Mountain News & World Report; Segments on Politics, Local Economies, Culture, and the Environment

WMMT welcomes commentary from our listeners. Today we'll hear from Bill Andy Farley of making Kentucky. He will comment on partisan politics. Recently Mitch McConnell, the Republican senator from Kentucky, visited Eastern Kentucky at least eastern Kentucky as McConnell a former Jefferson County judge-executive sees it. That is, he came to London, Corbin, and Somerset; all big Republican strongholds. Unfortunately, McConnell, as so many of Kentucky politicians tend to do, has a little trouble defining exactly what state that territory that lies east of I-75 and south of I-64 belongs to. Is it Virginia, is it West Virginia or is it just some vast and largely unclaimed territory much as the prairie was in the early part of the century. Anyway Mitch McConnell, along with Hal Rogers, the congressman that was foisted upon eastern Kentucky through redistricting, you know the one who does so much for his fat cat constituents in Somerset and London, have been working hard along with their Republican fellows in Congress and the Senate to crank up the propaganda machine of the radical racist religious Republican right

(hereafter to be referred to as the 5 Rs) and send a smokescreen to the American people, concerning not just the recently passed economic package but every initiative that's coming out of the Clinton White House. Led by none other than Captain Gridlock himself, also known as Senate minority leader Bob Dole, the five Rs (six if you count reactionary) have done everything possible to stop the changes that the American people voted for in November from being instituted. What changes. You know the ones that were supposed to do something about repairing the damage done by twelve years of failed Republican borrow and spend economic policies. Twelve years of selling out the interests of the American working man and giving it all to the big business buddies of Reagan and Bush. Twelve years of sending American jobs overseas. Like many Americans I voted for Bill Clinton because I didn't believe that the United States could stand four more years of Republican mismanagement. I want to see the tax burden of this country taken off the shoulders of the middle class where Ronald Reagan's voodoo economics had placed

it, and redistributed more fairly so that those who had profited so much under Reagan and Bush would be forced to pay their fair share. While Ronald Reagan was spending trillions of dollars on military projects that didn't even work, on stealth bombers that aren't stealthy, on B-1B bombers that can't fly for fear of the engines falling off. And sending American taxpayers’ money to allow the CIA to finance South American drug lords in the name of fighting communism. The economy of this country was slowly going from number one in the world to fall out of the top five. Recently it has come to light that the Reagan administration even went so far towards making certain defense contractors rich, as to falsify the test results of Star Wars in order to fool their enemies. Unfortunately the enemies of the Reagan administration included the American people and Congress, who had to be fooled into voting more trillions of taxpayers’ dollars to a project that was never expected to work. Just another prime example of how Republican borrow-and-spend economic policies

took a debt that it had taken two hundred years to accumulate and quadrupled it in twelve short years. And yet even though a good many Americans voted for change, what have the Republicans done? From the first days of the Clinton administration they have voted in block to stonewall every proposal that's come out of the White House, not to benefit the American people. They don't even take the time to examine or discuss proposed legislation, but to benefit the presidential hopes of Republican wannabes like Bob Dole, Newt Gingrich, and the ultra smug Phil-Gramm. Has there ever been such a sorry collection of pre-candidates on the American political scene as these three? I think not. Word of warning to the people of eastern Kentucky when you hear Mitch McConnell and Hal Rogers come to you to spread the Republican party line which consists of half- truths and a good many outright lies, when they tell you that the Clinton economic plan will hurt you by making the tax burden lighter on the middle class and making the wealthy

pay their fair share, when they say the Clinton economic package will hurt small business when in reality it has many benefits for the small businessman, Then they are doing the same thing to the you,the American working person, that Ronald Reagan did when he appointed all those anti-labor judges to the federal bench. You know, the ones who always rule to put working men and women in jail and impose those big union-breaking fines on organized labor, and they won't even have the good manners to kiss you first. [announcer]: Bill Andy Farley of ?Macon?, Kentucky; opinions expressed on this program are not necessarily those of WMMT or of the Appalshop. We hope to encourage the discussion of questions important to our community. Please let us know your views. From Mountain News and World Report, I’m Maxine Kenney. WMMT welcomes commentary from our listeners. Today we'll hear from Tommy Bledsoe.

He will comment on the Kentucky Cycle. Robert Schenkkan’s Kentucky Cycle creates disturbing images of ruthless greedy people who will stop at nothing, including murder of family and plunder of their own land, on their way to gain personal wealth and power. Unfortunately for the residents of eastern Kentucky in particular and the central Appalachian coal fields in general, Mr. Schenkkan appears to believe that the villains responsible for the sorry state he portrays are we who live here, not the people who stand outside these mountains and benefit most from the exploitation of our land, people, and resources. It is a shared blame, no doubt, to be shared with the industrial and corporate barons and their stockholders who in pursuit of the great American dream don't care where the coal counts from or how it's mined. As long as the lights burn and the heat comes on. And, I might add, to be shared with people like Mr Schenkkan, who seek to exploit the only thing we

have left: our culture, language, and history. Mr Schenkkan has compared his play with the works of Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller. I compare it with John Fox, Jr.'s Trail of the Lonesome Pine and James Dickey's Deliverance; both powerful works but libelous and complicitous in creating and perpetuating cultural, social, and historical inaccuracies under the guise of art. The Kentucky Cycle has been awarded a Pulitzer Prize. What next, an Oscar for The Beverly Hillbillies movie? This play has received overwhelmingly generous and positive responses in all the places it has opened, namely Seattle, Los Angeles, and Washington D.C. Next it goes to New York's Broadway stage and to HBO. Here I see a pattern of places and venues that are either geographically, socially, economically, or politically removed from eastern Kentucky.

Audiences in these cities who attend the theater and are likely to see this play tend to be a fluent, educated, curious, people but who may not question the decision of the Pulitzer selection committee as to whether this play deserves this prestigious prize. I'm curious as to the reception this play, actually a mini series of craftily-joined plays, would have with audiences here in Whitesburg, Kentucky. I suspect, as some people say, this dog won't hunt. People who live here and who have a history here know both sides of the Kentucky coin. So the danger lies not in our being led astray by the inventions of this poorly informed writer. If there is a danger, and I believe there is, it is in the validation given to Robert Schenkkan’s interpretation of our culture. My fear is that some people, who could know better, are better served to use this play as yet another excuse to look at us and this region as hopeless and

uncivilizable and therefore suitable only for exploitation and corruption. We know better. [announcer]: Tommy Bledsoe. Opinions expressed on this program are not necessarily those of WMMT or of Appalshop Incorporated. We hope to encourage the discussion of questions important to our community. Please let us know your views. For Mountain News and World Report, I’m Buck Nygard. WMMT welcomes commentary from our listeners. Today we'll hear from Jim Webb, program director of WMMT, who will comment on the Mountain News and World Report commentary. Every week we invite folks in our listening area or anywhere else for that matter to speak up on Mountain News and World Report. Many do but countless thousands and millions don't. This is one of those weeks. So in putting the show

together, I thought we would just not have a commentary. That would be that much less editing and splicing, not to mention the recording time itself. Then I remembered the great Appalachian flood of 1977. A very diverse group in Mingo and Pike counties banded together, not just to get through the most cataclysmic time many of us had known, but to try to figure out what happened. What was really going on, and what we could do about it. First of course food, then clothing, nursing and information, and so on. A group of ordinary extraordinary folks formed the Tug Valley Disaster Center. Whatever we could scrounge up was free to anyone who came by. Thousands of meals were served in the basement of the Presbyterian Church. A petition to abolish strip mining, a major cause of the flooding, was signed by over seven thousand people passing through the doors. The Presbyterian Church asked us to leave. We did, and took up in an empty house down the street that hadn't flooded. By then food wasn't the

biggest problem. Over the next four or five years the Tug Valley Recovery Center had changed its name. It was a part of many of the homegrown efforts to empower the citizenry [corrects pronunciation] citizenry of Appalachia in the 70s and 80s. The Appalachian land study brought to the light of day just who really does own Appalachia. The unmined minerals tax on the big boys, low-cost housing: the list is long and arduous. But they even started the newspaper, the Sandy New Era, which was distributed free throughout the Tug Valley though it often was “disappeared” from some of the outlets. A way to get the word out. In fact the Sandy New Era and the ?TV? RC did play parts in the toppling of the notorious Mingo County political machine and cesspool that even made it to network TV a few years ago. But one thing we always struggled with back then was how to get the word out, how to get the word out. Whether it was an incoming truckload of bread or a call for a community meeting,

I remember one night sitting around and someone said I wish we had a radio station. Everyone thought that a splendid idea. No one thought it remotely possible. Well, times change. Who woulda thunk it? There is a community radio station in the mountains and it invites listeners to comment. It really does. What a great idea. Even amongst the current crop of political corruption and hogs wallerin’ in the public trough, you can speak your piece on the radio on WMMT's Mountain News and World Report or on Mountain Talk. So that's my commentary. This is too important an opportunity to not use, so the heck with not having a commentary this week. We, you and I, have a radio station. You are welcome to use it. That was me, Jim Webb, program director at WMMT. Opinions expressed on this program are not necessarily those of WMMT or of Appalshop Incorporated. We

hope to encourage the discussion of questions important to our communities. Please, let us know your views. For Mountain News and World Report, I’m Jim Webb. [announcer]: WMMT welcomes commentary from our listeners. Today we'll hear from Neely Back, the solid waste coordinator for Lee County, Kentucky. We recorded her comments at a public hearing held by the state of Kentucky. The state was seeking comments about a wood products mill that Trust Joyce McMillan, a Canadian corporation, has proposed for Perry County, Kentucky. My name is Neely Elam Back, and I'm a resident of the Kentucky River basin, here tonight in Hazard you are visiting the oldest mountain range on earth. You're at the breathtakingly beautiful, sparsely populated, ethnically homogeneous headwaters of the Kentucky River. But make no mistake about it. In many other hidden ways you could be

standing in South Central Los Angeles. That's right. We're in a ghetto. Yet, we all gathered here, have some things in common. We all want to see a good economic climate where development can take place. Believe me when I say sincerely, we are ready for it, now. As the various representatives of Trust Joyce McMillan Bloedel have passed through Kentucky, you've been wined and dined, and properly introduced to our best people. You have met our public officials, our business leaders, and dignitaries. You may even have driven through our forests, but only now, under the compulsion of an air quality permit review meeting, are you available to the people who may work for you and with you, and who own much of the land from whom you expect to extract millions of dollars. We have come to tell you we want more of those generated dollars to stay here, at home.

We believe we can help you make that happen. But we want the money for southeast Kentucky. We want out of the ghetto. We the taxpayers who live in the Kentucky River basin are being asked to pay a tax to consume water that flows over our land, to form the communal river. One of the expensive components of our Weber water maintenance [?] is removal of sediment that collects and impedes flow. Current land uses contribute significantly to this process. The increased logging to supply your mill’s appetite may increase sediment, causing further financial burden to the people in the Kentucky basin. I think the taxpayer needs to know. A million people rely upon this water. Your mill will be paying as little as any business to maintain the river system. That doesn't seem fair somehow. Also, the hunger of this mill will so quickly change the landscape of our basin, because to paraphrase Neil Postman, the Kentucky River basin with your mill is not

the basin plus the mill. It's an entirely different basin. And what about incentives. Many of us are curious about the amount of public funds used to bring corporations to our region, especially corporations that are on a declining market pattern. We would like to know if perhaps these incentive monies might be spent to help existing small businesses get low interest loans, or to help our new entrepreneurs get started. Nationally, small businesses have been the mainstay of the economy. Why not here? We don't understand why we have to continually be required to embrace large, resource consuming corporate monoliths who despite one hundred years of residence has not brought economic prosperity to the majority of us. My precious few minutes are up, and I would like to close by saying: part of this process is helping us out of poverty. Part of it is

letting us learn. Please, I beg of you, share the wealth. And remember always, you might make money but you can't be successful without me. I'm just the average citizen. [announcer]: Neely Back. Opinions expressed on this program are not necessarily those of WMMT or of the Appalshop Incorporated. We hope to encourage the discussion of questions and issues that are important here in our communities. So please let us know your views. From Mountain News and World Report, I'm Tom Hansell. WMMT welcomes commentary from our listeners. Today we'll hear from Wendell Berry, a writer and a farmer in Port Royal, Kentucky. He will comment on the importance of preserving the tobacco farmer. The tobacco farmers should not be destroyed in order to eliminate, uh, tobacco. Uh, they’re good farmers

and from my point of view no farmer is dispensable, and the idea of getting rid of people in order to get rid of a product is a, a rather heartless and cruel exercise. And so I was pleading in my essay for an effort, a good faith large scale effort, to provide alternative uh, crops that farmers can choose to grow rather than tobacco. Some of them perhaps would not choose to quit growing tobacco, but they ought to have the choice and they oughtn't to be destroyed rather thoughtless, um, attempt to get rid of tobacco. Thoughtless not just because it's inhumane toward these people who after all were growing a crop that was highly valued by virtually

everybody until about thirty years ago. But also um, um, thoughtless because the use of this product is probably not going to be stoppable. In fact, probably the best way to promote its use would be to try to ban it, as we found out from our banning of other objectionable substances. Another, um, important thing about tobacco is that it, it... The tobacco farmers have the most successful production control program in agriculture and it's a model program and nobody is paying any attention to it because of this stigma of tobacco. But the tobacco program, which doesn't cost, uh, it doesn't involve a subsidy, costs the taxpayers nothing, um, would be

workable for other crops and other forms of agricultural produce. And it really does need to be looked at as a model. But the, um, problem of course is that soil isn't managed by, by policies and by, um, um, um committee meetings and, and important people meeting in, in committee rooms. The soil is managed by the people who use it. And to bring about the good use of soil would involve a completely different kind of thinking from the, the conventional thinking of governments and bureaus. People who manage soil well are people who, who do so because they want to do so, and because they know how to do so, and because they can afford to do so. And our policy people, our

experts on agriculture have ignored, um, the rules of that kind for at least two or three generations now. The, the um... We don't appreciate the possibility that we could make people secure on their land, and leave it to them to take care of it. We, we continue to fiddle with um, policies and, and ah government instructions and so on and they won't work. The abstractions don't work; abstractions are abstractions; when somebody is working they are a step or two beyond the abstract. [announcer]: Wendell Berry of Port Royal, Kentucky. Opinions expressed on this program are not necessarily those of WMMT or of the Appalshop. We hope to encourage the discussion of questions important to our communities. Please let us know your

views. For Mountain News and World Report, I'm Maxine Kenney. [announcer]: Today we’ll hear from Rich Kirby. He will comment on a recent trip to Czechoslovakia. [Other announcer]: WMMT welcomes commentary from our listeners and sometimes for those farther afield. Recently WMMT had the opportunity to go along with a group of folks visiting the Czech Republic and Hungary. Despite the barriers of distance and language we found much in common. We enjoyed plays together, and jokes, and shared songs, and when we met with several groups who wanted to start community radio stations we heard a lot about the same ideals and the same problems that we know here at WMMT. Another thing we share is environmental problems, particularly

around coal mining. Communism is very different from capitalism in some ways, but as far as land and water and air are concerned it often comes to the same thing. So we ask if things are better for the environment now than they were under communism. Peter is a young man who works for a very activist Czech organization called Rainbow, in the city of Brno. [interviewer] "Is it easier or harder ... [unintelligible]" [unintelligible] [Peter]: “It’s much more easier. This is to say, for example, it’s just very unusual here to be interested in global problems and all, not all but the majority of approach to urbanization just [unintelligible] and didn't didn't care or it was but impossible to care about or interest all of us on things like this. But people doesn't care now so much as they did before.”

[announcer]: A somewhat more cautious view came from an older activist, Miroslav Kondrata of the Nature Conservation Association, also in Brno. [interviewer] "Do you think the chances for preserving the environment are any better now than they were under socialism?" “Theoretically yes because we have better acts, a bit better legislation and the field is open for discussions and for protesting against things like the water [?]. In fact it's it's quite difficult sometimes because the approach of a new business man [?] is like in under capitalism in the last century, so they had somehow, they, some of them have idea that you know in the new democracy everything is allowed, so, you know, they want, they want possibility to

do anything but they do not want to take a responsibility, you know, for it so sometimes we have bad experiences with, with new, new business man, who are able to cut a piece of forests without permission or destroy, destroy a piece of environment without no responsibility, so it's it's not so easy. It's uh, of course it needs more concrete dealing with the owners, the people, and so on... Under communism it was somehow more much more simple because then you could say no and everybody should respect it. [announcer]: Rich Kirby of WMMT. Opinions expressed on this program are not necessarily those of WMMT or of Appalshop Incorporated. We hope to encourage the discussion of questions important to our community. Please let us know your views. For Mountain News and World Report, I’m Buck Maggard.

[announcer]: WMMT welcomes commentary from our listeners. Today we'll hear from Dick Austin, who farms and writes near Dungannon, Virginia. He says that for people who live in this area, the North American Free Trade Agreement isn't a very good deal. [Austin] Six Mexican-American women visited my southwest Virginia farm last summer, worried that NAFTA would cost them their jobs in the garment factories of El Paso, Texas. They'd come all this distance to alert folks working in low-wage industries here. These women received only minimum wage. But right across the Rio Grande River from their homes, Mexican citizens did the same work for a small fraction of the U.S. minimum. The problems with the proposed North American Free Trade Agreement, called NAFTA, are

considerably more complicated than the obvious threat to workers in low-wage factories that moved to the southern mountains in search of cheap labor and can easily move further south to exploit Mexicans forced to work for less than a dollar an hour. High tech and high-polluting industries may also find it attractive to move to Mexico. Louisiana Pacific Corporation, the largest employer here in Dungannon, has already moved one large mill from northern California to Ensanada, saving money by shipping logs once milled by American workers to Mexico. Paradoxically, while some American factories moved to Mexico, many more Mexican nationals may be forced to look for work in the U.S. NAFTA will expose Mexican small farmers to free trade in corn and wheat. Grains produced on America's large Midwestern farms will undersell what Mexicans have been growing for their own tortillas. American farmers may

get a penny or two more per bushel, and Cargill will make millions transporting our grain to Mexico. But there could be as many as eight hundred thousand Mexican farmers who are forced to leave their land to look for work. Many of them may wade the Rio Grande and search on this side. It seems a poor bargain for everyone. The major reason NAFTA is not real free trade is that Mexico is not a free country. One party has ruled for eighty years by rigging elections. Unions are controlled by the government, which holds wages down to attract foreign investment. Laws that confer worker rights and environmental protections are routinely subverted by the government itself. Indeed during Mexico's rapid industrialization over the past decade, real wages have fallen by a third to an average of only one- seventh of the comparable US wage. NAFTA does not require honest elections in Mexico, nor does it help Mexican workers bargain

freely or collectively. Instead it threatens gains U.S. workers have made over the past century. It has not effectively spread modern environmental protection south of the border. Instead it prohibits U.S. states and localities from maintaining any environmental standards higher than the international standard. NAFTA will surely enrich many large international corporations willing, willing to exploit production opportunities regardless of national or community needs. These corporations, through their economic might and political influence, are tightening their grip on the political processes in this country. NAFTA will promote their interests at the expense of democracy, labor, and the environment. The fate of NAFTA will be decided in the U.S. House of Representatives early in November. To protect our economy, to protect our hard won labor and environmental gains, and indeed to protect democracy itself, citizens must rise up and demand that our congressman vote this

treaty down. Then let's support real free trade with Mexico, trade that spreads freedom, trade that improves worker rights and environmental protection, trade that helps all people earn their bread in dignity. That's the kind of treaty that the United States, Canada, and Mexico really need. [announcer]: Dick Austin. Opinions expressed on this program are not necessarily those of WMMT or of Appalshop Incorporated . We hope to encourage the discussion of questions important to our communities. Please let us know your views. For Mountain News and World Report I'm Jim Webb.