As he resisted supporting the Build Back Better Act, Manchin spent MONTHS talking about his constituents (voters) to avoid the seemingly obvious argument that he was really serving the interests of ENERGY PRODUCERS. Now he's caught between the people who give him VOTES and the people who give him BIG MONEY and that makes him a SYMBOL of why many Trumpers and many other Americans RIGHTLY feel the system is broken
This happened because Manchin BLAKED on BBB only to have mine workers turn on him.
WORTH THE FULL READ< but here's the key excerpt:
"Manchin’s Choice on Build Back Better: Mine Workers or Mine Owners"
Senator Joe Manchin III is caught between the mine workers’ union, which supports President Biden’s social policy and climate bill, and mine owners in his state who oppose it.
"Joe Manchin grew up with coal miners,” said Jonathan Kott, a former aide to the senator who still advises him. “His heart is with them. His sweat is with them — and in the end, Manchin will always be with the U.M.W.A.”
But Mr. Manchin has also long been allied with the coal industry. His own family has profited from waste coal from abandoned mines, which the Manchins sell to a polluting power plant in his home state. And Mr. Manchin has received more campaign donations from the oil, coal and gas industries than any other senator in the current election cycle."
AND BASED ON THEIR TRUMP-INSPOIRED PRO-CIOALS POSTS HERE, THE COVE TRUMPERS MUST ALSO SUPPORT BBB NOW, RIGHT? BECAUSE OF THIS:
"But in the bill, Democrats included provisions dear to the unions of West Virginia, which have been watching employment in the coal industry diminish for years.
Most pressing was an extension through 2025 of an excise tax paid by coal mine operators and protected for years by Mr. Manchin. The levy finances a trust fund that pays about 30,000 miners coping with black lung disease and their beneficiaries a little under $700 a month. Because Build Back Better did not pass last year, the tax was cut in half as of Jan. 1, pushing the struggling fund further into debt.
The bill also includes top priorities for union leaders, such as stiff penalties for employers that block union organizing and collective bargaining.
Beyond those provisions is a weightier matter in coal country: whether to shore up a polluting power source or transition the Appalachian economy away from coal.
The bill includes industrial policies proposed by Mr. Manchin that would help wean the region away from fossil fuels, including $100 billion to aid manufacturers and $25 billion for advanced manufacturing outreach, with $4 billion of the outreach funding set aside for coal-mining regions. A tax credit for energy investments includes a generous additional subsidy for those investments that flow to communities with oil and gas workers, a closed coal mine or a shuttered coal-fired electricity generator."
IN OTHER WORDS, MANCHIN GOT WHAT THE COAL OWNERS SHOULD WANT . . . ESPECIALLY AFTER TRUMP LIED TO THEM:
"For years, coal miners and operators alike looked skeptically at such efforts. Miners rallied to Donald J. Trump’s side in the 2016 campaign as he promised to bring their industry back, not replace it with clean energy. He did not keep that promise, and coal mining employment, which was at about 51,000 jobs when he took office, had fallen to a nadir of 39,000 by the time he was denied a second term."
(it was a promise Trump couldnt keep, but he made it anyway because he's a CON MAN)
SO THAT PUT MANCHIN IN A VICE ...
"It took a while, but last month, those arguments won over the unions of Mr. Manchin’s home state, which have long been the backbone of his political support. In its statement asking Mr. Manchin to return to negotiations, the state’s A.F.L.-C.I.O. chapter noted that the bill included his industrial policy legislation."