I am happy and relaxed this morning, perhaps the first time in eight years.
The Obama Presidency really caused me a lot of stress.
Every day, another outrage.
An economy in my city that NEVER recovered.
Now, I think things will get better...
What city do you live in? And how did Trump help your city recover?
it doesn't matter what city he lives in.
trump didn't help it.
Now now lets be fair. Maybe he lives in coal country
"Get ready," he told them. "Because you're going to be working your asses off!"
Then, after Trump was elected, we wanted to see whether his promise would come true:
Did those miners end up working their asses off? No.
Since Trump was elected, there has been
a bump in coal jobs in Virginia and a handful of other states.
That's in part because of the coal companies' new confidence in Trump, but also because demand for metallurgical coal — the kind used to make steel — went up, mainly in China.
(Energy analysts say thermal coal plants, the ones that produce electricity, are continuing to close around the country.)
The company he had contracted with cut what it had agreed to pay Dotson. So Dotson and his partners cut their own salaries by 20 percent. They cut the employees' salaries by 10 percent.
They eliminated the employees' health insurance.
"It scares the s*** out of you, if you don't mind me saying that," he says. "I mean if you got fired tomorrow or quit tomorrow there's absolutely no opportunity to get another [job]."
Even though there has been an upturn in coal, Pennington says it's just a blip. Coal is not going to make a big comeback, he says, like Trump promised and people believed.