I have started about 5 different posts about this thorough conflict of interest here in West Virginia that caught the eye of the NY Times, but WV Blue has a piece up and some comments, so just go there and check it out.
Truly appalling behavior. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the fact that WV is pretty much run by Coal interests, this will be an eye opener.
Carnacki
Thanks for the link.
Dennis - SGMM
Spent many weeks in Huntington, WV on business back in 2000. Loved it.
Run by coal interests? Shit, screwed, blued and tattooed by coal interests. Look up “mountain topping” for example. Not only can the coal companies clip the tops off of mountains to recover the coal there, they can dump whatever they don’t want down the side of the mountain, choking and polluting streams and rendering the bottom land uninhabitable.
Although a lot of the people I got to know down there opposed mountain topping I can’t find anything that says it was ever stopped. Another consequence of America allowing the mineral rights to a piece of land to be sold separately from the land itself and then standing foursquare for the ability of the owner of the mineral rights to fuck up whatever’s above ground to get at whatever minerals may or may not be there.
Libby Spencer
It reminds me of that hunting trip that Scalia and Cheney took right around the time Scalia was ruling on something to do with Cheney. I think it was about having to disclose who was on the very secret energy committee.
edmund dantes
I’m sorry, but having your Supreme Court Justices elected is just ripe for abuse. One of the other Justices that ruled in favor of Masey just happened to have received over $3 million in his election campaign from Masey interests to unseat another justice. Of course this isn’t a high enough amount to warrant recusing oneself from ruling on the case.
Jeebus!!
Punchy
At least dirty-ass coal, and strip mining, and blowing up mountain tops for coal, and letting all the debris fall into creeks and rivers, and all the corruption that befalls it is SO MUCH BETTER than the acres of corn, soybeans, and the occasional pig farm in Iowa. Nothing quite as disgusting, repulsive, and detremental to a state than a bushel of corn, as compared to blacklung, environmental catastrophies, and government failure to regulate.
Yeah, I am picking this fight again.