How about a topical issue thread? Mountain Top Removal.

I doubt we'll have many people here who would advocate for this process... I know I'm dead-set against it.

Obama Says that we MUST find a way around MTR!!!
http://www.appvoices.org/index.php?/frontporch/blogposts/obama_says_that_we_must_find_a_way_around_mtr

Hillary Clinton on MTR
http://www.appvoices.org/index.php?/frontporch/blogposts/hillary_clinton_on_mtr/



I know this is a big issue in WV, so I hope voters are finding out about the candidates' positions.

What do you think? Will their stances on this issue effect the outcome?

Thanks. :)

a top priority. I'll continue to search and see what I can find.

At least there's some daylight between them on MTR, though.

WHAT A TERRIBLE THING TO WASTE:




YOUR MOUNTAINTOPS ON COAL MINING:






Educate yourselves!
http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/multimedia/2007/09/gallery_mountaintop_mining?slide=1&slideView=7
http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/67/24498

Big coal is hoping for government subsidies to replace oil. But its "clean coal" plan is an ecological nightmare for everyone. Scientists and environmentalists say "clean coal" does not exist; it is a misnomer and an oxymoron. The National Resources Defense Council has said, using the term "clean coal" makes about as much sense as saying "safe cigarettes." Physicist Karl Kruszelnicki states that coal companies "can only store 1,000th of 1 percent" of the CO2 they produce.
http://www.alternet.org/story/70475/

Thanks for posting them.

Since the mid-1980s, a controversial practice called mountaintop-removal mining has been used to excavate coal from the Appalachian mountains of West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Kentucky. Miners clear the forest, and then use explosives to shake loose the stone, which is combed for coal. The leftover material is spread into nearby valleys.

At least 800 square miles of mountains have been leveled, an even greater swath of forests felled, and 1,200 miles of streams buried by debris. Opponents say the practice leaves locals vulnerable to floods and sickness aggravated by pollution.

Activists have fought a losing legal battle against mountaintop removal mining. A 2002 "clarification" of the Clean Water Act allowed miners to continue pushing waste into streams. In August of this year, the federal Office of Surface Mining issued rules that will permit companies to operate within 100 feet of a stream, overturning a Reagan-era rule that nominally forbade the practice.
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Before mountaintop mining the Appalachian mountains in southern West Virginia were covered by a temperate hardwood rain forest. Environmentalists call them the lungs of the East Coast.

It's like internal neoliberalism

extractive, exploitive and economically devastating... does nothing for the citizens in the region

very important primary debate topic

k/r

And not making this about who's an "elitist", like Bill's telling them. *sigh*

for demurring on specifics because her knowledge of the issue is general. I also think she has the winning position. Coal is one of our few remaining "cheap" energy sources. Anything that might be seen to disrupt and add to the cost of mining, for whatever reason, at a time when our utility bills are tracking upward, is a non-starter. Especially if it's a government initiative. And West Virginians probably already have the Big Fear about job security in this crumbling economy. Talk about environmentalism right now will probably scare the daylights out of them, even if they're appalled by MTR.

Jobs aren't saved by MTR, and people there know this.

on the back roads of W.Va., then she could actually see the devastation to the environment rather than sitting there at those hearings and listening but not really listening (she had visions of prez campaigning on her mind I guess).

environmental groups have been raising alarms about this practice for years. I'm sure she's been told repeatedly.

about Hillary, should've read more than her comment. Point taken.

People there may hate MTR, but in a relatively poor state in a downward spiralling economy, it won't be hard to scare them into holding on to what little they've got, lousy as it is. It happened to the rest of us, we're no different. We didn't unionize when we had the chance, because unionizing is risky, painful in the short term, and scary. We could've wielded an insurmountable double hammer of labor shutdown and suspension of the most massive consumer market on earth to arrest the gutting of our productive core and drift into the so-called "service economy." Now we're supplicants to a corporate-owned government.

I do think Hillary's nod to one while acknowledging the other stance will play better. In the general election, with the economy even further in the tank, I think both their positions will get trounced by McCain coming to town to "save the proud, independent tradition of mining" unless Obama is exceptionally good at assuaging fears that their families won't be living on the street when the Liberal Socialist Enviromental Monster chases mining companies out of town.

that the practice has not saved any jobs.

If they believe the lie that MTR saves jobs, oh well. I hope they've been paying attention.

This and FISA are two issues we'll hear nothing about on TV in the coming weeks.

It would be fun to start a futures market predicated on MSM lies and gag orders.

*sigh*

Giustra didn't donate $131M for nothing! That's not how you get to be a multi-billionaire.

yeah... anti-Hillary... uh huh.