Paul believes mountaintop removal just needs a little rebranding. "I think they should name it something better," he says. "The top ends up flatter, but we're not talking about Mount Everest. We're talking about these little knobby hills that are everywhere out here. And I've seen the reclaimed lands. One of them is 800 acres, with a sports complex on it, elk roaming, covered in grass." Most people, he continues, "would say the land is of enhanced value, because now you can build on it."Yep. Rand Paul. Enhancing the Bluegrass State, one big, toxic environmental disaster at a time. I'm sure people are lining up to build on that "enhanced" land. The Details magazine article concludes with this:
"Is there a certain amount of accidents and unfortunate things that do happen, no matter what the regulations are?" Paul says at the Harlan Center, in response to a question about the Big Branch disaster. "The bottom line is I'm not an expert, so don't give me the power in Washington to be making rules. You live here, and you have to work in the mines. You'd try to make good rules to protect your people here. If you don't, I'm thinking that no one will apply for those jobs. I know that doesn't sound..." Here he stumbles, trying to parse his words properly but only presaging his campaign misstep. "I want to be compassionate," he concludes, "and I'm sorry for what happened, but I wonder: Was it just an accident?"Clearly ol' Rand here has never been in a situation where the entire town is beholden to one industry or one company. When the only people in the county hiring at a living wage is a coal mining outfit, when the only way to feed your family is to put on a helmet and brave the blackness, and put your life at risk, well...you don't have much of a choice. You play by their rules or you don't play at all.
I grew up in a plant town in western NC. Furniture and textiles country mostly, back in the dot-com era it was fiber optics. It wasn't anywhere near the danger of working in a coal mine, those people are hardcore heroes. But the big plants and the big factories, they made the rules, and you played by them, because you needed a job. I worked at one of the plants for a while and was grateful for the job, I had bills to pay. No unions where I grew up, either. Union was a dirty word and still is. The folks at the big GE plant found that out the hard way in the 90's when the transformer plant was shut down and the jobs moved to Mexico.
People still got hurt on occasion at the furniture or fiber optics plants. People still showed up to apply for jobs because that's where the money was. Still is. You play by their rules or you don't play at all.
But Rand Paul is fine going to Washington and telling the rest of America that accidents are "acceptable" because the free market will punish companies that fail safety protocols, and that it's great to level mountaintops because it makes Kentucky "enhanced". I'll tell you what, exactly what punishment has the free market leveled against Massey Energy for the Big Branch Mine disaster? Last I checked today, Massey wants to go back into the mine and work the sections where those miners died because time (and coal) is money, despite the fact the investigation isn't over yet as to the causes of the explosion.
And Rand Paul is perfectly okay with that. He wants to be compassionate, after all...but accidents happen, and there's money to be made. Somehow, I just don't imagine him to be losing very much sleep over something like that.
After all, he's just another big business Republican.
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