I hope if Hillary wins we can make West Virginia our new nuclear waste disposal area. It's certainly more deserving than poor Yucca Mountain. We can rename it Waste Virginia.
If the Democrats are serious about claiming any degree of moral superiority over the Republicans at all, this cannot be the party's attitude towards any part of the country, regardless of how much reason there is to dislike the people living there. The American left cannot turn into Margaret Thatcher deliberately pursuing policies that will hurt unsympathetic demographics and justifying it with 'they are not our people'. It is neither morally justifiable nor, in the final analysis, politically efficacious.
Well, they (WV) hates Hillary but her "Marshall Plan" for WV is their only real hope. They love Trump but there's nothing he can do to stop Appalachian natural gas from burying Appalachian coal. It's a pickle.
I mean, obviously they're reflexively voting in profoundly self-destructive ways, but that's no excuse to deliberately make things worse for them like IceSpear is suggesting. (I know there's a distinct possibility that he's not serious, but given his general opinion of poor whites, Poe's law is very much in effect.)
Well, great. I guess the next thing your gonna tell me is that we can't build that wall around WV like we should.
I'm kind of torn on what to do with WV. From a purely technocratic view, it's a horrible place to try to put people. The infrastructure is difficult and expensive to maintain. Over the decades, numerous communities have been abandoned back to nature as their economic viability faded when the coal ran out. There are many now that don't justify saving. Detroit seems easy by comparison. Not going to convince people to move is in their best interest (unless they make that choice on their own). Money for retraining is a no brainer for displace workers in many industries. Spending money on communities that aren't particularly viable is much more iffy (and keep in mind I type from New Orleans). Retraining would be worthless without relocating. Back to the pickle and people who already show a rather strong self-destructive streak.
