We all know that Ken Cuccinelli is a climate science denier, persecutor of climate scientists, clean energy basher, and major recipient of fossil fuel industry largesse. So I wasn’t surprised when I saw this headline in the Fredericksburg Patch, quoting Cuccinelli that “The war on coal in Virginia is a war on the poor” and that the coal industry is supposedly “vital to the [Appalachian Power Company service] area’s economic stability.”

In fact, as we’ve discussed previously, the whole “war on coal” argument is utter bull****. In fact, Virginia coal mining employment is UP – repeat, UP! – under President Obama. That’s not a LOT of jobs (0.46% of the Virginia total), but still, it’s nice to get the facts straight once in a while – even if you’re a right-wing ideologue (aka, “liar”) like Ken Cuccinelli. In addition, as this post explained, there’s been a decades-long decline of coal mining employment in Central Appalachia, a large chunk of which occurred under Presidents Reagan and George HW Bush (the trend continued under Bill Clinton, then reversed a bit under George W. Bush and Barack Obama).

The reasons for this decline?  First, mechanization (e.g., mountaintop removal coal mining), which has made the coal industry far more capital intensive and far less labor intensive than it used to be. Second, a migration of coal mining from places (e.g., Virginia) where it used to be mined by humans, operating in coal mines, to highly-mechanized Western and/or mountaintop removal operations. And third, the move away from coal and towards cheap and abundant natural gas, as well as much cheaper (and inexhaustible) wind and solar power. Put that all together, and what do you get? A decline in coal mining employment in the U.S. over many, many decades. Nothing to do with a “war,” unless you consider the impersonal forces of capitalism, technology and economics to be conscious beings capable of initiating hostilities against coal miners. (rolls eyes)

Anyway, I was curious what an actual, you know, EXPERT in this subject thought, as opposed to a bought-and-paid-for “useful idiot” like Ken Cuccinelli. So, I contacted Professor Michael Hendryx of West Virginia University, who has done a great deal of work on the health and economic impacts of coal mining in Appalachia (e.g., “Full cost accounting for the life cycle of coal” and “The association between mountaintop mining and birth defects among live births in central Appalachia, 1996-2003.”). The first paper, for instance, found that “the life cycle of coal-extraction, transport, processing, and combustion-generates a waste stream and carries multiple hazards for health and the environment,” adding up to massive externalities that are “costing the U.S. public a third to over one-half of a trillion dollars annually” and that, “[a]ccounting for the damages conservatively doubles to triples the price of electricity from coal per kWh generated.”

Anyway, I wanted to see what Professor Hendryx thought specifically about Ken Cuccinelli’s comments that “The war on coal in Virginia is a war on the poor.” His response was very revealing:

The evidence is overwhelming that a coal-dependent mining economy perpetuates poverty and offers increasingly fewer economic opportunities, but the industry and the politicians that cater to it can still play the jobs card it seems. Pretty sad.

In other words, Cuccinelli has it completely backwards: far from his (non-existent) “war on coal” constituting a (non-existent) “war on the poor,” in fact “a coal-dependent mining economy perpetuates poverty and offers increasingly fewer economic opportunities.” So much for that “Big Lie” by Ken Cuccinelli.

By the way, in the same talk, Cuccinelli also attacked Terry McAuliffe for supporting a “Renewable Portfolio Standard of 25% renewable sources of electricity by 2025” which Cuccinelli says is “bordering on California-style energy policy.” Of course, in Cuccinelli’s warped worldview, that’s a bad thing. In stark contrast, in the world of sanity and fact, that’s actually a very good thing.

Recently, the American Council on Renewable Energy’s (ACORE’s) “Fact Check” utterly demolished the claim that “State Renewable Portfolio Standards are job-killing government mandates that offer no economic benefits and cause skyrocketing electricity rates.” In fact, according to ACORE, “RPS policies are currently driving over 1/3 of new renewable energy development across America in a cost-competitive manner that protects American consumers.” Across the country, ACORE explains, Renewable Portfolio Standards are working to “drive in-state economic growth” while dramatically boosting the amount of renewable energy on the grid.

For instance, in deep “red” Texas, the state’s RPS “has been so successful that its 10-year goal was met in just over six years.” In our neighbor to the south, “renewable energy has decreased electricity rates and rates are lower than they would be without renewable energy, according to a 2013 study conducted by RTI International.” And in California, which Cuccinelli singles out as some sort of bogeyman, “[e]lectricity costs are dropping…making renewable energy more competitive with fossil fuels.”

The bottom line is that Ken Cuccinelli either a) has absolutely no idea what he’s talking about when it comes to energy issues; b) is simply spouting the false, “Big Lie”-style propaganda of his big fossil fuel donors and pals; or c) knows exactly what the facts are but has decided to lie through his teeth anyway (to pander for votes, to please his corporate masters, etc.). Actually, come to think of it, it’s probably “a,” “b” and “c” – the triple whammy of lies, disinformation, and ignorance all rolled into one noxious package. What a nightmare.

( – promoted by lowkell)

This is the fifth entry in the series*

Patterns tend to persist in cultures over long periods.

Sometimes, when a spirit has seized hold of a society and then driven it into disaster or disgrace, that spirit can be eradicated, or at least exiled into the recesses of the culture. Think of the way that Nazism has been systematically driven out of the German nation and the German psyche.

Nothing remotely like this happened with the spirit that took possession of the South and led it into catastrophic defeat in the Civil War.  

If it was an evil spirit that inflamed a region to fight to preserve slavery, neither the South nor the nation as a whole ever decided to drive that spirit out.

The South has continued to honor that spirit, and its fateful consequences. My wife went to Nathan Bedford Forrest High School. Forrest was a main founder of the Ku Klux Klan. The other high school nearby was named for Jefferson Davis, who attempted to prolong the war after Robert E. Lee had surrendered to Ulysses Grant. The South continues to form its identity around the spirit that animated it during that era of destruction.

After the Civil War, the same spirit that had roused the South to fight to preserve its “peculiar institution” – to defend both its existence and Southern claims about its rightness — continued to dictate the region’s values, claiming that the “Lost Cause” was noble and that its defenders were the good guys.

After the war and Reconstruction, that spirit created the Jim Crow South. It was a regime that wielded power through racial terror and oppression, forming the heart of the region’s politics and power relations for the better part of a century.  Although slavery had been abolished, its basic dynamics were resurrected, with blacks exploited and kept in humiliating and degrading conditions.  

The spirit that created Jim Crow also exploited the brokenness of its devotees, socializing a great many people from the dominant race to be ready to punish the most vulnerable group of people in their midst if any of them stepped out of line.  It built into the culture a readiness to punish a black man for looking the wrong way at a white woman, or for failing to show sufficient deference to whites, or for objecting to second-class citizenship (e.g. wanting the right to vote).  

The regime ended when the nation as a whole rallied — nearly a century after the Civil War — to enforce equal protection under the law.  Segregation was dismantled.

But that spirit is back.

Since the end of segregation, the once solidly Democratic South has become the base of a Republican Party that preys on the most vulnerable and expresses contempt (behind closed doors) for the “47 %”( of whom it has a most distorted picture). It hosts a political culture that is more likely to blame and belittle the downtrodden than to want to help them. It’s a culture that would rather children go hungry than that the richest should pay a cent more.

This Republican culture, moreover, seeks to impose its dominance in the name of morality, while really being driven by an insistence on power and control.  And like the earlier ante-bellum expression of this spirit, today’s version presents itself as the bastion of Christian values.

In these ways, the spirit expressing itself through today’s Republican Party resembles what worked for decades to defend human slavery as right and good and just. It is a spirit that drives people into dominating and exploiting others, and covering it over with hypocrisy.

***********************

The first four entries have been

The Spirit that Drove Us to Civil War is Back: Introduction,

The Spirit that Drove Us to Civil War is Back: The Wolves’ Version of Liberty ,

The Spirit That Drove Us to Civil War Is Back: Looking Closer at that National Nightmare, and

The Spirit That Drove Us to Civil War Is Back: A Spirit that Made Slavery Its Priority.

The next four entries will deal with the issue of where the responsibility lies, in both the Civil War era and the present day, for the breakdown of the political process into ever less cooperation and ever-escalating levels of conflict. These pieces, about the spirit that prefers war to peace,will appear beginning in two weeks.

*****************

Andy Schmookler, recently the Democratic nominee for Congress from Virginia’s 6th District, is an award-winning author, political commentator, radio talk-show host, and teacher.  His books include The Parable of the Tribes:  The Problem of Power in Social Evolution.   His website is at www.NoneSoBlind.org .  An archive of some of his earlier Blue Virginia postings can be found at  

https://bluevirginia.us/use…  .

Here are a few Virginia (and national) news headlines, political and otherwise, for Tuesday, July 30. And yes, I despise bottled water…environmental disaster and total boondoggle.

*Pope Francis On Gay Priests: ‘Who Am I To Judge?’ (I’m liking this Pope more and more, even as Ken Cuccinelli’s probably liking him less and less. LOL)

*Fox News’s worst interview yet (“The network owes author Reza Aslan an apology.” And the person doing the interview should never work on TV again, and the network should pledge to never conduct ANY interview like this again, etc. But none of that will happen, most likely, because this is the egregious Faux “News” we’re talking about.)

*Gerson: The GOP’s offensive, clueless minority (Wait, I thought it was the majority?)

*Kaine wants more effort to speed transfer from Guantanamo

*Kaine to chair key Middle East panel

*Mitt Romney’s Incredible 47-Percent Denial: “Actually, I Didn’t Say That” (He’s always been a pathological liar, why stop now? Actually, in all seriousness, Willard needs to get psychological help. He’s delusional.)

*Campaign chest or slush fund? (“Under Virginia’s flimsy finance laws, the first lady’s use of McDonnell  campaign funds is legal.”)

*Debate discord surfaces in LG race (“Democratic nominee Ralph Northam raised the issue Monday morning when he challenged Republican nominee E.W. Jackson to accept three debate invitations: an AARP-sponsored formum at Virginia Tech, another in Richmond and a third at Northern Virginia’s George Mason University.”)

*Conservative film flays McAuliffe’s Va. biz deals (Citizens United “was a litigant in a case that produced a 2010 U.S. Supreme Court decision giving corporations, labor unions and other organizations greater freedom to spend on political causes.” That’s right, one of the worst Supreme Court decisions ever…and this is the group that started it. Blech.)

*Ad targets Cuccinelli fight with climate scientist

*McDonnell’s private lawyers bill the state $54,000 in embezzlement case (“About $24,000 was for McDonnell himself, and the rest was to help his staff respond to FOIA request”)

*Who knows Virginia? Not (fill in the blank) … (“McAuliffe actually said he wanted to ‘four-lane 58 all the way out from the port.'” Uhhhh…last I checked “all the way out” means from beginning to end. But not in Ken Kookinelli’s weird world, apparently.)

*Today’s top opinion: Elegy (“The supposition that Virginia’s tradition of gentlemanly government means that the commonwealth does not require remedies for greed appropriate for, say, Louisiana invites derision. It does not set a high bar to say Virginia is not as bad as the worst.”)

*Expectations  for intermodal (“A study of the freight train terminal can keep the project percolating”)

*Broken promises on Craney Island

*Grass-roots campaign rallies opponents of Bi-County Parkway

*Dog days of summer will be all wag and no bite for at least another day

Congratulations to Del. Scott Surovell on a well-deserved honor! 

Richmond, VA — For the first time, the Virginia Chapter of the Sierra Club voted to recognize members of the General Assembly with awards lauding their work in the Legislature. The Chapter’s Legislative Committee voted unanimously to honor Del. Scott Surovell with the Solar Champion Award to recognize his work on energy policy.

On receiving his award Del. Surovell offered the following quote, “Virginia has lagged behind other states in encouraging renewable energy. By adding solar thermal energy to Virginia's renewable energy portfolio, we are taking a small step to encourage people to invest in this technology. The Sierra Club's Virginia Chapter has been a vigilant voice for changing Virginia's renewable energy policy and I look forward to continuing to work with them towards effecting larger efforts to reduce Virginia's carbon footprint.”

The Delegate from Mount Vernon patroned a successful bill that will add solar thermal energy to the definition of renewable energy in the Code of Virginia, providing an incentive for investment in solar thermal under the Renewable Portfolio Standard. More solar thermal means cleaner air and a healthier future.

“Delegate Surovell has established a strong record in the House of Delegates promoting renewable and solar energy including HB 1917 to allow a utility to claim renewable thermal energy from within the state and HB 1916 to create a tax credit for solar energy systems. We are very pleased to honor Delegate Surovell with the Solar Champion Award, and to also recognize his leadership with Senator Ebbin to repeal the hybrid car tax,” said Pat Soriano, Political Chair of the Sierra Club Mount Vernon Group.

Pictured here with Delegate Surovell is Pat Soriano, Political Chair of the Sierra Club Mount Vernon Group