May 25, 2010

Mr Barack Obama

President of the United States of America

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW

Washington DC20500

Dear Mr. President Obama,

The United State of America is a truly wonderful country that we are so blessed to call home. These United States are intended to be exactly that…United. United and equal, treated the same in regards to the law. Not red states or blue states, not states to reward or to shun. Your job as President is to lead this great country in a united front towards progress. Instead, you’re presidency rewards those who supported your campaign and ideas, and punishes those who voted for the other candidate.

No, West Virginia citizens did not vote for you in 2008. In neither the primary or general elections. Why? I believe it is pretty obvious. Your attack on coal, and yes, I said YOUR attack on coal.

A report by the Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee of the U.S. Senate indicates thousands of West Virginia jobs are endangered by the EPA’s continuing withholding of mining permits across the state.
 
According to the report, entitled “The Obama Administration’s Obstruction of Coal Mining Permits in Appalachia,” the EPA’s policies threaten almost 6,000 mining jobs as well as some $217 million in tax revenues for the state. In addition, the report indicates that on a regional basis, the EPA obstruction endangers more than 160,000 jobs.
 
In fact, the report indicates the EPA’s action is only part of a “broader agenda” to “drastically curtail coal mining in Appalachia.” 
 

By William Yeatman

Just because coal is an inanimate object doesn't mean President Obama's war on coal avoids human casualties. I witnessed the collateral damage to coal-dependent communities on Tuesday at the Charleston Civic Center in West Virginia, where hundreds of people gathered to demand that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) spare their livelihoods.

In Mr. Obama's war on coal, the most intensive front has been waged against a particular kind of mining, known as mountain-top removal (MTR). It involves blowing off the top of mountains to get at the underlying coal seams, and it is essential for the Appalachian coal industry's competitiveness vis-a-vis growing production west of the Mississippi. But it is anathema to environmentalists, a major constituency within the president's Democratic Party.

MELVILLE — Roger Ramey smiled as he stood on the landing strip at the Logan County Airport yesterday and watched the Hercules C-130 aircraft land.

Ramey, who retired after 20 years in the U.S. Air Force and is the senior board member on the Logan County Airport Authority, said watching the airplane land was a "dream come true."

"This is a lifelong dream," Ramey said. "When I was in the Air Force and stationed overseas in the 1970s, I heard through my parents that they were planning to build an airport here. I thought I'd spent enough time in the Air Force that I could come back to Logan and get a job at the airport. It didn't progress as big and as fast as I'd have liked and I spent 20 years in the Air Force and when I got out, we came back to Logan and I got a job with the railroad.