Good morning, suckers. From The Lexington Herald-Leader:

There has been no significant increase in coal jobs in Kentucky under President Donald Trump. The statistics on income in Eastern Kentucky were in the ARC’s latest classification of the economic status of the 420 counties in Appalachia that it will use for the 2019 federal fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1. The agency uses the data in decisions about spending money in the region and how much counties have to put up in matching funds for ARC grants. The lowest economic classification is distressed, meaning the counties are in the bottom 10 percent of more than 3,100 U.S. counties on measures that include income, the poverty rate and unemployment. ARC said 81 counties in its region will be considered distressed in fiscal year 2019.

As the H-L makes clear, this is a phenomenon that has taken place over several administrations, and one that has its roots in a number of factors, most of which have to do with the fact that coal has become largely obsolete and the fact that the evidence is overwhelming that coal is generally a hazard to the public health.

Of course, in 2016, along came the guy in the gold-plated patent medicine wagon, selling his Magic Dealmaker Elixir by the gallon. What would any of us have done in that situation? Your personal income, which never was astronomical on its best days, even when coal was booming and the bosses were getting fat, has sunk even further over two decades. Are you telling me you wouldn't even consider taking a big gulp of the conman's potion?

DOMINICK REUTER Getty Images

Along with this drop in personal income has come an increase in income inequality. At the end of July, the Economic Policy Institute produced a report that showed an income divide that had come to resemble the Cumberland Gap. From WVXU:

Income for the wealthiest one percent of earners in Kentucky was more than $719,012 in 2015, compared to an average income of almost $39,990 for all other Kentuckians. The report from the Economic Policy Institute shows from 2009 to 2015 the top one percent income grew 23.2 percent while everyone else’s income grew only 7.2 percent. Ashley Spalding is a senior policy analyst with the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy. “The growth in income inequality is the result of policy decisions that have reduced union density and eroded the value of the minimum wage and other baseline labor standards,” Spalding said.

But he loves our big, beautiful coal that gets "washed" and then transported, possibly via invisible stealth airplanes. It's better than those slaughterhouse windmills, as Daniel Dale's feed on the electric Twitter machine explains.

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Here's the transcript of Trump's remarks at a New York fundraiser last week about coal and windmills. pic.twitter.com/ADckyr4IET — Daniel Dale (@ddale8) August 19, 2018

Gawd.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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