The exploitation of Appalachia is nothing new. It has been going on for more than a hundred years. And like exploitation everywhere, from exploitation of the Native American who were here when the first settlers arrived, to to the exploitation of the indigenous settlers in Australia, to the exploitation of the Boers in South Africa by the British, to the exploitation of the poor in this country by the rich, to the exploitation of children by sexual predators, it is always the same. Keep the people poor and scared so that they remain powerless.

In the nineteenth century, Appalachia was not poor. Mountain families were farmers, and did well cultivating the steep hillsides and the rich bottomland in the mountains. There were naturists and knew how to live on the land, work with the land, and live in peace with the land. The mountains were shelter, provider, home. They knew weather lore, planting lore, nature lore. They knew how to fish and hunt and build, how the streams flowed, where and what kind the animals were. They had families, food to eat, a place to call their own which they would defend to the death.

The population grew, and the land was divided again and again to accomodate the newcomers. By the end of the nineteenth century, coal and steel companies began to buy up most of the land, eager to exploit the mineral resources that lay below the land. By the end of the first two decades of the 20th century, 70% of Eastern Kentucky was owned by coal companies. When the railroads came, the men had very little choice but to work for the railroads, or coal companies, live in company towns, pay exorbitant prices at coal stores. King Coal had the economy, the government and the land.

Kentucky fuels the whole country with coal to generate electricity. And yet Eastern Kentucky is among the poorest places in the United States. In Harlan County, the high school graduation rate is 59% The median household income is $18, 665 annually. The environment is nearly destroyed, and pollution is rampant. As long as it stays polluted, and the people are not educated, what other industry is going to locate there?

The poverty rate is 30%--exactly as it was when Lyndon Johnson declared his War on Poverty in Eastern Kentucky in 1964. The poorest counties in Kentucky are the ones that have had the most severe strip mining and mountaintop removal. 80% of the income generated by coal in Kentucky goes out of state.

How did it happen? It is a result of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, the very Constitution we hear so much about now.

The 14th Amendment was one of the Reconstruction Amendments designed to protect the civil liberties of recently freed African slaves.

Here is the text:

14th Amendment to the US Constitution

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

This amenment  was written to protect the civil rights of recently freed African slaves. Later, it was interpreted to give corporations the same rights as "legal persons," with horrifying ramifications.It gives corporations rights but little accountability. Coal companies are not "legal persons" and do not operate in moral ways that individuals would. Individuals would not repeatedly poison neighbor's wells. Individuals would not repeatedly cover a school with coal dust. Individuals would not tear a mountain down, change the landscape and then have the gall to blame the residents for their troubles. TECO and others have done this repeatedly with NO CONCERN for the people who live where the mines are, depending on their distance from Kentucky to keep them safe, and on legislators and other government officials who look the other way when there are violations.

Jack Spadaro became a whistleblower trying to protect the public from mining disasters. For his trouble, he was forced out of his job at the US Department of Labor's Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA). As a young mining engineer, he was brought in after the 1972 Buffalo Creeks disaster in West Virginia in which 125 people were killed when an impoundment dam collapsed. He discovered that the collapse could have been prevented if the dam had been constructed better, and spent the next 28 years inspecting impoundment dams. In Martin County, Kentucky, in 2000, a 300 million gallon slurry pond dam collapsed, causing one of the worst environmental disasters in US history. That toxic spill was 20 times larger than the Exxon Valdez oil spill, which generated a lot of press coverage. When he investigated, he found that Massey Coal, the owner, had known for 10 years that the dam was going to break.

Jack Spadaro attempted to charge Massey Coal with criminal negligence. But his boss, Elaine Chao, happens to be the wife of Mitch McConnell, Kentucky's senior senator. Massey had donated $100,000 to McConnell's reelection campaign. Spadaro found the lock on his office door changed and he was placed on administrative leave.

The very agencies charged with the responsibility for the safety of its citizens ignore the law, break the law, or rewrite the law to suit corporations. Under Bush's administration, this was the order of the day. Stephen Griles, the deputy secretary of the Department of the Interior under Bush, and a former coal lobbyist, instructed his staff to rewrite the provisions of the Clean Water Act so that ALL waste associated with strip mining be considered non-benign fill material only. A federal judge rejected that change, but was overruled in 2003 by the US Fourth Circuit Court. On that court sat John Roberts, who was subsequently tapped by Bush to be the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

TECO knows all of this, of course. And they take advantage every chance they get. So when they say that they are operating within the parameters of the law, they are correct..

But TECO is also criminally negligent, as Jack Spadaro thought. So is Mitch McConnell. So is his wife. So is John Roberts. Worse, and more meaningfully, they are guilty of depraved indifference, and are parties to the murder of US citizens.