Posted by JM Ashby
Oil and Coal company representatives with their "black oil hearts," as The Governator would put it, are none too happy about the upcoming regulation of green house gases by the EPA and the more attentive enforcement of the Clean Water Act. One state representative in Kentucky is taking things a step further and is now letting his constituents know that secession is on the table.
"Secession is an option," Rep. Jim Gooch, D-Providence, who has long been the Democrat’s top guy on the environment in the Kentucky House of Representatives, told me recently as I interviewed him for a story previewing what the Kentucky General Assembly might do on the environment this winter.
Secession is an option? Why would a Democratic Kentucky House Rep. be making statements like that? Lets see...
Gooch, who is a vice president of a western Kentucky steel company that does business with coal companies, and has taken provocative positions on the environment before, said he wanted Kentucky residents to know that secession was "an option," even as he described that as sounding "radical."
"If you keep pushing us, we are not going to let you totally destroy us," Gooch said of the federal government.
You would be hard pressed to find a lawmaker from either party in Kentucky that would go against the Coal industry when in fact even the democratic Governor is very pro-coal, but I think this goes way beyond local political theatre and industry loyalty and into the territory of Psycho Talk.