"Daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County,
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay?
I'm sorry, my son, but you're too late in asking,
Mr. Peabody's coal train has hauled it away."

- Appalachian Folk song

The list of "task force" members has been jealously guarded by Cheney because it is, in essence, a list of top contributors to the Bush campaign. These contributors were not just rewarded with slots on the task force list, but showered with favors that came at a devastating cost to America. At least one of the names on the list, a little bird reports, are top execs at the Peabody Coal Company, the largest, most ruthless barons in the world, infamous for originating the practice of ripping off the tops of mountains to get cheaply and easily at coal. Where Peabody has gone in, environmental devastation has followed. Many a coal miner's life has been lost, either catastrophically through accidents, or slowly and painfully through black lung, through Peabody's routine practice of failing to comply with safety standards, then covering up the evidence. Go up to this google.com page and look at the list of cases against Peabody just on this one page:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=Peabody+coal+company+poor+miner+safety+record&btnG=Google+Search

Until Bush was elected, progress was being made toward putting a leash on the coal companies wanton excesses against humankind and the ecosystem. A push was even being made to phase out coal-powered power plants, the chief sources of major greenhouse gases today. American coal-powered plants pump 2.3 billion tons of CO2 into the air each year. That is twice as much as the amount of C02 emitted by vehicles.

But then along came Bush. Peabody and affiliates dumped nearly $1 million into the Idiot Prince's campaign. The reward? Cheney's final energy report, released in May 16 of 2001, just 4 months after the inauguration, called for additional coal production and for SCORES of new dulfur-dioxide-belching coal-fired power plants to be built across the nation. There is strong suspicion by many environmentalists and people inside the energy field that the "rolling blackouts" of the same time were designed to create a crisis that could be used to promote wholesale construction of new coal-fired power plants. It worked. On May 21, 2001, Peabody issued a public stock offering, raising $60 million more than expected. The SAME DAY, Peabody threw a party for Bush to the tune of $25,000. Shortly thereafter, clean air standards for power plant emissions were rolled back - despite Bush's phony campaign promise to restrict power plant emission.

By the way, want to know why Bush proposed easing the standards for arsenic in drinking water? It was because Irl Engelhardt, chairman of Peabody had lobbied for it. So, the safety of the water drunk by 260 MILLION Americans was worth less than one million dollars in campaign dollars and one post-inauguration party to Bush. Just think what he'd sell out for a few million more!.

Peabody's influence now extends to the Supreme Court. In May of 2002, Bush's pressured John Ashcroft (not that it took much) to favor Peabody in a lawsuit brought by the Navajo Nation against the coal company. Not surprisingly, the sell-out court ruled in favor of the coal barons and against the tribe shortly thereafter, setting a miserable precedent that says, in essence, Big Bucks rule in all departments of the US government under Bush.

The ruling also sent another message: the Navajo, and any economically challenged minorities are fair game for the big polluters. Need a power plant or a chemical plant built? Put it in a ghetto or on a reservation. Even as Bush was invading Iraq in question of more oil and big reconsturction contracts for his friends, the Houston-based Steag Corporation announced its plan to build a new power plant on the Navajo Nation in New Mexico, an area where many are without basic amenities, including running water and electricity, an area where cancer rates from coal mining pollution are already anomalously high. Where would the power from the plant go? To Texas.

In short, under G. W. Bush, we have returned to the era of the late 1800s and early 1900s in which Big Business can get away with anything - from poisoning millions to murder (those thousands of civilians in Iraq, slaughtered in the name of Bechtel, Halliburton, and ExxonMobil.

Related articles:

How CHP Plants, which were supposed to be powered by alternative fuel sources, became coal-fired and "coal-gasification" plants under the Bush Reich. Article also talks about how the coal industry seeks to manipulate global warming science in its favor.

http://www.unknownnews.net/cdd082802.html

How Peabody and the Bush administration Exploit Tribal Lands
http://www.thenavajotimes.com/nation.html

Today's "Shorts"

The model Bush used for looting the Baghdad museums: Hermann Goering's ring of organized looters under Hitler

It has now been proven that the looters of the Iraq museums were well organized and knew exactly what they were looking for. They came armed with keys to safes, glass cutters, etc. But this was not the first time that such an operation has been undertaken under the cover of "fog of war."

Under the orders of art collector Hermann Goering, a gang of professional looters sdacked dozens of private homes, museums, art galleries and churches throughout Europe. In this way, Goering amassed a collection worth over $200,000,000 - which, of course, is closer to a billion by today's standards. The stolen loot ended up shoved in vaults of the Reichsbank at Frankfort-on-the-Main, Regensburg, and in Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria. 72 cases of art treasures looted from France and Russia were foiund in Buxheim. Goering never left a paper trail, though - he paid cash for every item.

info obtained from "World War II in Pictures," Greystone Press, 1946, which shows US GIs admiring newly discovered looted art caches.

Bush Gives Away more of US Treasury in Payoffs to Pals

As we all know, Bush handsomely rewards anyone who backs his agenda. Corporations who donate to his campaign can be assured of appointments or sweetheart deals. Now Bush is busy handing out billions of dollars in payoffs to countries that went along with his Iraq war scheme. So the payoff budget is getting progressively bigger and bigger, while our domestic programs - including our embattled cities - go begging.

The latest payoff recipient - Poland. Bush just promised several billion dollars to the country. However, being Bush, this was not without strings attached - two big ones. The first: that some of the money must go directly into the pockets of mega defense contractor Lockheed Martin to buy US fighter planes. The second: that Poland must vote for Tony Blair as head of the EU, so that Bush can expand his global power through his UK toady even further. Expect to see several of the news inductees into the EU have their palms crossed with Bush silver in a bid to install Blair as puppet king of the EU.