NY Times

By JOHN M. BRODER

Published: October 15, 2010

WASHINGTON — A top federal regulator has recommended revoking the permit for one of the nation’s largest planned mountaintop removal mining projects, saying it would be devastating to miles of West Virginia streams and the plant and animal life they support.

In a report submitted last month and made public on Friday, Shawn M. Garvin, the Environmental Protection Agency’s regional administrator for the Mid-Atlantic, said that Arch Coal’s proposed Spruce No. 1 Mine in Logan County should be stopped because it “would likely have unacceptable adverse effects on wildlife.” Source Article

This columnist  took a break from his recent tasks to attend the Appalachia Rising Day of Action in Washington D.C. on Monday, September 27. At least one thousand people took part in an inspiring and passionate rally calling for an end to the devastating practice of mountaintop removal by the coal companies in Appalachia.

I was already cruising over the Chesapeake Bay in my personal airship, the Silver Pelican, and with sidekick Ross Perot still on board as my guest, we set a course for our nation’s capital, and turned what would have normally been a two-and-one-half hour car trip into a bracing fifty-minute flight. My Head On Radio Network credentials cleared us for a one-day dirigible mooring pass, and I found a great spot on the old zeppelin mast atop the Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House. Encouraging me to “Get straight to the bull’s-eye on this deal down there,” Ross elected to remain with the ship and observe the activities from above, so I grabbed my camera and a rain jacket and descended, amidst  beaucoup d’esprit de bienvenue, to the genial but serious gathering below. You know, I never get tired of that.

Readers of this column are aware of our penchant for mirth and satire. But there is nothing amusing, let alone necessary, about blowing the tops off our mountains to extract more dirty fossil fuel–a process that we should be ramping down if not eliminating outright. Also in town were Bob Kincaid of the HORN – http://headonradionetwork.com/ and Matt Osborne – http://www.osborneink.com/ and we discussed this very topic later in the day. (You’ll notice in one of the pictures that Bob has no problem jumping right in the middle of the action. Unfortunately, this makes it easy for Dick Cheney’s spy satellites to locate and train their deadly high fructose rays on him.) It wasn’t so much that the rally lacked humor–it was certainly a jovial, exuberant and sociable affair. The funny part was how totally different this was compared to a typical tea bagger party.

These men and women are passionate and intense with their message, but unlike the Right, they’re not trying to scorch debate and criticism with shrill and incoherent posturing. Appalachia Rising and similar groups are made up of caring and discerning citizens who have a specific and legitimate concern and they are directing their protest at exactly the source of their anguish: Big Coal and the government which supports it. On Monday, I heard and watched these voices of the mountains, along with many others sympathetic to their cause, being eloquent, expressive and articulate. They understand history and context; they demonstrate an awareness of the connections between life, work and health and the real institutions which threaten them. To put it another way, those arrayed against Big Energy and mountaintop removal and in favor of conservation and alternative energy broadcast signal. The other side only transmits noise.

They are what the tea baggers wish they were and can never be.

An overwhelming majority of Appalachians stand in opposition to mountaintop removal. When your kids’ teeth are rotting, your water is poisoned, your home and land is being dynamited, and your neighbors are getting sick and dying, you don’t need handlers to tell you what the day’s talking point is. The folks who reside within the sound of mountains exploding every day don’t need to be reminded that we all live downstream, and that the damage is irreversible. I like to end my occasional call-in conversations to Bob Kincaid with a line from the book Altered Carbon, by Richard K. Morgan. It’s simply stated: make it personal. I don’t know how it could get any more personal for the people living in these corridors of destruction. The fact that they keep their tempers in check and their disobedience civil is even more to their credit.

The Right Wing has classically attempted to misrepresent the two basic camps of Americans by perpetuating an erroneous national distinction between them. It goes like this: those on the negative side who promote war, destruction and profit above all else–who essentially worship death– are strong and patriotic. Those on the positive side who seek peace and protecting the earth and it’s people from harm–who worship life– are portrayed as weak and un-American. I’ve never been quite able to have my synapses to fire completely around this. If I can ever get Ross out of the Silver Pelican’s rec room and away from playing Galaxy Girl for two minutes maybe he can explain the appeal of this anti-progressive myth.

It’s a characterization that has no substance. Because what results from building genuine and positive strength from the bottom up is a power that can face down the most entrenched opposition. Once you become a true victim of the system–once you realize that the Establishment will sacrifice you and your family for economic and political gain–then you become a force to be reckoned with. The cries and protests rising out of West Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky are resolute and unwavering. They are of the same grassroots stock as those who helped bring an end to the Vietnam War, who marched for civil rights, and who should hit the streets against our senseless crusade in the Middle East. But there are too many causes and not enough time, and right now, the war zone for these people is in the heartland of Appalachia.

You almost have to pity those who sat at the gates of the White House on Monday (and about one hundred peacefully arrested), and basically begged their president to acknowledge these reasonable and justifiable concerns from the people who helped put him there. Mr. Obama and all the legislators who were the fortunate recipients of the wave of populist spirit in 2008 should make no mistake about it:  these were your voters for hope and change. You asked them to believe and to show up on election day and they did. Now they are asking you in return to listen and act on their behalf. The only special interest here is our quality of life.

There is no doubt that there is a sense of powerlessness over America. Inequality has never been greater and participation in government and affecting the forces that shape our lives by the middle and working classes has never been more difficult. Those with wealth and influence can pick up the phone and be patched through to Senator Snorebuckle’s office as I write, and some call that democracy. Well, it ain’t. Anyone who claims to believe in the real thing should have been in Washington for the Appalachia Rising Day of Action. That is what democracy looks like.

Reverbo                                                                                                                                                                           Critic-At-Large

Climatologist James Hansen

Our man in the middle

Organizer Bo Webb

With the August 28 “Special” Democratic Primary fast approaching, it is appropriate, as a service to voters, to conduct a head-to-head comparison between the two main opponents, Joe Manchin and Ken Hechler.  The following represents that attempt:

	Manchin	Hechler
1.Used Car Salesman Good Looks	Advantage: Manchin
2.Actual experience in Washington		Advantage: Hechler
3.GREAT Hair	Advantage: Manchin
4.Trans-generational Wisdom		Advantage: Hechler
5.Fawning obsequiousness to Big Coal	Advantage: Manchin
6.Unimpeachable commitment to Human Rights		Advantage: Hechler
7.Yachting Experience	Advantage: Manchin
8.Educational Experience		Advantage: Hechler
9.Motorcycling Experience	Advantage: Manchin
10.Tremendous accomplishments in Congress on behalf of working West Virginia families		Advantage: Hechler
11.Ability to saddle WV with Earl Ray Tomblin as Governor	Advantage: Manchin
12.Saving the lives of mining families		Advantage: Hechler
13.Likely to vote in U.S. Senate more like a Republican than a Democrat	Advantage: Manchin
14.Unimpeachable commitment to Justice		Advantage: Hechler
15.Shares views similar to those of Kentucky GOP Senate nominee and Social Security despiser Rand Paul	Advantage: Manchin
16.Courage of convictions		Advantage: Hechler
17.Will make sure planet continues to get hotter,and Hotter and HOTTER and West Virginia gets flatter, and Flatter and FLATTER	Advantage: Manchin
18.Shares views in-line with a majority of West Virginia voters		Advantage: Hechler
19.Will make sure WV waters become more poisonous and West Virginians keep getting sicker.	Advantage: Manchin
20.Eminently qualified to sit in the U.S. Senate (a body named from the Latin root word meaning “old men”)		Advantage: Hechler
21.Privatized WV Workers Comp; likely to think the same way about Social Security	Advantage: Manchin
22.Less likely to be indicted during term in Senate		Advantage: Hechler

Executive Summary

As you can see, the head-to-head comparison is almost dead-even.  Only with a closer examination of the metrics may we see what the data genuinely discloses.  While Joe Manchin clearly has it all over Mr. Hechler in the things that really matter in American politics, things like hair, yachting and those used car salesman good looks, we really cannot ignore the fact that Mr. Hechler has what the old-timers liked to call “substance.”

Consider the candidates’ commitments to social justice.  While it’s true that Joe Manchin has had opportunities to actually do social justice, he really hasn’t shown much interest.  Why else, when tens of thousands of people around the world begged for a new Marsh Fork Elementary School, did he and his former staffer (and recently appointed senatorial seat-warmer), Carte Goodwin, actively oppose it?  Why did Joe have to wait until “outsiders” came in to finally get on the right side of justice and history?  On the other hand, as he noted at the time, when many members of Congress jetted away to Cape Kennedy for some NASA event, then-Congressman Hechler chose instead to risk arrest, beatings and even death to march with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at Selma.  To me, it’s clear that Mr. Hechler’s contribution to the betterment of our nation as a whole far outpaces Mr. Manchin’s tepid attempts at what he likes to call “balance.”

It is impossible to disagree that Mr. Manchin surely owns the field when it comes to courting the money.  How many politicians do you know who can hoodwink Labor into thinking he’s for working folks at the same time he’s blithely taking fistfuls of corporate cash from folks who loathe people who earn by the sweat of their brow?  Ken Hechler couldn’t do that in a million years, and never even tried.  He stood with working people, literally making possible entire next generations of mining families with his advocacy for mine safety and health legislation.  His part in the struggle for Black Lung benefits, alone, foreclosed any of the kind of love Joe Manchin gets from Corporate America.

If you work for A.T. Massey or any of the other non-union coal giants, I won’t be surprised when you vote for Joe Manchin, although Don Blankenship would far prefer you vote in the GOP Primary, what with its slate of “free-market” (read: anarchist) luminaries.  Frankly, to Mr. Manchin’s dubious credit, you really can’t tell the difference between him and a Republican, so I understand the confusion.  By comparison, Mr. Hechler is likely thought, for this day and age, quixotic for his dedication to the Democratic Party principles that made this country great.  Then again, what would you expect from a man who was on a first-name basis with an American Hero like Harry S. Truman?

One of the great successes of the modern Republican Party lies in its ability to have convinced a great number of Americans that Social Security is either dead or dying, even though the facts don’t support the conclusion.  If you’re one of those folks who believe that piece of shiny, sparkly misinformation, it will not shock me in the least when you vote for Joe Manchin on August 28.  After all, given the fact that Joe Manchin dismantled West Virginia’s government-run Workers Comp system and replaced it with a lumbering, profit-driven Frankenstein’s Monster, privatized version, you won’t be surprised when Joe Manchin starts mumbling about the need to find “balance” in privatizing Social Security.  What you’ll get from Mr. Hechler, however, are the facts: to paraphrase Mark Twain, the rumors of Social Security’s demise have been greatly exaggerated.  It is, at present, with absolutely nothing done to augment it, wholly, fully, completely funded through 2037.  Mr. Hechler will act and vote accordingly.

Polling data has indicated that a majority of West Virginians oppose the practice of Mountaintop Removal coal extraction.  The people who make money doing it, however, are not a part of that majority, and they can be expected to vote en masse for Mr. Manchin, since he’s been consistent in his ongoing struggle to seek “balance” between his need to curry favor with the coal industry and the will of the people of West Virginia to end Mountaintop Removal.  Even though Mountaintop Removal coal accounts for less than five percent of the less than 45% of America’s electricity provided by coal generally, Mr. Manchin has continued, day after day in his dogged, determined, lonely quest to find that ”balance” between what’s good for him and what’s good for the people of the State of West Virginia.  He is a tireless seeker, Mr. Manchin.

Mr. Hechler, on the other hand, is just tireless, and refuses to hold Mr. Manchin’s youth against him.  Mr. Hechler has shown that tirelessness (not to mention courage) in his willingness to be beaten by thugs on a march to commemorate the Battle of Blair Mountain (which, interestingly, Joe Manchin helped de-list from the National Register of Historic Places and, he hopes, from West Virginians’ collective consciousness, as well), not to mention being arrested in his effort to stand up for little children being poisoned by a coal prep plant next to an elementary school.  Come to think of it, where was Joe Manchin that day in June 2009 when Ken Hechler was standing up for little children?  Probably out hunting that elusive “balance.”  I hear it likes to nest with snipes.

Not to be outdone in Civil Disobedience, however, Mr. Manchin is on yet another quest.  If elected to fill Robert C. Byrd’s unexpired term, we may well see him cross that Finish Line in the next two years.  Mr. Manchin will not allow Mr. Hechler to outshine him in the Getting Arrested Department.  We may yet see the fruits of Mr. Manchin’s labors if he is, in fact, shown doing the now-all-too-familiar “perp walk” into the Robert C. Byrd Federal Courthouse in Charleston (Irony!) following the Federal Grand Jury Investigation of his administration that is presently under way.  Bravo, Joe!  We all admire initiative in such a balanced man!

So it is that we see a comparison much closer than I’m sure Mr. Hechler would prefer.  Granted, compared to the half-century of public service Mr. Hechler has rendered to the people of both his nation and his state, Mr. Manchin’s resume must look a little, well, thin, and wanting in gravitas, but I’ve never known Mr. Hechler to take an election cycle for granted.  More than anything, Mr. Hechler’s long experience in public service gives him a sense of perspective that no amount of that elusive balance can surmount.  He understands that this isn’t simply a statewide election; that, in fact, this election holds in the scales the fate of a nation.  West Virginia literally powered the Industrial Revolution.  Now, West Virginians will decide how we power the 21^st century.  Will we power it with compassion, courage and vision, the hallmarks of Mr. Hechler’s entire life, or will we power it with the heady-but-toxic fuel of lobbyist-delivered Corporate Money that flows like what Dr. King called “a mighty river” into Joe Manchin’s campaign, potentially influencing his senatorial votes on the issues of our day, not the least among them the pressing question of whether we will continue to cook ourselves right off this planet?  What kind of “balance” is there between the frying pan and the fire?

For the answer, and if you prefer not to cook your own goose (and that of every other American) in either frying pan OR fire, go to the polls Saturday, August 28 and cast your ballot for Ken Hechler.

Bob Kincaid is a broadcaster and activist living in West Virginia.  He was recently recognized as one of the Top 50 internet broadcasters in the country by the industry publication “Talkers” magazine.  He can be heard nightly around the world from 6 to 9 p.m., Eastern Time at www.headonradionetwork.com

HuffingtonPost

Lucia Graves