More than 150 people – mostly coal miners and their families turned outthis past Monday evening in Madisonfor the launch of the COALition for Romney. The group is a grassrootsorganization composed of working coal miners, their families, business owners,school teachers and others  -- both Democrats and Republicans, union,non-union, labor and management – coming together to protect the state’svital coal industry from the Obama Administration’s on-going War on Coalby supporting the candidacy of the prospective GOP Presidential nominee MittRomney.

Monday’s meeting was essentially an organizational meeting. The group hassince launched a Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-COALition/265299486910146?ref=hl. Leaders from Citizens for Coal, the Logan Coal Vendors Association, theCoalition for Mountaintop Mining and other groups are assisting the group withits formation.

Media from WOWK-TV, The State Journal and WCHS TV were on hand to cover theevent.  The West Virginia Radio Network’s Talkline program withHoppy Kerchival featured stories about the event for three consecutive days,including interviews with Coalition Co-Chairs Chris Hamilton, Roger Horton and Jimmy Winkler.

The Friends of Coal have launched three new Facebook pages -- Virginia,Pennsylvania and Ohio– to join existing pages for West Virginia,Kentucky and Wyoming.  The new pages are linked atpresent to the existing West Virginia and Kentucky pages. LaunchedAugust 15th, the pages have already drawn a significant amount of attention andare experiencing rapid growth. Please visit them at:

OHIO -- http://www.facebook.com/pages/Friends-of-Coal-Ohio/506676489346714?ref=hl

PENNSYLVANIA – http://www.facebook.com/pages/Friends-of-Coal-Pennsylvania/330247297069787?ref=hl

VIRGINIA – http://www.facebook.com/pages/Friends-of-Coal-Virginia/409523569106538?ref=hl

WEST VIRGINIA – http://www.facebook.com/friendsofcoal?ref=hl

KENTUCKY – http://www.facebook.com/friendsofcoal?ref=hl#!/friendsofcoalky

WYOMING – http://www.facebook.com/friendsofcoal?ref=hl#!/groups/121501981319765/

We are also assisting in the launch of a Friends of Coal – Virginia Tech,which has already attracted nearly 100 on-campus members. Our goal is now todevelop a single portal for both the Friends of Coal web pages and the socialmedia outlets.

Our social media web is seeing rapid growth and our linkages with otherorganizations are expanding quickly. For example, on a recent post, essentiallyan online ad entitled “Coal – It’s a Family Thing”featuring a miner walking up a road with his two young children, his smalldaughter carrying his dinner bucket, was viewed by more than 20,000 people in a24-hour period. 

In total, our social media presence provides exposure of our message toapproximately 500,000 people each and every week and this exposure level isbuilding with the addition of the other pages shown above and our developmentof linked messaging with them.

The new FACES radio message began airing this week in the counties bordering Ohio and Pennsylvaniaand three more of ours are in the production phase expected to begin airingnext week.

The coal industry and the people of West  Virginia won another in a series of court decisionslast Friday when the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of WestVirginia issued its ruling in the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition v. UnitedStates Army Corps of Engineers case. The Court said in essence that it is thesole purview of the states, their elected policymakers (such as theLegislature) and state regulatory agencies determine water quality standardswhen granting mining permits.

This is the fourth court decision in recent months that has essentially knockedthe legs out from under the Obama Administration’s war on coal, allsharing the common finding that the EPA has breached the rule of law and the limitationsimposed on it by Congress and usurped the powers of Congress and the states.