Owners of Big Coal nowadays live in places like Florida (TECO Energy), St. Louis (Peabody Energy), and Virginia (Massey Energy), but many powerful local families still draw their personal power from coal. Wealthy local families have sold, leased, and still manage large coal operations.
Whereas the Kennedy family bought West Virginia votes the old fashioned way, one by one with envelopes full of cash, George W. Bush was assisted into office by mining industry moguls and a disgruntled union boss who convinced people that an environmentally friendly president would cost them their jobs. (citations in the main article)
Bush flipped West Virginia voters from Democrat to Republican with the help of coal barons like William Raney, director of the West Virginia Coal Association, and James H. "Buck" Harless, another patriarch of the coal industry, along with Charles "Dick" Kimbler, a former miner's union official who helped break the Democrats hold on Appalachian counties.
"We were looking for friends," Harless told a Wall Street Journal reporter, "and we found one in George W. Bush."
After taking the 2000 presidential election, Bush set up his transition advisory team for energy policies. He named three Peabody Energy executives to assist him. When he installed Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell's wife, Elaine Chau, to her cabinet post, both Bush and McConnell* gained a friendly foe for those pesky mining industry investigations.
* McConnell co-sponsored the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), the first bill to muscle voting machines into American politics by force.
Resource exploitation produces such a sobering string of deaths every year that the Mine Safety Health Administration (MSHA) keeps a running "Fatalgram" tally on its web site. In charge of investigating these fatal accidents is Mitch McConnell's wife, U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine Chau.
On Oct. 11 2000, about 250 million gallons of black coal sludge gushed into a Martin County Kentucky mine and then flowed into two creeks. Black gunk swallowed backyards, gardens and driveways, annihilating life in the waterways. The spill was 23 times as large as the Exxon Valdez oil tanker spill, but it got less media coverage. Erik Reece, a lecturer at the University of Kentucky who teaches environmental journalism, chronicles the kinds of concerns that arise when death and disaster intersect with married Washington D.C. powerhitters:
Just like New Orleans, investigators found out they failed to follow safeguards and knew it was at high risk, but when MSHA investigators recommended a criminal investigation, Bush-appointed McConnell spouse Elaine Chau did not comply; one of the main investigators found himself locked out of his office.
It's only toxic sludge and global warming at stake. But -- whether it be through financing elections, intimidation tactics, or working with powerful families inside county governments to rig elections -- mining industry "persuasion" shoots its bullets both upward and downward.
Take local citizens' property rights and personal safety, for example. In his book Lost Mountain: A Year in the Vanishing Wilderness, Reece describes the personal toll exacted from a resident of moonshine government territory:
------------------------------------------------------------- quote: On the third of July, I drove across 10,000 acres of boulder-strewn wasteland that used to be Kayford Mountain, W.Va. -- one of the most hideous mountaintop-removal sites I've seen. But right in the middle of the destruction, rising like a last gasp, is a small knoll of untouched forest. Larry Gibson's family has lived on Kayford Mountain for 200 years. ... Forty seams of coal lie beneath his 50 acres. Gibson could be a millionaire many times over, but because he refuses to sell, he has been shot at and run off his own road. One of his dogs was shot and another hanged. . . In 2000, Gibson walked out onto his porch one day to find two men dressed in camouflage, approaching with gas cans. They backed away and drove off, but not before they set fire to an empty cabin that belongs to one of Gibson's cousins. This much at least can be said for the West Virginia coal industry: it has perfected the art of intimidation.
FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS CENTRALIZE POWER
In the last article, "The Hunt for Joe Bolton,", we showed you pictures of the Salyer family influence in Magoffin County. Salyer Coal Company. Salyer for Judge. Salyer Elementary School. Paul Hudson Salyer, a second cousin of former Kentucky Governor Paul Patton, served three terms in Magoffin county's most powerful position, that of Judge Executive, and the 2005 Magoffin County audit mentions that the County Clerk and his wife were running the office.Elections in Magoffin County were therefore being administered by a husband and wife. (printer-friendly copy of article click here, allow a couple minutes to load: http://www.blackboxvoting.org/moonshine1.pdf
Bullitt County is not dominated by the coal industry, but it seems to have issues with both drug trafficking and conflict of interest. Bullitt County just built the new Nina Mooney Courthouse Annex, elections headquarters. Nina Mooney was Queen of Elections for a few decades and now her son, Kevin Mooney, runs elections.
During Nina's reign, the Mooney family kept the voting machines in a warehouse they owned, rent paid by Bullitt County taxpayers. Bullitt County no longer houses its voting machines in the Mooney family's warehouse, but 2007 Bullitt County financial documents show thousands of dollars in taxpayer money going to "Mooney's Auto Supply." In Feb. 2007 alone, while Kevin Mooney owned it and while he worked for the county, over $2600 was disbursed by Bullitt County to Mooney Auto Supplies. A new owner took over in May 2007, but documents show that Bullitt County was equipping its road services division from Mooney's auto supply shop while he was running the elections division for the county.
So what are you saying? That the Ozarks are cram full of stupid people who vote these cretins in? We already knew that. In a democracy you get the government you deserve so let them roost in their own offal!
by
Archie (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 1270 comments)
on Thursday, September 20, 2007 at 12:06:11 PM
Since Missouri is part of the Ozarks, you missed the point
The article holds the Missouri anti-nepotism laws up as a GOOD example, and shows the Kentucky laws as a dreadful example.
This article highlights amazing work done by Kentucky citizens and a courageous and important stand taken by a Kentucky deputy who ran for sheriff.
The two points above would indicate that the conclusion you have tried to make is incorrect. The "point" of the article is that first, computerized elections force citizens to trust government insiders, a peculiar concept indeed in a democratic system, and second, that this "trust-based" model falls apart altogether when you have family members and crooks running the system.
This article proves that there is a real issue with family members holding inside position. The next article in the series will prove that insiders have been found to be crooks.
Bev Harris
by
Bev Harris (80 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 22 comments)
on Thursday, September 20, 2007 at 1:14:05 PM
2 comments
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