Vengeance is mine sayeth Mitch

By BERRY CRAIG

AFT Local 1360

Sen. Mitch McConnell, a Southern Baptist, must not have read that passage in the Good Book that says vengeance is the Lord’s prerogative.

The senate majority leader is stalling the Miners Protection Act, a bill that would save the United Mine Workers of America pension plan and keep it from probably going broke.

The other day, McConnell told some business leaders in coal-rich Pike County “that ‘the country must not turn its back on Kentucky coal miners,’" according to a Lexington Herald-Leader story by Adam Beam and Jonathan Mattise.

McConnell claimed “the pension issue is more complicated than just ‘helping miners,’ pointing out the proposal would only benefit union miners while doing nothing for non-union workers who have also lost their jobs,” the story said.

McConnell doesn’t give a flip about those non-union miners except as voters he can con and as a cover for getting even with the UMWA for endorsing Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes over him in the 2014 senate race.

The story cited Joseph Holland, a retired UMWA member in Owensboro, who “said the federal government owes them their pensions and health benefits because of a promise former President Harry Truman made in the 1940s that ended a costly strike.”

Holland also thinks McConnell is punishing the union for going with Grimes. “He says he supports coal, but you know no evidence that he’s supported the coal miners,” the story quoted Holland.

He’s right, of course.

McConnell and GOP presidential hopeful Donald Trump bloviate about the Democrats’ “war on coal” while they and like-minded Republicans wage war on miners. If they had their way, the UMWA would go away and mine safety would be left up to mine owners and managers driven by profit, not to impartial federal and state regulators. 

Mum's the word from Trump about the Miners Protection Act.

Anyway, when Kentucky’s senior senator intones that America mustn’t “turn its back on Kentucky coal miners” he really means the country needs to rally behind the well-heeled coal operators, who, not coincidentally, give generously to McConnell and to other union-busting politicians.

By pretending to stick up for non-union miners, McConnell apparently figures he’s hidden his blatant attempt to exact revenge on the UMWA. His ploy is about as subtle as a loaded coal truck honking its horn and barreling down a narrow two-lane road in coal country.