Jay Dee's Post

By Jeff Biggers The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very like to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well? — Henry David Thoreau, Walden He’s sitting in the Southern Regional Jail, in [...]

By Jeff Biggers What’s the matter with the Democrats in the Midwest and the challenge of coal? Have they turned their backs on the great American pastoral and our devastated coalfield communities and gobbled up the hook-line-and-sinker of Big Coal public relations shams and Big Coal lobby money? Instead of making false promises of more boom-bust jobs in [...]

by Ken Ward Jr. Well, the race to stand up for coal continues at the West Virginia Legislature … Yesterday, the Coal Association lobbyists gave their pitch about mining permits to the special committee set up by House Speaker Rick Thompson. There are reports out from Larry Messina at The Associated Press and Ry Rivard at the Daily [...]

by Ken Ward Jr. You’ve got to hand it to the Daily Mail’s George Hohmann for organizing a media protest of Gov. Joe Manchin’s closed-door meeting about the future of the South Charleston Technology Park. Gov. Manchin talks a lot about how he wants his administration to be open, but more and more — when a difficult [...]

By Jeff Biggers No American leader has done more to advance a clean energy future than President Obama. Nor has any American president done more to invoke a mandate for stricter workplace safety and environmental regulations. And yet, ever since President Obama ?rst visited my native southern Illinois coal?elds in 1997 on a golf outing with a [...]

by Ken Ward Jr. If you follow the federal Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement’s Web site, you may have noticed a half-dozen or more new entries under the “News and Stories” section. OSMRE staff have been busy posted photos and captions from agency Director Joe Pizarchik’s late January tour of the West Virginia coalfields. There are [...]

by Ken Ward Jr. Italy’s Pietro Cottrer collapses on the finish line after winning a silver medal in the men’s cross-country15-kilometre free event at Whistler Olympic Park on Monday, February 15, 2010 at the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Winter Games in Whistler, British Columbia. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Andrew Vaughan) When you’re enjoying more of the Winter Olympics [...]

Question 1 Illegal immigration This was Quoted from Shelly Moore Capito’s web site. “Cracking down on illegal immigration begins with protecting our borders which leads to a secure nation. Capito fully supports efforts to build a security fence along the U.S.-Mexico border, including efforts to build a virtual fence that uses cameras, sensors, and motion detectors. Capito [...]

There are 13000 registered lobyist in Washington That is over 24 per member of the house and senate. But we don’t really know how many lobbyists there are because if a lobbyist spends less than 20% of their time lobbying they don’t have to register. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce spent $144 million on its lobbying [...]

by Ken Ward Jr. Investigators from the U.S. Chemical Safety Board are said to be close to reaching a deal that would allow them to do their job of looking into what caused last Sunday’s terrible explosion that killed 5 workers at the Kleen Energy Systems power plant construction site. But CSB’s investigation was stalled for [...]