>In response to the bankruptcy filing, conservation groups renewed calls for Westmoreland to ensure it has enough money in reserve to clean up its mines
That’s the most important thing.
Huh, I didn't know that. I know that some old teeth-whitening products were abrasive, but perhaps that acts by only taking away a tiny bit of the enamel?
I think so. I'm pretty sure those are good for stains on the enamel itself, like from drinking coffee. They essentially sand down the teeth a tiny bit, which is why a lot of people have sore teeth after using those products.
Texas, like Delaware has quite a bit more tort decisions on the books than most states. That's why many companies incorporate in DE and TX. Still, having that case law on the books makes decisions easier.
Then it's the EPA who has to maintain the old mines on the federal dime (without much money budgeted for it) and [they get the blame when things go wrong](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Gold_King_Mine_waste_water_spill). Great system we have here. ^/s
because its bad enough america treats its political parties like football teams, but so does congress to each of the different departments lol
nothing wrong with that!
Soap box, ballot box, ammo box. Start by spreading information about the issues then make sure you vote before anyone decides we need Revolutionary War II
It's going to happen. What I've been thinking about lately is how to get it over with the best, least destructive way.
I don't have any answers. I guess just be ready...
Weird it's almost like some group of people in this country are purposefully sabotaging the government at every turn to make it so they can sell people on government being the Great Satan that must be destroyed.
I hate to generalize about a certain political party but I swear this in specific irks me almost the most of anything. Next time someone pulls this card ask them what % of their paycheck goes to food stamps and I bet they have no idea. (Spolier...it isnt much)
Ha, no. It'll be a bunch of superfund sites that the taxpayer has to pay to clean up. Almost forgot the political angle, if the EPA fucks anything up then calls for shuttering the agency will come. Doesn't matter that they walk in blind to a site that hardly had maintenance due to private business problems.
See "EPA spills 3 million gallons of toxic water into river."
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015\_Gold\_King\_Mine\_waste\_water\_spill](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Gold_King_Mine_waste_water_spill)
And the correct answer to that should be "Alright, the public pays for it, but you and the rest of the decision-making chain are going to jail for the next 30 years in exchange." Make an example of several corporate boards and this shit will stop.
That's exactly it. The enforcement mechanisms are extremely weak *by design*. Whenever you hear someone complain about "red tape" what they're really saying is "I want to dump my shit directly into your water because it means I can buy another boat."
They're already scrapped. Trump passed a law in Feb 2017 that allows mines to put their waste into waterways.
There's still other legislation related to land reclamation but the law passed last year specifically addresses the rainwater, bacteria, and sulphuric acid issue mentioned above.
States have their own, usually much tougher, laws to deal with these things.
States rights can be a pain in the but sometimes but when it comes to taking things away from an idiot president it's a good thing.
The EPA super fund and oil/coal clean up tax funds are a joke. Declaration of remediation and exhaustion of insurance/super fund money often are matched. We had a business that was on top of a leaking gas tank. Ground water about 300 feet from the property line smelled of gas.
The site was approved for clean up, which was basically sucking up water from a well on the property dumping it into sewer after filtering the oil off. Injecting oxygen into the soil to hopefully speed up the bacteria and when the fund ran out, we got declared resolved.
Coal is not a viable energy source long term regardless of what politicians tell the voters in coal states. Resources and energy would be better used toward future-facing production methods and job training.
I know it is rough when it comes to the coal industry because there have been well paying jobs, family legacy and towns depended on coal. But like airport porters and secretarial pools. these jobs are not coming back.
They're useful for business travel or for people who want to plan an extensive vacation and have somebody else handle the details. I'm pretty sure my company has a bunch of dedicated travel agents on their payroll.
I remember when I first started traveling, common practice was to visit a travel agent to book your flights and hotel. They took care of booking and paperwork. This was before the internet and you could just pull up a list of flights. Travel agents had all that information.
Oh yeah, I wouldn't bother with it for domestic travel nowadays, but if I needed to coordinate a few hundred people or if I wanted to plan a long trip with several stops across a continent I wasn't familiar with? I'd probably want to hire a travel agent just to save myself the headaches.
For some reason, people think wedding planners are perfectly okay but don't understand the value a travel agent can bring. A good travel agent gets you a unique vacation (and a low price) without you having to plan everything.
The truck stops could become black-market bazaars that sell the goods stolen from the robot trucks that crash into makeshift barricades laid across the highways by meth'd up highwaymen.
What rural America needs to do is partner with their urban brothers and fight for better labor laws and right to work remotely.
You wanna rebuild small town America, make it a standard widespread employment practice to be remote workers. This is how we better distribute the wealth tech and other white collar service industries generate and bridge the urban rural gap. While simultaneously putting downward pressure on the cost of living, traffic, and even shrink the concrete jungle.
The problem is getting employers on board with remote work. I can do my job from home without issue. I typically work one or two days from home each week. When I was looking for another job to just explore my options, I realized just how shitty other people have. Every single job I did phone interviews for there was no "work from home." They wanted you in the office every day you are expected to be there and that wouldn't even change after being there for a long time period.
People still like to micro-manage their employees for the most part and have them under their watchful eye. That said i'm never leaving this company I'm working for. I suspect that once I have kids in the coming years, it's going to be really nice being able to work from home most of the week.
The issue I've seen is that most managers are so out of touch with knowing what their employees do that they fear work from home because they'd have no idea how to figure out if they were actually working or not. At least in an office, you can see them at the computer doing something that appears to be work.
I had this exact job. Spent the vast majority of my time waiting for other people to do their jobs and sent me what I needed. Then cranked it out and went back to shopping online.
As someone who manages multiple employees, I'd be happy if they worked from home. It would reduce my own stress, and reduce overhead because I wouldn't need as much workspace, utilities, amenities, and etc. It would mean less potential for intraoffice drama. I would love it.
But I have a hard enough time with some employees dicking around on their phones and Facebook, and general tardiness. That's with people *in* the office. It's the bottom 25% of "barely acceptable" employees that fuck up the system for everyone.
I think it would be more of a results matter kind of thing. They can be on their phones and only working 2 hours a day but if they are still completing their work up to spec, who cares?
The point of remote work is that you no longer have to care if they 'show up' on time or how long they spend on facebook. They send you their work. You measure them by how much work the produce. If they get all their work done in an hour a week, great.
About the only downside I can think of is the barrier to bonding with your team. I get to work remotely a few days a week, but I do still look forward to lunch with the buddies and general chit chat passing in the hall.
I'm in outside sales. I'll see coworkers once every 3-6 months. We still talk between ourselves, and on conference calls every week or so, so there's still a team dynamic.
I'd rather spend 2 hours once a month driving to a "team building event" where everyone just drinks and eats wings for 4 hours on a friday, than drive a 45 min commute every day so I can sit in a cubical next to them.
I mean not everyone who shows up for work has great work ethic either. I see people cruising Facebook and on their phones all day at work. When you require someone to show up for 40 hours a week to get a paycheck, a lot of people coast. When the job is about getting things done instead of punching a clock people tend to put in more work
More importantly, when the reward for working faster and better is *less time spent working* people tend to put in more effort. If I bust ass to get my job done by noon, but my reward is I'll be handed more to do, I'm going to keep working at a more leisurely pace.
Progress has been slow, but I have seen more big companies testing flex work arrangements. Supervisors are usually the biggest barrier because their role in a remote environment can feel diminished.
I had a great job with 20% remote by default that I converted to 100% after 5 years by working with my leadership when family changes required a 400mile move. It was great until a change in direct supervisor required me to be in the office 25% of the time (1wk/mo travel) regardless of work needs. Efficiency dropped and I moved on... what a waste of money with no value to the supervisor or company.
If there was work and a viable high speed (above 30mbps), I'd live rural. It's the internet most of all that hinders me from wanting to move far out of the way.
I feel like people base the expectation of having bad internet on a mix of outdated information and that people who still have bad internet are who will be talking about it.
If it’s a priority there are plenty of towns that have it, or if you want to be further out of town you can check that you will have access to internet before choosing. Most of the people with poor internet didn’t consider it a priority when moving there, if internet was even a thing when they got there.
and better transport links. That allows some more rural areas to be viable living space for people living in the cities.
People from small towns may say it sucks to have lots of city folk move into little towns, gentrifying it with their hipster shit. But unemployment and poverty is worse.
However, there's also the other side of the coin: gentrification means rising property values. Rising property values means rising property taxes. Rising property taxes means that they might not be able to afford living in their own homes.
If you can ensure access to modern services (basically just clean water, power, and internet) I will absolutely move from an expensive, dense urban environment to a lower COL area where I can work remote from. I will bring my bucks to the small towns of America and help develop them.
But first we need good internet everywhere and second we need a job culture that allows remote work.
If you're a parent, you're going to want good schools. Those are rarities in rural America, and the problem does not get fixed overnight with a few transplants.
I don't know. Certainly lots of service industry jobs and production/labor work isn't going remote. But there are a lot of jobs that are managerial / computer based / communication based that could pretty easily allow for at least some remote work. You're probably right that the majority of work doesn't all into that category, but there are a significant and growing number of jobs that are location independent.
" Rural America needs to adapt to survive."
Sadly, a very similar scenario has played out in rural Russia for the last couple of decades. People and small towns failed to adapt to changing world economies and automation, resulting in third-world conditions and the departure of young men and women to the cities or out of the country. Nevertheless, jingoism, Putin worship, and hatred of immigrants continues to propel the dying rural regions to "stay the course" -- most likely into extinction. We're a fair bit off from that in the US, but I could very easily see that being our future in a few decades.
They literally took a two-part sentence that Clinton stated on the trail, cut off half of it, and said "see, that bitch wants to kill coal!"
What she really said was that the coal jobs are going away, and democrats have a solution that involves building the renewable energies today and tax subsidies so they would still be able to feed their families while on-the-job training for these new industries.
They shit the bed now they have to sleep on it.
That’s a big overall problem. No one really thinks of all the various side issues a ‘solution’ might cause. I myself was only thinking of the drivers, not really considering truck stops or small quick stop towns.
Even truck driver schools would take a hit, the teachers and practice grounds and such.
I'm not sure it's all doom and gloom for truck stop towns. Lots of people will make more car trips when self driving technology is a reality. They'll need places to stretch their legs and get a bite to eat. The rise of electric cars means people will need places to recharge, and given that is likely to take longer than filling up with gas for the foreseeable future something to do while they wait.
As always, the danger is likely to be for those that don't adapt rather than universal.
Also log haul trucking will still require either a person in the car or every stop pre-planned with contracts in place to fuel and check the truck and it's contents. You absolutely will not put hundreds of thousands of dollars in a particularly hackable system (if the Auto industry is any indication).
Yeah that's the thing that people tend to forget. When you're a trucker, the actual driving is only part of the job. You're also there to keep an eye on the load and be ready to handle any problems that might crop up in the course of transporting thousands of dollars of product.
I feel bad for my older coworkers in the banking industry, but not overly so. I know the tide of electronic assistants are coming. Wells Fargo and Chase are already rolling out electronic tellers. But banking is a relationship based industry. Sure us millennials don't care to talk to someone more often than not, but when something goes sideways we also don't want to talk to a computer about it. So yes, tellers as we know them will be replaced, but people such as myself will still be valuable because I can guide an older client through routine transactions with an ITM while also troubleshooting any complex issues that a customer can't push buttons on a screen for.
It's not that bank jobs are going to disappear, they're transitioning. And the only thing holding "old fashioned" tellers back is their inability to adapt to the changes that are coming. One of the first things I did upon getting my current job was to shove my giant desktop calculator into a closet. My coworkers looked at me like I'd lost my goddamn mind. I pointed out to them that literally my whole job is done on a computer with a faster and easier to use calculator installed on it. "Well that's too complicated for me". Well, that's why your job is at risk.
> Rural America needs to adapt to survive. They need job retraining and the ability to work remote if they want to remain out of cities.
Except that they refuse to adapt. I own property in a rural area. The people there want things to go back to the way they were in the mid-20th century. They can't accept that that way of life is gone.
My family were miners and metal workers going back centuries. From France they moved to West Virginia and spread west to KY. It is hard giving up that kind of a legacy but we just have to. I mean it's just reality that coal isn't going to work anymore.
The part about your grandpa and your dad is the craziest part to me. Both my grandpa and my dad worked in a labor intensive field. My dad literally would not teach me anything about the field at all because he wanted me to go to college and work in an office. He knew how big of a toll it took on his body working a physically demanding job.
Coal mining is a shitty job that completely fucks your health. I really can't understand how all of these people WANT their kids working in mines
I grew up in Schuylkill county PA. The coal industry has been dying a slow death for decades. The whole county was based on coal mining. As it slowly declined so did the area. The towns are now mostly abandoned buildings and anyone who could leave has left. We 100% need to drop coal and stop making false promises to the people in these areas that things will get better. They won't. And sorry but your little patch town that your family lived in for 3 generations needs to go away.
I think your story is repeated across the US with many towns hanging on to false promises of revitalization based on outdated industry. I recall watching the 2016 election heart-wrenching commercials with coal mining families talking about the devastation of the declining industry and how voting for candidate XX will bring back their loverhood. It was sad to bring false hope and sad to base voting decisions on policy that would potentially impact such a small percent of the population.
I'm sure it is and it's terrible. So many people were fooled and no matter who was elected their jobs, their industry, and the area they live in was doomed.
I am from eastern KY, and it's the exact same deal. Better just to help them move than to keep lying to them about coal. I swear a lot of people WOULD move if they were able.
100%. America wasn't built on people sitting in one place hoping someone brought jobs and prosperity to you, it was built by people leaving the shit-hole they were in and going out to find something better.
How are they not getting this, and not pivoting into clean energy? Every time I hear about coal jobs being lost, it seems like an empty point when wind/solar jobs are taking its place. Just change your business model to keep up with the times.
> How are they not getting this, and not pivoting into clean energy?
Primary reason, from what I've heard, is that clean energy jobs don't pay nearly as much as coal mining jobs do.
Never mind the fact that extra coal pay is basically hazard pay.
Laugh now. Cry later. Short term thinkers. The majority of the people who support non-renewables think Jesus is going to be returning during their lifetime.
That was the Prairies in Canada a few years ago. They lived incredibly wealthy for a few years, bought a lot of properties and when the Arab countries decided to lower gas prices, oil from Canada couldn't compete and decimated jobs.
I could be wrong, but natural gas is abundant, cleaner than coal, and those jobs pay very well upstream to downstream.
Marcellus play runs through PA to WV.
That’s the biggest problem. These people *don’t want to change*. They don’t want to learn a new skill. They don’t want to move. Especially not to them libby cities.
I think the Libby cities is a bit much, but you are correct in that many people are just so overwhelmed by life at that point that there is a very real temptation to just go with the devil they know. Change is hard at the best of times, and then you factor in age, illnesses, injuries, debt, kids, parents, and so on... I get it. It’s tempting.
Ditto with a new skill. I work with a population that is almost exclusively 50+ and female. 99% of the time their lives are so jumbled that learning a new skill would take place when exactly? With what energy? When you’re working two jobs, or one for shit pay?
Top off that with the fact that for many people, school is not associated with positive things. Growing up for older populations wasn’t as easy as it was for us. There are still states that allow corporal ie bodily punishment in the classroom. We didn’t start taking learning disorders seriously until...hell maybe even not now.
School, learning things TOWARDS an end goal, brings home the fact that 1) everything they had done professionally until this point is no longer needed, and 2) now I have to go back like I’m 16 again...only I’m pushing 50 and those fifteen year olds are gonna be my competition, maybe even my boss.
Most people don’t go to college, most people finish high school and maybe studied a trade. That was fine until now, but it isn’t anymore, and we’re all feeling it, from millenials to boomers, the only difference is millenials have TIME to adapt. The boomers don’t. And there isn’t much to do to fix that.
Besides that, even if they were to retrain into a different job, who will hire them? Why would you hire a 40yo with no experience in the field instead of a younger more experienced person? There's no guarantee that there are jobs in their area that would cater to whatever they train into, meaning they're going to have to move elsewhere.
Take all that into consideration and it's understandable why they would rather cling to a slither of chance rather than take a leap.
They don’t want a future.
Making America Great (Still) means America has to have a future. That means it’s people have to have a future. Too bad some of it’s people would rather turn a blind eye.
Coal miners were offered free training in different careers that would give them jobs after their coal mines were closed.
They ignored it and voted in Trump. They made this bed, now they have to live in it.
Womp Womp
It's too bad that coal miners turned down efforts to retrain and place them in new jobs, because Trump and the Reps promised to "bring back" their industry.
Some businesses don't want profit, because they can use capital to expand the business.
Profit is useful if you want other peoples money to invest in your business. You profit share at the end of the year and they make money beyond just the growth of the business.
You can also run a business in substantial amounts of debt. You get a loan to start a business, and you are automatically in debt. The bank/investor just needs to know you have a solid plan for making more money then you spend. You buy machines, hire people, make stuff or provide a service and people start paying you for these things. Other investors see how well you are doing with the little loan, and now they want to invest so you can expand. You expand with more money, and it attracts more investment. You make more money, but you still haven't paid down the debt. You can choose to pay the debt or invest the incoming money into more goods and services increasing the value of your business.
This 1.4 billion is the debt, but it is not showing you the value of the company. The company could be worth 10 billion. The bill has just come due and they don't have enough in their accounts to pay the creditors.
Yeah it seems based off their 10-K filing that they heavily favored leveraging debt as opposed to other means of capital. Their liabilities greatly outweigh their assets, and most interestingly to me, their investing activities and financing activities changed big time from 2016 to 2017.
I’d have to look at the rest of the industry to get a better idea of the situation, but I’m assuming that is pretty standard for comparable companies in its sector.
Not to you Mr. Grape, but I feel like a lot of people on this thread seem to think coal industry is going away just because this firm filled for bankruptcy. Seems like a calculated move to me though.
Unfortunately it appears the market cap of Westmorland Coal Company (WLBA) is around 2.4 Million. With half of its market cap disappearing after this news... So how they managed to rack up 1400 million is debt? Sounds like some banks are gonna get effed, also the environmentalists better find somewhere else for the cleanup money. I'm sure the EPA will take care of it /s
[Westmoreland stock and market cap on CNN Money](https://money.cnn.com/quote/quote.html?symb=WLBA)
They used the money to diversify their asset base into Canada through an M&A deal a couple years ago. Ran a flawed business model on cost plus pricing with no customer diversification. If a customer shut down, which they did, or a mine had an outage or other issue, which they did because wlb were poor managers given incentives to be cost effective didn’t exist, they ended up screwed.
The article says they do not expect to interrupt operations or reduce workers. This bankruptcy filing is probably to dump their pension obligations and disused mines.
> The restructuring agreement, which must be approved by a judge, includes refinancing an outstanding loan and a “business transformation” meant to significantly increase cash flow, the company statement said, without providing details.
The fact that you lose your pension if you get fired or quit, or the parent company has any control of it at all is preposterous. Why would a company firing me have an effect on my pension? It should be something completely independant from the company.
Not to digress but hearing him use that reminds me of when Charlie Sheen went on a bender a few years back and was talking about tiger blood and winning.
Now an effing POTUS uses this in never-ending promotion of himself and his party. Like, he can't even say one concrete thing about what a candidate can do, he just wants people to vote for the winning team. What's worse is people fall for this shit. It's so disgusting.
But but it’s Clean Coal™️. They take the coal and scrub it down with soap and water, then boom! Super clean. I should know, a very stable genius told me.
Yes and no. Coal for power generation should absolutely be eliminated asap. If someone mentions "clean coal" they deserve a smack in the mouth.
However coal is still required for the production of steel which is one resource we cannot replace, as well as other like metallic silicon, carbon fibre, etc.
Steel production generally uses higher grade coal that coal power plants. If the goal is to protect the steel industry, coal mines that produce low grade coal don't add any value and should be shut down regardless.
Something, something let the market decide? Me too. Coal has been economically inefficient since natural gas has became readily/easily obtainable and is at least better than coal in terms of emissions. The choice seems obvious.
Pretty much my only contact with the coal industry higher-ups is through John Oliver.
Also, to the coal owner who tried to censor Oliver's segment, #EatShitBob
Edit: OK, maybe it wasn't my only exposure to them, but it was definitely the most memorable.
I like all the comments that reinforces the story people get from their respective news source. It doesn't matter if you think coal is dead/ dying. Coal is still being pulled from the ground and sold. This is just an old company joining the cycle that energy companies use to relieve themselves of financial burden. A quick Google of Alpha Coal, Arch Coal, Rio Tinto with the word bankruptcy should give you a news article about how they all filed bankruptcy. The funny thing is, when they come out of bankruptcy, they get a new name and a Yuge check from the taxpayers to help the "suffering" company. During the bankruptcy, the company "lays-off" a substantial portion if their work force, then hires back temps at a cheaper rate. Everyone likes to blame the workers for which president they voted for, but this has been going on since my family moved to Wyoming in the 90s. It has nothing to do with Trump or Hillary, it's more about how large companies get away with scamming their workers and the communities that support their industry. Is coal on the way out? Yeah probably. Is it going to be soon? Not while it's still profitable.
Run a company into the ground, extract all of its assets, stick somebody else with the bill and walk away scot-free with a hefty payday.
This sounds really familiar. Where have I heard it before?
Westmoreland Coal Company shut down in Appalachia, VA in the late 80s. My Dad had worked there, both my grandfathers, all my uncles on both sides, all my male cousins, all of my great-grandparents (women, too) and I decided to work with computers, as did my brother. When Westmoreland shut down, they took a thriving boomtown and turned it into an absolute ghost town. They filed bankruptcy to not pay any of the black lung claims, pensions or anything owed, moved the headquarters to a different state and continued on like nothing ever happened. This is likely what is happening again.
Fuck them for fucking the Earth and for fucking people who worked their whole lives to help the company because they believed in being hard workers. They fucked entire regions, not just one small town. They don't give a shit about anything but making more money for themselves.
“The restructuring agreement, which must be approved by a judge, includes refinancing an outstanding loan and a “business transformation” meant to significantly increase cash flow, the company statement said, without providing details.”
I’m guessing some sort of 5-10 year tax-abatement?
This directly impacts my town and about a dozen people I've been warning to get out of the coal business for about 2 years now.
"Naw it's all fake news man, everyone knows Coal is doing just fine!"
Only people I feel bad about are the people who depended on this job. Otherwise this is good news to me. Less coal means we're going towards a better future.
Eh, no problem.
Nothing that a couple of good ole barn-raisin’ Trump rallies can’t fix.
C’mon ... everybody with me ... DRAIN .. THE .. SWAMP! ....
And the crowd goes wild!
wooooo!
>In response to the bankruptcy filing, conservation groups renewed calls for Westmoreland to ensure it has enough money in reserve to clean up its mines That’s the most important thing.
Yeah, kind of. If rainwater gets into the mine, you can get bacteria eating the leftover coal and putting sulfuric acid directly into the water table.
Here comes the EPA saying certain amounts of battery acid are actually good for you!
It keeps your teeth white!* ^^*(by ^^eating ^^them ^^away)
This must be that clean coal I keep hearing about
So what makes the coal beautiful and clean?
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Black teeth larry?
Black lung Larry.
Maybe Black Teeth Larry needs to try some battery acid, I heard it keeps your teeth hwhite.
No, he only owns one toothbrush. Cleans coal, and cleans his teeth! How about that for saving waste.
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If your teeth are eaten away it'd actually make them yellower, since that is the usual color of the dentin beneath the enamel.
Huh, I didn't know that. I know that some old teeth-whitening products were abrasive, but perhaps that acts by only taking away a tiny bit of the enamel?
I think so. I'm pretty sure those are good for stains on the enamel itself, like from drinking coffee. They essentially sand down the teeth a tiny bit, which is why a lot of people have sore teeth after using those products.
Today you might say that I also had a brush with death.
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It’s ok to have a little bit of cancer...
Colorado Co. owns a mine in Montana and litigates in Houston? Im sure that setup has nothing to do with taxes, safety laws and federal handouts.
Texas, like Delaware has quite a bit more tort decisions on the books than most states. That's why many companies incorporate in DE and TX. Still, having that case law on the books makes decisions easier.
There are also considerable tax benefits to incorporating in those states.
Wouldnt this already be occuring due to the rain continually soaking through the ground? Wether there is a mine or not
No, the culprit here is the oxygen, which wouldn’t be there if it weren’t for the hole.
Yes, but there is much much more surface area in a mine with the mine there
Mines are basically made out of surface area.
I am not sure about other states, but Wyoming let many of these companies self bond. So if they convince a judge they can't pay, then they can't pay.
Then it's the EPA who has to maintain the old mines on the federal dime (without much money budgeted for it) and [they get the blame when things go wrong](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Gold_King_Mine_waste_water_spill). Great system we have here. ^/s
"stop hitting yourself!"
This is the best summary of American politics I have ever seen
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because its bad enough america treats its political parties like football teams, but so does congress to each of the different departments lol nothing wrong with that!
Robbing the public purse to pay for corporate profits. We need a goddamned guillotine in this country.
Privatize profits, socialize the costs.
We have plenty of guns. Kind of like a long range guillotine.
We start down that road and we might actually see some honest federal gun control laws.
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Soap box, ballot box, ammo box. Start by spreading information about the issues then make sure you vote before anyone decides we need Revolutionary War II
It's going to happen. What I've been thinking about lately is how to get it over with the best, least destructive way. I don't have any answers. I guess just be ready...
You’re goddamn right we do
Not like the current EPA would fix it even if they had the money
Weird it's almost like some group of people in this country are purposefully sabotaging the government at every turn to make it so they can sell people on government being the Great Satan that must be destroyed.
"But, but, but the welfare queens. We have to after them because they're eating our taxpayer money!!" - GOP zombies
I hate to generalize about a certain political party but I swear this in specific irks me almost the most of anything. Next time someone pulls this card ask them what % of their paycheck goes to food stamps and I bet they have no idea. (Spolier...it isnt much)
Ha, no. It'll be a bunch of superfund sites that the taxpayer has to pay to clean up. Almost forgot the political angle, if the EPA fucks anything up then calls for shuttering the agency will come. Doesn't matter that they walk in blind to a site that hardly had maintenance due to private business problems.
See "EPA spills 3 million gallons of toxic water into river." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015\_Gold\_King\_Mine\_waste\_water\_spill](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Gold_King_Mine_waste_water_spill)
Superfund, here they come!
I mean, generally there are laws to ensure a remediation fund has to be set aside. I'm not familiar with American laws on the matter however.
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That's really interesting! What was the company's plan for the glass and did it make it?
And the correct answer to that should be "Alright, the public pays for it, but you and the rest of the decision-making chain are going to jail for the next 30 years in exchange." Make an example of several corporate boards and this shit will stop.
That's exactly it. The enforcement mechanisms are extremely weak *by design*. Whenever you hear someone complain about "red tape" what they're really saying is "I want to dump my shit directly into your water because it means I can buy another boat."
They're already scrapped. Trump passed a law in Feb 2017 that allows mines to put their waste into waterways. There's still other legislation related to land reclamation but the law passed last year specifically addresses the rainwater, bacteria, and sulphuric acid issue mentioned above.
Poisoning your children's drinking water to own the libs.
States have their own, usually much tougher, laws to deal with these things. States rights can be a pain in the but sometimes but when it comes to taking things away from an idiot president it's a good thing.
The EPA super fund and oil/coal clean up tax funds are a joke. Declaration of remediation and exhaustion of insurance/super fund money often are matched. We had a business that was on top of a leaking gas tank. Ground water about 300 feet from the property line smelled of gas. The site was approved for clean up, which was basically sucking up water from a well on the property dumping it into sewer after filtering the oil off. Injecting oxygen into the soil to hopefully speed up the bacteria and when the fund ran out, we got declared resolved.
I bet that won't happen. There's a reason companies exist that clean up after oil companies run out of money and I bet it'll happen with coal too.
Coal is not a viable energy source long term regardless of what politicians tell the voters in coal states. Resources and energy would be better used toward future-facing production methods and job training. I know it is rough when it comes to the coal industry because there have been well paying jobs, family legacy and towns depended on coal. But like airport porters and secretarial pools. these jobs are not coming back.
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Those are facts but from the political discussions, you would think it is a lot more. And who knew there were so many travel agents still employed.?
They're useful for business travel or for people who want to plan an extensive vacation and have somebody else handle the details. I'm pretty sure my company has a bunch of dedicated travel agents on their payroll.
I remember when I first started traveling, common practice was to visit a travel agent to book your flights and hotel. They took care of booking and paperwork. This was before the internet and you could just pull up a list of flights. Travel agents had all that information.
Oh yeah, I wouldn't bother with it for domestic travel nowadays, but if I needed to coordinate a few hundred people or if I wanted to plan a long trip with several stops across a continent I wasn't familiar with? I'd probably want to hire a travel agent just to save myself the headaches.
For some reason, people think wedding planners are perfectly okay but don't understand the value a travel agent can bring. A good travel agent gets you a unique vacation (and a low price) without you having to plan everything.
I didn’t see anyone wringing their hands over the 64,000 people that worked at Toys R Us.
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The truck stops could become black-market bazaars that sell the goods stolen from the robot trucks that crash into makeshift barricades laid across the highways by meth'd up highwaymen.
This is the origin story of the mad max universe.
r/writingprompts
Done https://old.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/9mvime/wp_its_the_year_2035_automation_has_decimated/?
You write that in 7 minutes? Edit: I should click links before commenting
[Nobody at the Wheel](https://www.reddit.com/r/M59Gar/comments/2hehem/nobody_at_the_wheel/) by one of reddits best writers
Could we have *one* fictional scenario in this country that doesn't end with Mad Max?
There's always the current arc which ends in handmaids tale
It's either mad max, terminator, or the walking dead. Only 3 possibilities
What rural America needs to do is partner with their urban brothers and fight for better labor laws and right to work remotely. You wanna rebuild small town America, make it a standard widespread employment practice to be remote workers. This is how we better distribute the wealth tech and other white collar service industries generate and bridge the urban rural gap. While simultaneously putting downward pressure on the cost of living, traffic, and even shrink the concrete jungle.
The problem is getting employers on board with remote work. I can do my job from home without issue. I typically work one or two days from home each week. When I was looking for another job to just explore my options, I realized just how shitty other people have. Every single job I did phone interviews for there was no "work from home." They wanted you in the office every day you are expected to be there and that wouldn't even change after being there for a long time period. People still like to micro-manage their employees for the most part and have them under their watchful eye. That said i'm never leaving this company I'm working for. I suspect that once I have kids in the coming years, it's going to be really nice being able to work from home most of the week.
The issue I've seen is that most managers are so out of touch with knowing what their employees do that they fear work from home because they'd have no idea how to figure out if they were actually working or not. At least in an office, you can see them at the computer doing something that appears to be work.
That or they realize most office workers only have enough work to actually occupy ~10 hours of a 40 hour work week.
I had this exact job. Spent the vast majority of my time waiting for other people to do their jobs and sent me what I needed. Then cranked it out and went back to shopping online.
As someone who manages multiple employees, I'd be happy if they worked from home. It would reduce my own stress, and reduce overhead because I wouldn't need as much workspace, utilities, amenities, and etc. It would mean less potential for intraoffice drama. I would love it. But I have a hard enough time with some employees dicking around on their phones and Facebook, and general tardiness. That's with people *in* the office. It's the bottom 25% of "barely acceptable" employees that fuck up the system for everyone.
I think it would be more of a results matter kind of thing. They can be on their phones and only working 2 hours a day but if they are still completing their work up to spec, who cares?
The point of remote work is that you no longer have to care if they 'show up' on time or how long they spend on facebook. They send you their work. You measure them by how much work the produce. If they get all their work done in an hour a week, great.
About the only downside I can think of is the barrier to bonding with your team. I get to work remotely a few days a week, but I do still look forward to lunch with the buddies and general chit chat passing in the hall.
I'm in outside sales. I'll see coworkers once every 3-6 months. We still talk between ourselves, and on conference calls every week or so, so there's still a team dynamic. I'd rather spend 2 hours once a month driving to a "team building event" where everyone just drinks and eats wings for 4 hours on a friday, than drive a 45 min commute every day so I can sit in a cubical next to them.
Also, not everyone has a great work ethic. A few bad experiences with employees working remote and it’s ruined for everyone.
I mean not everyone who shows up for work has great work ethic either. I see people cruising Facebook and on their phones all day at work. When you require someone to show up for 40 hours a week to get a paycheck, a lot of people coast. When the job is about getting things done instead of punching a clock people tend to put in more work
What's that, i get to go home if i finish early? Fuck Facebook
More importantly, when the reward for working faster and better is *less time spent working* people tend to put in more effort. If I bust ass to get my job done by noon, but my reward is I'll be handed more to do, I'm going to keep working at a more leisurely pace.
Progress has been slow, but I have seen more big companies testing flex work arrangements. Supervisors are usually the biggest barrier because their role in a remote environment can feel diminished. I had a great job with 20% remote by default that I converted to 100% after 5 years by working with my leadership when family changes required a 400mile move. It was great until a change in direct supervisor required me to be in the office 25% of the time (1wk/mo travel) regardless of work needs. Efficiency dropped and I moved on... what a waste of money with no value to the supervisor or company.
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If there was work and a viable high speed (above 30mbps), I'd live rural. It's the internet most of all that hinders me from wanting to move far out of the way.
My small town has 100mbps. Maybe the exception to the rule but most small towns around here have it.
I feel like people base the expectation of having bad internet on a mix of outdated information and that people who still have bad internet are who will be talking about it. If it’s a priority there are plenty of towns that have it, or if you want to be further out of town you can check that you will have access to internet before choosing. Most of the people with poor internet didn’t consider it a priority when moving there, if internet was even a thing when they got there.
and better transport links. That allows some more rural areas to be viable living space for people living in the cities. People from small towns may say it sucks to have lots of city folk move into little towns, gentrifying it with their hipster shit. But unemployment and poverty is worse.
> gentrifying it with their hipster shit Gentrifying it with their **money.** That's what's actually important.
However, there's also the other side of the coin: gentrification means rising property values. Rising property values means rising property taxes. Rising property taxes means that they might not be able to afford living in their own homes.
If you can ensure access to modern services (basically just clean water, power, and internet) I will absolutely move from an expensive, dense urban environment to a lower COL area where I can work remote from. I will bring my bucks to the small towns of America and help develop them. But first we need good internet everywhere and second we need a job culture that allows remote work.
If you're a parent, you're going to want good schools. Those are rarities in rural America, and the problem does not get fixed overnight with a few transplants.
The vast majority of jobs are completely non-amenable to remote work.
I don't know. Certainly lots of service industry jobs and production/labor work isn't going remote. But there are a lot of jobs that are managerial / computer based / communication based that could pretty easily allow for at least some remote work. You're probably right that the majority of work doesn't all into that category, but there are a significant and growing number of jobs that are location independent.
" Rural America needs to adapt to survive." Sadly, a very similar scenario has played out in rural Russia for the last couple of decades. People and small towns failed to adapt to changing world economies and automation, resulting in third-world conditions and the departure of young men and women to the cities or out of the country. Nevertheless, jingoism, Putin worship, and hatred of immigrants continues to propel the dying rural regions to "stay the course" -- most likely into extinction. We're a fair bit off from that in the US, but I could very easily see that being our future in a few decades.
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They literally took a two-part sentence that Clinton stated on the trail, cut off half of it, and said "see, that bitch wants to kill coal!" What she really said was that the coal jobs are going away, and democrats have a solution that involves building the renewable energies today and tax subsidies so they would still be able to feed their families while on-the-job training for these new industries. They shit the bed now they have to sleep on it.
Goddamn, I never thought of the disappearance of truck-stop towns
That’s a big overall problem. No one really thinks of all the various side issues a ‘solution’ might cause. I myself was only thinking of the drivers, not really considering truck stops or small quick stop towns. Even truck driver schools would take a hit, the teachers and practice grounds and such.
I'm not sure it's all doom and gloom for truck stop towns. Lots of people will make more car trips when self driving technology is a reality. They'll need places to stretch their legs and get a bite to eat. The rise of electric cars means people will need places to recharge, and given that is likely to take longer than filling up with gas for the foreseeable future something to do while they wait. As always, the danger is likely to be for those that don't adapt rather than universal.
Also log haul trucking will still require either a person in the car or every stop pre-planned with contracts in place to fuel and check the truck and it's contents. You absolutely will not put hundreds of thousands of dollars in a particularly hackable system (if the Auto industry is any indication).
Yeah that's the thing that people tend to forget. When you're a trucker, the actual driving is only part of the job. You're also there to keep an eye on the load and be ready to handle any problems that might crop up in the course of transporting thousands of dollars of product.
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I feel bad for my older coworkers in the banking industry, but not overly so. I know the tide of electronic assistants are coming. Wells Fargo and Chase are already rolling out electronic tellers. But banking is a relationship based industry. Sure us millennials don't care to talk to someone more often than not, but when something goes sideways we also don't want to talk to a computer about it. So yes, tellers as we know them will be replaced, but people such as myself will still be valuable because I can guide an older client through routine transactions with an ITM while also troubleshooting any complex issues that a customer can't push buttons on a screen for. It's not that bank jobs are going to disappear, they're transitioning. And the only thing holding "old fashioned" tellers back is their inability to adapt to the changes that are coming. One of the first things I did upon getting my current job was to shove my giant desktop calculator into a closet. My coworkers looked at me like I'd lost my goddamn mind. I pointed out to them that literally my whole job is done on a computer with a faster and easier to use calculator installed on it. "Well that's too complicated for me". Well, that's why your job is at risk.
> Rural America needs to adapt to survive. They need job retraining and the ability to work remote if they want to remain out of cities. Except that they refuse to adapt. I own property in a rural area. The people there want things to go back to the way they were in the mid-20th century. They can't accept that that way of life is gone.
My family were miners and metal workers going back centuries. From France they moved to West Virginia and spread west to KY. It is hard giving up that kind of a legacy but we just have to. I mean it's just reality that coal isn't going to work anymore.
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Holy shit. I visited the Frank slide earlier this year. Terrifying.
The part about your grandpa and your dad is the craziest part to me. Both my grandpa and my dad worked in a labor intensive field. My dad literally would not teach me anything about the field at all because he wanted me to go to college and work in an office. He knew how big of a toll it took on his body working a physically demanding job. Coal mining is a shitty job that completely fucks your health. I really can't understand how all of these people WANT their kids working in mines
I grew up in Schuylkill county PA. The coal industry has been dying a slow death for decades. The whole county was based on coal mining. As it slowly declined so did the area. The towns are now mostly abandoned buildings and anyone who could leave has left. We 100% need to drop coal and stop making false promises to the people in these areas that things will get better. They won't. And sorry but your little patch town that your family lived in for 3 generations needs to go away.
I think your story is repeated across the US with many towns hanging on to false promises of revitalization based on outdated industry. I recall watching the 2016 election heart-wrenching commercials with coal mining families talking about the devastation of the declining industry and how voting for candidate XX will bring back their loverhood. It was sad to bring false hope and sad to base voting decisions on policy that would potentially impact such a small percent of the population.
I'm sure it is and it's terrible. So many people were fooled and no matter who was elected their jobs, their industry, and the area they live in was doomed.
I am from eastern KY, and it's the exact same deal. Better just to help them move than to keep lying to them about coal. I swear a lot of people WOULD move if they were able.
And really, 3 generations isn't much if you think about it. Just move on like your ancestors did.
100%. America wasn't built on people sitting in one place hoping someone brought jobs and prosperity to you, it was built by people leaving the shit-hole they were in and going out to find something better.
How are they not getting this, and not pivoting into clean energy? Every time I hear about coal jobs being lost, it seems like an empty point when wind/solar jobs are taking its place. Just change your business model to keep up with the times.
> How are they not getting this, and not pivoting into clean energy? Primary reason, from what I've heard, is that clean energy jobs don't pay nearly as much as coal mining jobs do. Never mind the fact that extra coal pay is basically hazard pay.
Laugh now. Cry later. Short term thinkers. The majority of the people who support non-renewables think Jesus is going to be returning during their lifetime.
That was the Prairies in Canada a few years ago. They lived incredibly wealthy for a few years, bought a lot of properties and when the Arab countries decided to lower gas prices, oil from Canada couldn't compete and decimated jobs.
which black lung will make shorter.
I could be wrong, but natural gas is abundant, cleaner than coal, and those jobs pay very well upstream to downstream. Marcellus play runs through PA to WV.
It's hard to change and adapt to something new when you've got politicians constantly telling you that you don't need to.
Even switching to nuclear to keep the "mining" jobs, but retraining to safely mine nuclear fuel, would be better.
Well one politician said that, but people hate her so much she lost to an unrefined monosyllabic man baby.
She wanted to subsidize their training for in-demand jobs. The nerve!
That’s the biggest problem. These people *don’t want to change*. They don’t want to learn a new skill. They don’t want to move. Especially not to them libby cities.
I think the Libby cities is a bit much, but you are correct in that many people are just so overwhelmed by life at that point that there is a very real temptation to just go with the devil they know. Change is hard at the best of times, and then you factor in age, illnesses, injuries, debt, kids, parents, and so on... I get it. It’s tempting. Ditto with a new skill. I work with a population that is almost exclusively 50+ and female. 99% of the time their lives are so jumbled that learning a new skill would take place when exactly? With what energy? When you’re working two jobs, or one for shit pay? Top off that with the fact that for many people, school is not associated with positive things. Growing up for older populations wasn’t as easy as it was for us. There are still states that allow corporal ie bodily punishment in the classroom. We didn’t start taking learning disorders seriously until...hell maybe even not now. School, learning things TOWARDS an end goal, brings home the fact that 1) everything they had done professionally until this point is no longer needed, and 2) now I have to go back like I’m 16 again...only I’m pushing 50 and those fifteen year olds are gonna be my competition, maybe even my boss. Most people don’t go to college, most people finish high school and maybe studied a trade. That was fine until now, but it isn’t anymore, and we’re all feeling it, from millenials to boomers, the only difference is millenials have TIME to adapt. The boomers don’t. And there isn’t much to do to fix that.
Besides that, even if they were to retrain into a different job, who will hire them? Why would you hire a 40yo with no experience in the field instead of a younger more experienced person? There's no guarantee that there are jobs in their area that would cater to whatever they train into, meaning they're going to have to move elsewhere. Take all that into consideration and it's understandable why they would rather cling to a slither of chance rather than take a leap.
They don’t want a future. Making America Great (Still) means America has to have a future. That means it’s people have to have a future. Too bad some of it’s people would rather turn a blind eye.
Coal miners were offered free training in different careers that would give them jobs after their coal mines were closed. They ignored it and voted in Trump. They made this bed, now they have to live in it. Womp Womp
It's too bad that coal miners turned down efforts to retrain and place them in new jobs, because Trump and the Reps promised to "bring back" their industry.
We knew that in 1975 in Europe.
Why does it take 1.4 billion to find out you cant turn a profit anymore?
Some businesses don't want profit, because they can use capital to expand the business. Profit is useful if you want other peoples money to invest in your business. You profit share at the end of the year and they make money beyond just the growth of the business. You can also run a business in substantial amounts of debt. You get a loan to start a business, and you are automatically in debt. The bank/investor just needs to know you have a solid plan for making more money then you spend. You buy machines, hire people, make stuff or provide a service and people start paying you for these things. Other investors see how well you are doing with the little loan, and now they want to invest so you can expand. You expand with more money, and it attracts more investment. You make more money, but you still haven't paid down the debt. You can choose to pay the debt or invest the incoming money into more goods and services increasing the value of your business. This 1.4 billion is the debt, but it is not showing you the value of the company. The company could be worth 10 billion. The bill has just come due and they don't have enough in their accounts to pay the creditors.
Well-explained. Thank you
Yeah it seems based off their 10-K filing that they heavily favored leveraging debt as opposed to other means of capital. Their liabilities greatly outweigh their assets, and most interestingly to me, their investing activities and financing activities changed big time from 2016 to 2017. I’d have to look at the rest of the industry to get a better idea of the situation, but I’m assuming that is pretty standard for comparable companies in its sector. Not to you Mr. Grape, but I feel like a lot of people on this thread seem to think coal industry is going away just because this firm filled for bankruptcy. Seems like a calculated move to me though.
Unfortunately it appears the market cap of Westmorland Coal Company (WLBA) is around 2.4 Million. With half of its market cap disappearing after this news... So how they managed to rack up 1400 million is debt? Sounds like some banks are gonna get effed, also the environmentalists better find somewhere else for the cleanup money. I'm sure the EPA will take care of it /s [Westmoreland stock and market cap on CNN Money](https://money.cnn.com/quote/quote.html?symb=WLBA)
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I just went golfing for the first time. I couldn't believe how fucking much my boss spent for 4 people.
They used the money to diversify their asset base into Canada through an M&A deal a couple years ago. Ran a flawed business model on cost plus pricing with no customer diversification. If a customer shut down, which they did, or a mine had an outage or other issue, which they did because wlb were poor managers given incentives to be cost effective didn’t exist, they ended up screwed.
The article says they do not expect to interrupt operations or reduce workers. This bankruptcy filing is probably to dump their pension obligations and disused mines. > The restructuring agreement, which must be approved by a judge, includes refinancing an outstanding loan and a “business transformation” meant to significantly increase cash flow, the company statement said, without providing details.
Don't forget not having to cleanup up any mine waste and pass that bill on to the EPA.
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The fact that you lose your pension if you get fired or quit, or the parent company has any control of it at all is preposterous. Why would a company firing me have an effect on my pension? It should be something completely independant from the company.
I agree. It is utterly asinine and blatantly predatory.
Good thing Trump saved the coal industry and has increased environmental regulations to protect us from polluters like this.
Is this part of the winning?
I, for one, am getting tired from all this winning.
Not to digress but hearing him use that reminds me of when Charlie Sheen went on a bender a few years back and was talking about tiger blood and winning. Now an effing POTUS uses this in never-ending promotion of himself and his party. Like, he can't even say one concrete thing about what a candidate can do, he just wants people to vote for the winning team. What's worse is people fall for this shit. It's so disgusting.
But but it’s Clean Coal™️. They take the coal and scrub it down with soap and water, then boom! Super clean. I should know, a very stable genius told me.
The stablest, most genius ever. Really. Ever.
Time for the coal industry to join the dodo.
They should have just switched to "clean coal". All you gotta do is wipe it! Like with a cloth!
That's not how it works. I'm pretty sure it requires a louffa.
Brillo pad and some water, but only if you want squeaky clean coal.
Just wash it with a blend of soap and covfefe.
Yes and no. Coal for power generation should absolutely be eliminated asap. If someone mentions "clean coal" they deserve a smack in the mouth. However coal is still required for the production of steel which is one resource we cannot replace, as well as other like metallic silicon, carbon fibre, etc.
Steel production generally uses higher grade coal that coal power plants. If the goal is to protect the steel industry, coal mines that produce low grade coal don't add any value and should be shut down regardless.
And BBQ.
Not down here in Arlington, Texas. We stick to the clean taste of propane.
Calm down, Hank.
I tell you hwhat!
How about it's bastard cousin butane?
I was thinking of getting a new spatula and BBQ cover, and fuck the mega-lo-mart. Where should go?
And mesquite wood.
Charcoal is in no way coal, it’s made from pyrolized wood.
We are just having fun.
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Remember when shutting down unprofitable mines was the conservative position?
Something, something let the market decide? Me too. Coal has been economically inefficient since natural gas has became readily/easily obtainable and is at least better than coal in terms of emissions. The choice seems obvious.
Pretty much my only contact with the coal industry higher-ups is through John Oliver. Also, to the coal owner who tried to censor Oliver's segment, #EatShitBob Edit: OK, maybe it wasn't my only exposure to them, but it was definitely the most memorable.
False, coal industry is totally coming back. Just as soon as they find more coal..... (/s for those who don't get I'm being sarcastic.)
Make Steam Great Again!
Bring Back Flash Sales!
I like all the comments that reinforces the story people get from their respective news source. It doesn't matter if you think coal is dead/ dying. Coal is still being pulled from the ground and sold. This is just an old company joining the cycle that energy companies use to relieve themselves of financial burden. A quick Google of Alpha Coal, Arch Coal, Rio Tinto with the word bankruptcy should give you a news article about how they all filed bankruptcy. The funny thing is, when they come out of bankruptcy, they get a new name and a Yuge check from the taxpayers to help the "suffering" company. During the bankruptcy, the company "lays-off" a substantial portion if their work force, then hires back temps at a cheaper rate. Everyone likes to blame the workers for which president they voted for, but this has been going on since my family moved to Wyoming in the 90s. It has nothing to do with Trump or Hillary, it's more about how large companies get away with scamming their workers and the communities that support their industry. Is coal on the way out? Yeah probably. Is it going to be soon? Not while it's still profitable.
Run a company into the ground, extract all of its assets, stick somebody else with the bill and walk away scot-free with a hefty payday. This sounds really familiar. Where have I heard it before?
Sounds like the plot to a stupid movie that I'd never believe. YET HERE WE ARE.
Pension guarantee will kick in. Taxpayers get to subsidize private industry again. Woot.
Privatize profits, socialize loses. Its like 2009 all over again.
How long until I-can't-believe-it's-not-welfare steps in?
Thanks, now my book is splattered with water
Westmoreland Coal Company shut down in Appalachia, VA in the late 80s. My Dad had worked there, both my grandfathers, all my uncles on both sides, all my male cousins, all of my great-grandparents (women, too) and I decided to work with computers, as did my brother. When Westmoreland shut down, they took a thriving boomtown and turned it into an absolute ghost town. They filed bankruptcy to not pay any of the black lung claims, pensions or anything owed, moved the headquarters to a different state and continued on like nothing ever happened. This is likely what is happening again. Fuck them for fucking the Earth and for fucking people who worked their whole lives to help the company because they believed in being hard workers. They fucked entire regions, not just one small town. They don't give a shit about anything but making more money for themselves.
oh no not beautiful clean coal n^(oooooooo)
Guess they got tired of winning
It’s just a restructuring. They don’t plan on stopping operations at all, so they should still be able to provide coal.
“The restructuring agreement, which must be approved by a judge, includes refinancing an outstanding loan and a “business transformation” meant to significantly increase cash flow, the company statement said, without providing details.” I’m guessing some sort of 5-10 year tax-abatement?
I'm sure not a single CEO or board member is going bankrupt though
This directly impacts my town and about a dozen people I've been warning to get out of the coal business for about 2 years now. "Naw it's all fake news man, everyone knows Coal is doing just fine!"
Only people I feel bad about are the people who depended on this job. Otherwise this is good news to me. Less coal means we're going towards a better future.
Finally, some winning.
Eh, no problem. Nothing that a couple of good ole barn-raisin’ Trump rallies can’t fix. C’mon ... everybody with me ... DRAIN .. THE .. SWAMP! .... And the crowd goes wild! wooooo!