LoveMountains

Response to Susanna Rodell's Parting Editorial

Fri, 22 Sep 2006 15:42:28 GMT

September 07, 2006 <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />	Web Tools: [print] [email]
Readers' forum http://www.wvgazette.com/section/Editorials/200609069

Rodell no friend to mountains Editor: A clever headline writer nailed it with “Farewell to the mountains,” the headline of Susanna Rodell’s last column. She abandoned the mountains. Rodell acknowledged that mountaintop removal mining is “truly appalling. It makes huge swaths of the state’s forested hills — the kind of primeval landscape now so precious and rare in America — look like the surface of the moon.” Why oh why, I thought, have you not been saying that for the last three years? Rodell’s previous writing claimed that people who live near and suffer most from mountaintop removal use exaggerated language in describing their loss. It is almost impossible to exaggerate mountaintop removal; it is itself a gross exaggeration. Rodell thinks that ending mountaintop removal would destroy West Virginia’s economy. She agrees with the coal barons that quarterly profits make an economy. It is this short-term greed that destroys the economy in the long run. Mountaintop removal is ending all hope of a future for West Virginia, be it economic or spiritual. Just one example of our future economic loss is in the hardwoods industry. Every year, we lose 1 million board feet of timber that would have grown on the mountains already destroyed. This could build 4,000 houses annually forever. Rodell saw the rape but stood by silently while the mountains screamed for her help. Julian Martin Charleston

Islam Is A Bad Religion--Joseph C. Atkins Gazette

Fri, 22 Sep 2006 14:59:34 GMT

In his latest Gazette article Joseph C. Atkins recites a list of Moslem atrocities. Atkins observed that, “All my life, from Sirhan to today, we have known little of Islam but as a religion of blood-thirsty killers. Muslims, not Christians, not Jews, not Buddhists, not Hindus carried out these atrocities.”

Is simple to selectively look at history, pick out certain events, leave out others and come to a distorted conclusion. A casual view of Atkins’ time frame will reveal that if Islam is a bloodthirsty religion it sure isn’t the only one.

Atkins’ beginning with Sirhan Sirhan’s murder of Robert Kennedy was especially poignant for me. As a Kennedy campaign volunteer on election day I took voters to the polls in the mission district of San Francisco. On television that evening I saw my candidate murdered by a Moslem. Earlier that year Martin Luther King had been murdered and not by a Moslem.

In 1968, the year Sirhan murdered Kennedy, an army of Viet Cong, I assume mostly of the Buddhist culture, in the TET offensive, killed thousands of Christians and Buddhists. In that sad, mad war, America’s Christian Quaker president Nixon ordered the bombing and invasion of Cambodia and Laos, killing thousands of Buddhists. And there was Mai Lay where “Christian” American soldiers murdered Buddhist women and children. In the Vietnam deception there was the irony of a Jewish Secretary of State of our oft-claimed “Christian” nation ordering the carpet bombing of
Buddhist Hanoi on the eve of the birthday of baby Jesus.

“Christian” America has been at war most of my life. Since I was born in 1936, America has invaded and/or bombed at least 21 countries. This does not include the CIA supplying arms, mercenaries,and intelligence to one side or the other, sometimes, as in the case of the Iran-Iraq war, to both sides.

Maybe the devil made them do it, but in World War II “Christian” America and Great Briton fire bombed Dresden killing 400,000 thousand civilians. The Nazis, also of the Christian culture, murdered 6 million European Jews and 20 million Russians. The Shinto Japanese raped Confucian Nanking. A Christian president ordered the vaporization of hundreds of thousands of Shintos, Buddhists and Christians with nuclear weapons. Buddhist’s in Cambodia created the killing fields and murdered 1,000,000 fellow Buddhists. In India, Hindus have been known to go on periodic Moslem and Sikh killing rampages. Pat Robertson, a self-appointed TV spokesman for Jesus, called for the murder of the president of Venezuela. Four American soldiers in Iraq are accused of raping a girl and murdering her Moslem family. A West Virginia woman and her fellow “Christian” American guards tortured and sexually abused Moslem prisoners at Abu Ghrab.

Our born again Christian president just confessed to operating secret CIA prisons. Guess what they do to prisoners in secret prisons. If the CIA isn’t torturing Moslem prisoners just why does our born again leader want the CIA excluded from the Geneva Convention ban on torture? It is astounding that we are even debating whether torture is right or wrong, what has happened to us?

Every belief has a long list of killers, often their very heroes. It was Martin Luther who had the Anabaptists, precursor of the Mennonites, placed in cages and lifted to the ceiling of cathedrals and left there. John Calvin slowly burned Unitarian theologian Miguel Serveto, taking half an hour to kill him. “Saint” Augustine approved the killing of Donatists in North Africa. When Catholic Columbus was exterminating and enslaving native populations in the new world, his brother in Christ, Torquemada, was torturing and burning Jews and Moslems in Spain. And Israeli Jews are guilty of their own torture and bombing of Moslems. It all brings to mind an old Kingston Trio song.

There just isn’t enough space to enumerate the atrocities exchanged between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland nor the Christian Crusades against Moslems, Jews and just about anyone in their way. Our born again leader declared at the beginning of his war on Iraq that it was a crusade. His word “crusade” must have confirmed the Moslem’s world’s suspicions.

Perhaps not noticing the moat in Christian eyes, Atkins instructs the Moslems that it is their responsibility to change the perception of Islam from bloodthirsty cult to peace-loving culture. Ah so, and it is the responsibility of Christians to prove they are followers of the Prince of Peace. Following Jesus isn’t easy for the Bible says that to be a Christian one must love enemies, return good for evil, turn the other cheek and forgive seventy times seven.

Denise Giardina's Letter on Coal Bowl

Wed, 05 Jul 2006 18:08:19 GMT

The coal industry exploited football

http://www.dailymail.com/news/Opinion/200606306/

So the WVU-Marshall game will be the Friends of Coal Bowl.

Shame on both schools for allowing this, and shame on the Daily Mail for a promotional front-page headline when an article reporting crime would be more appropriate.

It would be wonderful to have a Coal Miners' Bowl to memorialize our miners past and present. But the Friends of Coal are the folks responsible for those mining deaths over the decades.

And what they will have in mind is a "celebration" of mountaintop removal, which is carried out by heavy equipment operators, not coal miners.

Mountaintop removal is an immoral activity that destroys mountains, trees, streams, wildlife and people.

In other words, it destroys West Virginia.

How this horrible destruction of the state can be tied to a football game is beyond me. But it has certainly ruined the game for those who love West Virginia.

Denise Giardina

Charleston

My Coal Bowl Op-Ed

Wed, 05 Jul 2006 18:06:59 GMT

July 04, 2006 The Charleston Gazette<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Julian Martin

· Friends of Coal Bowl: Football helmets become ads for mountaintop removal?

They sold out cheap, really cheap. The coal companies, masquerading as a grassroots organization called Friends of Coal, bought each WVU-Marshall football game for less than two four-year scholarships for each school. It cost the coal companies the wages of about three employees to turn WVU and Marshall football helmets, with Friends of Coal logos, into moving billboards for mountaintop removal.

With WVU officials referring to football games as products and exalting that the Friends of Coal Bowl will enhance the coal industry’s “image,” it is plain to see where this branding of our football players is going. The coal barons have had over 100 years to develop a good image, but they must have failed if it still needs to be enhanced.

The coal companies must be losing the public relations battle in West Virginia or they wouldn’t be making this desperate attempt to foist their propaganda onto WVU football fans. A few years ago, the coal bosses admitted that 80 percent of West Virginians oppose mountaintop removal. To counter their bad reputation, they rolled out a public relations blitz and created Friends of Coal, an instant “grassroots” organization. Their billboards and radio and television ads try to convince us that destroying half a million acres of West Virginia mountains and burying a thousand miles of streams is good for us.

The Friends of Coal Bowl agreement allows the coal companies to use signs and the giant video boards inside the stadiums to promote their views on controversial issues. They are free to repeat one of their more ridiculous claims: that mountaintop removal makes the mountains better and more useful; like claiming that cutting off your arms and legs will make you better and more useful.

Imagine the nightmare if every WVU football game is sold to corporate sponsors: For two more scholarships, logos are plastered all over the players’ uniforms a la NASCAR drivers. Even cheerleaders, coaches and referees are included in the tacky parade. The huge video screens, which cannot be turned off, blast out corporate propaganda that polluted air, water and land are good for your children. Mountaineer Field becomes one big advertising venue and is renamed each game for the corporate sponsor. Could some bowl games be named for Friends of Clearcutting, Friends of Smog, Friends of Toxic Waste Dumps, and Friends of Adult Sex Shops? Logo-clothed cheerleaders chant “Tear down the mountains, dump in the creeks, beat the hell out of Pitt!” and “Take the ball and run boys, give a good return for our dollars, while we scalp the mountains clean, boys, and flood the hillbillies out of their hollers.”

But imagine a pleasant dream: WVU and Marshall put education first. They use football games to tell the real story of coal in West Virginia. The football players, cheerleaders, coaches and referees wear symbols that honor the over 20,000 miners killed in state mines and the hundreds of thousands disabled by black lung and mine accidents. The video boards show re-enactments of the Battle of Blair Mountain, and news clips of the Farmington mine disaster, the Buffalo Creek flood and Sago. Green armbands are worn in memory of the dead mountains.

This Friends of Coal Bowl is propaganda, not education. The president of WVU should be ashamed of such blatant distortion of a university’s duty to tell the truth and to educate. A quality university would not be a willing agent of corporate public relations. But what can we expect, our WVU president is one of them, he is on the board of directors of Consol Energy. It is on the way to becoming a tradition, a previous president is on the board of Massey Energy.

My Mountaineers sold out to an industry that is destroying the reason for being Mountaineers.

Martin, a retired teacher, is a WVU alumnus and former assistant director of student educational services at the university. He is vice president for state affairs of the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy.

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Coal Bowl naming rights deal was not bid

Wed, 05 Jul 2006 18:05:49 GMT

Coal Bowl naming rights deal was not bid<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

http://www.dailymail.com/news/News/2006063024/display_story.php?sid=2006063024&format=prn
George Hohmann
Daily Mail business editor

Friday June 30, 2006

The right to name the series of West Virginia University-Marshall University football games was awarded to the West Virginia Coal Association for $1 million without taking bids, WVU associate athletic director Mike Parsons said.

Asked how he knows the schools didn't leave money on the table, Parsons said: "I think we know the marketplace pretty well. We deal with this every day. We feel like we have a pretty good feel for the product."

The deal with the coal association to name the series the "Friends of Coal Bowl" was announced last week. Parsons said no one has approached him since to say they wish they had been given an opportunity to bid on naming rights.

"We spoke with one other party before we solidified the deal with the coal association and they couldn't come close to that number," he said.

The coal association will pay $1,029,700 for naming rights, which the schools will split. The first game will be Sept. 2 in Morgantown. At least two of the seven games that are scheduled will be played in Huntington.

Parsons said the association will pay $140,000 each of the first two years, then 5 percent more -- $147,000 -- during years three through five, and an additional 5 percent, or $154,350, in years six and seven.

Parsons was asked if WVU and MU started with higher numbers and the coal association started with lower numbers and the agreed-to numbers were the result.

"I'm not going to go into the exact details of it all, but that ($1 million) is basically what we negotiated the price to be," he said.

For its money, Parsons said the coal association will receive tickets to the games; exposure inside the stadiums with signage, banners and advertising on the video boards throughout the games; a pre-game hospitality tent; participation in the coin toss; the trophy presentation and the trophy itself; development of the logo; and advertising on the radio networks of both schools.

"When we initially did the game contract between the two schools, we identified other marketing dollars out there to promote the institutions," Parsons said. "We wrote in the contract that anything we would do, we would share those proceeds.

"Later we decided to look for a game sponsor who would be there the whole seven years and not infringe on any marketing opportunities the two schools already had," Parsons said.

Shortly after Gov. Joe Manchin announced in May 2005 that the schools would play the series, the coal association called to express interest in naming rights, Parsons said.

"They are the ideal sponsor," Parsons said. "They represent one of the leading industries in the state. Many of their members are supporters of both schools already. It is an opportunity to enhance their image in the state."

Asked if there are similar deals, Parsons said, "In theory we do it with the basketball game in Charleston."

The annual WVU-Marshall basketball game at the Civic Center is named the "Toyota Capital Classic."

Parsons was asked what would happen if the Friends of Coal decided to use its advertising opportunities to mount an industry lobbying campaign about a specific issue rather than promote the industry's image.

"In their advertising, they have all rights," he said. "During the advertising itself they are within their rights to run their particular message."

"It was not bid," he added. "We are selling something. We are not buying something. We are selling basically an advertising package. That's what it really amounts to. Advertising is not traditionally a bid product."

As for the other party that couldn't come close to the coal association's offer, Parsons wouldn't name the business. He would only say it is located in West Virginia.

At least two companies -- Appalachian Power and United Bankshares Inc. --have promoted themselves heavily in the West Virginia sports realm. But officials with both said they were not approached about the football series and were not interested.

Appalachian Power won the naming rights to Charleston's $23 million minor league baseball park last year. The utility is paying about $125,000 a year for the right to have its name on the ballpark for 10 years.

"We were not approached" about the football series naming rights, said Appalachian Power spokeswoman Jeri Matheney. "And that's OK with us because we're satisfied with what we're doing with Appalachian Power Park. That's probably enough with us."

United Bankshares advertises its United Bank as "West Virginia's Bank." United is the official sponsor of Mountaineer sports and runs advertising on both WVU and Marshall sports broadcasts.

"I can tell you we did not talk to them (the schools) about this," said Rick Adams, United Bankshares' senior vice president.

"I'd say we are comfortable with our present relationship with both universities in termsof sponsoring athletics," Adams said. "We are comfortable where we are."

Adams said United already has many of the benefits the coal association gets in its deal. "We're involved with TV and radio," he said. "A lot of the stuff there would be overlap. We have boxes in both places, we have tickets, signage."

Contact writer George Hohmann at 348-4836.

KanawhaStateForest Gas Well Wildcat Trail

Thu, 22 Jun 2006 23:18:58 GMT

Walking in Kanawha State Forest is usually a calming experience for me. I get so enmeshed in the wildness that I feel like I could just hang out there all day. Today I walked up Polly Hollow trail took a right onto Wildcat trail, passed the junction with Beech Glen trail and after about a mile came upon a disaster, I was no longer calm. A new road, bulldozed by a company called Equitable, cut through an area that may not have been disturbed in a long, long time. There is a tree cross section pictured here that had 108 rings--it started growing in 1898!! I am amazed that they can just go where they want with huge roads--this road was 60 feet wide where it crosses and obliterates a piece of Wildcat trail. I am wondering if there is any law at all. Can they do this as often as they want and wherever in the forest they want.? Does owning the mineral rights give the right to tear up the surface? What can be done? Can we demand that no more new wells be drilled in Kanawha State Forest?

Cindy Rank Letter About Byrd

Mon, 19 Jun 2006 17:08:29 GMT

-----------

	Letter From Cindy Rank on Byrd
Date:	6/18/2006 9:03:34 P.M. Eastern Standard Time
From:	Martinjul
To:	weldonmartin@hotmail.com

This is the letter from Cindy Rank, Mining Chair of the WV Highlands Conservancy,referred to in my recent email about Robert Byrd, I failed to paste it in that email. Julian

Dear Editor,

Many thanks to Michael Grunwald for Sunday's article about my good Senator Byrd.

Ever grateful for Senator Byrd's knowledge and defense of the constitution as well as his early opposition to the usurpation of power by the Executive branch leading up to the war in Iraq, i remain thoroughly convinced that if the good Senator could see clearly, he would realize that Hugh Rogers and Abraham Lincoln were right. Times do - and have - changed, especially in the coalfields of Appalachia.

Senator Byrd is particularly blind when it comes to coal mining and how it impacts the hard working people (his people) who live and struggle to survive in the coalfields today. Nothing spoke more clearly about this lack of vision than his powerful 1999 speech on the floor of the Senate when he raised his voice and shook his finger decrying loudly "The Judge was WRONG !! The Judge was WRONG !!!!"

On the contrary, the late Judge Haden was right, and his decision in the Bragg litigation to limit mountaintop removal coal mining and valley fills was in the best interest of West Virginia and the nation.

With all due respect to the honorable Senator Byrd, i have to believe that if he visited the coalfields as much as he visits with industry lobbyists who roam the halls of Congress, he would be compelled to see that much has changed about mining today, and that the excesses of mountaintop removal, and longwall mining, and increased numbers of sludge dams are destroying the very people he feels he is defending.

The only thing that hasn't changed is the hasty departure of profit and resources that are leaving our sacred hills on "Mr. Peabody's and Mr. Massey's and Mr. Consol's coaltrains".

Sincerely,

Cindy Rank

HC 78 Box 227

Rock Cave, WV 26234

phone: 304-924-5802

"Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, things aren't going to get better, they're not!" The Lorax

For The Mountains
Julian Martin
Vice-President for State Affairs
West Virginia Highlands Conservancy
www.wvhighlands.org
1525 Hampton Road, Charleston, WV 25314

Contact me(martinjul@aol.com) for a trip to Kayford Mountain to see active and so-called reclaimed mountain top removal. Also contact me for I Love Mountainst-shirts, hats and bumper stickers and for speakers, information and exhibits on environmental issues in West Virginia.
And check out this blog on mountain top removal http://www.clipfile.org/antrim/

NOTICE: Due to Presidential Executive Orders, the National Security Agency may have read this email without warning, warrant or notice and also without any judicial or legislative oversight.

Robert Byrd Soul of the Senate?

Mon, 19 Jun 2006 17:05:39 GMT

In a message dated 6/18/2006 8:55:24 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, Martinjul writes:

If This Is the Senate's Soul . . .

By Michael Grunwald
Sunday, June 18, 2006; B02

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/16/AR2006061601756_pf.html

Hugh Rogers, the president of the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy, once tried to persuade his U.S. senator to oppose a road through the mountains he loves, a billion-dollar boondoggle that had been lampooned nationwide as a "Road to Nowhere."

But his senator was Robert C. Byrd (D), the legendary pork dispenser who chaired the Senate Appropriations Committee at the time. And the road was the Robert C. Byrd Highway, the latest slice of asphalt in the Robert C. Byrd Appalachian Highway System, not to be confused with the Robert C. Byrd Expressway, Robert C. Byrd Freeway or Robert C. Byrd Drive.

Byrd didn't seem to be listening. But Rogers knew Byrd was a published historian, renowned for his stentorian speeches about the statesmen of yore, so he tried quoting Abraham Lincoln to the effect that great men must change with the times.

Suddenly, Byrd snapped to attention.

"Times," he thundered, "have NOT changed!"

Not for Byrd. Last Monday, he became the longest-serving senator ever, with a 17,327-day streak dating to the Eisenhower administration. Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) hailed him as a "true Senate icon," Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) as "a giant." Colleagues in both parties paid tribute to this outspoken (if not plainspoken) 88-year-old from humble origins as "the soul of the Senate," the institutional conscience of the world's greatest deliberative body.

Byrd is indeed a self-taught, self-made man who remains beloved in West Virginia. He has defended the Senate's prerogatives against Republican and Democratic presidents, and opposed the war in Iraq back when it was still popular. And there is something amusing about his pedantic orations justifying West Virginia poultry research by way of Plato and Cicero.

But let the record reflect that Byrd is an anachronism. Not just in the quaint sense, like a corncob pipe or a grandpa who still says "fiddlesticks." And not just because he was once an Exalted Cyclops in the Ku Klux Klan. Byrd is a throwback to -- and remains nostalgic for -- a bygone (and not usually lamented) political era.

In fairness, Byrd has repeatedly apologized for his stint in the Klan more than 60 years ago. In his recent autobiography, "Robert Byrd: Child of the Appalachian Coalfields," he attributes his "foolish mistake" to youthful "tunnel vision." But while Byrd has said he renounced the Klan when he was 25, the conservative magazine Human Events has noted that he urged the Klan's Grand Dragon to bring the group back to West Virginia three years later. And while Byrd found room in his 770-page tome for entire sections on topics such as "WVU Wins Peach Bowl," he left out the letter he wrote to segregationist Sen. Theodore Bilbo (D-Miss.) declaring that he would never fight "with a Negro by my side. Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels."

Byrd's discomfort with racial issues outlived his youth. He filibustered the 1964 Civil Rights Act, at one point citing a study that purportedly proved whites had heavier brains than blacks. He used a racial epithet in a 2001 Fox News interview. He later apologized, but there is a bizarre passage in his autobiography describing America's white ethnics as "former minorities," and implicitly contrasting them with today's minorities. The former minorities "sought no special status," he writes. "They did not push and shove and demand something for nothing."

"If this nation were to be restored to its former greatness," he argues, "Americans must perpetuate the legacy of their Old World ancestors."

It's remarkable enough for an ex-Klansman to serve in public office, but it's truly astonishing for an ex-Klansman to wallow in public nostalgia. Much of Byrd's book is a moralistic lament for the good old days, for the "former greatness" of America. "There were great funny papers in the days of my boyhood," but not anymore. Back then, kids were respectful, the culture was not yet debased, the cities were not yet as dangerous as "the jungles of deepest Africa" -- yes, that's what he wrote -- and history books had not yet devolved into politically correct "multiculturalism." Even Coca-Cola was "a more zestful and invigorating drink when I was a boy."

Well, Coca-Cola was made with cocaine when Byrd was a boy. And of course history books were less multicultural before the civil rights era, when Byrd was trashing the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in chats with the FBI. For all his talk about bringing progress to West Virginia, Byrd by his own portrayal is a reactionary at heart, questioning the theory of evolution, fighting to keep laptops off the Senate floor, battling coal-industry regulations designed to reduce acid rain and global warming. He is one of the last of the "old bulls" who controlled congressional purse strings when the Senate was a true gentlemen's club, and his top priority hasn't changed in a half-century: shoveling pork into his home state.

Is that so terrible? Byrd once promised to be "West Virginia's billion-dollar industry," and he has more than kept his word, dotting his state with the Robert C. Byrd Bridge, the Robert C. Byrd High School and the Robert C. Byrd Center for Legislative Studies, where academics can research how Congress came to give West Virginia six technology centers, two community centers and about two dozen additional projects named for Robert C. Byrd. One man's pork is another man's "domestic infrastructure," and Byrd savors his reputation as the King of Pork. His memoir details hundreds of his earmarks in loving detail, along with gleeful tales of moving Navy and Coast Guard offices to his landlocked state. Appropriately, he moved the Bureau of the Public Debt to West Virginia, too.

This is why Byrd was named "West Virginian of the 20th Century," and is revered as the savior of an impoverished state. But even after Byrd's half-century of largesse -- new prisons, new labs, new subsidies for fish farms, dairies and steelmakers -- West Virginia is still an impoverished state, ranked 49th in per-capita gross state product. "Those earmarks haven't solved West Virginia's problems," says Michael Hicks, an economist at Marshall University in Huntington, W.Va. "I'm trying to be careful here -- I like my job -- but after 40-odd years, we're still at the bottom of every economic indicator." Byrd was ahead of the curve on welfare reform, complaining as early as 1965 that "relief has become a way of life for some people." But he never noticed that relief could become a way of life for his state. West Virginia is now a ward of the federal government, dependent on Robert C. Byrd.

The Republican revolutionaries who seized Congress in 1994 vowed to dismantle Byrdism, this tradition of entrenched politicians using federal tax money to try to solve local problems and subsidize local industries. They preached small-government conservatism, free-market economics and term limits. But many of them soon succumbed to the attractions of Byrdism. Fiscal restraint was forgotten, porky earmarks exploded and Frist hailed Byrd last week as "an outspoken proponent for investing in domestic infrastructure." It turns out that conservative Republicans like cutting ribbons, too.

Pork is a wildly inefficient way to create jobs, but it does make members of Congress seem indispensable to their constituents. And Byrd's hilariously self-important political memoir makes it clear that he has come to believe that as well. It chronicles just about every award Byrd ever received from a West Virginia interest group, along with excerpts from the glowing speeches thanking him for his work, plus Byrd's assessments of the "rousing" and "enthusiastic" responses to his acceptance speeches. "I lifted the mood of the crowd to soaring heights," Byrd writes in one typical passage. "It was a glorious occasion, and everyone went home happy in heart."

Anyone who has ever suffered through a Byrd speech will recognize the unintentional irony. Byrd thinks his audience is cheering for him, but they're cheering for his handouts. And this is the tragedy of Byrd. He's in many ways an inspiring Horatio Alger story, a child of the coal fields who willed himself to power, the only member of Congress (as he mentions six times in his book) who has put himself through law school while in office. But for all of his fulminating about city snobs who look down on West Virginia hillbillies, Byrd is the one who doesn't believe his constituents can pull themselves up by their bootstraps like he did. He thinks they need his help.

It's not surprising that the man behind the Robert C. Byrd Metals Fabrication Center and Robert C. Byrd Hardwood Technologies Center thinks so highly of Robert C. Byrd. The surprise is that Byrdism has become the quasi-official philosophy of the GOP-controlled Congress. It turns out that Byrd was right when he defended his Road to Nowhere: Times have not changed.

grunwaldmr@washpost.com

Michael Grunwald is a

Washington Post staff writer.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

A letter to the editor of the Washington Post in response to the article above. It is from Cindy Rank, Mining Chair, West Virginia Highlands Conservancy

__

Frying Pan Into The Fire

Sat, 17 Jun 2006 16:36:29 GMT

OUT OF THE FRYING PAN AND INTO THE FIRE

By Cindy Rank

It’s difficult to tell just which regulatory agency is doing the least to minimize

the damage from mountaintop removal mining these days.

A settlement agreement in our 1998 Bragg v Robertson lawsuit initiated

the multi-year Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) that produced scientific

studies documenting the intensive, extensive harm that mountaintop removal

and valley fills are doing to forest, stream and human communities throughout

the region.

The response to these EIS studies and ensuing court challenges has

been under-whelming and contrary to all reason.

All agencies reneged on the original intent of the settlement agreement

to recommend ways to reduce the impact of mountaintop removal mining

and valley fills. The Final Environmental Impact Statement instead recommended

that the agencies join hands in streamlining the permitting process

to allow more permits to flow more freely. — Go figure.

For its part the Office of Surface Mining proposes to “clarify” the

decades old buffer zone rule that prohibits mining within 100 feet of intermittent

or perennial streams, by saying the rule was never meant to prevent

dumping mining waste into miles of high quality headwater streams. — Go

figure.

By administrative fiat, Environmental Protection Agency redefined

what is meant by “fill” under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act. Declaring

that waste from coal mining is not ‘waste’ after all, but indeed acceptable fill

material, the change legalizes the Army Corps of Engineers’ practice of permitting

stream valleys to be filled with waste. — Go figure.

For its part, the Army Corps of Engineers has responded to challenges

to its nationwide general permitting of massive and numerous valley

fills, by relying on vapid Findings of No Significant Impact and inadequate

and erroneous EIS’s to support individual permits that approve the same

destructive practice. A Finding of No Significant Impact is the agency equivalent

of a Get Out of Jail Free card and results in a lesser degree of environmental

scrutiny and fewer opportunities for public comment.

The Highlands Conservancy will join OVEC (the Ohio Valley Environmental

Coalition) and CRMW (Coal River Mountain Watch) in court the latter

part of June to challenge four of the most egregious Corps permits issued

based on Findings of No Significant Impact.

Draft Environmental Impact Statement for Spruce No 1 Mine

In addition to challenges to the Corps widespread practice of issuing

Findings of No Significant Impact, the Conservancy, Ohio Valley Environmental

Coalition, and Coal River Mountain Watch have commented extensively

on the Spruce No. 1 Mine in Logan County. Here is some background

and a summary of the comments.

Originally proposed for 3,000 acres, this is the same permit that became

the focus of the Bragg litigation in 1998. Nearly ten years after Judge

Haden ruled that this and other similar permits were granted in violation of

the law, the state has issued the mining permit and the Corps is poised to

follow suit.

With deep and abiding gratitude to the Appalachian Center for the

Economy and the Environment, Trial Lawyers for Public Justice and the national

group Earthjustice for scrutinizing this and other issues in the DEIS, I

offer the following highlights from comments on the DEIS that were submitted

on behalf of WVHC, OVEC and CRMW. Continued on next entry.

(Continued 2) Frying Pan Into The Fire

Sat, 17 Jun 2006 16:56:39 GMT

Mitigation

By law the Corps must assure adequate

“mitigation” will be undertaken to

offset harm caused by the activity it is

permitting. “….In the DEIS the Army

Corps of Engineers must also claim that

mitigation and reclamation eliminate to

insignificance the harm from valley fills

and other project activities, or risk undermining

the very 404 permit they intend to

issue.” Hence, comments on the DEIS

pay particular attention to this issue and are unequivocal in their assessment.

“The widespread devastation documented in the MTRPEIS is clear proof

that the mitigation prescribed by the Army Corps of Engineers to offset these

harms is a complete failure. Without effective mitigation valley fills at

mountaintop removal sites cannot legally be permitted. “ More specifically,

“the mitigation proposed for Spruce No 1 is scientifically unjustified and will

fail to offset harms caused by the operation.”

The comments also emphasize the following.

· Environmental risks must be considered and quantified related to

toxic selenium discharges

· The DEIS Relies on a Flawed SWROA [Storm Water Runoff Assessment]

to Assess Project Impacts on Run-off and Flooding

· The Army Corps of Engineers Inappropriately Claims that Topsoil

Substitutes Will Adequately Replace Native Soils

· The Army Corps of Engineers Does Not Consider or Compensate for

the Time for Reforestation to Occur or its impacts on hydrological reclamation

· Issues impacting the citizens in the region that must be considered

by the Army Corps of Engineers.

The comments close with these remarks. “The Army Corps of Engineers’s

DEIS on the Mingo Logan Spruce No. 1 Mine does not comply with NEPA.

Over and over again the Army Corps of Engineers has made empty unsubstantiated

claims both minimizing the individual and cumulative damages from

MTR and also exaggerating even fantasizing the benefits of the planned

mitigation. NEPA clearly requires “scientific integrity,” in the studies and evaluations

contained in an EIS. 40 C. F. R. § 1502.24. The Army Corps of Engineers

has simply failed to deliver. Clearly, if the Corps had thoughtfully used

prevailing science to evaluate the project, the conclusions in the DEIS would

be far different, that substantial harm to the environment and communities

will occur. Thus, because the DEIS is fatally flawed the only alternative is for

the Army Corps of Engineers to either deny the permit or to extensively reevaluate

both the DEIS, the project, and the mitigation plan.”