President Trump has been a cheerleader for coal miners. But these miners say his administration is failing to enforce limits on a lethal workplace hazard
These coal miners didn’t read the fine print: the administration is a cheerleader for coal mining BUSINESSES, not for coal miners. Coal miners, especially sick ones, are just a sunk cost to them.
As the son of a 30-year coal miner, not reading the fine print is a prerequisite to mining. If they were worried about the finer details the majority of them wouldn’t be there to begin with.
Print fine like the silica dust
I won’t stand for this coal miner slander, they used to be militant unionists agitating for workers’ rights. They were thoroughly crushed and defeated, but not before making major material gains. Efforts have since been made by those in power to make the Appalachian people forget their history, and all that remains of that movement are traumatized and chronically ill elderly folk.
It’s a whole 'nother generation and breed of miner, my friend. Those miners understood the power of collective action and the power they held within the nation as a major contributor to the economy and what essentially made the country move.
Today’s miners, meaning in the last 40-60 years, have been coasting on the battles hard-fought by their fathers and grandfathers. Do you think the miners of today would have fought for unionization or medical benefits? I sincerely doubt it. No, today’s mining culture is a far cry from those who died at Blair Mountain and fought against Pinkertons.
I think Matewan should be one of those things commonly viewed at the high school level…
Ay, I am so sorry, but you are so right.
What, the anti-worker leader of the anti-worker party is anti-worker? Who would have guessed?
I thought that’s what they voted for?
They voted for their kids to work in those mines too.
Sort of the joke of the industry.
You bring in some soulless billionaire despot in blue jeans to tell Bari Weis’s CBS that wind farms took our freedom.
Then a village full of miners get shoved down a big hole when one of them asks about their three month delinquent back pay. This goes completely without mention, except in some Trotsky magazine that your average liberal wouldn’t wipe their ass with.
The people who get to vote aren’t the ones complaining
That’s fucked up that guys are still digging coal and getting black lung, there’s no way that shit is cheaper than solar or wind
They actually consider working the mines to be their cultural heritage. The number these mining companies have done on these families’ heads is astounding.
That’s not all that weird all things considered, just look at anyone named Smith, Miller, or Stewart all of them are names based on their ancestors jobs. That only really happens when your job is your heritage and I’d say that takes about 3-4 generations minimum. Mind you doesn’t make it any less fucked up that they prostate themselves to that shit work.
Meanwhile, I know the goal of companies is to fully automate all of mining.
They didn’t want re-training.
I remember all the alt-right asshats trolling journalists that lost their jobs to “learn to code”. I think that originated in the idea of trying to retrain miners…
Ah, but the cost of the miner with black lung is increasingly handled by that individual or their family.
If you are a coal miner and you think that a man that lives in a gilded apartment can relate to you and has your best interests at heart you are going to be sadly disappointed.
I had a great-grandfather that died of black lung. I thought that was wild to hear about when I was a kid, and I’m Gen X. The fact that it’s still happening is crazy.
Not with that attitude!
“I voted for him because he speaks his mind (and hates ******** just as much as I do)”.
Was this during Covid?
The meme, yes, the story as posted by OP, no. Same cause of mortality in the lung damage, different route of illness.
You say that like this shit still ain’t around
Fair. I guess I mean what was (hopefully?) peak Covid.
Around the time when these goofs were dying in droves and still insisting on their death beds it was a conspiracy against their blessed Orange Jesus and “his” stock market numbers. That it was “just” the flu. When they were going full Karen over social distancing, lockdowns, wearing masks, and a vaccine that constituted a moonshot that made medical history.
When they were mocking the idea of flattening the curve. Or tracking Covid numbers at all…
No, no, no, I voted for other people to be cast aside to die!
Can someone explain to me why in 2025 people are still ending up with black lung? Don’t they wear respirators on the job to prevent inhalation of silica dust?
Over the past few years, mine owners cut on safety while Republicans blocked regulatory enforcement funding.
From what I’ve read, that has meant more time on the job, increasing potential exposure. But I still haven’t seen anything related to respirators. Do they not wear them? Are they not provided? Do they not work? Are workers not being washed down to prevent dust inhalation before leaving their shift?
They are probably a pain in the ass to wear and the company has no incentive to encourage/mandate use… because just protection people from getting terminal illness for profit isn’t a good enough reason…
Have you ever tried getting certain folks to wear a mask?
If you’re not going to wear a mask, then don’t come crying when you get sick. 🤷♂️
But seriously — is this why they are still getting black lung???
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The ‘study’ linking vaccines to autism was not a study. It was literally a paragraph in a paper that basically said ‘some parents think they saw autism like symptoms emerge a few weeks after they got the vaccine’. That was it. It was a hunch and speculation from the get-go. On top of that, Andrew Wakefield, the doctor behind it all, did that ‘study’ on purpose because he wanted to push his own quack medicine against those specific vaccines. It was a moneymaking fraud scheme from the beginning.
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It should be the companies responsibility to keep the employees safe…I would suggest forced liability because companies can’t be bothered to care
Honestly don’t know, I was making a very timely covid related joke.
You mean a face diaper? Haw haw! *cough, hack*
Of course they are cast aside. They cost money with no benefit for Trump. Money he would like to spend on his billionaire cronies instead.
Proper medical care for 100 normal people or one more yacht for a rich guy? Guess what he’ll choose.
1000% this. These workers are the dumbest motherfuckers who vote against their own interest and go full pikachuface.jpg when he doesnt support them. What do you expect of a tyrant? Love and support? These troglodytes are fucking cattle to be slaughtered in their eyes of the capitalist elite.
Room temp IQs with the stupidest takes again. Need that “fell for it again” meme.
I have been saying this for nearly 10 years. How the fuck does Trump do it? Trump has had a lifetime of being a conman, of failing at business, of screwing over his partners and his employees at every turn. Yet for all this he STILL has people who crawl and cower towards him and still act like he is the pinnacle of business success when he is the pinnacle of business failure. His father, Fred Trump, was a grade A asshole (Woody Guthrie even mentioned him in one of his songs) but he actually WAS good at business. All risks that he took were calculated and he planned out his real estate plans very carefully and he absolutely took into account what advisors had to say. He was a terrible boss, yes, and an incredibly racist man, but he still consistently made money off his investments while Trump never did. Even in the 90s when Trump was increasingly becoming a joke there were still people that thought of his as highly successful when he had just gone through a string of embarrassing failures.
Just how does he do it?
Trumps opponents are gormless democrats who are so out of touch that even when healthcare is the most important issue to 75+% of americans, they will proudly claim that “universal health care will never ever happen.” Or that “Healthcare isn’t their highest priority,” as if 75% of Americans were yearning for bailing out the same banks that they all hate.
I was also referring to Trump before he got into politics. Even when he debuted in the 70s and early 80s there were tons of newspapers who pointed how just how full of shit the man was, but there were still others that bought the lie that he was the next Rockefeller when he was absolutely not.
As I understand it, the public perception of Trump was distorted by how he was portrayed on The Apprentice: https://www.psypost.org/new-research-sheds-light-on-the-influence-of-the-apprentice-on-donald-trumps-political-rise/
The producers at NBC had to jump through a lot of hoops to make Trump appear competent. Their chief marketing officer from that time is very sorry for what he did: https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2024-10-16/we-created-a-tv-illusion-for-the-apprentice-but-the-real-trump-threatens-america
Once Trump became the republican candidate, the right-wing media took up the responsibility of filtering and distorting what their audience got to see and hear about Trump.
Simple answer, (many) people are uneducated/dumb and these people love a showman who tells them what they want to hear.
It’s like if you think of all the ways we influence other people and show our worth to others, all of the most immoral and unethical tactics that actually work in the real world seem to come to Trump instinctively. He doesn’t even have to think about it. I think that helps him instantly jump to conclusions (linkedin filter: he’s decisive and a risk taker!) and have the unearned dunning-kruger arrogance to plow ahead (LF: he radiates confidence and stands up for his beliefs!) and wreck the country just to make some numbers go up for people who otherwise want for nothing.
Or maybe he’s just being controlled by malicious forces. (linkedin: he has high-level connections in the international community!)
Yeah i sure as shit do not know.
He has no redeeming qualities and seems to make the worst possible choice at every juncture but he inevitably seems to fail upwards.
I have a few observations.
He lies about everything all the time with no shame. As in, reality doesn’t matter it only matters what people hear you say.
He’s always the centre of attention. He’s always doing something controversial and is constantly on everyone’s mind.
He’s offensive. He offends the sensibilities of every rational person. Everything he says makes half the world feel exasperated and frustrated and angry, while the other half chuckles along because hes made the leftards angry.
He thinks and talks like an uneducated boomer, and that makes other uneducated idiots feel validated rather than feeling stupid.
The underlying problem is that Washington Democrats are largely worthless sleazebags. When you have two parties that both screw over everyone so that billionaires can get richer, often people just throw up their hands and vote for someone, anyone, who might be different. Trump is different.
And of course many people, tens of millions apparently, love having someone to hate. This is, of course, the underlying motto of today’s Republican party.
Actual deal with the Devil?
So glad we got rid of the illegals so our kids can share in the proud tradition of getting black lung and being forgotten. /s
So… It’s ok if non-citizens get black lung and forgotten?
Also no, but I think a lot and of MAGAts would change their tune on immigration if they really realized not only how much they contribute but how much quality of life for Americans would suffer.
What’s with this oppositionally defiant bullshit you’re spreading here, take a look inward and realize you might be a tool for Russia
Trump has been a cheerleader for coal mine OWNERS. He doesn’t give a shit about the people in the mines. Never has.
The plan is to cast everyone aside to die once their capital has been extracted. The ones who survive must still have some capital left to extract.
West Virginia voted for DJT. DJT fucked them over on this. They got exactly what they voted for.
HE WAS SUPPOSED TO BLACKEN OTHER PEOPLE’S LUNGS!! 😢
I’ve said this until I was blue in the face. The closure of NIOSH in Morgantown, the place that arguably led the charge for discovering black lung’s cause and combatting it, and continually working on particulate science, was the absolute biggest slap in the face to this state that could have happened. The biggest ally miners had in the the twilights of their careers is gone, and in it’s place, you get a “good job, bro” and kicked out the door by the mine barons. Any shot you have at recompense dies when they declare bankruptcy with yet another shell company; the holding ponds they’re responsible for? Not their problem. The recovery costs of the natural environment? State’s cost now. Yet all those profits go right into ol’ Jimothy Justice’s pockets. Probably amped as fuck that he gets to continue his racket, and ALSO vote on the policies that regulate the industry. How fun that is!
Fucks sake.
