Since Moscow Mitch Entered The Senate, 88% Of Eastern KY Coal Jobs Gone - Now What?

[hatrack]

Mitch McConnell staked his last Senate campaign, five years ago, in large part on his support for the coal industry and coal miners. But McConnell's unwillingness to shore up the fund that supports miners with black lung disease or their pension fund, even after dozens of his constituents traveled 10 hours by bus this summer to his Washington office, has allowed a well-funded opponent to seize on what should be McConnell's strength: coal.

"Coal miners risked their lives to fuel our country and our growth into a world power," Democrat Amy McGrath says in a recent attack ad. Borrowing a union battle cry that still echoes in the hills and hollows around here after more than 80 years, McGrath says: "The question for anyone in Congress is, which side are you on?" In an indication that it struck a nerve, McConnell's campaign quickly hit back with his own ad, asserting that "Kentucky coal country knows that Mitch fights and wins for miners."

As the coal economy of eastern Kentucky has collapsed in recent years after decades of decline, there's a growing impatience expressed even by some local Republicans and community activists with McConnell's leadership on behalf of sick and out-of-work coal miners and their struggling towns in his home state.

McConnell has propped up a dying coal industry as the economic engine of the region, instead of going all in on supporting economic diversity that could provide a future for communities. He failed to support legislation that would reclaim mine land for economic development. He shied away from a bipartisan coalition in his state that is nurturing tech, medical and even solar jobs. He led the Republican effort to cut taxes on the coal companies — taxes that would help struggling miners. And he has not pushed to shore up a badly underfunded miners' pension fund. McConnell and other Kentucky politicians "doubled down on coal at a time when they should have been shifting energy and resources to what was going to come after it," said Jason Bailey, who follows the state's economy as executive director of the liberal-leaning Kentucky Center for Economic Policy. "That proved to be a tremendous mistake for the region."

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In eastern Kentucky, mining jobs have slid 88 percent since 1984 — when McConnell was first elected to the Senate — from 29,801 to 3,449, as mechanization increased, companies embraced strip mining, which uses fewer employees, coal reserves shrunk and demand for coal faded. Cheaper natural gas now outcompetes coal — and so do renewable forms of energy, like solar and wind. In April, for the first time ever, U.S. renewable energy hit a milestone, with the renewable sources producing more electricity than coal.

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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/24092019/mitch-mcconnell-coal-miners-pensions-fund-appalachia-senate-campaign

[greymattermom]

1. The west is full of mining ghost towns.

Folks left when the mines closed. Why should East Kentucky be different? Let the miners work to repair the land, then let the trees return.