Many of you Lowdowners have told me that you often share the newsletter with your teenagers—and even younger children. Therefore, for proper parental guidance, I feel a responsibility to post this warning:Parents beware! This issue contains graphic material that could be unsuitable for minors—including environmental rape, corporate violence, and a level of political depravity that could leave them scarred for life.
With that said, I'm going to tell you a story that begins with breathtaking beauty, quickly takes a grotesquely ugly turn, then reveals a shocking callousness, yet also unfolds with heartening grassroots heroism. Ultimately, this is a cautionary tale that enlists you to write a better ending, for it shows with shining clarity why we must—ABSOLUTELY MUST—take our government back from the Kleptocrats who now hold all three branches in their greedy grasp.
The Beauty
Drive into the heart of West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky, and you'll find yourself in the midst of America's—and maybe the world's—oldest mountain range: the Appalachians. There are no adjectives adequate to describe the serene, ancient beauty you see, hear, smell, taste, and feel in these mountains. View them from a high point, and they are like blue-green waves breaking across the horizon as far as you can see. This is a remote and rugged expanse of high razorback ridges, plunging down into deep and dark valleys (called "hollers" here) and forested by an unparalleled diversity of mature broadleaf trees with an Appalachian ancestry going back nearly 300 million years. Pristine creeks and streams run through this region, and uncountable species of flowers, fish, woodland animals, birds, and other living creatures call it home.
Mountain people call it home, too, and they have a deep tie to this place that is the stuff of songs, legends, and history. Their culture is a rich, unique mix that encompasses the Shawnees, Creeks, Choctaws, and Cherokees who populated these mysterious mountains way before the Scotch-Irish, who first came in the 1730s, and later arrivals, including Germans and escaped or freed slaves. Because of the enveloping, insular nature of the Appalachians, people here retained all of these ethnic traditions and blended them to produce a music, religion, spirit, and attitude that is special. These days, quite a few people in Appalachia are impoverished, with little economic opportunity for them in the region. Yet they cannot conceive of living elsewhere, because here—at least they have their mountains.
The ugly
In a cabal of ignorance and arrogance, giant coal corporations and their political henchmen literally are decapitating the Appalachian Mountains. It's called "mountaintop removal" (MTR)—a form of strip-mining that is so dastardly, so perverse, so destructive, so unbelievable, and so unnecessary as to leave anyone who sees it whopperjawed, if not temporarily insane with outrage. ... [ read more ]
What the hell's happening here? Why is my bank in the tank? And my house and job? And my retirement money? Even my state's teetering on the brink of broke! Who did this to us? Fair questions, but we're not getting honest answers. 
