The Blue Ridge Breakdown

Troy N. Miller
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Breaking down the breakdowns. blueridgebreakdown.substack.com

  1. MAR 21

    Water, Water Everywhere... and Not a Drop to Drink (w/ Maria Russo, WV Rivers Policy Specialist)

    The 2026 West Virginia legislative session is over, but the fight over water, land, and local control is far from settled. In this conversation, I’m joined by Maria Russo, policy specialist with West Virginia Rivers Coalition, for a post-mortem on what lawmakers did—and failed to do—on flood resiliency, drinking water infrastructure, above-ground storage tanks, and the growing threat posed by high-impact data centers. From southern West Virginia’s ongoing clean water crisis to the Eastern Panhandle’s battle over farmland and opaque development deals, this is a conversation about what West Virginians are being asked to sacrifice, who gets to decide, and why the state’s most precious resources still too often come second to outside profit. The Legislative Session Ends Troy Miller: All right, March 20th as we’re recording this. And so the West Virginia legislative session is officially done, which means we could have a post mortem on it. And here to talk about that, and I’ve been looking forward to this conversation for some time, is Maria Russo, who is a policy specialist with West Virginia Rivers at wvrivers.org. We had Than Hitt on back in September to talk about more of the science side of what we could expect looking forward into the legislative session. And now we can see what actually happened because I don’t know, Maria, it seems to me like the legislative session starts and everybody has some sort of idea of what bills are. You know, some of them are hopeful, some of them, many of them are awful. And then the committees and everything happens, it starts really gearing up, and it’s really easy to lose track of things unless you’re paying attention to particular pieces of legislation. So first of all, thank you for joining us on the Blue Ridge Breakdown today. Maria Russo: Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It’s nice to be here on this first day of spring. So thanks for having me. Troy Miller: It is the first day of spring. And I have to say, I know there’s nothing more you’d rather be doing on a sunny 60 degree day Friday than sitting here and recording with me virtually. Maria Russo: Yes, exactly. Troy Miller: So you’re welcome for the opportunity. And with that, what. Can you just give me kind of a summary of some of the bills that were. That were. You were watching what some of the outcomes may have been and, you know, start wherever. I also have West Virginia Rivers’ policy brief from a week or so ago here. So we’ll go. We’ll use that as a rubric if nothing else. Maria Russo’s Overview of the 2026 Session Maria Russo: Awesome. That sounds great. Yeah. So we are coming off of the 2026 legislative session. It’s always kind of like a process to figure out what just happened because everything, like you said, is moving really quickly. There’s a lot that happens, there’s a lot of conversations that happen, and sometimes we see some progress made and sometimes we see setbacks, and sometimes we see nothing at all happen on some pretty serious topics. So yeah, I feel like I’m still kind of chewing on what this session was defined by and kind of what we’re left with. I would say overall, this session was a little slower than what we’ve seen in the past. I think in past years we have seen, especially the Senate, the last few years we have seen the Senate come out of the gate and pass like 30, 40 bills, like right off the bat. And we just didn’t really see that this year. We really saw a slower ramping up of this session. So I think that can kind of tell you a little bit of the tone that we saw. And so, you know, in some ways that works in our favor with some of the issues we’re pushing for because we have a little more time to work with legislators on the front end of things when session kicks off. But sometimes it can work against us too, because we saw a lot of bills die right around crossover day, which is of course this huge day where bills that start in the House have to be over in the Senate and vice versa. So we saw a lot of, like, you know, pretty big pieces of legislation die, and we do every year, but I think there was a lot more that kind of moved slowly this year. So that was kind of surprising for me because I feel like, and don’t get me wrong, it was still fast, a lot still took place early on, but it was kind of a different tone, I think, this year in the session. So I think that’s good, like, context to start off. Troy Miller: Absolutely. Maria Russo: As far as our specific issues I’ll jump into a little bit. We went in with some pretty clear priorities at West Virginia Rivers Coalition. So we went in asking for funding in the Flood Resiliency Trust Fund. This is a fund that was formally created in 2023 after the state had created some flood plans. But there was never a real structure to make some of that happen. We have seen tremendous flooding in West Virginia over the years, and this flood fund was kind of created to, in theory, get money to communities for both proactive flood mitigation and flood response, but we have never seen any dollars put into it. So a really big priority going in was to get some funding into that fund to actually make it useful. A second big priority we had was around water infrastructure. We have kind of all heard at this point that southern West Virginia is really struggling with some of their water infrastructure. Most people do not have access to clean and safe drinking water. So we were really hoping for that to be something that crossed the line of crossover day. We also are keeping a really close eye on data centers. So coming out of last year’s legislative session, you know, we had this huge House Bill 2014 that passed that kind of set the rules of the game for data centers. This year, those rules were actually put into place. So we were following that process very closely to figure out what was in those rules, what was not in those rules, and how can we affect any change on. On them in that data center build out process. So that was a big one. Another area we had was Ohio river restoration. So there is kind of a lack of federal funding for the Ohio river area. So I live over in the Chesapeake Bay watershed region, and there’s quite a bit of funding that comes from the federal level. There’s none that goes to the Ohio River. And so we were really working with legislators to try to flag some support there, which we can get into a little bit more. And then kind of the last piece that I’ll cover is we generally have a grounding value of just clean water. So we’re constantly watching for any bills that might pop up that threaten that. And year after year, we see the Above Ground Storage Tank Act come under fire. This is a bill that passed, or this is an act that was established after the 2014 water crisis, where one of these storage tanks leaked into water and left a lot of West Virginians without safe water. And so we see it kind of under attack every year. We saw that happen again. And there were some big, big outcomes there, which I’m happy to get more into. So that’s kind of the overview of what we were looking at going into session. And I’d love to pause and just hear from you, like, what direction should we take it? What are you. What are you most interested in hearing? Water, Geography, and the Reality of West Virginia Troy Miller: I want to, I want to take the opportunity because from my background when I went to university and all this, one of the things I really realized is that economics without geography, geographic understanding is really kind of a vacuous effort, you know, and this is one of those key things, right. West Virginia is the only state that is completely in the Appalachian, Appalachian mountain range, which means that basically everywhere is floodable. Whether you’re, you know, there’s. There’s always. There’s downstream from the mountains, everywhere there are valleys and rivers. The entire state is basically bound by rivers. The Ohio river on one side, where I’m from, very dear to my heart. I’m from upstream. So not as. As dire as some of the stuff in Parkersburg and Huntington. The long term is Dow dupont repercussions of industry. And this is for listeners who aren’t necessarily in West Virginia. Better understanding. And so there’s kind of this paradox of like water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink if you’re in the coal fields, you know, like you’re constantly under threat of these. The flood resiliency that hasn’t been invested in. When I was running for office a couple years ago, I know I was one of the candidates who was boldly saying, like, climate change is happening and I hated having to go. I’m not here to discuss whether CO2 is driving it. I’m here to make sure that when are that our legislature is addressing the ways that things are changing. The fact that the atmosphere can hold 7% more moisture with every degree centigrade of warming means that these storms can bring down that much more. And in West Virginia, where some of our development has been mountaintop removal, even in places like Wheeling, you know, the Highlands is basically a big mountaintop removal project. They cut off the top of a mountain, didn’t do adequate drainage. And that’s how you ended up with the floods in Tridelphia last year. That, you know, this torrent of water coming down a hill, that can happen anywhere in West Virginia. And at the same time, our potable water resources, our groundwater resources are relatively scarce and are being threatened by these data centers. And I would actually like to get in because I think you’re one of the people who I think understands HB 2014 better than most, was really kind of on the front lines of working with, not only trying to prevent it from being passed as it was, but then making sure that the rulemaking following that did put some sort of guardrails on these things. Because basically

    43 min

  2. MAR 7

    Bowzer: 2026 Elections, Social Security, and the Fight for American Democracy

    A conversation with Social Security Works PAC president Jon “Bowzer” Bauman on the 2026 election map, the future of Social Security and Medicare, rural political anger, media consolidation, and why the rule of law may be an existential question at this moment. In this episode of The Blue Ridge Breakdown, host Troy Miller speaks with Jon “Bowzer” Bauman—president of Social Security Works PAC and longtime advocate for protecting and expanding Social Security and Medicare. Their conversation ranges from the 2026 elections to the politics of rural America, media power, fiscal commissions, and the future of democracy in the United States. Get full access to The Blue Ridge Breakdown at blueridgebreakdown.substack.com/subscribe

    55 min

  3. FEB 28

    The Left Lost the People. From Fayetteville to France. What Do We Want To Win?

    As authoritarianism and far-right politics gain ground in the United States and across Europe and beyond, what’s clear is that this is not a uniquely American crisis. In this episode of The Blue Ridge Breakdown, I’m joined by journalist and author Cole Stangler, whose reporting spans both U.S. and French politics, to talk about: the global rise of the far right, the left’s loss of working-class support, and what lessons can be drawn across borders. From West Virginia’s labor history to France’s Yellow Vest movement, from FDR and Thomas Paine to today’s failures of neoliberal politics, this conversation asks a simple but urgent question: what do we want—and what will it take to win? Troy Miller:So as I was thinking about this intro and first, fascism being on, you know, now here in America, I was about to say, like, oh, you know, when Trump was elected, all these Americans were like, oh, I’m going to move to France and get away from the authoritarianism and the fascism. And then I thought, no, that was going on in 2015 and 16 too. So. And then I thought, actually, this has been going on since at least George W. Bush in the Iraq war. I remember Americans being like, “I’m going to flee to Europe. That’s so much better over there. They have universal healthcare, just like, it’s a better situation. And there I’ll live happily eating baguettes and drinking wine or whatever, or if you’re in Germany, eating wurst and drinking beer in the beer garden.” And it’s painfully clear to me that authoritarianism and fascism is on the rise everywhere. And Europe is no exception. It has a slightly different form across different countries in Europe. And because it’s a parliamentary system, it’s been a different kind of road to power. But let’s not kind of delude ourselves into thinking, oh, the grass is so much greener over there. So to really highlight this and talk about this, my friend Cole Stangler is joining us now. He is the author of several books, including—I’ll call it The American Mirror, because I don’t speak French and I will end up butchering the French pronunciation otherwise. His previous book is Paris Is Not Dead. You can find that one in English. The American Mirror will create enough demand here with this program that we’ll get it published in English. He is also the host of the new program, What Do We Want? Conversations with the International Left. Cole, thanks for taking the time and joining us today. Cole Stangler:Yes, my pleasure. Thanks so much for having me, Troy. Troy Miller:Yeah, it’s an important conversation. I should say off the bat that one of the reasons we’re having this conversation is because you covered my campaign two years ago as part of your book The American Mirror. And so with that full disclosure. Okay. You were writing that book during the election, and so it’s kind of tough to see the outcome at that point, but I think there were hints of it. The first two questions, and I’m not supposed to ask compound questions, but I’m going to, are, what did you learn from the process of writing the book and how has the information changed? How has your view changed in the year and a half since, or the year and three months or so since the election and take that any way you’d like? Cole Stangler:Sure, yeah. I mean, I think maybe if I could, if I could quickly, I’ll answer the question. But I think just to respond to your intro, which I think you’re spot on, we’ve been dealing with this threat of the far right for quite some time in Europe. I’ll speak more about France, which is what I know. I’ve been living in France for almost 10 years now. It’s gone by very quickly. So we do have this, I think generally speaking, you know, the European way of life, I think is something worth defending. Maybe we can get a chance to talk about that later. I think, like it is actually, you know, advantage that we have, you know, universal and at least extremely low cost health care that’s largely provided by the state, you know, paid sick leave, et cetera, down the list. I think all that is worth defending. But I think you’re about the 2024 campaign. You’re right. We talked and I’ve known you since before that as well, Troy. I don’t know how much full disclosure you want to give, but I know Troy very, very well. But I think in 2024, when we met, as you pointed out, this was not a—you kind of see the writing on the wall. I met with people in Washington, D.C. at the time, a congresswoman, and you could already sense that Trump, or at least the Democrats, were not looking in a super good position for November of that year. But what sort of surprised me the most, I would say part of the book, The American Mirror, is that I was looking at the ways in which America can help us understand French politics and some of the transformations in Europe. And one of the trends that I think is essential, and I think, I think you talk about this as well, Troy, is that the left has lost a big chunk, not all of it, but a big chunk of the kind of working class voters that used to vote for it in the past. That’s true in the United States, that’s true in Europe. We’ve seen that with the Democratic Party. So that, to me is, I think, the ultimate question. In some ways, it’s really the only question I care about. I think it’s the one question that I’m obsessed with that I think matters, is what can the left do to win back these kind of working class voters that used to vote for it. In cities, the left does decently well, but you leave large urban areas and it’s catastrophic. And that’s true in the United States, as you know. It’s also unfortunately, increasingly true in France. And so all this to say when I was in, that was part of why I wanted to come to a state like West Virginia, someone who’s interested in the labor movement. Not without romanticizing things too much, but a little bit of romanticization is good, I think, and healthy. Right. West Virginia plays this such an important part in the history of the labor movement with the miners, the UMWA also. Right. I was in the northern part of the state where, you know, you had the, the steelworkers, you know, used to be, used to be present quite—they’re still there, but used to be more prominent, the USW. And so all this to say what I learned is that I think I’ve always thought that unions were so important for kind of providing this connection between Democrats and, let’s say the left more generally, progressives and working class people, especially outside of urban areas. The decline of unionism explains this problem so well. And so what I kind of was surprised to find on the ground is that even in some of these places, I was in the southern part of the state after we met in Mingo County and—right—the UMWA is, is, is, is right. The decline of the UMWA explains in large part the, the biggest boost in Republican vote shares there. But I think what I learned is that, you know, the, the, the, it’s not like everyone was voting for the Democrats in the first place. You know, when the UMWA was there, like it always was more divided. And so this is, you know, maybe a more kind of nuanced answer, but understanding that even when the union was there, it wasn’t as if everyone was bought into sort of, you know, supporting the union and supporting Democrats. It was still seen as sort of a kind of polarizing topic. But I’ll take the polarization over the, over the, you know, not having any left or no unions or no Democrats at all. So what does that mean? I think for us moving forward, it’s that like being realistic about, like, what does it mean if we have a more robust, stronger labor movement on the ground? Maybe it means that we don’t convince everyone, but, but it’s important to be there. And, you know, it’s better, like I said, better to have a polarized kind of situation than to not exist at all. So in some ways it shattered some of my kind of romantic illusions about kind of the golden era of the UMWA. But. But they were there, right? And the Democrats were being elected because of them in large part. So I think I’ve gone on for too long about the first. Troy Miller:No, no, no, that’s great. And what I’ll, I’ll start off by saying by adding to your full disclosure of how long we’ve known each other, because I, you know, when we were freshmen in college, I think you were the first person I met who was talking about Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter with Kansas? And I think that is, you know, so you’ve been wrestling with this problem for a long time, so to speak. Or, you know, not so to speak. No, for a long time. You know, we’re looking at 15 years now at least, and longer. But in any case, the question of how did Democrats lose unions? How did Democrats, you know, also is the other thing in America, I think, and I’ll add to West Virginia’s labor history, that next year marks the 150th anniversary of the nation’s first or real one of the only general strike, starting here in Martinsburg with the railroad unions. And one of those amazing things where, yeah, they tried to put down the strike, but it spread so fast that when they tried to deploy federal soldiers, the rails are all done. You know, worker solidarity gets the goods. It’s really hard to stop workers who make everything move in the country from getting what they want at that point. And I think that’s one of the things that is a difference between the left in America right now and the left in Europe. You know, there’s always these calls for general strikes. Oh, let’s just grind the American economy to a halt. But the fractured nature of labor in America and the fractured nature of society in America make that, I feel like a much harder hill to climb than in France. And one of the people kind of miss about the Gilet Jaune movement, the yellow vest movement, that those were

    47 min

  4. FEB 10

    Congress Cut Medicaid to Fund ICE — and Left WV's Legislature to Foot the Bill

    Republicans in Congress gutted health care funding to expand Trump’s “papers please” goon squad, and now states like West Virginia are left to absorb the fallout, forced to decide whether to slash essential services or scramble to replace billions in lost federal dollars. In this conversation, I’m joined by Mindy Renae Holcomb of West Virginia Citizen Action Group to unpack what that tradeoff looks like on the ground: who pays the price, why so-called “optional” services aren’t optional at all, and what’s still at stake as the legislative session barrels forward.This transcript has been generated with machine and human input and errors are likely. Troy Miller So we are halfway done, just about halfway done with the West Virginia legislative session, which is, for people who don’t know, a 60-day session. We are a part-time legislature here in West Virginia. And so it’s a, it’s a little bit of time to cram in a lot of chicanery and robbery and bad ideas and all of this from income tax cuts that we can’t afford to taking any sort of regulations off of private schools while cracking down and making sure the public schools have to do more with less. All of these things. If you know it is. In summary, it is impossible, I think for any single person to be able to follow everything that’s going on in the legislature. So with that as backdrop, I do find that you can follow some groups including West Virginia Citizen Action Group and which in who employ my next guest, Mindy Renae Holcomb. Mindy Renae Holcomb, who is their organizing manager, healthcare lead over at West Virginia Citizens Action Group and she joins us now. So thank you Mindy, first of all for taking the time here. Mindy Renae Holcomb Oh absolutely. Thanks for having me. Troy Miller Always a pleasure. Okay. With all of that is kind of the background about what may or may not be going on down there. What is you’re the organizing. I’m sorry, I have to get it right. Organizing manager at healthcare lead. So let’s really focus in on that angle. What, what do we have going on? What are you paying attention to? What is particularly bad or particularly good? Take it from there, if you will. Mindy Renae Holcomb Well, yeah, we’re, we’re watching for of course any vaccination adjustments that they, that may be made. You know, reduction in requirements simply because West Virginia has one of the, if not the top vaccination program in the country. It’s one of the good things we are known for and we want to keep that. We want to keep our state healthy. And so we are definitely watching that pretty closely. We’re also watching for things that we will reduce because of the HR1 is which how I simply just demand on referring to it instead of the one big beautiful bill, the big ugly bill is how I I big ugly nasty bill. Yeah. That anything that’s going to reduce any services that are associated with Medicaid, particularly because that is, you know, we have a high population in West Virginia who utilizes Medicaid. We’ve already had the disaster of the, well, this is separate from Medicaid, but the enhanced premium tax credits that got, did not get renewed and those helped lower lower middle class folks afford plans on the exchange on the marketplace. And those have pretty, that, that up in Washington, D.C. that’s pretty much been dropped. So we’ve seen a drastic reduction of folks who are utilizing the marketplace. And I think, you know, even though it’s, you know, because of everything else that’s exploded in D.C. we still need to put pressure on our representatives there to, you know, because this is such an important program and it’s vitally important to West Virginians. So I’m not ready to pull the plug on anything being done. Obviously, it’s not going to help anyone this year, but I think we need to continue to bang that drum so that we can get people back on, get people insured and get them the care that they rightfully deserve. Troy Miller Yeah. And I’ll just say on that front, I think it’s starting to become clearer in people’s actual lives what we were, you know, screaming about last year when all of this was being either inaction on the part of the enhanced tax subsidies or the enhanced subsidies or action in the terms of just gutting rural health systems. And then, you know, saying, oh, here’s, here’s what, $200 million, that whatever it is, that’s a, that’s a band aid for under the amputation after you cut billions out. And we’re seeing like, you know, local business owners here in Jefferson County. There are a number of them who I know have said my family could no longer afford the, the coverage we need. And we’re going to piece it. Well, you know, we’ll try to piece it together, but please call your Congress, your Congress critters here in West Virginia. Yeah, that is huge. And to really hammer it home, West Virginia is also one of the states with the highest rates of people living with disabilities. And so there’s this whole article or feature over at PBS NewsHour a couple of weeks ago, particularly about how people with disabilities are going to bear the burden of these Medicaid funding cuts more than other people with disabilities in rural areas are going to disproportionately impact it. And it really pissed me off when I saw a couple of it must have been last month that our Congress people didn’t even manage to get us like the per person, per-rural-patient the same amount of revenue or the same amount of incoming funds to make up the Medicaid cap as, like, rural New York or rural Connecticut. Which just boggles my mind that we have such bad negotiators in Congress who are willing to just. I mean, with Shelley, her son got an appointment to the federal prosecutor’s office or the representing this dish. So, you know, cool, I guess, for them, but for the rest of us in West Virginia. Yeah. And it’s up to the. It’s up to our state legislature now to either exacerbate this problem through inaction or to start to address the problem from the state level. What are you looking at in terms of that? I know that there are some. There have been some movement that might even have some bipartisan support to, like, not totally hose all of us, but correct me if I’m wrong. Mindy Renae Holcomb Well, what we are concerned about is that Morrissey has said, don’t ask for any state funds to supplement or not supplement, but replace federal funds. So that’s going to put us in a pretty hard, hard way. And also, one of the ways that they are going to have. That they’re going to have to look at this is by cutting optional services. And that would be dental care that we fought so hard to get for West Virginia. I’m really worried about how IDD waiver is going to survive this. That is considered an optional service. So for those that don’t, there are services that are absolutely required under federal mandate for Medicaid. Anything else that is provided through the states is considered optional, and they aren’t what we would consider optional. Troy Miller Right, right. And I just want to ask you to elaborate on IDD a little bit. Mindy Renae Holcomb What is it for sure, Intellectual, developmental disabilities. So folks that have, you know, autism, that need additional care, those who have other, you know, disabilities that affect their ability to work, go to school, that need extra services in order to allow them to live a full life and participate fully in school and in work. Those services can be cut, eliminated. I mean, I’m not trying to put the fear out there, but it’s just. Troy Miller It could be right, something, as you were about to say, they’re not optional for the families, you know. Mindy Renae Holcomb Exactly. Troy Miller These services need to be. Especially, I mean, with dental, it really puts the nail on the head. Like, I’m sorry, we all have teeth. You know, it’s not really an optional thing to take care of them or not. And they’re a big indicator for our general health. Mindy Renae Holcomb 100%. Troy Miller And it’s only because the dentistry lobby has been so effective in America of sectioning themselves off from the rest of healthcare that this is even a discussion. Which is why, right. We don’t have any sort of. Well, we don’t have any universal healthcare, but there’s not even a requirement for dental services on private insurance to cover any damn thing. Basically, it’s all very patchwork, which is why we see commercials on the TV for this type of dental insurance and this type of supplemental dental insurance and all of this. Which is just mind boggling in the richest country in the world at the richest time in our history that we’ve turned an industry into. Hey, do you have teeth? Do you not want them to fall out of your head? Great. You can pay for this extra insurance for it. You know, that’s absurd. And our governor has, of course, he’s not going to supplement the funds with what we actually need. And as I pointed out back then and in past years, these are federally matched funds a lot of the time. So it’s not just, you know, we’re not just cutting the spending by $1, we’re cutting it by $2 to $3 a lot of the time. Just right out of our system and right out of the care that, yeah, West Virginians need just as much as anyone. What else do we have going on down in the legislature? Watch on YouTube, Like and Subscribe! Mindy Renae Holcomb Well, you know, I would argue more. So we have a very aging population. We have a very sick population. So, you know, I would put the argument out there that, you know, I have said from the beginning of HR1 that West Virginia will suffer the most out of anyone in the nation. And I still stand by that statement. And we seem to have a lot of folks who, you know, in our legislature who are prioritizing other pet projects or, you know, I’m just going to name it. And this is me speaking as M

    49 min

  5. JAN 15

    Thom Hartmann Breaks It Down: Oligarchy vs. Democracy, From Mesopotamia 11000 BC to Minneapolis 2026

    At a moment when democracy itself feels increasingly fragile at home and abroad, I sat down with Thom Hartmann to talk about power, oligarchy, and what he calls “humanity’s ancient way of living.” We discuss the historical roots of democracy, the rise of modern technocratic elites, the long arc from the New Deal to Project 2025, and why the struggle between democracy and authoritarianism is not new, but newly urgent. This conversation is wide-ranging, candid, and grounded in history, with an eye toward what comes next. Below is a transcript generated in part using Alice.ai and ChatGPT. You can watch and listen to The Blue Ridge Breakdown across the internet This conversation is available on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify, with clips and highlights on Troy’s Instagram. Troy MillerThom Hartmann is America’s number one progressive talk radio host. You can find him daily from noon to 3 Eastern, 9 to noon Pacific, pretty much anywhere you can find radio, or progressive radio at that. And he’s the New York Times bestselling author of dozens of books, one of which is The Hidden History of American Democracy: Rediscovering Humanity’s Ancient Way of Living, another of which is The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, which I’m very proud to have worked on the updated edition of. Before we get too much further: Thom, welcome back to The Blue Ridge Breakdown. Thanks for joining us. Thom HartmannThanks, Troy. It’s always nice to hang out with you. My cat says hi, too. Troy MillerThom, as we’re recording this on January 14, 2026, I see basically everywhere I look, from the sort of intraparty Democratic level out to the streets of Minneapolis, out to the streets of Venezuela, this sort of existential question of: are we, the people, going to be in charge of our future here? Are we going to be able to do something about the existential crises of machine learning, artificial intelligence, automation, all of this? The existential crisis of climate change? Elon Musk has said that don’t bother squirreling away money anymore for retirement because in 10 or 20 years it’ll be irrelevant. Says a guy who’s about to be a trillionaire. And in the streets of Minneapolis, I think we’re seeing the same sort of thing play out, whether we’re going to have a bunch of masked bandits who are accountable only to Kristi Noem and Donald Trump basically roaming the streets and deciding who is ripe for violence, or whether we’re going to take control of our country. And the parallels—I see the end of the Roman Republic into the Empire stages. I see the British, the Boston Massacre has been coming to mind as I look at Minneapolis. FDR talked about in one of his inaugural addresses: we fought the enemy without in the American Revolution; we fought the enemy within in the Civil War; and at the time, FDR was saying that we were again confronting the enemy without with Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany and imperialist Japan. I think we’re facing the enemy within again today. So with all of that, one of the reasons I really wanted to talk to you today, and in the midst of all of this, is that you have literally written a book on American democracy and rediscovering humanity’s ancient way of living. So with all of that as primer, what do you mean when you’re talking about reclaiming humanity’s ancient way of living, for one? And for two, what do we have with American democracy? How is this so special? Why is this so special? Thom HartmannYeah, well, I mean, what we have right now is increasingly oligarchy in the United States, unfortunately. But yeah, democracy is the oldest operating system for humanity. Virtually every aboriginal or Indigenous tribe around the world is organized democratically or something close to it. That’s the system that the founders of this country—Madison and Jefferson and Franklin in particular—they were the three who had a lot of interactions with Native Americans as they were growing up and throughout their lives, particularly Jefferson and Franklin. And what they observed was democracy actually happening in these communities, the largest of which, of course, was the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. And so this message—that there is a way that humans can live where power flows from the bottom up, not the top down, where government derives its authority from the consent of the governed, to quote the Declaration of Independence—it’s a principle that really, really resonates with people. And it has, all around the world, over and over and over again, at least in the modern era, the last 200 years, changed governments and changed the way people live. There’s always been a dynamic tension. You could argue that the rise of—well, in fact, Daniel Quinn makes this argument very cogently in his book Ishmael, which is a novel, but it’s just brilliant. I used to know Dan before he passed away—that we were always largely democratic prior to the agricultural revolution. And what happened with the agricultural revolution was suddenly we went from basically everybody being involved in food production—mostly the men hunting, mostly the women gathering, but nonetheless everybody involved in food production—to a very small number of people being in charge of food production, those being the farmers. And the farmers quickly discovered that they could lock up the food. And because without food, after a couple of weeks you die, or a couple of months depending on what your stores are like in your body, this became the power of life or death. And thus came the original kings and kingdoms. It was all based on locking up the food, on controlling the critical resources—food, water, transportation, stuff like that. So I think in that context you could make the argument that the post-agricultural revolution era from 7,000 years ago up until about 200 years ago was an argument for oligarchy and kingdom and authoritarian governance. Because everybody said all these advances that we made from the Stone Age literally to the modern technological age happened during times of kings and kingdoms and emperors and princes and all that kind of stuff. I’ve heard that argument made over and over again throughout the years. And the corollary argument, which was being made in a big way during FDR’s time, was that if you try to insert too much democracy, you’re going to end up with chaos. This was Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind. And I think what we’ve found, what we’ve learned, is that even—or particularly maybe with the experiment of democracy in the United States and in northern Europe—high levels of democracy, high levels of diffusion of power, high levels of participatory democracy, where power flows from the bottom up, actually enhance the growth of economies and enhance the development of innovation and things like that. But there’s always been this dynamic tension between democracy and autocracy. And the autocrats—you’ve got right-wing billionaires. One famously said he’s increasingly convinced that democracy and freedom are incompatible. That was, I believe, Peter Thiel. You’ve got others saying women shouldn’t have—well, again, it was Peter Thiel—saying the biggest mistake we made was letting women vote. These are very powerful and influential people. J.D. Vance wouldn’t be vice president without Peter Thiel. And so there’s this broad skepticism about democracy among the tech bros and the dark-enlightenment figures. And I see that as probably the biggest challenge that we have going forward, outside of the Trump administration’s naked attempts to turn us into a dictatorship. Troy MillerRight. I mean, I honestly see these guys in the wings basically just allowing Trump to have a nice big playpen of whatever, knowing that he’ll be gone soon enough and then they’ll be able to implement whatever they want. And Peter Thiel has also said basically that he doesn’t know why he should have to go and appeal to people who are never going to agree with him. Let’s use technology to basically go around the institutions of politics and the democratic system and our legislation. And I’ve been saying since Project 2025 was leaked, as I recall, that this is nothing more than a blueprint for what the Powell Memo laid out in 1973 that can be implemented as swiftly as humanly possible, so there’s no potential for pushback—or it can be done swiftly enough behind Donald Trump’s chaos. But I also now see that I think they—the tech billionaires in large part, but also Singer on Wall Street and all of it—it’s the classic villains, ironically enough. And I think now they’re basically trying not only to undo the New Deal and the Great Society, which were the goals of Project 2025, but to take us all the way back to pre-Civil War America, where you can have basically a feudalized system, but the feudal system this time is a technocracy. What do you think about that? Thom HartmannI would argue that to the extent that’s the trajectory that they’re pursuing—and I would not disagree with the argument, although I’d add some nuance—I would argue that what they’re trying to do is recreate the Confederacy. What you had in 1810, 1820, the South was pretty much like the North politically. And what happened was Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin in 1797 and started marketing it in the 1810s. One machine could do the work of 50 enslaved people. It was also very expensive. And so only the biggest plantations could afford it. They got massive economies of scale, which I think is analogous to the assembly line with Henry Ford and to AI and search technology today. That technological change wiped out their small competitors and turned people into sharecroppers. People had to sell their land to the big plantations and then continue to live on that land and work it on behalf of the plantation owners. By the mid-1840s, democracy in the South had completely ended. Th

    31 min

  6. JAN 8

    January 6, FDR, and the Fight for the Four Freedoms -- with historian Harvey J. Kaye

    January 6, FDR, and the Fight for the Four Freedoms In this episode of The Blue Ridge Breakdown, host Troy Miller is joined by historian Professor Harvey J. Kaye to reclaim January 6 as more than a symbol of democratic rupture. On January 6, 1941—eighty-five years before the Capitol insurrection—Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered his State of the Union address introducing the Four Freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. Those ideas became the moral foundation of the New Deal and America’s fight against fascism. Miller and Kaye trace a democratic through-line from Thomas Paine to Abraham Lincoln to FDR, examining how economic inequality, oligarchy, and historical amnesia have repeatedly threatened democracy—and how earlier generations fought back through labor rights, social programs, and an expansive vision of freedom. Rather than surrender January 6 to insurrectionists, this conversation argues for reclaiming it as a reminder of democracy’s unfinished promise—and the economic rights required to sustain it. Guest: Harvey J. Kaye, Professor Emeritus, University of Wisconsin–Green BayBooks: The Fight for the Four Freedoms; Thomas Paine and the Promise of America Get full access to The Blue Ridge Breakdown at blueridgebreakdown.substack.com/subscribe

    1h 11m
  7. What Goes Into the Water Doesn't Just Stay There -- with freshwater biologist Than Hitt

    12/19/2025

    What Goes Into the Water Doesn't Just Stay There -- with freshwater biologist Than Hitt

    In this episode of The Blue Ridge Breakdown, host Troy Miller speaks with freshwater biologist Than Hitt of the West Virginia Rivers Coalition about clean water, cancer rates, wetlands, data centers, and why what goes into our rivers never stays there. From selenium contamination to AI-driven data center water use, this conversation explores how science, policy, and profit shape life downstream—in West Virginia and beyond. Get full access to The Blue Ridge Breakdown at blueridgebreakdown.substack.com/subscribe

    45 min
  8. Why the U.S. Health Care System Is Broken — A Deep Dive with Thom Hartmann

    12/11/2025

    Why the U.S. Health Care System Is Broken — A Deep Dive with Thom Hartmann

    The Republican healthcare plan came out yesterday, December 10 -- which is essentially to give tax breaks to billionaires and let average Americans fight directly with health insurers. But WHY is our system in such DESPERATE need of FIXING? What are the factors driving America's healthcare deficiencies? What explains why we don't guarantee every American a right to healthcare? I sit down with @thomhartmann to discuss. Since the first program was developed in Bismarck's conservative Germany in the 1880s, EVERY SINGLE developed country in the WORLD has figured out how to guarantee healthcare to its citizens... except the United States of America. #oligarchy #healthcare #politics #economics #america #history Get full access to The Blue Ridge Breakdown at blueridgebreakdown.substack.com/subscribe

    29 min
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About

Breaking down the breakdowns. blueridgebreakdown.substack.com

Information

  • Creator
    Troy N. Miller
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    30
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Troy N. Miller
  • Show Website
    The Blue Ridge Breakdown