We're not just talking about Clinton versus Obama either.
The West Virginia Young Democrats called for a complete halt on the assigning of permits for mountaintop removal mining in West Virginia. This certainly cannot sit well with traditional supporters of the West Virginia Democratic Party such as the United Mine Workers of America. It also shows that many liberal Democrats do choose to live in some sort of bubble world where reality strikes about as often as the tooth fairy.
Did they not watch the news last night? Shortages of energy around the world have helped spin off a rise in food prices. Coal is a vital part of America's energy solution and West Virginians are heading off to good paying jobs in coal related operations. In the long term, coal must replace oil entirely as an energy source for power plants. The explosion of electric car use will place even more strains on our grid. We need to use our coal, corn, wind, natural gas, and water resources.
That's where the West Virginia Young Democrats don't get it. Like most liberals they believe energy comes from some sort of magical place. In the real world that some Democrats and most Republicans inhabit, we realize that the needs of people must be balanced against our desire to preserve nature as it is. In the real world we need to mine more coal, we need to drill for natural gas, we need to build hydroelectric stations on some of our rivers, we need to put windmills on some of our ridges. You can put West Virginians to work and put a dent in our nation's oil demand at the same time. We can't leave all of nature unspoiled in the process, but we cannot ask Americans to sacrifice their standard of living either. Not only do we rely on energy, but the world relies on us to produce many of its necessities for it.
That is the solution that Republicans and real world oriented Democrats favor. The Young Democrats are completely out of touch. Their advocacy for a halt to coal permits pits them against their elders. It also shows locally the growing rift in the Democratic Party. Older voters and industrial workers who understand the world as it is have less and less in common with the young Obama supporting intellectuals who see the anti-American George Soros as their guru. We are seeing Democrats battle over the soul of their party nationally, and now at the state level as well.
What the Young Democrats are doing is questioning the means by which we harness energy. The "magical place" from which they expect energy to come truly is magical. It's called technology; an increasingly threatening concept to modern conservative thought.
ReplyDeleteThe technology exists, and is improved upon daily, to change the ways in which we harness energy. A natural hesitance exists on the part of modern American conservatives to accept such technologies because it means abandoning the preserved methods of the good ole' days and in turn results in an inevitable loss of jobs and shift away from coal as a staple to the WV economy. However, the change needs to take place before we're left with no coal in the ground, a raped landscape and lets-pack-it-all-up investors who are ready to move on to the next fertile land.
If you choose to see the world in binaries (i.e. pro-american/anti-american, right/left, intellectual/common man, magical/real) you deprive your human cognition the ability to better differentiate more discretely and to see what is really happening. This state's population has been at the beck and call of mining companies since 6/20/1863, in every which way; unsafe drinking water as a result of over-mining, uncountable explosions, corporate enslavement. To defend the actions, and the overtly greedy and self-interested motives, of such an entity is shameful.
Certainly there are many who want to rely upon the methods of the past and ignore the possibilities of the future. Since its beginning, this blog has defended the expansion of wind power. Who are our opponents? They are mostly provincial liberals who argue about the ruining of their views. I myself argued that we ought to explore the possibility of harnessing our state's hydroelectric potential. Perhaps you read that, perhaps not.
ReplyDeleteHowever, we need to have answers for people now. America needs cheap and accessible power now. Without that power, our economy suffers. When the economy suffers, real people suffer. Coal fills the gap and does it well. In the theoretical world we can sit in our armchairs, sniff brandy, and talk about the way things ought to be and wistfully discuss a nebulous future. The world needs real solutions.
Technology advances occur yearly related to coal. We will see more and more strain on our power grid as we turn increasingly to electric cars. Coal is the answer now, and we do not have to wait.
Certainly in the process we must enforce the environmental laws in place and strike the right balance between the environment and the people. I mean the needs of real people who toil every day and try to feed their families, not comfortable theoreticians.
Mountaintop removal puts our neighbors to work and provides the power our country needs. It also has created areas for economic development in rugged areas where none existed before. I agree that the environmental laws must be enforced, but we cannot end a practice that is so vital right now to our country and our people.
First and foremost I don't believe the terms mountaintop removal and coal can be used interchangeably. So a call for the end of mountaintop removal, a popular sentiment across WV shared by many residents for many years, is not a call for the end of coal full-stop. Mountaintop removal, on the conceptual level, is a prime example of the technology that coal companies are interested in first and foremost; what gets the most coal for the lowest cost to the company.
ReplyDeleteThe young democrats in question are simply trying to ride the liberal wave and force WV democrats to catch up to the ideology of democrats on the national level (i.e. renewable energy). But, this cannot happen. Officials are backed (and in turn, more or less installed by) coal companies. And the fear of a large scale loss of jobs will sustain the pattern. So it goes.
As for the economy, we should ask ourselves why the economic situation nationally is not potentially messed up, but is practically and very clearly messed up now. Tax cuts that appeal to lower classes with short-sighted interests (much like the mining jobs in question) and a war that has drained our collective pockets but has served to make the companies involved richer than rich (much like how we continue to hear unusually high profits coming from the power industry but the price of their product is unrelentingly high for the consumer).
You'll have to excuse me if I sound like I have a brandy snifter in my hand but what is commonly referred to as neo-conservative ideology has created the mess were in economically and I, along with the majority of voters, will no longer put faith in neo-cons and their short-sighted nature.
The conservative economic system is a mess? Twenty-five years of almost unbroken prosperity is a mess? Economic cycles are, like illness for living beings, an unavoidable fact of life. Conservative economic policies ended a long period of economic disaster started by the liberal economics of Lyndon B. Johnson. Moreover, the idea of "short-sighted" tax breaks is not necessarily conservative since John F. Kennedy used them to stimulate the economy during his presidency.
ReplyDeleteCertainly there are myriad ways to get coal out of the ground apart from mountaintop removal. These do not guarantee a clean environment in themselves, as Preston Countians can attest. Mountaintop removal is certainly the most efficient and cost effective way in some parts of the state to get coal. Companies seek efficiency and profits; there is nothing wrong or immoral about that although they must be made to follow the laws in place. Your environmental beefs are not with the companies, but the state government who inconsistently enforces the law.
Again you blast people looking for what you call short sighted solutions. How much short term suffering is allowed as a transition period to get to the long term solutions you envision that might or might not work? In the real world you just cannot tell people to suffer for a few years in exchange for solutions that may or may not work. You have not even proposed in specifics what these solutions are. Are elected officials supposed to willingly fall on their swords? This does not work in the real world.
You have hit upon a political reality inadvertently. The national Democratic Party's ideals are far from consistent with those of West Virginia and many other states. Amazingly, Hillary Clinton is the hope of the traditional Democratic base of industrial workers because she is saying that she does not want to regulate their jobs out of existence. She has gone back to the Democratic rhetoric of the Truman era, which in fact was much more pro American, much more friendly to the average worker and the rights of the people than today's George Soros financed liberal leftism. It should be no secret that the currents of mainstream thought have sent her there.
In my post, I try to be abundantly clear that the neoconservatism practiced by the current administration over the past 7 years has been questionable at best (e.g. tax cuts, poor education reform, a war fought for private interest). And though I agree about the ludicrous nature of LBJ's economics, they pale in comparison to what we now have before us.
ReplyDeleteInadvertence abound. Your claim, "Companies seek efficiency and profits; there is nothing wrong or immoral about that although they must be made to follow the laws in place. Your environmental beefs are not with the companies, but the state government who inconsistently enforces the law", opens the floor for a very generalized debate on the pathology of corporation and the role of government. An issue that I believe we, at a very base level, agree on. Unchecked companies can, and often times do, exploit the division of labor and behave irresponsibly. The disagreement rears its head in the form of where we stand today. I believe that coal companies are so much embedded in the politics of WV that we should scrutinize their involvement internally, perhaps with an independent council. The role of the government is to make and enforce the laws, but when the person making the law is supported (to a highly questionable degree) by a corporation, the official in question is merely a puppet and cannot be expected to act in the best interests of his constituency.
However, we've come to such an era where corporate conglomerates, many of which have their own news companies, shape the public view. The amount of filtration in the mainstream media is absurd, and it stems entirely from corporate filtration. Again, this makes sense. A corporation unchecked will see no problem in being exploitative or damaging if it occurs in the name of profits. There are psychological reasons of disassociation involved in this. The pathological behavior of a corporation is much like the completely self-interested behavior of a psychopath. Psychopaths and corporations follow game theory as a way of life and for the majority of Americans, the general public's view is shaped by (effectively) "psychopaths" telling the news companies what they can and cannot say. The amount of sway corporations have over the national public is detestable and the government is very weak to do anything about. Back to WV, how can have faith in a system that has kowtowed to such interest? I (and I'm fairly sure the young dems would agree) think that mountaintop removal is one of the most flagrant offenses that is allowed by WV legislators.
As far as a solution for the economic future of WV, I simply don't have one. Logically, there may be no solution. We may be in an inescapable, slow downward spiral. However, criticism of coal company practices is not predicated on offering a solution. Tourism seems to be a good angle. But as far as seeing economic black, I believe only Mon. county and one county from the eastern panhandle are making money each fiscal year.
I'd say we first and foremost need to figure out how to raise education levels statewide before we have a foundation for any real economic shift. The promise scholarship was a very good idea theoretically, but it does nothing to prevent students from getting a degree and leaving immediately. However with this Bresch scandal, maybe WV will be the only place where a WVU degree is credible.
I don't expect politicians to fall on their own swords, but I do expect them to represent the best interests of their populations. And furthering a dependence on coal companies while simultaneously ruining scenic beauty falls short of my expectations. And it probably falls short of many West Virginians expectations. However, we've seen the GOP has locked this state down with fear of terrorism, infringement upon constitutional liberty, and religion-based pathos in presidential elections. The only aspect of our collective populous
that is remotely "democrat" is the pro-union sentiment and protectionism concerning jobs. The very association of WV-nians and unions is a testament to the inefficacy of the WV gov't to regulate coal company practices.