Tag Archives: kentucky

Trump Wants to Turn the Skies Black With Coal

Mother Jones

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Donald Trump is gonna bring back the coal:

President Trump is poised in the coming days to announce his plans to dismantle the centerpiece of President Barack Obama’s climate change legacy….In an announcement that could come as soon as Thursday or as late as next month, according to people familiar with the White House’s planning, Mr. Trump will order EPA chief Scott Pruitt to withdraw and rewrite a set of Obama-era regulations known as the Clean Power Plan, according to a draft document obtained by The New York Times.

….At a campaign-style rally on Monday in the coal-mining state of Kentucky, Mr. Trump told a cheering audience that he is preparing an executive action that would “save our wonderful coal miners from continuing to be put out of work.”

This is part of Trump’s plan to repeal all of Obama’s “stupid” climate change policies. “We’re not spending money on that anymore,” Trump’s budget director told reporters. No more funding for climate change science; no more worrying about carbon emissions; no more auto mileage standards; and lots and lots of beautiful, black coal.

Except for one thing:

This is from Lazard’s most recent energy analysis. Coal just isn’t competitive anymore. Oh, existing plants will keep going for a while, and maybe Trump’s executive orders—if they ever go into effect—will keep them in operation longer than otherwise. But there’s nothing on the horizon that’s likely to reduce the cost of coal, whereas wind and solar continue to drop every year. Gas is also likely to stay cheap for a long time thanks to fracking.

None of this is a secret. Everyone knows that Trump isn’t going to save any coal jobs, but the coal miners like to hear him say that he will. Based on previous reporting, I gather that even they know it’s mostly blather, but they still appreciate it. They give Trump an A for effort.

Back in the early part of last year, there was a mini-upwelling of comments from liberals suggesting that Trump might actually be better from a progressive point of view than more conventional conservatives like Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz. That was never true, and climate change is an example of why. Cruz or Rubio would have both tried to get rid of Obama’s Clean Power Plan, but I don’t think they would have literally tried to defund every bit of research into climate change or just flatly deny that carbon even mattered. They’re too conventional. But with Trump there’s always the danger that a combination of his signature ignorance and his rabid vengefulness will motivate him to go nuts. That’s what’s happening here. On the bright side, maybe his well-known incompetence will also keep him from being effective. But then again, maybe not.

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Trump Wants to Turn the Skies Black With Coal

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Who Really Benefits From Repealing the Stream Protection Rule?

Mother Jones

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Behold the politics of Donald Trump in a nutshell:

Weigel is in Florida, so the workers in question are mostly Appalachian miners. Here’s a quick look at Appalachian coal mining employment:1

This chart shows two things. First, coal mining in Appalachia has been plummeting for a long time. Decades, actually. So it’s pretty easy to see why Appalachian coal miners are in dire straits and eager to listen to someone, anyone, who sounds sympathetic to their plight.

Second, Trump is getting a lot of of attention for rolling back the Stream Protection Rule, but it’s not going to put anyone back to work. I had to cheat to even get it to show up on the chart. It’s responsible for maybe a hundred mining jobs out of a total decline of 30,000 between 2009 and 2020.

So who does benefit from rolling back this rule? Well, OSM figures that Appalachian mine owners will save about $24 million per year in compliance costs.3 So they’re pretty happy. This is a dynamic that we’re going to see over and over from Trump:

He puts on a big show about something or other. Workers cheer.
Offstage, it turns out the benefit to workers is minuscule.
Instead, the bulk of the benefits end up going to corporations and the rich.
Liberals will find out about this because the New York Times will probably write about it. Working-class Trump fans won’t, because none of it will be reported by Fox News or Drudge or Limbaugh or Breitbart.

Executive summary: workers get a pittance, the rich get rewarded, and streams and rivers will continue to be fouled by mine tailings. But Trump’s supporters will be happy because they’ll be kept in the dark by all the people supposedly looking out for them.


1This is approximate. I counted coal mine employment from Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Alabama. The projection is based on a 50 percent loss of coal production and coal jobs between 2012 and 2020. The Office of Surface Mining figures that the Stream Protection Rule will cost about 260 mining jobs, and that Appalachia will bear 46 percent of compliance cost. (See this CRS report, p. 17.) So we can roughly figure that it will cost Appalachia a little over a hundred mining jobs.2

2The net job loss will be about zero, thanks to additional hires of engineers and biologists. However, that does nothing for miners.

3See here, p. 15. Total estimated compliance costs are $52 million per year, with Appalachia bearing 46 percent of the total.

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Who Really Benefits From Repealing the Stream Protection Rule?

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Trump "Agrees Completely" That Repeal-and-Delay Is a Terrible Idea

Mother Jones

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Rand Paul says Donald Trump isn’t happy with “repeal and delay”:

President-elect Donald Trump backed waiting to repeal the Affordable Care Act until a replacement proposal is in hand in a Friday night phone call with Sen. Rand Paul, the Kentucky Republican said Monday, adding to momentum for changing GOP leaders’ strategy on dismantling the 2010 health-care law.

….“I believe we should vote on replacement the same day we vote on repeal,” Mr. Paul said in an interview Monday. Mr. Trump called the senator on Friday night “to say he agrees completely,” Mr. Paul said.

Uh oh. That’s a mistake, though it’s an easy one for an amateur to make. For the record: Mr. Trump calls no one. Other people call Mr. Trump. This is very important to Mr. Trump. He’s very insistent on following proper protocol, which is that others should be seen groveling to him, not the other way around.

Unfortunately, there’s a more serious mistake here too: Paul spoke publicly about Trump’s wishes before Trump did. This gives others plenty of time to corner Trump and talk him into changing his mind and then “explaining” that Paul didn’t get things quite right. It’s much better not to alert others to your conversation.

All that said, this fits the various smoke signals that have come out of Trump Tower for a while now, so maybe Trump really is serious about offering a replacement for Obamacare at the same time as repeal. I hope so. Obviously I’d prefer no repeal at all, but at the very least the American public deserves to know what Trump has in mind when the health coverage they currently have is ripped away from them.

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Trump "Agrees Completely" That Repeal-and-Delay Is a Terrible Idea

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Almonds Are Still Sucking Up Lots of California’s Water

Mother Jones

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Two new data points on the ongoing California drought and its impact on the state’s booming and thirsty farms:

• In California’s agriculture-rich, water-poor San Joaquin Valley, H2O from the state’s big irrigation projects has been especially scarce in recent years. As a result, farmers have had to rely heavily on water pumped from underground aquifers—and they’ve extracted so much of it that since 2013, land has been sinking in large swaths of the region, fouling up canals, bridges, roads, and other vital infrastructure and racking up billions of dollars in damage.

This year? Here’s an eye-popping report from the Sacramento Bee:

New wells are going in faster and deeper than ever. Farmers dug about 2,500 wells in the San Joaquin Valley last year alone, the highest number on record. That was five times the annual average for the previous 30 years, according to a Sacramento Bee analysis of state and local data

Back in 2014, Gov. Jerry Brown reversed a long tradition of Wild West groundwater management in California by signing a new law requiring the state’s most stressed watersheds to stop drawing down aquifers faster than they’re naturally replenished. The catch: The guidelines don’t kick in until 2040. In the meantime, San Joaquin Valley growers are embroiled in a “kind of groundwater arms race,” the Bee reports.

Aquifers don’t respect property lines, and in many cases, farmers with older, shallower wells are afraid of losing water to neighbors who are digging deeper wells and lowering the groundwater table. So they invest hundreds of thousands of dollars to drill new wells of their own. All told, farmers are expected to spend $303 million this year alone to pump groundwater, according to UC Davis researchers.

• In a new study presented last Wednesday at the Geological Society of America, Eastern Kentucky University’s Kelly Watson drills down into one of the destinations of all that water extraction: the state’s massive and growing base of almond groves.

Using satellite imagery, Watson looked at land conversions in California’s Central Valley (made up of two valleys, the San Joaquin and the Sacramento) between 2007 and 2014. She found that land devoted to the delicious (but water-intensive) nut had expanded 14 percent over that period—not surprising, given the ongoing almond boom.

The interesting finding, though, is that a huge chunk of the new almond territory was converted from fallow, completely un-irrigated land, including grasslands, wetlands, and forests. As for the rest, some of it switched over from less water-intensive crops like corn, cotton, wheat, and tomatoes; and some had been used for even thirstier crops like sugar beets, alfalfa, and clover. The bottom line: Watson calculates the net impact of the expansion was a 27 percent increase in annual irrigation needs for the converted land, putting massive new pressure on those struggling aquifers.

Over on Forbes, science writer Mallory Pickett notes that the study has yet to be published—it’s currently in peer review—and that “aerial images can only paint broad brush pictures” of the situation on the ground. But it’s not a pretty picture.

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Almonds Are Still Sucking Up Lots of California’s Water

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Here’s a sign that Kentucky’s politics might finally be shifting away from coal

Here’s a sign that Kentucky’s politics might finally be shifting away from coal

By on May 17, 2016 12:20 pmShare

“There is no red Kentucky or blue Kentucky. There is only charcoal black,” James Higdon wrote in Politico in 2014, noting the dominance of the coal industry in the state.

Two years later, we’re starting to see that change. In Kentucky’s Tuesday primary, the ballot includes a handful of politicians who are no longer railing against the “war on coal” but are trying to reckon with what happens after coal mines shut down.

This is easiest to see in the Democratic presidential primary. While campaigning in Kentucky and West Virginia, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders mostly resisted pandering to coal country. Sanders, an outspoken critic of fossil fuel production, won the West Virginia primary. Clinton said, “We’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business,” and got a lot of backlash for it. She offered a qualified apology, emphasizing her $30 billion stimulus plan for mining communities, but still insisted, “we’ve got to move away from coal and all the other fossil fuels.”

What’s happening in a little-watched Senate primary is even more interesting than the presidential race.

There are six Democrats running to compete against Republican Sen. Rand Paul this fall. The frontrunner on Tuesday is Lexington Mayor Jim Gray, and one of his challengers is Sellus Wilder, an underfunded environmentalist.

Gray hasn’t said much publicly about climate change or controversial policies like President Obama’s Clean Power Plan, but Wilder has. He considers coal to be a problem not only because it contributes to climate change but also because it threatens public health. Instead of propping the coal industry up, he would prefer to see Kentucky work toward building a new, more sustainable economy. Most surprisingly, he says the “‘war on coal’ is kind of made up.” When confronted by miners in eastern Kentucky, Wilder says he doesn’t think these jobs are coming back – EPA or not. That’s why he’s calling for federal grants to support education in the state, build up new infrastructure, and provide economic relief.

“Until we’ve settled the fact that killing environmental regulations won’t bring coal back, we can’t move on to the next question: What we can do?” he said in an interview with Grist.

Wilder’s rare willingness to tackle these difficult topics earned him endorsements from Climate Hawks Vote, a super PAC favoring pro-climate candidates, and Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, a progressive statewide advocacy group.

For Kentucky, “it is a first that a serious candidate with some serious statewide credibility is calling for an end to coal,” Climate Hawks Vote founder R.L. Miller said.

Wilder thinks Kentucky voters want a conversation about clean air and water, especially after Flint’s water problems.

“I find it difficult to talk about [climate change] because it’s such a partisan issue and it seems that facts don’t really factor into the debate really well,” he said. “I find a lot more traction talking about things that affect people’s lives. I make a lot more progress talking about things like energy efficiency and the costs of air pollution and the fact that Kentucky has epidemic levels of lung cancer, heart disease, and issues that are all directly related to air quality.”

Wilder is a long shot to win the primary on Tuesday, and neither he nor Gray stand much chance against the incumbent Rand Paul.

Still, Wilder’s candidacy is a sign that political wisdom is shifting in the state. As Stephen Voss, a political scientist at the University of Kentucky, explains, a “substantial portion of the Democratic rank and file would like to see their party, and their statewide candidate, hew more closely to the national party’s environmental platform but they have enjoyed only limited success so far.”

You could see signs of this in 2014 as well. Democratic Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes ran against longtime Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell, and lost. She pandered to the coal industry, and split with her party over the Clean Power Plan and on climate action. That may have hurt her more than it helped, say some Democrats like Wilder, because it didn’t win her much support among the coal community. But it did alienate progressives. On the same ballot, Rep. John Yarmuth, the only Kentucky congressman to win the Sierra Club’s endorsement, ended up earning 12,000 more votes than Grimes in the Louisville area.

Since we’re talking about Democrats here, we’re talking about a small portion of voters in Kentucky. Kentucky is not on the verge of becoming blue. And Republicans aren’t changing their approach yet. They’ll promise anything short of unicorns to coal miners this fall.

But if Democrats are starting coming around, then it may mean coal is finally losing its grip on politics, just like it lost its grip on the economy.

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Here’s a sign that Kentucky’s politics might finally be shifting away from coal

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How to make coal companies pay to clean up their messes

How to make coal companies pay to clean up their messes

By on 6 Apr 2016commentsShare

Peabody Energy, the world’s largest private-sector coal company, is not in great financial shape. Last month, it casually skipped a $71 million interest payment, and analysts are speculating that it may be edging toward bankruptcy. Standard and Poor’s recently downgraded Peabody’s credit rating to a “D.” The company has $6.3 billion in outstanding long-term debt.

If you’re cheering for the death of coal, that might sound like good news. But there’s a nasty catch: Peabody’s financial troubles mean it might not be able to pay to clean up its messes, and restoring landscapes and repairing streams and rivers can be expensive. The company has “self-bonded” to pay up to $1.4 billion in reclamation costs at its mines in the United States — and self-bonding means we’re trusting it to do so.

While coal companies usually offer up collateral or contract out in order to guarantee that cleanup will be paid for, it has become common in recent years for companies to simply pledge that they’re going to deal with the costs. These self-bonds (as opposed to, say, surety bonds, which rely on third-party insurers) only rely on the name and financial stability of the company itself. In other words, they’re basically billion-dollar IOUs, written on fancy letterhead instead of Post-it notes.

At this point, you’re probably wondering why a demonstrably financially unstable company is able to get away with just promising to pay $1.4 billion in cleanup costs. That’s because the federal government and many states have loose rules that allow self-bonding instead of a more reliable mechanism to ensure that reclamation is paid for. And even troubled companies like Peabody can often meet requirements for self-bonding by applying through subsidiaries that look fine on paper.

“These rules were created in a different era, when nobody thought that coal companies could go out of business,” Clark Williams-Derry, director of energy finance at the Sightline Institute, told Grist. With Arch Coal and Alpha Natural Resources both having recently filed for bankruptcy, that era is clearly behind us. “The only solution at this point is to recognize that self-bonding has completely failed, and that the only way forward is to completely change the rules.”

State mining authorities could change those rules and instead require companies to post surety bonds or set aside cleanup cash in an escrow account. Or they could continue to allow self-bonding, but not through 100-percent-owned subsidiaries. Some states already don’t allow self-bonding at all, like Kentucky, Maryland, and Montana, according to a survey conducted by the Interstate Mining Compact Commission.

The federal government could help too by updating its rules. Right now it allows self-bonding if a coal company is “financially healthy,” but that definition is riddled with loopholes.

Credit ratings firm Fitch argues that Peabody’s recently announced risk of defaulting on its debts could prompt regulators to change their rules. “Citizen complaints, scrutiny from the attorney general of Illinois and congressional calls for investigation follow a record number of financial defaults in the U.S. coal sector foreshadowing even tighter self-bonding rules,” wrote the firm in a press release. With many coal companies on their last legs and taxpayers ultimately on the line, here’s hoping Fitch is right.

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How to make coal companies pay to clean up their messes

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Mitch McConnell likes procrastinating so much, he wants the whole country to do it

Mitch McConnell likes procrastinating so much, he wants the whole country to do it

By on 23 Mar 2016 11:04 amcommentsShare

The most powerful man in the Senate isn’t interested in doing his job, and he’s telling state leaders around the country: Why should you do yours?

That man would be Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, whose steadfast refusal to consider a Supreme Court nominee until after the election gives new meaning to the word “dillydally.” Now the Kentucky Republican, in a letter published Monday to state governors, is also urging procrastination on another important issue: climate change.

McConnell is referring specifically to the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan, which requires states to submit plans for curbing carbon pollution from power plants an average of 32 percent by 2030. It’s the centerpiece of President Obama’s climate-fighting agenda, and McConnell has been urging states to drag their heels since the EPA issued the rule a year ago, when he told them to  “just say no.”  McConnell argued that states should refuse to submit a carbon-cutting plan to the EPA as a means of protest, even though legal experts dismissed his reasoning.

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Now McConnell is emboldened by the Supreme Court’s unexpected decision in February to stay the Clean Power Plan while the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit decides the case. If the courts do uphold the rule, McConnell insists there is no risk for states to stop planning for implementation. “[E]ven if the CPP is ultimately upheld,” he writes to governors, “the clock would start over and your states would have ample time to formulate and submit a plan; but if the court overturns the CPP as I predict, your citizens would not be left with unnecessary economic harm.”

Legal scholars say McConnell is once again giving terrible advice. “No one knows how it’s going to play out” in the courts, New York University Institute for Policy Integrity Senior Attorney Jack Lienke (and sometime Grist contributor) told me. “All we know is the rule is stayed until this litigation is resolved, and we don’t know exactly how it’s going to be resolved.”

There’s no reason for states to assume that if they stop their work now, the “clock would start over” and their time to implement the Clean Power Plan would be extended if the rule is upheld, Lienke said. The courts could do any number of things, as could the EPA. “It is bad advice to suggest they should count on that happening. The Supreme Court orders granting the stay didn’t say anything about holding up deadlines.”

Since the Supreme Court’s stay was issued last month, 19 states have kept working toward the Clean Power Plan regs, while 19 states have halted their efforts (four states are exempt because they have so few coal-fired power plants sector). McConnell’s letter is meant to help sway the nine states still debating what to do into the procrastinator’s column.

Ironically, his advice could wind up hurting the coal-reliant states (like his home state of Kentucky) that need extra time to begin a clean-energy transition. Foot dragging might be McConnell’s speciality, but it’s no good for anything but his political machinations.

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Why Did a 16-Year-Old Black Girl Just Die in a Kentucky Cell?

Mother Jones

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Last month, 16-year-old Gynnya McMillen became part of a disturbing trend — one of a growing number of girls across the country who’ve been detained after getting charged with a misdemeanor. Then mysteriously, one day after she was booked into Kentucky a detention center, McMillen was found dead in her cell.

On the morning of January 11, an employee at the Lincoln Village Regional Juvenile Detention Center found McMillen, who was not breathing. “She is cold and stiff, there is no respiration, no vital signs,” the employee told a 911 dispatcher. About an hour later, McMillen was pronounced dead. Little is known about why McMillen wound up dead while in juvenile detention, a locked facility where young people charged with crimes are held while they wait for future court dates or other action in their cases.

The incident, and the limited information that has been released to the public about it, has sparked outrage from McMillen’s family and the family’s supporters. State officials have launched two parallel investigations into the girl’s death, including a full autopsy. Kentucky’s Justice and Public Safety Cabinet Secretary John Tilley has asked that those investigations “be expedited,” a cabinet spokesperson told Mother Jones, adding that they “are nearing completion.” The cabinet declined to comment further about specific details in the case citing juvenile confidentiality statutes.

Here is what we know—and don’t know—about the case so far:

McMillen was taken to Lincoln Village after police responded to a domestic violence call. Shelbyville police officers arrived at McMillen’s mother’s house on January 10. McMillen had been living at the Maryhurst foster home in Louisville, Kentucky, and was visiting her mom for the weekend, where they got into a fight, according to BuzzFeed News. Shelbyville police called a court-designated worker—a state official who makes legal decisions in cases involving juveniles—who then contacted a judge and requested that McMillen be detained. McMillen was charged with a misdemeanor assault and transferred to Lincoln Village, a state-run juvenile detention center in Elizabethtown. Police said McMillen’s mother suffered minor injuries. Young people under the age of 18 who are charged with low-level crimes can be held in detention centers until a court decides what further action is needed. Their detention typically lasts around three weeks, but can extend for much longer, according to the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. In 2014, Kentucky enacted a law that was meant to help teens like McMillen avoid the court system altogether. Maryhurst declined to comment specifically on McMillen’s case, citing patient privacy laws.

McMillen had never been in detention before. A family member told 48 Hours’ Crimesider that McMillen’s one night at Lincoln Village was the only time she had ever been in detention. Prior to landing in the foster home, BuzzFeed News reported, McMillen lived with her father, who was awarded custody of her. But in November 2014, he died in his sleep. When McMillen spoke at his funeral, she promised to do well in school and make her father proud, a family member told BuzzFeed News.

At the detention center, multiple staff members physically restrained McMillen. Officials said that McMillen repeatedly refused to remove her sweatshirt when staffers tried to search and photograph her during the booking process. “The staff performed an Aikido restraint hold to safely remove the youth’s hoodie,” a spokesperson for the Kentucky Department of Juvenile Justice said. “The purpose of having multiple staff involved in a controlled restraint is to ensure the safety of the youth and staff.” A female staff member then conducted the pat-down and removed McMillen’s hoodie. “As far as I’m concerned that is a completely inappropriate use of a restraint,” Michele Deitch, an attorney and juvenile justice expert in Texas, told 48 Hours’ Crimesider. It is unclear if the restraint had anything to do with her eventual death, or if any other physical force was used against McMillen during her detention.

McMillen was placed in a cell by herself. The next morning, McMillen did not respond when staffers twice offered her food or later when they alerted her that her mother called. Although McMillen did not reply to staff members for several hours, no one appears to have checked on McMillen during this time. A Kentucky Department of Juvenile Justice spokesperson said staff members generally do not enter a detainee’s cell unless there are “obvious signs of distress.” It’s unclear why McMillen was confined in isolation to begin with. It is unclear if McMillen was merely in a cell alone or if she was placed in solitary confinement. Kentucky is one of 10 states that either have no limit or allow for indefinite solitary confinement for juveniles as a form of punishment.

Authorities don’t know yet how she died. After a sheriff’s deputy arrived to transport McMillen to court, Lincoln Village employees entered McMillen’s cell, and found that she was cold to the touch. Kentucky officials said McMillen appeared “to have passed away while sleeping.” Following the initial autopsy, the Hardin County coroner said there were no outward signs of trauma, such as visual bruising, and that it was unlikely she had a heart condition. The state’s Justice and Public Safety Cabinet has launched two investigations into the girl’s death, including a full autopsy. McMillen’s family has demanded that authorities release the surveillance footage that shows her final hours, as well as a recording of the emergency call that led to her arrest.

At least two Kentucky officials have lost their jobs in the wake of the incident, and one has resigned. One detention center staff member, Reginald Windham, was placed on leave for failing to check on McMillen’s cell every 15 minutes, as is required for detainees placed in isolation. On February 9, the governor’s office and justice cabinet announced that they’d fired Windham, following news reports about his longstanding record of “unacceptable behavior.” Personnel files provided to BuzzFeed News revealed that the Department of Juvenile Justice had disciplined or reprimanded Windham in five other incidents, including two that involved excessive use of force. In others, he as disciplined because he showed a lack of competency or professionalism. Bob D. Hayter, the head of the Department of Juvenile Justice, was dismissed from his job amid the investigation of the incident. The justice cabinet has not specified its reasons for Hayter’s dismissal. According to the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting, the department’s director of communications, Stacy Floden, also left her job in the wake of the state probe.

Gynnya McMillen’s arrest is part of a growing trend. The share of young girls in the juvenile justice system has been growing over the past 20 years, even as the number of arrests of young Americans has been on the decline. (My colleague Hannah Levintova recently broke down these numbers.) The percentage of girls who are arrested, detained, and end up in court increased between 1992 and 2013. Arrests of girls rose from 20 percent to 29 percent during this time, while detention of girls rose from 15 to 21 percent, according to the National Women’s Law Center. The trend has disproportionately affected girls of color: Black and American Indian girls were, respectively, 20 percent and 50 percent more likely to be detained than white girls. In 2013, black girls were the fastest-growing segment of the juvenile justice population.

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Why Did a 16-Year-Old Black Girl Just Die in a Kentucky Cell?

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Look at These Great Portraits of Doc Watson, Ralph Stanley, Etta James, and Algia Mae Hinton

Mother Jones

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I didn’t come up in the rural mountains, but my mother did, and during our vacations we’d find ourselves in the forest-and-meadows paradise of Southern Vermont, where just about any social gathering is an excuse to break out the instruments and play some old-time country tunes.

It’s also a place where just about everyone, it seems, has some kind of side talent, or at least something to barter. Wendy makes winter wreaths. Jerry sells jugs of home-brewed hard cider, milk, butter, and fresh eggs from his chickens. And Pete will carve you a custom mantelpiece when he isn’t building post-and-beam barns. People raised in these mountains don’t have a lot of cash, but they tend to be self sufficient—and they’re that way with music, too. If you can’t play some damned instrument, well, you can at least do the spoons, can’t you? It’s the people’s music.

Roan Mountain Hilltoppers at Fiddler’s Grove, 2003, Iredell County, N.C.

All this is by way of background as to why Hands in Harmony, a collection of portraits of Appalachian craftspeople and musicians by photographer Tim Barnwell, hit a note. It’s a long way from the mountains of Southern Vermont to the mountains of North Carolina, but in the music and lifestyle the distance is not so vast.

There’s a simple honesty, a complete lack of pretension, in Barnwell’s subjects, who consist both of notable artists—such Doc Watson, various Seegers, Earl Scruggs (who cut his teeth playing for Bill Monroe), Etta Baker, Ralph Stanley, and Laura Boosinger—and the unsung artisans and craftspeople who are equally skilled in their way, producing not songs but furniture, baskets, stories, pottery, or musical instruments. (This selection focuses on the music.)

Doc Watson backstage, 1983, Buncombe County, N.C.

The accompanying soundtrack, put together by Barnwell and dulcimerist Don Pedi, is appropriately hillbilly. That’s no put-down. That’s actually Ralph Stanley’s word for the music, since a lot of it came along decades, in some cases centuries, before anyone started calling it bluegrass. (That coinage emerged from the popularity of Kentucky’s late Bill Monroe, also pictured in the book, who named his backing band the Bluegrass Boys.)

Ralph Stanley Sr. with grandson Ralph III, 2007, Wise County, VA.

The producers did well. The CD features a nice gritty selection of songs, kicking off with 87-year-old Clyde Davenport of Kentucky doing “Over the Hill to See Betty Baker”—a lonely fiddle tune to put your mind on location—followed by a raw a cappella version of “William Riley” by Mary Jane Queen of North Carolina, who passed on recently at the age of 93. I already knew a number of these songs, and have even performed a few, but most of the versions were new to me. Old-time musicians borrow and steal bits from one another the way hip-hop producers do.

Algia Mae Hinton, 2007, Nash County, N.C.

I especially liked Algia Mae Hinton’s “Out of Jail,” and Barnwell’s portrait of her just makes you want to give her a hug, doesn’t it? I also liked the old fiddle tunes, including Byard Ray’s version of “Billy in the Low Ground,” Marcus Martin’s “Wounded Hoosier,” Roger Howell’s “Lafayette,” and Charlie Acuff‘s rendition of the old dance tune, “Two O’Clock.” Etta Baker‘s guitar work on “Carolina Breakdown,” stylistically similar to Doc Watson, is a pleasure, as is Pedi’s “That Pretty Girl Won’t Marry Me.”

Charlie Acuff, 2003, Anderson County, TN.

Now I like some grit in my hillbilly music, but no less alluring are Laura Boosinger’s more polished “Letter from Down the Road” and Sheila Kay Adams’ pairing of the old murder tale “Young Hunting” with “Elzic’s Farewell,” a Civil War-era song out of West Virginia.

It’s a solid collection in all, and just the thing to set the mood as you study Barnwell’s portraits, peruse the accompanying histories, and ponder how it would be to live in the mountains his camera inhabits.

Etta Baker, 2005, Burke County, N.C.

Earl Scruggs and son Gary, 2007, Jackson County, N.C.

Grover Sutton, 1987, Haywood County, N.C.

Laura Boosinger, 2006, Buncombe County, N.C.

Roger Howell, 2002, Madison County, N.C.

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Look at These Great Portraits of Doc Watson, Ralph Stanley, Etta James, and Algia Mae Hinton

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Animal Planet Is Being Sued for a Whole Bunch of Insane Things

Mother Jones

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A Kentucky farmer has accused Animal Planet of setting a fire, damming a creek, chopping down trees, and illegally trespassing and building structures on his property during the production of the reality TV show Call of the Wildman.

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Scandal is all too familiar for viewers of this once-popular show, which follows the supposedly real-life antics of a wily Kentucky wildlife rescuer nicknamed “Turtleman” and his buddies. First, Mother Jones uncovered evidence of repeated animal mistreatment, including drugging an endangered zebra and trapping a sick coyote and other animals for elaborately faked scenes. Then came revelations of state and federal animal welfare investigations, abrupt cancelations of broadcasts, and plummeting viewership—all the while Animal Planet representatives denied any wrongdoing.

Now, Turtleman, a.k.a. Ernie Brown Jr., along with his fellow cast members and producers, is facing a potential trial over allegations stemming from an episode filmed in the summer of 2014, called “Call in the Cavalry.” During the episode (part of which can be watched online), the so-called “Turtle Team” builds an elaborate tree house, using only materials that they find in the woods, and the “backwoods wisdom” for which the show is famous. “Everything we’re going to get is going to come from the backwoods,” Turtleman instructs his team—and the cast can be seen chain-sawing at least one tree, cutting shingles, and mixing cement.

But behind the scenes, J.D. Long, a 54-year-old resident of the rural hamlet of Liberty, Kentucky, says the show’s producers came onto his approximately 49-acre property after his sister, who lives there, explicitly told them they weren’t welcome. Long was furious when his sister told him that the team had built the tree house at least partly out of lumber he says they logged on his land. (One of Long’s lawyers, Andrew Trimble, says he saw multiple tree stumps at the site during a survey—consistent, he said, with claims in the broadcast that the tree house was built using local materials.) Long told local police that he commissioned a survey and found that three-quarters of the new tree house along with a recreational zip-line was built on his property, near the boundary line he shares with his neighbor, Rodney D. Finn.

The tree house in question, as featured in the episode “Call In The Cavalry.” Animal Planet

“They didn’t cut just any tree,” Long said. “Some of these trees they cut, they’re not replaceable. They only grow in certain places. They grow in deep, dark hollows.” Long, a landscaper and nurseryman by trade, says people tend to pay a top dollar for this type of wood, which is prized in log cabin design.

Along with trespassing and cutting down his trees, Long also alleges that people working for the show chipped away at the rock face of a waterfall Long says is also on his property to make the concrete (a scene that plays out in the actual broadcast), and then used that concrete to dam up one of his creeks.

Also Read “The Cruelest Show on Earth,” our yearlong investigation into elephant abuse at the Ringling Bros. circus.

But the most bizarre part of the incident, Long says, came in the middle of the night some months after filming had wrapped up—around November 20, 2014—when he woke to the sound of machinery. “My sister jumped out of bed, she was scared to death,” he said. “It made this whizzing that sounded like the whole neighborhood was going to blow up.” He called 911.

It turned out the whizzing was coming from a crane, Long said, which had arrived under the cover of darkness to tear down the tree house. Long says the remains of the tree house were then set on fire. “I mean, they could have set the whole mountain on fire, that’s what got me,” he said. “I was really aggravated.”

Sheriff’s Deputy Jamie Walters says he saw evidence of burned wood at the site of the tree house when he went to look, and found debris in the creek, according to a police report he filed about the incident. In the same police report, Long’s neighbor, Finn (whom he is also suing), admits to building the tree house that the production company had wanted for the episode. In court documents filed in his defense, Finn admits to being an “associate” of Turtleman, but denies the other allegations.

Finn did not respond to a voicemail left by Mother Jones, but in an interview with Deputy Walters last year, Finn said he had rented a crane and attempted to move the cabin after Long complained. Walters wrote: “He said when they tried to move the cabin it buckled in the center and came apart. Some of the cabin was salvaged but the remaining parts were burnt.”

According to Walters, Finn said he admitted that he “made a mistake when he constructed the cabin because he thought it was on his property.” Long refused to accept $1,000 from Finn as an apology.

Animal Planet and Sharp Entertainment—the New York-based production company that makes the show—did not respond to repeat attempts to seek an interview for this article. Neither did attorneys Rebecca Schafer and Emily Newman, from the Louisville legal firm representing the bulk of the defendants. Schafer and Newman filed documents asking the court to dismiss the case in May, and denied all the central allegations. The judge has yet to rule on that request.

In March, Long filed a suit against Animal Planet and its parent company Discovery Communications, along with the show’s production company, Sharp Entertainment, CORE Media Group (which owns Sharp), the cast of the show, and his neighbor Rodney D. Finn, who he says also trespassed and was involved in the construction and destruction of the tree house. Long has since been locked in the back-and-forth pre-trial exchange of documents between lawyers. No trial date has been set.

For his part, it seems like Turtleman might need all the financial help he can get from the production company he has worked for since 2011. “People think I have a million dollars,” he told The Post Standard, in March. “I got the famous part, but I haven’t got the rich part figured out yet. I’m the poorest famous guy around. I only made $50,000 last year, and that’s before taxes.”

Call of the Wildman is still under investigation by the US Department of Agriculture, which is looking into multiple claims of animal mistreatment raised by Mother Jones reporting last year:

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Animal Planet Is Being Sued for a Whole Bunch of Insane Things

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