So if any of you failed to read the Herald-Leader article by John Cheaves yesterday entitled “State tax money pays for coal industry’s mining promotion”, I would highly recommend it. I think the H-L archives articles after a few days, so you may have to find it elsewhere.
To give you the broad strokes from Cheaves’ article, our wonderful state government has given $400,000/year to the Kentucky Coal Association and their spin-off organizations to pay for what essentially amounts to a propaganda campaign promoting the ‘benefits’ of coal (does the coal industry even need any more power? seriously). Everyone’s favorite Kentucky celebrity and President of the KY Coal Association, Bill Caylor had this to say:
The environmentalists throw out a lot of negative stuff, like kids who are suffering from asthma because they breathe particulate matter from living near a coal-fired power plant, or deaths caused on the roads by big coal trucks. We’re trying to counteract that.
