The Association’s Board of Directors has endorsed Congressional and legislative candidates (shown at the end of this Coal Bits) for the November 4, 2014 General Election.  Please note the endorsed candidates representing the districts where you reside or have operations and please support their candidacy however best you can.  Also, we encourage you to share these endorsements with your employees, families and friends as these candidates need all the votes possible.  Please call if you have questions or need more information.  

The deadline for registering to vote in the November general election is October 14, 2014. This is also the deadline for citizens to change their address or switch political parties. To check your registration or to download a registration form, visit the West Virginia Secretary of State’s website at http://www.sos.wv.gov/elections/voterinformation/VoterRegistration/Pages/default.aspx/

The Friends of Coal social media network is continuing its unprecedented growth, adding another 1,400 fans over the past 15 days, bringing out total footprint to 86,989 fans. During that period we made 645 posts and received 22,600 incoming comments from 12,400 unique users. In total, we garnered 850,000 impressions during the two-week period – up almost 100,000 from our previous report.

Over the past 90 days we added 16,200 new fans and 297 new Twitter followers. We made 7,200 posts and received 171,800 incoming messages and comments from 106,700 unique users. In total, we garnered 7.2 million impressions during the period.

A very special episode of The Coal Seam television show is airing through the month of September. The show was filmed on location at the July Coal Rally in Pittsburgh. The show includes vignettes of the rally, which included Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin of West Virginia, Gov. Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania and Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor of Ohio.  Gov. John Kasich was also on hand via a video he sent.  WVCA President Bill Raney and Senior Vice President Chris Hamilton also addressed the crowd of thousands of coal miners there to protest the EPA’s GHG regulations that are shutting down coal-fired power plants and killing thousands of jobs.    

The episode is available on the state Library Television Network as well as your local cable system’s public access channel. Locally it is on Suddenlink Channel 17.

The next episode, with scheduled guest Roger Horton, president of the United Citizens for Coal, will be taped this week. Horton will be on hand to discuss the impact of these regulations on retirees and the communities of the coalfields. He will also discuss the recent merger of United for Coal and Citizens for Coal organizations. The new grassroots group has approximately 7,000 members in 26 states.

The Friends of Coal petition continues to collect signatures to protect America’s coal jobs. The petition has been online for about two months and has already collected more than 9,000 letters of opposition to the rule through our convenient online tool.

The online tool allows you to file your comments calling on EPA to rescind its job-killing regulations that are halting the construction of new coal-fired power plants and essentially forcing the closure of existing plants.  The letters are sent directly to the EPA’s official comments email address.

The comments period closes October 16th.  We need to generate more letters supporting America’s coal mining jobs.

If you have not already done so, please visit the online petition and add your support at www.friendsofcoal.org/soundoff.  We need your help and we hope you will do it today!