I grew up in West Virginia. You could not get elected in that state if you told the truth about coal jobs never coming back. So our politicians continue to pay lip service to the idea that "if we just de-regulate the coal industry, we can put WV miners back to work".
I didn't grow up in the coal mining regions of the state and I've since moved away, but it is depressing watching the citizens of my home state consistently vote against their own interests due to outright fabrications and lip service paid to them by gutless politicians who lack the backbone to tell them the truth.
West Virginia has a lot to offer and I do believe the people there could pull themselves up by their bootstraps if they accepted the fact that coal is the past and the state needs to move forward into new industries/the future.