Janie my dear friend.......I love how you ask and then answer your own question. It can be because this is coal and until the rest of the country says, "Yes, we will pay the dues to stop the use of coal," then we will see these atrocities over and over. You have done a wonderful job of directing the point of this thread while also maintaining your temper.

I wish I had lived your life and yet be still able to gently explain to others that this is about coal....not about history, not about a battlefield.......its about coal in a land where coal is King. You can tell I'm about to get real raw here cause I just can't take it anymore and yet the options are none......Take it.....no Vaseline............................

So..................

How many of you have been to the mining regions of the Appalachians? Once upon a time this was one of the most beautiful places in the world. Sadly though it was also one of the richest in coal and as the technology of the Industrial Revolution began to take over, the need for coal skyrocketed. The people of the region had been happily self-sufficient for many years but along came a few guys who offered them money for the coal underneath their land. All too soon they learned that they had given up their land altogether because any way that coal could be mined, it soon was.

Having very little else to fall back on, they went to work for the coal companies which once again took advantage of them by paying jackshit nothing for wages in dangerous working conditions. Did I mention that the jackasses who owned the mines and destroyed the land didn't have to live there? Also did I mention that these guys also sat on the boards of the industries which used the coal, like steel?   By the way, since steel went down the tubes they now also are invested in your local electric companies. Well I guess that's okay cause a guy should keep busy...............

But everyone got together and with the Union and passionate people and no small amount of violence, they got better working conditions (still pretty damn bad) and better wages. But then Old King Coal got to noticing that this was pretty damn expensive! So why not just rip off hillsides wherever it was possible to reach the coal that was closer to the surface? Now that worked well and there was some new and fun machines, costly but effective, to do the job........Here's Big Muskie, the world's largest walking dragline which was eventually scrapped. I mean why bother with the expense of all that if you can just blow the living shit out of the hills and mountains? So what if each method pollutes more than the last? Fuck a bunch of fish! Also, if you read the article, they allude to "reclamation" and that's about all a coal company ever did......allude to it.

I call it the "Dichotomy of Coal" but its easier to say "you can't live with it and you can't live without it." In a poor region, made much poorer by coal company thievery, coal mining is one of the the highest paying jobs. But the higher pay made the jobs fewer because the companies found other ways to get the coal. None of this mentions all the politics of coal which makes the case for the trade in the region that has one very valuable resource to trade! At every turn where we have tried to make it better, King Coal has found a way to make it worse.

So we destroy the land, pollute the water, endanger the populace and the wildlife..............and the coal is still there and mining still provides the best jobs in a job poor state and the best trade material in a place where there isn't anything else of the same monetary value.   Now do you think anyone in power gives a shit about a battlefield or history?


Spaw