You can’t say she wasn’t forewarned.

A constituent called Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito’s office to inquire who would be on the panel for her "West Virginia Energy and America’s Future" forum. The July 16 event at Riverside High School near Belle was one of several nationwide that Vice President Dick Cheney helped organize to whip up support for the Bush Administration’s More, More, More national energy policy.

The panel consisted of pretty much anybody whose future wallet fatness is directly tied to promoting the status quo and blocking progress toward environmentally safer forms of energy, such as wind, solar and hydrogen fuel cells. This was going to be a warm and fuzzy taxpayer-funded Coal cheerleading session, with a little Oil and Gas thrown in for good measure. Not surprisingly, no one whose future is in peril from mountaintop removal had a place on the panel.

The constituent suggested to Capito’s staff that a coalfield resident and an environmentalist be included on the panel. The staffer said Capito had invited someone from the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). DEP representing citizens? As if.

Apparently, the United Mine Workers also suggested to Capito that she get an environmentalist on the panel.

Who knows why Capito didn’t heed the citizen’s advice. Maybe Cheney issued a directive that these forums had better leave pesky citizens off the panel. Capito is so obviously being groomed for forward movement within the Republican Party, she would certainly obey. Or maybe she didn’t want to offend her campaign contributors by allowing their opponents to appear on stage with them. According to the Center for Responsive Politics (<www.opensecrets.org>), during the 99-00 election cycle, Capito, out of all House members, received the fifth highest amount of campaign contributions from coal mining interests.

When Capito and her entourage drove their sports utility vehicle up to the high school, people who care about the future, commonly called environmentalists, greeted her. She was a handed a citizens’ press package, complete with photos of the devastation associated with mountaintop removal captioned, "We won’t be America’s energy sacrifice zone."

She had to scurry past artist Carol Jackson’s assemblage of mock open coffins, each containing representations of what we have lost to mountaintop removal -- communities, jobs, streams, forests, topsoil, plants, animals and mountains.

Capito made a beeline for the Riverside lobby, where she chatted merrily with friends like Bill Raney and Chris Hamilton, the WV Coal Association’s chief excuse-makers for the coal industry’s disregard for coalfield residents and brutalization of the landscape.

Though she didn’t have anyone impacted by mountaintop removal on her panel, Capito did invite an outside extremist to tell us what West Virginia’s future is going to be.

Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) is chair of the House subcommittee on energy and air quality. "I think this is going to be the energy Congress," Barton said in his opening remarks. No wonder -- during the last election cycle, Barton was the number one House recipient of campaign donations from the electric utilities industry. Of all House members, he got the third most in campaign donations from oil and gas interests.

After Barton spoke, Capito instructed the panelists, which included coal and utility executives, to move from the stage into the audience so that they could see a slide show on the state’s economic forecast. The presenter, West Virginia University economist Dr. Tom Witt, would be up just as soon as he was introduced by Nick Carter, chair of the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce.

DEP chief Mike Callaghan walked off the stage and sat right next to Chris Hamilton, Vice President of the West Virginia Coal Association. Remember, Callaghan is the guy who is supposed to represent the citizens.

Capito and Barton moved out into the audience, too.

Carter turned his introduction of Witt into a slam against environmentalists -- "those people" who were opposed to wind power (huh?). "Those who fail to offer constructive and realistic ideas . . . should be left behind. Get real, get involved or get out of the way."

Thank you Mister Carter! If you hadn’t been so illogical and insulting to coalfield residents and environmentalists, we might have just sat there, quietly listening to that stacked panel extol the virtues of Bush’s insane, gluttonous energy policy. Instead, activist Julian Martin, a man who has been getting real, getting involved and helping to lead the way for years, had to take exception to your comments. He stood up and asked, "Do we get to speak or do we just get to listen to these insults?"

Capito and Barton stood up from their seats right behind Martin. Barton began arguing with Martin, saying he would call the sheriff on Martin and "haul his butt out." Perhaps there are laws in Texas against speaking out in public.

Martin, the son and grandson of coal miners, wasn’t too pleased that this Texan was trying to silence a West Virginian concerned about the future of the Mountain State. Martin insisted that the citizens be given the right to talk about their future. Capito, sensing a public relations nightmare, finally agreed to let Martin have a say at the end of the forum.

The forum on the future proceeded, with not one mention of energy efficiency, energy conservation, the true costs of coal that society pays, nor alternative energies. Whose future is that? Thank goodness Martin got to speak. He mentioned mountain removal’s worsening of the recent floods. He mentioned Barton’s campaigns contributions. Capito told Martin to stick to the subject. So Martin mentioned Capito’s campaign contributions.

"I am not an out-of-state environmental extremist. It’s much more environmentally extreme to take the tops of mountains off."

One thing we hope Capito learned from the forum: If you are going to discuss the future of energy in America, you had better make sure the dialogue includes the people whose mountain communities, whose very futures, are at risk from mountaintop removal coal mining.