I think you are right about that. The right is more concerned with coming up with ways to feed the people we currently have on the planet and and those we will will have within the next century. No one argues that there are too many people for the planet to support, but short of some super virus, killing them off just isn't going to work. KY is a red state for sure. In this end we have fertile farmland and farming is the big family business in most families. If you drive down the highway, you see, for the lack of a better term, markers at various intervals in some of those fields. The ones who have those markers are working with the University of KY Extension Service testing new varieties of grain. Most of them double crop, and they also use 'no till' technology which they were testing in the 1960. Perhaps not the older people in the families, but certany most of the younger ones have gone to college to study agriculture because farming is a science and the farmers here are business people. If we are going to feed the population of this earth or even just those in our own country for the next 50 years, we have to have better methods and technologies. The stupid redneck farmer is a popular myth amongst the left who do not hesitate to use the products produced or get as much of it as they can for free.
Science literate or knowledgeable? WOW. I guess propaganda is science and knowledge.
Kentucky...a prime example of how polluters and cartels have so subverted the political landscape that taxpayers are paying them. In return, they get destroyed communities, destroyed roads and their kids have respiratory problems, high incidents of cancer and chronic asthma.
But right wing regressives in America will find any excuse to cower to the dirty energy cartels.
The Impact of Coal on the Kentucky State Budget
Executive Summary
Rapid and dramatic changes in the worldÂ’s approach to energy have major implications for Kentucky and its coal industry. Concerns about climate change are driving policy that favors cleaner energy sources and increases the price of fossil fuels. The transition to sustainable forms of energy is becoming a major economic driver, and states are moving aggressively to develop, produce and install the energy technologies of the future. Long reliant on coal for jobs and electricity, Kentucky faces major challenges and difficult choices in the coming years.
These energy challenges come in the midst of KentuckyÂ’s state fiscal crisis and sluggish economic performance. The gap between KentuckyÂ’s revenues and expenditures makes it increasingly difficult to sustain existing public services. A recent University of Kentucky report notes that Kentucky ranks 44th among states in per capita income, just as in 1970, while other southern states like North Carolina and Georgia have out-performed the Commonwealth in recent years.1 Eastern Kentucky still includes 20 of the 100 poorest counties in the United States measured by median household income.2
In this critical energy, fiscal and economic context, it is increasingly important for Kentuckians to understand the role and impact of coal in our state. Coal provides economic benefits including jobs, low electricity rates and tax revenue. But the coal industry also imposes a number of costs ranging from regulatory and public infrastructure expenses to environmental and health impacts.
Coal and the Budget
The Impact of Coal on the Kentucky State Budget tells one aspect of the story of coalÂ’s costs and benefits. The report provides an analysis of the industryÂ’s fiscal impact by estimating the tax revenues generated by coal and the state expenditures associated with supporting the industry. We estimate for Fiscal Year 2006 Kentucky provided a net subsidy of nearly $115 million to the coal industry (see Figure 1).
Coal is responsible for an estimated $528 million in state revenues and $643 million in state expenditures. The $528 million in revenues includes $224 million from the coal severance tax and revenues from the corporate income, individual income, sales, property (including unmined minerals) and transportation taxes as well as permit fees. The $643 million in estimated expenditures includes $239 million to address the industryÂ’s impacts on the coal haul road system as well as expenditures to regulate the environmental and health and safety impacts of coal, support coal worker training, conduct research and development for the coal industry, promote education about coal in the public schools and support the residents directly and indirectly employed by coal. Total costs also include $85 million in tax expenditures designed to subsidize the mining and burning of coal.
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