I now see why the Republicans passed the bill to gut Superfund. It’s clearly unnecessary, what with a company actually named Freedom Industries taking care of the good people of West Virginia. Schools and restaurants closed, grocery stores sold out of bottled water, and state legislators who had just started their session canceled the day’s […]
Tag: West Virginia
On December 30, 1969, Richard Nixon signed the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act into law. The first comprehensive legislation in American history to protect the lives of coal miners, it came on
On August 25, 1921, the largest labor insurgency in American history and the largest civil uprising since the Civil War began in Logan County, West Virginia when 10,000 miners and their supporters wen
West Virginia turns 150 today. Forged in the rejection of treason in defense of slavery, the state developed into a medieval fiefdom of the coal industry with much of the nation’s worst industrial violence, endemic poverty, and resource exploitation. Even as coal withdraws from the state, it looks at the state’s residents as a bunch […]
On Monday, a West Virginia gas facility exploded, injuring two workers. Luckily, neither have life-threatening injuries. So this story will fade into oblivion even faster than a fatal coal mine or fer
Jay Rockefeller deserves major kudos for finally calling out the coal industry for lying to workers and the state that the EPA and environmentalists are costing coal jobs: This EPA rule – two decade
On this date 92 years ago, the Matewan Massacre took place in the small town of Matewan, West Virginia. In January 1920, the United Mine Workers of America had a new president: John L. Lewis. Lewis, who would become one of the most powerful labor leaders in American history, wanted to organize the miners of […]
Again, I just have a really hard time understanding why we don’t trust the energy industry to look out for our best interests? In 2007, Berry Energy Inc. of Clarksburg began drilling a conventio
The coal industry is so incredibly loathsome: In response to a recent study connecting mountaintop removal coal mining to birth defects, coal industry lawyers noted: The study failed to account for co
As I expressed last week when thinking about the Huffington Post boycott and its broader implications for the blogosphere, I noted that we are long past the time when the blogosphere was the relative meritocracy of the mid 2000s. It is extremely difficult for an individual new to blogging to rise up the totem pole. […]
Miners experienced awful conditions in the coal regions of West Virginia in the early 20th century. Coal companies ruled the region like a fiefdom. Impoverished workers had few connections with the ou