Are there any tanks on your front lawn yet?

Class warfare (0.00 / 0)

The National Mining Association's spokesman is doing what many conservatives do and project what he is doing/willing to do on to what he sees as the opposition (although considering the huge giveaways the Obama is administration has given to the coal industry -- Clean coal? really, Obama? -- it's hard to see how they see him as their opposition).

In this case the association's lax regards to worker safety and environmental standards in order to maximize their profits at the lives of the workers is just another example of class warfare that the coal barons practice.

The old adage about the rich when it applies to coal barons should be amended to "The rich get richer and the rest of us get killed."

When a man embarks upon a crime, he is morally guilty of any other crime which may spring from it. Sherlock Holmes.

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by: Carnacki @ Mon Apr 26, 2010 at 15:37:35 PM UTC

People forget there are underground mines in S. Illinois (0.00 / 0)

Just ask Rep. John Shimkus R-IL-19

NFTT: Support My Team or I Will Dance

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by: CA Berkeley WV @ Mon Apr 26, 2010 at 16:30:08 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

It's only class war when the poor fight back (0.00 / 0)

My brother posted the Tim Wise essay on Facebook, My brohter. Immediatley got a comment from a classmate from high school who is also an adjunct community college business professor and full-time cost analysis government employee about who Rev. Wright and Van Jones were just like what is going on now.

My brother has people calling him Hitler over the city trash and recycling programs. This is the same guy that laid all responsibility for the residents problems in NOLA on the Mayor. Then John McCain picked Sarah Palin. And the GOP wonders why they faded.

NFTT: Support My Team or I Will Dance

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by: CA Berkeley WV @ Mon Apr 26, 2010 at 16:53:14 PM UTC

in this day, all (0.00 / 0)

analogies to war in the labor/management context are absurd

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by: stevewvu @ Mon Apr 26, 2010 at 18:59:47 PM UTC

You handing out white flags? (0.00 / 0)

NFTT: Support My Team or I Will Dance

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by: CA Berkeley WV @ Tue Apr 27, 2010 at 13:09:35 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

listen to the miner interviews on NPR this morning? (0.00 / 0)

NFTT: Support My Team or I Will Dance

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by: CA Berkeley WV @ Tue Apr 27, 2010 at 13:32:28 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Coal operators are yearning for the "good ol' days". (4.00 / 2)

That's back when the U.S. government let them get by with murdering miners just for striking over the extremely poor living conditions the coal companies provided.

Here's a page ripped right out of what is by far the most accurate accounting of the bloodiest government-sponsored mass murder of American citizens since the Civil War.

(used with permission)

Back then, coal operators were so were so certain that the government would let them get by with whatever they pleased that they dubbed their most efficient weapon the "BullMoose Special" after Teddy Roosevelt, who had used his "bully pulpit" to try to unfairly sway the press and the jury to condemn William D. "Big Bill" Haywood, the secretary-treasurer of the powerful Western Federation of Miners (WFM), as an alleged co-conspirator in the assassination of former Idaho governor Frank Steunenberg on December 30, 1905. source

Although Haywood was found innocent, it is notable that like the union leaders of the WV mine war, he was arrested and faced a jury of his peers. In contrast, although coal operators hired Baldwin-Felts thugs to assassinate Sheriff Sid Hatfield and his deputy Ed Chambers on August 1, 1921 on the McDowell County courthouse steps in broad daylight, not one person was ever arrested for those murders.

By the way, I've nicknamed the field piece pictured above "Li'l Donny" because it once was used to kill miners right here in WV. it is notable that Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship recently went on a buying spree even as he faces an investigation in connection with the deaths of modern-day miners here in WV.

I guess the question of the hour is, is it wrong for the families of miners to expect the government to demand safe working conditions from the coal companies? I mean c'mon, just how bad can unregulated mine operators be?

For insight, one need but recall why they started throwing miners' families out of their shacks and murdering them over a strike by studying the miners' demands back then:

By 1912 the Cabin Creek miners were ready for a chance to throw off their oppressors. They quit their jobs in support of the Paint Creek strikers. And the strike continued to spread. Up and down the Kanawha Valley men put down their tools - "poured out their water." The spark on Paint Creek, thrown into an explosive situation, had produced a conflagration. The UMW was now battling for its life in West Virginia.
The demands of the striking miners were these:

1. Abolition of the mine guard system.
2. A reform in the system of docking. (A miner might be docked a thousand pounds of coal for loading a few pieces of slate.)
3. The employment of checkweighmen on the tipples to represent the miners and to be paid by the miners. (The law provided for these checkweighmen, but this law was ignored by the coal companies.)
4. Permission for the men to trade where they pleased, without discrimination for so doing. (A man might find himself fired for not trading at the company store.)
5. The payment of wages in cash every two weeks and not in script or credit cards. (Also part of West Virginia law, but ignored by the operators.)
6. Improved sanitary conditions, with the requirement that the companies remove garbage and keep the houses in condition.
7. Payment for mining coal on the basis of the short ton on which the coal is sold, and not on the basis of the long ton, on which it was mined. (In other words, at that time the miners loaded 2,240 pounds of coal for a ton.)
8. Rentals of houses based on a fair return on their cost, with allowances for upkeep and elec-tric lights on the same basis. (Rentals were checked out of a miner's pay before he got his money, as was his light bill. Both amounts were purely arbitrary sums.)
9. The nine hour day - they had been working ten.
10. Recognition of the UMW and the check off.
11. An increase in pay. (The least important of their demands. In unorganized fields pay was 25 to 35 cents a ton, in the Kanawha Union Field 49 cents. In the Central Competitive Field it was 90 cents!)

A Mighty Battle
It was to be a mighty battle for the coal operators, who from a governmental point of view, WERE West Virginia. One U.S. Senator was Clarence W. Watson of Fairmont, whom the miners accused of being "king" of the state. He was president of the Consolidated Coal Company in northern West Virginia, owning 100,000 acres of land and employing 15,000 nonunion men.
Prime minister to the "king" was the other United States Senator, William E. Chilton. Chilton was owner and manager of the Charleston Gazette and a law partner of William McCorkle. McCorkle was a Democratic leader in the State Senate and their law firm represented, by some estimates, four-fifths of corporate interests in West Virginia. The UMW could be sure of being fought by the press - with the exception of the two labor papers in the Kanawha Valley - and, more important, by every official governmental agency in the state. source: When Miners March by William C. Blizzard Copyright: © Appalachian Community Services 2010
All Rights Reserved used with permission

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by: One Citizen @ Tue Apr 27, 2010 at 09:05:43 AM UTC

just stop (0.00 / 0)

you're embarrasing yourself

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by: stevewvu @ Tue Apr 27, 2010 at 12:42:05 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

You first (0.00 / 0)

NFTT: Support My Team or I Will Dance

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by: CA Berkeley WV @ Tue Apr 27, 2010 at 13:09:45 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

One Citizen - thanks for posting this (0.00 / 0)

It's amazing how often when a conservatives sayz something stupid you can look more deeply and realize it is a case of projection.

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by: Clem Guttata @ Tue Apr 27, 2010 at 12:57:30 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

your comment (0.00 / 0)

echoes something I posted at the big orange yesterday morning in response to someone falsely claiming that West Virginians had a pattern of voting against workplace safety regulations:

You are confusing coal miners and coal mining executives.

You might want to learn more about how many miners have literally fought and given their lives for union representation in West Virginia. That same union representation that to this day continues to put safety first and help make mines safer than non-union mines.

(And, yes, we suffer mightily from regulatory capture here in West Virginia so that our neighbors all over the East Coast can enjoy cheaper electricity than they otherwise would, but that's no reason to blame the victims.)

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by: Clem Guttata @ Tue Apr 27, 2010 at 13:00:33 PM UTC

[ Parent ]