NASHVILLE — In advance of legislative hearings today on a bill banning “mountaintop” removal of coal in the state, the Tennessee Conservative Union on Tuesday launched a blistering ad attack on the practice and charged the Volunteer State will “become the first state in America to permit a communist Chinese company to destroy our mountains.”
TCU Chairman Lloyd Daugherty said, “Every Tennessean, regardless of political affiliation, should be appalled by the idea of allowing the red Chinese to destroy the very mountains crossed by Daniel Boone.”
While Tennessee is “a proud red [Republican] state … the Tennessee Conservative Union is not willing to go that red,” Daugherty said.
He noted that while the group, which bills itself as the state’s largest and oldest conservative group, is “100 percent pro-coal, [however] our organization does not support destroying our mountain heritage.”
He charged that using explosives on ridges above 2,000 feet “kills mining jobs because it takes fewer workers to blow up a mountain.”
The ad alludes to a Wall Street Journal MarketWatch article from last May that revealed China-based Guizhou Gouchuang Energy Holdings Group said it had raised $616 million in a private placement to be used mainly to acquire and develop Triple H Coal Co. in Jacksboro, Tenn.
That would make Guizhou Gouchuang the first Chinese company to invest in coal in America, MarketWatch reported.
The ad comes off as anti-China, but it also offers a critique of mountaintop removal coal mining in general, which is the big news here. The ad comes just a day before committees in both the state Senate and House are expected to vote on the Scenic Vistas Protection Act, a bill activists have been trying to get passed in the state for six years. The measure would make it illegal to blow up mountaintops to mine coal. Supporters are taking TCU’s support for the bill as a sign that it might gain more traction this year.
“The Tennessee Conservative Union is 100% pro-Coal, but our organization does not support destroying our mountain heritage,” TCU Chairman Lloyd Daugherty said in a statement Tuesday. “Mountaintop removal mining kills jobs because it takes fewer workers to blow up a mountain.”
JW Randolph, Tennessee director of Appalachian Voices, a group that has been working to pass the anti-mountaintop removal law, welcomed the ad. “We don’t care if you’re from Bristol or Beijing, blowing up the oldest mountains in America for a few tons of coal is a bad idea,” he said.
Being 100% pro-coal is like being 100% pro-smoking – for children.
Thanks! My local paper appearing here yet again in a positive light.
Technically it is the Cumberland plateau not Appalachian mountain
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumberland_Plateau
So don’t bad mouth half breeds Conservative, we have spent a considerable amount of time and resources to make this area pro green with Conservative (round peg in a flat earth hole)
Scenic Vistas Protection Act is top on our list
Notice the gratuitous photo of Obama shaking hands with a Chinese leader.
Scumball tactics!
If you vote for globalization and free trade, you get globalization and free trade.
Communist? Chinese? Today?
I suppose technically in name, sort of. But c’mon, in practice aren’t they about the best capitalists in the world!
The Best Capitalists? I reckon it depends on what one’s definition of capitalism is. This comes pretty close to mine:
Or this:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/03/china-environment-idUSL3E7H30FL20110603
Or this:
http://www.dw.de/economic-growth-chokes-china/a-16395393
Capitalism is excellent at extracting wealth from the environment – at the cost of the environment and at the cost of both the health and financial welfare of future generations. There probably ISN’T a better system at making some people incredibly wealthy and at making the present generation, if not wealthy (and most of America is far from wealthy), than at least comfortable. But to do so it extracts a terrible price on the future.
These are the ‘externalities’ ignored or rationalized by the free market theologians.
On China being communist or capitalist, they’re both. They basically discarded the economic aspects of communism and kept the political aspects. It’s actually the perfect breeding ground for capitalism to succeed – a population tightly controlled allows all sorts of excesses to go unchecked.
Where, exactly, does it imply that “that’s our job?”
the group insists they are 100 percent behind coal mining.
presumably they will now run ads against US companies that are blowing up mountains.
“He charged that using explosives on ridges above 2,000 feet “kills mining jobs because it takes fewer workers to blow up a mountain.”
Implies it pretty clearly, I think.
So that presumption is what you’ve put in your headline, not the facts? Misleading at best. The link that brought me here (from Planet 3.0’s twitter feed) only has, as you’d expect, the headline. There’s no such implication, let alone an unambiguous statement. If anything, the ad implies that they WOULD be against US companies blowing up Tennessee mountains.
Currently we have US Companies using mountain top removal. The group is now pushing the Full Ban On MT removal. Only new ones so both of you are right.
Heart-wrenching – simply heart wrenching. Proud noble working class face the facts: They were sold out by their own kind, who took the “Capital” the peons earned with their sweat and blood, their ‘stake’ in this land, the future promise for their children, and moved it to Communist Chinese investments for a larger ROI there, nation building there, promising futures for the peons there. These financiers, these cold-blooded unpatriotic corporatists now enjoy full bank accounts, uber rich lives abroad, while the “stakeholders” in Tennessee face unemployment, poorest schools ever, bad food, lives in shacks, and a future as semi-slaves for Communist Chinese overlords, in the new N Korea in America. We are witnessing the beginning of the end of the 20th Century “Golden Age” of America, and the 21st Century evolution of China and the Pan Eurasian Alliances to Empire status – on capital originated in America, earned by sweat blood and tears of American peons. God help and protect the noble, patriot Americans for they have been soundly sold out by their own flesh and blood for a few gold coins. Put down your flags, put away your side arms, swallow your pride, and bow down your heads in slavery before your new, Asian masters.
Failed American Policy:
“It is imperative that no Eurasian challenger emerges, capable of dominating Eurasia and thus of also challenging America… In that context, how America ‘manages’ Eurasia is critical… the three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together.” – Zbigniew Brezinski, The Grand Chessboard
and your goddamned corporatists sold you out to China.
Prepare now to satisfy the Angry Zionists ( a very small cult of power brokers) in Israel with a nuclear holocaust, fought by your daughters and sons, spilling their , American blood in foreign lands, at your expense, to further enslave, abuse, Palestinians, for meaningless ideological differences from the 10th century, to prevent a balance of ‘plutonium power’ in the Middle East, while China excels at education, technology, and Science, and moves into a bright new 21st century, burning your mountains of coal, in newer higher temperature, higher efficiency, superior ceramics lined, cleaner, furnaces of their own design, in a transition there to full Thorium fissioning technologies, suppressed in America by the current Nuclear Establishment to protect their invested interests. Capitalism morphed to corporatism in America – and marked the end of freedom and the enslavement of the peon there.
Step away from the keyboard. Look outside. Doesn’t that fresh air look inviting? Go get some…please.
“Drought is likely to become the ‘new normal’
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/03/21/nzdr-m21.html
We’re gonna miss you Annie, here comes no rain again….
Well, if you consider that there were multiple, multi-decade-long, severe droughts in the US Breadbasket during the Medieval Warm Period, then maybe it’s likely to become the ‘ye old normal’ too!
To complain that the article banner is misleading is to completely misunderstand satire. Maybe thats why I like Peter’s articles so much. I love the headline “Wind turbine syndrome is bullshit”. Highly technical.