Old King Coal is a heartless soul who mined his mother's grave for a dime's worth of coal. It's been told in the Mountain State that Old King Coal's victims are buried deeper than Appalachian coal.

Will King Coal's victims again be the workers of West Virginia? Aided by accomplices, King Coal aims to deliver a fatal blow to workers' advocacy groups by burying the "Workers Communication Bill." His henchmen in Charleston have invoked "free speech" to incite emotions; failing to make clear the "free speech" they advocate is corporate over individual.

This gives King Coal and his cohorts free reign to hold us captive while they summon their thought police to protect us from our deepest held thoughts and beliefs. This is contrary to what the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized: "No one has the right to press even a good idea on an unwilling recipient."

Again, corporate rights are being given preference over individual rights. Don't be fooled by a sly old dog barking on both sides of the fence. All he's defending is his political posterior. It's obvious he's laid down, then rolled over, to become King Coal's poodle, instead of the people's pit bull.

King Coal always leaves destruction in the wake of his reign. First, he strips the resources from the land, and ultimately the wealth from its inhabitants. We need only to look at McDowell County, the coal-richest county in the state, where 37 percent of its residents live in poverty, forced to endure lives in what has become an environmental disaster area created by King Coal through mountain top removal techniques, followed by reclamation efforts that locals refer to as "putting lipstick on a corpse."

Does "open for business" mean that West Virginia workers become hapless drones whose rights are abdicated in favor of King Coal and his corporate cohorts? Rights that are written with the blood of past victims of King Coal and his jesters in Charleston, who, it appears, are once again up to their old tricks.

Montani Semper Liberi.

Jim Dodgins
Augusta, W.Va.