Over Labor Day weekend we’re going to see a massive political event promoting climate change denial and mountaintop mining according to Credo. Some 25,000 people have signed up for the event. The same climate skeptics will be on board to include Lord Monkton, as well as, the usual messengers of the far right like Sean Hannity. And not a surprise, Ted Nugent will supply music. Hank Williams will even be on board. It’s being dubbed the “Friends of America Rally.”
How friendly is it? The rallies are nothing more than the tangible power of polluting industries like coal and oil that are backing them and strangling the rest of America from moving forward with clean energy jobs, work on new infrastructure to deliver that clean energy, and economic turnaround, not to mention the health aspects of cleaner air and water for generations to come.
It’s ludicrous to call this movement “friendly” to America at all. Who releases invisible, and sometimes odorless, but nevertheless harmful pollutants into the air that also ends up in our water? Who dumps chemicals, drugs, and makes huge environmental mistakes like oil spills and coal slurry spills into our waterways? And did it ever occur to anyone that when we’re assured from the different polluting entities that the parts per million or PPM that is being released is well within the limits of what is healthful for humans that there are 100’s of other industries saying likewise? So the safe limits of PPM of mercury, ammonia, carcinogens from incinerators, and the thousands of supposedly controlled substances entering the air meet up with the PPM limits of mercury, lead, pharmaceutical compounds, big Ag runoff and the like found in our drinking water that meet up with the sometimes tainted food we eat full of additives like corn syrup solids that help along the Type II diabetes problem in the U.S.
The industries that do this to our air, water, and food protest global warming as way to sideline the real issue, which is their pollution, in order stop any policies that might make them clean up their mess, and to avert new green industry that is competition. It’s one of the greediest ploys ever and polluting industry is pulling out all the stops. They put saving jobs out front at these rallies to mask the bad they do to the environment and all of us including their employees in the long run. The rise in cancer rates and new diseases isn’t a coincidence but may be more of an indication of what we’re really eating, breathing, and drinking.
These anti-environmental rallies are called “grassroots” events but DeSmogBlog dubbed them “glorified company picnics.” A New Mexico blog FBIHOP reported: “The Houston Astroturf event [was] an ‘energy employee’s rally’ a more fitting description of the closed door event that drew somewhere between 2,500-3,500 oil industry employees who were bussed in and given yellow ‘Energy Citizen’ t-shirts in “‘another high-priced photo op for the oil and gas industry.’”
It was also stated that one of the rallies in Texas was organized by the DW Turner PR firm that represents BP and Chevron.
The biggest “Friends of America” rally slated for Labor Day in West Virginia is no different. It’s backed by none other than Massey Energy that is a notoriously dirty coal company. According to the Rural Blog, The Lexington Herald-Leader reported:
Massey Energy Co. will pay a record $20 million for polluting streams around its coal mines in Kentucky and West Virginia, and spend another $10 million to prevent future problems. The lawsuit filed by the Environmental Protection Agency last May charged that Massey discharged excess amounts of metals, sediment and acid mine drainage into hundreds of rivers and streams in the two states.
The Rural Blog also included Louisville’s The Courier-Journal statement:
The civil penalty [for Massey] is the largest ever for violating wastewater discharge permits, and “stems from the massive, 300-million-gallon slurry spill in Martin County, Ky., in October 2000, often described as the southeastern United States’ worst environmental disaster, as well as 4,500 violations of Clean Water Act permits at mines in the two states. Many of the violations exceeded limits by 40 percent, with some pollutants discharged at levels more than 10 times their limit, the government said.
So if you run across Massey’s CEO Don Blankenship’s invitation to the Labor Day rally on You Tube where he says: “Hello I’m Don Blankenship and I’d like to invite you to a Labor Day rally in West Virginia. We’re going to have Hank Williams and have a good time but we’re also going to learn how environmental extremists and corporate America are both trying to destroy your jobs,” beware of the devil who likes to confuse.
Massey IS corporate America at its polluting finest. These rallies support the real extremists.
BTW the rallies aren’t limited to a few states. Michigan has one slated for September 3rd, Detroit’s Burton Manor Banquet and Conference Center.
http://www.allbusiness.com/legal/trial-procedure-suits-claims/10272123-1.html
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http://irjci.blogspot.com/2008/01/massey-paying-record-penalty-for-water.html.
http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/verizon_massey/?rc=homepage.
Listen here, buddy. Massey has done more good than bad for this country. Did your lights come on when you woke up this morning!? You’re welcome! You can say what you want about what this rally was about, it was actually about much more. The cap and trade BS is going to send this country straight to Hell. Yea let’s let china come over here and take our resources and put some of their people into power in our area…oh yea smart eh? Let’s take some of these jobs away from our working class and give them all to China.
This country was built upon the working class and yet we bring in someone into power who is doing more harm to it than good. Notice how much “change” has happened since Obama has come into power? I have…and it’s been shitty. Let’s get rid of more of these jobs, let’s put people on the street…it’s alright! Yea BULL SHIT it’s alright. No one shows how much harm he has done to this country, no instead they concentrate on his “date night” with his wife or it took him 8 months to find his kids a dog when he screwed up so many families in the matter of weeks. Way to go Obama…way to go! His wife even said this country is an “mean” country for crying out loud…what kind of family did we put into office here?
Oh yea sure…other jobs may open up from what they tell us, but how can they when they are all appearing overseas!? Why are we putting money into a country (Iraq) to rebuild it when there was nothing there in the first place!? WHAT ARE WE REBUILDING!?!?!? Haha nothing is exactly what we’re rebuilding. If anything we’re adding onto what they didn’t have.
OUR government is supposed to be looking out for OUR people! Not Iraq, not China, not Iran. Why do they insist on helping powers who OBVIOUSLY hate us and hurt us at the same time? If they really want to help out, why not get China to pass the Clean Air Act that was passed here in these here United States!?!? Answer that!
Even the British, who tried to take our freedom away from us long ago, are trying to help us keep our freedom now. If countries overseas can see how screwed up this stuff is, why can’t you!?
Blankenship, Nugent, Williams, and EVERYONE else who was involved in this event. God bless you! GOD bless you! You guys have inspired so many and pissed off even more. You have shaken the nerves of so many who want to ruin this country and you did it the right way. I attended that rally because I believe in what they say.
Where was your big rant when the U.S. went to war in Iraq not Afghanistan where 4,000 troops died? How about deregulation and tainted food and toys? Where’s the big free market system where I can shop around for a better deal when I do turn my lights on? BTW, if the sun is out on a winter day–I turn my heat off completely. Twelve feet of southern sun exposure heats my house. But oh no that will never work.
I don’t believe in cap and trade. I think anyone who pollutes should pay big time period. Obviously you didn’t read that 1/3 of all women have inorganic mercury in their blood and it accumulates. Where do you think all the mercury is coming from? COAL.
You want to talk China, then read this blog bucko: http://www.blogsmonroe.com/world/2009/08/while-we-continue-to-argue-about-global-warming-china-finds-going-green-very-profitable/.
Your kind of backward thinking is putting us even farther behind than what you believe progressives are doing. Baoding, China is already a model city of green over there. Wait until those industrious people start moving with that. They will be on top of the heap, with an even stronger economy.
Just because you probably won’t bother to read that blog, it says: “In three years, Yu (mayor of Baoding, China) has transformed Baoding from an automobile and textile town into the fastest-growing hub of solar, wind, and biomass energy-equipment makers in China. Baoding now has the highest growth rate of any city in Hebei Province. Its “Electricity Valley” industrial cluster – consciously modeled on Silicon Valley – has quadrupled its business.”
In just two more years, Baoding’s green industry will surpass its auto and manufacturing business in profits. The communist leaders are amazed and happy with the results.
Did you hear that? The COMMUNIST leaders in that country allowed Yu to shut down the polluting plants in his city because he found dead fish floating in the rivers and lakes. He lost 2% in annual economic growth at first. It looked like a big back step but when he moved forward with new industry it is surpassing all in growth.
Just what we need now over here is to ignore the competition again like our auto industry was accused and stick with the big polluters in the old fossil fuel world no one else will be using any more. Brilliant.