Subscribe via RSS Feed

Tag: "kentucky"

Friends of Coal Miners

[ 30 ] March 25, 2013 | Erik Loomis

Who are the real friends of coal miners? Like in the timber wars of the 1980s, an exploitative industry and its lackey politicians have claimed that the industry looks out for the miners against those evil environmentalists, while at the same time engaging in land management and labor policies that make workers’ lives worse. Given a declining industry due to overexploitation of the resource and because of a lack of economic alternatives for scared workers, this political move has been very effective both in logging towns of the Northwest and Appalachian coal country.

But in both places, activists have pushed back against the false choices of industry versus environment. Here is an outstanding letter from retired UMWA organizer Carl Shoupe about the lies of the coal industry to the people of Kentucky.

Since I’ve been around coal all my life, I guess I should be pleased when our “leaders” say they are Friends of Coal. But lately, I’ve been wondering, which part of coal they’re friends with.

Peabody Energy and its new company, Patriot Coal, are trying to weasel out of paying health and pension benefits promised to thousands of retired UMWA miners. Have you heard any objection from these Friends of Coal in our marble palaces in Frankfort? Those miners earned their benefits with their sweat and their blood, but now Peabody wants to dump them like they’re just more overburden.

These politicians may be friends of coal, but they’re not friends of coal miners and their families. These miners and their families are being robbed of their retirement and benefits.

My friend Truman recently spent a week hooked up to a hospital ventilator. Like thousands of others, he suffers with black lung, caused by working in underground mines filled with coal dust. Today, the number of severe black lung cases is on the rise again, affecting workers on strip mines and below ground. And yet Congressman Hal Rogers has led efforts in Congress to block rules designed to protect miners from that awful disease.

Another friend of mine had to move with his daughter away from the homeplace where his family has lived for over 200 years. Toxic runoff from mountaintop removal was poisoning him and his family.

But his state representative, House Speaker Greg Stumbo, stood up at an Environmental Protection Agency hearing about water pollution and insisted that anyone who wants to save the mountains should just “go buy one.”

The speaker may be a friend of the coal companies, but he’s no friend of coalfield families threatened by mountaintop mining and poisoned water.

Coal companies and politicians of both parties who are beholden to coal money are not the friends of workers. At the very least, political progressives should be aware that environmentalists are not the enemies of coal miners. The enemy is the employer who has zero concern for the aftermath of coal mining and the long-term effects of coal dependency on Appalachia.

Crisis Simulation

[ 8 ] February 27, 2013 | Robert Farley

This past weekend we held the annual Patterson School Crisis Simulation. This year’s topic was cyber-warfare; I have a long writeup at Information Dissemination, and a shorter writeup at the Diplomat:

Coincidentally, my institution (the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce) ran a simulation last week on a cyber attack against U.S. defense contractors.  Although the simulation abstracted a great deal from reality, it nevertheless provided some policy lessons.  The attackers in our simulation (representing a Russian criminal organization rather than the PLA) shied away from directly assaulting U.S. government institutions, instead focusing their efforts on a law firm associated with several contractors.  The attackers hoped to gain access to intellectual property, including patent applications and trade secret information, as well as patterns of communication between the firm, the government, and the contractors.

In our simulation, the attackers substantially succeeded in most of their goals, although they did run into some difficulty selling the information. The most important lesson we learned is that poor communication between government and private organizations can doom cyber-defense efforts.  In our case, the law firm only reluctantly relayed its concerns about a breach to the government and to its clients, leaving the attackers with ample time to conduct their theft. This reluctance was hardly irrational; the perception that secrets could be at risk would prove devastating to the firm’s business prospects. Although our simulation did not subdivide the U.S. government (by creating different teams for different departments), similar dynamics surely complicate interagency responses to cyber-attacks.

 

 

Ashley!

[ 77 ] February 26, 2013 | Robert Farley

Thanks to the Daily Caller, I’m now a strong supporter of Ashley Judd’s potential 2014 Senate bid:

- On her comparing mountaintop removal to the Rwandan genocide: “President Clinton has repeatedly said doing nothing during the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 is the single greatest regret of the Presidency. Yet here at home, there is full blown environmental genocide and collapse happening, and we are doing nothing. Naturally, I accept that I set myself up for ridicule for using such strong terms, or perhaps outrage from human victims of slaughter.”

- On fathers giving daughters away at weddings: “To this day, a common vestige of male dominion over a woman’s reproductive status is her father ‘giving’ away her away to her husband at their wedding, and the ongoing practice of women giving up their last names in order to assume the name of their husband’s families, into which they have effectively been traded.”

- On the coal industry, which employees thousands of Kentuckians: “The era of coal plant is over, unacceptable,” she tweeted in October.

- On how Christianity “legitimizes” male power over women: “Patriarchal religions, of which Christianity is one, gives us a God that is like a man, a God presented and discussed exclusively in male imagery, which legitimizes and seals male power. It is the intention to dominate, even if the intention to dominate is nowhere visible.”

- On men: “Throughout history, men have tried to control the means of reproduction, which means trying to control woman. This president is a modern day Attila the Hun.”

Of course, we’ll see how all this plays out in an election, and how strong a candidate Judd proves to be (if she does indeed run). Kentucky is a funny place; we all remember how devastating the Aqua Buddha scandal was to Rand Paul’s political career.

This Won’t Happen on Ashley Judd’s Watch…

[ 80 ] February 19, 2013 | Robert Farley

Oh dear:

On November 14, 2012, Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) wrote to Elizabeth King, the Pentagon’s congressional liaison, with an unusually credulous query. “I am writing on behalf of a constituent who has contacted me regarding Guantanamo Bay prisoners receiving Post 9/11 GI Bill benefits,” McConnell wrote in a letter acquired by Danger Room. “I would appreciate your review and response to my constituent’s concerns.”

Um, Guantanamo detainees getting GI Bill benefits? Yes, that’s from the Duffel Blog, as McConnell’s constituent clearly states, complete with the reference URL. Said constituent even notes that he or she can’t find any information about the alleged government payouts to suspected insurgents and terrorists.

 

 

A Sound of Wailing Ran from Piraeus Through the Long Walls to the City, One Man Passing on the News to Another…

[ 12 ] February 16, 2013 | Robert Farley

This is ugly. Take a look at the Jerry Tipton and John Clay twitter feeds to get a sense of the emotional dead space at the core of Big Blue Nation.

… post-game press conference even more ugly, if possible:

“We’ve got a couple of guys that are basically not real coachable,” said John Calipari after his worst loss in four years as UK’s coach. “You tell them over and over what we want to do, what we have to do, and they do their own thing. That’s where we are.”

Horror and Pornography

[ 71 ] January 10, 2013 | Robert Farley

I hesitate to link to this; take care, because it’s a genuinely horrible story of the death of a small child.  Newspapers acquire, justified or not, reputations for certain kinds of stories. The Lexington Herald Leader, it seems, almost invariably has some terrible tale of something awful befalling a toddler, whether shooting or car accident or fall from great height or some other mishap.

For reasons I haven’t been able to fully articulate, this story affects me more than most.  I’ve thought about it since the incident first hit the news, for reasons that should be obvious.  The story of the last moments is incomparably horrible, both for mother and child. At the same time, the participants oddly defy blame.  The father will likely go to prison, but this is clearly not a case of intentional homicide; it is perhaps too easy for parents to imagine something like this happening, if they ever found themselves with the misfortune of being forced to live in a trailer-turned-meth-lab.

While we can make social-science-laden-public-policy observations about events like this, in a country as large and varied as the United States, the overall impact of any public policy shift is simply to marginally increase or decrease the number of toddlers who die horrible deaths.  Policy shifts can have an impact that is hardly trivial; any of more investment in schools, an easing of drug prohibition, anti-poverty programs, greater access to and information about birth control, and better funded social service programs might have made a difference in this case.  Nevertheless, people are going to die in ways that shock and horrify; state policy only changes the “who” and “how many.”

I should also say that I’ve been reluctant to post on this because of a nagging feeling that, for the family, there ought to be something deeply private about this event. Reading the story, especially in the excruciatingly clinical style of the first link, feels like watching pornography; there’s something wrong about the notion that I have the right to know about it.  The story activates my horror/outrage/despair centers in an almost voyeuristic manner. That the story happens to be true only enhances the emotional rush. Surely the state needs to intervene, even if the principles have already been horribly punished.  Clearly, the media should stand as watchdog to the state, and evaluation of the events should inform our politics and policy. Still, I can’t help but feel that the combination of righteous outrage and horror that I feel when I read about the case is inappropriate; this belongs to someone else, and I have no right to this sense of despair.

Gettin’ Drunk in Kentucky Just Got Easier

[ 43 ] August 14, 2012 | Robert Farley

Get big government out of my grocery store liquor aisle!

A federal judge ruled Tuesday that a Kentucky law prohibiting grocery and convenience stores from selling wine and distilled spirits is unconstitutional.

U.S. District Judge John G. Heyburn II of Louisville said the state law “violates the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause in that it prohibits certain grocery stores, gas stations and others … from obtaining a license to sell package liquor and wine.”

In Kentucky locations where alcohol sales are allowed, beer — but not wine or spirits — may be sold in grocery stores. Grocery stores, however, may get a license to sell wine and liquor if they provide a separate entrance to that part of the store, where minors are not allowed to work. A store employee of legal age is required to conduct beer sales.

Such requirements do not apply to drugstores.

Thank goodness somebody finally found a use for the Constitution. This change will make it approximately 2.3% easier to acquire wine and liquor in Lexington by effectively making every single business establishment a liquor store. Now if we could only do away with the “no liquor sales on Election Day” rule, and the “can’t mail booze into Kentucky” rule, which is a genuine inconvenience.

Kentucky State Politics

[ 11 ] July 8, 2012 | Robert Farley

This is how we roll in Kentucky:

Former state treasurer Jonathan Miller finished eighth overall in the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas and won $69,896.

Miller was one of nine players left in a No-Limit Hold ‘em tournament that started with 4,620 players. With 1,700,000 chips, Miller, a lawyer from Lexington, was ranked third. The winner, Dominik Nitsche of Germany, received $654,797.

Miller said in an interview during a break that he’s been an amateur poker player for six or seven years, and making it to one of the final two tables in the tournament has been “unreal.”

Playing in the World Series of Poker was a goal he said he deferred while in public office.

“When you’re a politician in Kentucky, it is not a real good public relations move going to a gambling tournament in Las Vegas,” Miller said.

Not actually sure that this will be a net political negative for Miller…

The Last Days of Appalachian Coal

[ 10 ] May 31, 2012 | Erik Loomis

Eric Lipton’s feature on the decline of coal in Kentucky is interesting, though flawed. He tells a heartbreaking story for these coal miners, helping us understand just how deeply people in eastern Kentucky believe in coal. Even if other economic opportunities appeared in the region, a lot of people just don’t want to imagine a world not dominated by coal. Of course, the fact that the coal industry has ruled this area as a feudal domain for a century doesn’t help.

Both Lipton and the Kentucky coal operators are giving environmentalists too much power. The idea that environmentalists can set policy in 2012 is pretty laughable and flies in the face of a huge amount of evidence. Environmentalists can be a useful ally if more powerful players want something to happen. New York and Chicago are moving away from supplying power through coal because Bloomberg and Emanuel want it to happen. Sierra Club lobbying might be making a difference but they are hardly, say, passing national legislation or even state-level legislation on these matters. Environmentalists are an easy target. And by including pollution controls on new coal-fired plants, they have raised the cost of doing business. But environmentalists are an easy target that ignores what’s really going on.

And that’s fracking. The economics of natural gas just make a lot more sense. And for as horrible as fracking can be (and for all the problems we have ignored while just plowing ahead), it is almost certainly better for everyone with a stake in energy than coal, except for the coal miners themselves. Natural gas is tremendously efficient for home heating. It’s less dirty than coal. It doesn’t change the climate as quickly. And it’s just a lot cheaper at the present time. Even if you don’t have the pollution controls on new plants, coal can’t compete with natural gas right now.

And one issue the article elides is the fact that Americans are still mining enormous amounts of coal–but it is increasingly in Wyoming instead of Kentucky and West Virginia. Lipton mentions the overseas market for coal, especially in Asia. But high-quality coal seams are disappearing in Appalachia; after over a century, it is finally drying up. So the ability of Appalachia to transition to an overseas market is limited. The companies know this and they are invested whole hog in western coal.

Ideally, the government would step in here like Bill Clinton did during the spotted owl crisis. Settling the issue more or less in favor of environmentalists, as needed to happen, Clinton also ensured significant federal aid and job retraining programs to people who lost their jobs. But there’s no way that is going to happen in 2012. Loggers in 1993 weren’t any much pro-Democratic president than coal miners are today. But Oregon and Washington also had huge local constituencies who wanted to see old-growth logging on federal lands end and there’s just not that local community in Kentucky and West Virginia lobbying for the end of coal. It’s even more of an insider-outsider paradigm than the ancient forest campaigns proved to be. Even more important is the shrinkage of the welfare state and the overt hostility today to helping even white people, as opposed to the 90s when subsidies for poor white loggers were OK but welfare for black mothers was repealed.

Derby Day!

[ 14 ] May 5, 2012 | Robert Farley

Ladies and gentlemen, start your mint juleps. Here’s Smooth Bobby Farley’s Derby picks:

  1. Union Rags
  2. Alpha
  3. Take Charge Indy

Take it to the bank*.

*Do not take to any reputable bank.  Any resemblance to actual order of finish is purely coincidental.

 

 

How Can I Sleep When Our Couches are Burning?

[ 24 ] April 1, 2012 | Robert Farley

Some preparatory celebration…

Jubilation over the University of Kentucky’s win over the University of Louisville quickly turned into scenes of couch-burning mayhem in key celebratory areas around campus.

State Street, which had become the epicenter of couch burning in recent weeks, was quickly filled with thousands of people, smoke and flying beer bottles. Police in riot gear with fire extinguishers and batons dodged bottles from the growing crowd and tried to stop a raft of couch fires.

Police blocked people from an empty building, but could not stop at least five cars from being flipped over, set on fire or vandalized. Much of the violence was accompanied by people chanting a war cry of “C-A-T-S, Cats, Cats, Cats!”

Fire department officials said at least 39 fires occurred in the campus area, mostly on State Street, and mostly to couches and trash. The Fire Department also made 12 first-aid runs….

On April 1, 1996, crowds took to the streets after UK won the national championship against Syracuse. Cars were crushed; police officers and bystanders were hit with rocks and bottles; and a television news van was overturned and set ablaze.

City and UK officials had also urged fans repeatedly through the week to keep cool after the historic game.

But now city and UK officials have yet another night to get through, that of the championship game itself on Monday night.

“If this is a preview for Monday night,” said Samantha Shirley, who was watching the crowds on State Street, “then I feel sorry for the police.”

I’m sure that the UK student body will do its best to ensure that Lexington is visible from the International Space Station on Monday evening. The course of the game will merely determine how the fires are fueled. For our part, we’ll be parking the cars in the garage, booby trapping the couch, and enjoying the game over a snifter of brandy with an appropriately aged crowd.

Kentucky Basketball Tonight

[ 18 ] March 31, 2012 | Robert Farley

In the course of what amounts to an aesthetic argument on behalf of the Louisville Cardinals, Dennis Berman argues:

This should be a moment of elation for Kentucky fans. Their team plays a ruthlessly beautiful brand of basketball. Their starting lineup is better than the New Jersey Nets.

And yet there is something lurking underneath: A sense that winning is, in its own odd way, making UK’s fans miserable. Their expectations of triumph—be it recruiting battles or tournament games—has hardened into a coarse entitlement. It’s gotten to the point where even a championship will feel like anticlimax.

My best friend, a rare species of Louisville-turned-Kentucky turncoat, admits it. “It’s not fun,” he says. “We expect it.”

There’s something to this. While I appreciate that the state of Kentucky basketball since my arrival in the commonwealth has been unusually tumultuous (the graceless exit of Tubby, the trainwreck called Billy Gillespie), I’ve generally found Kentucky fans to be knowledgeable, committed, but curiously joyless about the object of their affection. I count myself as a fan now (I lack the contrarian spirit, except in extreme situations), and it seems that at certain atmospheric dread backdrops every game; the Wildcats will probably win, and will in all likelihood destroy the opponent of the day, but what if they don’t? After the final Gillespie year, when it seemed that the center of power in the SEC might be drifting permanently south, this dread became palpable.

I wonder; do Notre Dame football fans feel this same way? Is it characteristic of dominant programs that may be on the wane? Will this atmosphere of dread and apprehension lift if the ‘Cats win the title, at least for a while? I hope so; cheering for the Cats is altogether more trying that cheering for the Ducks, even if I’m a great deal more enthusiastic about Oregon football than Kentucky basketball. I suppose that the Ducks would have to have a very long run of success before the legacy of the program itself became weighty.

In any case, go ‘Cats! Brutalize the Cardinals! Louisville isn’t really even in Kentucky…

…and as for the LGM NCAA Tourney Bracket:

If Kansas wins and is beaten by Kentucky, tb_slash wins.

If Ohio State wins and is beaten by Kentucky, mwbugg wins.

If Ohio State beats Kentucky, grinchgalleriesofoysterbay wins.

If Kansas beats Kentucky, rapayn01 wins.

Page 1 of 712345...Last »

    • Switch to our mobile site