Awaiting Trump's coal comeback, miners reject retraining

[demmiblue]

Source: Reuters

WAYNESBURG, Pa. (Reuters) - When Mike Sylvester entered a career training center earlier this year in southwestern Pennsylvania, he found more than one hundred federally funded courses covering everything from computer programming to nursing.

He settled instead on something familiar: a coal mining course.

”I think there is a coal comeback,” said the 33-year-old son of a miner.

Despite broad consensus about coal’s bleak future, a years-long effort to diversify the economy of this hard-hit region away from mining is stumbling, with Obama-era jobs retraining classes undersubscribed and future programs at risk under President Donald Trump’s proposed 2018 budget.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-trump-effect-coal-retraining-insight/awaiting-trumps-coal-comeback-miners-reject-retraining-idUSKBN1D14G0?utm_campaign=trueAnthem:+Trending+Content&utm_content=59f9b29304d3012a85a6ab7f&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=twitter

[dhol82]

1. Its like a freaking cargo cult

[Bernardo de La Paz]

3. You pegged it. Insightful. And they trust him on the tax {strike}reform{/strike} heist. . nt

[CanonRay]

27. I never would have thought of that, but exactly right.

[Nitram]

40. dhol22, exactly!

Praying to the orange-haired god of greed.

[turbinetree]

2. In one emoji character should sum this up

[greymattermom]

4. All over the west there are ghost towns where the mines were,

and this is happening in coal country too. It always happens when the economy changes. These miners live in the heart of oxy country, and I expect that Republicans are fine with that.

[DBoon]

22. Are the descendants of the Bodie miners still waiting for gold mining to come back?

https://www.bodie.com/

[ileus]

95. It's the heart because when mining dried up, disability was the answer.

[Sam McGee]

5. There's dumb . . .

. . . there's dumber

. . . then, there's Trump-supporter dumb.

[SharonClark]

6. It's called being willfully ignorant.

[mikeysnot]

42. AKA republican base.

[Drahthaardogs]

59. They used to be Union Democrats

Trump has sold them a bill of goods and they are duped
It's sad actually.

[lagomorph777]

57. Even if coal were to come back,

who the hell wouldn't do anything possible to escape that filthy hellhole?

A Trumpie, that's who!

[treestar]

77. One of the things perhaps better done by robots

So as to avoid the accidents and deaths.

[Hekate]

143. A robot can't get black lung disease, or die from the boss ignoring safety regs...

Robots are an expensive investment bosses want to protect. Humans, not so much.

As the coal seams play out and miners have to drill through different kinds of rock to extract the last bits, there's an even worse lung disease that shows up too. Great prospect for your sons, guys.

I'm sorry their ancestral way of life is dying out, and I know change is hard. I know that if they can't or won't attract different industries to their area, that they will have to leave. But Hillary Clinton told them the truth -- that they would have to retrain; and she told them she had a plan to attract new industries to their region so they wouldn't have to leave -- and they spit in her eye in a rage.

Donald Trump told them a flat-out lie, and they helped elect him president.

[TheCowsCameHome]

7. Steam locomotive repair courses should be included.

Poor saps voted for Trump, now they will find out he lied to them.

[maxrandb]

13. That course is full

but I hear they have openings in Rotary Phone Repairman courses.

[ProfessorGAC]

24. How About Wagoneer Classes?

Are those full too? How about hooper classes? Full? Darn it!

[True_Blue]

46. Maybe blacksmith classes too

We just get rid of all the cars and the wagoneers and blacksmiths will have plenty of work.

[Turbineguy]

104. Buggy whip making.

Gonna be a bright future there.

Hey guys, have you considered mortuary science? It's a real good career choice in Trump country.

[Squinch]

107. Recent advances in stone tools.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

132. Rotary phone are too new fangled

All their phones have magneto cranks.

[lindysalsagal]

56. Flat Earth, Evil Spirit Exorcism, and leaches.

[MyOwnPeace]

102. Telegraph operator?

You know those skies are gonna' get clogged with all those cell phones!

[KY_EnviroGuy]

8. I can sympathize.

These guys have coal mining in their blood and family history, so like most of us we don't want to give up on the familiar - especially when it's been there for generations.

Unfortunately, like most dying industries, time and the stock market will end it for them and they'll have to move on. Some mining will remain, but on a very limited basis.

It is extremely cruel for the tRump administration to suggest to these people that coal will return to its former glory, therefore bringing in false hope.

[Irish_Dem]

10. Yes, exactly. Very cruel of Trump to lie to them. Good leadership would have encouraged

re-training.

[demmiblue]

15. +1

[Tracer]

44. Thank you.

I'm not going to criticize this guy too much, nor call him stupid.

There possibly could be a few coal jobs due to miners retiring or being injured, but certainly not enough to employ hundreds of workers.

It's a frightening thought for these guys to give up their familiar ways and make the leap into a new field. I get that.

There should be some kind of outreach for them to help them understand that they can do other jobs that will be better for them in the future.

[KY_EnviroGuy]

62. Yes, we don't know his situation and have no right to judge.

I've lost touch with that industry, but do know that what remains is transforming somewhat to using less labor-intensive methods. More high-tech people will be needed than before.

Coal-fired power is going out but not dead. In addition, there's some seams of specialty coal that are in high demand for making coke used in steel production, but these are fairly small mines.

I think the governments (states and federal) have programs in place to assist miners with finding new careers. However, many mountain folks have poor levels of basic education (particularly with science and math), and there are financial barriers as well. Some of these areas are so poor, they are losing their Walmarts! Many of these folks also have outstanding health issues to deal with.

This is a slow, painful process for the people and their communities.

[jberryhill]

52. "These guys have coal mining in their blood and family history"

Just out of curiosity, what did your great-grandfather do for a living, and what do you do for a living?

[KY_EnviroGuy]

63. Farming and timber (and the civil war) and me a retired engineer.

Not relevant to this discussion, though.

[jberryhill]

67. Well, if it's not relevant....

You had said this:

"These guys have coal mining in their blood and family history"

Unless there is some peculiar genetic quirk of these people, I fail to understand the meaning of that phrase. People in my family were farmers for generations. I could not tell you how to grow a potato, nor do I have any inclination to grow them.

I would think everyone has a 'family history' of something, but I don't think most people live with the expectation that they have some genetic imperative to do what their grandfather did for a living.

Did the "farming and timber" not stick with your blood in some way that it does with these folks?

[T_i_B]

139. Coal mining is different

Families were tied up in the coal industry intimately from one generation to the next until coal mining died out in the UK.

Because men in pit villages were generally expected to follow their fathers and grandfather's down the pit they generally weren't all that interested in academic study. In my experience many old miners have a strong preference for physical, manual labour.

Old coal mining towns and villages are very close knit places. Mining clearly produced a certain kind of camaraderie that in Britain also played a major part in the creation and rise of the Labour Party. However, that also tends to make these places very insular and unwelcoming to outsiders, which is something that the far right can and does capitalise on.

[ileus]

100. In coal country your GGF, GF, Father and all your uncles were coal miners.

It's kind of normal when you live in any area with only one industry, or manufacturing plant. Thus it's in your blood to follow in the families footsteps.

[Squinch]

108. But when you can't follow in the family's footsteps, when those jobs have been gone for the better

part of a generation now, you do something else.

Otherwise let's all demand that we be allowed to be hunter gatherers. All our families did that for a lot of generations.

[T_i_B]

138. Just hit the nail on the head there

I see this mentality in the old coal mining areas round where I live in the UK.

And I'm afraid that politicians of all stripes have found that the comforting lie works a treat in these places, when the thing they really need is the uncomfortable truth.

[KY_EnviroGuy]

141. Thank you, T_i_B for your input from the UK.

The real shame to me is that the corporate world does not care about people's heritage or culture. Instead, they focus entirely on profits.

The areas where mines were located would make excellent places for factories, with a hard-working labor supply. Instead, we see manufacturing and even high-technology firms located where it is most convenient and profitable for the company. Changing this mind-set would require a complete reversal of thinking in the corporate world - from profit oriented to worker orientation.

That would also require a substantial change of attitude in our current governments, so that locating in poor or more remote areas would be rewarded. Also, government would need to support new or improved infrastructure in those zones.

[T_i_B]

142. Actually....

....many old coal mining sites over here are now industrial estates. Which is something that is hugely underapreciated to be honest.

The trouble is, the new industrial estates and trading parts have been created with generous EU funding, and people in these areas have voted overwhelmingly to leave the EU. A case of voting to cut off your nose to spite your own face if ever there was one!

[vlyons]

9. Well now we know just how stupid the Trumpsters are

The prognosis for lung cancer alone should be motivation enough to jump at the opportunity to find another line of work. But it's not just stupidity, it's also laziness to put in the effort to learn something new and change his life. Trumpsters are not just deplorables, they are also incorrigibles. We should cut of safety net aid to any coal miner, who does not accept retraining.

[keithbvadu2]

18. "We should cut of safety net aid to any coal miner, who does not accept retraining. "

"We should cut of safety net aid to any coal miner, who does not accept retraining. "

They would rather continue on the public dole than work.

==============

Bob Levo, who runs a GMS training program, offered a measure of realism: The point of the training is to provide low-cost and potentially short-term labor to a struggling industry, he said.

“That’s a major part of the reason that coal mines have been able to survive,” he said. “They rely on us to provide labor at lower cost.”

[vlyons]

23. I didn't realize that

Computer programming and nursing are college level courses, requiring knowledge of math and reading skills. They require hard work to become competent. You have to use your brain, good judgment, and attention to detail - things that Trumpsters are very short of.

[Squinch]

109. The nursing and computer programming courses were not to provide low cost mining workers.

[ileus]

97. They're used to 100k a year, being a clerk at the Dollar General

doesn't take much training, and probably doesn't pay as well.

[DFW]

11. The Secret Service should take note of guys like this

If anyone is going to try to attack Trump personally, it won't be someone who knew all along what trash he was, but more likely some disillusioned coal miner who really believed Trump was going to save his way of life instead of letting his community turn into a ghost town.

[bronxiteforever]

12. This type of thinking just reaffirms what historians are saying

If the 19th century belonged to Britain, and the 20th century to the United States. The 21st century will surely belong to China.

[lunasun]

28. +1 yes East Asia as a whole

[GaryCnf]

14. Could we be any more condescending?

There is a truth here. Coal mining is never coming back. Hundreds of thousands of former miners will never work as coal miners again.

The certainty of that fact, however, provides no excuse for denigrating people who cling to the hope that they will not be shuffled off into a job which pays less than half what they made before with less than half of the benefits and the job openings for which they are woefully unable to compete against a younger and far better-trained existing work force.

And some of us wonder why working class voters aren't turning out to vote Democratic in the numbers we need to win elections.

[delisen]

20. Depends upon whom you are calling working class

The makeup of what many people call the working class has changed considerably since the 1970s.

[mobeau69]

21. Thank you.

[Coventina]

35. Um, this guy deserves it. He's being offered FREE EDUCATION and he sticks his head in the sand.

He's an idiot -willfully an idiot.

He deserves any and all mockery and disgust because he's going OUT OF HIS WAY to earn it.

[GaryCnf]

48. You must live a comfortable life

To think that a "free education" that leaves you with, AT BEST only half of what you had before (because you will always be behind the rest of the folks competing for available jobs in your "new" vocation when it comes to education and experience) is such a "gift" that clinging to hope for what you lost through no fault of your own makes you a "willful idiot."

[Coventina]

49. I spent most of my childhood homeless. That taught me that education is critical to a better life.

So, yes, I worked my butt off to get an education so that I could have a better life than what my parents gave me.

I learned from my mistakes, and gradually improved my economic standing.

I was smart enough that you don't snub opportunity when one is given to you.
This guy either isn't smart enough, or would rather believe the word of a treasonous, racist, sex offender.

Not feeling sorry for this guy.

[GaryCnf]

50. Ah, the J.D. Vance

school of compassion.

That explains the belief that going backwards is an opportunity because it's better than nothing.

[Coventina]

64. Who is asking anyone to go backwards?

I'm certainly not.

[GaryCnf]

69. What do you think a union coal miner makes?

What do you think a union coal miner's benefits package looks like?

Are they better than a nurse with a two-year degree, or a computer programmer watching the younger and far more experienced and educated people advance, or any of the other entry-level jobs they will have to compete for EVEN AFTER they complete their new "education?"

Well at least they have the dignity of work.

[Coventina]

70. How much do they make when there are no jobs?

I thought we were talking about unemployed people?

[GaryCnf]

74. I think we were talking about

whether coal miners are "stupid" for hoping for the jobs they've been promised are right around the bend instead of getting "re-educated" for service jobs that will never give them even a fraction of what they used to earn.

[Coventina]

76. They are stupid if they are depending on them coming back.

If it were my livelihood, I would be keeping up to date on what the latest information about it is.
It's not hard to find.

As I said up-thread, the only person saying coal jobs are coming back is the vulgar, talking yam.

Every expert in the field is saying they are never coming back.

And who says the only alternative is service jobs?

And, as a child that was raised in poverty, I can tell you right now that this attitude is damaging their children.

My parents wanted me to get an education so I wouldn't have to live like them.
These parents are telling their children that all they have to do is to wait for the money to come rolling in.

I would call that child abuse.

[treestar]

79. then what do they want?

The taxpayers to pay to start new coal mines, even if there is no market for coal? No one is that liberal.

[vlyons]

110. 1/2 of what he had before is better than nothing

And if he got off his lazy ass and got motivated to become politically active in his state, who knows? Maybe he could help elect a government that voted to raise the minimum wage, offer free, or at least affordable, higher education, free child care so his wife could go to school too.

Change is painful. So what?

[KPN]

37. Right!?

No kidding.

[DBoon]

53. when mechanization changed southern farming after WWII

Millions of African Americans moved to cities for jobs.

Somehow rural whites in the 21st century are incapable of this.

[Coventina]

65. Somehow you are elitist for pointing that out.

[GaryCnf]

66. Seeing as how

my grandparents were part of the "Millions of African Americans [who] moved to the cities for jobs," (albeit well before WWII) whose experiences you have invoked to support your attack on working people, let me help you with a couple of things.

First, "Emancipation" notwithstanding, those fine "southern farming" jobs my grandparents left behind were nothing more than extensions of slavery. They didn't leave because of "mechanization." They left because they were no better off than before the Civil War. They moved to the city because they believed the lie that their lives would be better there. If anything, what happened to them puts the lie to the patronizing BS line that working people would be just fine if they would only make changes.

Second, even assuming that your little fantasy about how black workers improved their lives by moving to the cities were true, that isn't what you are demanding of today's workers. You're demanding that they "move to the cities" (which I will take as euphemism for "make changes in their lives&quot that will make their lives dramatically worse AND BE HAPPY ABOUT IT.

[DBoon]

71. my aren't you touchy today

Have you not had your morning coffee?

And yes, post WWII mechanization did feed a mass migration, and yes those union factory jobs were better than plantation sharecropping.

[treestar]

82. No one has a right to always

have the standard of living they are used to. If the new jobs don't pay as much as the coal jobs, that may require a social safety net to help out. But it's better than nothing. Just because they made more in coal before does not prove that the market for coal would just return and be profitable at their former wages.

[GaryCnf]

98. As I said in my original post

I am not in any way shape or form saying that we should preserve the coal industry. I am saying that we (meaning the "we" who got rich off of coal miners) should preserve their income.

So maybe we sot of agree?

[treestar]

78. there is a kind of willfully stubborn

ignorance to it though. He is getting help due to an Obama era program but insists on something that won't pan out. How much are we supposed to sympathize with? How much ignorance do you have to display before you are called out on it? We don't owe him a coal job.

[Squinch]

83. So much misinformation, so little time.

1) No, it's not hundreds of thousands. The entire coal industry employs between 80 and 90,000 people. A fraction of those are miners. Most of those miners - and other coal industry workers -are in the west, not in what we think of as the coal belt. So the number is a fraction of what you allege.

2) They're rejecting any and all attempts to help them and insisting that the rest of us pay an enormous price to maintain their obsolete way of life. So yes, I will happily denigrate them.

3) These guys were never going to be the ones who made up the numbers for us. The turnout of people of color was what accounted for the differences in numbers between Obama's turnout and Hillary's. So if you go after these assholes, you aren't going to change the numbers by anything like a deciding margin.

My great grandfather delivered beer to bars in a horse cart. He made a great living. Then trucks showed up. He had to compete against a younger and better trained work force. Should he have insisted that the rest of us stick to horse carts? And if he had, would you be defending his insistence?

Money has been poured into retraining programs for these people, and they refuse to retrain. Hillary had a ready-to-go plan to make the coal belt and the rust belt opportunity regions for solar and wind energy. Those industries replace half the TOTAL number of coal jobs EACH YEAR. These idiots could have been sitting on a gold mine.

Enough. Screw them.

[GaryCnf]

96. Let's see if I get this right

You are claiming that only 80,000 people work in coal-related jobs?

There are approximately 174,000 blue-collar, full-time, permanent jobs related to coal in the U.S

. . .

This total does not include indirect employment . . . The level of indirect employment is in the low hundreds of thousands

https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Coal_and_jobs_in_the_United_States

Ok friend, since you're wrong there, let's move on.

No, working people (including those in the coal industry) are not "insisting that the rest of us pay an enormous price."

From the environmental health angle, most don't give a shit about the keeping the business going, whether it is mining coal or building cars. The people who care about that are the rich folks at the top. The workers care about being able to provide for their families at least as well as their parents did.

What's more, they don't want it at our expense. They want it from those MF's who got themselves rich off the sweat of our brow.

From a political standpoint, your comment about black voters is obviously correct. We didn't turn out for Clinton like we did for Obama. Do you really know why, because I will tell you? Hint: It wasn't the Russians and while voter suppression didn't help, it wasn't primarily because of that either. However, with margins as small as they were in the Blue Wall, the turnout we lost by calling working people (who, by the way, voted a majority Democratic) misogynists and racists for months was more than enough to swing those states.

Finally, attacking people for "sitting on a gold mine" because they don't jump for joy over retraining just to get a job that pays half as much as their old one is , as I said originally, astoundingly condescending.

I may not have personal experience in coal mines, but I listened to this same "You're an ingrate because you aren't jumping at a low-paying job. Well, it's work or starve now" from politicians as they let urban communities like the one I grew up in rot. The black on my face may not have come from coal dust, but I know how it feels to hear people in power tell me "You'll take the little we give you and you'll like it."

Apparently many here don't

[Squinch]

106. Ok, "friend." You go to Wikipedia-lite for your numbers. I prefer a real source:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/03/31/8-surprisingly-small-industries-that-employ-more-people-than-coal/?utm_term=.6b74e5844382

In that real source, you will find that the Census Bureau shows 76572 people worked in the coal industry in 2014, the latest year that data was available. The source goes on to say "That number includes not just miners but also office workers, sales staff and all of the other individuals who work at coal-mining companies."

Moving on. No. Those workers don't care about providing for their families. If they did, they would train for an actual job that actually exists rather than demanding that they be given one that is obviously never coming back.

Moving on. Yes, they do want it at our expense. By demanding that an unnecessary job be propped up artificially when that job causes enormous damage to the environment, we all pay for their refusal to live in the real world.

Moving on. People of color did not stay home because Democrats were being mean to coal miners.

Moving on. Wrong again about the pay for the jobs in renewable energy that would have moved into the coal belt. Those are not low paying jobs. And they are jobs that would have been around for a long time to come.

Finally, no those coal communities were not allowed to rot like the one you grew up in. There has been a boatload of money poured into the coal region to try to get economic development going on there.

Coal jobs are going away. They have been for a long, long time. Whine and cry all you like but nothing is going to change that. So people can take your lead and bemoan their fate and say they are being oppressed, and they will still not have a job. Or they can do something else, including taking advantage of the umpteen opportunities for retraining that have been poured into their community.

[GaryCnf]

111. Let me count the ways

One:

You think WikiSource is "Wikipedia light?"



You came on here low-balling the number of high paying jobs that are being lost as the coal business declines by including only the workers in the ground and ignoring all of the other blue collar jobs that are also being lost AND you used it to make a personal attack on another DU member. When you got busted, you attack WikiSource (simply for being WikiSource) even though, when all the high-paying coal company jobs being lost are considered, it says exactly the same thing as your source.

Two:

You don't know the first thing about what these families want. They aren't coal industry lobbyist, they just want jobs that pay like their current and/or old jobs.

Three:

Same deal. They're workers, not lobbyist.

Four:

So you want to go there . . . fine. I NEVER SAID we in the black community stayed home because so many in our party spent month after month calling working people misogynists and racists for not jumping on board a plan to shuffle them off into lower-paying jobs. I said WORKING PEOPLE, people who said economic anxiety was their number one concern, people who - when they did come out - voted in a majority for Secretary Clinton, stayed home because of it.

WE (although not me personally) stayed home because Secretary Clinton and President Obama are light years apart when it comes to talking about and doing something about the problems many of us face and, seeing as how we kept hearing how the election was in the bag, a lot of us just went back to dealing with our own problems instead of getting fired up about the election.

Of course, you don't want to talk about that so you just make some s**t up so you can, once again, make a snide comment instead of dealing with reality.

Five:

Jobs in renewable energy? Did you read the OP?

he found more than one hundred federally funded courses covering everything from computer programming to nursing

This isn't training for a handful of jobs in renewable energy (not that the jobs in renewable energy that this training would qualify them for are that high-paying anyway), it's training for jobs, like vocational nursing jobs and low-level computer programming jobs, which will never pay half of what they made before.

Six:

Go to West Virginia, go to Kentucky, go to the other industrial wastelands like Youngstown, Ohio . . . take some pictures of what they got for the "boatload of money" those poor abused suburbanites - which some Democrats believe are the key to winning - were "forced to pay for." While you're at it, go to Detriot, go to Gary, go to Houston because those of us who grew up there had to listen to how "boatloads of money" had been poured into our neighborhoods too. Get back to me then.

Seven:

Everybody knows coal is dead. I said it right off the bat. This isn't about preserving the coal industry. It's about doing justice for workers. Demanding justice is not whining, although it may seem that way to folks who live privileged lives out in the burbs. This country's wealth was created by stealing the sweat of the less powerful, the oppressed, and the enslaved. Wanting it returned is no sin.

[Squinch]

113. WTF? No, your wiki source and the Census Bureau numbers I quoted are NOT saying the same thing.

Last edited Thu Nov 2, 2017, 05:48 PM - Edit history (1)

They are not saying anything even close to each other. The Census Bureau numbers I quoted confirmed what I originally stated and what you are calling a "low ball number."

But I grow suspicious of you. Your conclusions about the numbers are either ridiculous or dishonest. I don't find your persona to be credible.

So, have it your way. I'll leave this ridiculous discussion, and you can keep insisting that the subject of the article should just continue to wait for a coal job to fall out of the sky onto his head. That way, you can defend him and tell everyone he is oppressed by the "poor abused suburbanites" as you call it. I prefer the term, "Whopping big straw man." But to each his own.

Have at it.

And have a lovely day.

[Hortensis]

115. I'm seeing a pattern of responding with a snowstorm of dense text

that doesn't actually refute charges of an initial pushing of anti-Democrat distortions. But how many of us "so-called Hillary Democrats" (anyone of any background who voted for her) are going to uncross their eyes long enough to bother to take a mental comb to it?

You are right, of course, Squinch. Your typically intelligent responses and respect for truth caused me to stop and read what you posted here in the first place.

[Squinch]

116. And I find it interesting that once I voiced my suspicions I haven't heard a peep.

[Hortensis]

117. Oh, he was too busy calling me a liar in another thread. :)

"Proving" it at repellent length. Even I didn't try to read it, or especially me.

[Squinch]

118. The persona is not consistent either. Let's you and me stand over here on the side and

watch and wait for the inevitable.

[Hortensis]

120. :)

As you say.

Just checked the news, and the chance to distract from Republican corruption and boost ratings by feeding Hillary hate has really brought it out. Time for a good movie.

[Squinch]

121. Enjoy it!

[GaryCnf]

128. Apparently I misunderstood

The meaning of "I'll leave this ridiculous discussion," and thought we were done, now I see you yammering about how I never responded.

Well you two enjoy each other.

Oh, btw, I'm sorry I don't fit your idea of how black folks are supposed to act. I'll take that opinion for what it's worth.

[Squinch]

130. .

[Cold War Spook]

124. Miners

that is the job that means something is this discussion. Miners make up about half of the people in this industry. They are the blue collar workers that are losing their jobs to mechanization and cheaper fuels.

[hatrack]

129. Bureau of Labor Statistics data

In all mining sectors for 2016: 626,100 jobs in all classifications
https://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_201.htm

Coal mining in 2017: Monthly estimates ranging from 51,800 to 52,200 three months trailing (not seasonally adjusted) or 51,500 to 51,900 (seasonally adjusted)
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t17.htm

[NCDem777]

135. To be fair

it's REALLY hard to be sympathetic. Most rural Republicans have absolutely no empathy for anybody else's situation until it happens to them. None.

When outsourcing was a primarily urban issue, they said get retraining (at our own expense), move to where the jobs are, etc. Could you imagine the white rage if urbanites stubbornly refused? They'd be in the streets demanding that all government aid be cut off.

[GaryCnf]

136. Totally agree

[Cosmocat]

94. Yes, we need to have empathy for people who have absolutely none of anyone else

jhc ...

[GaryCnf]

99. I'm assuming you met "for"

And in that case . . . a majority WORKING CLASS PEOPLE whose primary concern was economic anxiety voted for us.

The people who had "none" were the so-called "XXXXXXX Democrats" living out in the burbs who voted in a majority for Trump.

[onlyadream]

17. Why would a coal mining course be offered?

Also, it's human nature to stick with what you know and are familiar with. Poor guy made a poor decision.

[TexasBushwhacker]

75. That's what I was thinking

Why is there a FEDERALLY FUNDED course for a dying industry?

[Hortensis]

122. Responding to local demand? Not all jobs are gone yet.

I disagree with the notion that most of those people are clueless. We were in Kentucky/WV coal country a month or so ago, and the people we chatted with weren't too stupid to know the basics about their region's major industry at all. Very much to the contrary.

But most are very conservative by tradition and some by personality and tradition. They wanted what Hillary stood there and promised -- creation of vibrant prosperous local economies that would allow them continue to live with family and friends in a very beautiful country rich with their own old culture they love and value. And to be able to raise their children to be able to stay right there as adults and share in the wealth and wellbeing of the rest of America.

They just didn't want Democrats to win and make it happen.

I've lived in heavily conservative towns for the past 30 years, most of our friends and acquaintances have of necessity always been conservatives, and I believe most analyses ignore or vastly underestimate simple spiteful us-versus-them partisanship as an explanation for their choices. I see some form of it almost every day. And in this era, when most conservative principles and mores have become dissociated from GOP political behaviors that have nothing to do with conservatism itself, the growth of hostile, aggressive, tribal partisanship to an effectively insane degree explains virtually everything. The rest is mostly just dressing it up to sound better.

They understood. They just didn't want Democrats to win and make it happen.

[onlyadream]

137. There was a video clip of Sarah Silverman

Visiting a Trump supporting family who lived in Louisiana on the Bayou. They agreed with many dem principals,and Sarah said, "I hate to tell you this, but you're liberals!" This made me sad because something is really wrong, when we actually have ideals in common, but we can't even communicate well enough to see it.

[Hortensis]

140. Lol, what an insult. Worse, genetically something like

equal numbers of people are wired conservative or liberal to various degrees, with environment of course heavily affecting. Apparently hot climates, and others that make living difficult, increase conservatism, but still.

I've actually been told by a couple of people here in Georgia they'd never met a liberal before. The mere fact that they were chatting so openly and interestedly with me made me wonder about them too. The first ever, back in a conservative California community, received the news that, yes, she knew a liberal because I was one by leaping backward in shock, as if she just discovered Satan glowing behind my eyes. I didn't wonder about her.

[keithbvadu2]

19. Cheech and Chong in High School: I took Spanish; got a B.

Cheech and Chong in High School: I took Spanish; got a B.

[lunasun]

25. He will be very upset when some "other person " who took the realistic training gets a job

He will be suffering he will tell ya. His whole family suffering because he can't get a coal job and it's other people's fault he will tell ya.
Suffering from stubborn ignorance more like it

[Kittycow]

30. I think they're afraid as well.

In the respect that they have to step out into the unknown.

Heck, I was afraid when I switched from years of proficiency in drycleaning to becoming a CNA, but I took a deep breath and did it. And it turned out that I was really good at it

[lunasun]

32. he probably fears the other person who will take the realistic job more than the unknown

ignorance and fear

[hatrack]

51. Life is a step into the unknown - that's the human condition

Did these guys really expect Surrogate Daddy President to make everything all better, to make everything like it used to be?

Because that's what Shitstain was promising, and people who make that kind of promise when both parties to the discussion are adults are either con men or preachers.

[AJT]

34. Sadly the success of these retraining programs are

pretty low, especially in economically depressed areas.

[KPN]

38. That's the reality ...

and likely why the poor guy stuck with coal mining.

[Squinch]

84. And he'll say that "other person" STOLE his job. And he's being discriminated against.

[SummerSnow]

26. He will be very disappointed. Trump hoodwinked these people

[Zambero]

31. Believe ME!

Once more for hoodwinking emphasis: Believe ME!

[Zambero]

29. Coal will come back strong

...if and when the cost of extraction and transport falls below that of cheap natural gas. Blocking the sun and ending solar technology will also be a huge boost for the most polluting of all fossil fuels.
OK now, everyone start holding their breath!

[DBoon]

55. blocking the sun to eliminate cheap energy?

Didn't they make a movie out of this?

Like The Matrix?

[Zambero]

73. I haven't watched that one yet

...so can't answer to affirm. However, truth tends to be stranger than fiction, if what the GOP pushes for can actually be considered as "truth".

[pstokely]

33. and they'll be making coal powered cars soon

[mahatmakanejeeves]

61. GM Once Built These Fascinating Coal-Powered Turbine Cars

GM Once Built These Fascinating Coal-Powered Turbine Cars

David Tracy
1/31/17 5:12pm

[malthaussen]

36. It boggles the mind...

... it's not like mining is a cush gig. Generations of men have tried very hard to get out of coal mining. I suspect the question is not so much of lack of the availability of training, as lack of jobs in the area in which to use any training. Most of these towns in the back of beyond had one industry -- coal or whatever -- and you worked there, or nowhere.

-- Mal

[gibraltar72]

39. Proving once again

you can't fix stupid.

[Paladin]

41. To hell with these ignorant, self-destructive people.

If they're too foolish to take advantage of job training for the future, if they're that deceived by trump, then Democrats shouldn't waste time on them.

[hatrack]

43. "Would you like fries with that?"

.

[Neema]

45. I'm sorry, but I'm having trouble feeling bad for these people. I went to art school. Everyone

told me that I was wasting my time and money going to art school because it's so difficult to make a living as a fine artist even if you're very talented. But I didn't listen. I was young and stupid and thought I could do it anyway. So I went to art school. I even got my MFA. And guess what? I was working retail jobs with that MFA. I wasn't making enough to pay rent and my massive school loans, forget insurance.

But, I did eventually learn my lesson. I saw that my fine art career was going nowhere, and I started realizing I was pretty good at design. I wasn't offered retraining. I just did what I had to do. Eventually I worked my way into a design job, and now I have a full-fledged career that is creatively fulfilling and pays the bills.

What I didn't do was sit around waiting for something that wasn't going to happen and then blaming my circumstances on the government and brown people.

And honestly, at least there are some fine artists that go on to make a living or better in art. So I had better odds than these miners looking the gift horse of retraining in the mouth.

[packman]

47. I grew up in the declining Steel mill era - all too familiar

Left the area below Pittsburgh when the mill were shutting down and moving either to the South or overseas. Of course, all the related economies went with the mills - the coal mines, the stores, and all the little towns dependent on them. Sadly, the men refused to believe they weren't coming back. Up to the day they finally exploded them with dynamite and leveled the millworks with bulldozers, the old men still believed that somehow they would return.

[lindysalsagal]

54. And that explains republicans: magic selfish thinking.

To the death.

[exboyfil]

58. Neither nursing nor computer programming

probably fits his skill set.

I am at a loss in what you can do in coal country with the miner's skill set (ability to run sophisticated equipment and work in brutal conditions).

Moving really is the best option. Of course that then opens up the question of the lost support network, and the fact that there really are not that many good jobs to move to where the employer is willing to train you.

Neither wind nor solar power have much potential in this area.

At least in West Virginia I think tourism/hunting has potential, but then again, the market is already saturated with providers.

[Squinch]

85. No. They don't fit his skill set. That's why he'd need to train for it.

And look! There are free courses to do just that!!!

[exboyfil]

88. I guess I should use the term aptitude

I use my two daughters as examples. One is an engineer and the other is a nurse. Both are very smart, but they could not do the other's occupation very well. My older daughter, the engineer, has difficulty dealing with blood and interacting with individuals. My younger daughter, who is superb in biology, has difficulty in math.

Both children had pretty much the same teachers in their formative period, and I worked with both to the best of my ability. They just gravitated to the area in which they felt most comfortable. That is why I did engineering problems with my older daughter until she went off to college (still consulted on some of the more difficult problems) and helped my younger daughter do dissections at home for homeschooling in Biology.

[Squinch]

89. Everyone in the world needs to select their profession from the professions that are available

to them. You did it, I did it, everyone does it except, it seems, unemployed miners.

I was not able to choose being a morse code telegram decoder, nor was I able to choose being an Alaskan salmon fisherwoman without moving to Alaska. I had to choose something for which I could get the training and for which there was a demand in my area. Or I could have chosen to move to find demand for other jobs. Everyone has to choose with those restrictions.

Why do former miners assume they are exempt from those restrictions?

[Coventina]

90. Thank you!

I trained for a very limited area, I knew I was really rolling the dice about getting a position in my field.
But, I got the degree, put in 8 years of being an adjunct and living on starvation wages, and I finally got a tenure-track position.

If it hadn't worked out, I did have a fallback plan, because I knew full-time faculty positions were scarce as hens' teeth.

Everybody ALWAYS should have a fallback plan. I've never not had one.

[Squinch]

92. I was once in publishing. I did work that I began to see was not going to continue

for more than 10 or 15 years. (Today, what I did is only done by a very, very few people.) Fifteen years into my career, I knew that I could either continue to try to be one of the few that lasted or I could retrain. Now I'm in healthcare.

We do what we need to do. If we are offered help to do what we need to do, and reject it while insisting that what is clearly happening is not happening, we deserve what we get. Or don't get.

I'm sick of this nonsense. Miners are only talked about because they are white men. And it is only a handful of white men. And most of them spent the last generation telling others to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

[Coventina]

93. Exactly. You nailed it. White men who blame everyone else for their problems.

As if coal mining is something to aspire to in the first place.



Yes, please, I want to die of black lung in my mid 40s! Please train me for that!!

[Doreen]

60. Maybe it will come back. There still are a lot of naughty people who need coal in their stockings.

[Bengus81]

68. Wait!! Get training to make 8 track cartridges,that technology is coming back too!! n/t

[left-of-center2012]

72. I'm retraining now to learn how to make buggy whips

[jmowreader]

80. Move to the Redoubt. You're certain to get rich.

Out in this neck of the woods, where people from all over are moving to wait out the end of the world, a fella could make a pretty good living selling horse-drawn conveyances to the preppers.

[Elwood P Dowd]

81. Trump would probably buy some to use with his golden shower parties.

[Squinch]

87. Bahahaha! I just self deleted my joke about buggy whips because I see you got there first!

You have a great mind!

[truthisfreedom]

91. 60 minutes should do a piece on this immediately

We need to save the stupid from 45. He’s a self-serving asshole who never considers the damage to the American people resulting from his cons.

[Gothmog]

101. It is too bad that anyone would believe one of trump's lies

[unblock]

103. Yet another way Donnie is harming these people

[Luciferous]

105. I have a hard time sympathizing with these people.

[DesertRat]

112. Another example of 45's words causing real harm to people

[GaryCnf]

114. Some seem compelled to salve

A visceral need to slander loyal Democratic constituencies who weren't enthralled by their candidate has won out over finding ways to help them.

Luckily, not all progressives think the same.

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/04/07/how-democrats-lost-west-virginia-and-coal-miners-trump

[lagomorph777]

119. IN other news, parachute pants are selling out all over W VA

[CakeGrrl]

144. And Trump will lead the way:

'The loser Democrats wouldn't let me bring your jobs back!'

The king of the whiny victims encouraging his flock to do same.

[JDC]

131. They are dillusional in every sense

[alphafemale]

133. Coal is no longer profitable enough.

Not for an individual clawing those black veins out of the depths of the earth in the standard, romanticized way we see Appalachian coal mining.

That is not coming back.

Just in the way those echoing canyons of abandoned steel mills are never going to have a fire in their heart again.

Just because someone made a certain amount of money?

That does not mean they can expect to make that when the world changes.

And the world is always changing.

TV Repair also used to be a lucrative field.

[FreeStateDemocrat]

134. Difficult to overcome entrenched willful ignorance.

[Oneironaut]

145. Sorry, but coal is dead. It's never coming back, and it shouldn't.

It's a dirty, archaic form of energy. Sadly, they will never understand that Trump lied to them. They'll keep waiting for a savior that will never come.