Congress is entering the final days to pass the Miners Protection Act, which was proposed more than a year ago to direct $3 billion over the next 10 years into health care and pension funds for miners. The money would prop up United Mine Workers of America pension funds, relied on by more than 89,000 miners nationwide, including 13,000 miners in Pennsylvania.
An extension would honor a promise by the federal government dating back to the Truman administration to guarantee UMWA retirement funds. Without action, roughly 17,000 miners across the country would lose their health care benefits later this month, and an additional 4,000 would lose them early next year.
Wow, this is going to race like methane gas across the Appalachian coal country who went for Trump in a big way. Great holiday conversation brought to you by the Grinches in WDC.
Not one unamamous consent approved for anything at any time and filibuster everything up to and including reading of minutes, time of day and date.
Eat up hours of debate.
Return the favor for what the thuglicans have been doing ever since addled ronnie left office.
Mention that drumpf lost the popular vote at least 5 times in every statement.
Shut it down.
That will do less damage then anything these thieves would do given any oppurtunity at all.
Choose the lesser evil and shut it down.
Make Republicans and their ignorant voters own every and all Republican failure (to govern). Maybe we can finally get it thru the rural and confused white voter’s heads that Republicans don’t give a shit about them.
If you want American institutions to provide for the general welfare of American citizens like the Constitution states, you must vote for Democrats and liberals at all levels.
Only after the D’s show a spine and fight. If they continue to be floormats why bother?
Where was hillary during recount battle?
R’s fight. They delayed Francken for months and now they tied up N.C. gov. race and muddied the waters.
Meanwhile hillary and gang having provided for her and hers crawled into a hole and sold out anyone who voted for her or supported her in any way.
If the d’s won’t fight why ring doorbells, or organize for a bunch of sell outs.
You know what… perhaps the best thing the Dems could do is let the Republicans toss the miners under the bus. A lot of miners voted for tRump, it seems a good healthy taste of the stew they help cook might be a informative experience.
It would definitely hurt those ignorants sods who voted for trumpf and his lies, but it would be a wake up call. There will no mines he can reopen, and there will be no manufacturing jobs he can keep here and no factories he can reopen, and the Carrier resolution is just a hiccup. With their gullibility they’ve put the rest of us in a frightening situation. So, phuck 'em
@blogamator When 80-90 million people opt out of voting as they did this year it’s too big a burden for the rest of us who did vote to carry.
My thoughts exactly. Let’s not go to the mattresses over people who consistently spit in our faces. It’s time for Democrats to stop protecting people too stupid to vote to protect themselves. For far, far too long, Democrats have acted as human shields for people who then rail against Democrats and vote against them. It’s time to stop protecting idiots from themselves and force them to face the consequences of their own actions.
O I don’t know guys - I really like the sound of “Democrats threaten to shut down the government” for a goddamn change.
In fact, I am thinking it would be just peachy if they’d shut the shit down til 2020.
I do too, but I’d like it more if we’d hold our powder and shut it down on Pepe’s watch when the lives of a whole lot more than 20,000 miners are at stake.
I’m fine with letting coal country suffer for their vote. But for ONCE could we scream it from the god damn rafters WHO IS CAUSING THEM PAIN??? Make it as public as possible, instead of this quiet screwing that allows republicans to “blame the gubermint” and take no responsibility for their own action against their own voters. I don’t care if it has a snowballs change in hell, IT’S MARKETING. Which is apparently the only thing that matters anymore.
No matter how many times you post this lying bullshit, it will still be lying bullshit.
Have I told you how much I love you? Because I do. A lot.
I return the sentiment ten-fold!
You never disappoint. You cut to the chase instead of wasting keyboard strokes on asshatery.
I have no hard fast theory on exactly what Democrats should do. There are risks to a fight like this, and one of the risks is that the Democrats will ultimately prove not up to it and fail due to lack of nerve. There are others of course, so I don’t know what end of any sticks to grab in this dismal new political landscape.
But one thing I do know is that you both paint with far too wide a brush. 20,000 fucked over human beings should just get further fucked because they didn’t vote the way you wanted them to? I don’t think so. That kind of vendetta mentality is what I expect of ill-educated right wingers, and it does none of us any credit to exhibit the same.
Precisely. It is all perception, not reality. Republicans learned that a long time ago.
I’d agree insofar as saying there’s no predicting what a really pissed off group of trumpbelievers might do in the aftermath of further let down by their government even if it by the party they identify with. By a very large margin they don’t trust the Federal government as it is, as opposed to Dems who approve by over 60% of what the government does. Yet they need a wake up call to tell them that campaign promises are fantasies, and yes, our candidate did some of that too. We Dems are royally fucked for the next two to four years, our economic stability, our freedom of speech, our environment and more and it’s people who trusted the Rs and trumpism who’ve brought this about.
They’ll just blame Obama.