Coalfield blues

There's no doubt about it. These are hard times in the southern WV coalfields. Unfortunately, while the rhetoric is white hot (accent on white, by the way), straight talk is hard to find, especially in an election year. Here's a glum assessment of the current state of political debate here from my friend Ken Ward at Coal Tattoo.

On the positive side, some state leaders want to actually do something about it. State Senate President Jeff Kessler is holding a press conference tomorrow announcing the creation of a coalfield revitalization initiative. Obviously, it's way too soon to even guess how this will go but I think it's a big step forward just to create a task force to talk about the issues.

Meanwhile, people are starting to talk about the idea of some kind of federal assistance for displaced miners. Here's a piece from Grist titled "Should the feds bail out coal miners?" My short answer to that is, yes, as in programs modeled on other efforts to help workers displaced by trade agreements.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Republican WV Congressman David McKinley introduced a bill with a Democratic co-sponsor from Vermont to do something like that. The odds of it making it through congress any time soon don't look good, but it's another step in the right direction.

Another positive step that I've mentioned before is the What's Next, WV? effort, which is going to hold deliberative forums all over the state about our economic future.

None of this, however, is a big help right away to the over 5,000 miners who have lost jobs in southern WV over the last few years due mostly to shifting market forces.

This is what I'm talking about

As I've mentioned before here, in another lifetime, I used to referee karate tournaments. (This was before I went to Okinawa and saw the real thing and realized it should never have been turned into a sport, but I digress.) Anyhow, I really tried to call em like I saw em regardless of what I thought of the competitors, their style, teacher or uniform.

So, in that spirit of fair play, I'm calling "Ippon!" (Japanese for full point) to WV Republican congressman David McKinley. He cosponsored a bill, with Democrat Peter Welch from Vermont, that would provide transitional assistance to coal miners who lose their jobs. The legislation was modeled in part on the Trade Adjustment Assistance Act, which was designed to help workers who lost employment due to trade policies. As I argued in this op-ed, there is plenty of precedence for this kind of thing.

Welch is concerned about climate change. McKinley is a denier. Both may have different views on what is causing distress in the coalfields, as in the market or federal policies. But they did find something important to agree on

I think this is a put up or shut up moment for any Appalachian politician who holds or aspires to federal office. If you pretend to care about miners, then do all you can to push for policies to help those who are losing their jobs. Or else shut up about the so-called "war on coal." Because even if Obama and the EPA would go away today, the market wouldn't.