Hillbillies Duped Again, this Time by the Shrub. – One of the campaign ads that helped George Bush stage his remarkable win last year in West Virginia, until then historically a Democratic state, pledged that Bush would support disability payments to coal miners injured by black lung. Republican campaign ads accused the Clinton administration of trying to trim black lung benefits, which are financed by the coal industry but regulated by the Labor Department. In fact, one of Clinton’s last minute executive orders streamlined a lengthy and complex diagnostic procedure for black lung. The old system was favored by the coal industry because it kept injured miners from receiving benefits during years of appeals, until many of them died. Now that the Shrub is in office there has been a rollback of Clinton’s order hastening black lung award benefits. -- Washington Spectator