Selling Their Soul

Northwest Washington Central Labor Council — the patsies for Peabody Coal’s proposed Gateway Pacific Terminal — recently whined about the fact that they wished it wasn’t a notoriously anti-union company they were getting in bed with, but since it might get them a couple hundred jobs at the expense of Coast Salish peoples and the commercial fishing and tourism industries, they are willing to eat crow.

Meanwhile, the Peabody propaganda promulgated by hired PR guns, posing as local citizens, has been exposed in Seattle media as a lame hoax–apparently contrived by coal shipping industry consultants led by their main mouthpiece Craig Cole.

But the most interesting aspect of this colossal fraud by Peabody and Wall Street is the fact that the billions of tons of coal they want to ship across the US and the Pacific Ocean to sell in China doesn’t even belong to Peabody. It belongs to us, the American people. As revealed in a handy video by Greenpeace, the Powder River Basin coal is on public land, and the U.S. Government is giving it away for a dollar a ton to Peabody, so Wall Street can make a bundle while taxpayers get stuck with cleaning up their mess.

And it isn’t like we’re talking about subsidizing something worthwhile; when it comes to Peabody, we’re talking about the company that raped Appalachia and Black Mesa, brutalizing impoverished miners, and forcing Navajos to relocate so Peabody could turn West Virginia and Arizona mountains into toxic waste sites. Now they want us to pay them to do the same in Montana and Wyoming.

Maybe it’s time members of Northwest Washington Central Labor Council get their heads examined. Sucking up to Peabody is selling their soul.