Lyin' in Coal Country

So, this article showed up...  " Logan Officials Message to Clinton Campaign: After the Clinton campaign staff attempted to use the City of Logan Fire Department facilities for the Clinton upcoming visitations to the area, fire department officials contacted the Mayor of  L... " yada, yada. Hillary and the horrible Obama are "killing" coal.

Whether you like or agree with or dislike and disagree with Hillary Clinton, a little truth-telling is in order. Yes, Ms. Clinton did say "We're going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business." But, context matters; the context in this case matters a lot. Ms. Clinton wasn't saying that she or her administration would put the companies out of business but that economics, chemistry and physics would put them out of business.

Something else is killing coal jobs and it isn't the EPA, it's the coal operators themselves. The number of coal jobs in West Virginia and Appalachia was cratering long before any imagined war on coal was declared in the halls of the EPA. Whether from greed or hard-edged business decisions, coal operators decided that employing people as they had in Coal's golden years, is not a good investment. Why should they employ shifts when a couple of men with a humongous Caterpillar can produce as much coal by slicing off the top of a mountain and scooping out the contents?

And if you are betting on "clean coal" to bring back to good old days, bet again. The cost of "cleaning" coal in order to reduce harmful emissions will have to be paid for somehow. It will either happen by raising the price of coal, which makes coal more expensive and less attractive than alternatives like natural gas. Or, savings will be achieved by cutting labor costs, which means that workers will increasingly be replaced by equipment, pay will be cut further and conditions will worsen (these last two due to the neutering of the UMW).

Companies like Peabody and Massey have been screwing West Virginia miners for decades and when the miners pushed back the companies sent in the head-breakers, whether they were Baldwin-Felts "detectives," Pinkertons, or the West Virginia National Guard and the Army Air Corps. Today they send squadrons of lawyers but the effect is the same.

What no one seems to have a stomach for is telling the truth. Those jobs are going and there isn't a thing we can do about it. Coal isn't as efficient a source of power as gas or nuclear or -- increasingly -- renewables. So the pressure is on to phase it out. Coal is no longer West Virginia's number one industry, having been replaced by tourism decades ago. But in an effort to wring the last quarter's worth of profit out of coal, the operators have switched to mountain-top removal, which is directly impacting tourism and further killing the goose that is trying to lay a golden egg.

Companies like Peabody could act like good citizens and explore opportunities to build new industries here in West Virginia, whose people have made their owners, managers and stockholders unbelievably wealthy. Instead they spun off a a subsidiary called Patriot Coal, sold it the pensions that miners had invested their futures in and then declared Patriot bankrupt.

Politicians in places like Logan County and in the State Capitol have done the bidding of Peabody, Massey and others for too many years. Their cozy world is collapsing as coal fizzles and now it's Hillary's, or Obama's or the EPA's fault. Look in the mirror boys, and look behind you because justice will -- eventually -- catch up.

Kasich and his GOP Rivals

Over on Facebook, I've been ruminating on the presidential candidates. The GOP race is fascinating as only a multi-vehicle accident can be.  I think it bears repeating that Democrats who celebrate Trump's seeming emergence as the Republican front-runner are misguided. Yes it is likely that Trump would lose to Hillary Clinton and possibly to Bernie Sanders. But -- two points should be considered: The first and obvious one is that shit happens in election cycles and it's a long time from July to November. Trump could win. The second point is that the political climate and alignment of cynicism that produces Donald Trump (and Ted Cruz, for that matter) debases our democracy. If we give a damn about the political beliefs and philosophy underlying the system we profess to value we should be in the streets, on the phones, on email and --most importantly--in the voting booth, demanding this insult to our republican legacy stop.

I've read a number of posts and articles insisting the John Kasich is no moderate and is therefore as bad as Trump or Cruz (yes, they mostly come from the left) and it's BS. There is a huge difference between Kasich and his GOP rivals and it is illustrated in how he governs, which BTW his rivals have not done at all. John Kasich believes in governing; Cruz believes in drowning government in the bathtub and God knows what Trump believes in. When Kasich was elected Ohio Governor he initiated legislation that would end public sector unions. It was somewhat more severe that what Scott Walker tried in Wisconsin. Kasich was defeated in the legislature and has respected the democratic process and will of the voters, learning to work with the unions. Kasich opposed the Affordable Care Act; when it passed Congress, he took full advantage of the opportunities it offered Ohio citizens, unlike many other GOP governors who decided to let their citizens pick up the tab for their (the governors') commitment to "principle." He took a lot of heat for his decision and gave a pithy response that Republicans could (and once would) take pride in.

Kasich is a conservative and makes no pretense otherwise. In today's field being sane and responsible is often equated with being moderate, I suppose. The GOP establishment, which seems convinced that the only alternative to Trump is letting Cruz incinerate their chances has failed to get behind Kasich. That fact should be what really gets Democratic hopes up, because he is the candidate they don't want to run against.

I defend John Kasich, not because I agree with his politics (I mostly don't) but because he is--I think--a good man who believes in democracy, and because he is running for the nomination in a GOP field that has run out of good men.