(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."
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.
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