What WON'T Kentucky Do to Please Big Coal?

Nothing. I mean it. If Big Coal demanded that school lunches in Kentucky must contain at least a heaping teaspoonful of pulverized coal every day, Kentucky's spineless legislature and worthless governor would leap to comply.

Ecopolitology:

Just days after a group of activists ended a four-day occupation of Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear's office to protest the state's support of mountaintop removal mining, two bills advanced in legislative committees on Thursday that would make it easier for coal companies to continue the controversial practice. One of the bills advancing would declare Kentucky “a sanctuary state” from the EPA’s “regulatory actions against coal-producing counties.”

Introduced by chairman of the Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee, Brandon Smith (R), Joint Resolution 99 passed by a vote of 9-0 Thursday and could be considered by the full senate as early as Friday.

Smith said he got the idea for the resolution after hearing about "sanctuary cities" that declare themselves exempt from federal immigration law.

"We're doing it to raise awareness of the fact that the federal government is overreaching into parts of our economy and it's having a negative impact on Kentucky," Smith said.

Also on Thursday, the Kentucky House Committee on Natural Resources and the Environment unanimously approved a bill that seeks to exempt coal mines that sell coal for use in Kentucky from the federal Clean Water Act. That bill, as well as the "sanctuary state" bill, were both introduced as a reaction to stepped-up enforcement of Clean Water Act regulations by the Environmental Protection Agency under the Obama administration.

And the cocksucking of Big Coal is bipartisan, maintaining full suction through administrations rethuglican and DINO:

The state Transportation Cabinet spent more than $1 million from 2006 to 2008 to close and move a 2-mile section of Ky. 699 in Perry County at the request of a coal company that wanted to strip-mine the land where the highway was located, according to state records.

The cabinet's inspector general concluded in a Dec. 8 report that cabinet officials were not authorized to execute the subsequent land swap with subsidiaries of James River Coal Co. of Richmond, Va., giving up the highway site in exchange for nearby land owned by the coal company. Only the state Finance and Administration Cabinet, with the governor's permission, can give away state assets, Inspector General David Ray wrote.

State Auditor Crit Luallen issued an audit of state government Feb. 17 that mentioned the land deal in passing, with few details, concluding that the Transportation Cabinet could not legally give away state land.

Records show that then-Gov. Ernie Fletcher's transportation secretary, Bill Nighbert, authorized the project in 2006. Joe Prather, Nighbert's successor under Gov. Steve Beshear, approved its completion in 2008. That section of road, near the Leatherwood community, was not in the cabinet's six-year plan of priority projects.

Meanwhile, as Big Coal eliminate jobs along with mountains, forest ecosystems, clean water, communities and families, Kentucky politicians refuse to see that economic salvation lies not in worshipping Big Coal, but in regulating and replacing it.

Page One Kentucky:

Sure, the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce is focused on praising mountaintop removal and will never, ever dwell in the realm of reality when it comes to, well, anything, ever. Sure, people like Steve Beshear and his pals in the Energy and “Environment” Cabinet are suing left and right because they’re delusional.

But a new report from the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and Ceres finds that investments to clean and modernize power plants will create over 30,000 jobs in Kentucky. Yes, 30,000 jobs. In this state. Because of those allegedly pesky rules proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency, no less!

The key findings of the report:

* Based on recent estimates that the power sector will invest in capital improvements over the next five years, total employment created in Kentucky by these capital investments is estimated at more than 30,000 jobs, or about 6,000 jobs on average in each of the next five years.
* Installing modern pollution controls and building new power plants create a wide array of skilled high-paying installation, construction and professional jobs, as well as jobs at companies that manufacture pollution controls and other required construction/maintenance equipment.

Read the whole thing.

But the EPA is our enemy, you betcha.

As Jake writes often, this is why Kentucky can't have nice things.