And I don't mean that as a pun. Coal has no upside, no good side. This may not be a topic many of you hear about in some parts of the country, or abroad. But here in KY, we hear about coal ALL the time. So let me give you a little overview of the realities of the coal industry.

::EDIT:: I just found out one of the sites I quote here is spoof site. SO, yes, I was a bit punked, but the actual response to that site from its target, Peabody Energy is almost as outrageous, Check back for updated info soon!::

( This is a bit long, but worth reading, and very, very important. )

Another very disturbing dimension of the recent legal maneuverings in Michigan is that it's not alone. There are a significant number of the current crop of governors and state legislators enacting, or trying to enact, strikingly similar legislation. We have seen this with the union-busting measures in Wisconsin, Ohio, and other states, and it's looking like Scott Walker may try to enact a the same emergency powers arrangement in Wisconsin as well.

Now none of this seems too far fetched for the Tea Party. However, it is interesting when one takes a step back and wonders exactly how did all these state-level politicians all come up with the same legislative initiatives at the same time? If you're thinking they must have some 'sooper seekrit' neo-con policy handbook, you're not too far off.

Introducing the American Legislative Exchange Council (or ALEC). A conservative legislative policy group, they provide boilerplate ideas designed for implementation by state legislators and aimed at dismantling unions, regulation, pretty much everything they don't want to have to contend with. Membership is open to state legislators (for an affordable $100 a year), but boasts an impressive cadre of corporate sponsor/members as well (for the far more significant $5,000-50,000 per).

So what, right? After all, industry folks flock together at conferences; it's what they do. It's as inevitable as geese flocking in the fall. Chiropractors, shoe salesmen, grocers - they all have organizations where they compare notes, show off, trade ideas. What's the big deal?

Well, let's look at who founded ALEC, and who the big names are. ALEC's founders include:
-Paul Weyrich, a long time Right Wing activist, and one of the founders of the Moral Majority, founder of the Heritage Foundation, and known for his dominionist leanings.
-Henry Hyde, of the Hyde Amendment fame, another long-time conservative stalwart, and a banner bearer in the Clinton impeachment proceedings, internet censorship, and other Religious Right causes.
-Lou Barnett, former Political Director of the American Conservative Union, National Director of Reagan’s Political Action Committee, "Citizens for the Republic, and central to the revival of CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference.

The real clincher is the big money though. ALEC, in 2000, collected $56,126 in dues from members who were legislators. However, their total revenues were $5,685,299, almost 100 times that much. That money comes from big money corporate interests. Represented among the big money contributors and members? Amoco Corporation, Archer Daniels Midland , Koch Industries, Coors Brewing Co, Verizon Communications, Inc., PhRMA (Big pharmaceuticals), Pfizer Inc..... it's a regular Who's Who of corporate America.

According to reports from people who've been in these conferences, the agendas tend to run on two tracks: enabling corporations (by union-busting, stripping regulations, etc. ALEC was also behind the recent bills criminalizing attempts to expose cruelty or unsanitary conditions at factory farms.) and social conservatism (opposing health care reform, global warming denial, anti-environmentalism, anti-immigration, etc.). Groups like Family Research Council and the Pro-Family Legislative Network are represented in ALEC as well.

Read more on this story at these links:
SmartALEC: Dragging the Secretive Conservative Organization Out of the Shadows
ALEC fingered as source of coordinated anti-union, anti-immigration legislation
Creating a Right-Wing Nation, State by State
American Legislative Exchange Council - Source Watch.org
American Legislative Exchange Council | Right Wing Watch
Gov Rick Snyder Sellout? Prefabricated Corporate Michigan (Government) Courtesy of Koch & ALEC
FORTUNE - The big political player you've never heard of

For those of you who may still be able to delude yourselves into denying that the RepubliCorp Party is screwing the poor so the rich can get just a tiny bit richer, I hope this will settle the question.

If you don't know this, the state of Michigan recently passed legislation allowing the governor to declare "financial emergency" in towns or school districts and appoint someone to fire local elected officials, break contracts, seize and sell assets, and eliminate services. Under the law whole cities or school districts could be eliminated without any public participation or oversight, and the elected officials of such a town or city may be rendered powerless under the authority of an "Emergency Manager."

This law has been touted as a dramatic measure needed to save communities in dire conditions, and stop corrupt local governments from hampering effort at revitalizing renewal effort. It has, however, been put into effect for the first time in Benton Harbor, a small predominantly black town in SW Michigan. While it's true that this town has been in trouble for decades, this is not the 'saving the town' measure the Repubs may want you to think it is....

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

AND... we are going to arrest anyone who objects, First Amendment be damned, our legally elected official be damned.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

This is infuriating beyond measure. Can we really look at this and not see shades of totalitarianism? Is this where we are now? And from all indications, a similar measure is being drafted in Wisconsin....

Courtesy of DailyKos

http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/KM1ZP7J14S0/-Assault-on-student-voting:-Just-the-latest-GOP-overreach

The right to cast a ballot and choose one's representatives in government from alderman to president is viewed as a quintessential and inalienable right of the American democratic experience. The expansion of this right to an ever-wider range of previously disenfranchised populations has been a cornerstone of all the great civil rights movements in America. And not coincidentally, these expansions have been opposed by conservatives at every turn.

The original American conservatives were the Tories, who opposed the very idea of a free America and wanted to ensure that the only "voter" who mattered was the King of England, but their undemocratic ideas were defeated by a popular revolution and the radical notion of Thomas Jefferson that people should be able to choose their leaders—or at the very least, the white landowners who were the only ones really considered people at the time. Subsequent generations saw a gradual expansion of the franchise: to those who did not own land, to blacks, to women, and finally, to young people between the ages of 18 and 20 who had the obligation to fight in our country's wars, but did not have the right to vote for the people who got to declare them.

At every step of the way, these movements were opposed—often with violence—by conservatives who wanted to keep things exactly the way they were and leave the decision-making in the hands of the people who most resembled them, rather than see rights be expanded to entire groups of people who just might have a different political perspective. Not coincidentally, these groups of more recently enfranchised voters tend to vote far less conservatively; it's a natural instinct, after all, not to vote for the politicians who promise to follow in the footsteps of those who actively sought to curtail hard-fought freedoms.

Because of this, many conservative politicians have done their absolute best to limit the voting rights of the types of people who would generally vote against them—most often black voters or young voters, since these two groups are the ones most likely to vote for Democrats. (If conservatives could successfully attempt to restrict the rights of women to vote, they probably would, but women are evenly distributed throughout the population, while black voters and young voters tend to live in more concentrated areas such as particular neighborhoods or college towns, making their usual voter-caging and voter-suppression tactics far more actionable.) Stringent voter ID laws have been introduced in several conservative-leaning states under the premise that they are urgently needed to prevent voter fraud, even though only a handful of cases of voter fraud are ever prosecuted in a given year.

The real objective of these bills, of course, is to make it harder for Democratic-leaning voters—poorer people, immigrants, and young voters especially—to cast a ballot. This real objective was never explicitly stated, of course—until now. New Hampshire State Representative Gregory Sorg recently sponsored a flatly unconstitutional statute to eliminate the right of New Hampshire's college students to cast a ballot where they go to school. But most crucially, his argument against the franchise for students was not based on their residency, but based on the decisions they made when voting:

In prepared remarks, Sorg referred to students as "transient inmates . . . with a dearth of experience and a plethora of the easy self-confidence that only ignorance and inexperience can produce."He wasn't alone: these same sentiments were echoed by New Hampshire House Speaker O'Brien, who also felt that younger voters should be disenfranchised until they learned to vote his way:

New Hampshire's new Republican state House speaker is pretty clear about what he thinks of college kids and how they vote. They're "foolish," Speaker William O'Brien said in a recent speech to a tea party group.

"Voting as a liberal. That's what kids do," he added, his comments taped by a state Democratic Party staffer and posted on YouTube. Students lack "life experience," and "they just vote their feelings.

Conservatives have always wanted to do this. They have always felt that students and minorities should not be able to vote because they don't make the same decisions. But until now, they have never had the temerity to come out and say it. Similarly, conservatives have always wanted to destroy public employee unions. They have long chipped around the edges and made hints and rumblings. But until now, they have never dared to do what Gov. Scott Walker has done in Wisconsin. In like fashion, conservatives have always wanted to roll the clock back on women's rights. They have gradually restricted abortion rights in all the ways they possibly could under the constitution, and hinted that birth control was a net negative for society. But now they dare to openly change the definition of rape and defund the vital family planning and cancer prevention services that so many women of lesser means rely on.

Just like the all-out conservative assault on women and on public employee unions, this new assault on the voting rights of our youth is an example of the type of overreach that will once again doom the GOP to minority status in the years to come. Voters were frustrated with Democrats in 2010 that not enough progress had been made on jobs. They did not vote for the GOP because they truly wanted to see the elimination of the labor movement, access to birth control, and voting rights for college students. The biggest mistake made by conservative politicians is a fundamental belief that their skill in messaging and winning elections truly translates into real support for their actual policy ideas. If they keep going down this road, they will soon find out the truth—the hard way.

Read this: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/02/21/947947/-The-Koch-Brothers-End-Game-in-Wisconsin

No, really, I mean it; read it. This union thing? It's a shell game, a diversion. A Big, loud, straw man. Not that it's not important, far from it! Selling out the infrastructure workers anywhere is not just bad business, it's monumentally stupid. Not that Walker won't take whatever concessions he can wring from the unions along the way, and be damned happy about it; we all know he will. But let's review a few things:

Wisconsin HAD a budget surplus when Walker came into office.

Wisconsin lost that surplus almost immediately to "business tax cuts" (I'm guessing I know which kinds of businesses benefitted from those cuts, and it's NOT the local, small businesses....) and a health care bill that Walker put in place.

NOW Walker has this mad crisis to offset the deficit (which he created.)

So enter the deunionizing schtick, which everyone knows won't help the budget, but will only hurt more or less everyone.

Now, let's pause here, and look at Walker's big supporters. To whom does Walker owe his office? It's not a new or unknown name, and it's no surprise either. Koch brothers, directly, and through the sort of money-shifting voodoo they do so well, pretty much bought this guy the Governorship.

OK, here's where it gets dicey, but stick with me a minute more. Why does this matter? What do the Koch brothers or their interests have to do with unions in Wisconsin? Well, not much, and that's just the mystery. Until one looks closely at the REST of the budget Walker is pushing.

Say Walker concedes on the union issues, and admits defeat. The Dems come home, the budget passes, and there is much rejoicing. But what's in the rest of the budget? How about this little gem, so far unnoticed, and unremarked:

"Sale or contractual operation of state−owned heating, cooling, and power plants. (1) Notwithstanding ss. 13.48 (14) (am) and 16.705 (1), the department may sell any state−owned heating, cooling, and power plant or may contract with a private entity for the operation of any such plant, with or without solicitation of bids, for any amount that the department determines to be in the best interest of the state."

I hear you saying "Huh?" What this little bit of jargon does is allow the state government to sell off any public utility or power plant to a private entity anytime, for whatever price it likes, with no oversight. Let that sink in a second.

By sneaking this provision in under the union kerfluffle, Walker can now hand over Wisconsin's public utilities to anyone he likes. And who do we suppose he likes? The folks that put him in office, of course. Considering the assets already owned by the Kochs in Wisconsin, this could create a staggering monopoly.

So if Walker's budget, even with removal of the anti-union component, passes with this provision, the only thing keeping such a monopoly from happening would be Walker's sense of fair play and desire to protect the citizens of Wisconsin from being raped at the hands of a massive corporate monopoly.

Anyone want to take any bets on that?

Didn't think so.

Spread the word, pass this around.....

Published on Right Wing Watch (http://www.rightwingwatch.org)

Religious Right Brings Back the Halal Meat Panic

There isn't a satirist out there that has a chance of running out of material!

I have decided to see just how bad things are. I took the transcript of Keith Olbermann's Special Comment "If the Tea Party wins, America loses," with its laundry list of the insanity from the Tea Party, and checked it against the election results. Let's see how many of the nutjobs he mentions won their races, shall we? I bolded those who won, italicized those who did not. If the race has not been called, it's underlined with the percent up or down in parens. Remember, as you read, the people whose names are in bold are now numbered among our nation's lawmakers. I warn you, it's not a pretty picture....

( The list portion is under a cut, for those who want to preserve their belief that America makes any kind of sense at all. (And because it's long, but mostly the former) )

Olbermann closed by saying, among other things: "You are willing to let these people run this country? This is the America you want? This is the America you are willing to permit? These are the kinds of cranks, menaces, mercenaries and authoritarians you will turn this country over to?"

The answer is apparently yes. Not all the loonies made it, true. Some of the most bizarre were weeded out, true. But a lot got it. A whole lot. Over the next two years, we MUST fight to take it back, to discredit the insane Tea Party, to push these lawmakers to reveal their flaws, show their agendas. And in two years, we have to make it right. The democratic congress blew it in the last two years. And we blew it this fall. We have two years to get our shit together and make damned sure we don't blow it again.

Get out and vote! Many people fought hard for you to have the right to vote. Of course, you can choose not to exercise that right. But today - this is a day that could change so many things, for better or worse. I know many of the Democratic candidates are disappointing. Trust me, we have some duds here, too. But look long and hard at the alternatives before choosing not to vote, or to vote third party. If your Republican candidates are anything like mine, or many of the ones we've seen in recent weeks, is this *really* the election you want to walk away from? Do we want Christine O'Donnell and Rand Paul and others like them plotting the course of our futures, even for a few years?

Please, vote today.