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Today's Top News
Controversial Coal Mining Method Gets Obama's OK
WASHINGTON - With the election of Barack Obama, environmentalists expected to see the end of the "Appalachian apocalypse" -- their name for exposing coal deposits by blowing the tops off of whole mountains.
Singer-Actress Ashley Judd speaks during a rally in Frankfort, Ky. on Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2009 calling for an end to mountaintop coal mining. (AP Photo/Roger Alford) But in recent weeks, the Obama administration has quietly decided to open the way for at least two dozen more "mountaintop removal" projects.
The decision to clear a path for the controversial projects was never officially announced, but instead conveyed in a letter this month to a West Virginia congressman and coal ally, Democratic Rep. Nick Rahall. The letter said that the Environmental Protection Agency would not block 42 of 48 mine projects that it had reviewed so far, including some of the most controversial mountaintop mines.
In mountaintop removal, explosives blast away a peak and expose coal seams. Coal companies say the practice is safer and more efficient than traditional shaft mining. Critics say the process scars the landscape and dumps tons of waste, some of it toxic, into streams and valleys.
The administration's decisions are not the final word on the projects -- or on the future of mountaintop removal -- but it removes a major obstacle. And the decision, coupled with the light it sheds on relations between the mining industry and the Obama White House, has disappointed environmentalists. Some say they feel betrayed by a president they thought would end or sharply limit the practice.
What makes the issue politically sensitive is the fact that environmentalists were an active force behind Obama's election, while his standing among Democratic voters in coal states is tenuous. Halting mountaintop removal could eliminate jobs in those states and put upward pressure on energy prices.
Coal advocates have solicited help from officials as high as White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, and the issue sparked contentious debates among administration officials, including one shouting match in which top officials of two government agencies were heard pounding their fists on the table.
The White House is "searching for a way to walk this tightrope," said Phil Smith, a spokesman for the United Mine Workers of America, whose president, Cecil Roberts, has urged administration officials to allow the procedure. "They have a large constituency of people who want to see an immediate end to mountaintop removal, and an equally large constituency -- many of them Democrats, I might add -- whose communities depend on those jobs."
Earlier, Obama had won praise from the green lobby for taking a skeptical view of the procedure. And the EPA announced in March that it would review mountaintop projects.
The EPA has the authority to review and ultimately block mountaintop removal under the Clean Water Act, but if the agency raises no objections, the final decision is made by the Army Corps of Engineers. The corps previously indicated its intention to approve the 48 permits.
A review of Obama campaign statements showed the presidential candidate expressing concern about the practice without specifically promising to end it. On a West Virginia visit, he said he wanted "strong enforcement of the Clean Water Act" and added, "I will make sure the head of the Environmental Protection Agency believes in the environment."
And EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said this year that the agency had "considerable concern" about the projects. She pledged that her agency would "use the best science and follow the letter of the law in ensuring we are protecting our environment."
Soon afterward, the agency blocked six major mountaintop projects in West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio.
But this month, after White House meetings with coal companies and advocates such as Rahall and West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin, the EPA gave the green light to at least two dozen projects.
"It was a big disappointment," said Joan Mulhern, a lawyer for Earthjustice, an environmental law firm that has led court challenges to mountaintop removal.
Mulhern charged that the EPA "blew off" Jackson's earlier promises that the agency would adhere to science and conduct an open process.
Ed Hopkins, a top Sierra Club official, said that some of the projects that obtained the EPA's blessing "are as large and potentially destructive as the ones they objected to.
"It makes us wonder what standards -- if any -- the administration is using."
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55 Comments so far
Show AllIs there even one issue Obama will take a Progressive stand on?
Just one?
Must he side with conservatives, neo-conservatives and corporatists on EVERY. SINGLE. ISSUE?
Hopefully that polluted water will end up coming out of the tap at 1600 Pennsylvania.
Good point. It appears Obama is just another politician influenced by corporate America, just like all the rest.
Only a complete overhaul of this government, including new constitutional amendments addressing corporate and special interest control will get us back to REAL democracy.
Of course, many of us knew it all along.
As to your second point, my reaction is something like, "if only....". With every other issue reaching crisis stage, with a dozen or more envioronmental tipping about to, well, tip, and with the vast majority of American "consumers" ('cuz we're no longer "citizens" 'cuz citizens feel a responsibility to take action to improve their society) unwilling to act, do you REALLY think there is a POLITICAL solution to our troubled evolution?
No:
Obama will not take a progressive stand on a single issue
Not unless he faces some dire pressure to do so.
Imagine what a progressive Democratic campaign in 2008 would have looked like. Let's say Obama took the popular stands that Nader or McKinney took. Let's say he even took something like the quasi-libertarian stance that Ron Paul took.
Where would the money come from? How would he get on TV?
Are we to believe that the press corps could not get a story out of the candidacy of a young, attractive, vivacious and outspoken African-American candidate like Cynthia McKinney? Can we imagine that the press shunned Nader because he was unknown or because he has some trouble dealing with soundbytes?
Alright, business had to run a Democrat. But that does not mean that either business or Obama imagines that he does not work for them.
keep on hoping for that change you believed in!
thank god I can turn on my home theater and watch an old documentary on appalachian wildlife...those little critters were so amusing!
Global Start Date: September 22, 2012...no more mountain top mining...let's get those gardens going!
♪ Go tell him, We the People
To let my mountain go! ♪
· Yr Obd't Servant
"Some say they feel betrayed by a president they thought would end or sharply limit the practice."
Yes, being betrayed puts them in the same boat as most of the people who supported this lying sack of shit.
q
quickstepper June 2nd, 2009 10:54 am....WELL said...and that he is...twice!
SOO happy I did not vote for the SOB!
SOO angry with myself that I did.
q
quickstepper June 2nd, 2009 11:14 am...Whoops...apologies for irritating a sore spot....don't feel alone, though!
Indeed. I held my nose when I voted for him, and I still smell shit.
Oh, and quickstepper: Don't beat yourself up. There wasn't a choice. McCain/Palin had to be kept out of office (though I'm having an ever more difficult time reasoning why).
Next time remember - the lesser of two evils is STILL EVIL.
'Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.' - Pete Townsend
Oregoncharles
We're hostages. The only way to break out is to break out. As Arundhati Roy said: Why play their game where they make all the rules and have all the power. Why not find where our own power lies .... and then use it! force them to play by our rules for a change.
I didn't vote for Obama but I understand why so many did, even though I thought they were wrong not to collectively dissent at the ballot box. oooooh, scary McCain waiting in the wings to eat us up for his breakfast! They see us coming. They have industries who design the traps for us. It's all rather evil. Best not to play along in my opinion. Take a look at Germany in the late 1930s.
Single payer health care? How many progressives would cancel their health insurance policies in the name of dissent?
Rape Of The World~
Mother of us all
Place of our birth
How can we stand aside
And watch the rape of the wold
This the beginning of the end
This the most heinous of crimes
This the deadliest of sins
The greatest violation of all time
Mother of us all
Place of our birth
We all are witness
To the rape of the world
You’ve seen her stripped mined
You’ve heard of bombs exploded underground
You know the sun shines
Hotter than ever before
Mother of us all
Place of our birth
We all are witness
To the rape of the world
Some claim to have crowned her
A queen
With cities of concrete and steel
But there is no glory no honor
In what results
From the rape of the world
Mother of us all
Place of our birth
We all are witness
To the rape of the world
She has been clear-cut
She has been dumped on
She has been poisoned and beaten up
And we have been witness
To the rape of the world
Mother of us all
Place of our birth
How can we stand aside
And watch the rape of the world
If you look you’ll see it with your own eyes
If you listen you will hear her cries
If you care you will stand and testify
And stop the rape of the world
Stop the rape of the world
Mother of us all
Mother of us all
Mother of us all
Mother of us all
-Tracy Chapman, New Beginning
Mother always wins, humankind may very well be joining the dinosaurs, but life will go on, stronger than ever.
Hey Alex Catgirl,
Aren't you glad our president approves of "clean" coal? I just watched this video on mountaintop removal that a poster recommended. I think you should see this and share it with your friends.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPixjCneseE
Warning: It may make you cry, and it may make you angry. But it may make you fight back! Scratch and claw Catgirl! Meeeyooooooow!!! Get 'em! (hissss!)
The insanity of people in their never ending endeavour to destroy the home we all live on just for some horrible people that want quick and easy money from a quick and easy method of extraction of a substance that is a known toxic, just never ceases to amaze me.
And just as amazing are us, the people that will just stand around and let it happen with out putting the people we elect under the most stringent microscopic view that would have a lot better chance of stopping the rape of the world for those few who will profit by so much while not giving a tinker's damn about the consequences.
We are talking about terra-forming our natural world into something that will not be conducive to life, but what the hell, these jackoffs will use their ill gotten gains to buy a plush and scenic and environmentally perfect places to live in another part of the country relegating the rest of us to have to eck out a life in the devastation they created, not hardly a good bargin.
The BIGGEST problem are the lobbyist and it is getting to the point to fix it will have to be physically barring them from approaching our elected officals or shooting them.
obama, bought and paid for by the 'clean coal' lobby, is as big a traitor the to U.S. and the world as any president has been and he still has over 3 & 1/2 years left in his presidency unless something happens to him and that would put someone just as bad in the driver's seat, joe 'double blow' biden, our choices are once again sliming down to next to none.
Wrong! The BIGGEST problem is not the lobbyists. It is the CORRUPT MEMBERS OF CONGRESS, THE CORRUPT SENATORS AND OUR BOUGHT AND PAID FOR PRESIDENT. And they sold out CHEAP, the bastards.
We are in one awful fix. Our democracy is gone. We live in a under a government that is has been purchased by the wealty elite. And what are we going to do? Is there any hope that the people will rise up and throw the bastards out?
Our Constitution has been shreded. The will of the people is ignored. Our nation is bankrupt. We are entering a long term depression. The earth eco systems are at a point of collapse.
What is ahead for your children and grandchildren? Our apathy and ignorance is nearly making us powerless. So, what are you going to do?
What did you expect from Barack MoreoftheSame Obama.
It makes you want to Ralph! Oh ya, I did! Where was most everybody else on that Tuesday last November? Fingering Obama.
Oh well, you got what the lobbyists paid for.
Terran
Massive Civil Disobediance worked for Ghandi, MLK and is the only that will change this crooked game.
OK all except the deluded know Obama is a loser and so were third parties, so this is a case where we all do need to move forward instead of the same old same old.
Civil disobedience and non-violent protests won't work when you're defending something. The authorities will just move you out of the way - through the legal system and/or physically - then the corporate workers will destroy the mountain or forest so that there's nothing left to defend.
Is that the best picture the AP had of Judd?
Intelligence and creativity can produce alot more jobs than EVISCERATING MOTHER EARTH !!!
Kentucky and West Virginia didn't even go for Obama back in November, so what does he owe them?
This is what pisses me off, Obama is catering to the LOSING wing of the Democratic party, a/k/a Clintonites, who insist on winning back the good ol southern fried crap Johnson alienated back in the 1960s. The "rocket scientist" DNC strategists haven't figured out that 50-60 something Joe Cracker-Redneck-Hillbillies are no longer relevant. They and their pathetic communities are DYING, and being replaced by much younger/cuter/smarter urban, racially diverse, religiously apathetic millennials,.....who Obama *does* owe.
We made him, we can make him and all his congressional allies go away by staying home come next election day. No campain donations, no blogs/sites(a/k/a free press), no campaign workers...they get the same thing they gave us - the brush off.
Theoretically, yes, and it's comforting to contemplate as we drift off to sleep at night, but this Prozac-, sugar-, and television- addled nation will once again follow the "race for the presidency" on FOX and MSNBC like just like any other sporting event, and dutifully vote on the first Tuesday in November for the two Manchurian candidates the powers that be give us. Just like last time, and the time before that, and the time before THAT, and the time......
We are a rarified bunch, we CommonDreamers. If you'd step outside your bubble you'd see that the vast majority of Americans are not like us. We are not, by any stretch of imagination, a nation of activists. And once we realize this, we can plan effective strategies that take this very tangible fact into consideration.
Human decency? (pardon the oxymoron)
Well, remember the Cartel's motto, "The buck stops here," and they want to make sure that every one of them does.
This latest act against our environment by Obama now proves without a doubt that he is not Green, but Black. I'm not referring to the color of the man's skin, but black as in covered with "Clean Coal".
Obama is the charismatic guy that your sister (the voter) wants to go on a date with...
No matter how much you suggest she date your intelligent, kind, honest friend (Nader)...
(or McKinney if she "votes" that way...)
But she claims that Obama is so popular! And handsome and funny! And he has lots of money!
No matter how much you point out that he is a liar, corrupt, and is a criminal based on his past...
Your sister will claim, but if I don't date Obama, the only other single guy in town is that old geezer...!
So you let her make her own mistakes in order to learn that one cannot compromise your integrity...
Now your sister is married to this guy for another 4 years, maybe 8, of domestic abuse & neglect...
She still justifies his abuse with "he says he will change!" "give him time, you need to keep hope"...
She still sings his praises for the vacous rhetoric & lipservices to promises past...
Making excuses to explain how he cleaned out her life savings and maxed out her credit cards...
Dems need to quit acting like battered spouses making excuses for their abusers...
They need to divorce themselves from the dem party and vote their conscience for a change...
I would rather be single & pining for McKinney than be complicitly married to a war criminal...
GoldenMean:
Brillant reply!
I voted for an African American for President too but it was not Obama.
I voted for real change, not chump change!
If you voted for Obama folks you voted for a chump!
I also voted for a woman for President.
I vote for a third-party canidate.
I voted Green Party.
I voted for Cynthia McKinney.
Thanks for that, Golden Mean. Best I've read putting it all into perspective.
I've dated Ralph off and on for over a decade, whenever he comes into town. We have a few laughs and some of the most meaningful conversations, but it always ends the same. We both know the relationship isn't going to go anywhere in the long run (In fact, he told me so personally about a year ago) and I seriously dated a man from the midwest for a few months about five years ago, but he turned out not to be as serious about "us" as I thought he'd be. Nice guy, but ultimately I felt a little betrayed. Not by Ralph, though. I always know where he stands, and he's still the best guy out there.
Mostly though, I'm on my own, and I'm OK with that.
Really.
This is one of the STUPIDEST things that Obama has backed. West Virginia is being DESTROYED by the mining companies.
Come on Mr. President, where is the change you promised? I hope it is not limited to being better looking and a better speaker than George. Hell, anybody could have fit that bill.
Show us something. Now is the time. Not later, not after we are all impoverished and bankrupted by overpriced health care.
I doubt we will get the treatment in bankruptcy court that the banking system got.
And now this? Thanks a lot.
Lemme help all the BO supporters deal with Disappointment #23:
Sen. Durbin: "Frankly, they own the place."
"They" being Big Bankster, Big Energy, Big Heath, Big Farm, and, of course, Really F-ing Big Military.
"The place" being our government.
As hard as it is for so many of y'all to swallow - BO works for the owners of "the place." Period. If he didn't, the owners would replace him, just as you would be replaced at your job if you didn't do what the owners said.
IOW, instead of wasting time trying to influence the owner's top dog and hoping he does the right thing in spite of the owner's direct orders, start focusing on ways to wrest ownership of "the place" away from the present owners.
It is a sad day!
You can probably make a case that the east coast will go dark and cold next winter. We have to have the jobs that burning coal provides. We have to have these jobs or the entire population might go bezerk and all of society has to come under the gun of homeland security so that there is no civil unrest.
It may also be necessary so that the banks with all their new money can go back to their old games. We must save the banks at all costs because that is where all the elites have their savings.
Maybe we can ship the mountain tops to Iraq in the empty ships that we will have going back to Iraq to bring home all our troops and their military toys. Then at least the mountain tops wouldn't be filling up the valleys where the people live in places like West Virginia, and the mountain tops could be used to fill up all the bomb craters that were produced in whatever our operations are now called in Iraq.
He was the best of the viable candidates. But on mountaintop removal and Afghanistan, he is a great disappointment indeed.
Could it be that he doesn't like being president?
Fred Schueler, a Canadian, I assume, wrote the following at Truthout: "Everyone knows that Afghanistan is where empires go to commit suicide. Canadian military involvement was silly enough ("As real peace-keepers we'll succeed where millennia of militarists have failed"), but diverting the US failure in Iraq to Afghanistan is sillier than anything the Russians or British or Genghis Khan or Arabs or Alexander the Great attempted. At least their methods had succeeded outside Afghanistan before they took them there..."
"Visible candidates."
I love that term. Que vivan los fantasmas.
Guess that will be the end of the West Virginia Mountaineers.
It will be handy to have all that flat land to resettle people when DC goes under water.
Actually, I don't think any tribes ever claimed the tortuously rugged, impenetrably vegetated (ever been in a laurel or rhodedendron thicket?) area now called southern west Virginia/eastern Kentucky.
And there you have it. Barack Hussein Obama, the Decider in Chief, has decided that our environment will take a back seat to the economy. Wonderful. I'm just waiting for enough of us to not be able to buy food and then we can all enjoy Soylent Green.
What the hell are we doing that we cannot finally string these bastards up and start over? Are we that fearful of anything resembling real change? I weep for the world my poor children will inherit.
So sad to see his so farup head up the butts of the corporations! I was a big supporter. Realistically, it was all we had.
"Realistically, it was all we had."
More circular logic. "It was all we had" was a realistic conclusion only because millions of voters, fearing the unknown and lacking faith in their own collective power, convinced themselves that they had no choice but to vote for Obama.
The underlying problem is Corporate Personhood.
See the Extreme Court's error in: Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company, 118 U.S. 394 (1886). These sorts of evildoers often lose their hand or head under Sharia law.
Are we suggesting Sharia as the answer?
One can empathize with Sharia law, given the violence those governments have to respond to. On the other hand, one can empathize with those caught under Sharia law, too.
Why not stop corporate personhood and insist on equal media time for candidates, but maintain a separation of church and state?
Jeevee
We tried to warn everyone to look at Obama's voting record, but apparently nobody did.
The only honest politicians are the minority ones, e.g. Ralph Nader.
"I've been to the mountaintop." Good thing he got there before it was blown off.
Joe
Everyone should be made to watch this video. Everyone of these so called “mainstream” news journalists, whether they be from ABC, CBS, NBC etc. ought to be required to air this video or others like it. They won't!
Just look at what these bastard coal corporations are doing to the people and to the Earth. And President Barack Obama is in support of this? What is going on here?
Meanwhile, these poor people are without a voice in their so called “America.” Their streams, rivers and property’s are all being polluted at the expense of these corporations, who could care less about the people or the environment, as long as they’re making $$$$. Continue to pillage the Earth and F’ the people.
Mountaintop Removal Movie from iLoveMountains.org
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPixjCneseE
COTO knows
Thank-you. I watched it. I'm sad, I'm mad, and I'm spreading the word!
There was a time when the media would have paid attention.
The original Strip Mine Reclaimiation Act of 1977 (which MTR somehow bypasses it's "approximate original contours" requirement) was passed after a torrent of media coverage of strip mining practices that pale in impact compared to MTR.
I keep getting a lot of cynicism when I say this, but I beleive that we DO live in very different times than the 1960s and 1970's. And they aren't better times.
Yesterday, Obama, once again, praised Reagan for all that "morning in america" crap. Obama mustn't have lived in western Pennsylvania, where my Fransiscan brother made regular trips to foreclosed homes to clean up the suicides of laid-off miners and steelworkers.