power thing. It was a federal project administered through the ARC but created by the Obama administration to diversify Appalachia.

And obviously Hal was on board because you look at a lot of these contracts and a lot of them go to Somerset area. Yeah. Like his Somerset, Kentucky area. But I guess the overarching themes here are consistent with what the ARC has been doing for 40 or 50 years now. I'm going to let you keep going. I'm going to bring this in later. Why don't you go for it, Tonya? Well, you're about to make a point that I'm just going to emphasize. Okay.

You want to get to it first, and then I'll emphasize it? We're like the globetrotters here you well if i'll slam dunk it if you're if all of you because this article is is i mean you you make a few stretch assumptions i don't even mean assumptions you got some holes in your account you there may be like five sentences in this whole long thing that's just your opinion. The rest of it is just a string of facts. This is literally just a string of facts. Anyone disputing this, I don't even know how

they can. And then you just summarize what this actually means at the end. And this summary, if it's not enough in all of your string of facts of just historical data to know it's like the arc has literally told organizations that they will not be funded if they're working with groups like apple shop you know what i mean like they won't fund us they won't fund people who are working with us on their projects and a

handful of other groups that they've deemed radical or that organize or any of this yeah absolutely like totally cut and that's and that and to say that apple shop is radically organizing and a threat to your project is is pretty out there just goes to show you how far right things have drifted. Oh, yeah. Totally. Yeah. So, okay. So I wrote down a few things that, like, that, you know, you should know. And we can read through some of these projects if you want. I thought it might be kind of fun. Well, I have a question.

Did really none of them would talk to you just about the work they did? All you wanted to know was about what happened. Yeah. No, no, no. It's not like you were drilling happened. Yeah. No, no, no. It's not like you were drilling them. No, no, no. I only got responses from two people. Sorry, three.

I only got an earnest response from one. And it was a woman at a place in southwest Pennsylvania. These people don't even want to talk about what they did. No, of course not. Supposedly. They committed unspeakable acts against the pool. Well, you worked at it. I mean, they did the classic, like, oh, so-and-so is more qualified

to speak on that than I am. They would just bounce me around. Pass them. Nobody would ever give back to me. Well, because they hired someone to coordinate this garbage for $14 an hour and then fired them immediately

as soon as it was over. Right. Well, okay, so here's a... You get at a really interesting point. People are interpreting this as an expose. Like, I was trying to do what Campbell Robertson did or anything other people have done with this program.

This $153 million program with 184 grant recipients. This is not an expose. It was just a commentary on liberalism and the sort of gradual transformation of liberalism from the 60s war on poverty to the neoliberal market driven liberalism of Obama. Because that's what this is. Like they've Obama like a lot of them even kind of build it as like I don't want to go this far and say that they were saying it's war on poverty 2.0.

But they were couching in in the language of like, let's government help you out. Let's government help you out. So they poured 150-something million dollars into this. And most of the money has gone to startups, entrepreneurs. I would say the bulk of it has went to people providing services from other parts of the country yeah and yes all the tech bros have were flown in yes they run these innovative tech programs and and another thing that i realized while researching this is the role that universities and colleges and community colleges play in they sort of like entrepreneur uh culture you know

what i mean like they have positioned themselves especially in the periphery of capital t the capital r region as like the sort of locations where capital is aggregated expertise is aggregated, expertise is aggregated, and then those things are deployed into various, like, I don't know, like this woman said, makerspaces, business coaches, tech, whatever. What's wild to me is that, I mean, like, when you think about, you said, what is it, $157 million? $153 million, yeah. and how 157 million 153 million yeah when you think about the big grand scheme of budgets you know that it's not a lot like for instance our one prison was getting half a bill right just to build one prison right but when you think about it in actual like what people are able to accomplish with this amount of money like i mean obviously well i'll just say let's say it this way these like inter-act programs and shit oh yeah that we're getting like how much how much million about two or three million

which is a lot of money but but they weren't just getting it from so this is the thing about power is that if you can get two or three million from arc you can easily raise two or three million from venture capital yeah then go and you can raise from the katherine t mcarthur found then go raise it from the katherine t mcarthur for like six month programs that in that ended up impacting 12 like five people oh nobody gets jobs from this stuff and they even openly say this on facebook forums and stuff too like it's so funny it almost mirrors that fucking pyramid scheme our buddy was into that's kind of cult like oh it's that's the thing is a it is 100 a pyramid scheme just like all capitalism is just like some kind of scheme or another yeah

to put it in perspective of like historical regional organizations, like we already mentioned Apple Shop, the annual Apple Shop budget to employ 20 people is less than $2 million. Yeah. People are vastly underpaid. Right. You can't emphasize that enough. But less than $2 million a year. Well, this is another thing that blows my mind. For a whole year of programming.

Oh, yeah. That's what the city of Westbrook's budget was to to hire, like, you know, street crew, fire. Yeah, and that's a lot of money. Yeah, to run a whole city. And they're getting over two mil to run one half-job project. To fucking start, like, a fucking horse cum soap factory. Yeah, that's going to run for a six-week training program. Well, that's the thing.

You, too, can make soap from horse cum. Come here and learn at Barberville, Kentucky. The most truest Kentucky entrepreneurial venture in the year of our Lord 2019. Well, but this is the thing that I find so fascinating is how many of them couch the language of their missions and projects in these liberal terms. Like, they are helping people and like this

is um it like it is this sort of like progressive minded project uh when in all actuality it's a it's a ponzi scheme it's a pyramid scheme like you were saying yeah and that's what's so fascinating to me about it they're in a cult and they don't even know it really yeah i wonder how much money how rogers personally has made off of power initiative he's probably made several million if i just had to guess or so it's a double digit percentage yeah and this isn't even a conspiracy or anything how rogers a lot of the institutions and organizations he's plugged into sits on the board of all this other stuff in somerset kentucky let's see his tax returns how about that he makes a fuckload of money from federal contracts and he's on the appropriations

committee so he just gives himself government money amazing he's kind of like he's kind of like the hillbilly matthew lesko remember the guy that come on like daytime tv when you're homesick and he had all the question marks on his suit and he had that book he's like here's where the government money is yeah okay so like this is okay so i had pulled out some numbers um so you know like i said a lot of this money goes for tourism. A lot of it goes for workforce development. That's the thing you see all the time. Workforce development. Farm-to-table shit.

They love the farm-to-table and foodways stuff. But here's what they don't like. Communism. Do y'all know one rich Appalachian farmer? Or even me. I don't know. I'll take you a step further. Or even making any money. I don't know. I'll take you a step further. I don't know

one that's making minimum wage. Not one Appalachian farmer. But I know plenty of people that made a lot of money training them to farm. Oh yeah. It's because you can't make money like, and this is the thing that, blows my mind about it, is that

they base all of this on the inerrancy and wonderment of capitalism. But they continually forget the basic premise of capitalism, which is that things have to be profitable. There has to be losers. Yeah. And so why the fuck with like farming in this like really rugged there are losers hill country oh yeah like what soils no been yeah you can't like you can't do large-scale farming here and so it's not going

to be profitable so i don't know and so it's a logistics conundrum to get the shit in and out like realistically speaking people on this show in the next three weeks um we could do it to turn around that quick of people who've tried and failed uh-huh well very skilled people there's never going to be like a like a we're never gonna be able to produce something here and get it out like that's bad capitalism for east like appalachian the quicker we realize that the like we're gonna run a ramp market we're just gonna start okay if we can turn kudzu into ramps or figure out some really quiche way to set to move kudzu yeah yeah kudzu jelly i guess ginseng is kind of um profitable but you remember

that dry land fish yeah that woman in chinatown uh in chicago laughed at me when i told her i talked to her about kentucky ginseng she said wisconsin right right get the fuck out of here she laughed in my face yeah get the fuck out of here nobody wants your. Nobody wants your Kentucky-ass ginseng. But at any given time, my uncle, Dale's got a whole fucking back room, whole garage full of dried out

of ginseng. He's dry now. I come look at all his ginseng. Well, ginseng isn't labor-intensive like farming is. You get three or four

of your buddies and go out to the mountain and... And then also, what do you make off of it? Right. You put a lot of work into it and you make

a couple hundred bucks, a thousand bucks. Well, my Aunt Sharon's unbearable. He needs time out of the house. He needs things in the woods to do. I'm not against foraging. I'm just saying it's not a viable full-time job for most people. No, I can assure you Dale's not buying any second homes anytime soon. Yeah.

Hold on one second. Okay. Listen to this. this makes no sense to me this is one of the grant recipients 1.5 million dollar arc grant to marshall university research corporation in huntington west virginia for the sprouting farms project the project will facilitate the development of a vibrant agricultural industry in a nine county area in southern west virginia by educating new farmers well education is another at least let's let's come up you know how the guy did the buzzwords of capitalism podcast yeah yeah let's come up with our own buzzwords of transition the appalachian transition education education has been put on too much of a pedestal education completely overrated also very much a grift yes absolutely um so educating new farmers

launching farm businesses are you coming for sexy sex and tom watch your ass turn yeah we're coming after you next. It's alliteration and sexication. Oh, my God. And it's a portmanteau of sexication. Sexication, yeah. We're going to blow you open next. I can't wait for the sexy, sexy and expose. Launching farm businesses, jump-starting wholesale market channels,

all while encouraging business and farm sustainability. ARC funds will be used to implement workforce and farm business accelerator training programs. Well, definitely workforce is top. Accelerator. Workforce acceleration. Secure and upgrade the project site and facilities because if this is southern West Virginia, a lot of those sites are going to be fucking uh former coal mines brownfields brownfields um provide direct business support and employment to new agricultural businesses and program graduates the program project will create 20 new businesses this is my favorite part of all these they just throw out the metric There are only 20 businesses in Whitesburg.

Kentucky. If. They love these metrics. Counting. Dairy queen. But the thing is, their metrics have no rationale behind them. They're just arbitrary. Oh, well, people on the affluent listserv would disagree with you, Tom.

They use a very strict methodology for determining business. I'd be interested to know this. Okay, well, I'm just going gonna chime in here as an official sociologist and tell you that all measurements are bullshit they're all made up that's right even dig measurements that's right people uh if it says you're small it's bullshit actually um it goes the opposite way project create 20 new businesses and 33 new jobs and leverage 90 961 475 dollars in additional development i love it i love the rule of three just like dick if he says it or just like sexual partners you know they say if men say they've been with like 30 people they've really been with

10 right right right so it's it's so it's tripled all these numbers are tripled out of some out of something they found it's exactly i've done it myself folks tripled out of something they found. That's exactly right. I've done it myself, folks. Oh, that's why I know. That's how I know. I've written enough grants to know. I've just been sitting there like, oh, I wrote an annual report. 20 sounds good.

That sounds right. Because you can't overplay your hand. Exactly. But you can't put it too low so it sounds meager. On an annual report last year, I said 6,000 people had visited Apple Shop. I have zero evidence of that other than the pain in my ass of when someone just walks in. Like, hey, I've never been here before. I was in a Amy McGrath ad.

That's all of our business. So education. This is a hilarious education entry. hilarious education entry um 2.1 million dollars to the consortium for entrepreneurship education in charleston west virginia for the entre ed k through 14 every student every year project when i first read this i was like okay well maybe they're putting some money into education maybe i can write about something like maybe something good is in here. But this is what this is. The EntraEd program enables K-12 teachers to integrate entrepreneurial content and context into delivery of required standards in any subject or grade level. So basically we've got to teach the kids early to be capitalists.

Dog, they're teaching them at kindergarten. I have no idea what you just said. That didn't make a lick of sense. They're teaching, this is what it says, I'll reread it. EntraEd program enables K-12 teachers to integrate entrepreneurial content and context into delivery

of required standards in any subject or grade level. The project will educate the next generation of Appalachia's workforce to create their own businesses to drive the local economy i've seen this in action i've seen this in action and when i worked at cavek we had an elementary a middle and a high school entrepreneurial fair and when i'm telling you that babies came in there we had the elementary school one at our office because it was small and they had literally it was like six lemonade stands i shit you not six lemonade stands a dog

walking business a car washing business a bicycle cleaning i shit you not it's like they've just seeded all so this is like the natural progression of the stem stuff. Hair bows. There were a lot of bows. Kids making bows. Why? For athletics. We don't even teach humanities anymore. Just from kindergarten on it's just how to be the most ruthless, blood thirsty. Forget music. Forget music. Also, also, also

Art class is out. Right. The arts are done. But also if you fuck up if you fuck up you end up in the lower classes. You end up, what is the pejorative? Flippin' burgers. That's right. That kind of stuff.

And the reason they do that is so they can automatically relegate a huge section of our burgeoning population to low-wage work. Uh-huh. And so it's like, either you do this and you play by our rules and if you're lucky this happens or it's back to the fucking salt mines for you if you can't if you can't make your car washing business work there's another way folks and none of us really have to work that much dude these are all so fucking bleak uh $1.4 million grant to Southwest Virginia Community College for the Southwest Virginia Regional Cybersecurity Initiative. The initiative brings together three colleges in Southwestern Virginia. I met these people.

And aims to position this seven-county Southwestern Virginia area as a regional hub for cybersecurity industry. No, I swear to God. We saw these people at Pay on Lake. Remember? That's who those fucking were. Remember we talked? Is this that flashing storage hub? security industry no i swear to god we we saw these people at pound lake remember oh that's who those fucking were is this the storage is this that flash and storage hub the off talked about they were they were all all these kids were at uva wise for a two-week cyber security intensive and me and you they all came to pound lake and you left and we started talking to them

yeah and that's what they told us they were doing it was an international program they were all kids from other countries yeah they create at uva doing. It was an international program. They were all kids from other countries at UVA Wise. It's a certification credential program aligned with industry needs and national security agency guidelines. Amazing. We met these mothers. Industry needs and the national security apparatus. They were all from other countries. That's darker than you could even imagine.

I couldn't fathom why they would fly in all these kids to do cyber security at UVA Wise. It's because they had power money to do it oh yeah they had they flew 1.5 million dollars none of these kids were local i don't even know how they found pound lake there might have been one local dupe um 1.5 million for the retraining energy displaced individuals oh that's so good energy displaced individuals you know someone in a in a google Drive, in a Google document that someone was editing, a bunch of people were editing that said folks, and someone put individuals. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Why is folks canceled again? I don't know. I don't know. But that's just the other version of individuals. Is it like classes or something? I think it's less professional now. Right. Folks is what you say when you're telling people what you're doing out loud.

Yeah. When you speak it. But when you write it on paper, you have to say individuals. Oh, okay. Okay. I've just heard, like, folks kind of mention, like, kind of pejoratively. Oh, I don't know. I mean, I think it's just hilarious.

I mean, it's like a drinking game at this point. Even when I was at KFDC, man, I won't name her Bo. In staff meetings, we would like check mark how many times someone said the word folks. Folks. $2.2 million to the industrial development wise for the Virginia Emerging Drone Industry Cluster Project. ARC funds will be used to position five counties in southwest Virginia as a national destination for the development of a drone operator workforce to support the emerging drone industry in the United States. Another KVEC reference. When that was announced, the three idiot men that I worked with at that time who were so into drones, so into drones they had crashed one in the office.

But luckily, the assistant director who was a woman had taken out insurance on it through amazon it's got to replace anywho they were furious when this was announced because they were being just like blast like well we'll never catch up to that how do we compete with that how do we compete with that a drone racetrack essentially yeah that's what that was. It was like a drone racing facility. Oh, you'll love this one, Tom. $662,000, or a little over half a million, to the Southwestern Pennsylvania Corporation

in Pittsburgh for the Southwest Pennsylvania Economic Gardening Initiative. Gardening's big. No, it's economic gardening. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Oh, yeah, whoa Oh yeah yeah yeah Is this where they In Pittsburgh no less Amazing

Say more The ARC funds will diversify The business operations Of supply chain industries In a 10 county region In southwestern Pennsylvania So southwestern Pennsylvania

Is the garden And their planting businesses Yes Yes And they called it The economics garden Economic gardening initiative. So gardening has nothing to do with it?

No, no, no. It's like a metaphor. It's like, it's like a, I put in, Economic gardening. In the essay, You rape what you sow.

Yes. It's kind of like terraforming Mars. Like you just kind of do a little bit of stuff here. Yeah. And you know, a little seed capital here, a little angel investing there.

And then you get a diversified economy, folks. And then you get your yield. Do you think NASA would... Two coal miners working in coding. Do you think NASA would return your emails

about the work they do? No. What's wild to me is that the point is they get grants which get them press which get them more grants. They must not have thought

you were a valid journalist. Yeah. Well, I mean, obviously not. If you search my name, I think the first few things that come up is an essay just taking a massive shit on the nonprofit industry. You think they Googled you and then they didn't respond? They're smarter than me. People reach out to me all the time and I never think to Google them.

Whatever. I never think to Google them. So, okay. like, no, whatever. I never think to Google them. So, okay. So we're well over an hour at this point. So we should probably start wrapping it up. But there's a few other things I just want to point out. So we've kind of covered all the venture capital, entrepreneurship, tourism, stuff like that. But this is a good one you'll like.

but this is a good one you'll like. $1.1 million to Ohio University in Athens, Ohio for the Appalachian Recovery Project, an Ohio opioid workforce initiative. So all of these are about turning addicts into productive workers. Into wage slaves. Into wage, exactly. How to bring them back

into the... Profit centers. Exactly. As if they haven't suffered enough. Also, I mean, it's just not even thinly veiled.

It's so much money. It's just in the way we talk about people, too. Productive member of society. It's all... Paying their debt to society. I mean, I had to keep bringing this up,

but Apple shops never got a grant this big. Never in 50 years. A million dollars. A receipt grant to Industrial Commons for capturing emerging markets through the creation of a textile and furniture circular economy. Feasibility study. Dude, they love feasibility studies. They fucking love feasibility studies.

I got a little insight on feasibility studies. Tom being the con man he is. Feasibility studies boil down to getting the right people with the right connections to sign off on whatever you want it to say. Yes. So, for example, you could do a legitimate feasibility study and they would come back and they'll say, so, for example, on this hotel. Because I worked on that. And, you know, it's like realistically just the eyeball test. If they built, i don't know what

they were shooting for i think maybe at one time they were saying something like 50 rooms which is outrageous but let's say they built like 14 to 20 something rooms up there i think it's legitimately you could say they would operate at half capacity 50 of those rooms filled x amount of nights a week is like they're like sort of like you know equation yeah yeah i would say you could probably operate at half capacity maybe two nights one night a week legitimately one night a week half capacity but if you go to the hunting group in chicago or one of these, like, sort of boutique, like, the people that really have to, like, sign off on your project to make it go. Like, say, oh, yeah, this will work. One, that's going to cost you a ton of money.

But two, they'll say any fucking thing you want them to. Hell, you can get 52 rooms in there in half capacity eight nights a week. Right. Fucking eight days in a week. Because you're paying them. Because you're paying them. Right. Right.

That's the real thing of the consulting class. It's not based in any sort of reality at all. It's whoever has the clout, you grease their palms, and then they sign off on your bullshit, and then it looks like you're legit, too. Well, and so this is the thing. In all of these, and so I tallied it up, so if we're if we're looking at things that would actually help people health care education material needs um infrastructure um so okay so there's 140 184 projects on this thing most of them require because they want to do the whole zilicon valley

thing so most of them require my bad silicon no I think we should just go with that. We'll go with that one. They've got the Silicon Holler thing now. But most of those things require broadband. Right. There's no, there's nothing in here really for broadband infrastructure. I think there was seven grants awarded for actual broadband infrastructure out of 184. Which is funny because, like, that's always the huge hurdle everybody talks about to do something here. Yet more money is spent on the cart before the horse.

Yeah, so there's more grants in here for feasibility studies for broadband infrastructure than actual fucking broadband infrastructure. Which, mind you, broadband's something we could do tomorrow. Easily. Oh, yeah! But Hal has commitments to Verizon and Windstream and at&t etc etc and by the time it gets to you it's chopped up so much and the bandwidth is fucked but really and truly we could fucking go away broadband tomorrow and have give it to everybody for nothing right when they say feasibility studies for broadband infrastructure they're not talking about like

going out and looking at the mountains and being like, can we get a fucking wire? What they're talking about is, will we have enough stakeholder input and buy-in? And what they're really talking about is like, goddamn, okay, how can we get Verizon to do this? How can we make it profitable? Right. Yes, that's exactly right.

For our corporate overlords. And so that got me thinking like well okay is there any infrastructure in here at all two fucking grants for actual water and sewer infrastructure and one of them is in service to a wildlife viewing facility outside corbin kentucky oh yeah which is that that whole elk viewing thing is premised on tourism like million dollar bridges to elk reviewing and that wasn't the other one to a hypothetical prison that we made yeah that actually wasn't out of power that was out of power that was uh aml aml pilot project tom yeah my bad oh fuck man um something that you wrote in here reminded me of a conversation i had

last week what um where you say hillbillies are a rich seam of grant money oh yeah and that's a tom sexsonism by the way yeah well it reminds me of i mean it's kind of like the everybody wants to be a hillbilly but nobody wants to drink the water which to which we really don't know the origin but another one i love to which we probably don't know the origin. But another one I love, to which we probably don't know the origin, but I heard myself from Herbie Smith, was there's a lot of money in poverty if you're not poor. It's true. And it just so happens we were chilling last week talking about, and he was going on, he was on one about how he used to never see a help wanted sign. And now they're everywhere. And what he was getting at is that nobody wants to work no more.

Classic boomer bullshit. Oh, God damn it. And he's like, you know, everybody's left. But, you know, I used to never see. He said, I never saw a help wanted sign until I was, you know, several years old. Here's the other thing, too, is, yeah, you're goddamn right nobody wants to work. That's what I told him I said. There's no wind at anybody's back.

There's no light at the end of the toe. There's no upward mobility. So even by the rules of capitalism things are even like... He said when they turned this Druthers into a Dairy Queen 5,000 people. This is in Fast Food Women, an Apple Shop film. 5,000 people applied for 18 jobs.

That is incredible. At Druthers. When it was becoming Dairy Queen. I miss Druthers. I know. We had one in Pineville too. Druthers well when it was becoming dairy queen i missed druthers i know we had one of them pineville druthers was the shit okay anywho when they changed it over to dairy queen 5 000 people applied for 18 jobs and he was like you know what you know because that's that's how it was you know he's like now there's all these help wanted signs and i said herbie none of these jobs it doesn't pay you to work these jobs if you have kids you cannot afford child care to work like you it is not that's just one thing there's no like the

health care prop the prop the health problems that these jobs will cause you will cost you more in in medical bills than what you're being paid oh yeah literally that my sister is in this loop right now she keeps going back to a job that is fucking her back up she stands and chops uh fucking fruit all day long and it has fucked her back up so bad because she doesn't even have like the right padding under her feet where she stands all day right right you know i mean there's other hard jobs whatever but she literally stands chopping all fucking day and it's fucked her back bad and she keeps going back to this job when she's paid in more medical bills than what she's been paid yeah like quit yeah it does not pay anyone to work these jobs none of these jobs and he was just like well when i was a kid minimum wage was one dollar an hour well okay

the equivalent of that is now when it's like the equivalent of that is today's minimum wage is about a penny an hour if you it's like the equivalent right right you always hear the thing thrown about two things like one you nobody can afford a two-bedroom apartment any zip code in this country a minimum wage now and the other thing is if adjusted for inflation they always throw this out if it minimum wage were kept up it'd been around 18 bucks an hour now and most economists agree it needs to be well over it's like basically 20 it needs to be like 21. yeah like a fight for 15 is like obsolete yeah it's taken so far it's taken so long to even get to yeah well it's still not here and they're still trying to roll that out you know over like a number of years yeah well um so that

you know there's other good stuff in here but you know we're pretty well over but um like i said uh innovation gateways that's another good one that they love. Fucking A. But, okay, but... Gateways. Oh, yeah, Gateways. Love it. You know... The gatekeepers of the gateways of innovations, right? But I think the overall sort of thing, the overall point I want to try to make here,

and that I was trying to make with this is that okay let's say that um you read this and you say you're right there is a lot of money in poverty we gotta whatever and you want to dial it back to the 60s well what happened in the 60s i mean what we have now this massive bloated non-profit industrial complex that does nothing is all a product of what happened in the 60s especially these overfunded motherfuckers i mean i just can't believe they're getting they're pulling down two million for one project tanya i found projects in here that get a hundred thousand dollars just this someone so they paid someone let me see if i can find it i think i can find it real fast. I feel like I have spent

the last three years just like hustling my ass off for $50,000 here and there. You know what I mean? This, this,

just fucking died. We're just like fighting and scrapping for fucking crumbs. This like PR firm got almost $200,000 just to monitor and evaluate the power initiative.

I want to get six figures to monitor and evaluate. Why do you need $200,000 just to fucking post on Twitter all day? They were doing their PR. Goddamn, if we could figure that out, we'd be here. But this is all kinds of downstream strategies. $150,000 for a strengthening economic resilience in Appalachian communities project. Just the fucking research, explore, document strategies and policies local leaders can use to enhance the future economic products. Local leaders who probably don't even like you.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. You know what I mean? Yeah. Well, this is – There is no local leadership. No, no, no. I just betrayed the poor working class. Yeah, leadership is too strong a word.

No, go ahead. I'm sorry. I was just thinking about you talking about these hub centers where they're trying to funnel population. And it's just like, if you're in eastern Kentucky and you still support Hal Rogers and you don't live in Somerset or Pikeville, you should really reevaluate some things. Mm-hmm. Carry on. So, but this is the thing. This is the larger point is that like let's say you wanted to dial it back to the 60s and you wanted you wanted a more um like like i call it in

there and like the writer aliocia goldstein who i quoted in my thing calls it social liberalism the belief that government can make things better and that the little guy has to be looked out for by the government. His civil liberties have to be protected. It's over. That's over. We cannot go back to that. We'll never return to that again. We have passed through the wormhole of neoliberalism.

You can't dial the clock back now. The only path forward now is either some sort of fascist political project or socialism i mean it really is socialism or barbarism and so you kind of have to make a choice or barbarian yeah you kind of have to make a choice and um and so the real answer here is all the solutions to all these bullshit problems are political none of them are technocratic you can't fucking throw money at a bunch of community colleges and non-profits and expect to have a thriving regional diverse economy and all this stuff no people have to have political empowerment they have to combine their labor power and exert it um this is peak incrementalism it's not even it's not even it's not even there it's it's not even band-aid

work they couldn't even call this harm reduction well it's it's all it is it's it's just capitalism churched up and clothed in the words of like progressive wokeness or whatever i mean the government spends money worse that's true that is true that's certainly true but you know locally pacifying countries yeah but locally this has a lot of really fucked up and difficult ramifications i mean it it stops a lot of important work from happening just like when we're just literally trying to convince hal rogers not to build a prison we're shit on by our co-workers and like people who we work with saying literally we have to work with these people yeah i mean you could make an argument that's why i was fired it's like we have to work with hal and you said some mean things about him and that that makes us awkward

that's uncomfortable. I mean, and you say this in the article, essentially. Well, you at least hit at it when you talk about the original origins of the ARC and the OEO. Is that it, OEO? Yeah. OEO, baby. OEO. I like where y'all got that reference.

It's fucking old. Is that all of these ARC grants and the bare bones of it is stopping organizing. It is. Like it's halting organizing. Because it obscures, like all liberalism, it creates a sort of mask

that obscures reality for you. And this is why every time people freak out about an essay like this or us saying any of these things, it's why they latch on to nitpicking details. They miss the larger point, which is that we're just trying to, it's like you were saying earlier, it's all just facts. We're all just laying out how the world really is. And if you don't know how the world really is, how the fuck are you going to change it? The point is to change the world.

Yeah, they don't actually want to change the world. They want things to stay the same thing. They don't want the status quo to be challenged. These are the kind of reminders I need when I convince myself, when I start to spiral and blame myself for my mental health. This ain't my fault.

This ain't your fault. This ain't my fault. You come by it honest. You're surrounded by people who are under an illusion. They're fucking deluded. Absolutely. Take the red pill. Not in the bad alt-right way.

In the Marxist way. Take the actual sickle and hammer red pill. And start seeing things as a Marxist. Fuck. I don't know how else to put it. Anyways. So, if you want to go check it out. as a Marxist. Fuck. I don't know how else to put it. Anyways, so, if you want to go

check it out. Go buy the latest copy of The Baffler, it's yellow. Such a cute cover. Yeah. It'll look great on your coffee table.

Totally. Or you can go to thebaffler.com. Yeah, they got it on the internet too. In your bathroom magazine rack.

Yeah. People love to put reading materials in their bathrooms. Like me. I never read it, but it is there for anybody who wants to. Because you have to read your phone on the toilet. Terrence keeps the 9-11 issue of The New Yorker on the back of his toilet. And the Donald Trump election issue. Right, the November 8th, 2016 issue.

Yeah, so, all right. So, before we go, is there anything you want to plug? T-shirts. We got T-shirts. We got the tour coming up. We've closed out pre-orders on T-shirts. We'll close out tonight. So, people won't be able to by the time they hear this.

But if you do If you missed out Come to one of our shows and get one Please we'd love to see you on tour I have a plug On the last tour The only gift I received Was Some salve and

Some organic tobacco Both great gifts by the way Such great gifts I shouldn't have said that's all I received Some salve and some organic tobacco leaves. Both great gifts, by the way. Such great gifts. No, I shouldn't have said that's all I received. I mean, those are my only gifts. They were tremendous. I finally used the tobacco leaf this weekend.

You need to share some of that. Tony's been hoarding the tobacco leaves for spells. Okay, I'll bring you one each. Because you have to like, there's a way. I figured out, I had a friend over who knew what to do with them. Okay. And so we had to like re-moisturize them, we had to leave them in water a little while,

then dry them back out and cut them. And they were, it is the best blunt I've smoked in years. It was felt, it tasted so good. Did you get like nicotine fucked up on it as well? I don't think so. I don't think so. Maybe. Shit, I don't know.

It just tasted so good oh yeah yeah just so light and airy so what's your um what are you saying you want people to bring you other gifts start thinking now about gifts you're going to bring us because i'm going to be on all the tour dates and i want gifts this time since i didn't miss out the last time but no no the shout out was to the folks who gave those to us that was actually open source I was getting at. Open Source Farms. Yeah, Open Source Farms, who showered us with those gifts. Thank you so much. I finally did use the leaf, and it was delicious. Thank you.

It was such a pleasure. Well, hopefully I'll get to try that. Also, before we go, please check out the Patreon. If you want more content, trust me, the content there is good. Yeah, and now that I'm part-time at work, I'm about to step it up on the Patreon. Patreon's gonna be Tanya heavy, so if you

want Tanya, come to the Patreon. Let's get lit over on the Patreon. If you're not sure how this works, because some of our boomer listeners, i.e. my parents... Actually, my parents aren't boomers probably like like gen x my parents are gen xers actually interestingly enough um but let's just say

everyone gen x and up is kind of like what is this patreon thing well it's just a website it's like any other website p-a-t-r-e-o-n.com slash trailbilly workers party you it's just a website. It's like any other website. P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com slash Trailbilly Workers Party. It's like a Netflix subscription. You just give it $5 a month and it gives you the content. And for people who are already Patreon subscribers, might I suggest offering a month or two as a gift to a friend? Yes. I think that's such a nice gift to give.

That's a good upsell, Tom. That is a good gift to give. What a salesman. Sales person. What a good gift. Such a nice gift to someone. It's very cheap, but it's rich in content.

But use their credit card so after the first month it just renews automatically. On their credit card. Hopefully they forget about it. Don't check your statement. No, just add it to your shit and be like,

this is for you. This is a little thing I'm doing for you this next couple months and then I think you're going to want to keep it going be like, this is for you. This is a little thing I'm doing for you this next couple months. And then I think you're going to want to keep it going. Right, right. All right. Well, check that out.

And we will see you next time. All right. Yeah. Bye.