Seven steps to fight for WV that you must take NOW. Ignore the wave of populist anger at your peril.
WV #WokeAF and Angry
Salting the Earth in WV
A study of frack water's effect on WV forests ended tragically: "Forest Service researchers sprayed more than 80,000 gallons of fracking fluid on a half-acre area of hardwood trees in the Fernow Experimental Forest, a plot within the Monongahela Forest in West Virginia. They immediately observed 'severe damage and mortality of ground vegetation' and, 10 days later, premature leaf drop. Two years after spraying, 56 percent of the large trees were dead."
The Economics of Extraction Debt
No longer do Robber Barons need to plunder villages with swords and arms. With regulatory and/or judicial complicity, the extraction industry can jab a siphon into our veins and drain our lives away. They simply appropriate our air and water, and transform them into wealth for themselves. In essence, Extraction Debt is the modern weapon of corporate pillage. Launch it at a community, and watch the fiscal destruction that follows.
Fracking Royalty Ripped-off
They're having the same problems in Pennsylvania:
Top 4 Questionable WV Politicians
4. The WV DEP. This is not a politician, of course, but I’ll call out the secretary who directs the department. By not taking part in the court actions against Jim Justice mines, it looks as if the WV DEP is responding to behind-the-scenes pressure. WV DEP Secretary Randy Huffman has already stated that he can’t do a good job of protecting people here in Ritchie and Doddridge...
To Catch the Conscience of King Coal
Ken Ward: "The questions that need asked in the wake of this deal between EPA and Jim Justice are less about whether Justice got special treatment, but whether really the entire mining industry gets special treatment — whether we should accept hundreds (or even thousands) of environmental and workplace safety violations as just the cost of doing business. And not for nothing, but we should also be asking questions about exactly how candidates who proclaim that they would end this way of doing business would do so — and political skills to build the sort of support doing so would require, given the state’s and the Legislature’s overall politics. Changing the way we interact with coal companies, or natural gas operators for that matter, isn’t something that can be done with the wave of some magic wand."
4 types of politicians opposing cannabis
Cannabis legalization has failed in WV under the leadership of both parties. Cannabis is NOT an issue of party, here. Who opposes legalization, then? Four types of politicians support cannabis prohibition... 1....
West Virginia’s Resource Curse
Frack executives have specifically stated that they site "shale gas wells away from large homes where wealthy people live and who might have the money to fight such drilling and fracking operations."
The Party of Dirty Tricks
Which is the party of dirty tricks here in WV? Both, sadly. But the latest example comes from my own party, via WV State Democratic Party chair Belinda Biafore.
Landsplaining
The governor is quoted as commending Antero's project. But a quick check shows me that among his campaign donors were the President and CFO of Antero, Glen Warren Jr; Paul Rady (Chairman and CEO); his wife Katy; the Senior Vice President Steven Woodward...
The Appalachian Oracle 