A scary business

I mentioned earlier that I just got around to reading Laurence Leamer's The Price of Justice: A True Story of Greed and Corruption, about WV's adventures in Masseyland. Here's a paragraph that jumped at me:

Blankenship and his cohorts made it a scary business to live in West Virginia and dare to suggest that the state could no longer be so dependent on coal for economic growth. Not a single major politician in the state directly faced the realities of a declining coal industry and a future in which, if the state's leaders did not wake up, the historic coal fields would be nothing but wastelands of the lost and the left behind. Politicians knew if they offered even the mildest criticism, the coal industry would immediately vilify them as traitors and look for ambitious candidates to challenge them. There would be no easy solutions and no technical magic wand that could place mini-Silicon Valleys, for instance, up mountain hollows--but no one was asking the questions that had to be asked.

I would say there there were some exceptions, such as Senator Byrd in his last years or Senator Rockefeller as he approaches retirement. There are even some state legislators who want to move in a post-colonial direction. But overall the paragraph stands.

HERE'S A SURPRISE. The rich rule.

ON THE BRIGHT SIDE, nonviolence trumps violence when it comes to making revolutions.

SPEAKING OF VIOLENCE, this item argues that climate change is just that.

DOING THE NUMBERS. Here's a look at health care reform enrollment.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Quick shout out

I admit it, I'm behind the times. I just got around to reading Laurence Leamer's 2013 book The Price of Justice: A True Story of Greed and Corruption. My pet name for the book is Alice in MasseyLand, except Alice isn't a character.

The world it describes, that of the almost unchallenged power of the no longer existent Massey Energy and its former CEO Don Blankenship, is as weird in its own right as was the one the fictional  Alice found down the rabbit hole.

If you haven't read it yet, I highly recommend it. I was involved in dealing with many of the same issues, but in different arenas. It was quite enlightening to read this account. I almost feel like I finally understand many things that were going on, like watching a previously unintelligible foreign movie with English subtitles.

If you do read it, you will no doubt understand and support my personal campaign to change the state motto of West Virginia from "Mountaineers are always free" (which used to be true before so many of my fellow West Virginians acquired the habit of corporate servility) to "You can't make this **** up," which at least is current.