How To Win Power by Selling Out Your Own Union (Clarice's Pieces)

From an historian's point of view, one could do worse than studying the United Mine Workers of America. It is a microcosm of the American Labor Movement. It is a startling picture of the role of individuals in the making of American history. It is the story of how a once powerful institution's leaders repeatedly sold out its members as the nation drifted from large scale industrial production of power and goods to being a producer of private and public services . Finally, not least, it is a story of breathtaking betrayal of working men by a man who used them as a stepping stone to greater personal power and to influence with an administration which time will prove the epitome of crony capitalism in the U.S.

I have some intimate personal experience with the UMWA having represented Joseph A. Yablonski ("Jock Yablonski") in his bid for the presidency of the Union in the late 1960's and his successor Miners for Democracy, the reform group which took over after he, his wife and daughter were murdered by thugs in the pay of then Union President Tony Boyle.

The stage for that fight was set by the dictatorial control of the union by its most famous leader, John L. Lewis, whose physical and mental decline left no suitably compelling successor, but only the levers to unhampered power over the union's resources to whomever grabbed the reins. My records of that fight are available to scholars at the Wayne State University Labor Archives. They provide an interesting snapshot of the labor movement, the union, the coal industry and labor law in that period.

Since then, the number of unionized coal miners has dramatically decreased and miners in at least West Virginia are increasingly turning from their traditional Democratic party allegiance.

Wow, thank you for posting this. I have a personal interest in what is happening with the UMW, the Obama administration and it’s crony capitalist partners, which also include a union, the ILWU.

Another personal tie in to this story for me, is the fact that the CIO once tried to murder my grandparents to stop my grandfather from taking office as the first president of the Electrical workers and Machinists at RCA.

Oh, how I wish that we could discuss this article directly with Clarice Feldman, aka, Fedora.

There is a whole lot more to what she is saying that I could tell her.

What the Obama administration and Richard Trumpka are doing is to empower the sub-bituminous coal producers in the Western part of the country and pass regulations which promote the sub-bituminous coal and handicap the regular coal through EPA regulations and fees (better known as taxes) that make the cost of building so-called “clean burning” coal plants (which burn sub-bituminous) financially more appealing.

Everything that Obama is doing aimed at moving the center of trade in this country away from the Mississippi and East Coast to the West Coast. Obama wants to move ALL our exports through ports controlled by the ILWU, an openly communist union. The ILWU ports are mostly owned an operated by SSA, a subsidiary of CARRIX, which Goldman Sachs owns.

CARRIX claims to be the largest cargo moving company in the world. Goldman Sachs is the largest share owner in CARRIX. Think about the power that gives Goldman Sachs and the Obama administration. Coal is a part of the equation because they are using the shipment of the sub-bituminous coal as an excuse to expand rail lines through rural lands (and a few cities, as well) that will provide the Gateways for the flow of goods to ASIA over Warren Buffet’s rail lines, through the ILWU ports. But the coal is just to get the shipping and the rail lines started for the grain that they hope will follow.

The Obama administration has been in talks with Western farmers, who formerly raised grain and are now being paid not to raise grain, who are either leaving the land fallow, or using it for grazing. The agreement with these farmers is that the federal government would lift the restrictions on their farming under the condition that they agree to ship their grain and soybeans, by rail (on Warren Buffet’s trains) through SSA/ILWU ports to China, where they coal and grain will be unloaded at another SSA/ILWU port (Maria Cantwell, arranged approval for the SSA port in China. We still don’t know who is paying for it)

The relationships involved with coal and the Obama administration cronies is so complex that it would take me a couple of hours to explain and detail. It all ties back to the Agenda 21. The Obama administration is not only picking winners and losers among industries, he is picking winners and losers among unions, among states. The coal scheme also involves the “Native Americans”, not exactly to their benefit, but to use them, like the left uses the union members, as a weight on the private sector workers, the tax payers.

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