01-30-2021, 01:47 AM
(01-28-2021, 05:32 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Coal mining, especially underground, is a dying business, and at this I refer not to the well-known dangers of coal mining as I do to the working-out of known coal seams. The once-powerful United Mine Workers Union (UMWU) that made practically ensured that West Virginia would be a safe D state in any but a 49-state Republican blowout (it went once against Eisenhower, against Reagan in 1980, and against the elder Bush in 1988) has been weakened for that alone. Surface mining, which is more catastrophic to the environment, does not need the highly-skilled union miners; that is most of the contemporary coal mining. West Virginia has gone for the Democratic Presidential nominee in 350-plus electoral vote elections for the Republican before 1980 and against the Democrat in the one 350+ landslide for a Democratic nominee since 2008. It is the only State that has done so since 1970.Dude, you're not going to be able to power the entire country off solar panels and windmills alone. I think America can do better than that in the long run myself. I have a better idea lets force China to fall in line with the rest of the world and clean up its act. Keep in mind, the Third Reich had a master plan, big dreams like Progressives do these days and a belief that it would last a thousand years that blew up in its face. Is it a coincidence that the same red states that filed a grievance just had a major oil line project related to all of them stopped in it tracks. This is supposed to be a time of unity and working together and not supposed to be time to demonstrate power and authority. Do you know what I would do, I'd ignore the order and give Biden the finger and continue and force Biden's hand at the wrong time in history. I'm done with the Democrats and all their bullshit. Welcome to the 4T.
Alternative energy could well be the revival of the energy business in what used to be the coal fields, and I can easily imagine the United Mine Workers' Union getting a revival in the area... and new-found political influence. I can hardly imagine more appropriate places for solar panels than the ravaged hilltops that recently had surface coal seams to strip mine. Oh, they will no longer be miners? We have the Teamsters' Union, and not many Teamsters are literal teamsters of the old kind.
Alternative energy will more require formal learning and less on vocational skill, but it would have a relatively concentrated and skilled workforce much like the oil industry, whose refineries and oil fields are heavily organized.
Reviving the economies of middle-Pennsylvania, West Virginia, eastern Kentucky, and southeastern Ohio could well be a win-win for Democrats as well as the rest of America. I don't live there, but I would prefer that people live at least as well as the underground coal miners of yore used to. The only people that that can hurt politically are the local Republican pols, who have done little more than to make the same mistakes as the Democratic machines did there of failing to make the appropriate investments in education, roads, and public health because King Coal did not need much formal education or good roads and because the UMWU was able to get above-average medical insurance for miners... and coal miners needed that. Oh, did they need that!