Values Driven Strategies

Nearly three years ago Virginia’s Governor, Tim Kaine, came from behind to beat favored Jerry Kilgore, a conservative Republican attorney general whose roots in the state’s deep southwest mountain section helped and hurt his candidacy.

Rural Virginians across the state liked Kilgore’s farm upbringing and his parents’ sacrifices to see their twin boys and younger son well educated and nurtured for public service. Jerry Kilgore’s steadfast conservatism was a click or two to the left of George Allen and Jim Gilmore, but obviously well to the right of Kaine’s liberal leanings. Jerry never hid his conservative credentials and resisted urgings to head to the middle and compromise his long held views, some say to the detriment of his electability.

Northern Virginia, having changed demographically and politically over a short number of years as Yankees flocked to the state’s nicer weather and high tech jobs, rejected Kilgore’s law and order stance, his mountain culture and dialect, strict gun rights and what they perceived as his anti-environmental stance, although as attorney general he amped up the enforcement of all laws, including those protecting land, air and water.

In the end, Kilgore could not match Kaine’s deft transition from ultra-liberal to solid moderate without blinking an eye (although Kaine’s left eyebrow usually made a magnificent arch when it was obvious he was not believing his own “I am a traditional Virginian” rhetoric).

Perceived as Virginia’s most liberal governor, Kaine kept his pro-business promise, even to the extent of re-appointing a member to the state water control board who had been cited twice for violating the state’s clean water laws he was sworn to uphold. Next, Kaine fully embraced a new coal fired power plant in the Virginia coalfields and stood firm as his liberal base accused him of being owned by the power plant applicant, a slave of coal and, most recently, of threatening the state’s citizen air pollution control board to vote right or else just one week before the power plant permit was to be decided. It was approved unanimously.

One of Virginia’s most influential political blogs, aptly named Raising Kaine, came into prominence bolstering Tim Kaine’s candidacy and image in a state that heretofore had flat out rejected all liberal and most moderate gubernatorial candidates. Kaine, some say, was literally blogged into office by Raising Kaine and other pro-environmental groups, pro-immigrant organizations and the statewide media that had decidedly become more liberal as Republicans were repeatedly vilified for being too pro-business and too anti-tax.

Mark Warner had shown the political world that resisting tax increases could be made to look like Republican led gridlock and anti-business, while raising taxes for specific good causes became leadership. Never in the state’s history had opposition to raising taxes been conveyed as a bad thing. Running on a platform not to raise taxes again, Kaine won his race and immediately supported a multitude of increases in fees and taxes, citing a change in circumstances as his justification.

When one now visits the Raising Kaine blog (www.raisingkaine.com) all references to Tim Kaine are gone. Where his name once dominated the home page, a reverse “R” and standard “K” took its place. Most recently, the name “Hussein” fills the space between the “R” and the “K”. Presumably this is a show of support for Barack Hussein Obama, the current favorite of progressives, although he himself is being criticized by some nationwide progressive blogs for tilting toward the middle in an effort to win the White House.

Kaine most likely killed any chances he had at being tapped as Obama’s vice-presidential running mate due to his unbending loyalty to perceived polluters and big business. He has also alienated wide swaths of independents. They are finding themselves fairly shocked at him for first embracing the bad driver penalties that affected only Virginians, then at his audacity to recommend higher gas taxes at a time when many working class people can barely afford to drive to and from their jobs.

All in all, Kaine has strayed from one bad policy decision to the other, alienating various bases of support without reaping much political capital or tangible results along the way. His victory over a traditional conservative Republican could be a playbook for Obama as he follows the same path of winning the nomination by being liberal and pursuing the general election by adopting moderate to conservative viewpoints.

Or, Kaine could serve as a lesson for progressives to call out Obama early and often through liberal media and blog sources, wanting to avoid their candidate from being “Kained” by corporate America and hemmed in by what they believe to be an uninspired political middle.

It will be interesting to see if the Virginia experience will help or hurt Obama. He is going to need every ounce of oratory skills and acrobatic political two-stepping to pull this one off. Being bullied and vilified for decades by conservatives, particularly the late Jessee Helms, progressives do believe their time has come to elect a true believer. No matter which side one supports, America’s fate hangs in the balance.

Frank Kilgore is an attorney in the Virginia coalfields who frequently writes about conservation, education, health care and politics. He is not related to Jerry Kilgore.

The snobbish national media have made a great deal out of the fabled oddities and presumed racism of the Appalachian people during the recent Democrat presidential primaries and caucuses. Again, the elite talking heads have ignored the racially motivated comparative data from the flatlands and portions of major cities to rush to a preconceived notion about Appalachian culture and people.

First of all, exit polling showed that race was a significant factor in how votes were cast in several non-Appalachian states, regions and cities. More importantly, who can deny that race was an issue when Obama pulled 90% of the black vote as his nomination gained steam? And this overwhelming one-sided support came at the expense of Hillary Clinton whose husband has been touted as America’s “first” black president. He was also, in many ways, seen as the Appalachian president just as Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy struck a chord here in much tougher times.

The recent lop-sided primary votes tallied in the deeper portions of Appalachia were not particularly anti-Obama; they were loyalty votes to the Clintons and a protest of what many rural Americans see as an ultra-liberal and anti-gun political record on the part of Obama. That is not to say that the hills are devoid of racism, it is everywhere in the world and flourishes among all races but we have made many great strides to overcome it in America and the mountains.

Just as Appalachians mostly favored anti-slavery and pro-Union policies leading up to and during the Civil War, loyalty and the independence to exercise it is intense. Doug Wilder, the nation’s first black governor, did very well in the Appalachian portion of Virginia two decades ago but his policies and positions were moderate for the times and would be conservative by Barrack Obama standards, therein is the rub. Critics can call it racism if it makes them feel superior but it is about policy and visceral issues that any astute politician can easily research, it is not like we have hidden our support for guns, God and nationalism here in the hills.

Let us take a look at the mountain region’s history as a primer for many flatlanders who hold dear to their stereotypical and biased view toward 40 or so million Americans who proudly call Appalachia home.

During the Revolutionary War the British officer, Major Patrick Ferguson, decided to threaten the Appalachian frontiersmen with a promise to “lay waste to their country with fire and sword” if they did not lay down their arms in Upper East Tennessee, Western North Carolina and Far Southwest Virginia. Upon hearing this, the mountaineers, (including my forefathers) did what most people of Scots-Irish heritage have tended to do under similar circumstances: they gathered up their rag-tag forces, drank some, started making speeches, sang a fighting song or two, became increasingly incensed and went after HIM. Men of lower class English ancestry and the sons of Germans persecuted for religious differences joined them. Together, they were as determined a bunch of freedom fighters to ever stand on American soil.

At King’s Mountain, in the foothills bordering South Carolina and North Carolina, these mountain Patriots used hit-and-run stealth tactics to defeat a larger, better armed, formally trained Loyalist force that held the high ground. In the process, these “backwoodsmen” shot Major Ferguson eight times before he could fall from his horse. Teddy Roosevelt later called this battle the “turning point of the Revolutionary War.”

Mountaineers then proceeded on to become favored soldiers in war after war in behalf of their nation. Sought after by seasoned military commanders for their shooting skills, innate savvy, respect for authority and loyalty to a land they hold dear, the likes of Sergeant York and hundreds of highly decorated mountain combatants disproportionately swelled the ranks of our country’s toughest and most tenacious patriots.

There is no doubt that guns, and the ability to defend one’s self and family from criminals and tyrants alike, are still key issues in the mountains. President Bill Clinton did not threaten that basic tenet that harkens back to the fighting spirit of Appalachians that prevails even today. Al Gore and John Kerry ignored this Second Amendment tradition and we know how that strategy turned out in West Virginia and other Appalachian states. One might make the case that issue alone pivoted mountain swing states to George Bush, not a pleasant thought for sure.

When Appalachians were starving during the Great Depression, its men made up the backbone of the Civilian Conservation Corps and later signed up for battle during World War Two in record numbers compared to other, more populous, regions of the nation. What these hard-boiled subsistence farmers, coal miners and loggers may have lacked in education they made up for in understanding the lay of the land, innovative tactics and tenacity.

What they did not forget upon returning home was Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Democrat Party that gave them a chance to feed their families and Harry Truman, who ended the war with Japan by cutting the fighting short and sparing hundreds of thousands of American troops, my father included. These were tough decisions made by tough presidents during tough times and the tough people of the mountain culture appreciated them. If we have something in common in the mountains, it is that we do not easily forget an insult or a favor and we repay them when we can.

The point is, what Barrack Obama ran into in deeper Appalachia was loyalty to Bill Clinton, who many mountain people respect for his rural roots and his push toward including people of modest means in the American Dream. Obama’s Chicago liberalism and association with persons with anti-American attitudes also hurt him severely.

In other words, Bill Clinton, warts and all, is like us in heritage and attitude. He is a person we would be comfortable sitting down with at the church picnic and swapping hunting and fishing stories and maybe reminisce a bit about past romances at the drive-in theatre. John Kerry was not such a person and Obama’s remarks about our kind clinging to guns and religion instead of hope and enlightenment has not helped his cause either. The sustained business and educational achievements of “our kind” would surprise and apparently baffle the nation’s elitists who apparently have no intention of reflecting upon their own bigotry.

Obama, however, was wise to come to Appalachia soon after his nomination was a sure thing. He is a very bright politician and obviously has the confidence to go where he feels unwelcome and that boldness alone will garner respect. If he fails to carry Appalachia it will not be because he is black, it will be because of his lack of understanding of what is important to us as a culture just as we cannot pretend to truly know what is important to his black, urban culture.

While many mountain people will be drawn to John McCain’s independent streak and his valor and courage in Viet Nam, where he refused to be released from torture and captivity until his comrades could join him, Obama will gain a respectable share of mountain votes as he articulates his vision for better jobs, health care, and educational opportunities. He will gain votes here, most of all, if he show a little respect for an independent and fiercely loyal culture that has been ridiculed by the Andrea Mitchells and other media elites of the world for way too long. But Obama cannot blame racism with the fact that his very liberal political positions are way out of sync with much of rural America, including the mountains.

This is the first presidential election in memory wherein political pundits have viewed the Appalachian region’s residents as a swing voting bloc. Perhaps Virginia’s Senator Jim Webb has honed that perception by writing about the Scots-Irish factor in our country’s history and the region’s potential of becoming much more of a national political player.

We Appalachians also have the good humor to laugh about ourselves while maintaining a sense of pride and security about our land and culture. We have never collectively condemned the cultural bias and bigotry we endure. Maybe it is time for all that to happen. If Obama can touch upon what we have in common with other marginalized cultures in America, he could do very well indeed. After all, Obama now has Hillary’s blessing and if he can persuade Hillary and Bill to come to the mountains often and ask us to vote for him, and mean it, it just might be the smartest thing he ever did.

The author, Frank Kilgore, is a life long advocate for better health care, natural resource conservation and improved educational opportunities in Central Appalachia. He practices law in St. Paul, Virginia and is the founding chair of the University of Appalachia. His views do not reflect those of the University.

The Appalachian coalfields have suffered and benefited from coal mining over the past century. The environmental impact of all forms of mining and the wanton deaths of and injuries to coal miners until federal laws finally took hold, are well documented. Debate still rages over the use of mountain top removal mining methods to strip away thousands of acres of forested watersheds to more cheaply access coal.

The less documented downside to the mining of coal is the impact it has on communities that depend almost solely upon it for economic survival. When times are good and the demand and price for coal are high, miners and their communities prosper. When the demand for coal turns downward or the worldwide coal supply is glutted, the impact upon coalfield communities if felt almost immediately. Miners are laid off, businesses that depend upon them close, residents move away and public schools bleed students and revenue. The people that stay behind either own businesses or professions that are necessary to meet the needs of the remaining population and society then consists of segments of the population without the training, education or physical abilities to successfully procure other employment outside the region.

This double phenomenon, the losing of a large portion of motivated workers and their children, is referred to as the “brain drain” that has come and gone several times in all of Appalachia but seems to be accentuated in the coal producing region. Appalachian Regional Commission statistics bear out the fact that that federal agency’s largest portion of “distressed” counties are found in the coalfield region. The huge majority of school children in these distressed communities are on public assistance of some sort and the higher education attainment lags well behind the surrounding areas. Moreover, the health care statistics, harmful lifestyle habits and drug abuse well exceed national averages and the political corruption that comes with such conditions flourish.

I am fortunate to have been in a position to help establish two graduate schools in the heart of the Virginia coalfields. One, the Appalachian School of Law (www.asl.edu) is located in Buchanan County, Virginia; a hardscrabble county if ever one existed. ASL is now ten years old, fully accredited and hosts approximately 350 students and 100 employees. Recently, a large higher education center has located behind it to accommodate expansion, a community college campus and soon will offer B.S., B.A. and masters programs provided by a well-established private school college, which was attracted to the region due to a steady emphasis upon quality education.

Due to the success of the law school I was asked by county officials to plan and launch another graduate school. I gathered the appropriate sponsors and in late 2004 we launched the brand new University of Appalachia (www.uacp.org). Our first program was a college of pharmacy that opened its doors in 2005. In order to secure a niche and draw good students to a remote area, we set up an accelerated program that utilizes summers to intensely train and graduate students a year earlier than traditional programs. On May 17th, we graduated our charter class of 67 brave and optimistic souls who quit their careers and believed in us to make sure our new school would provide them with a lifetime opportunity to advance themselves and their mountain communities. Over 80% of our first class is remaining in Central Appalachia to help improve rural health care outreach.

Together, the two graduate schools have 550 students and 150 employees in an underserved and intensely mined, logged and de-gassed county of 23,000 residents. The favorable economic, social and educational impacts have been profound.

The emerging approach in mountain communities of utilizing higher ed as an economic development tool found its roots in Buchanan County. These jobs are not outsourced and our graduates are much more likely to stay “home” and bless their communities with their knowledge, skill and sense of community mission. Many times, the homegrown solution to embedded problems is the best.

My new motto is: “The more colleges built, the less prisons needed”.

The author is a long time advocate of conservation, education, health care and sustainable job development in the Appalachian coalfields. He can be reached at 276-608-0839

Several national publications, including /Time Magazine/, /The
Washington Post/ and the /New York Times Magazine/, have highlighted the
abysmal health of the people of Central Appalachia, and of the Virginia
coalfields in particular. Federal and state authorities have spent
significant funds verifying the same statistics over and over but little
has been accomplished to ameliorate the problems so thoroughly documented.

Some small portion of the heart and respiratory problems ravaging the
mountain population might be due to congenital factors or, in specific
locations, to air and water quality. But the overwhelming majority of
the chronic health problems are self-inflicted, the consequence of
tobacco, drug abuse, fatty and sugar-laden foods, lack of exercise and a
fatalistic outlook on life that relieves individuals of responsibility
for their own health.

While historical abuses of the environment and workforce may have shaped
a culture of low self esteem and malaise about the future, there is no
excuse for allowing such self-defeating attitudes to go unchallenged.
Coalfield communities must instill healthier lifestyles through intense
health education beginning in early childhood and continuing through
high school. As President Bush famously said: “Childrens do learn.”

Children respond to community and adult encouragement, expectations and
rewards. Just as coalfield kids prove they are capable of stellar
achievements in sports, like high school football, they could improve
their longer-term health and fitness if their communities made it a
priority.

Students and health care professionals in preventive health care public
health, exercise, nutrition and naturopathic medicine (as taught in
science-based accredited schools, not the self-taught quacks) are the
key to turning around the health of thousands in the coalfields. But
they must do more than talk the talk. Children respond to role models,
not preaching or threats.

One thing is for certain, the existing hodgepodge of programs is not
working well. Given limited resources, we may need to perform a coldly
calculated triage: If a high percentage of the region’s adult population
is set on an irreversible course of lifestyle-driven premature disease
and death, perhaps we should focus our limited resources on the young.
If we concentrate our programs on mobilizing dedicated educators and
focusing programs where they do the most good, perhaps we can move the
statistics in the right direction within a generation.

How else, but through early intervention, can we alter the fact that
Appalachian adult males use tobacco at a rate three times the national
average? Nicotine is a known threshold drug to other health wrecking
substances, particularly cocaine, meth and prescription drugs. How else
can we persuade kids, otherwise destined to early mortality due to
obesity and diabetes, to adopt alternate lifestyles unless we marshal
our forces to teach them better today?

Sociologists often blame the government and coal industry for the
current lack of health care and sustainable jobs in the coalfields.
Certainly an argument can be made that a culture of throwaway lives
emanated from decades of coal miners being expendable. In the early and
mid part of last century thousands of miners were killed and maimed each
year. For every three soldiers killed in combat during WWI, one miner
died back home getting out the coal for the industrial war effort.

The deep-seated cultural preference for living for today, based on the
conviction that God has a certain date planned for a person to die,
persists to a troubling degree in our mountain society. Whatever
historical justification there may have been for such hopelessness,
however, today is today. Future generations must embrace self-discipline
and control what they put into their bodies.

Indian reservations, inner cities and coalfield communities share the
same issues of poverty, despair and self-inflicted wounds. We accomplish
nothing by affirming well known facts over and over. Let’s get busy
addressing the problems with prevention and education. We can no longer
tolerate the idea that Appalachia is a place of throwaway lives.

Hopefully the very small minority of our nation’s environmentalists who stayed the course over the past few decades are not screaming in unison “I told you so!” from the dark recesses of our few remaining old growth forests.

Could the original tree huggers really be blamed for being a little smug after chirping like canaries in the coal mines that the ravaging of the planet’s land, air and water would bring us to the point we now find ourselves? Jimmy Carter warned us and we should have listened; had we done so it is projected that we would not currently need a drop of Middle East oil. Al Gore said so and has now become the world’s green darling. And it is true that they both are hypocrites, using and wasting energy and natural resources like there is no tomorrow as they jet around spreading their respective messages, but their messages, we must admit, have been pretty well borne out.

Unfortunately, finding hypocrites is easy but that rarely solves the problem they avidly identify. Just because Al Gore lived in a big energy-wasting house (now rectified) while nagging the rest of us to conserve natural resources does not mean that the polar ice cap has stopped melting much quicker than the most pessimistic scientists predicted. Fox News gloated daily about Al’s double standard, but that public whipping did not seem to satisfy Mother Nature’s most recent bad attitude toward humans and our puny efforts to dominate her.

And projections of immense toxic clouds, expanded deserts, rising seas, more intense droughts and tornadoes do not seem all that far-fetched as we brace for India and China to approach the natural resource consumption level of the modern world. Those emerging super powers treat workers and the environment the way the industrial world did decades ago and we get to watch history repeat itself at the tune of 2.5 billion new and insatiable consumers.

Recent advances in technology, including electric cars and vehicles that run hundreds of miles on compressed air, solar conductivity paint, river turbines, ocean wave generating power and improved wind farm solutions are all very promising.

When will these alternative energy systems really emerge to make a substantial difference? That is easy, when the large energy conglomerates run low on oil, gas and coal and conceive of effective ways to corner wind, water and solar resources. It should be interesting to see how our government helps them monopolize such widespread events of Nature. Also, when gas finally reaches $5.00 per gallon in the U.S. and the true cost of coal powered electricity is passed onto consumers, then we all will stop laughing at the nerd driving the little hybrid in the HOV lane and our neighbor who uses those silly looking LED lights.

Frank Kilgore

Many writers, both native and guests to the Appalachian coalfield region, have attempted to tackle the root causes of its entrenched poverty, environmental degradation, abysmal health statistics and outside domination. Some social reformists point to Northern industrialists that came into the post-Civil War South, seeking fortune in an unsophisticated, sparsely populated and remote mountain region as the beginning of the seduction and ultimate despair that beset an area larger than many countries.
A majority of writers and commentators make excuses for the mountain residents as if none of them facilitated the gouging of the earth and the people employed to work it. Well-known indigenous families were just as responsible for the region’s state of despair and the havoc foisted upon its landscape and people as any Yankee may have been. Numerous descendants of this mountain elite continue to live off the trusts and perpetual leases of minerals that often were procured through fraud, artifice and simple greed all around. Millions of good trees have been sacrificed in the form of discarded studies to identify and chronicle the persistent problems besetting Appalachia and most of the Deep South, but precious few action plans that work have been implemented until recently.

The Old South, reeling from Sherman’s concept of urban renewal and creating open space, did not fare much better with the second invasion of strong-arm investors, from within and without, who took great advantage of Reconstruction and a disorganized political structure. Cheap labor, cheaper yet politicians, loose or non-existent environmental controls, lack of organized labor and the tendency to blame the freed slaves for all the region’s woes kept the South from progressing at the rate of the rest of the nation. Add to that the Southern white male’s tendency to consider the dominion and control over land, Nature, women and people of color as a Biblical mandate and you had yourself a culture not too fond of change.

Due to all of these factors it has taken over a century and the exponential influx of new ideas but the South in general is easing away from the devastation and over development of sensitive landscapes. Katrina helped sober up the notion that Nature could be mocked and dominated. Build a city below sea level near a hurricane-prone coastal area and the question is not if catastrophic disaster will strike, simply when. The Everglades, like the coalfields, have been taken for granted and abused until Nature has struck back with a vengeance. Belatedly, Florida has come to realize that water and wetlands are truly a finite resource, just as the current drought has reminded Georgia and Alabama that the faucet cannot be run on full all the time.

The question is, did Appalachia and the South fail to keep up with their national counterparts in these quality of life issues by design or fate? Is there something about Appalachian culture and Southern political thought that drove the low-regulation, high output economies to the detriment of the environment and the working class? Or could this outcome mostly be attributed to a retarded development of a land ethic and environmental sensitivity due to setbacks suffered during the Civil War, subsequent Reconstruction and the onslaught of carpet baggers and mercenary investors taking advantage of a nearly helpless region paralyzed from the impact of a destructive war fought almost exclusively on its soil?

Not many historians or social scientists have tried to put all of these trends together for easy examination. Like following a trail of breadcrumbs, one must divine the disjointed writings and ruminations of a variety of commentators from very diverse vantage points to seek a common thread. One writer did not restrict the impact of a exploiting Nature and the mistreatment of disenfranchised humans to the South. Robert D. Bullard, in his work entitled “Anatomy of Environmental Racism and the Environmental Justice Movement” saw such exploitation as a national ethos. Here is his theory, in a nutshell:
The nation was founded on the principles of “free land” (stolen from Native Americans and Mexicans), “free labor” (cruelly extracted from African slaves), and “free men” (white men with property). From the outset, institutional racism shaped the economic, political, and ecological landscape, and buttressed the exploitation of both land and people.

Is the genesis of our reckless misuse of the environment and centuries of mistreating the majority of our people really that simple?

Frank Kilgore

If you have ever wondered if youth, smoking, illegal drug use and littering have anything in common, wonder no more. The following findings should cause the most radical smokers’ rights fanatic to shiver:

“Results of this study deliver a strong cautionary message that those who smoked cigarettes before the age of 15 were up to 80 times more likely to use illegal drugs than those who did not,” said lead author Shenghan Lai, MD, MPH, associate research professor, Epidemiology, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.

What have most states done with the huge tobacco settlement funds that were originally touted for preventing smoking among young people? Most have spent those funds for anything but education and prevention, including general expenditures in order to keep taxes down. Meanwhile, the hard earned smoking decline among teenagers has leveled out and show signs of spiking as some Hollywood actors and megastar singers sink to new lows by using tobacco in every movie and public appearance they can.

Tobacco companies have found out many clever ways to skirt around advertisement bans. As the bans went into affect we started seeing more smoking on TV, movies and public appearances by celebrities than anytime since the 1950s. Big Tobacco also uses direct mailing and inundates anyone who signs up for any of their gimmick “free prize” contests with slick brochures urging the reader to be an edgy dude by getting addicted to their product. The prize is death.

A much less deadly but worrisome habit seems to go along with youth and smoking. Studies now reveal that smokers are 64% more likely to litter than non-smokers and that 67% of all litterbugs are people aged from their teens to thirty. Nearly one fourth of litter in cities and on beaches comes from cigarette butts, packages and paper. This debris is gobbled down by birds and fish, killing them by the thousands worldwide.

The national and international movements to ban smoking in public places, keep children away from tobacco, fine litterbugs for everything from throwing down cigarette butts to leaving entire vehicles to rot in creeks, seem to be making some headway. The debate in Virginia over whether or not smoking should be banned in public places has been couched as one of public health versus individual rights. The argument posed by opponents to smoking bans has gotten ridiculous.

Anyone who invites the public to their premises has a duty to protect the invitee from harm, whether it means forbidding pit bulls from roaming the floor, keeping poisonous snakes from under the tables and chairs or banning self-destructive “rebels” from polluting the common air with 1,000 known air pollutants that cause lung disorders and cancer. As in all other cases in a civilized society, if businesses open to the public refuse to protect customers and employees, the state requires it.

Children do what they see adults do. One does not have to believe in evolution to agree that we humans act like monkeys in that regard. The less that children see adults smoking and littering, the less likely they are to pursue either habit and the less likely these kids are to pursue much more deadly illegal drugs and lifestyles. Let’s get real and save our children.

The author, Frank Kilgore, is an attorney in St. Paul, Virginia and a lifelong advocate of improved conservation, education, health and creating eco-tourism jobs in the Appalachian coalfields.

The concept of “Appalachia” has always been hard to define or pigeonhole. The region is vast; its footprint expands over a thousand miles from northeast to southwest from Maine to Georgia (if one follows the Appalachian Trail and the states through which it traverses) and even more inclusive is the boundary if the Appalachian Regional Commission’s map is considered to be the final say. In any event, defining the region geographically, much less politically, culturally and socially, has always been a challenge.

Today we have at our disposal the living encyclopedia known as Wilkipedia. Although this Internet-driven text is not the official word on anything, it does give the reader a taste for what the current national culture thinks about everything from avocados to zoology.

The Wilkipedia lowdown on Appalachia is both informative and frustrating but does, nonetheless, inform us of what the general thesis of a much-studied region has turned out to be, whether or not we agree. The following is the definition:

The Appalachian region of the Eastern United States is home to over 20 million people and covers parts of mostly mountainous areas of 13 states, including Mississippi, Alabama, Pennsylvania, New York, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, Maryland, and the entire state of West Virginia [1]. The near-isolation of the area’s rugged topography is home to communities with a distinct culture, who in many cases are put at a disadvantage because of the transportation and infrastructure problems that have developed in the area[1].

Appalachia is often divided into 3 regions—southern (portions of Georgia, Alabama, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia), central (portions of Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, and Tennessee), and northern (parts of New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio, and West Virginia) Appalachia[1]. Though all areas of Appalachia share problems of rural poverty, inadequate jobs, services, transportation, education, and infrastructure, some elements (particularly those relating to industry and natural resource extraction) are unique to each sub-region. For example, Appalachians in the central sub-region experience the deepest poverty, partially due to the area’s isolation from urban growth centers[2] .

Appalachia is particularly interesting in the context of social and economic divisions that exist within and between the region’s socioeconomic communities. In addition, outsiders’ often incorrect and over-generalized external perspectives, and their relationship to culture and folklore of this near-isolated area, are important to the region’s future development[1].

Poverty, politics, and uneven economic development

Though industry and business did exist in Appalachia prior to the 20th century, the major modern industries of agriculture, large-scale coal mining, timber, and other outside corporate entries into the region did not truly take root until this time. Many Appalachianites sold their rights to land and minerals to such corporations, to the extent that 99 percent of the residents control less than half of the land. Thus, though the area has a wealth of natural resources, natives are often poor[1]. Since at least the 1960s, Appalachia has a higher poverty rate and a higher percentage of working poor than the rest of the nation. Wages, employment rates, and education also lag. The Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) was created in 1965 to address some of the region’s problems, and though there have been improvements, serious issues still exist. Communities that are not considered to be “growth centers” are bypassed for investment, and fall further behind. In 1999, roughly a quarter of the counties in the region qualified as “distressed,” the ARC’s worst status ranking. Fifty-seven percent of adults in central Appalachia did not graduate high school (as opposed to 80.5 percent in the general U.S.[3] ), roughly 20 percent of homes have no telephone, and the population is still declining[4] .

Infrastructure as an agent of poverty

One of the factors at the root of Appalachian economic struggles is the poor infrastructure. Though the region is crisscrossed by many U.S. and Interstate highways, those routes primarily serve cross-country traffic rather than the locals themselves. Towns closer to the major highways and nearer to the many larger cities fringing the region (Pittsburgh, Wheeling, Columbus, Cincinnati, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., etc.) are disproportionately better-off than rural regions in the mountainous interior. Instead of being tied to the land, jobs in the towns tend to emphasize industry and services—important signs of a more diversified economy. However, aside from the major urban centers along its perimeter, the entire Appalachian region still suffers from population decline and the loss of younger residents to the cities.

Another factor affecting development has been sheer inequality in power between the classes. Historically, elites interested in satisfying personal goals have controlled Appalachian politics to the expense of the region’s poorer residents.[1]. Seeing no personal benefit to establishing infrastructure, they generally eschewed developments that would have been difficult and expensive to establish in the mountainous areas[1]. Instead, they allowed the region to rely on industry—using barges to send natural resources to market, requiring that workers have only minimal education, etc.–and created no infrastructure for business[5] . Now, with roughly 100,000 jobs left for miners, Appalachianites are unable to access jobs or the resources and opportunities necessary to lift themselves out of poverty[6] . Some academics contend that the situation of Appalachianites amounts to one similar to that in third world countries: Residents live on land that cannot be traded outside of trusted circles or used as collateral because, due to the history of unincorporated businesses with unidentified liabilities, there are not adequate records of ownership rights[7] . This “dead” capital is a factor that contributes to the historical poverty of the region, limiting Appalachianites’ abilities to use their investments in home and other land-related capital[7] .

Political inequalities

The elite class instilled strong systems of inequality into Appalachian politics and economy. For instance, the powerful have a history of encouraging racial divisions in order to divide workers and pit them against each other, spurring competition and serving to lower workers’ wages[8] . Family history and economic status are also bases of discrimination: one resident notes of employers, “If you have a rich name, they’ll take you–otherwise you can’t get no work.”[8]

Since the 1800s, coal operators and plantation bosses have discouraged education and civic action, allowing workers to become indebted to plantation stores, live in company housing, and generally make themselves vulnerable to the interests of their powerful employers[8] . Community members that experienced a justifiable fear of punishment for speaking out against the corruption of the status quo developed a habit of compliance rather than democratic institutions for social change. Fearful of punishment, middle class residents allied themselves with the elites rather than challenging the system that colored their everyday lives. Burdened by the choice between exile and exploitation, the actual and potential middle class left the region, widening the gap between the poor and those in power[8] . Observers often perceive a fatalistic attitude on the part of the Appalachian people[9]; many suggest that this is due to the history of political corruption and disenfranchisement, which led to weak civic cultures and a sense of powerlessness. Says a volunteer in the area; “the people usually regard politicians as crooks who won’t do anything.”[10]

Educational disadvantages

In 2000, 80.49 percent of all adults in the United States were high school graduates, as opposed to 76.89 in Appalachiapower [11]. Almost 30 percent of Appalachian adults are considered functionally illiterate[11] . Educational differences between men and women are greater in Appalachia than the rest of the nation, tying into a greater trend of gender inequalitiespower[11] .

Gender inequalities in Appalachia

Women have traditionally been confined to the domestic sphere, often lack access to resources and employment opportunities, are disproportionately represented in peripheral labor markets, and have lower wages and higher vulnerability to job loss[3] . Throughout the region, women typically earn 64 percent of men’s wages, though they work as many hours[12] . Women are also often the hardest-hit by poverty—for example, 70 percent of female-headed households with children under the age of six are in distressed counties, a figure substantially higher than the national average[4] .

Outside perspectives and stereotypes

Though mainstream Americans assume that Appalachian culture is homogenous within the region, many distinct locales and sub-regions exist[13] [9] . Over-generalizations of Appalachianites as impulsive, personalistic, and individualistic “hillbillies” abound. Many scholars speculate that these stereotypes have been created by powerful economic and political forces to justify exploitation of Appalachian peoples[9] . For example, the same forces that put barriers in place to prevent the development of civic culture promulgate the image of Appalachian peoples as politically apathetic, without a social consciousness, and deserving of their disenfranchised state. In spite of the region’s desperate need for aid, weariness of being represented as “helpless, dumb and poor” often creates an attitude of hostility among Appalachianites [14] .

Appalachians as a separate status group

It has been suggested that Appalachia constitutes a separate status group under the sociologist Max Weber’s definition[15] . Criteria are tradition, endogamy, an emphasis on intimate interaction and isolation from outsiders, monopolization of economic opportunities, and ownership of certain commodities rather than others[15] . Appalachia fulfills at least the first four, if not all five[9] . Furthermore, mainstream Americans tend to see Appalachia as a separate subculture of low status. Based on these facts, it is reasonable to say that Appalachia does constitute a separate status group[1]. [9]
(Citations Omitted)

The sheer number of inferences and negative connotations strewn throughout this modernistic definition of Appalachia’s “social and economic stratification” is both alarming and sobering. What person from outside the region reading this would not feel empathy for such a land and population and, more striking, what person from the outside reading this would want to come here to invest and become a stakeholder? The most obvious answer to both questions is the stream of exploiters that have drilled, mined, cut, scraped, drained and hauled off as many of Appalachia’s natural resources as could be extracted with the cheapest labor and fewest regulations as possible for the past one hundred or so years.

Harry Caudill, author of the nationally acclaimed book, Night Comes To The Cumberlands, was one of the first home-grown writers to effectively accuse the power structure of absolute rape of the land through unregulated strip mining and the outright domination of the coalfield political scene through raw financial power, intimidation and corruption. Harry Caudill’s version of Appalachia is so depressing that any sensitive reader would ponder suicide upon finishing the fatalistic text, exactly the fate of the author as he aged and became more despondent due to illness and the destruction around him.

Had Harry Caudill lived to see some of the strides made in health care, education, mine reclamation and a small but growing native conservation movement, he might have enjoyed the Wilkipedia definition of his beloved homeland. He would have furiously edited and revised it, taking on the task with the writer’s skill he displayed in numerous books and articles. At times, even Harry resolved that Appalachia’s entrenched problems were caused from within due to some genetic and self-destructive traits. Other scholars have put the blame squarely and totally on the “fat cats” from the industrial north that came in droves after the Civil War to denude the hillsides of the world’s best hardwood timber and later gouge the earth for the world’s best coal.

Somewhere between the genetic and cultural theories of perpetual despair and the powerlessness of a subjugated population lies the truth: the current natives of the region exploited and disenfranchised the Native American inhabitants along America’s early frontier and we, in turn, have felt the brunt of similar treatment from economic forces regardless of their origin. In absolute respects, the heart of Appalachia (the coalfields) is still a frontier and a frontier by definition is more easily exploited than an organized, educated, well-fed elite and generational social system.

As the foregoing definition indicates, the outer fringes of Appalachia that are nearest urban areas develop faster and are less identifiable with the stereotypical meaning and perception of the region. The “inner core” of Appalachia is, by topography and geology alone, the coalfields.

Professional planners equate lack of access with lack of progress in the American sense. The Appalachian Regional Commission has spent countless tax dollars planning and building corridors into and through the coalfields, making the extraction of coal, gas and timber much easier yet the core distressed counties still persist, sometimes improving their economic status with mini-booms of coal and timber extraction as the world’s demand for same fluctuates.

This is a dead end game, the coal and gas are finite and most planners agree that the best coal is gone, the hard to get coal is going fast (15-25 years at best) and natural and coalbed methane gas is being pulled from the earth at a rate never envisioned (nearly 3000 wells in Buchanan County, Virginia alone, and growing).

What to do? Is coalfield Appalachia destined to become a hollowed out and abandoned land devoid of life and energy? Or can the growing grassroots efforts to reverse environmental degradation, combat stereotypical bigotry from the outside and use higher education as an economic tool as well as an incubator for training tomorrow’s modern leaders carry the day? The tipping point is upon us. If the region wins this transitional battle, Wilkipedia will carry a much different and optimistic definition a decade from now. If the powers of yesterday prevail, Wilkipedia’s definition will be revised as an obituary.

The author is an attorney practicing in the Southwest Virginia coalfields and has been active in issues regarding conservation, education, health care, economic development and politics for over thirty years.

Two wrongs do not make a right but they at least deserve to be reported. That revised axiom is particularly true when reporting the abuses of political power. Recent news articles have scathed the Republican House majority in Virginia for failing to record sub-committee votes and the related media reports and editorials also seem to imply that the Democrats, when they held the majority, were more benevolent and transparent with political power.

First of all, any political body in America that fails to record a public vote is wrong, period. While it is true that the sub-committee hearings and votes are open to the public and usually well attended, it should not be Joe Citizen’s job to count the raised hands or voice votes.

But what about the way things were done during the preceding 130 years that the Democrats held the majority in the Virginia General Assembly? Currently, the House Republican majority appoints committee members in proportion to each party’s numbers. In other words, if the Democrats have 45% of the general membership in the House, they receive that proportionate share of committee slots.

This proportionate power sharing arrangement, adopted by the Republican majority for no other apparent reason than to be fair, never existed under the Democrat rule of over a century. Applying this self-imposed rule after the Democrats recently gained seats required the House Republicans to take some of their own party members off of committees and replace them with Democrats. This voluntary act of reducing one’s own party power is unprecedented in Virginia.

In the 1990’s, Democrats, leaving the Republicans with much less representation than their numbers would mandate, dominated the powerful House Appropriations Committee. In 1992, the Republicans had 18 members in the Senate, the Democrats 22, yet the Senate Finance Committee was made up of 12 Democrats and 3 Republicans. Examples of “hogging” power and killing bills in the dark are easy to find under prior Democrat rule. The current self-righteous indignation is not very persuasive and the media should at least compare the two dynasties in a balanced manner.

In addition, the Republican minority for 130 years had no say (as in zero) in the selection of Virginia’s judges. Yet, after the Republicans took the majority they re-appointed over 90% of the Democrat incumbent judges and appointed or elevated other Democrats to the bench, much to the dismay of many Republican lawyers wanting to fill those positions. The anticipated “bloodbath” in the judiciary never happened and should not have as a matter of principle and continuity. Selecting judges is serious business with long term ramifications and the Republicans’ self restraint in that regard has not been much discussed or appreciated by the media.

Most recently the media complained that the House majority would not allow a Democrat delegate to remove his own bill from a House floor vote. Apparently the House Republicans wanted to force Democrats to vote a pro-union bill up or down in order to show union members that given a chance that some Democrats would vote for big business, contrary to campaign promises.

This tactic is similar to one employed by then majority whip and accomplished Democrat quarterback, Dickie Cranwell, when he introduced the new governor’s budget as his own and forced Republicans to publicly vote upon George Allen’s proposed cost cuts. The proposed budget reduced many facets of state government and the public was up in arms with the help of a little bit of demagoguery. In particular, Allen’s cuts did not touch education but that was not what was being told to the voters.

The tactic boomeranged a bit when Dickie was nearly beaten the next election by a novice Republican in his district. She simply showed voters the budget bill that Dickie introduced along with copies of news articles quoting Democrat leaders, including Dickie, that the budget proposal would close essential services. Politicians can often times outfox themselves, a lesson that the Republican majority would be wise to recall.

So, the bottom line is that both parties use political procedures and obscure parliamentary rules to get their way. Neither party is pure nor do their histories indicate that they ever will be so. They are made up of humans after all, and merit constant oversight with balanced and full reporting.

On balance, the Republican House majority has been abundantly fair with committee appointments but continues to make the same old mistake as their Democrat predecessors by refusing to record sub-committee votes. If the media will accurately report the fallacies and abuses of both parties, present and past, the public will be much better informed. Independents, after weighing both honest assessments, might then be more persuaded to vote accordingly come election time. They do, after all, control the outcome of most elections.

The author is an attorney practicing in the Southwest Virginia coalfields and has been active in issues regarding conservation, education, health care, economic development and politics for over thirty years.

As impoverished rural areas, inner cities and Indian reservations struggle with the lack of health care and an abundance of poverty, some health care professionals have been incredulous enough to recommend preventive care and intense lifestyle education starting in grade school to address these related maladies. Who are these meddling folks who want children as well as adults to learn a holistic approach to health care by avoiding tobacco, drugs, fat, processed sugars and underage drinking, get away from television and video games and go outside to run, jump and play? It is those pesky naturopaths again.

This new generation of naturopaths is not to be confused with the self-trained or Internet degreed mystics who scoff at most if not all modern medical treatments, prescription drugs and surgeries in exchange for deep breathing, herb tea and humming. The new naturopaths graduate from accredited schools with science based training and emphasize the use of natural products and whole foods to avoid health care problems while teaching a proper diet and exercise regimen and extolling abstinence from overly processed foods, sugar, excess fat, tobacco, illegal drugs and alcohol abuse.

They do so in a medically technical and easy to grasp caring manner so that the patient “gets” the interaction between what they ingest and exactly how consuming the wrong product impacts the body’s engine room and orderly functions. A two-minute lecture from the patient’s family doctor versus a two-hour teaching session from a naturopath will make a world of difference when someone is struggling with the lack of knowledge or will power to help themselves.

Accredited naturopathic schools, like Bastyr University in Seattle, often times share professors with accredited MD schools and perform research studies for the National Institutes of Health and other renowned organizations to determine the medicinal qualities and features of natural foods and therapies. The data are coming in daily and the prospects of forever changing health care modalities looks very promising indeed.

More progressive states in health care, such as Washington and Connecticut, eagerly invite naturopaths from accredited schools to fill the missing health care link in turning around our society’s near epidemic contracting of obesity related ills, diabetes, lung disorders, anxiety and the many other maladies that emanate from smoking, drugging, over eating and under exercising. It is not just a coincidence that the nation’s most healthy lifestyle states are also the ones most likely to roll out the red carpet for well-trained naturopaths.

If allowed to do what they are well trained to do and encouraged to work with doctors, pharmacists and other health care professionals to counsel and tend to the chronically ill and the weak of constitution, naturopaths will, over a decade or so, help reverse our speedy spiral to becoming one of the most unhealthy nations in the industrialized world. Billions would be saved in public expenditures wasted in treating the same ailments over and over instead of addressing the root causes, whether they be depression, cultural habits, diet induced lethargy or simply the lack of getting off our butts and walking a few miles.

The medical societies in many states, particularly Virginia and most other Southern states, lobby hard against properly trained naturopaths being licensed, monitored and controlled by the state, thereby encouraging the ill-trained knockoffs to operate in the shadows, much to the potential endangerment of human life and limb.

One could be cynical and speculate that the reason for this “closed shop” attitude by some MDs is born of turf protection but that theory makes no sense. Our national shortage of primary care physicians and need for a long list of specialists as well, means that the demand is present to employ thousands more allopaths if only they were available. They are not, and even if they were, their training does not adequately emphasize prevention. Most importantly, prevention is usually not covered by public or private insurers, a very shortsighted approach to addressing our ongoing health care crisis.

So what is the problem? Why do many medical societies and local and state governments not embrace and promote specially trained preventative health care specialists to fan out across America and provide an ounce of prevention to avoid a pound of costly cure? It must be ignorance, not the systemic kind that disallows one to learn, just the stubborn kind that causes one to not look further than some antiquated perception.

Chiropractors, osteopaths and, at one time, allopaths, all underwent this phase of being ridiculed and doubted. Each group improved its training, cut back on outlandish claims of magic pills and instant cures and are now mainstream. Naturopaths, or at least the ones being properly trained, should be the next health care provider to be welcomed as a key to keeping people from getting sick in the first place or, once cured, from slipping back to the ways that made them sick.

As our health care crisis worsens and medical costs expand exponentially, it seems we should be urging these common sense agents of preventative care to come aboard. Lots of suffering and billions of dollars could be prevented along the way. If the MD world keeps blocking this licensing process then one must ask: what is their solution to the impending meltdown of health care in our nation and if they have the answer why isn’t it being implemented? The current approach is not working, in case anyone needs to be reminded of that.

Note: Frank Kilgore, an attorney in St. Paul, Virginia, is a long time advocate of improved health care, environmental protection and enhanced education in the Appalachian coalfields, home to one of the nation’s most chronically ill populations. A bill introduced by Delegate Terry Kilgore (no relation) to set up the licensing of qualified naturopaths in Virginia is now pending before the state legislature. Delegate Kilgore’s goal is to provide underserved areas in the state access to specialized preventative health care through outreach and education.

Copyright 2008 The Southern Ledger. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.