The silver lining

OK, so this is more of a tweet than a self respecting blog post, but a friend of mine had a great one liner today when we were talking about West Virginia's water woes, from the chemical leak in January to the latest coal slurry spill.

He said the only good thing about the water mess was that it made West Virginia's ruling class stop talking about the Obama administration's so-called "war on coal" for a month or so.

I think he might have been right.

The groveling plague

When someone first sent me this column, titled "Is West Virginia a Cult?" I groaned. On reflection, though, the writer had a point or two.

I mean, how messed up is it when people brag about how much abuse they are able to take from their ruling class?

Or when the state's leading politician, Senator Joe Manchin, brags about West Virginians being willing and able to do the "heavy lifting"? (Translation: getting shafted by rich corporations and saying, "Thank you sir! May I have another?")

The writer kind of nailed it here:

"The hard-luck people of Appalachia deserve their reputation for physical courage and a strong work ethic. But they suffer more from servility than bad luck. Outsiders wince when the  natives angrily declare their independent spirit and then cringe before corporate polluters, however tawdry."

Actually, polluting isn't even half of the story. Let's not forget killing workers on the job, either by fast or slow methods and getting away with it.

The sad part is that I remember a time when West Virginians weren't as good at groveling before their masters as they are today. I'd like to think that this boot-licking phase will pass. I guess we'll see.

Rant alert

I feel a major one coming on. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe in print rather than online. But one's on the way.


The rant will be related to the "aquacalypse" that has hit around 300,000 West Virginians over the past several days.


I've been thinking about how when Senator Joe Manchin was governor he took down the popular "Wild, wonderful West Virginia" signs at the borders and put up ones that said "Open for business" until popular outcry got too loud to ignore.


(Maybe that sign should now be updated to say "Open for poison.")


West Virginia has indeed been wide open for certain kinds of business for the last 100 years or so to get away with murder, metaphorically and sometimes literally. And, with some notable exceptions, the state's political leaders have done all they could to help.


Now the chickens have come home to roost, as real chickens do. And one irony of all this is that this "open for business" attitude helped lead to this toxic mess that will make it even harder to attract the kinds of people and businesses and investments we need to move beyond the pillage economy.


I'd also like to ask a couple of WV's top level politicians a question. That question is this: "if the people of West Virginia one of these days get sick and tired of being sold out to corporations by politicians, how much do you think your life would change?"


My guess is, a lot.

Oh good

Well, I guess everybody can relax. John Boehner, Republican speaker of the US House of Representatives, told the world in the wake of West Virginia's chemical mess that "we have enough regulations on the books."

According to Salon,

“I am entirely confident that there are ample regulations already on the books to protect the health and safety of the American people,” Boehner continued. “What we try to do is look at those regulations that we think are cumbersome, are over-the-top and are costing our economy jobs. That’s what our focus continues to be.”

That ought to take care of everything, right? I feel better already. I'm sure WV Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito agrees.

MEANWHILE, BACK IN REALITY, here's a good op-ed by a friend of mine on how we're trashing our water and why that might not be such a great idea.

Out-ranted

I thought I had a pretty good rant about the WV chemical leak here, but I know when I've been outdone.  This one from Public Radio by Anna Sale, who used to be a reporter for WV Public Broadcasting, isn't bad either.

Meanwhile, I'm still wrapping my head around the fact that when workers from the WV Department of Environmental Protection showed up at Freedom Industries several hours after the leak, they found a 400 square foot pool of chemical "thicker than water, but not as heavy as syrup" held back by a cinder block and what sounds like a sand bag.

I mean, Jeez, what more do you need?

In addition, state officials admitted they had no plan for dealing with a leak like that.

A special joint committee of the WV legislature has been established to investigate the leak and propose possible legislation. It'll be interesting to see how industry hacks will try to gut anything that is proposed.

As I said in an earlier blog post, if any meaningful action comes from this, it will only be because some rich folks were inconvenienced this time around.

A final note: while driving to Charleston today, I saw a car with an Ayn Rand "Who is John Galt?" bumper sticker. I felt like running the guy off the road, sticking his head in some good licorice-smelling Kanawha River water for 15 minutes or so, and saying "John Galt is a fictional character from a bad book, you dumb ****.  This water, on the other hand, is real." In a nonviolent way, of course.