Better late than never is true only for the tough. The weak and impatient won't be hanging around to see what happens.
The crusty old adage popped into my head when I saw the president's budget proposals. Better late than never. I'm not sure why it took so long to propose Abandoned Mine Land funds to create much needed jobs in areas hit hardest by the shifts in the electricity generation landscape over the last ten years. But it did.
A billion dollars over five years doesn't sound like much...if you're a Walton. Two hundred million dollars a year into the coalfields that creates jobs AND fixes environmental problems is hard to argue with. I can't wait to see how Senators Yertle and Goldilocks do it.
Anyway, that money's just been sitting there, building for years, just waiting to be spent. But it's been notoriously hard to get. I know from experience raising project money in Elkhorn City. The reason it's hard is simple:
Once that money is used to fix a site, that site cannot be mined again. When you fix that hillside or holler or creek, it's out of play for the coal companies.
Our SOARing leaders, Beshear and Rogers, are going to be hard-pressed not to support Obama's proposal outright. But using that money means admitting the days of major coal mining in eastern Kentucky are ending. Hal's already got himself a highway but Beshear has big stars in his eyes and is looking ahead. It'll be interesting to see how he plays his success with the Affordable Care Act to an office in Washington. It's a lot easier to be the guy who's for healthcare coverage for everyone when you aced the test from the beginning.
There's a lot of "better late than never" around the President lately. Now that the Koch party has taken over both houses of congress, he's found a spine and seems to be revelling in pointing out the wins his administration has had despite their every attempt to make him fail.
Imagine that Americans support a party whose entire goal is to make the President of the United States fail. What would your grandparents do? Not that.
So I'm happy to see him call them out. Too bad he didn't do it from day one.
In other "better late than never" randomness, I'd like to shift gears from the terrorists in Washington to the terrorists in the middle east. I am of the opinion criminals using religion and poverty to manipulate unfortunate people to their will (honest, I'm not talking about Washington anymore) need to be erased. But we, the U.S., should not be doing the erasing.
To further my tangent, I'd like to point out that Japan has been pretty quiet militarily for a long time. Having your cities used as nuclear test sites will do that. But now Japan has gotten bloody and they're itching to try out some of that high tech weoponry they've been hearing about.
Some cultures will not mesh and the thugs who use poverty stricken muslims to do their dirty work would have a real hard time finding recruits in Tokyo. Maybe we should sic the original suicide bombers on ISIS for a while.