Thread by @kyllbilly88

🧵 on #JDVanceIsRotten #OHSEN:
In 2017, a new, privately owned company called AppHarvest announced plans to build a huge, ultra-high tech greenhouse in Pike County, KY. Prior to the announcement, AppHarvest CEO Jonathan Webb & his financiers had been working behind the scenes /1

They wanted to raise capital for the venture. What they had was an idea with a "compelling" story.

Part of what was so compelling about the story on offer from Webb was that it fit in nicely with mass, liberal and conservative, “concern” with Appalachia. /2

In 2017, every Tom, Dick and Harry with a keyboard wanted to blow smoke about the “problems with Appalachia” and “Trump country.” /3

@elizabethcatte called this shit out: "Appalachians to fill made-to-order constituencies, anchored by race, is a tired game. Social upheaval from the Civil War to the civil rights movement, often triggered, and still does, a larger fascination with Appalachia. ... /4

"These projections do a disservice to both Appalachians and other economically and socially disadvantaged groups by pitting their concerns against one another instead of connecting them.” - Elizabeth Catte "What You're Getting Wrong About Appalachia" 2018, p. 13 /5

Appalachia “explainers” have become sort of a cottage industry attractive across all regions of the US. Explain the dumb hillbillies and white trash to folks across the US. What is this mysterious land of dirt people? /6

Part of this is because communities everywhere want to turn away from deep engagement with historic dimensions of race and class in every community, including their own. We can scapegoat one region as the sole source of all ills. /7

This kind of thing happens a lot. As Hosang and Lowndes put it in 2019, reproductions of these kinds of narratives obscure forces driving political developments. “Shifting material forces, contexts, and interests disappear, ... /8

"as do any genealogies of power, authority, & resistance that might have shaped such dispositions. Racial identifications become severed from the conditions that mediate their production; ... /9

"class identifications become severed from the meditations of white supremacy & racial hierarchy.” /10

AppHarvest CEO Webb was offering to start a company that would “put the coal miners and coal country back to work.” He wanted to build, on top of an abandoned strip mine site, a high tech green house in Pike County that would grow tomatoes. /11

What’s not to like in this story? There’s hard workers, “local” foods, a pivot away from coal extraction to an environmentally conscious and “sustainable” industry, and people who really want and need jobs. The glowing headlines flowed. Our saving grace. /12

Early on, Webb and AppHarvest brought on media darling JD Vance to serve on the board. JD Vance had been making the rounds in the media circuit talking about his bestselling book Hillbilly Elegy. He was not just a bestselling author, he was also a well connected attorney. /13

Around the same time as he was being recruited to work with AppHarvest, Vance was also announced as the leader of the, then $150 million, Rise of the Rest Seed Fund. This fund was started by AOL founder Steve Case and included big name investors /14

Investors in Rise of the Rest Seed Fund included Jeff Bezos of Amazon & Eric Schmidt of Google. Rise of the Rest Seed Fund pumped tons of venture capital into AppHarvest. /15

Needless to say, Vance was a boon for the company. Popular, well connected among the ultra-rich and powerful. Essentially overnight, AppHarvest was flush with capital and a grift of an idea. /16

After determining that AppHarvest couldn’t successfully build a massive greenhouse on top of an abandoned strip mine, which anyone with half a brain around here could have told them, they scrapped the plans for the Pike County site. /17

Pikeville officials rescinded their offer to let the company lease land, and AppHarvest announced in early 2019 that they were moving their eyes to Rowan County KY /18

In NE Kentucky, the company was trying to snap up a 350 acre parcel to build a 60 acre greenhouse. Just outside of Morehead, they completed their first building project & got the greenhouse up & running. They have grand ambitions for their company, and the story doesn’t end here

They soon became a publicly traded company (via SPAC merger), and a much discussed entity across the region. They are in the process of building facilities in other Kentucky counties, including Madison Co /20

What is going on? How did a nothing company, recently valued at as high as $1.5 billion, spring up overnight in such a small town? What effect is this having on local residents? And how does this fit in with larger plans to bring “development” to eastern Kentucky? /21

Check out this early headline as an example of the coverage they the co got at the time

*I have no comment on the thought that AppHarvest is harvesting people as well as tomatoes. But to crib from Soylent Green “AppHarvest is PEOPLE!” /22

Today, local governments in east KY are in dire straits fiscally. Counties & municipalities that had relied on coal severance tax rev have been in a bind as the coal industry has been taking hits. The downturn in the coal economy transcends typical boom&bust cycles in coal. /23

Coal can no longer compete against cheaper natural gas as a source of fuel. Much of the coal has been mined in central Appalachia and it takes a lot more to get to thinner coal seams. Chewing through more and more rock to get to coal increases mining costs. /24

That makes coal in central Appalachia more costly to mine than coal out in Wyoming and other coal producing states in the west. There are many other compounding reasons that explain the decline in the coal economy. What is mentioned here is hardly exhaustive. /25

For our purposes here, it matters that lots of coal companies have gone belly up and declared bankruptcy. For local governments that depend on coal for tax revenue, this causes problems. /26

Not to mention that even where there are active mines owned by companies that are not on the precipice of declaring bankruptcy, industry will always use their influence & power to avoid paying what little they are required in taxes. Its a problem bigger than the coal economy. /27

This has been turbocharged by basic neoliberalism & budget austerity. Local financial crises are also not limited to eastern Kentucky local governments. In 2015, Hillview, Kentucky, became the first American city to file for bankruptcy since Detroit /28

This happened after Hillview unsuccessfully appealed a court ruling ordering it to pay $11.4 million in damages to a company over a land deal that didn’t work out. Across the country, policy & public administration officials are scrambling to learn more about ... /29

the predictors and causes of municipal bankruptcies, and what role state-level interventions play in that process. /30

All of this meant that local govs in KY, esp EKY, were in dire straights BEFORE the COVID 19 pandemic. These conditions illuminate why there has been inter-local governmental competition to recruit AppHarvest to come to particular KY counties. /31

Vance, Webb and others involved KNEW about these dynamics and used that to their advantage. It's basically the same kind of thing we saw Amazon do to US cities when pitching a new location for a headquarters /32

Rowan Co is not in the coal fields. The historically dominant extractive industry there is timber. There is no story about Appalachia that isn't largely about coal, but the story of the mts are bigger than JUST coal /33

The conditions also help spotlight why there has been so little public critique or analysis of AppHarvest as the company expands into new territory. /34

AppHarvest moved their sights from Pike County to Rowan County. From the coalfields to outside of coalfield communities. The company built their narrative off of the back of a “coal story,” but are not serving coal communities. /35

This is NOT to say that Rowan County is unlike Pike County and doesn’t have a long history of and current presence of extractive economies and juggernaut commodities. The most powerful local family came from timber wealth /36

Big-time development is evolving across eastern Kentucky. We’d do well to understand development and how we might successfully organize under the specter of domination, seen most clearly in ownership, power dynamics and social control formations. /37

For the local power structure in Rowan Co (& now Madison & other counties), AppHarvest has become a keystone to "economic development" ambitions. It's got a flashy story and a "social mission." Lots of the folks who are attracted to the company's pitch are well meaning ppl /38

And the workers there are not avatars for the people in board rooms. But the company did build a brand and a reputation. And that reputation got enough umph behind it to attract a SPAC /39

Given the economic & political conditions & their histories in Rowan Co, how can those conditions help generate tons of profit for very wealthy & powerful people right away? How did AppHarvest rake in so much money? So let’s turn our attention to finance for a bit. /40

A SPAC (Special Purpose Acquisition Company) is basically a shell corporation for investors. These financial instruments pool money together from various contributors. /41

The fund created by a SPAC is then traded on the stock exchange to increase the amount of capital flowing into the fund and notch additional investors. /42

There is no building, no production, no commodity. Just the pool of money. Then the SPAC manager will propose purchasing a privately owned company with the capital in the fund, and shareholders invested in the SPAC will vote on approving the acquisition or not. /43

Investors will then decide whether to remain in the SPAC or get their $10 per share back from the SPAC when the fund proposes purchasing a company that the investor may or may not want to buy. /44

These funds are increasingly popular on Wall Street, although they can be controversial. There is a lively debate among investors and regulators right now concerning SPACs. SPACs are a very low cost way for a private company to go public. /45

If a private company wants to go public, there r many hoops that they have to go through with the SEC (Securities Exchange Commission) & other agencies to enter publicly traded markets. There is less red tape involved when a company goes public through being purchased by a SPAC

Presently, the SEC and market forces regulate SPACs. Since SPACs initially don’t have any business, there is essentially no financial accounting that the SPAC has to do for the SEC and no earnings reports that they have to file with the agency. This is all completely legal. /47

The purpose of SPACs is the mergers! This is a massive amount of capital that moves and flows each month through SPACs. The I.P.O (initial public option) of the “pool” is only the first stage in the SPACs life ... /48

there are tons of SPACs out there that have yet to find the right company to purchase and merge with! In July of 2021, more than $100 billion worth of SPAC mergers on Wall Street was announced! We are talking about big money, and only a few “whammies. /49

We’ve spent time in some arcane waters. But it is because these are mechanisms that have made massive amounts of capital and investment flow into little ol’ Morehead. These mechanisms are used across the country for a variety of purposes. Keep your eyes peeled. /50

AppHarvest was acquired by a SPAC. When that first happend, the stock SOARED. Now that they've had a series of really bleak financial reports, the stock is in the toilet. So bad that the company is facing lawsuits alleging investors were misled /51

Vance made money off this nonsense & was on the board. Webb is still touting the company to local governments. Tomato production at the co is not looking good. & local govs bend over backwards to offer land, incentives and more to this company instead of helping everyday ppl /52

believe me when I say that Vance is a top-tier grifter. He really sucks and doesn't care what happens to our people, our towns, & our ability to pay for needed public services. So long as he gets his bag, he dont give a fuck about us. #OHSen #OH22 #JDVanceIsRotten