By Josh Moon
Alabama Political Reporter
Alabamians are tough, self-sufficient people.
The conservative people of this conservative State don’t like handouts or Welfare. They don’t like people who can’t learn from their mistakes, take responsibility for their actions and pay their own way.
Which makes me wonder … why do I and progressives like me have to keep bailing y’all out?
I’m serious. It’s getting old having to drag you folks out of one mess after another, constantly having to apologize for your backwards ways and ignorant ideas.
Because it’s never-ending.
One week you want to upend 200 years of mostly peace by forcing the Christian religion on everyone. The next week you’re trading a few coal jobs for the entire environment. The next you think it’s cool if we can set rivers on fire.
Last week, we had to save you again – literally – as you were trying like hell to give away your own health care.
With the help of a few contrarian Republicans, Democrats made sure that when you or your loved one gets sick with an expensive disease, an insurance company can’t drop your coverage. The progressives in this county made sure that you won’t lose everything in exchange for giving a rich guy a big tax break.
But the entire exercise was concerning, because it left us wondering just how many times we’re going to have to save you all from the idiotic promises that spew forth from President Cheeto before he’s impeached.
If the health care debacle was any indication, there might not be a limit. Ignoring the reality of simple economics and basic math, you all somehow believed Donald J. Trump, a man who bankrupts casinos, could magically lower health insurance costs, cover more people and make drug prices lower.
And how was he going to do all of this?
Negotiations.
Seriously. That was the super-specific plan that you all bought into. The same group clamoring for an eighth Benghazi investigation was perfectly cool with a bill no one had read on the day it was to be voted on by the House.
But it doesn’t stop there, does it?
You’re also cool with killing off the EPA, because White House Bob keeps telling you that he’s bringing back coal jobs once those darn regulations are killed.
I have bad news: coal jobs aren’t coming back. Ever.
Trump and his cronies want to kill the regulations so billionaire CEOs can start dumping waste into the rivers where your kids swim and fracking you to death.
Because coal jobs didn’t die due to regulations. They died because of technology that makes it much easier and cheaper to find alternative energy sources.
And once again, here’s how your ignorance of this reality was twisted for the benefit of conservative politicians at the expense of conservative voters:
In other states where coal jobs were plentiful at one time, more progressive State leaders got out in front of the trend and offered job training and job options to coal workers, helping them prepare for the alternative energy jobs coming to their states.
But in conservative states, like Alabama, instead of spending money on those programs, we instead spent it on lawsuits to “fight Obama’s war on coal.” Alabama politicians fought against alternative energy companies, blocking wind farms in the northeastern part of the State. And it continued to push this narrative that coal was suffering because of liberal environmental policies, instead of from market-driven cost concerns.
Why?
So you’d vote for them. Because they knew that no one likes change, so you’d vote to keep your jobs if they made a promise they couldn’t keep.
But what you really did, by buying their lies and refusing to accept reality, was vote against your own interests – your interests in better jobs and cheaper power.
Now, thousands of coal workers either are out of work or will be soon, and they’re hopelessly behind in training that would land them a more promising job in the future. The rest of the state is dealing with higher energy prices. And somehow you blame liberals for this.
As we did with health care nationally, the progressives of this State tried to help you, tried to save you all from yourselves. But there’s only so much we can do.
What’s that line y’all like to use when you’re stripping public assistance away from poor people?
At some point, y’all have to learn to help yourselves.
