A steel plant at the edge of this riverside town played a pivotal role in the family history of Sen. JD Vance.
The plant, Vance wrote in his memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” was nothing less than an “economic savior” for his grandparents. A steady job there for his “Papaw” is what lifted his grandparents “from the hills of Kentucky into America’s middle class.”
Its future looks bright too, thanks in part to a grant of up to $500 million from the Biden administration. The money is aimed at helping its owners replace a coal-fired blast furnace so that steel can be produced with clean hydrogen and natural gas — improvements that would cut climate and air pollution and help ensure the plant stays open for another generation.
But the political benefits for the Biden administration — and by extension Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee — are less clear. This is true not just in Middletown but in similar communities across the country that are on track to receive funding from either the Inflation Reduction Act or the bipartisan infrastructure law, arguably the two biggest domestic accomplishments of President Joe Biden’s time in the White House.
Both measures remain largely unknown to the public, polling has shown. Perhaps as worrisome for Harris is that the federal investments may not do much to break the country’s partisan divide, even in places that have benefited from the spending.
Yup, they also will hear zero talk of actually setting everyone back on an even footing. Ask them about re-pooling all resources and opportunities and letting people start from scratch and compete solely by their own sweat and innovation.
Nosiree, none of that is necessary because they already pulled themselves up by their bootstraps right through (well funded public) school and then went to college (paid for by the money their parents earned at the jobs with the racist bosses who never would have hired non-whites). Well, unless things were tough for them at home of course, in which case they had to get (government subsidized) loans and maybe even take out a second mortgage on the house (that they inherited from gramps in the redlined neighborhood). But you know what? They worked hard at that job with the defense contractor (that was lobbying for inefficient government contracts in their local congressional district). They spent so much time commuting on (subsidized) highways burning (subsidized) gas. How dare people ask for a functioning transit system; that costs MY money!
Nope, nothing but pure self-starters who never got a single leg up due to government programs or structural advantages! Time for everybody to compete in a perfect marketplace starting…right… NOW! Go! Why are the rest of you so far behind? You must be those jealous, lazy mediocrities Ayn Rand told me about!
Shit, I’m not even particularly opposed to playing the game. I don’t find anything deeply disturbing about wanting some safety and luxury and extra opportunities for the particular children you love the most. Just don’t be a dick thinking you mastered the game through sheer will, or be unwilling to pass some reasonable share of the resulting GDP back to people who need it more than you, and on whom you depend to be your community. Our culture frankly asks for ridiculously little from those whom the system serves, and having the gall to think that it’s rigged against you and that you’re morally entitled to every single economic unit vaguely related to your mere existence strikes me as the height of arrogance.
Half of your post reminds of Craig T Nelson talking about the time he was poor and on food stamps and nobody came and helped him out. So clearly people should pull themselves up by their bootstraps like he did.
Or Boebert complaining about socialism while in the same sentence talking about how she grew up on government cheese and welfare. So much cognitive dissonance.