VA GOVERNOR MCDONNELL – COAL INDUSTRY STOOGE by John P. Flannery

Governor McDonnell - Stooge

Republican VA Governor Bob McDonnell would ravage the Appalachian mountain tops in Virginia and West Virginia for his coal mining handlers, erase them from the horizon, destroy what’s green, historic and vital, and depress nature’s landscape lower than the lowest known valley, leaving behind a scarred, unusable pale-colored waste land, with acrid pools of poisonous water and toxic gas.

On February 1, 2011, Governor Bob announced at a coal “awareness” breakfast in Richmond, Virginia that he would join forces with former West Virginia’s Governor Joe Manchin and fight the EPA’s effort to prevent mountain top removal in West Virginia.

Dave Bourne, who lives in Purcellville, said, "I was born and raised in West Virginia, my family was a coal mining family and many still live there.  My relatives attended the church where the families of the Sago mining disaster held funerals.  Why doesn't Bob McDonnell mind his own business."

Perhaps it’s because Governor Bob wants to ruthlessly exploit Virginia in the same fashion as former Governor Manchin did West Virginia, and help the A&G Coal Corp tap into the 1,300 acre Ison Rock Ridge mine in Southwest Virginia, unconcerned about the communities nearby, that is, Andover, Appalachia and Inman.

Governor Bob once promised Virginia more jobs but the removal of Thomas Jefferson’s mountains with machines will dramatically reduce the number of miners, hiring fewer machine operators to do the deed, cutting job benefits and labor costs, and guaranteeing greater profits to out-of-state mining companies.

Mountain top removal despoils valuable resources forever, and impoverishes the communities.  Families not only lose work, they are displaced from their homes.  Afterwards, they can’t dig wells in poisoned aquifers.  Nor can they breathe the air.

EPA’s published code orange and code red alerts inform us, at some distance from these mining sites, that the particle pollution is so severe that the 1.5 million area residents who have lung disease (asthma, emphysema or chronic bronchitis), or are children, older adults and active outdoor workers really should stay inside; it’s as if the coal industry turned a key in the lock, and imprisoned the fragile, in their greed for profit.

Bourne observed that these political leaders "don't live downwind of the toxines they release into the air we breathe and they don't drink the water that's been polluted by the runoff.  I know the people who do and the terrible conditions those miners work in and where their families live.  What Bob McDonnell is doing will spread the misery right here into Virginia."

True enough if Governor Bob has his way and Ison Rock Ridge Mine dumps 11 million cubic yards of rock, dirt and poisonous metals in nine neighboring valleys in Southwest Virginia, and destroys and pollutes their streams.

Know Governor Bob by his corrupting contributors over the last five years including Cumberland Resources ($500,000), Alpha Natural Resources ($155,000), AT Massey Coal Co. ($80,000), and Consolidated Energy Inc. ($80,000).

Bourne said, "If McDonnell wanted to do something worthwhile, he'd stand up for those families in West Virginia and he'd stand up for the families of the Commonwealth.  In McDonnell's world, however, it appears political contributions are more important than what's right."