Over the years, George Allen has spent a ton of money on cowboy hats and boots in an unsuccessful attempt to identify himself with the folks of rural Virginia. Southwest Va, or coal country as some think of it, was the location where Allen forever buried his political career with the now infamous macaca statement.Southwest Virginia is one of the most beautiful places in the country. It is the region settled by Jim Webb's Scots-Irish ancestors and to this day, Mr. Webb still has kinfolk living in the area. These rural Virginians and their neighbors in Eastern Kentucky have much in common. They have dug the nations coal, cut the nation's timber and throughout our history have provided our country with more than their fair share of soldiers to fight our wars.
But beneath the romantic history and the scenic beauty of the mountains there have always been underlying economic struggles. The coal business has always been a feast or famine proposition, dependent on prices and demand and as coal is a non-renewable resource, there is no stable future for rural Virginians in coal mining. The family farms of the past are gone everywhere in rural America. Though many Americans picture a relaxed bucolic life away from the hustle and noise of the city, the reality of Southwest Virginia show workers competing for minimum wage jobs, and those who do better sometimes spend eight hours a day or more just driving back and forth from work. Making a living in the mountains has never been more difficult than it is today for the people of Southwest Virginia.
When George Allen was Governor he had an answer for jobs in Southwest Virgina. What the area needed was a new industry--an industry that would never shut down and one that would provide jobs for generation after generation of rural Virginians. But George Allen didn't didn't bring Toyota or Ford into Southwest Virginia. There were no new high tech jobs for Wise County. The new industry coming to the Virginia mountains was the prison industry.
In a new film, Up the Ridge, filmmakers Nick Szuberla and Amelia Kirby have produced a masterful piece of work, giving a raw and unflinching picture of the prison industry, the politicians behind the plan, the guard, and especially the prisoners in Wallens Ridge State Prison.
Up The Ridge is not just a film about what happens inside a Supermax prison. As much as anything we see the tough choices faced by communities in rural Appalachia. As we see more and more prisons built in Virginia and Eastern Kentucky, and prisoners shipped in from as far away as Hawaii, New Mexico and Connecticut, I find myself wondering, can't we do better than this. Is Southwest Virginia to become the prison captitol of the United States. When will the nation realize rural Americans can do more than dig coal, fight wars and guard criminals sent so far away from home and family. Below are the places and dates.
Oct 2nd ------------Newport News
Christopher Newport University 7PM
Ferguson Center for the Arts
I University Place
Oct. 3rd------------Roanoke
Blue Ridge Public Television, 7PM
1215 McNeil Drive
Oct 4th-------- Charlottesville
Sojourners United Church of Christ, 7PM
1017 Elliot Ave
Oct 5th---------Arlington
Home of Jon Sheldon
4000 N. Roundhill Rd
Oct 6th-------Richmond
Wesley Memorial United Church, 7PM
1720 Mechanicsville Turnpike
Oct 7th--------Norfork
Norview United Methodist Church 2 PM
1112 Norview Ave
Oct 8th-----Harrisonburg
Eastern Mennonite University
Strite Auditorum 2 pm
1200 Park Road
I say bring back those offshore outsourced jobs and put them in these rural areas. Right now we have government jobs, state and federal that are offshore outsourced. That taxpayer money could be recycled into US jobs in rural areas. Believe it or not, it's cost effective because these regions are economically depressed. $10/hr is pretty good in a rural area and $14 is fantastic. It seriously isn't that much of a capital investment (in comparison to manufacturing) to set one of these centers up. It also isn't that much cheaper these days to offshore outsource to India, partly due to customer dissatisfaction, rapidly increasing wage rates in these offshore outsourced companies, identity/security issues and employee churn.
US employees on the other hand, are probably going to stay, they won't jump out of the job every 3 months.
Americans dealing with everything from credit card support to computer repair help want to talk to other Americans and it's not that tough to train people (believe me, training often consists of "read this script").
(of course as pointed out, prisons are now a huge profit area, plus corporations often contract out for prison labor...)
Right now high speed Internet is in many rural areas and to bring it there isn't that tough. A town with a call center plan and some tax credits/incentives would probably do it.
Alternative energy: Start production prototyping R&D in rural areas. There is a lot of R&D going on in biodiesel and getting some of this started in rural areas.
Manufacturing generally: We've had such a mass exodus and as far as I know, there is no strategic policy initiative to jump start strategic manufacturing back in the US. But, there are a series of areas that are actually critical to our economy and national security in the future.
One would also need high skilled labor, so maybe a tech college for high skills training. But ya know, do what countries who got our jobs through offshore outsourcing do, they start small, usually with something that isn't so high skilled and build it up. They give tax holidays, government subsidies, you name it to build up their industries.
How about the US starts looking at our nation as a 3rd world nation that needs to build up it's manufacturing base. After all, it's closer to the truth than anyone cares to admit.
Take a look around at upstate New York, Michigan, Appalacia, SouthWest Virginia... it starts looking more and more 3rd world.
Additionally, I was in the USAF in the late 80s, and stationed in Japan. I was the first "generation" of US military in Japan who were under the Japanese pvoerty level. The Yen to Dollar ratio quickly went from 305 yen to a dollar, to 105 yen to a dollar (1986 - 1989). US Servicemen who were there 5 years before me raved to me about how cheap everything would in in Japan when I got there, and I found the opposite was true. We were cheap compared to Japanese semi-skilled labor. We had to go to South Korea to get anything cheaply, and we did as frequently as leave and meager pay allowed.
5 years later I was stationed at the Pentagon and US Servicemembers coming back from Korea in 1993 and 1994 were complaining that the same thing had happened to them. Korea used to be a 3rd world country where they (the GIs) could get anything cheap; but now they could not afford to live there anymore - so they stayed on base as much as possible because they could no longer afford to spend money in Korean bars, restaurants, and stores. Where previous the military people had Korean house keepers; now the US military members and their families were taking second jobs cleaning Korean homes for extra money (as much as SOFA - the Status of Forces Agreement would allow).
What we were witnessing was a change in relative wealth of nations. Japan and then Korea quickly went from developing countries to wealthier than the United States per capita.
A couple of years ago I visited Prague in the Czech republic with my wife on vacation. Things were still cheap in Prague - mostly; though the expat community there was complaining about recent inflation. We ran into money changers on every corner looking to charge high exchange rates for dozens of currencies (always better to go to a bank - but some tourists are lazy)... well the money changers did not even want to do deals for U.S. Dollars. None. The Banks and Hotels had to because you were a customer, but they all had $40 or $100 limits on the amount of U.S. currency they'd take from you... basically the dollar's value was falling so fast that they just didn't want the useless paper money. That was Memorial Day weekend in 2004, and to be fair the Czech Krona was being replaced with the Euro soon (people could already do it voluntarily, but most restaurants were still taking Krona) - but it illustrated to me how another developing nations was beginning to switch places with us for 3rd world status (to be fair - the Czech republic used to be 2nd world - but does that term even apply anymore?).
We are not a 3rd world country yet... and we are still far from it - but I see us heading that direction. Hopefully "market forces" will arrest the free fall at the point that our own workers cost about the same as workers from Latin American countries... short of government intervention what else will stop that equalization?
It's like the US seems to think it's static, that it's economy will always dominate and that is just absolutely nuts.
It's also condescending to believe that somehow we've got all of the skills, the answers, the talent and magically other nations do not and are not out to wipe our asses economically.
Places like E. St. Louis, parts of the Midwest decimated by the massive offshore outsourcing of manufacturing and so forth...all one has to do is look at a video clip and some photos and see it's so close to 3rd world, it's not funny. The only thing propping up some of these areas is running water, heat and food but all other aspects look way way way too similar.
Your point on the dollar exchange is most frightening...that hasn't been heard of since before WWII (if more like 1906).
Free markets are not free, much less fair. It is well past time to level the playing field, provide as much attention and government help to the workers as has been done for the multi-national globalization elites. That's what Jim Webb is talking about, if only the mass media would listen.
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Remind people that George Allen helped push these unnecessary supermax prisons at an extreme cost to Virginia taxpayers.
Remind people that George Allen takes credit for reducing crime with his plan to abolish parole in 1995, but crime rates started their drop in 1992 and were not related to truth in sentencing! Allen lied then and continues to lie when he takes credit.
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