Blackbird Pie

by: One Citizen

Thu Nov 12, 2009 at 20:12:26 PM EST

Sing a song of sixpence,
   A pocket full of rye.
   Four and twenty blackbirds,
   Baked in a pie.

   When the pie was opened,
   The birds began to sing;
   Wasn't that a dainty dish,
   To set before the king?

   The king was in his counting house,
   Counting out his money;
   The queen was in the parlour,
   Eating bread and honey.

   The maid was in the garden,
   Hanging out the clothes;
   When down came a blackbird
   And snapped off his nose.

Last week one of Don Blankenship's political handmaidens publicly claimed that

"Coal severance taxes make up 60 percent of our state's budget".

Really, Mr Hubbard? "Sixty percent"? Why not just go ahead and claim that the coal extraction industry altogether accounts for 120 percent of West Virginia's economy?

Which is practically what he did, when in the same article he also stated,

"With each mining job, there are eight more jobs created. This means there are 112,000 West Virginia residents going to work, every day. From the doctors and schoolteachers, right along with the cashier at Kentucky Fried Chicken taking your order, all these jobs are a direct result of West Virginia coal."

When I read that, I fought off the sudden urge to light bituminous and pine-scented incense in front of the tiny carved coal owl figurine my father bought for me at a bait, tackle and souvenir stand near White Sulfur Springs back in the fifties. I still treasure the bamboo fly rod he purchased for our camping/ fishing trip as well. Anyway Carl Hubbard almost had me believing that the tiny statuette proves beyond all doubt that coal operators are entirely responsible for West Virginia's burgeoning tourist industry. Almost.

Speaking of birds, Hubbard's mention of the Colonel's Original Recipe® reminded that during our father-son fishing trips, my dad insisted that he cook every meal. But that'd be dangerous today, because the Department of Health and Human Resources has since posted cautions against eating fish caught in any WV streams.

I've never savored any meal more than the fresh trout cooked over campfires that I proudly built as a young lad. It could have been due to the pure air, sunshine, and wading in the cold Greenbrier whetting my appetite, rather than my father's skill at cooking over an open fire.

Anyway, Hubbard is dead right about doctors making a killing thanks to the coal industry. West Virginia's entire medical profession is urgently needed to treat coalfield children for cancer and other serious health problems. It's almost as if he's proud that his industry has leaking coal waste from impoundments and toxic slurry injection sites all across our rural coal fields. He's boasting that doctors are cashing in from the lead, mercury, arsenic, selenium and other metals caused by his industry. Although the thought of that made me a little nauseous, his suggestion that teachers owe him a debt of gratitude is what inspired me to "bake" the digital pie chart below.

direct image link   http://tinyurl.com/Black-Bird-Pie

It was either sheer gall or pure ignorance that Hubbard displayed when he implied that teachers should be grateful, after a coalition of coal patch legislators kept the Recht Decision mandate unfunded for over a decade. But that really doesn't matter. At that point Hubbard's hype actually escalated into pure hypocrisy because Mingo's school district (where Hubbard's own coal-related business is located) bankrupted and was taken over by the State TWICE due to local underfunding. What's most despicable is that Mingo's operators were raking in record profits from the amount of coal they were extracting per man-hour during that same period of time.

Below the jump is the paradigm used to support the use of data in my chart above.

Coal CEO Declares War on Labor Day

by: One Citizen

Thu Sep 03, 2009 at 18:06:08 PM EDT

No doubt you've heard the annual claims of a "war on Christmas" touted by the right wing punditocracy as a means to use hyperbolic rants to smear the left. But now there's a real war against not just another holiday, but the entire movement for which it stands.

Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship's hosting of a Labor Day rally to preserve American jobs in West Virginia's southern coal fields isn't just a sick joke.  It is his full out declaration of war not just against the UMWA but all families who live in, or near, his precious coal.

Not too long ago Massey Energy was publicly taken to task by United Mine Worker's president Cecil Roberts for trying to get English language standards relaxed so that Mexican immigrants could pass mine certification. He was doing it to specifically keep his company's wage expenses low. And apparently, it wasn't the first time they'd tried it.

In 2001, a labor broker came to the mining board with a request to import 1,000 Mexican and Chilean workers for two unnamed coal companies.  source

All of Massey's mines are nonunion It's no small secret that Massey has been obviously been trying to kill off the UMWA for as long as anyone can remember.

CEO Blankenship could very well be the most anti-labor person on the face of the planet. If being anti-Labor weren't in his DNA, then why else would a man who reportedly rakes in just under $20 million per year have hired a team of corporate lawyers (Charles Woody, Eric Kinder and Jeffrey Foster, of Spilman Thomas and Battle in Charleston) to beat his ex-maid out of her well-deserved unemployment benefits?

Long ago, America's most popular poet predicted where most all of us might be if it weren't for the American Labor movement.

Company Towns

You live in a company house

You go to a company school

You work for this company,

according to the company rules.

You all drink company water

and all use company lights,

The company preacher teaches us

What the company thinks is right.

                               Carl Sandburg

The U.S. Labor movement is so important that the first Monday of every September

is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country. source

West Virginia has played a very important role in helping to establish the very roots of organized U.S. labor. Most significantly, our state's impact in the development of the UMWA and the AFL-CIO is due to our coal, steel and the railroad.  As America's labor force has grown strong, so grew her middle class, as well as West Virginia's economy.  Individuals such as John L. Lewis, Mother Jones, and Joe Hill each came here to take part in a struggle which resulted in better pay and working conditions for most all American workers.

Despite the threat of physical harm and economic ruin, miners have constantly struggled against great odds to achieve their goals: the eight-hour day in 1898, collective bargaining rights in 1933, health and retirement benefits in 1946, and health and safety protections in 1969. source

Native West Virginian Bill Blizzard was indicted along with 52 other men for "treason against the State", even though the mobilization of his "Red Neck Army" from Marmet, WV to the historic Battle of Blair Mountain wasn't against the state at all, but the coal companies.  In contrast, neither coal operator Quin Morton nor paid mercenary Bonner Hill was ever arrested for the murder of Cesco Estep by their bloody Bullmoose Special at Holly Grove, WV.  And not one of Logan County Sheriff Don Chafin's mercenaries, who had been hired by the Logan County Coal Operators Association, were ever charged for killing and maiming miners on Blair Mountain.

To this day, coal company apologists claim that had miners not blocked access to their mines, companies would never have had to retaliate. But just how badly could coal operators have been treating minersfor them to have openly rebelled en masse?  

During the war (WWI) some mine operators were making up to 600% profit from coal sales and all the while the federal government required a no-strike agreement for the duration of the war.  The sudden change in economic conditions had to have been a shock to mine operators.

Coal operators laid off miners and attempted to reduce wages to pre-war levels.  In response to the 1912-13 strike, coal operators' associations in southern West Virginia had strengthened their system for combating labor.  By 1919, the largest non-unionized coal region in the eastern United States consisted of Logan and Mingo Counties. source

President Eisenhower, the last decent elected Republican president recognized:

"Labor is the United States. The men and women, who with their minds, their hearts and hands, create the wealth that is shared in this country--they are America."

PERMANENT LINK: http://tinyurl.com/CESCO-ESTEP