By Linda Blackford | Editor
Hope you’re having a terrific weekend, and that you can relax and catch up on all the news that happened this week. It was a lot. Entering the scene was a new data center, a new pipeline, and a new gubernatorial candidate; leaving it was a DOJ case, a television star and Medicaid cuts. In between was some analysis on what Gov. Beshear should “do” about Sen. Mitch McConnell, some proposed legislation, and some great commentary.
Thanks, as always, for reading!
Governor Andy Beshear speaks with Senator Mitch McConnell and McConnell’s wife Elaine Chao during the 143rd Fancy Farm Picnic on Saturday, Aug. 5, 2023. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Austin Anthony)
By McKenna Horsley
A lot of people are asking Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear to “do something” about U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell’s absence from the Senate. Exactly what he “can” do isn’t so clear.
A photo from a fluorspar mine in Crittenden County (Photo courtesy Robert Ordway)
COMMENTARY
By James Ordway
In the 1930s, as Harlan County, Kentucky, erupted into one of the most violent labor conflicts in American history, a quiet reality was unfolding two hundred miles to the west. In Crittenden County, men went into the ground every morning to dig fluorspar—a mineral essential to building the steel for Allied ships, the aluminum for wartime aircraft, and eventually the uranium for the atomic bomb. They put in the sweat equity, doing dangerous physical labor for modest wages during a decade of historic economic catastrophe. And yet, the guns stayed holstered. The National Guard never came. Florence Reece never wrote a protest song about Marion, Kentucky.
NEWS OF THE WEEK
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