Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right

by Arlie Russell Hochschild

  215 it was your sector, the free market, that was letting you down Citizens for Tax Justice, "Corporate Taxpayers and Corporate Tax Dodgers, 2008-2010," November 2011, http://ctj.org/ctjreports/2011/11/corporate_taxpayers_corporate_tax_dodgers_2008-2010.php. Most American companies also pay lower taxes in the U.S. than on their foreign operations.

  15: Strangers No Longer: The Power of Promise

  221 the rally at the Lakefront Airport in New Orleans According to Wall Street Journal commentator Gerald Seib, Trump is the "inheritor" of the Tea Party without fitting squarely into any of the conservative strands of thought it combines. Gerald Seib, "How Trump's Army Is Transforming the GOP," Wall Street Journal, February 23, 2016.

  225 "I'll press charges" CNN Politics, "Trump Ends Wild Day on Campaign Trail by Calling for Protesters' Arrests," March 13, 2016, http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/12/politics/donald-trump-protests. Also see "Next Time We See Him, We Might Have to Kill Him: Trump Fan on Punching Black Protester," RT.com, March 11, 2016, https://www.rt.com/usa/335188-trump-protester-punched-arrest.

  225 "I would have gone bum, bum, bum" Donald J. Trump, rally in Kansas City, Missouri, March 12, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owSn8IYQUks.

  225 "Were going to get rid of it in almost every form" Coral Davenport, "E.P.A. Faces More Tasks, Louder Critics, and a Shrinking Budget," New York Times, March 19, 2016.

  225 "We're not silent anymore" "Donald Trump Forcefully Removes Protesters from Louisiana Rally," Mic.com, March 5, 2016, http://mic.com/articles/137129/donald-trump-forcefully-removes-protesters-from-louisiana-rally.

  225 They gather to affirm their unity Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (New York: The Free Press, 1965 [1915]), 432; also page 417 on rites as a form of dramatic art and page 446 on scapegoating. Also see Rene Gerard, The Scapegoat (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1986).

  228 the reason for this shield of talk was to protect her elation The need to believe is poignantly and insightfully described by Leon Festinger, Henry W. Riechen, and Stanley Schachter in When Prophecy Fails (London: Pinter and Martin, 2008 [1956]).

  16: "They Say There Are Beautiful Trees"

  231 their names on waiting lists with thousands of others Chico Harlan, "Battered by Drop in Oil Prices and Jindal's Fiscal Policies, Louisiana Falls into Budget Crisis," Washington Post, March 4, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/04/the-debilitating-economic-disaster-louisi anas-governor-left-behind. Also see Campbell Robertson, "In Louisiana, the Poor Lack Legal Defense," New York Times, March 20, 2016.

  233 "hut for the technology and talent they supply" Richard Florida, "Is Life Better in America's Red States?" New York Times Sunday Review, January 3, 2015.

  233 Young conservatives are far more likely than their elders to care about the environment Amanda Little, "Will Conservatives Finally Embrace Clean Energy?" New Yorker, October 29, 2015.

  233 1969 Union Oil spill in the waters outside Santa Barbara, California Dan Fagin, Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation (New York: Bantam Books, 2013).

  233 since 2009 rates of air, water, and land pollution have been rising again across the nation Despite earlier progress, pollution trends in the nation as a whole have recently begun to rise. Toxic waste disposal in water has risen since 1988. Disposal in land has risen since 2009, and disposal in air and water has also gone up since 2009. County, state, and national trends for air, land, and water have mostly gone up in recent years. For the United States as a whole, total air emissions were 318,928,965.52 pounds in 2009 and 327,579,947 in 2012. As for water, in 2008, emissions were 12,165,940 pounds a year, and in 2012, 12,551,178. For injection wells, the figure in 2005 was 95,110,426 pounds deposited in the earth; in 2012 it was 96,246,373. For landfills, the figure was 74,721,866 pounds, but by 2013 it had risen to 78,374,459 pounds. Data from the Environmental Protection Agency's Toxics Release Inventory website can be found at http://www2.epa.gov/toxics-release-inventory-tri-program.

  235 Norwegians live upper-middle-class lives In 2014, Louisiana corporate income taxes yielded $481,212,000 in revenue, and severance taxes brought in $862,150,000. According to information from the Louisiana Legislative Auditor and the state Department of Revenue, however, Louisiana lost $2.4 billion because companies were offered large exemptions between 2000 and 2014 on oil severance taxes: Indeed, for three years it was hard to tell whether the oil companies paid anything to the state, since the job of auditing oil company payments was handed over to the Office of Mineral Resources, which has close ties with industry and which, between 2010 and 2013, performed no audits at all. U.S. Census Bureau, "State Government Tax Collections: 2014," Table STC005 (accessed December 11, 2015), http://factfinder.census.gov/bkmk/table/1.0/en/STC/2014/STC005. or (factfinder.census.gov/bkmk/table/1.0/en/STC/2014/STC005/0100000US) Institute for Southern Studies, "Looting Louisiana: How the Jindal Administration Is Helping Big Oil Rip Off a Cash-Strapped State," http://www.southernstudies.org/2015/05/looting-louisiana-how-the-jindal-administration-is.html. The report cites the Louisiana Department of Revenue's "Tax Exemption Budget, 2011-2012" and "Tax Exemption Budget 2014-2015."

  235 overall well-being that come with such affluence—they enjoy freedom from need Paradoxically, it is partly Norway's culture of ownership as well its belief in sharing the proceeds from oil with the citizenry that have led to its great wealth. The assistant director of the Norwegian Ministry of Oil and Energy, Mette Agerup, explained that Norway operated on the premise that "the oil company was the helper in harnessing the country's natural resources, but that the oil ultimately belongs to the nation." Kevin Grandia, "If Canada Is 'Oil Rich' Why Are We So in Debt?" DESMOGCANADA, March 5, 2013, http://www.desmog.ca/2013/02/28/if-canada-oil-rich-why-are-we-so-debt.

  236 divide those who "see the game as rigged and those who don't" Reich, Saving Capitalism, 188.

  237 The reds might be the Louisiana model, and to some degree, the blues are the California one Caroline Hanley and Michael T. Douglass, "High Road, Low Road or Off Road: Economic Development Strategies in the American States," Economic Development Quarterly (2014): I-10.

  237 there are ideas heyond either party yet to be born See Thomas Frank Listen Liberal, or What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? (New York: Metropolitan Press, 2016), and Joe Bageant, Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War (New York: Crown Books, 2007).

  238 So the Arenos were left as prisoners of their lost paradise, rememberers The suit was filed April 2, 1996, and dismissed in 2014. Harold Areno, et al. v. the Chemical Manufacturers Association, et al., 14th Judicial District Court, Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana. Harold Areno was one of twenty-two plaintiffs in the class-action petition for damages against PPG, Axiall, Citgo, Occidental Chemical, and Westlake Polymers, among others. As Mike Tritico explained in an e-mail, "with the failure of ATSDR (Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry) to confirm any significant chlorinated hydrocarbon problem in the area, the plaintiffs' attorneys had no way to prove any damages," Mike Tritico, e-mail to the author, July 27, 2015.

  238 a cleanup crew had been stirred into action Frank DiCesare, "Bayou d'Inde Cleanup to Begin This Month," American Press, February 16, 2015.

  238 place six inches of clean sediment on top of it The idea of cleaning up Bayou d'Inde died under the local authority of the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, where PPG "took the leadership." Right nearby, curiously, Bayou Verdine, a small tributary of the Calcasieu River, which, like Bayou d'Inde, flows through both residential and industrial areas, had been in the 1980s equally contaminated, and is now clean. That contamination had not been left to the companies themselves but to federal agencies—the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

  238 "As long as you reduce the chemical concentrations on the surface, you're okay" William Fontenot, e-mail to the author, December 16, 2013.

  242 the Texas state legislature effectively forbade any local bans of fracking and
waste disposal Mose Buchele, "After HB 40, What's Next for Local Drilling Rules in Texas?" Statelmpact, July 2, 2015, https://stateimpact.npr.org/texas/2015/07/02/after-hb-40-whats-next-for-local-drilling-bans-in-texas/.

  242 adamantly opposed bans on it Zaid Jilani, "Fracking Industry Billionaires Give Record $15 Million to Ted Cruz's Super PAC," Alternet, July 25, 2015, http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/fracking-industry-billionaires-give-record-15-million-ted-cruzs-super-pac.

  Appendix B: Politics and Pollution: National Discoveries from ToxMap

  251 and meanwhile, others living in the same state, two class levels higher, did vote as Republican Alex MacGillis, "Who Turned My Blue State Red," New York Times, November 20, 2015.

  252 TRI measures are called the Risk-Screening Environmental Indicators (RSEI) So the RSEI omits some sources of pollution—from car exhaust, for example.

  253 and one's political orientations generally Initially we tried to relate attitudes (from GSS) to exposure levels (from RSEI) based on zip codes. But some zip codes lacked information from RSEI. That is, RSEI offered information for some zip codes but reported no information for others. So we based our analysis on RSEI measures of exposure in counties (a larger area) instead of zip codes (a smaller one).

  Appendix C: Fact-Checking Common Impressions

  255 "welfare"—benefits that are income-needs based See "A Century of Welfare Spending," http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us_welfare_spending_40.html. Unemployment benefits spiked at 2.06 percent of GDP in 2010 and declined to 0.5 percent of GDP in 2015. Medicaid (medical care for the poor) has grown from 1 percent of GDP in the 1960s to 3 percent in 2015.

  255 in thirty-five states and the District of Columbia Ife Floyd and Liz Schott, "TANF Cash Benefits Have Fallen by More Than 20 Percent in Most States and Continue to Erode," Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (last updated October 15, 2015), http://www.cbpp.org/research/family-income-support/tanf-cash-benefits-have-fallen-by-more-than-20-percent-in-most-states.

  255 fallen steeply since then Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, "SNAP Costs and Caseloads Declining," February 10, 2016, http://www.cbpp.org/research/food-assistance/snap-costs-and-caseloads-declining. The data is based on USDA reports, the U.S. Census Bureau (resident population estimates and projections), and Congressional Budget Office data, using a January 2016 baseline.

  256 projected to fall to 1999 levels by 2016 Bobin Rudowitz, Laura Snyder, and Vernon K. Smith, "Medicaid Enrollment & Spending Growth: FY 2015 & 2016," Henry J. Kaiser Foundation, October 15, 2015, http://kff.org/medicaid/issue-brief/medicaid-enrollment-spending-growth-fy-2015-2016.

  256 based on 2010-2012 data, most work Ibid.; Louis Jacobson, "Are There More Welfare Recipients in the U.S. Than Full-Time Workers?" PunditFact, January 28, 2015, http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/jan/28/terry-jeffrey/are-there-more-welfare-recipients-us-full-time-wor (based on Census and Bureau of Labor statistics).

  256 Medicaid or Children's Health Insurance Program recipients Ken Jacobs, Ian Perry, and Jenifer MacGillvary, "The High Public Cost of Low Wages," April 13, 2015, under section entitled, "The High Cost of Low Wages," http://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/the-high-public-cost-of-low-wages.

  256 All Earned Income Tax Credit recipients work Jason Furman, Betsey Stevenson, and Jim Stock, "The 2014 Economic Report of the President," March 10, 2014, https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2014/03/10/2014-economic-report-president.

  256 among homecare workers, 48 percent did so Jacobs, Perry, and MacGillvary, "The High Public Cost of Low Wages." The Bureau of Labor Statistics produces a yearly "profile of the working poor." In 2013, the BLS found that 5.1 million families in the United States were living below the poverty level, despite having at least one member in the labor force for half the year or more. The "working-poor rate"—the ratio of the working poor to all individuals in the labor force for at least twenty-seven weeks—was 7.7 percent for families (which the BLS defines as a group of two or more people residing together who are related by birth, marriage, or adoption). The count of families used in their report includes only primary families. A primary family consists of the reference person (householder) and all people living in the household who are related to the reference person. Families are classified either as married-couple families or as those maintained by men or women without spouses present. Bureau of Labor Statistics, A Profile of the Working Poor, 2013 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Labor, 2015), http://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/cps/a-profile-of-the-working-poor-2013.pdf.

  For the racial composition of working-poor families, see Deborah Povich, Brandon Roberts, and Mark Mather, Low-Income Working Families: The Racial/Ethnic Divide (Working Poor Families Project and Population Reference Bureau, 2015), http://www.workingpoorfamilies.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/WPFP-2015-Report_Racial-Ethnic-Divide.pdf.

  256 the rest was payment for work According to the Congressional Budget Office, in 2011 (the latest available), households in the lowest quintile of income (adjusted for household size) received an average of $9,100 in government transfers (cash payments and in-kind benefits from social insurance and other government assistance programs from federal, state, and local governments); that amounts to about 37 percent of an average pre-tax income of $24,600. Congressional Budget Office, The Distribution of Household Income and Federal Taxes, 2011 (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Budget Office, 2014), https://www.cbo.gov/publication/49440, 2.

  256 26.2 percent did not participate Shelley K. Irving and Tracy A. Loveless, Dynamics of Economic Well-Being: Participation in Government Programs, 2009-2012: Who Gets Assistance? (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Census Bureau, 2015), http://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2015/demo/p70-141.pdf.

  256—257 the ratio is four TANF recipients to every one hundred poor people See Figure 2 of Ife Floyd, Ladonna Pavetti, and Liz Schott, "TANF Continues to Weaken as a Safety Net," Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, updated October 27, 2015, http://www.cbpp.org/research/family-income-support/tanf-continues-to-weaken-as-a-safety-net.

  257 for white women it was 1.75 David J. Drozd, Trends in Fertility Rates hy Race and Ethnicity for the U.S. and Nebraska: 1989 to 2013 (University of Nebraska at Omaha: Center for Public Affairs Research, 2015), http://www.unomaha.edu/college-of-public-affairs-and-community-service/center-for-public-affairs-research/news/fertility-rate-gap.php. In 2010, the averages were 2.0 children per black woman and 1.8 children per white woman; see Mark Mather, Fact Sheet: The Decline in U.S. Fertility (Washington, D.C.: Population Reference Bureau, 2012), http://www.prb.org/publications/datasheets/2012/world-population-data-sheet/fact-sheet-us-population.aspx; U.S. Census Bureau, 5-Year American Community Survey 12009-2013 data] (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Census, 2013). According to the Census's American Community Survey data from 2013, for the United States as a whole, the birth rate per 1,000 women is 59 for non-Hispanic white women, 58 for black women. The rate for poor women (women ages fifteen to fifty who have some form of poverty status) is 56 per 1,000 women. In Louisiana, the birth rate for non-Hispanic white women is 53 per 1,000 women, and 61 for black women. For poor women, it is 58 per 1,000 women.

  257 were employed in the civilian sector Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Employment Statistics [2014 data] (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Labor, 2014) (accessed September 2, 2014), http://stats.bls.gov/ces/#data.

  257 An additional 1 percent Defense Manpower Data Center, Personnel, Workforce Reports & Publications (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Defense, 2014) (accessed November 25, 2014), https://www.dmdc.osd.mil /appj/dwp/dwp_reports.jsp.

  257 In addition, 9.8 percent of workers—including public school teachers—work for local government Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Employment Statistics [2014 data], 257 private sector workers earn 12 percent more than their public sector counterparts David Cooper, Mary Gable, and Algernon Austin, "The Public-Sector Jobs Crisis: Women and African Americans Hit Hardest by Job Losses in State and Local Governments," Economic Policy Institute, May 2, 201
2, http://www.epi.org/publication/bp339-public-sector-jobs-crisis (see Keefe, 2010, cited in Cooper, Gable, and Austin).

  258 In the public sector they earn 2 percent less than whites; in the private sector, 13 percent less Among black public sector workers, in two out of five categories of education, blacks earn less than comparable whites (high school degree and some college)—and that accounts for most black public sector workers. Publicly employed black high school dropouts and those with a BA or advanced degree earn slightly more than their white counterparts, but very few blacks fit those categories (see Cooper, Gable, and Austin, "The Public-Sector Jobs Crisis," Table 4).

  258 Actually, it does not See the review of environmental regulation by Eban Goodstein, Jobs and the Environment: The Myth of a National Trade-Off (Washington, D.C.: Economic Policy Institute, 1994). Also see Michael Porter and C. Van der Linde, "Toward a New Conception of the Environment-Competitiveness Relationship," Journal of Economic Perspectives 9, no. 4 (1995): 97—118. Porter and Van der Linde argue that properly designed environmental regulations could lead to so much innovation they could completely offset costs of compliancc. For a recent review of the literature, see John Irons and Isaac Shapiro, Regulation, Employment, and the Economy: Fears of Job Loss Are Overblown (Washington, D.C.: Economic Policy Institute, 2011).

  258 stronger environmental standards have not limited the relative pace of economic growth Stephen M. Meyer, "Environmentalism and Economic Prosperity: An Update," working paper, Department of Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1993): I-10. See also Stephen Meyer, "Endangered Species Listings and State Economic Performance," Project on Environmental Politics 8t Policy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (March 1995); J.R. Bliese, The Great "Environment Versus Economy" Myth (New York: Brownstone Policy Institute, 1999).