Donald Trump announced Monday Ohio junior U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance as his running mate in the 2024 Election, and I have some concerns.
Like J.D. Vance, I am also 39 years old; I also grew up in a struggling old industrial city in Ohio; I have also lost countless people close to me to the scourge of drug addiction; and I have also spent a lot of time in Appalachia — although my time was spent as a reporter in the Ohio foothills of Appalachia covering poverty, education, crime, courts, transportation, health care, business, and labor for nearly a decade.
Where does one begin? Perhaps 2016 when Vance first launched into the national spotlight with his memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy.” The memoir part of the book I found interesting and sad and heartbreaking on the level of all the other stories I have witnessed, heard, and reported on about childhood traumas passed down in families struggling with poverty.
Then there was the other part of his book, the diagnosis and prescription part, that I couldn’t understand or relate to: A certain seething contempt and scorn for the people of Appalachia and the Ohio “rust belt,” as though their struggles were the result of deep personal character flaws and a lack of bootstrapping, and not predictable consequences wrought by growing up poor in a region wracked by exploitation, stuck in cycles of generational poverty, and mired in the kind of desperation that accompanies these things.
Most reporters drift toward certain topics of personal interest, and mine has always been the hardships of those in poverty and all its attendant ills. You see, “poverty” is not its own specific beat; it’s a topic wrapped up in the largest resource, funding and hence achievement gaps in education; it’s tied to the lack of reliable transportation to get to work, or job interviews; it’s weighted down by a lack of access to primary and preventative health care, and even internet access; it’s connected to childhood trauma, and hunger, and the long-term denial of regular meals and nutritious food; it’s burdened by increasing costs and regressive taxes: A greater and greater percentage of income goes toward rent, utilities, groceries, toiletries.
I’ve met grandmothers providing kinship care to their grandchildren who’ve had to look at a couple boxes of mac and cheese and hot dogs, a loaf of bread and PB&J, as food for the week. I’ve met mothers working two jobs having to face a high electric bill but not having enough leftover for shampoo and deodorant. Imagine the bullying at school that leads to, and then think about how that bullying is just one more additional hardship — like not ever having your parent or parents around because they’re working two jobs, and you have to take care of younger siblings from the time you turn nine because child care is unaffordable.
The generally crushing existence of all of it year after year, decade after decade, a lifetime of one blow after another; one trauma after another; one setback after another; one car breakdown, one broken bone or disease racking up medical debt, one layoff sending the family hurtling toward crisis and bankruptcy, just imagine it, and you begin to see how poverty perpetuates itself by breaking everyone in it down, and leaving the vast majority without a shot to break the cycle. And of course the susceptibility to addiction is high. Anything to fade away from the nightmare for a few hours. So that begets all its own problems and cycles and traumas from there. I learned all about it in the courtrooms and at the addiction treatment centers.
So here is where I take issue. While I covered poverty in Appalachia, these are the cycles and problems of poverty at-large, wherever you find it, in the cities or in the country hills, regardless of race, creed, or religion, throughout the country. This is not some cultural problem with Appalachia or the so-called “rust belt” — which is an insulting term, by the way, as is “Hillbilly.” This is what poverty is like anywhere in America. All that and much more.
Appalachia itself is charming and noble. The “Hey Buddy” drawl and geniality of so many people is downright charismatic. A lot of folks are a helluva lot of fun to go four-wheeling with or to visit with over a draft at the local hole-in-the-wall. There’s genuine warmth and a good-times attitude. There’s an authentic kindness and lack of pretension. Then you learn the history of the coal mines and the breaker boys and the company towns and the union-busting and the Battle of Blair Mountain, and the Matewon Massacre, and you begin to understand what the region has been through and where it is now.
The rural Ohio I know is full of strong, caring, resilient, community-minded people. I can say the same for the cities. Sometimes I get asked where I look for hope, and I always say that it’s not the politicians; it’s the thousands of good-hearted people working so hard every day to help their communities, in cities, towns and villages across Ohio. In my work as a reporter, I’ve been lucky enough to meet a whole heckuva lot of them.
So after all my years of reporting their stories, some things seem pretty obvious to me as far as what can be done to help these communities, and giving tax cuts to billionaires just isn’t one of them. But that’s what Donald Trump is promising.
Neither is saddling them with the regressive financial burden of 10% tariffs, which amounts to a $1,700 tax on Americans and will increase inflation that falls heaviest on those in poverty. That is another Trump promise. Replacing income taxes with tariffs, as Trump has also suggested, would send millions of families in poverty hurtling toward ruin, not only paying much higher sales taxes and other fees to try to still fund the government, but seeing vast swaths of support systems removed from under their feet. Costs going up would also forestall interest rates coming down. Devaluation of the dollar, as they propose, would also jack up inflation rates. Trump has also proposed cutting corporate tax rates from 21% to 15%, after already cutting them from 35% to 21% in 2017.
Defunding the U.S. Department of Education as Trump has proposed would cut $18 billion a year for Title I high-poverty schools, cut $15 billion a year for special education, and cut $28 billion a year for Pell Grants. That would have a devastating impact on these communities.
What these communities need is lots of funding and support to overcome the poverty achievement gap in education with best practices: early childhood education, before school programming with a full breakfast for those who need it; full universal lunch during school hours; and after school programs with dinner availability and options ranging from athletics to music and the arts to media production to outdoor activities. We need full, well-rounded education; and trauma-informed training for all public-facing teachers and workers; and connected, wraparound support systems for families.
We shouldn’t be cutting our education budgets, commoditizing and privatizing education as billionaires are planning to do under Trump, and leaving whole communities out in the rain to perpetuate the cycles. We should realize, to paraphrase Frederick Douglass, that it’s easier to give a child education, hope, and opportunity than it is to fix a broken man.
We should be making our public schools palaces of such learning, hope and opportunity, that keep children away from potentially toxic or negligent home environments for as long as possible; that give them three square, nutritious meals a day if that’s what some need; that provide them with good adult role models and mentorship, and allow them the opportunity to explore a variety of interests to find their individual passions to pursue, and a pathway toward a fulfilling, stable career and adulthood.
On Wednesday night, J.D. Vance made his pitch to the “working man” in his vice presidential acceptance speech. Stood up next to the actual Trump agenda, I just don’t know what he’s talking about. That’s my concern. Nothing in the Trump agenda tangibly promises to help the families J.D. and I know so well. Quite the opposite. Meanwhile, as far as the heart-wrenching menace of drug addition, J.D. has already prioritized defunding Ukraine over fighting fentanyl.
I have many other concerns, such as his extreme moral and intellectual flexibility that raises serious questions about his ethics and candor; and his advocacy for abandoning Ukraine to the ravages of Putin; and his playing footsie with a neo-monarchist named Curtis Yarvin; and his comments that the radical right should seize institutions and ignore the courts; and his joining the ticket of a convicted felon — also adjudicated guilty of sexual assault and business fraud — who conspired to overturn the results of a free and fair election and rob millions of Americans of their votes, and instigated a violent mob attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 to disrupt constitutional business and the peaceful transfer of power.
I am concerned that J.D. has said he would’ve went along with the plot to create a constitutional crisis by overstepping his authority as vice president and overthrowing the election results.
In short, I have grave questions about J.D. Vance’s judgment and trustworthiness, and I do not understand his apparent desire to overthrow the post-WWII Pax Americana in favor of some sort of nationalistic isolationism where autocrats rum amok, with a reactionary domestic agenda that dismantles programs for people in poverty and will only exacerbate and perpetuate their plight and exploitation, while Trump and the five dozen billionaires supporting him get even more filthy, stinking rich.
This column was originally published in Ohio Capital Journal, part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
