UVA Joins Colleges Agreeing to Disregard Suspensions for Participating in Anti-Gun Protests

In the wake of the horrific mass shooting on February 14, 2018, many high school students are planning to participate in anti-gun protests, especially on March 24, 2018 when nationwide protests are scheduled.  A number of school superintendents - typically in backward, GOP dominated/knuckle dragging areas of of America (the two generally go together) - have threatened to suspend students who miss school in order to participate in such protests.  In an effort to counter such efforts to stifle free speech and freedom of assembly, a number of prominent colleges and universities have announced that suspension arising from participation in anti-gun protests will not be counted against student applicants.  Among such universities I am proud to say is my alma mater, the University of Virginia which found itself invaded by non-Virginian Neo-Nazis last August.  Here are highlights from BuzzFeed:

In the Needville Independent School District just outside Houston, Texas, the superintendent reportedly sent out letters threatening three-day suspensions for any student who joins in on walkouts.

"Life is all about choices and every choice has a consequence whether it be positive or negative," Superintendent Curtis Rhodes said. "We will discipline no matter if it is 1, 50, or 500 students involved. All will be suspended for three days and parent notes will not alleviate the discipline."

The Spring Independent School District, also in the Houston area, and the Waukesha County School District in Wisconsin issued similar warnings. (The Waukesha superintendent later made another statement saying students could participate if they were excused from class by their parents.)

Now colleges are standing up for the teenage activists, saying it won't affect their admissions decisions if they get suspended for protesting. 

Here are just a few of the schools that have vowed not to penalize student protesters:

Yale UniversityMIT
Boston University
University of Virginia
Tulane University
Dartmouth College
George Washington University
UMass Amherst
Brown University
Northeastern University
University of Connecticut
Clark University
Smith College
UCLA
Brandeis University

For more schools that have made this pledge, growing lists are available here and here.

Noticeably missing from the lists of such universities are Christofascist institutions such as Regent University and the even more insane Liberty University whose degrees and graduates are frequently viewed with suspicion by those who graduated from legitimate colleges and universities. 

The University of Virginia Statement reads as follows:

Kudos to my alma mater!

Rural Christian White America Doesn't Grasp That it is The Problem

As regular readers know, I have little sympathy for rural, white Christian America.  Indeed, I view its inhabitants as a clear and present danger to America's future and how the nation adjusts to a rapidly changing world.  Moreover, many of the misfortunes that now face this demographic, in my view, stem in large part from their own bad decisions and desperate clinging to ignorance and fundamentalist Christianity which cannot abide knowledge, education and/or science that reveal that their belief system is built on sand and in some aspects is simply untrue.  Much of Southwest Virginia embodies rural, white Christian America at its worst.  The question then becomes how do progressives  - the so-called "coastal elites" deal with these people.  To win elections, Democrat candidates need to find a way to try to attract their votes, yet is being "understanding" the correct course of action?  Trying to reason with those who reject reason and prefer to cling to ignorance is an exercise in futility.  Personally, I am inclined to shame them and call them out - the husband prefers a more conciliatory approach - and not waste my breath on those who have chosen to close their ears and minds. A lengthy piece in Raw Story by a former resident of rural white Christian America seems to support my approach.   Here are highlights:

As the election of Donald Trump is being sorted out, a common theme keeps cropping up from all sides: “Democrats failed to understand white, working-class, fly-over America.”  Trump supporters are saying this. Progressive pundits are saying this. Talking heads across all forms of the media are saying this. Even some Democratic leaders are saying this.

It doesn’t matter how many people say it, it is complete BS.  It is an intellectual/linguistic sleight of hand meant to draw attention away from the real problem. The real problem isn’t East Coast elites who don’t understand or care about rural America. The real problem is that rural Americans don’t understand the causes of their own situations and fears and they have shown no interest in finding out. They don’t want to know why they feel the way they do or why they are struggling because they don’t want to admit it is in large part because of the choices they’ve made and the horrible things they’ve allowed themselves to believe.

I grew up in rural Christian white America. You’d be hard-pressed to find an area of the country with a higher percentage of Christians or whites. I spent most of the first 24 years of my life deeply embedded in this culture. I religiously (pun intended) attended their Christian services. I worked off and on on their rural farms. I dated their calico-skirted daughters. I camped, hunted and fished with their sons. I listened to their political rants at the local diner and truck stop. I winced at their racist/bigoted jokes and epithets that were said more out of ignorance than animosity. I have watched the town I grew up in go from a robust economy with well-kept homes and infrastructure to a struggling economy with shuttered businesses, dilapidated homes and a broken-down infrastructure over the past 30 years. The problem isn’t that I don’t understand these people. The problem is they don’t understand themselves or the reasons for their anger and frustration.

The problem is that rural America doesn’t understand itself and will never listen to anyone outside its bubble. It doesn’t matter how “understanding” you are, how well you listen, what language you use…if you are viewed as an outsider, your views will be automatically discounted. I’ve had hundreds of discussions with rural white Americans and whenever I present them any information that contradicts their entrenched beliefs, no matter how sound, how unquestionable, how obvious, they will not even entertain the possibility that it might be true. Their refusal is a result of the nature of their fundamentalist belief system and the fact that I’m the enemy because I’m an educated liberal.

At some point during the discussion, they will say, “That’s your education talking,” derogatorily, as a general dismissal of everything I said. They truly believe this is a legitimate response, because to them education is not to be trusted. Education is the enemy of fundamentalism because fundamentalism, by its very nature, is not built on facts.

Knowing this about their belief system and their view of outside information that doesn’t support it, telling me that the problem is coastal elites not understanding them completely misses the point.

Another problem with rural Christian white Americans is they are racists. I’m not talking about white hood-wearing, cross-burning, lynching racists (though some are). I’m talking about people who deep down in their heart of hearts truly believe they are superior because they are white. Their white god made them in his image and everyone else is a less-than-perfect version, flawed and cursed.

Once you have this view, it is easy to lower the outside group’s standing and acceptable level of treatment. Again, there are varying levels of racism at play in rural Christian white America. I know people who are ardent racists. I know a lot more whose racism is much more subtle but nonetheless racist. It wouldn’t take sodium pentothal to get most of these people to admit they believe they are fundamentally better and superior to minorities. They are white supremacists who dress up in white dress shirts, ties and gingham dresses.

Because rural Christian white Americans will not listen to educated arguments, supported by facts that go against their fundamentalist belief systems from “outsiders,” any change must come from within. Internal change in these systems does happen, but it happens infrequently and always lags far behind reality. This is why they fear change so much. They aren’t used to it. Of course, it really doesn’t matter whether they like it or not, it, like evolution and climate change even though they don’t believe it, it is going to happen whether they believe in it or not.

Rural Christian white Americans have let anti-intellectual, anti-science, bigoted racists like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, the Stepford wives of Fox, and every evangelical preacher on television into their systems because these people tell them what they want to hear and because they sell themselves as being like them. The truth is none of these people give a rat’s ass about rural Christian white Americans except how they can exploit them for attention and money.

Gays being allowed to marry are a threat. Blacks protesting the killing of their unarmed friends and family are a threat. Hispanics doing the cheap labor on their farms are somehow viewed a threat. The black president is a threat. Muslims are a threat. The Chinese are a threat. Women wanting to be autonomous are a threat. The college educated are a threat. Godless scientists are a threat. Everyone who isn’t just like them has been sold to them as a threat and they’ve bought it hook, line and grifting sinker.

Since facts and reality don’t matter, nothing you say to them will alter their beliefs. . . . . The problem isn’t understanding their fears. The problem is how to assuage fears based on lies in closed-off fundamentalist belief systems that don’t have the necessary tools for properly evaluating the fears.

I think the idea that “Democrats have to understand and find common ground with rural America,” is misguided and a complete waste of time. When a 2,700-year-old book that was written by uneducated, pre-scientific people, subject to translation innumerable times, and edited with political and economic pressures from popes and kings, is given higher intellectual authority than facts arrived at from a rigorous, self-critical, constantly re-evaluating system that can and does correct mistakes, no amount of understanding, respect or evidence is going to change their minds and assuage their fears.

“Rural white America needs to be better understood,” is not one of the dots. “Rural white America needs to be better understood,” is a dodge, meant to avoid the real problems because talking about the real problems is viewed as too upsetting, too mean, too arrogant, too elite, too snobbish.

I do think rational arguments are needed, even if they go mostly ignored and ridiculed. I believe in treating people with the respect they’ve earned, but the key point here is “earned.” . . . . Just because the media, pundits on all sides and some Democratic leaders don’t want to call the actions of many rural white Christian Americans racist and bigoted doesn’t make them not so.

What I understand is that rural Christian white Americans are entrenched in fundamentalist belief systems; don’t trust people outside their tribe; have been force-fed a diet of misinformation and lies for decades; are unwilling to understand their own situations; and truly believe whites are superior to all races. No amount of understanding is going to change these things or what they believe. No amount of niceties will get them to be introspective. No economic policy put forth by someone outside their tribe is going to be listened to no matter how beneficial it would be for them. I understand rural Christian white America all too well. I understand their fears are based on myths and lies.

They are the problem with progress and always will be, because their belief systems are constructed against it.  The problem isn’t a lack of understanding by coastal elites. The problem is a lack of understanding of why rural Christian white America believes, votes, behaves the ways it does by rural Christian white America.

Life in Virginia's Sickest and GOP Supporting Counties

Grundy Virginia

Over the weekend in Richmond for the inaugural events for the Democrat slate led by Ralph Northam, there were an abundance of people from Virginia's so-called urban crescent that extends from Fairfax County, Arlington and Alexandria southward through Richmond southeast to the cities of Hampton Roads.   These are the areas of Virginia that vote Democrat and oppose the reverse Robin Hood agenda of the Republican Party which, if House Speaker Paul Ryan were to have his way, would include drastic cuts to public support, including disability payments and Medicaid (actually, every city in Virginia other than Lynchburg and Waynesboro and a handful of tiny "cities" in southwest Virginia voted for the Democrat ticket in November, 2017).   Not present in any significant numbers were those from the rural areas of Virginia that supported both Donald Trump and Ed Gillespie who in reality espouse policies that, if enacted would cause major harm to the very same rural areas.  Coincidentally, the same day that Ralph Northam and his ticket mates were sworn into office, I came across an piece in The Atlantic  from 2015, that focused piece on life in America's sickest counties, ten (10) of which are located in Southwest Virginia.   

The county most spotlighted in the piece was Buchanan County, Virginia.   Ironically, despite its severe dependence on federal disability payments, Medicaid payments and remote area medical clinics, Buchanan County voted over 80% for Donald Trump in 2016, and 75.94% for Ed Gillespie this past November.   Trump's tax bill slashed taxes for the wealthy and large corporations, few if any of which are found in Buchanan County, and will fuel Republican desires to slash the social safety net spending.  Gillespie, had he been elected championed a similar tax cut in Virginia that would have left Virginia with a $1.5 billion deficit which would have likewise brought spending cuts in programs that aid an already desperate area of Virginia.  Both votes are yet further displays of the irony that rural regions vote against their own economic interest typically because GOP candidates play upon the residents' racism, homophobia and general rejection of knowledge and modernity itself.  How residents expect to turn their regions around economically when their bigotry and backwardness make them anathema to modern and progressive businesses.  A further irony is that newly inaugurated Governor Northam - a pediatric neurologist by profession - whom Buchanan County rejected last November has pledged spend time working in the RAM clinics mentioned in the cited article.  Here are excerpts from the piece in The Atlantic:

Remote Area Medical ("RAM) was founded in 1985 by Stan Brock, a 79-year-old Brit who wears a tan Air-Force-style uniform and formerly hosted a nature TV show called Wild Kingdom. Even after he spent time in the wilds of Guyana, Brock came to the conclusion that poor Americans needed access to medical care about as badly as the Guyanese did. Now Remote Area Medical holds 20 or so packed clinics all over the country each year, providing free checkups and services to low-income families who pour in from around the region.

Inside, the clinic’s patrons looked more or less able-bodied. Most of the women were overweight, and the majority of the people I talked to were missing some of their teeth. But they were walking and talking, or shuffling patiently along the beige halls as they waited for their names to be called. There weren’t a lot of crutches and wheelchairs.

Yet many of the people in the surrounding county, Buchanan, derive their income from Social Security Disability Insurance, the government program for people who are deemed unfit for work because of permanent physical or mental wounds. Along with neighboring counties, Buchanan has one of the highest percentages of adult disability recipients in the nation, according to a 2014 analysis by the Urban Institute’s Stephan Lindner. Nearly 20 percent of the area's adult residents received government SSDI benefits in 2011, the most recent year Lindner was able to analyze.

[F]ive of the 10 counties that have the most people on disability are in Virginia—and so are four of the lowest, making the state an emblem of how wealth and work determine health and well-being. Six hours to the north, in Arlington, Fairfax, and Loudoun Counties, just one out of every hundred adults draws SSDI benefits. But Buchanan county is home to a shadow economy of maimed workers, eking out a living the only way they can—by joining the nation’s increasingly sizable disability rolls.

Just about everyone I spoke with at the Grundy clinic was a former manual worker, or married to one, and most had a story of a bone-crushing accident that had left them (or their spouse) out of work forever.

In October, the sun-dappled mountains blazed with red and orange as the leaves turned. If you wanted to send someone a postcard to convince them of the merits of Virginia, this would be it.

But if this place has the scenery of the Belgian Ardennes, it has the health statistics of Bangladesh. People here die about five years earlier than they should. About a third of people smoke, and a third are obese. A quarter of the people live in poverty, compared with about 11 percent in the rest of the state.

These Appalachians, many of them former coal miners, are among the nearly nine million American workers receiving disability payments today, compared with 1.4 million in 1970. Spending on the program has risen nine-fold over the past four decades. Clusters of recipients can be found from California to Maine, though as Lindner points out, the states with the highest numbers tend to be in the South and Southeast.

Critics say the program’s expansion is partly driven by Americans who are perfectly capable of working but are unwilling to do so. Since the mid-1980s, government spending on the elderly and disabled has ballooned, even as tightened eligibility rules have slashed welfare aid for needy mothers and children.

But visiting a place like Grundy reveals a more complicated picture. There are undoubtedly some who exaggerate their ailments in order to collect their checks. But many of the coal workers here have experienced horrific on-the-job accidents and can’t go back to the mines. Other residents have been battered by diabetes, obesity, and tobacco. Others still suffer from severe depression and intellectual disabilities that would preclude most kinds of work. And most importantly, there are no other options here: no orthodontist’s office where someone can work the front desk; no big firms brimming with entry-level secretarial jobs. It’s not even clear how a person would go about calling around for a job here: My iPhone stopped working a few miles outside the county line.

Locals blame the town’s economic slump on the decline of coal, which they in turn blame on the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulations. Several yards were dotted with campaign signs urging passers-by to “Stop Obama/Vote Gillespie.” (Sixty percent of Buchanan county voted for Ed Gillespie, the Republican candidate for Senate, though he lost in the state overall.)

The population of the county has shrunk by about 15,000 people since that year [1978]. In May alone, 188 workers were laid off in a mine near Grundy. The industry has been slammed by the newfound natural gas reserves and is expected to contract further by 2020. Still, coal remains the largest private employer in Buchanan, and its heavy impact continues to be felt even by those who no longer work in the mines.

Compare all of this with Arlington County, 400 miles away in the northern part of the state, which has one of the nation’s lowest rates of disability. Only 1 percent of people in Arlington are on disability, and it’s regularly ranked one of the overall healthiest (and richest) counties in the nation. Here, there are well-paved bike routes and a Metro-accessible Whole Foods. People complain when they can’t take their tiny dogs into Starbucks.

Virginia, in other words, is a state divided not only by politics, professions, and mountains, but also by how run-down its citizens are. While Buchanan county’s fortunes have been inextricably tied to coal, those of Northern Virginia are hitched to the government.

An outmigration of the young and talented has left behind an aging population that is ill-equipped to deal with a changing economy. Thirty-two percent of Buchanan's residents never graduated from high school, compared with 15 percent nationwide.

Because getting to a doctor is hard and expensive, people self-medicate with prescription painkillers, alcohol, and tobacco. Eventually, said Smiddy, the pulmonologist, “they become dysfunctional. They're weaving behind the car. They're setting the stove on fire. It's not that they're bad people. They’re probably faith-based people, family people. Most are just trying to function.”

The problem is, even if society were to decide that there should be fewer people on disability, that the system has become too bloated with sneaky pretenders, it isn’t clear what a fifth of the population of Grundy would do to survive. It’s entirely possible that some of the town’s residents are faking their disability claims, but it’s hard to imagine that most of them are. People who are rolling in undeserved government dough generally don’t line up at the crack of dawn to get their teeth fixed in an elementary school cafeteria.

The problem, as Smiddy sees it, isn’t just that the economy is limited, or that the region’s education and medical systems could use an overhaul. The county’s health has been so poor for so long, he says, that locals have set their expectations too low. And once everyone—the people, their employers, their doctors, the government—accepts that bleak vision, it hardens into reality. It makes it so there’s no life after coal.

Yes, Southwest Virginia allowed itself to become wholly dependant on the coal industry which is now dying no matter what promises Der Trumpenführer maymake.  But two other things are at play: 32% of the population never finished high school and much of the population is described as "faith based."  The result is ignorance and bigotry that make the area unattractive to many who might otherwise travel to the region and enjoy its natural beauty (the husband and I would certainly never go there).  As far as new businesses, and uneducated population makes it almost impossible to sell the area.  Sadly, much of the populace refuses to look in the mirror and acknowledge that they are a large part of the problem and that until behavior and attitudes change, things will only continue to get worse.  Understand, I am not unsympathetic to the plight of the people of the region.  I simply cannot grasp how the vote for politicians who espouse policies which will only end up hurting them more while rejecting modern values that are allowing other parts of Virginia to flourish.

Early Morning Rant: "Call Me By Your Name" and Hampton Roads' Backwardness

Yesterday began the United States release of the movie "Call Me By Your Name" which has received rave reviews and Oscar buzz ever since it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier in the year.   Outlets as diverse as the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Wall Street Journal, Variety, The Independent, New York Times, Rotten Tomatoes, etc., have all lauded the movie and its actors and directors.  All of which, of course, means it is NOT showing in Hampton Roads and cannot be found among any of the "coming soon" information" although it appears to be coming to Richmond next week.  With a strong gay romance theme, my fear is that other than the Naro Theater in Norfolk, few theaters in the region may show this movie that likes to view itself as "world class" and sophisticated - Virginia Beach perhaps laughably is trying to court Amazon for a major headquarters facility - yet has a huge Regent University/Pat Robertson display at Norfolk International Airport (which has no international flights).  Talk about telling visitors the area is not sophisticated or accepting!

The irony to me, of course is that places like Hampton Roads - Southwest Virginia even more so - need to see this movie and perhaps have their parochial eyes opened to the reality that love is love (reading the book which the movie is based on, which I have done, would be equally good).  In many ways the husband and I have a very nice life in Hampton Roads, but this is yet another occasion where I am reminded that this is not where I really would prefer to live.  There is a reason why all of our vacations are to truly progressive cities and/or foreign countries (Ft. Lauderdale in a month, Key West in March, and London and Paris next September).  

Yes, Virginia is set for another four years of progressive Democrat leadership under Ralph Northam, Mark Herring and Justin Fairfax which hopefully will improve things over all - an employment non-discrimination law protecting LGBT Virginians would be a nice start.  But socially and culturally, Virginia still has a very long way to go.  As shocking as the concept might be to Virginia Republicans who daily prostitute themselves to right wing religious extremists  best embodied by The Family Foundation, it takes more than low taxes to attract world class, progressive businesses.  Meanwhile, the husband and I will persist in doing our part to open minds in this area even though it gets exhausting at times.

Should We Just Let Appalachia Depopulate?

If there is any part of Virginia that is an economic basket case it is large swaths of Southwest Virginia that comprise a part of Appalachia.  Much of the economic malaise derives from the decline of the coal industry.  But much also comes, in my view, form the region's social backwardness and religious extremism that keeps new industry from entering the region.  The combined result is that young people are fleeing the region, leaving the region inhabited by an increasingly elderly and less educated population.   If Congressional Republicans have their way and gut Medicaid, the regions economy will be even more distressed as rural hospitals are forced to close and some of the few large non-coal related employers cease to exist.  Two editorial in the Roanoke Times - here and here - suggest that perhaps parts of Appalachia should be allowed to simple become depopulated.  The pieces recognize the reality that before the rise of the coal industry, the region was very sparsely populated. A few counties and small cities are trying to embrace education and woo new 21st century businesses. Many, however, are not and the downward spiral, if anything, is accelerating.  Here are  excerpts:

Here’s an uncomfortable question: Instead of trying to build a new economy in Appalachia, should we simply depopulate the place?

Mind you, that’s not a position we’re advocating. It does, however, make for a sobering thought experiment — one that has some important policy implications.

Here’s who got us thinking about this: A friendly fellow named Lyman Stone who issues some dire warnings. By day, he’s a cotton economist in Washington, concerned with the ups and downs of the global cotton trade. On the side, he runs a website called In A State of Migration, which tracks migration trends around the world. A native of Kentucky, he writes a lot about Appalachia. One of his posts — laden with charts and graphs and maps — shows population trends in Appalachia.

The basic point: Westward settlement mostly bypassed Appalachia, likely for the obvious topographic reasons. From 1800 to 1870, what he calls “the classic core of Appalachia — West Virginia, eastern Kentucky and Southwest Virginia — was mostly empty.

Then something happened. Coal happened. Railroads happened. People — many of them immigrants — poured into Appalachia. Roanoke was not the only boom town to spring up then. So did lots of other communities deeper in coal country.

Between 1870 and 1890, the population of many counties in Southwest Virginia (we’ll just focus on our part of Appalachia) nearly doubled. Over the 20 years after that — between 1890 and 1910 — many nearly doubled again. Wise County’s population more than tripled. From 4,785 in 1870 and 9,345 in 1890, Wise County’s population surged to 34,162 in 1910. The coal boom wasn’t over yet. By 1950 — the year most coal counties in Virginia peaked — Wise County topped out at 56,336. West of the Blue Ridge, only Roanoke was bigger.

Put another way, Appalachia was where the jobs were. Now it’s not.

First, coal-mining became more mechanized. People started moving out decades ago, long before the demand for coal dropped. The collapse of the coal economy has only accelerated that population exodus.

All but one of Virginia’s coal counties is smaller than it was in 1950, sometimes dramatically so.  . . . . And their populations will surely continue to decrease for two reasons, one economic, one demographic.

The economic reason: Last year marked the first time that coal was not the nation’s biggest energy source; natural gas surpassed it. Coal will not come back in any appreciable way. The demand of metallurgical coal — used in steel-making — may rebound some, depending on the economy. However, when utilities make decisions on new power plants, they’re looking decades ahead. They are putting their money into natural gas — hence, Dominion Energy’s interest in the Atlantic Coast Pipeline — and, to a lesser extent, renewables such as wind and solar. You can’t simply flick a switch and turn coal back on.

The demographic reason why coal counties will continue to lose population: It’s young adults who are leaving. Rural areas in general are getting older, but Appalachian counties even more so. . . . . There is not going to be a baby boom in the coalfields — so all these counties will simply get older and older, which means another way they lose population: Deaths outnumber births. All that’s old news, of course, just a backdrop for getting to this question: How much lower will Appalachia’s population drop? And should we really try to stop that?

So what is Appalachia’s economic future? There are certainly efforts to change the equation. Wise County is now rich with broadband Internet — thanks in part to investments by the state’s tobacco commission — and is now making a play for data centers. It’s already landed one. The University of Virginia’s College at Wise and the community college there are training students for drones and cybersecurity. There are similar efforts in eastern Kentucky to create what some are calling “Silicon Hollow.”

On the other hand, Appalachia is a lot bigger than just one forward-thinking county. And President Trump’s proposed budget zeroes out funding for the Appalachian Regional Commission, the federal agency that makes a lot of that training possible. It also zeroes out funding for the program that converts abandoned mine sites into marketable industrial sites.

Trump has lifted environmental regulations on coal. This helps the coal economy in the short term, but does nothing to change its long-term trajectory in the marketplace. Meanwhile, he is trying to take away the few tools that Appalachia does have to remake its economy. Even with those tools, though, the challenge to create an economy to match its existing population is daunting.

Stone puts it in clinical terms: “The market equilibrium for Appalachian population may be even lower than the levels we see today. I know this will cause deep sadness for locals who long for recovery; and as someone who genuinely loves Appalachia, it does for me too. But we can’t let hopes blind us to realities. On some level, population must be associated with economic activity to support it. Coal mining is still declining, and when it’s completely gone, it’s not clear how much economic activity will remain, and therefore how much population can be sustained.”

So what is the solution - beside Appalachia dropping its religious extremism and bigotry towards those who are :other"?  The second o-ed suggests something abhorrent to many whites in Appalachia: immigrants.  Here are excerpts from that piece:

In most localities in Southwest Virginia, more people are dying than being born. In 2015, there were about 1,800 babies born in Virginia’s coalfields. But about 2,400 people died.

Furthermore, the number of deaths is only going to accelerate in coming years, because there are bigger age cohorts moving into their senior years. Meanwhile, the number of births is probably going to fall, because there are fewer young adults left to have babies.

That means right now the coalfields’ population declines by about 600 people a year just through the natural process of deaths and births — even if nobody moves out. And that annual deficit is likely to increase to 1,300 to 1,800 per year — again, even if nobody moves out. That’s a lot of people to make up.

So what would it take to keep the population of the coal counties even? To stop the population losses entirely? Hold onto your seat.

There is another solution, one that could repopulate the coalfields. It’s a policy that’s been proven to work elsewhere, but isn’t likely to be very popular in Southwest Virginia. Still, we’ll mention it anyway: Immigration.

One of the great ironies of our current political situation is that anti-immigration sentiment runs highest in rural areas, yet it’s rural areas that logically should be the loudest champions for increased immigration.

The United States is not Canada — a little matter in 1776 made sure of that — but there are some things we might learn from our northern neighbor. Rural Canada faces the same demographic pressures that rural America does, yet some Canadian communities have responded very differently.

Consider the case of Cape Breton, the northernmost part of Nova Scotia. It looks and feels a lot like Southwest Virginia — mountainous, with an economy that was once based on coal. Now the coal mines are shut down, and the population is declining. Sound familiar? The problem does but the solution doesn’t: Community leaders there are actively encouraging immigrants to settle in Cape Breton — and the leadership complains when their provincial and federal governments don’t do enough to direct immigrants there.

Not just Cape Breton either. The Calgary Herald recently looked at two small towns in what it called Manitoba’s “Bible Belt”: “In 2011, Winkler’s population stood at 10,700; Morden’s was 7,800. Both cities and the surrounding region have grown by more than 3,000 people since, thanks to immigration programs that have drawn people from all over the world.” The Herald said the two towns were now economically “booming,” as employers are enticed there by the larger talent pool of workers.

Canadians see more clearly than Americans that immigrants drive the economy, not slow it down. So what would it take to reverse the demographic collapse in the coalfields? A baby boom would help. So would increased immigration. Without one or both of those, the coalfields will continue to die, quite literally.

New Survey: Rural America is Racist and Out of Touch With Reality

A new Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation survey of rural Americans confirms several things that I have long believed to be the case: (i) rural Americans tend to be much more racist than urban residents, (ii) even though they are the largest recipients of federal safety net spending, they think those who are "other" are the ones living off the dole, and (iii) rural Americans believe "Christian values" are under attack because there are more restrictions on their ability to persecute others.  Again, rural red states - especially those with white populations - receive far more federal funding that they contribute to Washington and they contribute far less to the national budget than the large cities and blue states that are the economic engines for the nation's economy. One can only assume these people get their "news" from Fox News, Breitbart, or their right wing "Christian" pastors.  It would almost be funny that these people who are the largest drain per capita on the federal government think minorities are the ones playing the system if it did not disclose an insidious deep seated racism that unfortunately goes hand in hand with much of rural America and conservative Christianity.  Here are highlights from the Washington Post:

The political divide between rural and urban America is more cultural than it is economic, rooted in rural residents’ deep misgivings about the nation’s rapidly changing demographics, their sense that Christianity is under siege and their perception that the federal government caters most to the needs of people in big cities, according to a wide-ranging poll that examines cultural attitudes across the United States. The results highlight the growing political divisions between rural and urban Americans. While urban counties favored Hillary Clinton by 32 percentage points in the 2016 election, rural and small-town voters backed Trump by a 26-point margin, significantly wider than GOP nominee Mitt Romney’s 16 points four years earlier. But popular explanations of the rural-urban divide appear to overstate the influence of declining economic outcomes in driving rural America’s support for Trump. The survey responses, along with follow-up interviews and focus groups in rural Ohio, bring into view a portrait of a split that is tied more to social identity than to economic experience.

“Being from a rural area, everyone looks out for each other,” said Ryan Lawson, who grew up in northern Wisconsin. “People, in my experience, in cities are not as compassionate toward their neighbor as people in rural parts.”

In the poll, rural Americans express widespread concerns about the lack of jobs in their communities. Two-thirds of rural residents rate local job opportunities as fair or poor, compared with about half of urban residents. Nearly 6 in 10 rural residents say they would encourage young people in their community to leave for more opportunity elsewhere.

Rural areas have experienced a weak recovery from the Great Recession, with the total number of jobs down 128,000 from pre-recession levels. Suburban and urban counties have each gained about 3 million jobs, according to an analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

Rural Americans express far more concern about jobs in their communities, but the poll finds that those concerns have little connection to support for Trump, a frequent theory to explain his rise in 2016. Economic troubles also show little relation to the feeling that urban residents have different values.

Rural voters who lament their community’s job prospects report supporting Trump by 14 percentage points more than Clinton, but Trump’s support was about twice that margin — 30 points — among voters who say their community’s job opportunities are excellent or good. Trump also earned about the same level of support from those who say they don’t worry about paying their bills as those who couldn’t pay their bills at some point in the past year.

Most rural residents say they think key elements of Trump’s economic agenda would help their local economy. Large majorities of rural residents say infrastructure investments, better trade deals, a crackdown on undocumented immigrant workers, lower business taxes and deregulation are “very” or “somewhat” important to boosting jobs in their communities. The largest fissures between Americans living in large cities and those in less-dense areas are rooted in misgivings about the country’s changing demographics and resentment about perceived biases in federal assistance, according to the poll.

Rural residents are nearly three times as likely (42 percent) as people in cities (16 percent) to say that immigrants are a burden on the country.

“They’re not paying taxes like Americans are. They’re getting stuff handed to them,” said Larry E. Redding, a retired canning factory employee in Arendtsville, Pa. “Free rent, and they’re driving better vehicles than I’m driving and everything else.”

The poll reveals that perceptions about abuse of government benefits often go hand in hand with views about race.

When asked which is more common — that government help tends to go to irresponsible people who do not deserve it or that it doesn’t reach people in need — rural Americans are more likely than others to say they think people are abusing the system. And across all areas, those who believe irresponsible people get undeserved government benefits are more likely than others to think that racial minorities receive unfair privileges.

That sense of division is closely connected to the belief among rural Americans that Christian values are under siege. Nearly 6 in 10 people in rural areas say Christian values are under attack, compared with just over half of suburbanites and fewer than half of urbanites. When personal politics is taken into account, the divide among rural residents is even larger: 78 percent of rural Republicans say Christian values are under attack, while 45 percent of rural Democrats do.

The other irony, of course is that it is rural America's racism and religious based bigotry that prevents new and progressive businesses from locating to their areas. Until they let go of their 1950's beliefs, they will be increasingly fall by the wayside and continue their downward social and economic death spirals.  I'm sorry, but I find it hard to have sympathy for these people. With the Internet and other avenues to access truthful information, they have chosen to embrace ignorance. 

Rural America Voted Trump, Now Worries Over Medicaid Cutbacks and Broken Promises

The idiocy of much of the GOP's rural base is at times stunning.  Year after year, GOP appeals to racism, right wing Christian fanaticism, and a ever present message of the dangers posed by those who are "other" is used to induce rural voters to vote against their own economic best interest.  Now, it seems that some in Kentucky may be belatedly figuring out that they were played for fools and may have cut their own throats.  Other rural regions that voted for Trump will likely also end up empty handed.  Perhaps I am cruel, but I really have no sympathy for these people (except their young children) if they voted for Trump/Pence and Republicans in general.  A piece at NPR looks at the angst now being experienced by many who may now lose their health coverage through Medicaid expansion that would be lost if Trump and the GOP keep their promise to repeal the Affordable Health Care Act, a/k/a Obamacare. A similar piece in Salon looks at how Trump supporters were played for fools and have screwed themselves.  First these excerpts from NPR:

For Freida Lockaby, an unemployed 56-year-old woman who lives with her dog in an aging mobile home in Manchester, Ky., one of America's poorest places, the Affordable Care Act was life altering.

The law allowed Kentucky to expand Medicaid in 2014 and made Lockaby – along with 440,000 other low-income state residents – newly eligible for free health care under the state-federal insurance program. Enrollment gave Lockaby her first insurance in 11 years. But Lockaby is worried her good fortune could soon end. Her future access to health care now hinges on a controversial proposal to revamp the program that her state's Republican governor has submitted to the Obama administration.

Next year will likely bring more uncertainty when a Trump administration and a GOP-controlled Congress promise to consider Obamacare's repeal, including a potential reduction in the associated Medicaid expansion in 31 states and the District of Columbia that has led to health coverage for an estimated 10 million people. Kentucky's enrollment has doubled since late 2013 and today almost a third of its residents are in the program. The Medicaid expansion under Obamacare in Kentucky has led to one of the sharpest drops in any state's uninsured rate, to 7.5 percent in 2015 from 20 percent two years earlier.

Kentucky's achievement owed much to the success of its state-run exchange, Kynect, in promoting new coverage options under the health law. Kynect was launched under Bevin's Democratic predecessor, Steve Beshear, and dismantled by Bevin this year.

Bevin has threatened to roll back the expansion if the Obama administration doesn't allow him to make major changes, such as requiring Kentucky's beneficiaries to pay monthly premiums of $1 to $37.50 and require nondisabled recipients to work or do community service for free dental and vision care.

Trump's unexpected victory may help Bevin's chances of winning approval. Before the election, many analysts expected federal officials to reject the governor's plan by the end of the year on the grounds that it would roll back gains in expected coverage.

"I think it's much more likely that a waiver could be approved under the Trump administration," she said. "On the other hand, I wonder if the waiver will be a moot point under a Trump administration, assuming that major pieces of the [Affordable Care Act] are repealed."

Lockaby is watching with alarm: "I am worried to death about it."

About 60 percent of Clay County's 21,000 residents are covered by Medicaid, up from about a third before the expansion. The counties uninsured rate for non-elderly adults has fallen from 29 percent to 10 percent.

The piece in Salon also looks at the self-inflicted harm that may becoming to those who allowed themselves to be wooed by appeals to their racism and religious extremism.  Here are highlights:

You aren’t going to make any extra money under Donald Trump, so I hope your racism, or your attempt to ignore it, keeps you warm at night.

OK, we have all gotten the memo that it’s not cool or politically correct to yell “I hate the blacks, I hate the Mexicans and I hate the Jews!” But seriously, when was the last time the KKK celebrated a presidential election?

The real question is this: What’s the point? What do these white working-class people we’ve heard so much about really expect? Having a race-baiting president will not — I repeat, will not — transform into any opportunities for hard-working whites in America, just like the Obama candidacy didn’t deliver any black person from the issues that African-Americans have been facing since long before I was born.

A common theme that’s being tossed around is that Trump’s election was the white working class’ chance way to say “F**k you!” to the political elites who forgot about them, sucked up their factory jobs and left them out to dry. I take issue with this for a number of reasons.

The first and most obvious reason is this: How do you buck a system ruled by elites by electing a billionaire who was born rich, employed the Mexicans he blamed for taking jobs away and could never possibly understand someone else’s struggle?

What’s sad is that these angry, hard-working white people don’t understand that they saw more economic gains under President Obama than they did under George W. Bush. Unemployment went down across the board except among African-Americans ­­— the rate actually doubled for us — so those folks should be praising Obama, not championing Trump or subscribing to all this alt-right B.S.

Then there’s the myth of returning factory jobs. It’s not a real thing! And trust me, I used to subscribe to the same ideas, all caught up in the nostalgia of the old dudes from my neighborhood. My friend Al’s grandpa used to park his Cadillac on Ashland Avenue, hop out and roll up on us nine-year-olds like, “Finish high school, get a job at Bethlehem Steel and your future is set!”

Those jobs were long gone by the time we came of age, at Bethlehem Steel and almost every place like it across the country. They weren’t taken by Mexicans or sent overseas­­ — industries changed, new products were made and robots were invented that could do the job of 10 men and work all night without complaining. Those beautiful factory positions for uneducated hard-working whites (or anybody else) aren’t coming back, and I don’t care what Trump says.

We should be asking ourselves what’s going to happen when the forgotten Trump supporters are ignored by him­­. I challenge the Klansmen, the closet racists and the rest of his supporters to look deeper into Trump’s life and his business. Unlike you, he’s not committed to white, he’s committed to green, and your financial situation will not change.

 As noted above, I feel sorry for the children and youths fated to live in the declining regions.  As for the adults who supported Trump, they truly deserve the worse things that life can throw at them.   

Did West Virginia Spurn Hillary Because of Obama?

In Virginia, West Virginia is often viewed with skepticism.  After all, West Virginia broke away from Virginia during the civil war and the cultures of the Tidewater and Richmond Virginians and the mountain dwelling West Virginians could not be much greater - in 1860 or now.  West Virginia remains a vastly white state while Virginia has seen much demographic and educational change and much urban growth unlike its next door neighbor.  In the wake of Tuesday's Democrat primary that was won by Bernie Sanders, there are some who view Hillary's loss as a rebuke for serving and siding with Barack Obama, America's first black president.  Indeed, given the racism that is alive and well in West Virginia, which is only magnified by Obama's efforts to push the nation towards clean energy at the expense of coal, such thoughts are probably accurate.  A column in the New York Times looks at the situation.  Here are excerpts:

West Virginia turned on Hillary Clinton. In 2008, when running for the Democratic nomination against then-Senator Barack Obama, Clinton won every county in the state, carrying it by a whopping 41 points.

The Hill reported this week that, according to a political-science professor at a West Virginia college, West Virginia voters were so “fiercely anti-Obama that they voted in large numbers in 2012 for his primary opponent, who was a jailed felon in Texas.”

This cycle, a major part of Clinton’s strategy has been to so closely align herself with President Obama that there is very little light between them. This helped her secure and retain some minority voters, but most likely distanced her from many white ones.

On Tuesday, Clinton lost every county in the state and trailed Bernie Sanders by nearly 16 points. So what’s going on in West Virginia?

First, it is one of the whitest states in the country, and the absolute whitest in the South. It is also the least educated state and one of the poorest. As of 2014, almost 94 percent of its citizens are white, only 18.7 percent have attained a bachelor’s degree and 17.2 percent fall below the poverty threshold.

West Virginia is also heavily reliant on the coal industry, which is at odds with liberal clean-energy initiatives. In an interview with The San Francisco Chronicle in 2008, Obama said of his proposed energy plans:

If somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted. That will also generate billions of dollars that we can invest in solar, wind, biodiesel, and other alternative energy approaches.

Bankruptcies aside, the Obama years saw a steep decline in coal production in the state. According to a report published by West Virginia University, “After climbing to nearly 158 million short tons in 2008, the state’s coal mine output has tumbled in each successive year to an annual total of approximately 115 million short tons in 2014 ─ or a cumulative decline of 27 percent.” This was the right long-term clean-energy approach, but it hit a sour chord in West Virginia.

[S]mart long-term policy, but doesn’t sit well in West Virginia. Clinton recently apologized for the “misstatement,” saying, “I don’t know how to explain it other than what I said was totally out of context for what I meant because I have been talking about helping coal country for a very long time.” But the apology was too little, too late for voters in West Virginia.

West Virginia illustrates the danger that accompanies the Clinton strategy of closely aligning with President Obama and his policies: Many white voters, particularly white men, detest him. 

These white non-college graduates are a strong base of support for Donald Trump, who exclaimed in Nevada, “I love the poorly educated.” Apparently, the feeling is mutual. If Trump has a path to the presidency, it will most likely be because of Clinton’s — and Democrats’ — weakness among people who look an awful lot like the voters in West Virginia.

Like much of Southwest Virginia, West Virginia is its own biggest enemy.  Few new, progressive business want to locate to a region so consumed with racism and so proud of embracing ignorance a bigotry.  Until these factors change, do expect economic improvement.  

Gloucester County School Board Will Squander Money and Seek Rehearing En Banc

Transphobic, cowardly Gloucester County School Board

Rather that put the fiscal interests of Gloucester County taxpayers first and foremost, the Gloucester County School Board has opted to seek to appease a minority of religious extremists and file a petition for a rehearing en banc in the Gavin Grimm case - i.e., by the full 4th Circuit Court of Appeals.  Sadly, the move is not surprising given the general backwardness and knuckle dragging aspects of that county.  One can only hope that the petition is refused or that the en banc panel slams the school board's unconstitutional policy.  The Daily Press looks at this wrongheaded decision.  Here are highlights:

The Gloucester County School Board filed a petition Tuesday for a full 4th Circuit Court of Appeals review of the ruling issued last month in the lawsuit filed by a 16-year-old transgender student.

In April, a panel of three judges ruled in favor of Gavin Grimm who is challenging a bathroom use policy imposed by the School Board that requires transgender students to use either a private bathroom or the restrooms assigned to their birth gender. Grimm was born female but identifies as a boy.

In a lawsuit filed last June, Grimm said the high school is violating Title IX and the Constitution by refusing him access to the boys' restroom.

The en banc review the School Board seeks would be a rehearing of the case by all nine judges on the appeals court. The three-judge panel voted 2-1, in Grimm's favor, to send the case back to a federal judge in Norfolk. Federal Judge Robert Doumar refused to issue a preliminary injunction that would have required the schools to let Grimm use the boys' restrooms while his discrimination lawsuit proceeds.

If readers want more information on these transphobic cowards, go here.