Up The Holler

by Cesco Estep

There is an unholy three-way alliance in West Virginia that threatens our very way of life. It began many years ago with an unspoken bargain between the local “mainstream” media and the corporations who gain the most from our abundant natural resources. Together they have undermined the political system to the point where the health,  safety, and welfare of the citizens of Appalachia are rarely even considered by the state’s main regulatory agencies if enforcement even remotely involves our extraction industries.  One of the earliest examples of the level of collusion by State lawmakers was when one West Virginia governor ordered his state militia to destroy the printing presses of certain newspaper editors who dared criticize his pandering to powerful robber baron coal owners. It has been lost to all but the most astute state historians that during that same period Governor Hatfield never so much as even blinked at Charleston’s “mainstream” newspapers. He obviously felt that unlike the newsprint from the labor press, Charleston’s “mainstream” media had been reporting the “right stuff” all along. Hatfield and his legislature were criticized by Congress, but in the end the sovereignty of the State of West Virginia ruled the day, and the historic Paint Creek strike was broken without giving in to the number 1 complaint by strikers: the removal of the brutal mine guard system. Eventually some fifty thousand miners and their families were thrown out of their homes across the Kanawha Field by the coal owner’s union, replaced mostly by immigrants from all over the world.

While these days the deal between the our press and our political leaders over how to go about selling out the rights of citizens to the extraction industries is not quite as overt as it used to be, the more subtle modern alliance between the two has essentially undercut any natural competition between the two political parties which have been producing most of our lawmakers. The incentive for this long-lived corporate-driven media/ political confederacy has always been money, and I mean big money.  Money so big that even some of the state’s once most powerful trade unions have been compromised and all but brought to their knees. The secret syndicate formed by the extraction industry corporations to control the political will and dictate what the media reports is truly an Axis of Avarice.

Despite the incessant yet subtle propaganda that our local news organizations pump out, more and more West Virginians are rejecting the false paradigm that voting for “the lesser of two evils” is necessary. No longer is the thought of putting the alternative into office as nearly as frightening as it used to be, because folks sense that both essentially are driven by the same evil. There is much evidence that voters have begun rejecting outright the two party system, which, considering the lack of choice that those two parties have been offering, makes a lot of sense. Last general election’s turnout indicates that many, if not most, had been duped into boycotting their own right to vote!  If, indeed, that’s true, then most of the blame for that boycott is on West Virginia’s mainstream media.

Persuading voters to opt out of their duty to participate in our democracy on election day is one of the main strategies of the Axis of Avarice. For around a century the not so subtle persuasion of cash-on-the-barrelhead advertising has turned our local mainstream media into a virtual propaganda tool of the extraction industries. If you doubt it then consider this: It is beyond curious how West Virginia’s major news sources have collectively avoided letting the public know the real results of  our last statewide Special Election. The dirty little secret they don’t want you to realize is that Earl Ray Tomblin was put into office by a paltry twelve percent (12%!!) of all registered WV voters. Instead of reporting the incumbent’s failure to inspire even his own base as a shocking fact,  just last year the media collectively chose to misrepresent our last gubernatorial election as “exciting” by falsely reporting that it was a close race.  Had challenger Bill Maloney won by the same margin, then Mountain Party challenger Dr. Bob Henry Baber, would have been portrayed as a “spoiler” throughout the state and likely beyond. But the truth is that there’s no way that Baber could have been a “spoiler” for either of his two opponents because it really wasn’t a close race at all! Conspicuously unreported by allmedia outlets is the shocking fact that a SEVENTY-FIVE PERCENT of all voters essentially chose to vote for “NONE OF THE ABOVE!“ That, friends and neighbors, is beyond simple voter apathy. It is proof of a silent conspiracy.

Unfortunately, the lion’s share of West Virginia voters had once again been scammed into thinking that there were only two candidates in the race, despite the fact that there has long been THREE major parties in West Virginia.

To most everyone who ever had bothered to register it was obvious that between the incumbent Democrat and his Republican challenger there wasn’t enough difference to bother to go to the polls on election day. Despite complete media saturation (and thanks to the millions-upon-millions thrown into full-blitz advertising by both corporate camps,) West Virginia voters realized the lack of a clear difference between what Tomblin and Maloney represent. Yet due to the blackout by stations and newspapers with whom their advertising dollars were focused, most registered voters to this day aren’t aware that the Mountain Party exists, much less that its platform allows only nominees who aren’t corporate sellouts.

In elections over the last dozen years voters have been purposely misled by the media’s push-polling to think that there are only two major political parties in West Virginia. Because of the pernicious industry-wide media blackout in corporate biased and corporate driven surveys year after year, voters go to the polls thinking that the two party system is broken. Worse yet, there is solid evidence indicating that voters actively choose not to participate because of the negative ads the two corporate-sponsored candidates run about each other, primarily because they really don’t have much positive to convey about themselves.  It’s through that cynical secret system that the media has long been paid to push the lie that there is no third party grassroots solution.

Although it’s been widely ignored by the media, the dismal turnout for the last statewide primary (again, the Special Election of October 2011),  signaled a major tipping point. If, as the media would like us to believe, corporate advertising truly controls who wins elections, then it’s ONLY because that campaign cash has caused an industry wide local corporate media blackout of the facts regarding the growing influence of the Mountain Party. Mountain Party candidates are regularly kept out of the news and off the editorial pages because they staunchly refuse to accept corporate campaign contributions. Honest candidates with honest solutions are effectively blocked from addressing the public primarily because it is impossible for them to raise huge amounts of campaign financing without compromising their stance on major positions.

The silent conspiracy of blacklisting candidates for cash for over a decade is the only adequate explanation for the resultant boycott by voters last election day.

Grassroots campaigning across our rural mountain state on five and ten dollar contributions is arduous, but our gubernatorial nominees have been doing it for over a decade.  It is no mall coincidence that the lack of decent alternative telecommunications makes it even more so. Thanks to the political tentacle of the Axis, the Manchin/Tomblin syndicate essentially wasted $24 million in federal stimulus on gold-plated internet routers, most of which will sit un-utilized in their unopened shipping cartons until they’re obsolete. Last primary, enough low information voters (a.k.a. pissed off Democrats) turned out to select Keith Judd, a Texarkana prison inmate over Obama because Manchin and Tomblin had, through their well-greased media, successfully scapegoated the President for what their syndicate had been doing to us for years.

In the run-up to the last gubernatorial election, most potential voters believed that they could choose only the incumbent, whose platform was “Lower Taxes, More Jobs“,  or his challenger, whose platform was essentially, “More Jobs, Lower Taxes“.  Why is it both nominees are essentially running on the same plank as last year? Apparently both camps want us to swallow that Earl Ray’s year-long term in office somehow magically changed the way voters feel about their own nominee.

How can the press maintain credibility while acting as if it’s natural for two corporate tools really is a competition between “two major parties”? How can the press ignore the fact both camps apparently believe that the repeat of the same lower voter turnout will be an advantage for their own candidate while running against the same opponent? It is hard to fathom how any journalist worth his salt could swallow that either Maloney or Raese are anything more than high-paid strawman candidates. Perhaps most noticeable is how no one in the mainstream media ever gets around to pointing out how ludicrous the whole “Punch ‘N Judy” theme is between the Manchin, Raese, Tomblin and Maloney. All that lucre for “campaign advertising” is obviously money well spent. It’s essentially hush money.

Choosing not to report the facts is one thing. Leaving out information to keep folks from figuring out exactly why only 12 percent of all voters wanted Earl Ray Tomblin to continue to govern and even fewer chose Maloney is a direct threat to the mainstream media’s economy. Even the brightest corporate-employed journalists never dare wonder out loud why there was such a low turnout despite the fact that West Virginia has maintained the highest voter registration rate per capita for years. None dare publicly speculate why so few participated despite soaring voter registration rates previous to Tomblin’s Special Election. What I’m getting at is that if folks had enough of the truth and were able to weigh all those factors, they’d begin to understand the real reason why so many WV voters chose to boycott the last Special Election.

The misconception that there was no reason to vote is a ruse deftly propagated by the

Major evidence of the media repeatedly blocking out Mountain Party candidates is found in the political polling contracted and subsequently published by major newspapers in the state. As of this date, the most recent example was in the Charleston Daily Mail.

newsprint push polls. This year the WV Broadcaster’s Association will do its level best to keep the existence of a third party solution from the general public by barring the Mountain Party candidate from publicly debating Earl Ray Tomblin and Bill Maloney.

Despite the media’s concerted efforts, those of us who are politically astute do know that the Mountain Party of West Virginia exists, and recall that it had a gubernatorial candidate on the 2011 ballot. The fact that Dr. Bob Henry Baber did not inspire people to come out to vote was basically because he couldn’t afford to buy access to the public through West Virginia’s avarice-driven media. Like all Mountain Party candidates, Baber rightfully shunned all corporate backing, so the media dutifully kept his name off their political polls and blocked him from the statewide TV broadcast of what was advertised as a gubernatorial “debate”. Note that I purposely placed quotes around the word because it was more of a snoozefest due to the lack of integrity presented by the “journalists” who paid to deliver their softball questions while acting as if it all was something more than a political ad for the syndicate’s corporate agenda.

To the credit of West Virginia voters and despite the media blackout, Baber received well over three times as many votes as there were registered Mountain Party members. At the same time, Earl Ray Tomblin received far fewer than than 1/6 of his “base” of 643,859 registered Democrat voters. The incumbent inspired only 102,234 voters out of 1,215,213 all registered. Big Bill Maloney lost because he failed to inspire 251,408 of his fellow Republicans to go to the polls for him. He received 99,013 votes despite the fact that there were 350,421 registered WV Republicans. How could both candidates have possibly been so dreadfully uninspiring even to their own “base”? And just why does the mainstream media choose to ignore each candidate’s obvious failure to garner votes?

Money.

Fortunately, for tools like Tomblin, Maloney, Manchin, Raese, and their international syndicate of ultra wealthy backers, the State of West Virginia is abundantly resource-rich, which is the only justification for shoveling millions upon millions of cash at our media. Considering West Virginia’s long, sordid history of graft and corruption by industry shills of both major Parties, it is no small coincidence that our State does not track the source of campaign contributors in the same way that other states do for their citizens. However, according to data compiled by the National Institute on Money in State Politics, the largest sectors to contribute to Tomblin’s 2011 campaign were lawyers and lobbyists, followed by mining interests. Maloney, a gas industry advocate who earned his fortune in the extraction industries, actually loaned his own campaign $2,450,000, or 74 percent of his total campaign expenditure. Unreported and untracked by our Secretary of State is how he’ll retire that earlier campaign debt to himself. It’s a pretty safe bet that Maloney will repay himself from the money he raises from “outside interests” this go-round for whatever deal he cut prior to his first run with the Koch Brothers. In Raese’s case spending campaign cash on advertising could be compared to the same way that folks move their loose change from one pocket to another, since he’s a multimillionaire media mogul. Joe Manchin’s fortunes were made from his coal and gas brokerage firm during his entire political career, assuring his political backers that his deadly personal policy of “Retail Government” will remain in place and insuring that his campaigns will be well financed by the extraction industries -for as long as he can stay out of jail.

It may strike some folks as odd that West Virginia’s Republican Party chose to run the same candidate who just last year lost to Earl Ray. It really only makes sense as long as the press continues to support the ridiculous notion that it was a close race. One might have assumed that since Governor Tomblin and former Governor Joe Manchin officially proved that they were “Friends of Coal Operators” by suing the EPA (for basically trying to protect citizens from radical mining practices) that Maloney, a gas industry man, might have been persuaded to use the lawsuit as a political bludgeon, since the surface mining industry has displaced so many deep miners. Besides, NON-political polls have strongly indicated that most West Virginians want MORE regulation, oversight, and enforcement over industrial excesses, not less. Yet Tomblin’s main challenger remains silent and the media even more silent (if that’s possible).

The disconnect between what the two major candidates are touting and what voters really want (and the state needs) is evidence of corporate-driven media spin, considering how that West Virginia’s major newsgroups avoid connecting the most obvious needs of citizens to the complete lack of concern by the major party candidates. It is solid proof of a conspiracy when the major newsgroups essentially silence Mountain Party candidates.

Despite having an extensive gas industry background, Bill Maloney has apparently chosen to never mention publicly why Tomblin’s Marcellus “dirty bomb” bill is responsible for so many job losses in the coal patch. More than anything else Tomblin has done to knock King Coal off the throne, the incumbent’s “anything goes” Marcellus bill that Tim Manchin helped wheedle through the legislature caused the price of gas to tumble to the point where coal can’t possibly continue to compete as an electricity source. Despite the blinders by the media, progressive voters know why Earl Ray, Joe Manchin and their Republicrat campaign has desperately been shifting the blame onto Obama by endlessly flogging their phony “war on coal” meme. Their culpability for their team effort to push the low standard regulations over hydrofracking in West Virginia is never mentioned by the mainstream media because it’s paid lots and lots of money to advertise for them. So that outcry about Obama’s “war on coal” all must be true, right?

Try wrapping your mind around it this way. Owning both jockeys insures that you’ll never lose in a two-horse race. In West Virginia’s gubernatorial two-party race the multinational corporatists (known as “ALEC“) not only own both jockeys, they’ve bought both political stables –lock, stock, and barrel.  ALEC’s biggest problem in our Great State is that there are THREE horses in every gubernatorial race. Because the Mountain Party owns its own stables, it is impossible for ALEC to own all of the jockeys. So the next best thing isn’t to board up starting gate #3, but rather to bar the Mountain Party entry from the track altogether. In West Virginia, ALEC operatives have accomplished it by indirectly taking control of the State’s media. Anyone even remotely familiar with the true history of West Virginia realizes that West Virginia’s major media was compromised long ago. It has always been instrumental in suppressing third party politicians who dared stand up for the people against excesses from what was once commonly called the robberbaron industries.

Cesco Estep is the pen name of a Charleston resident who wishes to remind readers of a certain political activist that was murdered in his own home by order of Governor William E. Glasscock of the Great State of West Virginia. Estep’s house was riddled with bullets for aiding strikers by letting them camp on his property during a lockout.  On the night of February 7, 1913, the bloody Bull Moose Special, manned by Kanawha County Sheriff’s deputies and mine guards rolled up Paint Creek, then, according to congressional testimony, slowed down as it approached Holly Grove to strafe miners in their tents with Gatling guns mounted on an armored rail car. The Bull Moose Special had been armored for the specific purpose of transporting scab labor, and the coal operator was tired of having his scabs intimidated as they were being transported through Holly Grove.

Although Quin Morton, the coal operator who had requested the action, and Kanawha County Sheriff Bonner Hill, who was in command of the operation, were both on board the train that night, neither were convicted because at the time they were under protective orders from the West Virginia Governor.

Never forget the many brave men, women and children who were forced to revolt against the government of the State of West Virginia in 1921. Today’s politicians are compelled to destroy historic Blair Mountain rather than to preserve it,  for the same reasons that they’ve all but eliminated teaching in our schools the true reasons behind that uprising. Although the controversial mountaintop removal permit at Spruce Fork includes major portions of Blair Mountain, that fact is never included by mainstream journalists when they write about the lawsuit that former governor Manchin filed against the EPA for placing a moratorium on destroying its watershed. Blair Mountain stands as a solitary symbol of the dangerous amount of control outside extraction industries exert over our nation’s political system as well as our local media.

Despite being registered as a Republican, Dr. Allen H. Loughry continues to fight as hard as is legally possible to clean up West Virginia’s elections. He deserves the vote and full support of every true Progressive.

SUPREME COURT CANDIDATE ALLEN LOUGHRY FILES RESPONSE TO FEDERAL LAWSUIT AND FILES LAWSUIT WITH STATE SUPREME COURT TO ENFORCE CAMPAIGN LAW COMPLIANCE

Loughry Also Adds Brennan Center for Justice and Huntington Attorney Marc Williams to Legal Team

Charleston, WV – Supreme Court Candidate Allen Loughry today filed a response to a federal lawsuit that attempts to block funding to his campaign.  The federal lawsuit was filed by another Supreme Court candidate’s campaign attorney.

In addition, Loughry filed a separate legal action in the State Supreme Court seeking to force the State Election Commission (SEC) to follow the existing laws and provide his campaign with the additional funding.  Loughry has been critical of the Secretary of State’s office and SEC during recent weeks for their handling of the pilot program and says that the SEC has been in direct violation of West Virginia law since at least the middle of July.

“The SEC’s refusal to abide by the law is not only a violation of its constitutional duties, it also is a slap in the face to the State legislators who passed the law, as well as to then-Governor Joe Manchin who pushed for and later signed the law,” said Loughry.  “This unprecedented decision not to follow this law has the potential of singlehandedly destroying the pilot project in addition to negatively impacting the entire Supreme Court election.  The SEC is not permitted to simply disregard laws any more than a private citizen could decide he or she won’t follow a law.”

Loughry is represented by The Brennan Center for Justice at N.Y.U. School of Law and also by West Virginia attorney and lead local counsel Marc Williams.  The Brennan Center is a non-partisan public policy and law institute that focuses on the fundamental issues of democracy and justice.  Williams, who is a managing partner at the nationally-known law firm of Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough LLP, has litigated hundreds of lawsuits in the state and federal courts and has earned a reputation as a leader nationally with issues important to the judiciary.

“I am so deeply honored to have the Brennan Center for Justice along with Marc Williams as a part of my incredible legal team,” said Loughry.  “These top-notch attorneys would not get involved in this case if they didn’t recognize the importance of this issue to the voters of West Virginia and to the entire country.”

Loughry said that since the SEC has failed to follow the law, he is anxious to take on this fight on behalf of all West Virginians who want fair judicial elections.

“This program was set up so that the voters would have a fair opportunity to know the candidates in the Supreme Court race in order to make an informed decision about the qualifications of the candidates and not just the ones with the most money,” said Loughry.  “The idea is that this program will eliminate the perception that Supreme Court seats are being bought by other attorneys who practice before the court, by wealthy individuals, or by large corporations, who spend thousands, and sometimes millions, of dollars to elect certain judicial candidates.”

Loughry added that unlike any other campaign for the Supreme Court, the maximum contribution limit to his campaign was $100, that every contribution came from West Virginia registered voters, and that he did not receive a single dime in PAC money.  “It will be impossible for someone to argue with a straight face that a $5 contribution from my fourth grade teacher will impact the impartiality of decisions I make as a Justice on the Supreme Court,” said Loughry.

Loughry was critical of the federal lawsuit filed by one of his opponent’s campaign attorneys.

“The federal lawsuit filed by my opponent’s campaign attorney is nothing more than an attempt to protect the system of buying elections and keeping average citizens from participating in the political system,” said Loughry.  “You should not be able to buy a seat on the Supreme Court like you buy a candy bar at a convenience store.  This should be about fair judicial elections for all West Virginians.”

Loughry’s actions come after a recent 2 to 2 vote where the SEC failed to approve the additional funding to his campaign.  Loughry said the state law is clear in that the SEC is required to provide the additional funding once certain conditions are met.  The SEC voted 4 to 0 that the conditions had been met, yet failed to enforce the law.  Loughry said those actions are an encroachment by the executive branch into the judiciary’s function.

Loughry said that the SEC’s actions are exactly why average citizens are frustrated with many public officials.  “The SEC is sending the message to the nearly 700 people who contributed to my campaign, to the state Legislature that passed the law, and to all of the State’s registered voters, that their voices don’t matter,” Loughry said.  “People just want their elected officials and governing boards to strictly follow the Constitution and to represent them with honor, integrity, and high ethical standards.  Just like all West Virginians, I expect no less from any of our elected officials or governing boards in this state.”

_____________________________________________________

post script: Upon sending the above press statement to a fellow journalist, Loughry noted:

Dr. Loughry literally wrote the book on The Sordid And Continuing History of Political Corruption in West Virginia

I filed in the supreme court today.  Here is the press release.  I am not an “establishment” candidate so they will more than likely resort to what they do best, i.e., try to tear me down personally.  I didn’t get in this without that knowledge and I am just going to take the fight to November 6th and see what happens.

We can only wonder how it affected Manchin’s “BLIND TRUST”!

BACKSTORY WV Governor Manchin Sues Obama, EPA Over Mining Coal Regulations By PATRICK REIS THIS LINK

BACKSTORY: JUDGE RULES EPA Exceeded Authority in Permit Veto for Logan County Mountaintop Mine Reporter: Cathleen Moxley; Andrew Colegrove; Michael Hyland; The Associated Press Mar 23, 2012

BACKSTORY: “In June, three coal producing companies — Alpha Natural Resources, Central Appalachian Mining and Arch Coal — idled operations at a number of mines that resulted in more than 1,000 miners losing their jobs.” source

Are these Chinese characters the real political power behind former WV governor Joe “Manslaughter” Manchin?

According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, China was West Virginia’s eighth-largest export market in 2008, at $251 million, and fifth-largest in 2009 at $296 million. It just so happens that Manchin was leading a delegation to China at the same time that EnerSystems, his coal brokerage firm, was paying him more than he was making from his governor’s salary.

WV Secretary of State Sees Dead People …AFTER the Primary!

Can the West Virginia’s Governor’s Zombie Army win his War On Coal or just get him RE-elected? Stay tuned…

There are few things more bracing than sharing a brew of chickory, sassafrass and just a touch of blackstrap with friends who are close enough to discuss politics without falling out. It’s coffee talk for folks who can’t afford coffee and we’re serving it to you straight from the heart of Appalachia.

We are pleased to present this exciting this new local slant on an old media form. This political satire is created exclusively for UpTheHoller.com and it will be regularly featured, at least throughout this political season.

We’re also taking this opportunity to let readers know that we’ll be relaunching this blog very soon with a new look and some new and improved features!

Editor’s note:

Before you read Mr. Estep’s diatribe, I suggest that you listen to the following short video. It isn’t an ad, it’s an admission of guilt by former governor Joe Manchin at the 2008 Coal Symposium. Note the audio evidence that WV senator Rockefeller witnessed Manchin boasting that he’d told his safety regulators to relax enforcement of violations in the mines:

In Estep’s article below he includes the link to the full motion, full length video of Manchin’s Coal Symposium presentation.

Will West Virginia’s Senator Manchin be indicted over Upper Big Branch before or after the state’s coal-fired media re-selects him?

by Cesco Estep

ON June 18, 2012, Ken Ward Jr. reported that U.S Attorney Booth Goodwin praised Alpha for ‘great strides’ addressing ‘systemic problems it inherited’ from Massey Energy.

What I want to know is when will Goodwin charge former WV governor Manchin with manslaughter for his deadly “Retail Government” policy? What I’m also wondering is when will West Virginia’s major newspapers report the whole truth for once? It is certainly newsworthy that Manchin actually was recorded telling mine operators that he’d instructed his mine safety regulators to go easy when they saw repeated violations and to not shut down the mines.

Isn’t it worth at least one headline that then-governor Manchin was pulling down a huge paycheck as a coal broker when Upper Big Branch exploded due to (in part) his policy of relaxed regulations? Yet the corporate-owned media remains silent, obviously hoping to squeeze just one more giant payday out of Manchin’s multinational extraction industry backers in the form of campaign advertising for his second run for U.S. Senate.

If you think Manchin wasn’t personally invested in cranking out as much coal as possible out of Upper Big Branch and all the other mines in West Virginia, then its likely because the Charleston Newspapers Group (who should have been reporting this connection all along) has never gotten around to letting voters know that at the time of the explosion he was raking in more cash as a coal broker than he was pulling down as governor -due to his lax policy of enforcement by his top mine safety regulators!

From the New York Times:

“In the 19 months before winning his Senate seat in a hard-fought special election, Manchin reported operating income of $1,363,916 from Enersystems. His next disclosure showed $417,255 in Enersystems income.”

Although his son is now supposedly running Enersystems (which is listed primarily as a coal brokerage), because at some point in time Manchin reportedly placed his interest in a “blind trust”. Nonetheless it is a little hard to swallow that Manchin was acting on behalf of the people of West Virginia when he told those coal owners that he’d instructed “his people” to lay off his industry whenever they saw safety or health violations!

Lest you believe that Manchin didn’t have a major conflict of interest at the time, current presidential candidate Mitt Romney revealed what he knows about how a “blind trust” actually works. He should know, not just because he’s an extremely successful businessman, but because he also served as the governor of Massachusetts,:

That, along with the video of Manchin’s admission of guilt prior to the Upper Big Branch explosion, is pretty strong evidence that most any politician can be caught on camera speaking the truth, eventually.

Let’s review 3 facts:

1. ALL of the official reports stated that the explosion at Upper Big Branch would have been avoided if mine inspectors would only have simply enforced existing laws and regulations. That assessment was also included in the press release for U.S. Attorney Booth Goodwin’s plea agreement with Massey. So it appears that at the very least, mine inspectors and their agency heads are just as guilty as Massey because they didn’t enforce existing laws.

2. THE VERY FIRST OFFICIAL REPORT published after the disaster, which was authored by former MSHA director Davitt McAteer, stated unequivocally that the disaster took place because of a “too cozy” relationship between the coal company and politicians!

He did it quite eloquently, stating,

“Such total and catastrophic systemic failures can only be explained in the context of a culture in which wrongdoing became acceptable, where deviation became the norm. In such a culture it was acceptable to mine coal with insufficient air; with buildups of coal dust; with inadequate rock dust.”

How could this situation have developed into the “norm” unless mine regulators were either bribed by Massey or else instructed by their superiors to ignore? Stopping just short of naming names, McAteer’s team pointedly explained,

“It is only in the context of a culture bent on production at the expense of safety that these obvious deviations from decades of known safety practices makes sense.“

In other words, by undercutting the mandate of entire agencies that had been upheld for DECADES, Manchin’s “Retail Government” fostered a culture that very likely resulted in state-sponsored MANSLAUGHTER.

McAteer’s report branded the inability of the state of West Virginia (while under governor Manchin) to protect the lives of miners as “a political failure – a failure by the state’s government to nurture and support strict safety standards for coal miners.”

But McAteer didn’t stop there, he went on to say, “If miners’ lives are to be safeguarded, the cozy relationship between high-ranking government officials and the coal industry must change, as must the relationship between the enforcement agency and the industry it regulates”.

To easily check my quote within the context it was originally used, you can download the pdf version of that report from the source found at this link, and then using your pdf search engine enter the searchword: cozy. It’s found in Chapter 12, titled The Normalization of Deviance which is found at this link.

http://www.nttc.edu/programs&projects/minesafety/disasterinvestigations/upperbigbranch/chapter12.asp

Unbelievable as it may seem, Manchin was actually recorded admitting to having instructed his regulators to go easy and not shut down the mines whenever they saw a violation. While at the podium before the 2008 Coal Symposium Manchin’s exact words were:

“Hey John, you’ve got a problem here, now before I write you up with a violation, here’s what I think you ought to do to fix it.”

There were reports that the “John” that Manchin was directly addressing was his pal John Raese, a coal mine owner and WV media mogul who was in the crowd at the time. This was in 2008, well before Raese had declared his intentions to stage his candidacy for U.S. Senate. Anyway, Manchin went on to say,

“Let’s get together, get our people together. I’ll come back in a week or a month or whatever the rotation time would be. Then if you’ve made those changes, tried to make the changes, we’re working in the right direction. Rather than going out with a ball bat and a cease and desist order and fines, I’d rather you spend the money to fix what’s wrong, try to make it safer, than give the money to government. I guarantee you we won’t fix it.“

Don’t take my word for it, though. Check it out at this link

At the top of this report I called for a review of 3 facts but only listed 2, so here’s the last fact, which really ties it all together:

3. Back when he was riding around in Massey’s corporate jet Manchin was raking in more cash being a coal broker than he acting as our governor.

For the sake of justice someone should let the unfortunate relatives of those who died at Upper Big Branch know that while Manchin may proclaim to be a “Friend of Coal”, his cozy Retail Government relationship with Don Blankenship was at the root of what got those men killed. Don’t count on the mainstream media to do it, because Manchin’s Coal Symposium pals have pitched in millions for his campaign war chest, AND HE SURE AS HELL WON’T SPEND IT ADVERTISING IN ANY WHISTLE BLOWER MEDIA.

I’m betting that John Raese’s WV MetroNews corporate holding* will never cover it, nor will Bray Cary‘s West Virginia Media, which broadcasts and whose flagship is “The State Journal”. Chilton’s Coalpatch Daily Flail may eventually mention Manchin’s holdings, but it’s a pretty safe bet neither paper will ever get around to connecting how his cashing in while maintaining a deadly Retail Government policy set up a situation which caused the deadliest West Virginia mine blast since the Farmington disaster of 1968. Why it’s not emblazoned across both of Chilton’s papers is a mystery.

In an effort to look “fair and Balanced” in the blog that the Charleston Newspapers provides him, Ken Ward has actually reported Manchin’s personal ties to the coal brokerage EnerSystem, but he has never tied Manchin’s company earnings to the former governor’s culpability at Upper Big Branch, and the fact that Manchin is a coal broker has never been published in the Gazette.

*Johnh Raese’s father passed several producing coal mines down to him. He also owns 25 radio stations across West Virginia and is the founder of the METRONEWS network, which has 56 affiliates that reach every nook of the state. He is Vice President of the West Virginia Newspaper Publishing Company, which publishes The Dominion Post, Morgantown’s daily newspaper. Rease also serves as Chairman of the West Virginia Radio Corporation, and has announced his intention to run against (Dinocrat) Manchin a second time, again on the Republican ticket.

National polls have revealed that the general public knows full well that America’s two-party system is broken. The sorry turnout at elections all across the country confirms that voters don’t believe that their interests are being represented by the candidates produced by either of the two major parties. One poll just this past January revealed that more than two-thirds of Americans would consider voting for a third-party presidential candidate,

Although there are other national parties, the media rarely, if ever, mentions them, and for good reason. Corporate media is cashing in on the system in place. Though major party candidates muse from time to time about the need for reform, neither major party truly supports clean election laws or full public funding of campaigns. As a result, huge amounts of cash are shoveled into advertising accounts.  Corporations and corporate media get the elevator while America’s middle class and the poor get the shaft.

One simple solution is to turn America into a democracy (with a small “d”). Below, my good friend GaryZ explains how.

It’s The Electoral System, Stupid
by Gary Zuckett – Economic, Health & Environment
Justice Coordinator, Southern Appalachian Labor School

Who can ever forget the irony and unfairness of the November/December election of 2000? The whole world watched us, the bastion of Democracy, elect a president with a couple of hundred votes selected from one state with lousy ballots. To rub salt in the wound, the winner lost the popular vote by nearly a half a million ballots and the Supreme Court snuffed the counting of uncounted ballots spit out by those notorious punch-card machine counters. Former President Jimmy Carter indicated in a recent public radio interview that an international observation team (many of which he attended) would probably not certify these results. Many are offering solutions to this fuzzy voting problehm. Here’s mine: Proportional Representation in the Electoral College, and Instant Runoff Voting within the states.

Fair Electoral College Voting:

Maine and Nebraska have figured it out (without the need for a constitutional amendment). Electors to the Electoral College should not be chosen by states in a winner-take-all manner. In these two states the statewide winner gets only two electoral votes. The rest are allotted to the winner of each congressional district (one vote per district). This would result in an electoral vote count that more closely reflects the popular vote even in elections like November 2000.

In a small state such as West Virginia things wouldn’t change much, but large states with significant regional differences could split tickets two or three ways. In addition, candidates could no longer afford to ignore small states or write off states secure in either their own or opponents courts because every Congressional District would be up for grabs. If the 2000 election had been counted in this manner who would have been our president? I haven’t done the math but I’d bet his name wouldn’t have a “W” in it.

Instant Run-Off: No Vote Is “Wasted.”

In our winner-take-all system, the winner in a three-way contest can win with less than 50% of the vote. This happened in ’92 when the Reform Party grabbed double-digit percentages and Clinton won with only 43% of the popular vote. In many states today it’s possible to win multi-candidate elections with 25% or less. This is a Democracy in name only.

What if you could vote for not only your first choice, but a second (and even third) for political candidates? You could if we used Instant Run-Off Voting (IRV). This is how the Parliament in Australia and the President of the Republic of Ireland are elected. It works like this: each voter has only one vote, but ranks candidates in order of preference #1, #2, #3 etc. The counting of the ballots simulates a series of runoff elections. If no candidate receives over 50% in the initial vote, the one with the least number of #1 votes is eliminated and citizens who voted for the eliminated candidate have their #2 choice voted. This “instant runoff” is repeated until someone wins a majority of votes. Thus a (begrudging) mandate is created for the eventual winner, unlike the mess we’re faced with now.

Under this system, Ralph Nader (or Denise Giardina) supporters could vote their conscience knowing their votes could still be counted toward a potential victory for their second choice. This would negate the need for Nader “vote swapping” (which I did with a friend of a friend in Texas) and effectively eliminate the “lesser of two evils” argument against voting for third parties. How many #1 votes would Nader or Giardina have gotten under IRV voting? Easily double or triple if people voted their values. Would this send a message to the eventual winner? You can count on it. The Center for Voting and Democracy (www.fairvote.org) is a wealth of information on how to upgrade our voting system from an ENIAC (the first vacuum tube computer) to a Pentium IV. Its not rocket science, but since the American Political Science Association uses IRV to select its President, there must be something to it…

Two simple and constitutional reforms of our voting system could put us back on track toward fair and representative elections.

If not now, when? If not us, who?

Adapted from an article in the January/February  2001  SALS JOURNAL, a quarterly publication of the Southern Appalachian Labor School , a regional grass-roots organization dedicated to social & environmental justice and workers rights.

by One Citizen
This is adapted from a piece originally published on Wed Jan 27, 2010 at 05:39:03 AM EST on a supposedly “Progressive Democratic” website that has since banned the author altogether for attempting to reveal the corporate hijacking of both major parties in West Virginia

If you live in West Virginia, whether you realize it or not, you live in a war zone. Wealthy corporations in the form of robber-baron businessmen declared all-out class war on the citizens of the state around a century ago. It has been waged both openly and subversively ever since.

Although there has been no small amount of consternation in the progressive blogosphere about the Supreme Court’s decision to open the floodgates for the outright purchase of lawmakers everywhere, the lack of reporting by the mainstream media about the strain it puts on our democracy is pretty solid proof that the U.S. mainstream media is anything but “liberal”. Corporate-owned media has always been self-serving because corporations by their very nature are primarily self-serving entities. In fact if corporations are “persons”, then the largest corporations likely grew that way because they have a predatory predilection built right into their DNA.

Despite an apparent news brownout on what the Citizen’s United case can, or will, unleash here, to observe the textbook example of the devastation that corporate-run state leadership has wrought one need look no further than the true, unfiltered history of West Virginia. The stranglehold that King Coal has had on our political process long before Citizens United is legendary, and its unfortunate outcome very tangible. Although the landmark decision is yet to change how democracy works in other states, because West Virginia has long-established a corporate dynasty which rules both major parties, the new national political dynamic under Citizen’s United really won’t effectively change much here at all.

Despite the fact that our public schools have never taught the reason why mine workers and their families were compelled to take up arms to throw off the oppression and depravity in coal company communities all across southern WV, it’s no secret that wealthy corporations and individuals have always “invested” huge amounts of cash specifically to influence those who run our state government. The obvious reason is so that they may continue to reap windfall profits while killing anyone foolish enough to try to survive the widespread and wanton industrial holocaust wrought under the extraction industry collective.

In West Virginia, our corporate-owned media has long had a vested interest in never reporting the full truth, not just because fossil-fuel backed politicians have always been able to spend incredible amounts of cash on advertising. In West Virginia’s extraction industry dynasty entire media chains have long been literally owned by coal operators and others who are personally invested up to the hilt.

Most everyone has heard the old adage about history repeating itself, but few understand why it’s true. History, at least as it’s been taught in West Virginia, has purposely been crafted to repeat itself. The industrialists that have long controlled both our media and our state education system have constructed a virtual firewall specifically to prevent voters from ever learning certain details of events. Nowadays, according to surveys rarely revealed to the public, more and more folks are suspicious of the media. For good reason.

Many suspect that our education system is “broken” as well, but few understand why. State and county education administrators, hand picked (or bought off), purposely see to it that certain subjects are never taught. Ask any member of the state’s Golden Horseshoe Society what they learned in public school about the Battle of Blair Mountain or about any of our rich labor history here in the Mountain State and then ask them what they were taught about the Hatfield and McCoy feud. The reason no one knows about the fight to throw off the oppression of the combined forces of the state and corporations is because it wouldn’t serve the vested interests of those in power if voters were being taught that our political leaders -from both major parties- have always supported the oppression of the state’s populous to enrich their wealthy political benefactors.

Since its inception, West Virginia has always been recognized as having within its borders the some of the greatest energy producing resources of all the states, yet the childhood poverty here has always been rated as one of the worst in the nation. Have you wondered why the full story behind the march to Blair Mountain has never been a part of any curriculum in any of West Virginia’s public schools? Or why, in its coverage of the commemorative march CNN completely skipped the history of state-sanctioned atrocities against its laborers and their communities all across our coalfields? Although the Battle of Blair Mountain is widely recognized by state-paid “historians” as the largest armed insurrection since the Civil War, what they don’t people to realize is that it was by far the largest armed uprising of the people against any state government. It’s because they don’t want us to ever figure out how corrupt our politicians were because then it would be far more difficult for them to continue corrupting them, generation after generation.

For over a century now there has been a secret strategy to keep voters from ever learning that our elected leaders, from the governor on down, have been profiting from the oppression of laborers, their families and their communities. As far as any soulless multinational corporation is concerned we surface-dwellers are no more than a liability, to be controlled or otherwise eliminated, just like the strikers and their families were back when scrip (a.k.a. counterfeit money anywhere else in the U.S.), yellow-dog contacts and systemic rape were all fully supported by the state and passively sanctioned by the fed -until the march to Blair in 1921.

To this day coal operators are able to pull the strings of our puppet politicians because we, as children, were never taught the horrific legacy foisted, by both industry and state, upon our own fore bearers Robber barons have blossomed into multinational corporations by pitting laborer against laborer, both nationally and internationally once trade barriers were dropped several decades ago. While West Virginia exports record amounts* of the highest grade metallurgical coal in the world, the counties where that coal is extracted rank among the highest poverty rates in the nation.
*in man-hours spent per ton produced.

Those in power can only continue to destroy for us as long as we re-elect those who support this evil dichotomy. And that power will be possible only for as long as they continue to trick us into believing that our collective votes will never count as much as the amount of money they can spend for each election.

A VIDEO BLAST FROM THE NOT-SO-DISTANT PAST

In the online video below, witness West Virginia’s top coalocrat, former governor Joe “Retail Government” Manchin literally panting as he embarrasses us all with his plan to honor “The Coal” in the same manner that we now honor our war veterans. Then watch him publicly give his pal the ol’ reacharound (politically speaking) as he makes a number of outrageous claims which are so contrary to the facts that they’re utterly ridiculous. Finally, after listening to him play the patriotic card to sanctify “the Coal”, wonder in amazement how Manchin avoids getting whiplash as he immediately goes from patriotic pandering to criticizing America for making us “energy unsecure” by not subsidizing the coal industry even more than it already does!

It is important to note that although Manchin’s nearly breathless pandering was taped prior to the Citizen’s United decision, yet after he had served as the state chairman for the extremist multinational American Legislative Exchange Council(“ALEC”) (-PDF FILE). Since that time ALEC is known to have drafted, and then pushed legislation through many statehouses all across the nation. One major legislation is that which is fully supportive of Corporate Personhood and the Citizen’s United decision. (see pdf file at this link).

ALEC has not needed to push that particular law in West Virginia because there is already a well-established stranglehold on our political system.

While political leaders all across the nation have marveled at our state’s leaders ability to take pre-Citizen’s United pandering to a whole new level, the corporate media’s local brownout on the following spectacle back in 2009 was so complete that Joe Manchin (D-Coalocrat) was elected by a majority of unwitting voters, and now openly represents only his corporate backers in the U.S Congress.

All video and audio sources used in the making of the above video editorial are in the public domain and therefore are not prohibited by copyright laws.
The original interview was produced by the State of West Virginia’s Library Commission Video Services around October 2009 (ref. no. c 122.07).

Although the video takes a lighthearted look at the former governor, his lies are not only substantial they are obviously intentional. Despite Manchin’s lack of any pretense whatsoever regarding the pandering that he’s doing, West Virginia’s corporate-owned media somehow manages to never reveal the man. At the same time they let himget by with never addressing the fact that thousands of people have died and are dying due to virtually unregulated coal operations across West Virginia. However, try as they may, the argument by the coal operators and their land companies that leveling mountains will attract businesses is extremely hard to accept since those of us who live here know that only about three percent of the land razed by surface mining has ever bbeen truly developed. That was around fifty years ago, when literally thousands of deep miners were laid off, only to be replaced by far, far fewer folks who now extract the same coal as drag bucket operators and dozer jockeys.

If you’d like to check the video source for the quoted Forbes magazine article citing their editors who voted West Virginia the most polluted state in the nation, just go to Forbes.com: Home Page for the World’s Business Leaders where they noted that West Virginia ranked at #50 (see chart at this link), “suffer from a mix of toxic waste, lots of pollution and consumption and no clear plans to do anything about it. Expect them to remain that way.”

If you’d like to check out the American Lung Association’s State of the Air report that failed WV’s air quality while Manchin was lying about it, you can download this PDF FILE

If you doubt that the water quality in West Virginia is a major problem here, then you probably missed this New York Times article. Note that I had intended to link to a particular article by the Charleston Newspapers about this subject, but curiously its editors decided to wipe it from easy internet access.

Then there are those ever-increasing warnings (now also known as “advice”, notably for the first time ever) from WV’s Department of Natural Resources about eating fish loaded with toxic substances.

Regarding the pollution of water by coal operations in WV, note that not after much delay the WV DEP (also known as the WV Department of Everything Permitted) finally reported to the WV legislature that it just didn’t have enough information to conclude that coal slurry injection at some point ended up poisoning rural community water wells in and around the WV coal fields. In WV, regulations require the coal operator to monitor the slurry sites, but somehow the WV DEP just never got around to making sure they were. The surprising result was that our coal-powered legislature has still never prohibited coal slurry injection.

Unfortunately, the WV DEP gets by with employing engineers who apparently can’t comprehend even one the most basic laws of physics (entropy) any better than WV lawmakers wish to recognize established federal testimony about toxic waste containment.

Top EPA scientists recorded their understanding of entropy on pg. 28315 in the FEDERAL REGISTER on May 26, 1981, when stating:

“Since disposing of hazardous wastes in or on the land inevitably results in the release of hazardous constituents to the environment at some time, any land disposal facility creates some risk.” [pg. 28315]

Our regulators and lawmakers obviously have never seriously considered that the RELEASE OF HAZARDOUS CONSTITUENTS TO THE ENVIRONMENT is INEVITABLE when they left it up to the coal owners to monitor coal impondments for leaks.

Pg. 28324 records EPA’s top experts establishing that “The longer one wishes to contain waste, the more difficult the task becomes. Synthetic liners and caps will degrade; soil liners and caps may erode and crack. …EPA is not
aware of any field data sh owing successful long-term containment of waste at facilities which have not been maintained over time.”

The EPA also states that “Ultimately, waste reduction and resource recovery probably provide the best alternative to land disposal,” [pg.28325] although the neither the WV DEP nor the coal-powered WV legislators will ever pass legislation to make THAT happen. Unless we force them.

We here in West Virginia have all been portrayed as inbred and uneducated buffoons because the multinational corporations want us to be written off. Our beautiful forests and mountains, and our very homes are in an industrial sacrifice zone. Those who live here are being poisoned or starved out due to lack of jobs. Resident and activists Maria Gunnoe and Bo Webb testified before a U.S House subcommittee hearing recently that coal companies were bringing busloads of Mexican workers into the heart of our southern coal patch. It’s not a question of whether they’ll work for less money than we will. The plain fact is undocumented workers are far more expendable, and far less likely to report atrocities than Appalachian-Americans. Plus, when the mine is played out, they can be bused back across the border. In the meantime after local communities are poisoned or starved out, their land is bought for a pittance and their homes and neighborhoods
bulldozed to oblivion. Eliminating property-owners eliminates potential whistle blowers when the mine site and surrounding environment (including the water table) goes through the “reclamation” process.

There are alternatives to allowing the wanton destruction of our state. We can get politically active, and support only candidates with a platform that will protect you and yours. Stop voting straight-ticket D and straight ticket R and start supporting third-party alternatives. And for God’s sake stop voting for the “lesser of two evils” when all both major parties have been offering are two sides of the same filthy coal company scrip!

You could do as most of West Virginia’s registered voters do most of the time and boycott politics entirely. And that’s fine, just so long as you understand that the act of not voting has always been a vote for the status quo. The sad turnout at our elections is clear evidence of how effective the corporate media is at alienating and confusing potential voters. Their strategy is to get all but the wealthiest voters to simply hunker down and accept the idea of being nothing more than collateral damage, and to never question the integrity of our political system.

If you get a chance, read Don’t Buy Another Vote, I Won’t Pay for a Landslide: The Sordid And Continuing History of Political Corruption in West Virginia by Allen H. Loughry and you’ll begin to understand how and why the Citizen’s United decision changed very little in how West Virginia is run.

BTW Originally a registered Democrat, Loughry is currently running as a Republican candidate in the 2012 election for the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia. He changed parties when West Virginia’s Democratic Party essentially threw him out for revealing too much. Needless to say, WV’s Republican Party doesn’t seem too thrilled that a truth-teller is running in their party, either.