Coal barons: GOP lawmakers try to turn back the hands of time

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: In the living memory of older residents, Pittsburgh was the smoky city -- where midnight came in the morning and shirts were dirty by noon -- and that smoke was the byproduct of an economy based on coal. Hearths glowed and jobs abounded, but the air was like poison.

In those days, Old King Coal and his acolytes had their loyal representatives in Congress and the state Legislature to see to the interests of industry. But gradually things changed. Americans came to appreciate that jobs and clean air weren't mutually exclusive. In 1970, the Environmental Protection Agency was born under a Republican president, Richard Nixon.

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