Chris Haye’s has had a very useful and worthwhile series on Coal, Appalachia, and the changing economy in recent days. Above, the political and social parallels between Big Coal and Big Tobacco.
Below, an interview with Don Blankenship, the “Dark Lord” of the Appalachian Coal fields.
Don seems somewhat medicated in the clip above, but stays on doggedly on message.
The first two clips were terrific and well worth watching. As someone who was addicted to nicotine for many years, and now has heart issues, I find the perfidy of the tobacco industry infuriating. It helps one understand why people sometimes crack and shoot up the place when you hear the presidents of the companies saying “nicotine is not addictive”. I’d be willing to bet that some of them were dying for the hearing to end so they could go have a cigarette. When I taught biology students about the evils of tobacco back in the 60’s, I was always thinking about the next class break and the cigarette my NON-addiction had me craving for. I was not a hypocrite, however—-the students knew I smoked and I had even shared cigarette breaks with many of them—-I held myself up as the prime example of how addictive cigarette smoking was, and that was actually very convincing to them—-they said that it must be addictive if someone that knew so much biology and how bad smoking was had gotten so “hooked”.
The flash of the Newport commercial was deja vu for me also. Nearly everyone was smoking in college back then, many with mentholated brands , and a friend got me started by offering me Newports—-just like sucking on candy, until……
Speaking of cracking and wanting to shoot someone, Don Blankenship would be a prime candidate for many people. He sounds medicated because that actually may be a lifelike drone that he sends out in public while he hides in his bunker to avoid getting shot. He is one of the best examples of “what’s wrong with the country”—-a modern day Robber Baron whose Massey Coal company was the biggest violator of mine safety regulations in history before he was forced out. His “persistence” is typical of all the fossil fuel Barons—-he sounds like the CEO’s of Exxon-Mobil and Shell in his view of the energy future, and that’s why I keep ranting about COAL. IMO, one sick and sorry SOB.
The UMWA video comes up as “removed because it’s too long”, but it’s obvious what Roberts likely said. It’s always the same old tune—-protect jobs for coal miners (but more importantly protect the paycheck he gets for his whoring of coal), and iced with the same kind of “coal is good for the country” crap Blankenship spouts. The opening paragraph of his statement below summarizes it all.
June 2, 2014 [TRIANGLE, VA.] United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) International President Cecil E. Roberts issued the following statement today:
“The proposed rule issued today by the Environmental Protection Agency will lead to long-term and irreversible job losses for thousands of coal miners, electrical workers, utility workers, boilermakers, railroad workers and others without achieving any significant reduction of global greenhouse gas emissions.
PS I’d like to know why the UMWA has its headquarters in Triangle, VA, which is a rather “armpit” town outside the gates of the Quantico USMC base on the Potomac south of DC. Rents are probably lower there than closer to DC, so maybe Roberts IS trying to save the miners some money.
http://www.umwa.org/?q=news/epa-existing-source-emissions-rule-puts-american-jobs-risk-does-nothing-address-climate-change
The Koch brothers had also infiltrated West Virginia University and had one economics professor and a fellowship student on their dole. That professor wrote a book on how deregulating the coal industry would make mines safer. He disappeared after one of those big mining accidents, but I think my brother had him in class and was indoctrinated with free market ideology secondary to such.
“Don seems somewhat medicated in the clip above, but stays doggedly on message.” While his demeanor is possibly attributable to China White, excerpts from “Predisposed”, by Hibbing etal. describe a more likely explanation.
{On message} – pg 140
“The differing orientations to new information are likely to manifest themselves in differing attitudes towards science and religion, with liberals eager for more data even if those data are alarming (think global warming) and conservatives more likely to be content with knowledge that they believe has already been revealed to them. Seen from this vantage point it is not surprising that attacks on science are more likely to come from the political right.”
{Medicated) – pg. 168
“Our hypothesis was that liberals would be more facially expressive that conservatives and that turned out to be half true. Like other EMG* studies, we found females, regardless of political persuasion, to be more facially expressive than males. Unlike any other EMG study, we found liberal males to be emotionally expressive at pretty much the same level as females. The most distinctive group by far was conservative males. While … response to the images was significant for everyone else, for conservative males it didn’t budge.”
• EMG – electromyography, a fancy term for sensors measuring muscle contraction.