'Manchin Doesn't Speak For Us' Gets Lump of Coal for Xmas; Sen. Says WV People Happy About No 'BBB'

[appalachiablue]

- Stewart Acuff, of Jefferson County, W.Va., center, and Rev. Dr. William Barber of the Poor Peoples Campaign, conduct a news conference outside of Hart Building, December 14 to call on Senator Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) to support the Build Back Better plan and voting rights protections.
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-'West Virginians Give Manchin A Lump For Coal For Christmas.' By John Nichols, The Nation, Dec. 23, 2021. - Ed.

Manchin claims his constituents are happy with his abandonment of Build Back Better. Miners and other residents say that just isn’t so.

When WV Senator Joe Manchin rocked Washington with his announcement that he would oppose President Biden’s Build Back Better agenda, he offered a sort of explanation. “If I can’t go home and explain it to the people of West Virginia, I can’t vote for it. And I cannot vote to continue with this piece of legislation. I just can’t,” Manchin told Fox News Sunday. “I’ve tried everything humanly possible. I can’t get there.”
But the corporate-aligned Democrat, whose pre-Christmas pronouncement derailed end-of-the-year efforts to enact the social spending measure, never tried to explain the plan to West Virginians.

He did the opposite. He talked about it being too expensive, too wide-ranging, too ambitious in its approach to everything from ending child poverty to addressing climate change. “Let’s be clear: Manchin’s excuse is bullshit,” responded Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.). “The people of WVa. would directly benefit from childcare, pre-Medicare expansion, & long term care, just like Minnesotans.” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) was equally blunt, saying on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, “The idea that Joe Manchin says he can’t explain this back home to his people is a farce.”

Manchin’s a political careerist who has a long history of using elected positions to enrich himself and his family. His low opinion of his constituents has long been an open secret in WVa. Now, it’s making headlines. “Manchin reportedly told people that parents who receive the $300 per child would spend that money on drugs,” announced WTRF-TV in Wheeling. “Manchin also reportedly told fellow Senators that he was against the bill’s paid sick leave because people would lie about their illness for hunting trips.”

Despite the revelations about his personal profiteering, deference to donors, and disregard for the people he is supposed to represent, Manchin is now claiming that West Virginians agree with him.

“When I talked with Sen. Manchin on Monday, one of the things he kept saying to me was that West Virginians were happy that he wasn’t going to move this bill forward, that it wasn’t good for WVa. I don’t think that’s true,” (CPC) chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) told me Tuesday. Jayapal’s right: Polling shows that most West Virginians agree with most of the BBB agenda. After she issued a statement that declared the senator was not “a man of his word,” the CPC chair said Manchin called her. Her statement clearly stung. His call offered an indication that he is sensitive to suggestions that he is out of touch with key constituencies, said Jayapal, who believes that they may yet be able to convince him to support much of the BBB agenda..

“JOE MANCHIN DOESN’T SPEAK FOR US”... https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/wva-miners-manchin/
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* West Virginians Say Joe Manchin Betrayed Them and Still Have Hope Build Back Better Will Pass, Dec. 23, 2021. https://www.democraticunderground.com/10832503

[Uncle Joe]

1. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread appalachiablue.

[appalachiablue]

2. That's quite a claim by the senator. Not a good

idea to disappoint and misrepresent people who are struggling and in real need. Especially Hillbillies.

[DonCoquixote]

3. dammit let's get someone to primary Joe NOW

put money behind the effort!

[appalachiablue]

4. STEWART ACUFF, Bio (Photo above):

- HUFFPOST, CONTRIBUTOR Stewart Acuff, Utility Workers Union of America, Chief of Staff & Assistant to President.

Stewart Acuff is the Chief of Staff and Assistant to the President of the Utility Workers Union of America (UWUA). Prior to working for the UWUA, Stewart Acuff was named Director of Organizing for the AFL-CIO in October, 2002 by AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, who noted Acuff’s “strong leadership skills and a deep passion for the potential of unions to lift working people's lives.”

As organizing director, Acuff coordinated strategies to help working men and women join and form unions across the federation’s 53 member unions. He has been a community organizer and union organizer for 25 years, except for a brief stint as a truck driver. From 1977 to 1982, he worked as a community organizer in Missouri, Texas, Tennessee and New Hampshire for organizations affiliated with ACORN and Citizen Action. In 1982, he joined the union movement as the organizing coordinator for the Service Employees International Union in Texas, where he was responsible for a campaign in which employees of 12 Beverly Enterprises nursing homes organized into the SEIU.

In 1985, he became executive director of the Georgia State Employees Union/SEIU Local 1985. He helped build a union of 2,500 state workers despite the fact that public employees in Georgia had no collective bargaining rights, no dues check-off, no rights to meet and confer and no provisions for union recognition. Acuff was elected president of the Atlanta Labor Council in 1991, where he served for nine years. In 2000, he joined the AFL-CIO staff as deputy director of field mobilization for the Midwest region. He served as deputy director of organizing from 2001 until becoming director.

Acuff writes and speaks extensively. He has written articles for the Atlanta Constitution, Labor Research Review, In These Times, The Nation, Foreign Policy and Focus Magazine, Labor Studies Journal, New Labor Forum and several Georgia newspapers. He also has written essays in Which Way for Organized Labor? (edited by Bruce Nissen) and Organizing for Justice in Our Communities (edited by Immanuel Ness and Stuart Eimer). He is a member of the Federal Reserve Bank Advisory Council, the National Steering Committee of Jobs with Justice, the First Iconium Baptist Church in Atlanta and numerous other organizations. https://www.huffpost.com/author/stewart-acuff

[burrowowl]

5. K&R!

[twodogsbarking]

7. Where I grew up coal was free for many.

It cropped out of the ground in places. People had punch mines.
Just about like digging potatoes. Some houses had shallow mines
with access from the basement. You literally had a coal mine in your house.
Lots of people relied on coal for hot water so they kept a fire year round.
Some had no indoor plumbing. Four bedrooms and a path.

[Mary in S. Carolina]

8. This is so interesting twodogsbarking

I posted on a previous thread that I was lucky enough to be invited into the home of a West Virginia family where they cooked wild game, we sat by the campfire, drank moonshine (I am sure it was legal moonshine) and were told story after story and it was sooo interesting that I could have stayed for hours.

Before TV, phones, radio, etc, there was storytelling, and no one is better at storytelling then the West Virginians. The beauty in West Virginia is stunning. We, as Americans, owe a lot to West Virginia, they broke with Virginia and joined the Union during the Civil War and the Apalachin people are credited for winning the American Revolution. Thank you West Virginia!!

[twodogsbarking]

9. Part of the farm I grew up on was payment to an ancestor

for service in the Revolutionary War.

[Mary in S. Carolina]

11. I find that fascinating

[lees1975]

10. West Virginians are putting pressure on Senator Manchin, but

Last edited Fri Dec 24, 2021, 11:53 PM - Edit history (1)

they also need to bombard the the other Senator, Shelley Moore-Capito, who is a representative of privilige and wealth which is not common in West Virginia. How someone like her gets elected to represent a state where many people struggle financially is beyond me. She needs to feel the pressure to step aside from Republican obstructionism, which doesn't help a single West Virginian, and at least be held accountable for her opposition.

[appalachiablue]

12. Moore-Capito, and people like Alex Mooney noted

in this article, and others. I also don't know how they continue to be elected given the appalling conditions. She and Manchin have had challengers, like more progressive Stephen Smith, and Paul Jean Swearingen I think, but the Republicans and those tied to the old guard remain in control.

Money and power dominate and there aren't enough engaged, informed people although groups have formed and attempts have been made more recently to change things. It's a sad, baffling situation.

Shelley is very connected to the Repub. political circle in WV, the daughter of former Gov. Arch Moore as you know. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arch_A._Moore_Jr.
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.. But on Sunday, Manchin announced he would not support the bill, citing concerns about the national debt, rising inflation & spiking coronavirus cases.

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R) & the state’s other senator, also opposes BBB legislation, & fellow GOP Rep. Alex Mooney, who represents Institute, WV in Congress, voted against it in the House...

- Read More, https://mountainstatespotlight.org/2021/12/21/black-communities-industrial-air-pollution/

[lees1975]

13. Yes, a whole political dynasty disconnected from the people who elected them.

My Dad grew up in Clarksburg, served in the Navy during WW2, worked at the local carbon plant in Anmoore for a couple of years before realizing his way out was to graduate with a chemistry major from WVU, which he did. He got a better job as a result, but still working in the chemical industry, stayed in the Union. So were his older brother, uncles and cousins, most of whom worked for the carbon plant. There was not a Republican among them, and I remember him shaking his head when Arch Moore was elected. He said there couldn't have been a politician in West Virginia less interested in the working class. Now his daughter is a Senator, and if my Dad were alive he'd change that sentence to apply to Senator Moore-Capito.

Under Trump, West Virginia turned out to be one of the few states that didn't see much improvement in the employment situation, he ignored the miners once in office, gave mine owners tax breaks and compensated them for loss of production. West Virginia, consistently lost population again, a longer streak than any other state. It's most prosperous counties, Berkeley and Jefferson in the Eastern Panhandle (where people commute to work in Washington and Baltimore) are talking about seceding from the state.

But how do you get that message to the people in the state.

Ask Bernie Sanders. He knows.

[Bucky]

14. All the West Virginians he talks with tell him they don't want BBB

He's been from the boardrooms to the country clubs, from the gated communities to the exclusive lake resorts, and back to the board rooms. Every single West Virginia he meets is 100% anti BBB.

He's representing his true constituents. Like any politician, he works for the people who pay him