Fear of success

It's becoming increasingly clear that what lies behind the mania of the US House majority to shutdown the government and crash the economy is fear that the Affordable Care Act will succeed.

I mean think about it. If "Obamacare" was a disaster, the thing to do would be let it roll out, capitalize on how bad it is, and ride that wave to victory. As Napoleon was supposed to have said, "Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake." That isn't happening. Instead, West Virginia alone, over 50,000 people have signed up for the expanded Medicaid program since Oct. 1.

I wonder how much damage the Whackadoodles will do before it's over, but I don't think they are going to be able to put the genie back in the bottle.

AND THEN THERE'S THIS: a recent poll shows that a majority of Americans don't think the shutdown crisis should be linked to Obamacare funding.

HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION. Here's a look at why it matters.

BOOMS AND BUSTS. Here's a call for WV leaders to get real about the future of coal. I'm not holding my breath on this one.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

When indeed

West Virginia just hit a milestone with the first coal mining death of 2013. Brandon Townsend, 34, of Delbarton in Mingo County was killed at an eastern Kanawha County mine when a hydraulic jack exploded, according to the Charleston Daily Mail. I wonder how many more there will be,

Meanwhile, WV's 2012 mine safety legislation, which wasn't worth cracking open a really good bottle of wine over (sorry about ending that phrase with a preposition), still hasn't been implemented. Although it made some modest improvements in state law, plenty of people, including myself, were critical of its drug testing provisions, since drug abuse hasn't been a factor in any major mine disaster.

In other coal news, mining employment dropped in the last quarter of 2012, with a total of 1,200 jobs lost. Ken Ward reports that 2/3 of the losses occurred in surface mines.

Since I'm leaning pretty hard on Ken today, let me give a final shout out to this great post of his at Coal Tattoo, which asks, not for the first time, "When will W.Va. plan for 'after coal?'"

From what I can tell, the answer so far is, not any time soon.