E-Mail Raises Questions in Firing

[PVnRT]

Source: Lexington Herald-Leader

An Alliance Coal executive wrote an e-mail to his colleagues Nov. 13 to announce the firing of the state director of mine permits — just minutes after the firing happened.

"Ron Mills will be asked to resign this morning and will be replaced by Allen Luttrell on an acting basis," wrote Raymond "Rusty" Ashcraft, Alliance Coal's manager of environmental affairs and permitting at the company's Lexington office.

Ashcraft sent his e-mail at 9:24 a.m. Minutes earlier, Mills said in an interview Sunday, he was pulled aside in Frankfort and fired as director of the Division of Mine Permits. Later that day, his deputy, Luttrell, was named as his acting replacement.

The e-mail raises questions about Alliance Coal's role in the firing of Mills, who opposed a controversial policy — called "the 331⁄3 rule" — that allows the company to mine without showing that it has the legal right to enter all the land in its plans. Environmentalists say the policy is illegal and they will sue to block it.

Read more: http://www.kentucky.com/latest_news/story/1049100.html

---

So, Mills tries to ensure that federal law is followed...gets fired (we all know what "asked to resign" means), and a few minutes later, an executive at a coal company knows. The shit keeps stinking worse on this one.

[rurallib]

1. amazed Alliance even involved the government in their decision

Is this the same company that bought the U of Kentucky basketball team a while back? (built a huge $ dorm?)

[PVnRT]

2. No, they bought a dorm on campus and wanted to rename it the "Coal Lounge"

http://www.grist.org/article/kentucky-straight-takes-on-big-coal/

[Alcibiades]

3. The old iron triangle at work

It works at the state level, too.

[ixion]

4. yep...

and We, the People have no part in that arrangement, save for bank-rolling it. :grr:

[Blue_Tires]

6. that explains it all

where did you find that? or did you make it yourself?

[Alcibiades]

12. Iron triangles are an old concept in political science

I'm a political scientist. I don't remember who came up with the idea first, and the book I use to teach intro doesn't have a citation, and most of the books in my subject field are in a different area, but iron triangles have been in the literature since at least the 1970's, and the concept itself predates the first use of the term.

This is a well-established concept in political science, so much so, in fact, that some folks have made careers out of calling it into question. Many scholars today favor the idea of an "issue network" as more descriptive of the actual process at work (the idea is that there are actually competing interests at work in any given area, some of which actually represent the public interest, rather than the narrow, particularistic interests typical of the old iron triangle model). As such, the idea of the iron triangle is a bit out of favor in the literature, though every political scientist, certainly in America, at least, is familiar with the idea.

That particular image is on the wikipedia entry under "iron triangle." The reason why you may have not heard of this subject, one upon which hundreds of books and articles have been written, is that political scientists just study politics: we don't practice it, or even talk about it with folks who are not our students, or publish about it in non-academic periodicals with a broader audience. We pretty much just sit in our offices, studying a political system that any decent theory of democracy would find appalling.

[jotsy]

8. Have you any other nifty graphic tidbits as telling as this?

Are you an economics expert as well by any chance? I wonder why the bank closure list, (which now stands at 130 on the year) isn't bigger news. It seems to me big banks are monopolizing, which I don't feel like is a good thing but not sure as to the details of why that would be, would love to chat with someone in the know.

[Alcibiades]

13. I'm a political scientist, not an economist

My third field is comparative, which includes some readings in economics, particularly international political economy, but I couldn't model a social welfare equilibrium if I tried, which I have. For the explanation of where I got the graphic, see my reply to one of the replies above.

To understand what's happening in the economy today, you have to read the work of that long-dead economist, Karl Marx. Much attention has been paid to where Marx, and Lenin, were wrong, but little has been said about how they were right. Though it's boring reading (except for a few spots where the absolutely acidic wit of Marx, or perhaps Engels, slips through) the last half of volume III of Capital, wherein Marx describes the credit system, seem prescient today: "The credit system, which has its focus in the so-called national banks and the big money-lenders and usurers surrounding them, constitutes enormous centralisation, and gives to this class of parasites the fabulous power, not only to periodically despoil industrial capitalists, but also to interfere in actual production in a most dangerous manner — and this gang knows nothing about production and has nothing to do with it."

What Marx describes is a tendency for finance capital to become more phantasmagorical, more concentrated, and more felonious as capitalism develops. There are several things upon which you may rely:

1. Banks (and other financial institutions) will get bigger
2. The amount of leverage in the system will increase
3. The profits accruing to financial insiders will increase
4. The political system will act as though it is the captive of Wall Street
5. The economic system as a whole will be subject to an increasing number of shocks and crises as a result of all this

Probably the most important thing to be done would be to break up the financial firms and banks that have become too big to fail, but this seems unlikely, because of item #4. Even the stimulus and the bailout only served to forestall this, and it seems improbable that anything other than a final collapse will create some sort of new equilibrium, which some of us may get to see, assuming we don't all starve to death before then.

[flying rabbit]

14. interesting

Thanks!

[ensho]

5. the coal barons have too much power and should be brought down

nt

[era veteran]

7. Alliance Coal, Peabody coal. Only time changes

Ky Democratic Party is rotten and only marginally better than the Repubs. John Prine sings it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHHR_tA7eg4&feature=related

[kpete]

9. E-mail raises questions in firing - COAL EXECUTIVE KNEW OF MINE OFFICIAL'S OUSTER IMMEDIATELY

Source: Lexington Herald Leader

Monday, Dec. 07, 2009
E-mail raises questions in firing
COAL EXECUTIVE KNEW OF MINE OFFICIAL'S OUSTER IMMEDIATELY
By John Cheves - [e-mail]

An Alliance Coal executive wrote an e-mail to his colleagues Nov. 13 to announce the firing of the state director of mine permits — just minutes after the firing happened.

"Ron Mills will be asked to resign this morning and will be replaced by Allen Luttrell on an acting basis," wrote Raymond "Rusty" Ashcraft, Alliance Coal's manager of environmental affairs and permitting at the company's Lexington office.

Ashcraft sent his e-mail at 9:24 a.m. Minutes earlier, Mills said in an interview Sunday, he was pulled aside in Frankfort and fired as director of the Division of Mine Permits. Later that day, his deputy, Luttrell, was named as his acting replacement.

The e-mail raises questions about Alliance Coal's role in the firing of Mills, who opposed a controversial policy — called "the 331⁄3 rule" — that allows the company to mine without showing that it has the legal right to enter all the land in its plans. Environmentalists say the policy is illegal and they will sue to block it.

Read more: http://www.kentucky.com/latest_news/story/1049100.html

[bergie321]

10. Coalgate?

Does this mean that coal is completely debunked as a source of energy?

[SoapBox]

11. Rotten

...just more rotten, crooked, corrupt, big-money-big-power crap.