Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 143: Survival Mode To Beast Mode

Episode Date: April 23, 2020

This week it's Epstein, welfare queens, and coffee beans. Support your local small business on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

So, Tanya, do you get the Mountain Eagle at your house? Yeah, I have it. I just picked it up at the dollar store. Does it still scream? It has not screamed in years. It whimpers. It cries. Did you see the story on the front page?

About the barber? Not about the barber, but about the barber but about the barber's wife yeah wait what the barber's wife made the front page oh my god i have to hear this so the mountain eagle ran a story i guess last week saying that a local barber had defied the quarantine orders in the closed business orders and was cutting hair this was according to the whitesburg police chief who you may know tom yeah and the funny thing about that story was that the police chief he said well we know they're in there cutting hair we can never catch them with someone in the chair. So it's like the Whitesburg PD has spent more than one day staking out the local barbershop trying to catch them with someone in the chair. Literally.

Oh, boy. But anyways, when they ran this story, apparently it really pissed off the wife of the barber. And so the wife of the barber visited the newspaper office to get a paper and complain that the story was about the shop she and her husband own. I'm interested. This is where this is going. The wife, who was visibly upset, said three people had called to tell her there was a story about the shop in the paper. The wife said her husband has owned the shop for 40 years and goes there every day to get his mail and work on the interior of the shop. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But this is the funny part. If anybody has any complaints, they can call me. Don't go behind my back. Basically, she was going there and there to be like, shut the fuck if you've got any problems you can come to me keep straight to me bitch keep our name out your motherfucking mouth that is a classic easter kentucky defense come straight to behind my back yeah yep say it to my face yeah well um well welcome back to the show tanya i wish i could say it's good to be back tanya does nobody know the trouble you've seen no no certainly not you don't you don't want you don't like the return to routine and normalcy and listening to your two best neurotic friends um melting down i have uh i guess it's probably still close but uh i'm coming after y'all for most neurotic friend. Might be me. You look like you might have had a great fright.

You know how some people get a fright and they'll get a white streak in their hair? Do I have a white streak? You ain't got that yet, but you've got the sort of catatonic pose going. Yeah, I'm not well, that's for sure. I'm in survival mode. Well, let's treat this like this is... How do we get you from survival mode to beast mode? Well, honestly, I had no interest in being on the podcast until yesterday morning.

And so the content has drawn me back in, truly. As it always does. as it always does as it always does it's kind of like those Pepe Le Pew cartoons when he's got the suit wafting out the window and then you just smell it and you just float right up to the window this is truly that number four scene and it's got to be mine

oh wow well do you want to tell us real quick though i mean because like look um we had a sort of catastrophic natural disaster in the middle of a pandemic here and it received it's just fucking just cosmically hilarious. It received precisely zero media coverage. So let's do a little bit of media cosplay here on the Tribblies. Let's pretend I'm Dan Jennings. What's the name of that? Christian Amanpour.

No, what's the name of that reporter? Tom Stoddard. Pretend I'm Tom Stoddard. Okay, I got to say something. There's no reporter? Tom Stoddard. Pretend I'm Tom Stoddard. Okay, I've got to say something. There's no reporter named Tom Stoddard. Actually, I've drank myself stupid. Can't remember his real name, who you mean to say. Okay, you're Tom Stoddard.

I cannot let this go on. I'm Tom Stoddard. You're listening to KVX News. Ma'am, tell us about your experience. Are you a real authentic person? Did you experience a power outage? Did you experience real authentic hardship? Really, though, what happened? do you want to talk about it what

happened um well i mean i think about a million people were without power across the south last week isn't that right a lot of people yes in eastern k eastern Kentucky, about 75,000? It was about 70-some thousand here, but across the south, that storm hit a lot of places. Last Easter, I mean last Sunday, so Easter Sunday. Yeah, yeah. A really bad storm hit. On the day Jesus rose from the grave. The day Jesus was born. Jesus is not happy with us. I think that's probably

a pretty... A takeaway. I think that's the bare minimum we can learn here. But the day before that, I had to bury my cat. Trigger warning, cat mom in

really bad shape. So there was like two straight days of crying and whining about that. And then we had no water to wash our faces or our asses. Or baptize people in. Yeah. So you guys were like those people in those commercials

or media coverages from the 1960s where they would cover people like uh with cold smudged faces eating dirt yeah we we really truly were eating dirty food trying to eat what was in our fridge grilling it outside the first day wasn't that bad we didn't really take it seriously because we figured they we put obviously too much trust into a monopoly a power monopoly here who has no reason to act swiftly on anything and and probably um yeah i don't know but yeah we were grilling out but then that night it got very cold so every single night that we didn't have electricity it was in the 30s and it would only get up to about in the 50s during the day so we could not get the house warm michella is out

here like a butch princess queer fucking porn stream chopping wood every day all day long but still we could not keep it warm enough in the house so many crazy every day so many crazy things happened some of the highlights is that i i had to so i went to a bunch of stores trying to find hand sanitizer because i didn't I wasn't hoarding hand sanitizer, even though we were in a pandemic, because I wasn't leaving the house. So I was just washing my goddamn hands. Then when I lost water, we needed hand sanitizer and no store had it. There was none anywhere.

So I had to start making hand sanitizer out of Everclear. That was rough. And essential oils. But I figured out a good ratio, good recipe. If you want it, I'll share it. Okay. Is it UNICEF and WHO approved? Because I don't want to use it if it's not.

Yeah, it is. We don't trust WHO anymore, remember? That's right. I don't know if we should trust unicef anymore either bro the who uh recommends 70 alcohol so the band peter townsend yeah i like how you said peter townsend steph peter downs his father um but then i traded some hand sanitizer to my neighbor for some weed so that was really pretty awesome classic bartering scenario we're going back we're bringing back the old professions and by by bringing them back we're also bringing back the old monetary transaction forms bartering baby yeah she's

bartering and uh yeah sex for food tanya i think i'm becoming an anarcho-communist you should be i think that's probably the route we need to go i think i i think that i am and I think that this is just a label somebody slapped on me. He makes one mask. And you can't. Did you like our mask? He was raked over the coals last week for some

controversial statements he's made. This is his overture to the community. Oh God, what'd you do? That's not the reason why. That's not the reason why that's not the reason why i'm off the i'm off the pod one week and you get us buried is that what happened no it was a

big misunderstanding it was a big misunderstanding that's what they all actually i i'm not gonna say anything more about it um but the reason i'm not an anarcho-communist, the reason why I'm an anarcho-communist now is that, look, what's our entry point into national politics anymore? Truly. No, you're right. Bernie is asking me to reroute my sustaining gift. I think I was giving him $12 a week or something.

I don't even know. Not much. He's wanting me to reroute that to other electoral campaigns god damn it bernie i mean did you guys see what cuomo's trying to do um in new york to get him off the ballot to get to get bernie off the ballot in new york yeah still my god my God. You know, they were supposed to rule on that today. I haven't seen anything about it. Let me see. Nobody fucking cares anymore. I'm sorry.

Kobo doesn't have anything else to do right now? He's not busy? It does matter. It does matter a lot because he can accrue delegates, and they are not only committed to breeding Bernie. They want it to look like it was not even close. Well, not just that. They don't want any binding resolutions to Medicare for All.

They don't even want to fucking risk it that Medicare for All might be on the platform. Oh, okay, I see. Because if he has delegates, then they can fight on the platform oh okay i say you know because if there's if he has delegates then they can fight for the platform right they don't want anything like that they are fully committed to the strategy of chasing the conservative suburban wine moms who don't like trump that's their strategy now and honestly bernie's an idiot for going along with it because he doesn't realize that they're fucking

getting ready to steamroll him but maybe he's not I don't know maybe he's got some like ninth dimensional chess thing where he's like Biden's gonna die and then I can swoop in maybe that happens too I have no idea but or maybe Biden names him VP then at his inauguration Bernie pulls a pistol out and just

domes Biden right while he's fucking taking the oath. And then just finishes the oath for him. Oh, fuck. That'd be wild as shit. Do you think they are, no matter what, they will have an in-person convention? No matter what.

No shit, Tanya. what is this you just sent us a screenshot from the website that i had oh my god can we say it on air is that what you texted us i don't know was there a gag order is there a gag order on bad news? There should be. Biden's policy advisor turned into an environmentalist in Whitesburg, Kentucky. Oh, I know her. She was a rural strategies intern before I was. Oh, shit. Remember? I do.

What the fuck? We didn't indoctrinate them well enough She climbed the ladder fast and she's back I remember she got a job She just got a She got a job with Biden Yeah After her

A couple years after her internship or something Anyway Um Well anyways How do you plug into national politics now you know i don't know how you do it like i don't know especially considering i mean obviously uh i've just come unglued here but i just don't even think we have physical infrastructure to hold up against climate, our current climate situation. So it's just, I just feel like I'm, I just at this point feel like I'm never going to get out of survival mode.

You know what I mean? I just cannot help but just not like feel so unprepared. Well, I've got to tell you, my my friend it's probably a good instinct because we're going to be in survival mode here i mean it's just like anything else you have to stay in survival mode for a while till you can get to beast mode well and then when that happens i mean i'm ready to fill up the bathtubs every time there is a storm warning. So that I at least have a backup. Some fucking water that I can use. It's just not good.

The situation is not good. You just cannot rely on these fucks. Here's the thing though. Me and Tom talked a lot about this on the last Patreon. Which we definitely should have released to the public. Instead of that last episode. which was dog shit, apparently. We have all the tools necessary at our local level to perhaps dig in and just, you know,

maybe try to institute some sort of wealth redistribution or egalitarian-type commune at the purely local level we may not have any other choice we might need to do city states again somebody somebody had commented on it on the comments and it's like it's called municipalism you dumb asses and mike bloomberg's been doing this for however long and i would just want to say to that person and listen this is no shade but living in eastern kentucky is about like living in nicaragua in the 80s okay that's what nobody understands it's like living like under fucking monwell noriega in panama or some shit not as violent obviously but like with the same political dynamics and uh you know if you don't have it live there don't

speak on it i mean i really i i'm with you because i feel like if we're let's dabble in anarcho-commie here i feel like there's a lot we can figure out on local levels around infrastructure and like meeting needs and supply chains and shit what i do not know how to figure out without the fucking feds is redistribution of digital wealth what are we supposed to do with that well fortunately we have one big fish we can shake down there his name name's Don Childers. And shake he will. We take all of his assets, liquidate them, give them to the people a la Chavez with the oil in Venezuela, and we're off to the races, baby.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, imagine the bargaining power we could have with several million new dollars in assets and property value. Our credit score would go up. We could start taking out loans, making investments. Now, of course, this all depends on if there's still a stock market in the apocalyptic future, which there probably won't be.

Just call it what it is. It's hanging on by a thread right now the oil's back up today and everybody's shouting joy for it but there's the thing it's you know how like you know we said one time that you really can't bargain with the ocean at a certain point yeah at a certain point you just have too much oil sitting around you know what i'm saying it's like yeah we could throw some cash into it give it a shot in the arm but uh you got to consider production all that kind of stuff and that's just this is only a flash in the pan it's just uh it's just not going to be good very long well i'm not going anywhere I ain't driving nowhere

and I ain't flying nowhere and I think there's probably a lot of people with me at this point yeah well I mean I don't know if you guys saw this but um so like the oil for American

like the price for American oil traded on the West Texas Intermediary, whatever the fuck it is, WTI. That's the thing that went through the floor this week. It was trading at around negative $40. Love that. Wait, does that mean negative $40? Hold on. So let me compare that to yard sale prices here, which is what I'm familiar with.

Does that mean that you have to pay me $40 or I have to pay you $40 to even get it off my property? It means basically they were paying about $3 for you to come take a barrel of oil. Yeah. for you to come take a barrel of oil. Yeah, so if you owned a refinery, yesterday or this week was a really great week, probably. People were just paying you to take their oil. It's partially because there's a glut. There's oversupply and low demand,

but also, apparently, there's storage concerns at the big North American storage hub in cushing oklahoma so so while i shivered in my own filth and my and my neighbor ran her oxygen off a truck battery god damn it is that what you're telling me yeah okay okay but check this out that's fine but then okay so wti is one is the price is like how you gauge the prices of oil in north america but then there's Brent Crude Oil. Brent Crude is like the international marker. It started to go down yesterday,

but check this out. Trump swings in to save it. Oil prices rebounded on Wednesday after Donald Trump stoked Middle East tensions saying that he had ordered U.S. warships to shoot down and destroy Iranian vessels if they posed a threat. What? The prospect of renewed tensions in the Middle East gave crude a lift during a week where prices had struggled to contend with an evaporation of demand triggered by the coronavirus. How much more proof do people

need that the only thing keeping the system afloat is blood there is a literal wood chipper and for every one of us that they send through it someone someone is making money this is unbelievable the only ticks the market has seen in the last month is blood yeah it's blood dripping down into the machine. The market ticks up. Can I tell y'all something? I don't... I did something kind of dumb yesterday.

You leave the house, Tom. No, I had like two Roth IRA accounts. One's an old one that I just haven't been putting anything in. The other one is one I've been maxing out. And I was playing around with the old one that I just had some money sitting in there, like a couple hundred bucks sitting in there from like four or five years ago. So I bought all these ETFs yesterday that were just oil, like straight oil companies. Oh, my God.

And I had $300 yesterday. And I looked at that Roth IRA. I have $162.85 today. Just plunged. I don't know how they got oils up, whatever, whatever. Suicide mission. Well, it depends. What did you trade it on dude i don't know don't ask don't answer that question i don't know what the fuck any of this means i have no idea

either i mean i've tried to understand i'm trying my hardest i finally got i used two different banks in my credit union which i've tried to move to, but they're so fucking stupid. I literally cannot. I've tried, I've made every effort to move all of my accounts, my many, many empty accounts to the credit union. To my credit union. But they just like, they kept telling me they were putting ATM over here and they never did. Anyway, whatever. I finally got my internet banking set up so i can look at it

on my phone and try to put my checks in with the camera phone or whatever and they i have a ira on there it's empty it's zero dollars but i think they created an ira for me you think they're hoping i'll just send money over to it or something now you have had to open it up you probably opened it up for a job or something. You think I just had to have an IRA account at some point? Yeah, if you've got a nice little salary job, you generally have one. They make you open one. Well, I mean, I've got a retirement at Apple Shop, but it's still there. I don't have it.

It's still in their big whatever. No, you'll have it. They'll send you a letter. But this isn't my personal credit union account. I just had like a random empty IRA account. I'm like, what the fuck is this? That's weird. Very weird.

I don't know, Tanya. I don't know, T. Banks are... Okay, when my mammal passed, I don't know Tanya I don't know T Banks Okay When my mamaw passed We had to Dig up multiple containers of money In the backyard

And I am about there my friends That's where I'm at She's burying cash She did not trust banks The woman lived through the fucking depression she she saved fucking baloney rinds and i that is exactly where i'm at right now i can't throw anything away i'm a nervous wreck and i'm gonna make jewelry you're gonna make jewelry out of baloney rinds and sell it on edson i did start an xc i started an Etsy in the past week. I'm going to start selling moths. I don't care.

I'm on the edge. That's for sure. I deleted all my social media apps and downloaded Signal. I'm on the edge. Really? You're not on Twitter anymore? No, I deleted the app. Not your account, just the app. Yeah. No, not my account. It's just the app but um yesterday not your account just the app well

yeah no not my account it's just the app so i can't get on them so instagram i can't get on at all but then i had to get back on fucking i just go to facebook and twitter in my browser but i didn't have to i had to get back on facebook to find outage information literally nowhere else to find outage information but fucking facebook get on the goddamn phone tree and call everyone i know um and then i had to get back on twitter yesterday uh because of the grand content well that spewed up into my face people were texting me the content that's how rich it was you want to talk about it? You want to dig into that content?

No, I want to cut my leg off. You don't want to talk about it? No, I do want to talk about it. Want's a strong word, but need probably. I need to. I need this outlet. Occasionally, Michelle says this, and I think about it now as in like a revolutionary um a revolutionary tool she says about people occasionally they're gonna fuck around and

catch about 20 years worth that ain't even theirs to catch and i think we need to i think that's the energy we need to channel right now into this story no into this fucking current climate ones into what we're dealing with this existence this new existence all these motherfuckers who are fucking us right now and have been fucking us for years but we've had you know enough distractions or whatever to keep us uh house broken as tom says we need to make sure they all catch however many years we have 33 for me of misery they need to catch it even if it's not exactly theirs they deserve it yeah my sole goal at this point i have everybody should pick a millionaire billionaire and just ensure that they die in absolute shame and misery yeah like everybody gets assigned one and it's your goal,

kind of like a guardian angel, but opposite, to make sure that nothing but calamity befalls them. Yeah. I sent out a handful of care packages in the mail today to people who've been checking on me

and stuff. And I got a lot of messages from listeners and Venmo's. Thank you all so much for the love. I redistributed that immediately um but in the care in the letters i sent the short letters all i could come up with was i hope i see you soon and i hope it's in mitch mcconnell's ashes i hope we're standing well speaking of mitch mcconnell i don't we actually don't have to go. Where do you want to go from here?

You want to go straight into the main feature? I guess we've hit a couple of appetizers. We can hit a few more if you want and then go into the main course. Whatever y'all think, we have a very juicy, deeply, deeply diseased segment. I don't even know where to begin with them, really, honestly. I don't even know where to begin with them really honestly i don't really know where to begin where do you start with these motherfuckers all right let's start where everybody started yesterday huh okay let's we'll work backwards from there from yesterday yeah let's start where everybody started yesterday um you know um if you're a... If you are a...

I don't know, like... Devout Trillbillies listener, you'll recognize the characters at the heart of this story from... Do you remember what episode that was even from? Do either of you have one? I do remember we recorded it in Tom's apartment. I do remember that, too. One of the last ones we did.

Back in the old world when we were together. If I had to guess, it was probably let me see. Give me the bleach boys and bleach my hole. I mean, I could go back and look. It was this year. It was this season.

It was like a couple months ago. It was right, okay, I'll tell you what it was. It was the episode after Valentine's Day. Okay. Because this happened right after Valentine's Day. Is that right? It was probably... The episode that's The Promise Zone, maybe?

No, that wasn't it. No, I remember recording that one was it devil's milkshake i believe it was the devil's milkshake episode i've been devil's yeah yeah that sounds right classic yeah 134 episode 134 so okay if you if you want to really keep up with this episode you go go back and listen to episode 134. They play this ace character. If you really want to track their record. And go back and listen to... Where is the episode where we covered the ARC?

It's called No One Agency Should Have All That Power, but I can't find it at the moment. Episode 112. That would be a good one to cover for this, too, because these two characters are very much in the world we're about to describe. Okay. So let's start where everybody started yesterday. Yesterday, actually, this was yesterday.

I'll tell you what happened. I woke up because my fucking phone. I sleep however goddamn long i want to because the sun comes up and the sun goes down but it don't give a shit what i do anymore and you neither but i woke up because my fucking phone was vibrating because people were texting me because that's the only notification i get on my phone is text messages i can't handle any other buzzing you gotta call or text me to get a buzz on my phone and so i rich up and grabbed it pulled it down and god help me it's npr links and i have never been more furious

in my fucking life that people had messaged me links to npr just when you thought you got out for none of that, though. Jesus fucking Christ, people. My God. It doesn't get more dystopic than that. I just really don't know. The only thing worse than waking up next to somebody you really didn't want to wake up next to is waking up to a bunch of NPR leaks. Literally. Literally.

literally um so yesterday this was the this was the hot story um burning up all the airwaves in the the tls um on npr bitter taste for coffee shop owner as new 600 jobless benefit drove her to close. These people make so much money to write this shit. So much money. So there's a few things that we're going to get into that are wrong with this story. But let me just go ahead and, you know, go through some of the basics. $600 per week. That's what the federal government is now offering to people who've lost their jobs because of the basics six hundred dollars per week that's what the federal government is now offering to people who've lost their jobs because of the coronavirus for many workers and employers that money is a godsend a way to keep food on the table while also cutting payroll costs but the

extra money can create some awkward situations some businesses that want to keep their doors open say it's hard to do so when employees can make more money by staying home. Some businesses want their employees dead. They want to put them in harm's way. They want them to suffer. It makes it awkward. It really does. It makes it awkward. It makes it awkward. Okay, we basically have this situation where it would be a logical choice

for a lot of people to be unemployed, said Sky Marietta, who opened a coffee shop along with her husband, Jeff, last year in Harlan, Kentucky. You mean G-Off? He's G-Off. I've not been – so I've been watching justified lately and um and the harland kentucky they constructed that show is kind of a mythical place it's not really harland in some ways but in some ways it is yeah it's it's it's sort of like an amalgam of, like, 70s and 60s Harlan mixed with, like, Hazard around the early 2000s. Mixed with nowhere I've ever seen before, but, yeah, it does better than some.

Well, what was it? A year or two ago, they filmed a movie. They filmed something in downtown Harlan because it looked like somewhere else in the 60s. Oh, yeah. I think that was the movie with What's-Her-Name from Game of Thrones. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Well, I've just been thinking about, like, Boyd Crowder coming across a coffee shop like this or a yoga studio like this like come on raylan

come on raylan we gotta get in on this raylan these green jobs they're brewing they're brewing in the coffee shop raylan it used to be running oxy up from Florida. And now look at it. Raylan, now all we got to do is take that mine runoff water, flip it around, serve everybody coffee off of it. They won't even question how dirty it is. Yeah. We'll take this mine runoff and we'll turn it into coloring paints, and then we're going to write a grant from the federal government. Then we're going to write what's called a grant with the USDA.

We're going to paint a possum on the side of this building. They're going to give us so much money to provide coffee to the nurses through this crisis. Hand over fist. Because health care workers, the least they deserve is fresh good coffee i i love this because there's a there's a unique type of brain disease that small business owners have where they think that their like project is altruistic you know i mean it's not like they're giving like nurses coffee or anything you know what i mean no they're selling it to them yeah jesus fuck well in their minds okay well i guess i'll save that because let's um carry on their goal their goal was to provide good coffee good internet

service and some opportunity in a community that has been starved of all three. Oh, my fuck. Harlan County is notoriously for their demands of good coffee. In their list of things that they want, coffee is always at the top. At the very top. Unbelievable. These people don't deserve this shit. They don't deserve a land without good coffee. Used to be these oxys we'd run up, Raylan, but we got beans now.

We're going to be planting coffee beans. Beans, Raylan. Kentucky proud beans. Kentucky proud beans. We got to slap a little sticker on it. Everybody's going to buy it. Kentucky proudoud Coffee. We're very committed to helping to transform the downtowns and main streets in eastern Kentucky, Marietta said.

When the couple advertised for workers, nearly 100 people applied for just a handful of openings. The shop had been up and running for only a few months when the coronavirus hit. The blah, blah blah blah the number one people that we're serving right now are health care workers i feel like they don't have a lot of options and they certainly deserve at least some coffee in this right oh my god oh my god oh my god but here's here's what happened here's what happened options out there here's what happened in So few options out there. Here's what happened in the story. And for this part, I'm going to turn it over to Skye herself, who wrote a blog post about this at her website called Kentucky Moonbow. Please don't plug it.

Why are you doing this? Kentucky Moonbow. She already said on Facebook she's getting hate mail. And I was like, well, it can't be be blamed on us we haven't even touched it yet Well you know For that reason I was kind of hesitant to do this I told Tom I was getting cold feet earlier

I was kind of hesitant to do this because they were receiving hate mail Oh I'll probably get fired fuck it See This is everything that's wrong with it's just continue on it's just these people are gonna are this is the blood machine they are gonna stay or single-handedly gonna keep sucking our blood literally raylan uncle ted's got honeybees up there thorn. What we're going to do is we're going to make this

Appalachian Proud honey. We're going to slap a little sticker on it. We're going to sell it by the truck full. They got these things called community farmers markets, Rylan. Farmers markets. We ain't got to run Oy no more oh man um so so so then what what happened next will surprise you and so this was the whole this was the whole framework of the npr story and i don't know if you guys saw this but the day day before in Politico, almost like this shit had been planted or planned,

there was an identical story that said the exact same thing. That workers can make more money by quitting and filing for unemployment and getting the $600 a week rather than staying in their shitty $8 an hour minimum wage small business job. And I don't think that it's a coincidence that these stories appeared at the same time as these protests in the state capitals from small business owners demanding to have their small business reopened. Another funny thing happened at the same time that me and Tom meant to cover that we did it.

There was a symbolic small business funeral held in Lubbock, Texas. No way. Yeah, they did a funeral for small businesses, Tanya. Oh, my God. They did the whole thing. They sang Hamdol's... The whole thing, they gathered out in the streets, and they said, this is the end.

This is the end. Wow. But all these things appeared at the same time, and their general gist on NPR and Politico and from this blog post itself from Sky Marietta, which we can dig into here in a minute. queen type story of how people are mooching off the system and how the the real workers the essential ones and etc are getting shafted it's the same conservative shit except tom i believe you called it the biggest mask off moment so far in this pandemic and i tend to agree because you know what it reveals how deep the political realignment has truly come in the last few weeks right it is true it's like people are really showing themselves they have had to hide a bit hide their libertarian conservative shit. To get these grants. Mask off, bitch.

Raylan, Raylan, you know if you go to the doctor and they tell you you have diabetes, they'll prescribe you carrots now. They're giving them kale for high blood pressure, Raylan. We gotta get in on this. Essential oils. Homeopathic medicine, Raylan. We gotta get in on this. Essential oils. Homeopathic medicine, Raylan.

What I love is that it wasn't just that people are mooching. That's what you said. She took it a step further to say that they were hoarding wealth. The poor people baristas. Tanya,

even more preposterous than that she not only did she say they were hoarding wealth she said that that was the reason for the great depression yeah because poor people were hoarding wealth people wanted their wealth she said she literally her quote was did you know that's what caused the great depression that's why we that's why we lost the great depression it's a ted talk it's a ted talk she started her ted talk did you know i mean she's talking about my sister my sister worked part-time in a grocery store and when this popped off we had to convince her to quit and now she's on unemployment and staying home with her kids who she's now a full-time fucking teacher for two five-year-olds how many people want to be a full-time teacher in a trailer to

two five-year-olds anybody anybody want to line up for that for free today was one of their birthdays so i made a cake here and put candle in it and blew up balloons and stuff and we facetimed it was complete fucking madness in the house today even i was so stressed after a 30 minute facetime i needed a bath this is who this is who she is saying is hoarding wealth to cause another Great Depression. Well, if you do, I mean, in fairness, if you look at that photo of Florence Owens Thompson, you know, she's got Liberace rings on, a fine of silks. A Gucci bag.

Gucci bag and her Obama phone. Tom, look, this is what she says did you know so I'm quoting from her blog now so like the way this story was made fascinates me like I wonder if someone read the blog post and then tipped off an NPR

reporter I mean there's layers to this because as many people pointed out on Twitter like to get unemployment you have to be fired. She closed her business, and I guess in Kentucky that means that you can still collect unemployment. Maybe, I don't really know how this works during this crazy time. She didn't stop her business. She just shut her doors temporarily and laid them off, I'm sure.

Right. Which is what most people have had to do. Um. Because coffee is not essential, you stupid bitch! Coffee and yoga is not essential! You got no beans, Raylan!

Look, the federal government, they want you to do this. It it's crazy they want you to be doing this stuff really it's not even legal and this is the what's crazy it's like i mean well you get into it more before i pull back the camera here okay uh she says she says did you know that people hurting money is one of the major causes of deflation and was a driving force of the Great Depression? Oh, God. We have created a perfect storm to encourage folks to have unprecedented amounts of money.

Nowhere but a few low-priced major corporate chains to spend it and a future uncertain enough to make people want to save up every dime possible that money is set out set to run out right at the moment that america will likely be ready to reopen after the major threats of illness abate um there was a part in here she talks about more worrisome we are already starting to see the outcome of social unrest they're scared they're getting a little scared oh gosh people have agency people are scared i want like i keep coming back to this sentence we have created a perfect storm tour encourage folks to have unprecedented amounts of money like look there's only so much money you should have life is full you get 500 a week instead of 420 or instead of 325

unprecedented amounts of money like they never deserved this we never deserved this money we should have never had it we don't know how to spend money to begin with and we're talking about 600 we're talking about pennies fucking pennies and this whole fucking bailout bill this was the only thing in a what trillion how much fucking money now how much was the care cares act whatever however many billions of dollars 130 billion maybe i heard i heard i heard they went through 14 years worth of funds for this kind of thing in just a couple of weeks. Like what they normally distribute. In that, in unemployment and everything. Yeah, because 22 million, what is it, 25 million now people are unemployed?

Yeah. What's the number? 22, I believe. Yeah, and the only piece of the CARES Act that gave any fuck about any regular working person was this piece that was it right oh yeah yeah that's it this is everything else was give the cruise ships eight billion dollars and she didn't that not a word about any of them but she went to harvard do you want to tell me that she doesn't know what's happening in this this structural system look also though look um the only reason they gave people that money is just so that they

would spend it on just basic commodities to like sort of prime the pump of the economy like her stupid fucking coffee yes she's just she's got cut out of this she's pissed she got cut out of it exactly that's exactly right but that that's the reason they gave this people this money because they needed to maintain some base of you know consumerism just the most basic sort of uh strata of consumerism it wasn't like they did it out of altruism they basically did it to just like keep the system's bare bones running and you're

seeing this now with the way that McConnell is talking about pensions McConnell is told Mitch McConnell is totally fine with letting states declare bankruptcy and default on their pensions and all this other shit they're fine with giving people just bailing them out with the lowest amount of money possible just so they can keep

capitalism running but when it actually comes down to um you know the bare bones of how neoliberal austerity works they are still at the end of the day just austerity hawks they're just neoliberals truly um mask off well but this is the this is the realignment i'm talking about this is what i think is so fascinating is that the republicans like okay i was reading this thing the other day about how after the 2008 financial crash it was completely out of the question that they would bail out Main Street. I'm quoting, I'm using air quotes here, that they would bail out average everyday Americans,

that they would do what they're doing now. That was out of the question. The Republicans were never going to sign off to that. It's very fascinating that not only do they, like they just blew through that in the early stages of this pandemic they were like oh we've got to give people money fuck it but there seems to be developing a rift between like the trump people who are fine with that and the mcconnell people who are still uncomfortable with that like whoa yeah like like this has been our project for so long what are

you doing here right and it seems like the liberals, I can totally conceive of a situation where the liberals, people like Marietta here, et cetera, the liberals side with McConnell over Trump here because they hate Trump so much. Yeah. Well, it's telling in their first offer of that with the stimulus. They want to give every American $250, and they were so goddamn proud of that.

Right. You know what I mean? Like, they were trying to thread the needle between, like, McConnell's austerity and Trump's, like, monopoly money politics. Right. And they ceded a lot of ground to both in that half-assed measure. Oh, my God. The mind boggles at all the sensible ways that money could have been better spent. I mean, did you guys see the story about how a lot of these small business loans

have just been taken by corporations that don't deserve them? Yeah. Yeah, because guess what one of our one of an actual incredible small business owner here in whitesburg who should have been interviewed by fucking npr has been posting non-stop on her facebook about all these piece of shit corporations that hawked the fuck in and swooped up this money she has like named their ceos and how much money how much bonuses their ceos got all this stuff she's doing her own research and fucking nailing these people to the wall because that's an actual enemy well this gets at an interesting question though and

this is the this is probably one that our audience wants to hear are small business owners the enemy what are small business owners the enemy no that's not what i'm saying she was talking about these big corporations who swooped in and took all this small business money no i know i know what you're saying i'm saying that is asking this yeah i'm saying that in the grand scheme of things are just across the board whether they're good people or bad people are small business owners bad um i wouldn't say that probably no i say yes with exceedingly few caveats i mean without small business i would have business, I would have no marijuana. I would have no...

Dealing in sex work is not small business. That's not small business. That's just called hustling. It's a strictly mercantile operation, not a capitalist one. Yes. My favorite barbecue well i i tend to so i'm with tom here i think that that i think they break down into a lot of different subgroups yeah we can break them down right here um so a large i'd say the vast

majority of small business owners in this country are the ones i mean and i'm including like their political orientation align with the dipshits protesting outside of the capitals in the states like those i'm comfortable saying like those are most small business owners they're highly conservative in the outlook. They've got sort of a ruthless competition mindset about America and the American dream. They're temporarily embarrassed millionaires. They think that one day they'll be able to make it into that. An incessant need to lick the boots of people that have done better than them in business.

You're right, right. Yeah, but they are fervent believers in capitalism. They believe that capitalism can be, I don't know, it can be sort of gamed in such a way to benefit someone like them. They are rubes because American capitalism is ruthless, and as we're seeing, they're just getting gobbled up left and right because that's what fucking capitalism does. Yeah. Well, I will say, especially here, there is a whole crew of small business entrepreneurs who have been fed absolute garbage bullshit from nonprofits and government agencies for decades about entrepreneurialism. That's my other.

So we have those small business owners, the ones who are conservative in outlook, believe in the American dream, believe in capitalism. Right, okay, I got to head up. And then we have this other kind who have just run rampant through Appalachia, like fucking termites. Like, they are everywhere. And again, we covered this in the episode 112.

We've covered it a lot on this show. It's been a very frequent type of person. Someone who believes that the answer to all of Appalachia's woes from poverty to bad health outcomes, joblessness, etc. is small business entrepreneurialism. These people are usually liberal in outlook, right? They generally have a very liberal worldview. And by that I mean they believe in all of the uh you know i don't know what how

would you put it like they believe in like i guess like socially liberal ideas like diversity and um well they named their coffee shop stuff like coffee revolution and put Che Guevara on it. You think I'm joking. I've seen at least two places like that. Well, I think... Are you getting to a third category? Yeah, I think there's a third. I think there's a third category. The third category is like old punks from the early 80s who started a punk bar in like 1982 and it's just like barely

hanging on and they're generally good people but i have a i have a soft spot for those i mean but these people are so few now like the way the way that small business works in america now is like i don't know i feel like corporations just more and more like undercut the need for them. And that's like this, that's sky. This is the liberal Sky Marietta's big objection with American capitalism that that Wall Street crowds out the little guy. Wall Street, Wall Street makes it impossible for our small business or not Wall Street.

I'm sorry. Walmart, Walmart, Walmart. Yeah. These poor people, they don't have anywhere to... I mean, where are they going to spend their money? They can't go nowhere. What are they going to do with it? They're just going to give it to Walmart. No, bitch, they're going to pay their fucking bills with it. Because they're all behind on them because they haven't had enough money to live

their entire fucking lives. Well, also, they are going to spend it at Walmart. And there's nothing fucking... That's just the reality of it. And that's fine. Instead of what? Buying her bougie coffee?

It's just insane. It's not like she ran a hardware store. It's like completely mental. That's exactly the thing. And you know, since crude oil's bottomed out, and I can't say higher than crude oil anymore, the other thing about small business, too, is they offer the same shit Walmart has, in less of a selection, and it's goddamn $4 or $5 higher.

Yeah. Whatever. The point here is that to tell people, to convince people who have lost jobs, like manufacturing, mining, whatever jobs, because of capitalism, they've lost these jobs because of mechanization and just that was the whole plan to begin with. agencies and non-profits are are still today literally right now feeding these people the lie that they have to become entrepreneurs if they want to save themselves and their community like that's the answer yeah and that's all they want to give soar is having ton like all they have that's all they do is talk about entrepreneurship when we had we in order to protest a prison we had to do it at an entrepreneurship fucking gathering expo yeah we had to do it at an entrepreneurship fucking gathering. Expo.

Yeah, we had to do it at an innovation expo because that's where our elected officials are. Well, you know, as we talk about this, it's just now occurring to me, I guess, after years of writing and observing and talking about this, that none of these small businesses are ever, ever intended to be profitable. Like the whole point, it rests really more on some sort of idea of social control more than it does on profitability. Because like if you look, and again, we did this in that episode 112, and I did this in that piece I wrote for The Baffler. But if you go through all of the grants that the federal government gives to the ARC, to the Appalachian Regional Commission, to then disperse to what they call, quote, unquote, economic development initiatives in Appalachia, the vast majority of them go towards entrepreneurial initiatives.

The vast majority of them go towards entrepreneurial initiatives, whether that's teaching people how to run their own businesses or teaching people how to fucking open them or just giving money straight to businesses. Yeah, most of the money is just spent paying rent for dilapidated buildings that rich people own. That's what these people are doing the marietta's own a building in downtown harlan that is not only has the coffee shop but has harlan yoga yeah they bought they bought all these buildings for nothing they came here from the northeast we haven't even got into all their whole history y'all can just look it up yourself it's raylan raylan they turn the temperature up to 95 and bend in all kinds of weird ways. It's called hot yoga. These people sit on the Chamber of Commerce and the tourism for Harlan County,

and they don't even live there. They don't live there. Go ahead, Tom. No, never mind. Never mind. live there well the thing that go ahead tom no never mind never mind tony montana said no no no kids and no women yeah we have to keep the kids out of this check it out check it out check it out we have to keep the kids out of this even though that's the most diseased aspect of this story um but look this is the funny thing they wrote the problem now is the policy has been made law and that's hard to walk back as we've been told by our representatives and elected

officials oh my god oh so she called she called somebody up tried to throw her weight around about this oh yeah she's saying yeah and and you mentioned this earlier sorry to interrupt you again but you mentioned this earlier that even like Twitter popped off about this immediately. It's like they NPR. This was a terrible journalism. NPR didn't interview any of these fucking workers to get their perspective. And you wonder how she how these people were the have come to rise to represent small businesses in Kentucky. It is Biden.

It's no small fucking happenstanceance these people are well connected they went to harvard that's where they met they have money and power and even though she has deep roots in eastern kentucky this bitch knows she called up someone she went to college with and that's who interviewed her do you know what i mean like she did this she she has like pushed herself to the top they are literally out here i mean they are so diseased and attached to entrepreneurship that they are literally running competitions for it they have moved here to create a like um a reality sitcom for themselves so that they have something to talk about during dinner parties when they go back to the northeast make no mistake make no mistake and one of those things they like to talk about even when they get

interviewed they in one of their interviews dear god help me i don't know which one but they literally when when the when the person says have you gotten any pushback from local people about all this all these big ideas you brought down here all this bullshit you're doing they said we our kids are drinking the same water and and have the same health care system we're all in that's what they said we've sacrificed our young here to prove that we're in it to win it baby totally totally in line of the ethos of the current moment about getting people back to work they say what you want about them but they live their ideas i saw i saw it um uk did this interview of them i think that's what i'm talking about

yeah and and they were like talking about eastern kentucky and he was like uh he was like i love it down here you've got real authentic people. He really literally does say authentic people. Yeah, authentic culture. You've got authentic culture. Look at the people. They're so real. They have real problems. He literally said places like New York and Boston and Paris

have lost every cultural authenticity about themselves. And places like these are the only places left in the world with cultural authenticity. They're so lucky to live here, so lucky to be here. Well, but that's the funny thing. You know they go back to have it, and they tell all their friends that. Look, there's real authentic people down there. They have real problems, and it's crazy.

You won't believe it. They take Oxycontin. My little gets to go into the woods. No, Tanya, Tanya. No kids. No kids. This isn't a video on the fucking internet. I'm not making this up. I know.

I know it is, but we can't be involved. She said, my kids get to go hunt mushrooms and eat them for dinner. How many kids get to say that? My kids get to hunt their food. No, a lot of guys in their late 20s. My neighbor has found 1,600 hickory chickens. She calls them dry land fish, whatever.

One of my favorite parts of that video is they're talking about women-owned businesses, and one of them was like Gypsy Mountain or something. I'm like my mic down. I'm crying. I can't continue on. There's just no way to bring these people to justice, and we're just literally making ourselves miserable. Oh, there's one way, right?

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Before we get too far down that road let's put it in context the context is that local non-profits beg people like this to come here and validate their work they well the reason that these motherfuckers got such a stronghold the way the reason they're automatically on the chamber of converse automatically in the fucking tourism committees automatically in every room that most people who grew up here and live their whole lives will never get an invitation to is because the local non-profits need people like this to prove that their work is luring people in because it's not enough it's not enough to actually serve the community you're in you have to make your community

look in your own image you have to you have to make it you have to make it look good enough to attract other people to come well yeah raylon raylon raylon they get people from the housing projects to walk and they give them coins so they can go get summer squash but it's. It's a parking solution, right? It's an overflow parking. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. That's my last boy.

My last horrible boy Crowder. We're doing crazy things with currency down here, Raylan. You would not believe it. We got a farmer's market with its own currency. Look, okay, but let's put it in context. That's our currency.

They brought script back, man. You won't believe it. They brought script back. It's crazy. You get a grant. You know what your daddy and your daddy's daddy used to dig for? It's the same thing, but this time for tomatoes. If you can dig up enough heirloom seeds.

So if you live, like we said on episode 112, you can't listen to this episode really without listening to that one, I feel like. If you live in an area that is, quote unquote, economically depressed or deindustrialized or highly impoverished, you know exactly the type that we are talking about. We're talking about liberal, wealthy people. And I'm not talking about like conservative wealthy people. Conservative wealthy people are an entirely different breed we're talking about liberal wealthy people who want to um they want to pull people up by their own bootstraps they want to they want to give people a way to pull themselves up by their own they want to strangle

people with their own bootstraps they want to exactly but it is this weird ideological project like gentrification where they have to remake communities in the image that is palatable to them. Like we kind of talked about this with that episode with Amber Delgado. Because it is a form of gentrification. But it's really weirdly tied in where we live with the nonprofit industrial complex. tied in in where we live with the non-profit industrial complex it's very i mean it's just like it is gentrification because they literally called the cops on local kids who were drawing with chalk on the sidewalk outside their fucking business because someone drew a titty so it's literally gentrification um they they will raise money to bring new yorkers down here to pay murals

but the second a local kid has some artistic to draw some chalk titties yeah literally some artistic expression to try to to try to putting in effort which none of us should bother putting in literal fucking literal fucking effort from teenagers to make their community look like they want it to they call the fucking cops and threaten them well it's um so yeah it's part of an ideological project it's more than just like we have surplus capital and we need to do something with it it's also this like well we need to make a public demonstration that we are making the world a better place with our money they're great sacrifice right and i'm not really sure where these people got their money i have no idea i've looked into it i've not been able to really

um figure that out um you know what i mean but uh i don't know but i do have something i want to tell both of you we laid off our pi so he could draw more money on unemployment the true billy private investment they're better than the peanuts we were giving them yeah he's making more money now i do have to say this i do have to say this. I do have to say this. You saved the bomb for the end. I saved the bomb for the end. I don't know where these people got their money. But I do know that Jeff Marietta got big because he co-founded this tech company called Giant Otter. Right?

Yeah. We knew that. Giant Otter. Well, Giant Otter was created in the mit media lab and um what do we know about the mit well you're gonna have to finish the joke for me i don't know what's up with the mit media lab todd dude brace yourself MIT Media Lab was like the hub for all Epstein-related fundraising and activities in Boston, I guess.

So the Epstein tendrils snake even into eastern Kentucky. Epstein even has wow the shock the spine tingling conclusion Jesus fuck amazing you can draw a through line from just transition to Jeffrey fucking Epstein

very simple through line without a ruler of course you can of course you can oh man well i want to close on i want to close in their closing paragraph in that article so they were talking about social unrest and how this this dynamic of people mooching off the system and being able to get more money from the government than getting paid for it. Hoarding wealth. Hoarding wealth. Hoarding wealth will lead to social unrest. That's what they said.

Hoarding wealth. She said that. Those are her words. This is what she said. In our opinion, so for now, we can wait and see what America thinks of paying people who aren't working more than those who are. In our opinion, it's a ticking time bomb for massive civil unrest widespread labor strikes food shortages and a prolonged

depression like this one thing not corporate malfeasance not the existence of capitalism in general or the speculative trading market or any of that it's people taking more money than they deserve over a shitty minimum wage job that's what's going to bring the collapse of society that's what i'm saying this this part these people have the best education money can buy and they've sacrificed everything according to them to come down here and live the best money the best education money can buy harvard educated yeah they have the best education money can buy and they're down here uh sacrificing their children to bad water and health care to prove that they're serious about this now they're very serious about this need this desperation for authenticity but when they call up their cut their fucking friend karen

no we'll say susan sorry we're gonna leave karen alone karens don't deserve what they've received they call up susan and say listen you know i'm having i'm at my coffee my coffee shop's in danger down here we got a lot tied up down here you remember that story i told you about that cute kid who like brought us mushrooms to sell us like the entrepreneurship down here is really strong susan and i'd love to like if you could just interview me for npr that'd be great and and even though so she has she has this entire platform she has bolstered her motherfucking self as the face the voice of small business eastern kentucky and then that's what she fixes her fucking lips to say on national fucking npr

that's what she says and when she gets it when she gets in my dms about this that's what i'm gonna ask her well she won't because um like these people are conservatives now like for the longest time we thought that again this is what the realignment has shown you can be as woke as possible terrence they've picked a winning team is all i know because they don't look at us look at us all we have all we have is this rinky dink podcast and an extra six hundred dollars a fucking month to rub between two sticks and they've chosen winning team and they're bailing out cruise ships so they can keep on cruising

well check this out though um we may be one of the only small businesses in america right now actually turning a profit so we're one of those we're one of those caveats so if you want to stick it to these assholes and prove that they're fucking idiots just donate to our patreon it'll go go towards something great trust me we're putting money back to take over yeah it's all going back to my weed man okay that's all i got um no but really most small business owners are bad um they're either completely misguided because they think that i mean this is the weird thing a lot of small business owners come from the working class they think like i've got a little bit of money saved back i'm gonna

try to do my own thing they they are probably because they hate bosses which is a very good instinct like i wonder how many i wonder how many small business owners are completely fueled by their hate for every boss they've ever fucking had well yeah i mean it's a misguided uh political action if that's i mean that's that's that's the wrong course to take um and also it changes your it changes your relationship with the system once you own employees and assets and all this other shit oh but then there's yeah but then there's another um there's another category of the small business owner who again we we are attacking here, both are bad, but both come from completely different social forces. And it's fascinating to me that for the longest time we were told that these people, because they are liberal,

because they're a little bit more open-minded, because they aren't completely homophobic and racist or whatever, even though I'm sure they are deep down secretly, although they would never say it publicly, that they were on our side. Well, they're not, and the way that politics is shaking out in this crisis, I think, is a pretty good sort of revelation in that. I don't know.

I don't know. What do you guys think? Mask off. Fucking mask off. Is it mask off? Is it mask off? Damn. Well, um... I was trying to think of another Raylan to close it out on,

but I was blanking. Another, uh... Another, uh, woke Raylan. Raylan, we gotta stimulate this local economy. Alright, I'm sorry. Another boy crowd in my back. We gotta stimulate this local economy. We gotta get green jobs in here.

Um, I'm looking at their website and it's hilarious, bro. It's so fucking funny. They have multiple coffee shops. Four ways to stimulate the local economy. Hint, it's not Walmart.

Please, y'all. Put me... Just... Well, okay. But wait, before we leave please put kill me put me out of my misery before the next power outage i can't i can't do it i can't handle it can you um can you conceivably can't you conceive of a situation where somebody would be listening to this and be like okay well then what's your solution like if it's not entrepreneurial small businesses putting money back into the community what is your solution it is absolutely it is so violent to tell people that the answer to a century of extraction is moving around the crumbs in a different way

move them around in a different way you peons solve your own fucking problems with the money that was never invested anywhere that your family never created the wealth that never was and never will fucking be if this is the answer right i've got some ideas a 90 percent marginal wealth tax micro loans raylan micro loans you ever heard of a little organization called MACE-Ed? Microlones. Raylan, they give low-interest loans to budding entrepreneurs. What's your idea, Tom? Financial planning. I think it's a couple things.

One, I think there's two things we can do right now to low-hanging fruit. One, not go back to work. Two, stay in your house and refuse to pay rent. That's all I got right now the low-hanging fruit one not go back to work to stay in your house and refuse to pay rent yeah that's all i got right now i like this article on their website we expect to lose 45 000 doing the right thing it is time for other businesses oh get the fuck out of here oh hey i'll throw a terence Ray ism. Come down off the cross, asshole. Make the wood. Yeah. Not looking for a pat on the back or anything, but. God damn it.

That pisses me off. That makes me, I was going to say it. It's on site with Jeff Marietta. Yeah. Well, they're all the same. They're all the same. Just fighting over the sort of surface features of the system they want they want it to appear nicer and more diverse and stuff

but they all ultimately want the same thing and this is why i have a million times more respect for the boyd crowders of the world like grifters who just run oxy in from florida i have way more respect for that fucking grift than these assholes because these assholes are trying to like church it up to you they're trying to church it up and sell you on the idea that this is actually good for the community a made-up hollywood grift truly respected more i truly do respect a made-up hollywood grift more than this you know that shit's real where do people get their oxy from huh they're not growing it out of the ground listen i've had i've been asked to bury enough florida license plates to know what's coming from florida what's coming from flor? Tigers? Gators? Yes.

Tigers and lemurs. Oh, my God, Tanya. I never thought I'd see the day you'd get in. Exotics? I'm the exotic. Wow. Well, all right. Well, we got it.

We got it, didn't we? Truly. What's the bow to put on this? I really don't know. I don't know. Reading her blog post is fucking funny, though. It's like, it's so fucking good. We wanted to repurpose a vacant historic downtown building to give some life to a main street that was beautiful but looked forgotten.

Yeah, these people are your enemy. They're your class enemy, but they're also just your enemy because they're assholes. And they think you don't... Just as a practical matter, they're jerks. Yeah. Right. They literally think that you do not deserve to live.

Right, but again, they will church it up in a million different ways to like conceal that fact she said it she said it played with day at npr and then posted on her facebook how shocked she was that this was controversial and she was getting hate mail for it she after she said poor people don't deserve any money they do not deserve to live they only deserve to work until they are dead jesus christ man they're so fucking stupid they're stupid but they do also like the um right wing small business owner they also do truly believe in capitalism and in the productive force of capitalism to alleviate poverty. It's really fascinating to me that he would go on and talk about the cultural significance and idiosyncrasy of eastern Kentucky,

and his whole project is a gentrifying one that tries to homogenize Eastern Kentucky and make it look like just like anything else. You know what I mean? Yoga studios, like high-end coffee. It's just, it's literally the exact opposite of what he's saying, but they're so stupid. They're so propelled by their own class interest that they can't even see what it is that they're doing. Does that make sense? Like none of these critiques or anything have probably even occurred to any of them these are the people who they i mean they literally built a stage they built a stage and hosted a ted talk so that nathan hall could talk about hemp that's literally these people this is who they are oh shit this is who they are to save people jesus fucking christ but it is all this it's but the fact that you bring

that up just goes to show that like it's all the same characters that have just been recycled in and out for the last 10 fucking years and they have no ideas they have nothing they have surplus capital they have power to say whatever they want on npr that's what they have yeah i mean i'm sure we could do that if we really wanted to too but and they have the luxury you think we could get on the npr and say whatever we want terrence i guess not i was thinking i mean we could say whatever we want Terrence I guess not I mean we can say whatever we want if they had us on wait wait don't tell me I could give some wacky answers yeah

and as they remind often they have the luxury to move to live anywhere they want they have the luxury and privilege to live anywhere they want have their little shit offspring run around any hillside they want and any cityscape but they've chosen to let their miserable die here with the rest of us you know what a fucking sacrifice

tanya the calvary's coming don't worry about it you're not gonna die to die. No, it's not. No, it's not. I'm going to die. Yes, it is. Tanya, listen. I don't want you questioning my leadership, but I always step up in the big moments. You know this. Well, I mean, forces are moving so fast at this point. Like, history is moving so fast at this point that the mariettas of the world will like these people will have a doomsday bunker in a few months like they'll take care of themselves it's fine like they'll be non-factors we won't even have to hear from them again we may not hear from anybody again

you won't be hearing from me. But yeah, no. Run these people out of your community. Trust me, they aren't giving back in the way that they say they are. I mean, the capital, I guess, in the economic productivity that they introduce to a community is so minuscule. She said in her blog post they employed five people. Which is like... You're paying five? And they're interviewed on npr she's been interviewed on npr because she employs five fucking people five people and she was interviewed on npr and cannot stand that they're getting six hundred

dollars a week now cannot fucking right stand it that they are literally hoarding wealth it just eats her up just like god damn it and she says it herself in her thing that wasn't she paying her employees like eight bucks an hour right she said that in harlem county a living wage looks a little different terrence living she said we were already paying a little wage turns out that's a little different here no it's not different actually it's more here pretty sure it's the same anywhere you go a living wage here is even more to pay back all the bullshit that we've taken for a century to power your cities. Our living wage is more, actually. It's incredible.

If you have five employees that you're paying like eight bucks an hour, like that means your payroll at the end of the year is like a hundred grand, right? It's not that much. And the grants, I mean, like compared to if you're putting a, I mean, I don't even know if it would be that much though. I mean, if coal employees are making like $25 an hour, I mean, it's a drop in the bucket, paying five employees $8 an hour at a coffee shop. The math, even the math of their own shit, and again, we pointed this out in that one episode,

the math that they employ to justify it doesn't even make sense. No, none of it. None of it actually creates economic stimulus. They love that word. How to stimulate your economy? It's so sexual. It is. How to rub the clit of your local economy.

How to do the crazy eight on the prostate of your local economy. Sex. It's all there is here at the end of the world, folks. That's all we got left. But, I mean... God, I'm horny as a goddamn buzzer. Everyone I know is so horny. We're getting more questions

in our sex ed DMs and my sexy sex ed dms than ever before people are so horny right now because we're miserable yeah well um anyways to me it just goes to show you that like they're not in this for the traditional capitalist reasons to turn a profit it is this much more insidious sort of like well i don't want to say it's more insidious it is just as equally insidious insidious it's just project of social control like it's gentrification um ultimately and uh it's a game show for them it's a it's a it's a reality show you're exactly right it's cosplay build themselves into their

own reality show so that they have shit to talk about at dinner parties, so that their lives are interesting, so that their kids have funny stories to tell when they're valedictorians on stage graduating. They love it. If you think about it, we're just like, you know, we're just like bog flies in their laboratory. I will give 100 U.S. dollars for proof that this conversation has happened between the two of them. And you know it has. That they have talked to each other about how good their kids' essays are going to be to get into Harvard. How much hardship they've seen living here. Oh, fuck. What was it like living there? In the war zone of Harlan County?

Absolutely. It wasn't easy for us growing up. My dad skimmed off the top of a few foundations, but we still found a way to make it work. Well, the whole thing. My name's in a harland county school system you think i got my no kids no kids god damn it their whole relationship to this the whole relationship to this is colonial like the guy came here as the pine mountain settlement school executive director which which okay i just to say this though me coming here was probably colonial in some respect right i mean do you think americorps vista is a colonial program

probably but it's a little different you getting paid what twenty thousand dollars a year four four dollars an hour twelve thousand dollars a year get paid sweat shop wages yeah but but it is in service to this non-profit industry that's just trying to sort of put a pretty face on capitalism and manage its contradictions it kind of feels sort of colonial not in the same way that what they're doing is but well you know what i i'll challenge them because i'm sure they're gonna hear this i challenge them to turn turn this on their heads do an expose about us three no don't do that yeah please please please you'll you'll uncover all kinds of shit that you don't

want to see here yeah but think about what they're to be able to say about where we came from, for fuck's sake. Alright, fellas. Alright, let's wrap things up. Maybe we can go out on that video. That video is pretty fucking funny. Now they talk about their kids in that

video. I'll selectively edit it Okay We have to have principles We have to have The moral high ground Even though we've built our entire careers

Off shitting on other people And in the process we've hollowed ourselves out And there's nothing left really We're drama is what it really boils down to We are We're what drama this is only a career for you terrence what this podcast yeah you said we've built our careers off well it has to be i don't have any other job i got. I hate to break this to you, Tonya. About six months, it'll be a career for all of us. I had a career and made a stupid fucking decision.

Please continue to give out my vidmo on every episode. Will you exit out? Open up with that video and exit out with Choices by George Jones. Oh, shit. All right. oh shit all right well uh choices uh go with god support us on patreon support your local small business in the just transition movement support tanya and word and prayer that's right p-a-t-r-e-o-N.com slash Drillbilly Workers Party me and Tom had an excellent goddamn

Patreon episode from Sunday that I'm just really nervous nobody's going to listen to no respect

no respect everybody's tired of listening Tanya you don't understand while you were gone people got so tired of listening to us

they got so fucking tired oh I understand interesting wow of listening to us. They got so fucking tired. Oh, I understand. Interesting. Wow. But you know somebody too. Yeah.

As a result, they missed out on a classic TNT episode. The only good one we did without you. No, I'll try to go listen to it myself. It's because y'all are flooding the market

with this extra Sunday bullshit. I told you that was a bad idea. I told Tom that. I told Tom we're flooding the market. You see it with oil right now. Supply to man, Tom. Supply to man. You just described it yourself with oil. We put a glut of content out there.

Yeah, god damn it. We got too much content sitting around. Not enough places to put it at. You're gonna put us out of business, buddy. God damn it. Should've known better. Alright, I'm gonna go so I can eat dinner. Thanks for listening.

D-Y-E. See you in hell, boys. See you in hell. Truly. I've had choices Since the day that I was born There were voices That told me right from wrong If I had listened

But no, this is the most interesting place Hold me right from wrong if I have listened. But no, this is the most interesting place to live in America, absolutely. And I would argue the world because, you know, Boston, New York, Paris, London, Berlin, Dubai are more similar than different these days. Because of globalization, because of kind of the McDonaldization of society, the really authentic cultural aspects have been lost. And you come to eastern Kentucky and it's been retained. And they have such strong culture, such great heritage here, great music, incredible arts and crafts, and it's all been retained. Have the Mariettas encountered any pushback from locals? Jeff said no, that is not the case.

So one, we moved here with our children. So our children were experiencing the same experiences that other communities were. They're drinking the same water, they're drinking the same food, they're getting the same health care, they're getting the same education. So you're all in. The age I found I like to drink Oh, and I never turned it down There were loved ones But I turned them all away Now I'm living and dying

With the choices I've made I've had choices