Opinion & commentary
Opinion and commentary submitted to Appalachia Insider by individual contributors. The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Appalachia Insider. These pieces are separate from our news reporting.
There is something revealing in the story of Sony receiving an estimated $508 million back in tariff refunds. Not because Sony did anything particularly unusual, and not because the refund itself is the only thing that m…
Read story →ABC News ran a headline this week blaming rising prices at Dollar Tree on President Trump’s tariffs. It is a neat little story if you do not look too closely. Tariffs go up, prices go up, and the network gets to point a …
Read story →They tell us Walmart has “always low prices.” Most people accept that without thinking much about it. Cheaper than the store down the road must mean cheaper. That’s how competition is supposed to work. Push prices down.…
Read story →The Steward’s Works Program Eastern Kentucky does not suffer from a lack of problems that need solved. You can see them almost everywhere you drive. A culvert clogged for years. A drainage ditch overtaken by brush. A …
Read story →There is a scene in The Sandlot that I’ve always loved. The boys are playing baseball as fireworks explode overhead on the Fourth of July. The whole town seems to be outside. People are gathered on porches, kids are runn…
Read story →If you spend enough time in Eastern Kentucky, you start noticing something in people’s voices when they talk about institutions now. Not outrage so much as exhaustion. The kind that settles into a place after people spen…
Read story →If you want to understand the failure of modern economics, spend some time in Eastern Kentucky. Drive through towns with leaking water systems and roads still scarred from floods. Pass abandoned industrial sites and nei…
Read story →It seems that every time you turn on the news in the last ten years you see the same thing. Another town without clean water. Another boil advisory taped to the refrigerator. Another family standing in a checkout line wi…
Read story →In Eastern Kentucky, we don’t really have a land problem. And we don’t really have a labor problem. What we have is a water problem, a sewer problem, a housing problem, and an infrastructure problem. You can still buil…
Read story →There are still places in this country where the land tells the truth. You can stand at the edge of a small farm just after sunrise and see it plainly. Rows that don’t stretch for miles, but bend with the shape of the g…
Read story →People have spent my whole life calling Eastern Kentucky a poor place. They say it on the news. They say it in Frankfort. They say it every time we show up in a ranking nobody wants to be on. But I have never believed th…
Read story →For more than a hundred years, Eastern Kentucky carried America on its back. Our coal lit its homes, powered its factories, and built its wealth. We gave everything. The hills, the rivers, our health, and our people were…
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