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.
“I don’t really look for the government to do anything for you,” he said. “It’s more like just stay out of my way.”
Same people are probably 100% fine with the government not allowing women access to modern birth control and reproductive care choices.
They have this fantasy where they imagine “no government” would be awesome. Meanwhile, there’s plenty of shithole countries without a functioning government. They could move to one of those if they are serious and want to try that kind of life.
They have this fantasy where they imagine “no government” would be awesome.
“Woo! I can do what I want!” When many people want to make their immediate environment worse for everybody, even themselves, to the point that they make each other miserable. We can prove this by putting right-wing libertarians on the moon together. Some would be begging to come back within a week.
It is pretty funny that many small/no government movements end up creating governments because of fucking course they do. No laws sounds great until other people start doing shit you don’t like. Also funny is how many freedom loving Republicans live in HOAs. They love rugged individualism as long as it looks exactly like theirs.
They love rugged individualism as long as it looks exactly like theirs.
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.
See: “A Libertarian Walks into a Bear” (https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21534416/free-state-project-new-hampshire-libertarians-matthew-hongoltz-hetling ).
What a fun read. Thank you.
Are we really pretending the “divide” in this country is about economics?
It’s been proven time and time again that Trump voters were more likely to be business owners not the poor dirtbags who work for them. The people who work for them, those people say they’re Trump voters, but you can’t really count on meth addicts to show up to vote.
The federal funding “doesn’t really change anything,” said Tyler Kirby, who sat outside the steel plant on a simmering July night, eating a hamburger and waiting for the start of his 12-hour overnight shift fixing cranes.
Overnight 12 hour shift? Yeah this guy isn’t gonna wait all day in line to fucking vote in Ohio. His boss is the guy actually voting for Trump.
Let’s call it what it is. We have the evidence. The evidence is that what drives them is racism, misogyny, and “pissing off liberals.” They don’t give a damn about the money, they are filled with hate, and no amount of money will suddenly change that. JD Vance and Peter Thiel are fucking proof of it.
People, as a group, aren’t completely amenable to reason. If they were, they’d start from their stated beliefs of “children are innocent” and “children must be supported” and conclude that the only possible logically and morally acceptable resulting outcome would be to feed all children.
That hungry children exist, and that this isn’t a scandal which the majority of people who hold beliefs about importance of children are regularly talking about seriously trying to address, it seems that some other factors must motivate them more. Two likely candidates, to me, are convenience and status. If you can conveniently gain status by demeaning outgroups then, amazingly, you can do very little and potentially gain a lot! “I might not have an education, and I might be on minimum wage, but at least I’m not Mexican / a feminist / an atheist” etc.
you cannot logic someone out of a position they did not logic themselves into.
Making people’s lives better pays dividends over time even if they don’t immediately respond to it
“I don’t really look for the government to do anything for you,” he said. “It’s more like just stay out of my way.”
This is the problem. Instead of giving up on the government actually doing anything positive, these people should be demanding more. But their tiny brains have been so poisoned with hate that they only see the government as useful for harming others. The switcharoo their shitbag idols have pulled on them has them completely incapable of focusing on the real problems while the wealthy pillage the country further.
“I will terminate Kamala Harris’s green new scam and rescind all of the unspent funds, give all of the unspent funds back to building roads, bridges and give it back to the government,” Trump said at a North Carolina rally last week.
It’s almost as though they think that by not spending this money bettering communities it’ll somehow reduce how much they have to pay in taxes. No! Get the free handout!
If the government hadn’t intervenened he would probably be out of a job sooner than later…
“I don’t really look for the government to do anything for you,” he said. “It’s more like just stay out of my way.”- Tyler Kerby American Idiot
I really don’t want to see a Trump presidency because of all the chaos that will ensue, but the teeny little diabalical part of me really wants him to lose his job because of it. This motherfucker is literally being saved by Joe Biden, but he’s too stupid to see it.
I have heard that, in the UK, there was a correlation between areas that receiving EU funding and areas that voted most heavily for Brexit.
The UK government did not keep up that funding.
We should start listening to these people then and start giving them what they’re asking for: No help at all and an expectation that these chucklefucks “pull themselves up by their own bootstraps” like they’ve told everyone the fuck else for a hundred years.
You keep voting to get no help? Okay, you got it. We’ll never help your stupid asses again. That’s what you wanted, right? To succeed by your own hard work and nothing else? Let’s see how it works out for you considering we’ve been propping up your economic dead weight areas for decades.
As a taxpayer, I’m more than happy to stop giving these fucking losers money if they keep saying they don’t want any of it.
So let British Steel fucking die and let these people eat their own fucking words and deeds. Cry me a fucking river, this is what you voted for.
I keep saying it, the US should split up in two countries so the red States can finally become the third world country they want to be.
“I don’t really look for the government to do anything for you,” he said. “It’s more like just stay out of my way.”
“Except on abortion. On abortion, the government should most certainly stay in the way…and on books in a library…government should stay in the way on that one too. Bathrooms! Most certainly a place government should stay in the way. I believe it is of paramount importantance to all Americans that the genitalia you use to relieve yourself match what I think it should for the room you’re in doing it…except if its a single seat bathroom, then it doesn’t matter…and government should stay out of the way.” - Vance probably
“Why are there so many fucking potholes in this road!! Someone should do something about it!”
Federal money like this needs to be earmarked. Tracked. So that it’s used only to benefit the business. Not just disappear into the shareholders greedy pockets and CEO bonuses.
Well yeah, now 500M will get allocated to go directly to the business only, but another 400M that previously would have gone to the business now gets to go directly to the shareholders instead since it’s unallocated! WIN-WIN!
Requiring any closer bookkeeping than that is SOCIALISM!
/s – kinda, but, I expect that’s the reality
Can’t win when you’re arguing with people who already made their minds up.
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