Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 66: It Keeps The Lights On

Episode Date: August 22, 2018

We get back to the basics in this one by taking a deep-ish dive into recent coal news -- who's mining it, where it's going, and what it means for energy markets, consumers, and elections. We lost some really good audio at the beginning of this episode and we're really torn up about it so please send us your thoughts and prayers. Music by Tenure

okay take two take two damn man we we just lost so much good content there was so much good content that was a banner start to what i was i was like man this will be another fucking bonger damn son where'd you find this content okay go back we have to redo the entire bit about We have to redo the entire bit about country songs. Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. Where are you going to start at? Red Army, country songs, or naming customs? Damn. Oh, man, there was so much good shit.

You're right. There's naming customs. Let's start here. We'll start with, we'll just perform this everything we do is off the top of the dome but let's do this right here you want to you want to perform try to perform okay go i got this okay let's see what you got so anyway like we were talking about earlier before everything was recording to the wrong microphone if you're like a united states proud fucking uh we won't be pushed around blah blah blah blah just know that uh we were terrified for a good many decades of the soviets the point i was trying

to make earlier i don't even know i would think i'm probably going to wind up getting it wrong twice but even try it man shoot your shot all right i'm gonna shoot my shot we as i said earlier we just passed the anniversary for the atomic bombings of hiroshima and nagasaki right And the Japanese were trying to sue for peace. They were trying to get us to stop the war. Please. No mas. No mas.

But it wasn't because they were afraid of little dumbass Normandy beach storming American badasses. A bunch of guys that would go home to become Hell's Angels. A bunch of guys that would go home to make a bunch of memes about how our generation is snowflakes.

Snowflakes. And that was a funny thing that happened this week where some dipshit was like my grand my 94 year old german grandfather said that uh he saw images of antifa in the streets and he and he said oh my god it's just like nazi germany if only we had stopped them then and then it turned out that this person didn't even exist or have a german have a german grandfather and also also not for

nothing but if you have a 94 year old german grandfather i wouldn't put too much stock into the stuff he says exactly i mean at that point he's probably having to be wiped and exactly he was probably having to be wiped and where was his bitch ass when the fucking nazis were he was probably having to be wiped and where was his bitch ass when the fucking nazis were he was probably a nazi too that's not fair for me to say actually walk up walk it back well it is fair for you to say because the motherfucker didn't exist in the first place you're right exactly so i can make up whatever you can make you whatever you wanted to be well the reason we got into that first place because i was detailing to you my uh soviet soviet training protocol right who which was come up with by by this guy named uh alexander

folly comrade folly from for those of you on the t-nation boards and it's not even certain much like this guy's 94 year old german grandfather if comrade folly even existed but that makes his story all the more powerful yeah to me yeah it's kind of like john henry or something you know what i mean yeah uh well uh an ardent follower and maybe even the person behind the fall leaf legend is a guy named pavel Setsulin, who was a former KGB guy who now trains Army Rangers. Well, this is what I'm talking about. It's very topical. You see those videos of like Putin, like body slamming people and shit, like when he was in the KGB in the 80s and stuff or shit, man.

shit man there's plenty of videos on youtube of like the soviet like um red army like doing um like calisthenics and stuff like dancing calisthenic routines you're like god dude these people would have kicked our fucking asses oh yeah man that's not even a question well it kind of goes back to that remember that one episode where tanya was here and we were talking about khrushchev telling Nixon, basically, like, we build our houses to last. We build our cities to last generations. Like, we'll surpass you in 60 years and you'll look at us in the rearview mirror

and we'll just be waving at you. Just stunting on Nixon. Yeah. Yeah, he was tapping into something real there, which is that they actually believed in something. That's why the Red Army was the most powerful fucking army. Granted, they did basically put every man, woman, and child out there, just like, protect your cities. Mother Russia is under attack, you must protect your cities. that you know mother russia is under attack like you must protect your cities unorthodox but but like i said the japanese didn't sue for peace because they wanted the

americans because they were afraid of like a little ground invasion from the americans they knew that the red army was covering a distance over manchuria of hundreds of miles blotting out the sun exactly they're like fuck no man i'd rather deal with the americans yeah i'll take my chances with these these guys that just uh you know smoke cigarettes and write letters to their sweethearts exactly i might see nagasaki tomorrow i might see it's okay tomorrow meanwhile like some grizzled fucking uh just battle-hardened soviets just like sitting in a tank watching the fucking like japanese peninsula rise in the fucking distance jesus christ oh fuck well uh so there was that then we covered the fact that i'm your therapist

and that you have to recount your life to me and in i'm laying horizontally this first time i've recorded horizontally yeah i listened to myself on the bonus episode and i think i was just holding my microphone really close but it sounded like i was wheezing like i had sleep apnea or something i was really self-conscious about that i listen to that my laugh sometimes i'm like man that motherfucker's got cotton mouth i think that about myself um yeah no i was we were talking about how country songs these days usually play out in the format of people just listing shit. Just listing things. Or there's the political polemic. There's that.

But mostly it's just like virtue signaling against cultural Marxism. I'm looking forward to the day that country music starts embedding the message of Jordan Peterson. Oh, God. Well. That's where I saw my first driving movie. What was Peterson's thing this week about the ants? Oh, yeah.

Just say that. I did say that. Dude, I think he's, you know, like he subsists on nothing but meat, you know. Oh, yeah. Weirdly. And I think think he's, you know, like he subsists on nothing but meat, you know. Oh, yeah. Weirdly. And I think. He's going to have gout.

I think this is probably his keto brain coming up with all these things. It's like, look, 30% of the ants do 70% of the work. I would like to do an episode one day where we talk about the scientific claims of people like Peterson. Dude, it's really funny. It's like every time there's just staggering inequality. It happened during the late 19th century, too. They always trot out someone to provide some sort of scientific basis. We've seen this before, Peterson.

You're not new. Jordan Peterson country songs, though that is actually a funny concept when i ate broccoli i heard gave me lower back pain i heard the millennials aren't going to hooters no more because they don't like titties. Can you imagine making that leap? What? That nobody goes to Hooters because they don't like titties.

Yeah. Yeah I don't It's like only like the lamest motherfuckers went to Hooters to begin with. You know what I mean? Right. Yeah you're right. The absolute lamest. Just the worst. Yeah, you're right. The absolute lamest. Just the worst.

Yeah. The absolute worst. All right, let's try to re-tackle what we were just... Well, hold on a second. The one other thing, the naming customs. The naming customs. That was good. Well, the point was that my country music persona would be much better if you changed my middle name and my last name to Terrence Ray Gentry.

Or Ray Gentry. Or Ray Gentry. That would work, too. I think T. Ray Gentry like T-Bone Burnett would work, kind of. Right, right. Even though T. Ray is not really a thing like T-Bone is. Right, but it would still work. Yeah.

I get that all the time anyways. It's really funny when people don't want to say my first name. Yeah. You ever like on a sort of relationship basis with somebody like that who doesn't want to say your first name, they just use like a nickname? Like, hey, T-Ray, nobody says Terrence.

Well, some people do. You do, obviously. I got a confession, Mac. I've always hated when people call you T-Ray nobody says Terrence well some people do you do obviously I got a confession Mike I've always hated when people call you T-Ray hey it kind of like

grates at me like you know it's kind of like when I don't know somebody calls you like calls like a fat guy

tiny you know what I mean it's just I don't know it's just like I am with you in this I don't want to say anything because I'm just trying to keep it cool.

I don't want to snap on it. If you're going to talk about me, you answered about any goddamn thing anyway. Pretty much, right. Except like, numbnuts or... I don't answer to numbnuts. You answer to numbnuts?

Every once in a while. Terrence Ray Gentry is my country singing anti-cultural Marxism persona and what was the other thing the naming custom is

like I said before we were cut off that our buddy Leslie on Twitter pointed out that was pointing out Loretta Lynn's children's name and all of them

have that Eastern Kentucky one syllable middle name that's almost always said with the first name. Right.

So like Terrence Ray Thomas Dale we both checked the boxes. You know that you're imbued with white trash DNA

if your name follows that pattern it follows that basic format yeah you're absolutely right yeah or i've always kind of wondered about my middle name the fact that it's gentry kind of um has this sort of like uh you know it's like this sort of saying that everybody's just a temporary everybody's temporarily broke you know what i mean like you're just on your way i always kind of wondered if that's the whole point of my middle name like uh we were poor and so the gentry thing was like uh aspirational aspirational there you go yeah but no really though my birth certificate has two middle names. In which case, I wonder. I guess I could just go by Terrence Neithercutt, right?

Please don't. Terrence Jentry Neithercutt, right? What is Neithercutt? What's that from? I think it's British. That sounds pretty regal. Neithercutt. Neithercutt. Neithercutt. What is nethercut? What's that from? I think it's British. That sounds pretty regal. Nethercut.

Nethercut. Nethercut. So, coal. I don't know, man. I don't know. Coal. So, we got several things. You started it off.

Yeah, well, I just, here's how I would tee it up. It's just that in this moment where, to borrow the Adam Curtis phrase, hyper-normalization, everything's hyper-normalized, and, you know, everything is just so fucking crazy, and all that. Like, if you were living in eastern Kentucky in the previous eight to ten years before Donald Trump, you were prepped for that. If you were fully prepared for this new world order

through a little something called the Friends of Coal campaign. Exactly. Yeah. And I think what you mean by that, or at least the way i understand it is that um you know say what you would have met capitalism um we sort of know it to be a soulless uh profit driven like immiserating system right right it has no moral center it has no um yeah it has no moral core right basically it's just a constantly churning machine that just creates profit well there is a

rationality to that to the when you're talking about allocating resources we obviously see it as immoral and wrong and uh inefficient creates a lot of waste and a lot of environmental harm. But there is a rationality to it in the sense that, like, if it is too costly to mine coal, you find another energy source, in this case, natural gas. Natural gas is cheaper than coal. Therefore, you would think that utilities and the regulators in states like West Virginia and Kentucky would try to incentivize burning natural gas. You would think that. You would think.

But that's not the way it's happening. And we're starting to see this happen on a federal level. Me and you have seen this for years in the states we live in, in Kentucky and we've seen it in West Virginia, because it's just craven ideology, right? But it doesn't make any sense. It makes no sense to continue to force utilities to buy coal when it's much cheaper to switch to natural gas.

And there's all kinds of anecdotal evidence that this is happening. First of all, people's power bills are going up. Second of all, you've got instances, particularly one I'm thinking of, this Mitchell power plant in West Virginia in which they bought, they had to sell 400,000 tons of coal that was just laying around the lot. Just like heaps of coal that they couldn't burn or use or anything. Right. So they just had to sell it off for 17 cents more per ton than they bought it for.

So they made a little bit of a profit off of it, I guess. But the point is, and we're starting to see this again at the sort of federal level, they're regulating from this sort of stance of an ideologically driven agenda. Again, say what you want about capitalism, it's craven craving it's terrible

all these other things but it doesn't have that sort of ideological uh imperative to it it's just you know burn whatever's cheapest extract what's ever cheapest mechanize in a way that makes it as cheap as possible right i don't know um but now what you are getting is... Well, it's funny because, you know, there's sort of the adage, socialism for the wealthy and then boots to the neck for everybody else. Right. I would argue there's not been a sector more exemplary of that than the coal industry. Yeah. And particularly if you look in the last i don't know i mean i keep

throwing out these arbitrary figures last 20 years like i don't know the last little bit right you look at um this sort of liberal push to address climate change and all these things and if you listen to the sort of discourse around coal and our coal future and our energy future, all indications say what? Well, coal's sort of on its last legs. It's like, you know, we've knocked a leg out.

Now we just got to kind of lean on them and they're on their way out and all these employments drop in and, you know, all this kind of stuff. But the one serious miscalculation that all these people made in that is that these coal people have relationships going back decades and decades and decades and whatever. And so now they have a guy, who basically you know it's well documented that coal sort of helped him get to where he's at and like you know sort of the narratives around and

all the same recycled friends coal people and so now if you look at what's going on and he's rolling out these sort of uh bailouts right for the coal companies now in West Virginia tonight. It's what it amounts to. Basically... I didn't know this, that they were rolling it out like a red carpet. Not really. They're having an event for it and it's going to be disgusting.

But it's interesting if you look at it like that it is so entrenched and the sense of of we need to throw these people a lifeline because they helped bring us to this dance and trump's going to do that and what's and what's going to happen in the miscalculation comes in is that yeah sure coal's on its last legs but these companies will run coal at a fucking loss if it's advantageous to take advantage of trump's policy proposals to do so well it's interesting that you say that because there was an article yesterday um or over the weekend in wymd that you showed me it's pretty It was like, I can't remember the exact.

You got it printed out. I don't actually have it printed out, but it was pretty funny because the article. Hold on a second. I've got it right here. I'll pop it up right now. Dude, the fucking headline was great. And the video in it was pretty funny too

because they interviewed this woman with Perry County Coal. It's a coal company in Perry County county which is the next county over um hazard baby the headline reads eastern kentucky coal company is expanding its workforce thanks to possible attitude change in washington this is from this is from our local CBS affiliate. An Emmy award winning CBS affiliate, mind you. I love the phrase attitude change. That's all it comes down to, baby. Obama just had the wrong attitude. My favorite use of that is when our buddy Roy likes to go get high on his car before

his registration. He says, I'm going to go outside and change my attitude real quick. That's what the Trump administration's doing, man. Just went outside and changed their attitude a little bit. Read the fucking article. This is what they're doing, Tom. There's no market for coal, okay? They could sell this shit, I mean, ostensibly to some...

We're talking about Central Appalachian low-sulfur coal. This is premium shit, baby. This is the good shit, baby. It's ain't steptone. It's ain't steptone like that pussy Wyoming bullshit. They'll sell it at a loss, maybe. But you know how they stay profitable, right? Read the fine print down there in the middle of the article.

What's the going rate for a miner that they're paying them if i remember correctly it's the positions okay so basically there was a handful of new coal jobs coming to perry county 12 12 12 so not even a hand article doesn't even mention that it's only 12 or something. So if, for example, your local gas station were adding twelve cashiers, that probably wouldn't be newsworthy in most places. Yeah. And when I lived in Las Vegas, cashiers at gas stations made about what coal miners start out of here.

And that's just for real. Well, it depends on the mine, and it depends on what the job is. But this fucking mine in particular is an underground job. These positions start out at $17 an hour for less qualified employees and can reach up to $25 an hour for more qualified and experienced employees. Would you crawl into a mountain for $17 an hour? Fuck no. I'd rather go work at Walmart. You'd probably

be getting only $5 less. Probably be making $13, $14 an hour at Walmart. And you would retire with your lungs intact. Fuck that, dude. I'm not gonna go bolt a roof in a mine for $17 an hour. Fuck no. That shit's brutal. My brother-in-law got his foot crushed.

Yeah. By a bolt machine. But that's how they'll stay profitable man they'll just pay their fucking miners squad douche and then and then get little local news outlets to run these weird fucking propaganda stories and the really funny thing is and all it serves to do all this shit serves to do is to give people false hope that like yeah things are gonna go back to the halcyon days

when everybody was making this is just I mean we're gonna just you know at first it's gonna be 17 to 25 but you know if you stay with us dude

well the way that the article is framed the way the article is framed it's really funny that this came out this week the same week that the epa did release those new coal pollution rules it's um it's framed in the the the person that they interview in the article is basically like you know um i don't want to be

too explicit about this but it's basically because the trump administration they've got an attitude change you know they've come around to i went outside for a few minutes hot boxed and then they came back in ready to ready to bring fucking coal back baby uh dude it's it's really bad the um the really funny part about that article though was it was at was at the very end they were like if you want to know how to apply to this job visit WIMT.com they basically like positioned themselves are you fucking serious? I'm not kidding you it's not in the written part it's in the video part

WMT's WIMT is not only caping for coal companies around here and for Hal Rogers and all the other powers that be they're like positioning themselves well dude if I'm not mistaken the guy I only know this because if I'm not mistaken and people could call me on this if they know better but Wayne Martin who's a guy that I knew only because he used to be the men's basketball coach at Moorhead way back in the day

so he'd all the time be around the program when I was there. I think that he is the run in the show at WMT or was at one point and is also in the coal business. Really? Yeah. So it makes sense. It makes sense that the same people that are over WMT probably have skin in the game in coal too. I could be wrong about that

but I think that's true. It really wouldn't surprise me in the slightest um but you're not getting any sort of uh i don't know man that's the dose of reality you get yeah you're just tuning in well but also i think you know maybe we should term this co-literacy. But, you know, you're talking about like the new dumping rules and all this kind of stuff. I think something that's lost on people, particularly liberals, when they see something like, oh, my God, they can dump it in the creeks now. It's like the Clean Air and Water Act has never been enforced in any meaningful way in the coal states. Right, right, right. Clean Air and Water Act has never been enforced in any meaningful way in the coal states.

Right, right, right. So, like, when you see stuff like that and you get outraged, it's been going on for a long damn time. Yeah, I don't know if I... So now they're just dropping the pretense. Right, exactly. That's what it means. I mean, I can't really explain it more explicitly than this. In the early 80s, after a decade and a half of militant anti-strip mining activism, I mean, we're talking about people literally firing weapons at strip miners.

Yeah. A decade and a half of unregulated strip mining, just the worst sort of environmental problems imaginable you you know, you could think of. Well, it also sort of created a labor conundrum, too. I don't mean to cut you off, but just to draw the distinction, strip miners are people that work on mountaintop removal sites, and underground miners are people that do it sort of an older way, to put it in layman's terms.

But when I was a kid, it it's well not not quite that old not you put it send a canary in there uh not quite that old they've made they still mine like that in like pakistan and china and it's why there's millions of black lung victims in china it's fucking insane oh dude totally methane explosions and they'll just like kill 20 motherfuckers and just like put them in wheelbarrows and drag them out of there and keep running coal. Yeah, yeah. Even here, that would be a huge news story.

I mean, it used to be like that here in the early 1900s. No exaggeration. Yeah, yeah, totally. But anyway, the point I just wanted to make about that is from the labor perspective, when I was a young man, the underground miners fucking hated strip miners they were scabs right because right i mean they knew the particular math of the situation was well if they need if they use more machines to get this shit out they need fewer employees like you didn't need any sort of yeah advanced you know whatever to to see that And when the Friends of Coal campaign sort of

hit a fever pitch, somehow that all got absorbed together and like if you were critical of one facet of the industry it was an affront to us all. Yeah. You know what I mean? And I'm interested to chart when that happened and I'd be interested to know what your

thought is on that or when you could pinpoint it. Well, let's see. Let's look at a timeline um like i was saying a minute ago in the early 80s uh after like i said a decade and a half of sustained sort of pressure and just outrage that they were letting this happen strip mining um they passed what is called the surface mining control and reclamation act yes macro and it's really carter and the rose guard all these past what is called the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act, SMACRA. Jimmy Carter and the Rose Guard, all these old fucking hippie activists. I was with Jimmy Carter and the Rose Guard, and they signed SMACRA. Hey, you want a fucking cookie?

Everybody's still fucking dying. Right. That created the Office of Surface Mining. What it basically did, though, just uh it introduced to the industry a loophole i mean a way for them to um mechanize and revolutionize their means of production and the way they did that was mountaintop removal so it's really funny how you get the surface mining uh regulation in the early 80s and then you get mountaintop removal which was even more destructive because what they did was they would go in and place dynamite charges blow up massive parcels of land and then just get drag lines and just fucking just basically spread it all around just

dump all the fucking shit into the water you You know, the Obama administration for years said they were going to do this drink protection rule that would update the science that OSM was operating on from the 80s. Surprise. And then the Trump administration came in and did away with it literally immediately. Liberals were outraged. It would have done nothing. Anyway. Not for nothing too

they had to pine and fucking beg for a hundred was it a hundred feet stream buffer from the obama administration and even they were reluctant to to give that to concede that i was a part of some of those conversations man i mean yeah and it's the obama administration this isn't fucking republicans right right yeah yeah no it's it's it's a total joke regulatory agencies in this country exist solely to facilitate business and maximize profit yeah that's the only reason they exist they don't exist to protect the environment they don't exist to protect your health they exist solely to maximize profit and to do it in a way that doesn't piss off enough people a critical mass of people to where they get you know they get back up on strip mines with guns and start shooting at people that's that's exactly the deal and so if

you're a fucking liberal out there then you think that obama was a champion of fighting climate change and all your fucking liberal heroes are these just you know exemplars of fucking excellence where saving the environment's concern and curbing uh climate change you're completely moronical you literally are the biggest fucking dipshit that ever existed and you should go you should go fucking seriously i have no tolerance for these fucking people dude you're you're right and the clean it's really funny because it's really funny because like the administration like basically had a few things that they were just it's it's hilarious they they tolerated us for a few years um

it's it's hilarious they they tolerated us for a few years um i remember um sally jewel wasn't that her name department of interior yeah who obama plucked she was the ceo of rei i mean that's peak liberalism if you ask me if you go find an outdoor company ceo because the outdoor companies are all ran by these fucking reactionary assholes that just have like a hippy dippy aesthetic. They want enough river. They want to be able to fish some cold water trouts and to not. Yeah, in North Dakota or wherever. Exactly. To be able to watch the elk and stuff.

So the Obama administration rolled out this clean power plant you know that this this uh back in probably um i was working it at voices that would have been 2015 is when they came out with us yeah and the whole point was to reduce our carbon emissions and to uh reduce public health costs associated with carbon emissions it was totally toothless um had no way to really enforce it it was uh it was just a gesture man right i mean liberals banked on the idea that hillary would win and continue that they could limp that along for another eight years giving everybody minor concessions here and there or not even minor concessions really just uh symbolic gestures exactly exactly but it was just a symbolic gesture right

so basically what the trump administration put out today is um is they're calling it the affordable clean energy rule and it's a replacement of the of the clean power plan and this rule is fucking hilarious this is a trumpian document it is a platonic trumpian document is perfect in every fucking way because i'm tying off in it they openly admit that carbon emissions will increase and will lead up to 1400 premature deaths annually. The Clean Power Plan tried to basically say it will save up to 3,000 premature deaths annually or something like that. So they're not even making any bogus health claims. They're just saying like, yeah, we're trying to kill you a little bit. Exactly.

That's exactly what's going on. We tortured some folks. Okay, let's read some of this the clean power plant i'm quoting from the new york times article on this the clean power plant aimed to curb planet warming greenhouse gases by steering the energy sector away from coal and toward cleaner source energy sources like wind and solar according to its calculations the decreased coal burning also would reduce other pollutants like sulfur dioxide which poses respiratory risk and nitrogen

oxides that create ozone. Obama's EPA also estimated that by 2030 the Clean Power Plan would result in 180,000 fewer missed school days per year by children because of ozone related illnesses. I have asthma

it's probably some form of result from this granted i grew up in the oil fields is a little different but um by contrast the trump administration analysis finds that finds that its own plan would see 48 000 new cases of exacerbated asthma and at least 21,000 new this is okay this is by their own admission listen listen listen folks i'm not gonna lie to you there's gonna be a toll but to get this thing back rolling, we're going to sacrifice 14,000 children, particularly the weak ones with asthma and other respiratory illnesses. Dude, the analysis also includes a section called foregone climate and human health benefits. That is, instead of listing the health gains of the Trump plan, preventing premature deaths, for example, or avoiding a certain number of increased emergency room visits from asthma attacks, it is instead describing the effect of the Trump plan as benefits lost. So basically, they're just conceding up front.

And mind you, people, they're throwing a party for this tonight in charleston they're throwing a party for this tonight in charleston oh fucking dude uh there's another core aspect of it which is really good i really like it when these plans have like anti-science uh components of them like anti-methodology components or whatever so um uh the clean power plan uh had something in it known as the uh six cities study which is a harvard like a landmark harvard university study that tracked thousands of people for nearly two decades and ultimately formed the backbone of federal air pollution regulations okay the agency is now considering epa a separate rule to restrict the use of any study for which raw data cannot be published as is the case with the six studies six city study which is based on the

confidential health records of its participants so basically the point is like if you have any scientific data whatsoever based on reported health data to a physician or scientist or anything like that, you can't use it. They made it impermissible. Impermissible. Exactly, dude. And again, there's a party going on. impermissible impermissible exactly dude um and uh and again there's a party going on

tonight in Charleston for this it's so funny it's so funny man I was I was

I was watching like paying attention on Twitter to some of the tweets about the event there uh huh

and when Jake Tapper and the CNN crew walked in they just got booed out of the fucking building. Which would be

great if it, you know, under different circumstances. Dude, that's a really funny thing. Jake Tapper, that piece of that bootlegging piece of shit. Dude, what a fucking... Can't even win it with the Trump crowd. But even, dude, just seeing, like, fucking actual figures on the left

just, like, losing their shit over Jake Tapper being disingenuous about some study. I saw that. You made a good point today. Dude, it's just unreal. About Bernie calling out jake tapper for some bullshit like well i mean and i mean i and i'm not getting back into our anti-electoralism i mean we've beat that horse to death but it's really like it's it's weird to see these people that we looked at two years ago as like our hope yeah slowly be absorbed into that

sort of like liberal media complex too like so much so that they're just pining for their approval and wanting their message to get out there and it's like the only time i know that people around here watch cnn is when there's like a west virginia town hall or something right like they might know people like oh i'm gonna watch that to watch that and see if I see Jeff on there or whatever. Yeah, yeah. You know, or when like somebody, Anderson Cooper comes here and does a story on like Black Lung or whatever. Like was the case, I guess, a year and a half ago or something. I'll get into the, I'm never afraid to get into anti-electoralism, my man.

I'm always ready to down that hill we have found a new niche in that no but really the reason why this comes from personal experience this isn't just some abstract fucking thing I believe that like oh it doesn't make sense to engage in the electoral I mean yes it does with some

caveats and I think like in a if you could have a workers party that sort of all those things aside. Nobody's telling you not to go vote for Ocasio-Cortez. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Do whatever the fuck you want. But my larger point is that I've lived long enough and have experienced these things long enough. For example, the clean power plan that don't fucking amount to shit they're all gestures to release a pressure valve on the outrage of certain segments of activists or whether they're environmentalists labor

activists or whatever they're specifically designed for that and now i see our grip is we see socialists falling for the same pitfalls exactly you know what i'm saying yeah and it's it's i'm saying i don't want y'all to get okie doked in the same way that we got okie doked in the environmental movement yes it's 100 true we're speaking totally from experience exactly i've sat down with these people and they've lied to my fucking face yeah that's squared off with congressman senators and country lawyers yes they lie to you they'll tell you whatever they think you want to fucking hear just to make you not as mad as you really should be yeah um man it's it's it's really funny um Man, it's really funny.

Oh, fuck. Who was it on that choppo where they interviewed the Parquet Courts guy? I love Parquet Courts, man. But they were talking about how, like, back when we were a teenager, we used to listen to Rage Against the Machine, like, fuck yeah. And then in our 20s, we're like, man, that's corny as fuck. And now we're like like fuck yeah and then in our 20s feel like man that's corny as fuck and now we're like fuck yeah again like the there's a line from a rage song that's like your anger is a gift yeah and that is 100 true man yeah that's the one fucking thing they can't take from you i always knew the history would be more kind to to uh tom rell on the boys

exactly that's the one thing they can't fuck Don't let them take that from you because it's legitimate. It's totally legitimate and while these just total fucking psychopaths do the song and dance tonight for this like letting them put more shit into

the air so you can die a little bit faster that's what you're up against man and your little measly clean power plant or whatever will never change that it will never uh stamp that out no i don't know man i don't know i remember being at a permit hearing a few years ago and um and this guy this guy talking about how um you hear this a lot, right? I mean, I've heard this multiple times, where you'll have guys come in, and I don't know if they're paid by the industry or if they really just do believe this. I think there are some that really do believe this, where they extol the benefits of high walls and flat areas.

For economic development. For economic development. And even polluted streams, like we were saying earlier, just this machismo aspect, like, buddy, I drank this my whole life and I'm fine. But, hey, bud,

I've heard people literally say in bars, like, oh, my water comes from off the strip mine, so you know it's good. Like, they have literally my cousin worked at cumberland river coal and he said buddy i'll go i'll go there you'll see the biggest fish in there now you tell me that water's bad and those fish probably like fucking got some sort of my friend yeah plutonium and they cause it to to be like the Hulk or some shit. Absolutely. But it's all ideology.

And this is why Trump winning was not that big of a shocker to us. Yeah. Because we saw what people would be willing to put up with for that. Yeah. You know, people can put up with quite a bit of even when the material circumstances around them, when the material reality

around them is telling them that like... Points to the contrary. Right. It's a hyper-normalization. Yeah. But yeah, our sort of... I just like saying that word. Yeah, I know.

Yeah, it's pretty dark, man. You know, I'd printed off a lot of stuff. There's a lot of good examples of this, though. A lot of good anecdotes. There's an article in Inside Climate News by Jim Bruggers that was just put out a few weeks ago about how electric bills are skyrocketing across Appalachia, mostly because a lot of people are leaving Appalachia,

but a big reason is because they're shutting down all these old piece of shit power plants and they're making the customers pay for it. And that's how the ideological reactionary sausage gets made. It's made, friends. That's funny, man. It's like with the AEP rate hikes last year and how they bait everybody into this is that

they see what it's going to cost them to remain in operation, giving everything like the shutdowns, the plant shutdowns and all that kind of stuff. And they say, well, if we're going to keep our profits going at a certain percentage, at a certain, I'm trying to say trajectory, but that's not the right word. I'm sitting here gesturing with my hand up. Anyway, if we're going to keep this profit machine rolling, here's what we're going to have to pass on to our customers. And then here's how they do it.

They say, well, we need 9%. Well, we're going to come out and say we need 18%. Yeah, yes. And then once we get what we want, then can say guys it was tough but we made all the necessary adjustments that we could we and we bum scraped and borrowed and the poor son of a bitch that i feel sorry for not really feel sorry for but it's funny it's like always the pr guy that has to get up on stage and take the abuse from the pissed off customers yeah because the fucking ceo's fucking disgusting ass is sitting three rows

back and it's two chicken shit to get up there and take his own bullets yeah yeah no it's pretty absurd man and it's funny because you'll even see some of the cold guys like that dipshit brandon smith is like it's like you know like goddamn guys you gotta fold the pat hand every once in a while so they don't know we've got the deck stacked you know and he'll get up there and have this faux outrage i see people struggling yeah yeah and it's like shut the fuck up smith sit down yeah man it's it's um it's pretty it's pretty crazy it is absolutely wild i mean um we're sort of at a situation where the trump is trying to incentivize they're trying to create market incentives for purchasing coal. But, you know, I don't know if it's really hard to explain this, but even if you're strip mining, it's still very expensive to do so because, man, a lot of these hills have been mined out so many times

over and over and over. There's just not a whole lot of fucking coal left. No, all the best things are gone. That's something we've known since I was a child. This shit's on the wane. And the way, yeah, I really need to get some of my coworkers in here to talk about this because it's connected. It's all connected, right?

It's like the reason why. We'll do a part two. All right. It's connected. It's all connected, right? It's like the reason why... We'll do a part two. All right. The reason why black lung is so...

It's just skyrocketing at rates we haven't seen in 30, 40 years is because those seams are so thin. Yeah. And when you are mining in a thin seam, you're breathing a lot of dust. Yeah. It's really hard to control for that, even though we know that they're not controlling at all for those things.

Right, right. And it's particularly disgusting just like you pointed out several times when you have other developed countries who have eradicated black lung england germany right etc etc yeah it's pretty it's pretty wild i didn't yeah that's fascinating i didn't know so we're recording this on tuesday by the time this comes out that thing will have already happened in Charleston. But that's pretty funny, man. I'm kind of like a glutton for punishment. I kind of want to go turn on CNN and see what's going on with it.

Oh, man. Well, it's hard for me to know how much time because we lost all that fucking audio at the beginning. Let's take a quick break real quick, and then we'll come back for just a second. We'll close out. How's that sound? Sounds good. guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo Oh, man. Talking about the neither cuts.

My people. My people. I'm watching this show right now on AMC called The Terror. Have you heard of it? It's about the... It's like the 1847 British naval voyage to find the Northern Passage over the Arctic Circle. And they get stuck in the ice, basically, and wind up staying there for years. I mean, it's a fictionalized account of that.

The real thing that happened is no one made it back alive. They don't really know what happened. They suspect there was cannibalism and some stuff. But man, and I don't even really like the show that much, but it's really effective at depicting what it would be like to get stranded in the Arctic Circle in the 1840s. Oh, yeah. Lost in the Arctic, stranded in the Arctic Circle in the 1840s.

Oh, yeah. I mean, like, you know, like, there's all the stuff like gangrene and... Scurvy. There's all that. Scurvy, right. Which is pretty interesting. But back then, you really also had to deal with a lot of poisoning because, you know, they didn't really have a full understanding of... Because, you know, like you heard the phrase mad as a hatter. You know, it usually came from like the glue or whatever that they would use.

Mad as a hatter. You know what I'm talking about? The mad hatter. Yeah, right, right. I guess the glue and the hat they would use would drive people slowly insane. Really? Yeah. Interesting.

Yeah. I didn't know that. But back then, people were all the time getting bismuth poisoning, like lead poisoning and stuff. It just slowly drives you insane over time. My reliance on Pepto-Bismol might be to blame for my erratic behavior lately. Oh, wow. Tom's just staring off into space and rambling about...

Bismuth poison. I've been Bismuth poisoned. It usually turns your shit black, doesn't it? Yeah. Bismuth? Yeah. Which is kind of scary because it if it could mask you feel like you really were like bleeding out of you right innards right at this point it's just kind of like you

take that for granted though yeah i mean you just kind of part of that part of the ibs lifestyle you're gonna see blood and you poop time to time oh man um man i had a good idea for a bit the other day and i was totally gonna save it for you and tanya but um it's just too good for me not to share um the idea is a um you it's it's like a um you know how they're always using call centers and stuff as economic development around here? Yeah, yeah, yeah. They'd be like, oh, we're going to put a call center. It's going to open up 100 jobs.

Man, motherfuckers were flourishing when Sox was around. Yes, exactly. Because it's like, no matter how bad you fucked up, you know you could always fall back on Sox. Exactly. exactly yeah it's like it's basically this thing was a call center that was like the urban equivalent of like uh like ups i guess you know what i'm saying like as long as you could pass a drug test there was a place for you on the chain somewhere right well which i don't know ups store store yeah, those good. I worked at UPS store job for three fucking years, my friend.

Yeah. Three years of my life I gave to the UPS store franchise. I'm never getting that back. Dude, you can never have dignity or anything when you are, anything when you are um when you're trying to like meet someone in a bar or even go out at a date or something like that when like for the previous 10 hours that day you wore a little polo shirt with your stupid fucking name tag on it that's like my name's terrence ask me any question you like people ever abuse you? Absolutely. Like just fuck with you about stuff sometimes? Absolutely, man.

Did you have to keep your resolve? I did, but there were a few times I did not keep my resolve. I always have a good chuckle. About every year during Christmas time, during the high season, UPS out of hazard, they always put out a call for part-time package handlers. Yeah. And I can't think of a job description that I am more qualified for. That's right. Just a part-time?

Not full-time. Just a part-time package handler. Which I'm sure is hard work, really, but I'm making a joke here. Yeah, man. It's all jokes. Yeah. No, it's pretty badass you get to ride around like on the golf cart too if you're the part-time package handler easily yeah that looks man but i feel so sorry for those guys from like because it starts right around thanksgiving like with the black what

do you call it like friday shit and all that stuff. Is that what it is? The big shopping holidays. I think it's Black Friday. And then the next thing is Cyber Monday. And the shit just does not let up through the whole season. That's where you have cyber sex. Do you ever have cyber sex? Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, I went to a place called The Attic. Chat room. Oh, nice. And you throw out the ASL. Oh, we've Yeah, I went to a place called The Attic. Chat room. Oh, nice. And you throw out the ASL. Oh, we've talked about this before. Like, theoretically, you found out that you had been cybering with one of your best friends. You know what I mean? Like, you're, like, a 35-year-old and me, and you realize that we cybered together.

We cyber sex together. You were, like, strawberry blonde hair, and I was, like, rubbing my dick. Like, oh, yeah. Just imagining it. Yeah. You were like strawberry blonde hair And I was like rubbing my dick Like oh yeah Just imagining it Got that is weird I talked on the phone With one of my One of the girls I met on there

One time Yeah And I was pen pals with several of them Like when you were like 12, 13 It was kind of weird I was extremely online even then Even before online was a thing, really. Right, right, right.

Oh, yeah, we've always been extremely online, man. Yeah. We've all been extremely online. I used to, one of my favorite things to do also, I'd get on the WWF chat rooms, like the wrestling chat rooms, and I would always put like, the real Rock or the real sean michaels and act like i was like ask me anything you want ask me anything you were doing ama before it existed the people would sit like oh when are you coming back to eau claire wisconsin

not gonna look at the schedule looks like i'll be there in february not gonna look at the schedule looks like i'll be there in february did you ever pretend to be um chris benoit i was never that he was wcw then i probably would have they found what if they would have found those trends those transcripts and you were just fucking around with some kid you were like i'm gonna kill my wife and kid i'm gonna kill my whole family that would have been crazy that's that's one for the safety manuals right then they track you down and they

they yeah could you imagine if you were in a Matt Damon like movie where they lead you into a room you wake up

and they fucking take the the bag off your head or whatever you're like god you know what I mean your hair's all fucking... Start snatching at people.

Right. They were like, how did you know Chris Benoit? Man, I was fucking 12, dude. I was just fucking around with some people in a chat room. It was Eastern Kentucky in the late 90s. You had to be there. No, the answer would be that you talked to your son 30 years in the future 90s you had to be there no the answer would be that you talked to your son 30 years in the

future because of a of a wave of a solar wave that came off the sun or whatever and took the man for reference on that one see last episode episode number 12 or some shit um oh yeah

we do have a premium we do have a patreon i need to remember to plug that we have a patreon that we are posting episodes on every week so and we're trying to make it worth your while t-shirts are coming we have a t-shirt design now they're they're coming they're coming uh they should be i'm gonna i'm going to guess they will probably be getting out to you by the end of September, 1st of October. That's what I'm shooting for. Right. If you pre-ordered shirts, those are coming around that same time too.

How long ago did people pre-order? Gosh. Actually, extract that from the extract that from the no no no we're all transparency here baby yeah look me and Tom

are two people um you know and Tanya too like we're just Tanya's part time now yeah well Tanya's part time right

but uh which means that we've uh kicked her out of the union and uh taken her health care. She's going to lead a scab driver or something like that.

JK, JK, JK. She will go scab boards though when we do go on strike. But really, we're sorry about the shirts. I mean, Jesus. Well, there's only a handful that we've said, but they are coming. There have been so many times when I'd be talking to you like, man's only a handful that we've said but there are so many

times when we i'd be talking to you like man this is i'm stressed that we are so yeah i'm well here's what here's what i'm gonna do those people pre-order shirts i'm gonna refund their money and give them a shirt for free okay for you that's that's what we're gonna do but anyone else who's a patreon subscriber um or wait i don't know what i'm saying. I don't make the deals. You make the deals man. What are the deals? If you've been a Patreon subscriber for at least

six months and that's a good chunk of you by now you'll be getting your shirt for free. Make sure your sizes and addresses are updated

and for those of you that pre-ordered I will be refunding your money shortly and we will send you a t-shirt for free for basically loaning us $18 for

seven months. Yeah. Is that what happened? People just... Well, no. Well, what happened was I was in search of an outfit that... Well, look. We need to be straight up with you right here. Me and Tom are grifters. Alright? We're con artists. No. Not so much as i'm just kidding that is is i i wanted

to find a place that union made and union printed and union made shirts in the south and that proved to be a harder enterprise than i thought uh-huh until i found there's a teamsters represented factory of baytown in tennessee that's pretty. And that's the idea that we're going to use their shirts to print stuff on. All right. Well, don't tell me. Anyway, no, I don't have to tell you that. See, I'm the member of this outfit

that looks the other way when injustice occurs. I'm just like... Terrence always turns a blind eye to injustice. Whatever it fucking takes, I don't care. I'm cutthroat, baby. We're taking this shit to the top. Hems the brakes, kiddies. Oh, I didn't finish my hypothetical earlier.

So, you know, they use call centers. Well, a funny idea that would stimulate economic development and create like a self-regulating internal sort of perfectly thermodynamic system or whatever would be if it was call centers for environmental non-profit conference calls so if you needed to um call in you know if you needed to if you needed a uh basically they would set up conferences for you need to troubleshoot an sjw problem you call the uh call center you're like like oh my god the trump administration is trying to pass affordable clean energy bill they're like all right hold on one second and they put you

in a conference call where you basically hear a bunch of ideas that make you want to go to sleep and you lose all of your outrage completely and they send you back out there completely indifferent to what you were calling about in the first place exactly you're feeling me yeah you're good you were looking at me but i see you're on my level i'm with you all right that'll do it you know what i mean like it'll uh but I see you're on my level. I'm with you. I'm with you. All right, that'll do it. You know what I mean? Like, it'll never, that business will never die.

Seems like there's always going to be an industry of people just thinking about problems and then thinking about how they can not actually solve them. Or thinking about

how they can solve them about 70%, but not enough to put them out of a job. Exactly. Exactly, man. Exactly. Incrementalism.

There's too much money in incrementalism. That's why it's not going on. Well, what it is is you become part of the status quo. I mean, literally, materially, you become part of the status quo and that's the same thing with the Democratic Party, man. Yeah. And if you really want to get into cahoots with them, that's what you are getting.

And just as a practical matter, incrementalism is how we get shit like the student loan crisis, right? Yeah. It's like they don't want you to pay that off in one fell swoop. They want to limp you along over time. Right. Because that way they've always got, you know, a blue million people with their revenue streams right which is much better than if somebody just pays you off and one wax oh well no fuck that right we always want to be able to get money from you yeah yeah yeah it's about streams of revenue dog so we know more

about economics than most economists yeah man, it's about latchkey businesses, baby. Right. Yeah, no, you become... Not latchkey, what am I saying?

Turnkey businesses, turnkey operations. I think I know what you're talking about. Like car washes. Oh, in what ways? I took that

from King of the Hill. Oh, okay. I'm sorry. All right, well, the point is uh the point is keep your outrage high i don't know man i don't know i'm talking talking listen to rage against the machine cool again yeah and sign up for us on patreon because I know you want that extra weekly content. Patreon.com slash Trill Bailey Workers Party.

No apostrophe. Right. Yeah. If you've got five bucks on your couch cushions, if you, you know, maybe you want to skip a, you know, lunch at McDonald's one day a month. Here's what you could do. We'll take that. This would be the cheap way to do it but I totally respect it

if you do it. Sign up for one month, $5. Listen to everything on there and then just unsubscribe, do it again in six months. Binge, listen to it. You know what I mean?

Just, if you don't want to spend, how much is that? 12 times five? $60 a year? Yeah. You want to spend $10 a year? We're cool, man.

Yeah. We don't really care. It's time to go. All right. Thanks for listening, everybody. We'll see you next in a few days.