Presidential campaign strategy is deceptive and unfair to coal miners Source-Roanoke Times

Herman Jones | Jones has lived in Fredericksburg for the last 13 years following retirement from the active Army as a colonel with his last duty assignment as director, missiles and munitions for the U.S. Army in Europe, and as the U.S. Army representative to the NATO committee on nuclear warhead management. He was born and raised in the coalmining town of Coalwood, West Virginia.

Hillary Clinton has stated that a vast number of Donald Trump’s staunchest supporters fall into a category of “deplorables.” But that’s not the case in Southwest Virginia, where Trump polls strongest with forgotten coal miners looking for rescue.

During the last decade, coal production has plummeted in the commmonwealth’s mining region, leaving hundreds more miners unemployed each year in Buchanan, Dickenson, Wise and nearby counties. This fall, the U.S. Energy Information Administration predicted nationwide production would end 2016 down another 18 percent, the steepest decline since 1949. Nevertheless, the same day, at a campaign rally in Abingdon, Trump held a “Trump Digs Miners” sign and promised to put them back to work.

I wish he could.

I’m no stranger to the coalfields. I was born and raised in Coalwood, West Virginia, where my dad worked in Olga Coal Company mines for 40 years. He repeatedly told me before he succumbed to black lung disease at the young age of 71, “There will come a day when there will be no such thing as coal mining, so you better prepare yourself to do something different.”

Everyone in Coalwood knew the principal demand for Appalachian coal was to make the steel that built America. The average miner believed he was part of an industry that would grow forever and guarantee income for generations to come.

But, as my father warned, things have changed. Patriot Coal, Walter Energy Alpha Natural Resources, Peabody Energy and Arch Coal — the first and second-largest American suppliers, respectively — have all filed for bankruptcy in the past two years.

In China — currently source of more than half the world’s steel — the government recently announced plans to lay off 1.8 million coal and steel workers; while U.S. steel industry researchers are under public and government pressure to develop cleaner alternatives to traditional coal-fired blast furnaces.

In 2013, Nature and Scientific American reported that an electrically powered steel manufacturing demonstration plant could be just three years away.

These are the facts behind Clinton’s position on coal, a stance that has been taken out of context and politically misrepresented. “I’m the only candidate [with] a policy about how to bring economic opportunity using clean renewable energy as a key into coal country,” she said. “Because we’re going to put a lot of coals miners and coal companies out of business, right? And we’re going to make it clear that we don’t want to forget those people. [They] labored in those mines for generations, losing their health, often losing their lives to turn on their lights and power our factories.”

In contrast, Trump panders. In Abingdon, he admitted it. “I asked [miners] why they didn’t go into a different industry. They said, ‘We love mining. We don’t want to do anything else.’ Their jobs have been taken away.” So he’s going to “give them back.”

My father never would have voted for a candidate who will say anything just to capitalize on despair, unemployment and poverty. I hope our Appalachian neighbors won’t.