OPINION
President John L. Lewis
I’ve talked about this many times before, but I grew up in a little steel mill coal mine town on the Allegheny River. And coal miners were a very special part of the men I witnessed growing up. There are two stories that I always remember. One was in the 7th grade and they had school announcements on the public address system when kids lost their parents, or something would happen. The announcement would come before school started. We sat alphabetically and with a name that begins “Bo” the girl behind me had a name that began with “Ca” and the announcement came that her father had died in a coal mine. The infamous Newfield Mine. The roof had fallen in on her dad and I don’t think they ever got his body out.
Later that day I was playing first base with the first organized ball team I played on, and one of the air shafts from the coal mine came up on an angle about 50 yards behind third base. I remember standing on the bag and thinking that Barbara’s father was down there, and I realized how dangerous that job was.
Later, I was working in a steel mill 4-12 p.m. and we got off at midnight. If you know steel mills or coal mines there are bars surrounding all the gates where the men went in and out. And across the railroad tracks from the mill I worked at was a bar-restaurant that actually advertised that they had color TV and it was air conditioned.
That was the place that we headed. It was the summer of 1964. We were talking politics, and these old miners and mill workers would come in there, watch TV and nurse beers in the evening. The wise ass that I am now was who I was then, and the old guys were all named Skee, or Stash, or Stanu, and I asked this old man who he was voting for in the presidential. He turned to me and said who’s running? And I said Lyndon Johnson and Barry Goldwater. And he looked at me and said my president is John L. Lewis. And I remember thinking what a fool he was until later I realized that the great John L. had done more for that guy than all the presidents put together.
John L. got vacation pay, safety in the mines, better pay. The Newfield coal mine had an incredibly bloody history. Management actually kept machine guns, tear gas bombs, and rifles to try and stop strikers and organizers.
To this day it angers me when some guy driving down I-25 in his BMW, sipping white wine in the evening with vacation pay, retirement plans, and medical benefits, says terrible things about the old unions. The unions won that for him as well.
Now comes Joe Biden. The publisher of this paper Chuck Bonniwell, Mark Crowley our site engineer, and myself were at the Trump convention in Cleveland in 2016. Walking around were two honest to God West Virginia coal miners. Their hard hats were covered with stickers, and they were beat up from hitting the sides of the mines. And I went over and introduced myself and they were the real deal, and they were there for Donald Trump. Hillary was threatening to shut down coal mining in America. Now Joe Biden wants to shut down coal mines and replace them with wind and solar. And I’m watching these greenies celebrate the kinds of men I just talked about losing their jobs.
Biden’s crack down on coal powered plants, new rules requiring coal plants and gas plants to match carbon captured technology and mitigate 90 percent of emissions, and instead of trying to meet those requirements, they’ll just close the mines. Pushing these men into retirement. It’s a sad day.
The choice that’s coming for us is in November, when we find ourselves really stumped by both candidates. This green agenda under a reelected Joe Biden is going to be costly. While our biggest rival, the Peoples Republic of China, has doubled its coal fired power growth to 2,400 coal fired power stations since the year 2000. They’ve doubled their coal fired plants and Joe Biden is closing ours down.
Can anybody on the Front Range imagine the impact on Colorado Springs and Pueblo where the coal plants are? You think those bird killer wind turbines are going to run the Front Range? I guess it just looks good on paper. And it makes me more of a Trump guy, and I hate Trump.
— Peter Boyles