When I was growing up in the fifties and sixties, my father, when discussing politics or politicians, would always end his discourse with, “They’re all a bunch of crooks.”  As a teenager, I marveled at the simplicity of this sentiment, giggled at the use of the prohibition-era term ‘crooks,’ conjuring up images of Dillinger and Capone, and in my literal logical frame of reference, wondered why in the world we (meaning adults who could vote) would elect people to Congress who were criminals. It didn’t make sense.

Until the past couple of years, I didn’t give politics much thought, merely noting that Richard Nixon was a crook by anyone’s standard. All the rest seemed like buffoons to me—Ford, Carter to some degree, Reagan without a doubt (“Well, there you go again…”. Bush I seemed mildly addled, Clinton too distractible.  Then came Bush II, and my father’s crook admonishment came roaring back to me. Wiretaps, firing lawyers at the Justice Department because they were Democrats, waging war after justifying it with lie upon lie. Bush II seemed to me to be a candidate for the Crook Hall of Fame. I should have been paying closer attention.

The buffoons lulled me to sleep. For all of that time, beginning in the early seventies, there was, in Sherlock Holmes’ words, a crooked “game afoot.” Coal and energy companies, with impunity, developed a way to extract coal for the mountains using what is called Mountaintop Removal, or MTR.  MTR is accompanied by what is known as Valley Fill, in which the millions of tons of mountain top is shoved into the valleys, destroying whatever existed in the valley before the fill.  Thousand of miles of headwaters were destroyed in this way, thousands of acres of beautiful and unique Appalachian scenery gone forever. Wildlife destroyed, a whole way of life in those mountains altered.  

Daryl Hannah, actor and activist, recently highlighted this issue in a piece she wrote for the Huffington Post. Her article gave some factual material, and also some personal accounts by the people in West Virginia who have been affected by the removal of the mountaintops. She spoke of a seventeen year old who died of ovarian cancer. She let speak a man who has a family in which all of the members are dying or poisoned. I’m sure that there are hundreds more with similar tales to tell. 

The coal companies would say, of course, that there is no connection.  The tobacco companies said the same thing about smoking.  And in the recently-passed Climate Bill, it was noted that coal companies were exempt from further regulation.  In my literal logical way of thinking, there must be some crooks somewhere, or that couldn’t have happened.  So I decided to look it up, see if I could find a crook connection with tragedy occurring in the Appalachian states.  Sure enough, there are crooks aplenty. 

In the 110^th Congress (2007-2008), 215 of the 435 members of the US House received at least $6,200 in donations from either coal or energy lobbyists or both.

Five of them received more than $100,000 in contributions, including Steny Hoyer ($129,800), John ‘Where are The Jobs’ Boehner ($113, 250), and John Dingell ($190, 250). Of the top 10 recipients of coal money, five were Democrats and five were Republicans. That seems pretty well bipartisan to me.

 In the same 110^th Congress, US Senate, 54 of 100 members received donations from coal and/or energy interests or both in amounts of at least $7,500. Six of them received at least $100,000, including Mitch McConnell ($195, 150), James Inhofe ($157,300) and Jeff Sessions ($126,415). Of the top ten recipients of coal money, eight were Republican, two were Democrats.  

Any surprise that coal companies are exempt from regulations which would clean up our environment?  Any surprise that the most basic needs of the people who live in the region most affected weren’t consulted? Any surprise that money is by far more important to these crooks than any kind of family values they know or even understand? Any surprise that a child’s death from ovarian cancer is of no concern to these people in Congress who engage in the most heinous criminal activities imaginable? 

Like my father said: They’re all a bunch of crooks.   

Follow the Coal Money: Tracking Dirty Coal Money in Politics

http://coalmoney.priceofoil.org/federalRaceGraph.php?type=congress