Maybe It Should Be "Mars Day"

Worried that NASA's plans for getting men to Mars are going to take too long or cost too much?  Don't fret yourself.

If you can't take people to Mars, you can certainly bring Mars to the people.  

This is a place where "moving mountains" is no longer a figure of speech. Here, among the steep green Appalachians, mining companies are moving mountains off their pedestals to get the kind of coal that Washington needs.

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"It used to be West Virginia," said Vivian Stockman, an environmental activist. "And now it's Mars."

The connection between mountaintop removal mining and Washington D.C. is both political and physical.  Big coal lobbies hard to keep this abomination going, despite laws that were intended to make mountaintop removal illegal decades ago.  The Bush administration has obliged the industry with ruling after ruling that has weakened environmental laws and made the most destructive practices more profitable year after year.  And as more of the Appalachians are reduced to rubble, the bones of the mountains are being burned right down the road.  

The D.C. region, with its need for electricity skyrocketing, has been burning steadily more coal, buying almost a third of its supply from this part of Appalachia.

And that, analysts and environmentalists said, means that Washington's air conditioners and iPods have helped drive the region's "mountaintop" mining.

Communities destroyed forever, mountains a billion years in the making and some of the most diverse forests on the continent reduced to lifeless plains.  In exchange, lobbyists and politicians stay cool and get their tunage.  That may not sound like a fair deal to you, but the companies and their supporters in Washington think it's great.

The electricity for today's Earth Day celebrations in Washington D.C., will be provided by the utter destruction of ancient mountains.  There's no better example of all talk, no action.

When they're not turning the United States into Mars, they're busy treating it like a third world country where it's easier to bribe judges and buy politicians than it is to follow the rules.

That support and [Massey Energy CEO] Blankenship's friendship with Chief Justice Elliott 'Spike' Maynard have come under increasing national scrutiny in recent months. Photographs of Blankenship and Maynard together in Monaco while Massey had cases pending before the court surfaced in January.

National attention did finally force Chief Justice "Spike" to recuse himself (though he swore that trip to the Riviera wouldn't affect his impartiality), but this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how MTR operators are running roughshod over congress and the judiciary.  It starts with state and local officials, many of whom are put in place through dollars coming from the companies.  Want to try getting a judge to stop an illegal MTR operation, when that judge's campaign was completely funded by the company involved?

Make no mistake.  Mountaintop removal mining is hugely profitable.  It employs far fewer miners than other methods, and avoids all that pesky reclamation that's required under other methods of mining.  Companies that practice this technique are raking it in as the price of coal soars along with that of oil, and guys like Blankenship can buy a local judge with their pocket change

Blankenship's 2007 salary, bonus and perks, including use of a company-owned house, topped $23.7 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday. Blankenship's compensation totaled more than $17.5 million in 2006.

Add to that 35% raise on an already stratospheric salary perks like a company home and a company plane.  It would be hard to find a more egregious example of the disparity between how an executive lives and how his workers live, or in the case of Massey, how those workers die.

How far is Blankenship willing to go to make sure his company has free reign to wreck the mountains?  This far.

Over the years, he has dipped into his own pocket to support West Virginia political candidates, including approximately $3.5 million to help state Supreme Court Justice Brent Benjamin, a Republican, defeat an incumbent Democrat in 2004.

Benjamin is just another of those judges who will rule "impartially" on the violations Massey has turned into standard practice.  

But the momentum at the federal level is changing.  The Clean Water Protection Act now has 133 sponsors which is thirty more than it had not so long ago.  At the state level, states like Tennessee are coming closer to enacting their own bans.  Though Senator Clinton has delivered a mixed message on MTR, more and more legislators are coming to understand that mountaintop removal isn't just bad for the environment, it's bad for the economy.  

Let's leave Mars on Mars, and save what little of Earth remains.