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I'm more hopeful than I've been for awhile



‘I’m more hopeful than I’ve been for awhile’


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Holly Bailey
National Correspondent
Yahoo NewsJanuary 15, 2017




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Gary Webster and Lynn Jackson at the Schultzen Club in Mingo Junction, Ohio. (Photo: Eric Thayer for Yahoo News)

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In the weeks leading up to the inauguration, Yahoo News visited towns and cities across the country, speaking to voters who had supported Donald Trump in the election. As the shape of his administration emerged, we asked voters if they were happy with their choice and optimistic about the future. Here is some of what we found:
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MINGO JUNCTION, Ohio — When Donald Trump talked about running to represent the “forgotten men and women” that the American dream had left behind, he could very well have been talking about the residents of this tiny village at the foothills of the Appalachians, in the heart of the Ohio River Valley.
A little less than 40 years ago, a young Robert De Niro piloted a gleaming white Cadillac up Commercial Street here, filming a pivotal scene in the Vietnam War epic “The Deer Hunter.” But today, the street stands bleak and empty. Many of its buildings are boarded up and condemned, dark against the rusting iron husk of the vacant steel mill that rises tall above town like a haunted tombstone for the village’s better days.
Thousands of people used to walk down the hill toward the river to jobs at the former Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel mill before it closed permanently eight years ago after a series of ownership changes. The restaurants and shops that depended on the workers soon went away too — leaving just a handful of businesses, almost all of them bars, patronized by residents who struggle to keep their lives afloat in a town that sometimes doesn’t have enough money to keep the streetlights lit.
Almost everybody here in this town of 3,300 people is a registered Democrat, a party affiliation that dates back to their parents and their parents’ parents. But during the past 20 years, as the mining and steel industries here have collapsed, the die-hard Democrats have become less die-hard, disillusioned by a party they feel has left the working class behind.


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A closed steel mill in Mingo Junction, Ohio. (Photo: Eric Thayer for Yahoo News)



In November, Trump easily captured Ohio, a victory fueled in part by winning over blue-collar workers in eastern arts of the state who had turned out in historic numbers for Barack Obama in the previous two elections. In Jefferson County, where Mingo Junction is located, Trump defeated Hillary Clinton by nearly 35 points, but despite his resounding victory, many here remain deeply divided over Trump and whether he will really deliver on his promises to revitalize Rust Belt towns like this.
Weeks after the conclusion of what was widely considered one of the most divisive campaigns in recent memory, Trump was still a touchy subject in Mingo Junction. At Townhouse Bar, an old tavern on a now-deserted end of Commercial Street that used to be a hangout for steelworkers on break, a woman named Darla stopped the conversation when asked about the election. “There is a rule here: Never, ever talk about politics in a bar,” she warned, as other patrons on nearby stools nodded in agreement. “It’s nothing but trouble.”
But a few minutes later, after playing a round of keno, Darla relented. “I know where to take you to talk about this,” she said, leading the way down the block to a members-only bar called the Schultzen Club, where Lynn Jackson, a 65-year-old retiree from nearby Steubenville who had been laid off from her job at a coal-fired power plant, sat with her friend Gary Webster, a 63-year-old retired teacher from Mingo Junction. Both had spent their lives in the region, raising families, only to see the city around them fade away as the industry died. “We don’t even have a gas station,” Webster lamented.

They spoke with nostalgia of a time when the air was so dirty that birds barely flew in the sky. “I called it boiling the stacks,” Webster recalled of the soaring blast furnaces and smokestacks that now sit idle at the mill just outside the bar’s backdoor. When they were running, pollution floated in the air. “It looked like glitter falling.”


Even though the air was dirty, the town was booming. “People didn’t want for nothing really,” Jackson recalled. “It’s not that everybody was rich, but you made a decent income that you could raise your family on.” But those days are gone, replaced by a struggle that seems never-ending.

After living here most of their lives, it was now mostly the older generation that was left. The kids who had grown up here had escaped, looking for better lives elsewhere. Not that their families blamed them. A town that had once held so much promise now seemed like something of a dead end.


There were appealing things about Trump’s message, they acknowledged, including his pledge to bring back jobs and industry to struggling towns like this. But for all his promises, there was something that didn’t ring true. Jackson, who said she started out giving Trump a chance even though she rarely votes Republican, was turned off by his litany of promises with few details and then by his propensity to “shoot off his mouth.” She felt uneasy about his temperament to be president and concerned that he was simply saying anything to win. “I don’t trust him,” she said. “He’s nothing but a mouth.”


But Jackson acknowledged she was in the minority. A few feet away, on a billboard set up near a pool table, someone had hung images of Clinton, one from a newsstand tabloid depicting her with an Adolf Hitler mustache (“World War 3,” the headline warned) and another of her behind jail bars. She had an idea about who might have hung them there, but fearful of fights, people shied away from talking about whom they did or did not vote for. “Oh, you don’t talk about religion and politics in a bar,” Jackson said, adding, “I say, ‘I do, if you ask me.


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Mingo Junction, Ohio. (Photo: Eric Thayer for Yahoo News)





But down the block, at an old bar called the Parkview Inn, there was one Trump supporter willing to own up to his vote. Joe Mannarino, a 57-year-old steelworker who had bounced from plant to plant after losing his job at the mill out back years before, was a registered Democrat who crossed party lines to back Trump. It wasn’t that he believed everything Trump said, he explained, but he saw him as a change candidate who would be more likely to help working-class people like him and towns like this.

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The Schultzen Club in Mingo Junction, Ohio. (Photo: Eric Thayer for Yahoo News)


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Residents here have a long memory, Mannarino said. They still recalled how Bill Clinton went to Weirton, W.Va., just across the river shortly after he won the Democratic nomination in 1992, where he visited a mill and pledged to stop foreign steel from being dumped at cheap prices. “And then he turned around and passed NAFTA and all these trade deals that killed us,” Mannarino said. “How could anybody trust a Clinton after that?”
Trump, he said, was hardly the perfect candidate, but he was the only person who seemed to speak to and care about people like him. On the trail, Trump vividly spoke of reviving the steel industry in order to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure and the inner cities. “We will build the next generation of roads, bridges, railways, tunnels, seaports and airports that our country deserves,” Trump declared in a line in his stump speech. “American steel will send new skyscrapers soaring. We will put new American metal into the spine of this nation. ”
Now that Trump is soon to be in the White House, Mannarino said he expects him to deliver on those promises to rebuild the country with American steel, as well as his pledge to renegotiate trade deals like NAFTA on more favorable terms to the United States. Can Trump actually follow through on all those promises? Mannarino said with a shrug. “I’m hopeful,” he said. “I’m more hopeful than I’ve been for a while.”
A town has hope that it hasn't been forgotten


SANDY HOOK, Ky.—It used to be known as the most reliably Democratic county in America.

In a state that had long ago gone deep red, Elliott County, located here in the winding forested hills of remote eastern Kentucky, was a true anomaly. Since 1872, three years after the county was founded, the majority of voters here had backed a Democrat for president every four years. 

It was the longest streak for any county in the nation—and one that came to an abrupt end in November when Donald Trump overwhelmingly defeated Hillary Clinton by 44 points, his largest margin of victory in the state of Kentucky and one of the largest in the country.

To some, a Republican win seemed a long time coming. The population is predominately white and largely impoverished–working class people who once toiled in nearby steel mills and coal mines but have struggled to make ends meet as those jobs have vanished. But politics, like the land, had been passed down through generations, and a majority of residents remained solidly Democrat, a loyalty dating back to their fathers and grandfathers who earned their first paychecks building roads and public infrastructure as part of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.

“(When you voted), it was either the Democrat, or it was the devil,” said Myron Lewis, a convenience store owner and native of Sandy Hook, the county seat. Lewis’s father worked in the mining industry.

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Sandy Hook, Ky. (Photo: Eric Thayer for Yahoo News)

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Slideshow: Scenes from the road in Donald Trump’s America >>>

But that loyalty has been tested in recent years. Hard hit by the recession, Elliott County didn’t enjoy the recovery other parts of the country did. And in 2015, many more lost their jobs when AK Steel, one of the largest employers in the region, idled its plant in nearby Ashland. The unemployment rate in Elliott County now stands at 11 percent, more than double the national average and one of the highest in the country. Many here have to drive an hour or longer to their jobs.

Let down by Barack Obama, who didn’t usher in the recovery the region needed, and angry at Clinton’s suggestion at a CNN town hall last year that “a lot of coal miners” would lose their jobs in years to come, many here were intrigued by Trump who vowed create jobs and be a president for those who felt abandoned and overlooked by the rest of the country.

“Appalachia is this forgotten area of folks within the country. And we wanna still be seen as viable. And that’s not happening at all,” Lewis said. But Trump seemed to be their unlikely champion, a New York billionaire who seemed to understand and care about the “working people” in a way that other candidates didn’t.

Lewis, who is 41, had recently moved back to Sandy Hook after years away. He had traveled the country, working to develop fuel and truck stops. But, unlike many here who had graduated from the local high school and never looked back, Lewis believed in his hometown, and he returned with his wife and kids, looking for the quiet, small town life he’d enjoyed as a child. He opened a gas station and convenience store right off state highway 7, the main drag through town.

Sitting down for lunch at the Frosty Freeze, one of the only restaurants in town, Lewis acknowledged it has been tougher than he expected. While other nearby counties enjoyed some rebound, Elliott County has been in endless struggle, playing “second fiddle” to counties closer to Interstate 64, 30 miles away, in the quest to lure industry and jobs. A private prison had opened just outside of town a few years earlier, bringing about 160 jobs, but the county needed more. That’s why, he said, so many Democrats had crossed party lines to back Trump. “He promised jobs,” he said.

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Sandy Hook, Ky. (Photo: Eric Thayer for Yahoo News)

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The residents in Elliott County or anywhere in this region of Kentucky don’t want a “handout,” he said. People just want a chance to work and take care of their own. “The thing that folks don’t understand is Appalachia doesn’t want any more than what Appalachia can do for itself by and large. …We were raised that way. You don’t need a world to take care of this village. But this village doesn’t need to be forgotten neither. You don’t ask for a lot, but you don’t wanna be forgotten at the same time.”

While many voters here crossed party lines to back Trump, he didn’t have coattails. Democrats won the rest of the ticket, perhaps confirming not only Trump’s unique power to win cross-party votes but also his tenuous political position. Though residents were friendly to Trump’s message, they are desperate to see results and are expecting him to deliver soon. Jobs are at the top of Lewis’s list, though he acknowledged Trump will “have a long row to hoe” when it comes to restoring coal industry jobs. He is hoping a Trump administration might help attract more diversified industry to the region, including more jobs in manufacturing and health care.

And while he likes some of Trump’s ideas about renegotiating trade deals, something that won him many votes here and throughout the Rust Belt, Lewis admits he’s unsure about how far the new administration should go. He likes the idea of making countries like China pay more to access the U.S. market and for punishing partners who dump cheap goods taking away business from American companiesbut he’s wary of Trump’s call of simply exiting existing trade deals if other partners won’t play ball. “I’m not there,” he said.

Perhaps more than anything, except for jobs, Lewis says he hopes Trump will truly try to work with both Republicans and Democrats to break through gridlock in Washington. “I hope he surrounds himself with great minds to help him lead,” Lewis said. And, he added, he hopes Trump curbs his addiction to Twitter.

“Off the cuff Twitter remarks at 11:00 at night are not (helpful)… Let’s move on,” he said. “It’s time he drops that pettiness.”
[url=https://www.yahoo.com/news/in-americas-forgotten-places-trumps-supporters-hope-to-be-heard-finally-233159431.html][/url]
(01-18-2017, 01:06 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: [ -> ]What's ironic is some of Trump's cabinet picks are not exactly the workingman's buddies.

Which ones are you thinking of?
(01-18-2017, 01:06 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: [ -> ]What's ironic is some of Trump's cabinet picks are not exactly the workingman's buddies.

Not exactly indeed!

One baby buster got duped.

I've never seen a more anti-worker, anti-human, anti-life, incompetent group of greedy bosses appointed for any cabinet by any elected leader, ever.

I mean, even Adolf Hitler's "cabinet" were at least competent!

Warren Dew asks which ones? The question is, which one is not? The answer is, NONE OF THEM.

Incompetent nominee Ben Carson made that clear here:
https://youtu.be/nRqhx91TbBw?t=7m30s
But don't you think that the fact that they are incompetent means that this is going to be a one-man show - and a show by a one man who was characterized as a "New York liberal" by all his Ayn Rand-loving opponents in the Republican primaries?

That bus is gonna have a lot of bodies under it by the time Trump is finished.
(01-18-2017, 01:07 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: [ -> ]
(01-18-2017, 01:06 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: [ -> ]What's ironic is some of Trump's cabinet picks are not exactly the workingman's buddies.

Which ones are you thinking of?

Butting in, but that called for a response immediately
  1. @ Treasury: Steve Mnuchin - the foreclosure king
  2. @ HHS: Tom Price - who thinks healthcare can be managed by catastrophic coverage and savings
  3. @ Labor: Andrew Pudzer - who believes that minimum wage is unnecessary, and workers should be happy with the self-gratification of a job well done.  Not him, of course.
  4. @ Education: Betsy DeVos, who never attended a public school, but knows they are all bad
There are others, but these will suffice
(01-19-2017, 10:54 AM)Anthony Wrote: [ -> ]But don't you think that the fact that they are incompetent means that this is going to be a one-man show - and a show by a one man who was characterized as a "New York liberal" by all his Ayn Rand-loving opponents in the Republican primaries?

That bus is gonna have a lot of bodies under it by the time Trump is finished.

No, because New York liberals don't appoint greedy fascists who love Ayn Rand.
(01-18-2017, 03:35 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: [ -> ]I mean, even Adolf Hitler's "cabinet" were at least competent!

Huh?  Albert Speer was the only competent one.
Himmler, Goebbels, Goering, Hess; I'd say they were very efficient.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler_Cabinet
(01-19-2017, 10:54 AM)Anthony Wrote: [ -> ]But don't you think that the fact that they are incompetent means that this is going to be a one-man show -

No.  If they are incompetent, it means Trump will get much less of what he wants done that Congress opposes. As partisanship increases, Republican legislators increasingly become independent actors, with their own brand that will ensure re-election.  They don't need Trump and in four years (or 8 at most) he will be gone and they will still be here.

So that means Trump will likely be just another Bush, unless he achieves a major war or similar one-off event.

This of course assumes that the Trump appointees in those areas he cares about (i.e. not education or HW) are incompetent.  Neither Tillerson nor Mathis strike me as incompetent.
(01-19-2017, 12:40 PM)David Horn Wrote: [ -> ]
(01-18-2017, 01:07 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: [ -> ]
(01-18-2017, 01:06 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: [ -> ]What's ironic is some of Trump's cabinet picks are not exactly the workingman's buddies.

Which ones are you thinking of?

Butting in, but that called for a response immediately

You don't claim to be a conservative, though.
(01-19-2017, 03:22 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: [ -> ]Himmler, Goebbels, Goering, Hess; I'd say they were very efficient.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler_Cabinet

Himmler the school teacher?  As for Goering see the Battle of Britain.  Hess, wasn't he the guy who flew to Britain in summer 1941 and ended his life as prisoner #7 at Spandau prison?
(01-19-2017, 03:30 PM)Mikebert Wrote: [ -> ]
(01-19-2017, 10:54 AM)Anthony Wrote: [ -> ]But don't you think that the fact that they are incompetent means that this is going to be a one-man show -

No.  If they are incompetent, it means Trump will get much less of what he wants done that Congress opposes. As partisanship increases, Republican legislators increasingly become independent actors, with their own brand that will ensure re-election.  They don't need Trump and in four years (or 8 at most) he will be gone and they will still be here.

So that means Trump will likely be just another Bush, unless he achieves a major war or similar one-off event.

This of course assumes that the Trump appointees in those areas he cares about (i.e. not education or HW) are incompetent.  Neither Tillerson nor Mathis strike me as incompetent.

Tillerson has no experience whatsoever as a diplomat. Big business is not diplomacy. And the business he ran is the business we don't need, and is killing the planet. No-one who is aware of what's going on would trust him to carry out the Paris accords or negotiate good climate deals, not to mention stand up to Putin. His answers to the committee were pathetic and dishonest in the extreme.
(01-19-2017, 03:51 PM)Mikebert Wrote: [ -> ]
(01-19-2017, 03:22 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: [ -> ]Himmler, Goebbels, Goering, Hess; I'd say they were very efficient.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler_Cabinet

Himmler the school teacher?  As for Goering see the Battle of Britain.  Hess, wasn't he the guy who flew to Britain in summer 1941 and ended his life as prisoner #7 at Spandau prison?

The article verified what I already knew generally. Goering ordered "the strategy that would almost win the Battle of Britain for Germany." It was Hitler who ordered Goering to shift to attacking London, after a British attack on Berlin and "Hitler's Ego." That was the mistake that turned the tide in the war in Europe.

Ask the millions killed by Hitler's SS if Himmler was not efficient.
(01-19-2017, 12:40 PM)David Horn Wrote: [ -> ]@ Labor: Andrew Pudzer - who believes that minimum wage is unnecessary, and workers should be happy with the self-gratification of a job well done.  Not him, of course.

In a decent country somebody like this would have people with torches and pitchforks at his door.
(01-20-2017, 11:37 AM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: [ -> ]
(01-20-2017, 09:49 AM)Odin Wrote: [ -> ]
(01-19-2017, 12:40 PM)David Horn Wrote: [ -> ]@ Labor: Andrew Pudzer - who believes that minimum wage is unnecessary, and workers should be happy with the self-gratification of a job well done.  Not him, of course.

In a decent country somebody like this would have people with torches and pitchforks at his door.

This country needs a real labor movement. Not a stealth PAC for politicians, not a crypto-Marxist front group ... but a real grass roots group that is actually run by real workers and whose mission is good paying jobs, reasonable Ts and Cs between workers and corporations, etc ... all the good motherhood and apple pie stuff.

The Tea Party, which is composed of real workers, has been trying to turn the Republican party into this, but with admittedly mixed success.
The Tea Party is a motley crew of old Boomers and Silents who make plenty of money but still don't want to pay any taxes. They have turned the Republican Party into the most cruel and ruthless creeps this nation has seen since the days of Dixie and Jim Crow. They are the total opposite of a workers' movement.

Yes, America needs a real labor movement! And it would run Andrew Pudzer and his like out of town on a rail, and would not be fooled by a Lumpy Chump Grump who promises to make America great and then appoints mugwumps like Pudzer.
(01-20-2017, 09:49 AM)Odin Wrote: [ -> ]
(01-19-2017, 12:40 PM)David Horn Wrote: [ -> ]@ Labor: Andrew Pudzer - who believes that minimum wage is unnecessary, and workers should be happy with the self-gratification of a job well done.  Not him, of course.

In a decent country somebody like this would have people with torches and pitchforks at his door.

I have a long list of those worthy of something better.  Tar and feathering and then riding out on a rail.

1. The Waltons.
2. All Hedge Fund managers.
3. Any CEO who does "financial engineering', outsourcing, hires H1B's and does a train your replacement program.
4. Any CEO who runs a skimming operation:  Banks, finance companies, title loans, etc.
5. Any economist who advocates skimming operations like Rogoff. Digital money is just plain stupid since it can be hacked , skimmed by Apple, Microsoft, etc., and denies privacy.
6. TBTF grifters.  As such: Big Grin



TBTF=Too Big To Fail. Yes, maybe Trump can hire his cronies to build a shiny new railroad we can ride them out on when we get the chance! Make America Great Again! lol
(01-20-2017, 04:05 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: [ -> ]The Tea Party is a motley crew of old Boomers and Silents who make plenty of money but still don't want to pay any taxes. They have turned the Republican Party into the most cruel and ruthless creeps this nation has seen since the days of Dixie and Jim Crow. They are the total opposite of a workers' movement.

Yes, America needs a real labor movement! And it would run Andrew Pudzer and his like out of town on a rail, and would not be fooled by a Lumpy Chump Grump who promises to make America great and then appoints mugwumps like Pudzer.
I suspect that they've paid/been paying their taxes like everyone else is supposed to be doing.
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