With a family like this: Nevada GOP candidate's relatives tell voters to pick rival

That’s going to make for an awkward Thanksgiving.
Adam Laxalt is running for attorney general in Nevada as a Republican, but is being opposed by an unusual group: his own flesh and blood. In fact, some of Laxalt's extended family members have written a public letter urging voters to pick Laxalt’s Democratic opponent, Ross Miller, instead of their relative.
Laxalt's campaign consultant Robert Uithoven dismissed the letter as a desperate move from Miller's campaign, and said Laxalt "doesn't have anything bad to say" about his relatives.
“The only reason our opponent would exploit this issue and circulate this kind of thing is he sees himself losing his political career," Uithoven told FoxNews.com.  
In the letter, which was published Thursday by the Las Vegas Sun, the seven family members said they felt they had to speak up in support of Miller “to maintain the integrity of our home state of Nevada.”
“Know that our message does not originate from a Republican, Democratic or even family affiliation,” the letter says. “It has to do with the most basic question all voters must ask themselves when they step into the voting booth, ‘Who really is the best qualified candidate for attorney general for the state of Nevada?’”
The message was signed by Adam Laxalt's aunts, Kevin and Neena Laxalt, as well as his cousins Kevan, Kristin, Michelle, Peter and Meggan.
A FoxNews.com request for comment from the Miller campaign was not immediately returned.
Uithoven said there are many family members that support Laxalt's campaign, and have been with the "candidate every step of the way." He said he believes the letter will have little impact because Nevada's voters are focused on real issues, not a family feud.
"Most voters, they are voting for a candidate they are not voting for a family," he said. 
Laxalt’s mother, who is also named Michelle Laxalt, also spoke out in support of her son.
"Nevada is full of large families, all of whom may not adore one another at all times. I doubt Nevadans are truly interested with family beefs that are not their own," she said in a statement to the Associated Press. "Many of us are so proud and supportive of Adam, his military service to our nation and his desire to serve in public office."
This isn’t the first time Laxalt’s family drama has made headlines.
The 34-year-old was revealed last year to be the secret child of longtime New Mexico Sen. Pete Domenici and Michelle Laxalt, whose father former Nevada Sen. Paul Laxalt, served alongside Domenici for years.
Domenici and Michelle Laxalt, who was 24 when she had her son, said at the time that they decided to go public with their decades-old secret because they believed someone was about to release the information in an attempt to smear Domenici, who had a reputation as a deeply devoted family man.
"I deeply regret this and am very sorry for my behavior," Domenici, 80, said in his statement. "I hope New Mexicans will view that my accomplishments for my beloved state outweigh my personal transgression."
Domenici was the longest-serving senator in New Mexico history when he retired in 2010 after six terms. Michelle Laxalt became a prominent lobbyist, Republican activist and television commentator after the affair.

Dozens of expelled Nazis reportedly paid millions in Social Security

Former Auschwitz guard Jakob Denzinger lived the American dream.
His plastics company in the Rust Belt town of Akron, Ohio, thrived. By the late 1980s, he had acquired the trappings of success: a Cadillac DeVille and a Lincoln Town Car, a lakefront home, investments in oil and real estate.
Then the Nazi hunters showed up.
In 1989, as the U.S. government prepared to strip him of his citizenship, Denzinger packed a pair of suitcases and fled to Germany. Denzinger later settled in this pleasant town on the Drava River, where he lives comfortably, courtesy of U.S. taxpayers. He collects a Social Security payment of about $1,500 each month, nearly twice the take-home pay of an average Croatian worker.
Denzinger, 90, is among dozens of suspected Nazi war criminals and SS guards who collected millions of dollars in Social Security payments after being forced out of the United States, an Associated Press investigation found.
The payments flowed through a legal loophole that has given the U.S. Justice Department leverage to persuade Nazi suspects to leave. If they agreed to go, or simply fled before deportation, they could keep their Social Security, according to interviews and internal government records.
Like Denzinger, many lied about their Nazi pasts to get into the U.S. following World War II, and eventually became American citizens.
Among those who benefited:
--armed SS troops who guarded the Nazi network of camps where millions of Jews perished.
--an SS guard who took part in the brutal liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto in Nazi-occupied Poland that killed as many as 13,000 Jews.
--a Nazi collaborator who engineered the arrest and execution of thousands of Jews in Poland.
--a German rocket scientist accused of using slave labor to build the V-2 rocket that pummeled London. He later won NASA's highest honor for helping to put a man on the moon.
The AP's findings are the result of more than two years of interviews, research and analysis of records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and other sources.
The Justice Department denied using Social Security payments as a tool for removing Nazi suspects. But records show the U.S. State Department and the Social Security Administration voiced grave concerns over the methods used by the Justice Department's Nazi-hunting unit, the Office of Special Investigations.
State officials derogatorily called the practice "Nazi dumping" and claimed the OSI was bargaining with suspects so they would leave voluntarily.
Since 1979, the AP analysis found, at least 38 of 66 suspects removed from the United States kept their Social Security benefits.
Legislation that would have closed the Social Security loophole failed 15 years ago, partly due to opposition from the OSI. Since then, according to the AP's analysis, at least 10 Nazi suspects kept their benefits after leaving. The Social Security Administration confirmed payments to seven who are deceased. One living suspect was confirmed through an AP interview. Two others met the conditions to keep their benefits.
Of the 66 suspects, at least four are alive, living in Europe on U.S. Social Security.
In newly uncovered Social Security Administration records, the AP found that by March 1999, 28 suspected Nazi criminals had collected $1.5 million in Social Security payments after their removal from the U.S.
Since then, the AP estimates the amount paid out has reached into the millions. That estimate is based on the number of suspects who qualified and the three decades that have passed since the first former Nazis, Arthur Rudolph and John Avdzej, signed agreements that required them to leave the country but ensured their benefits would continue.
Long-living beneficiaries can collect hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments.
A single male who earned an average wage of $44,800 a year and turned 65 in 1990, the year after Denzinger did, would receive nearly $15,000 annually in Social Security benefits, according to the Urban Institute, a nonprofit public policy group in Washington. That's $375,000 over 25 years. The amounts are adjusted for inflation.
The Social Security Administration refused the AP's request for the total number of Nazi suspects who received benefits and the dollar amounts of those payments.
Spokesman William "BJ" Jarrett said the agency does not track data specific to Nazi cases. A further barrier, Jarrett said, is that there is no exception in U.S. privacy law that "allows us to disclose information because the individual is a Nazi war criminal or an accused Nazi war criminal."
The agency also declined to make the acting commissioner, Carolyn Colvin, or another senior agency official available for an interview.
The Justice Department declined the AP's request for an official to speak on the record. Spokesman Peter Carr said in an emailed statement that Social Security payments never were used as an incentive or as a threat to persuade Nazi suspects to depart voluntarily.
"The matter of Social Security benefits eligibility was raised by defense counsel, not by the department, and the department neither used retirement benefits as an inducement to leave the country and renounce citizenship nor threatened that failure to depart and renounce would jeopardize continued receipt of benefits," Carr said.
The department opposed the legislation in 1999, Carr acknowledged, because it would have undermined the OSI's mandate to remove Nazi criminals as expeditiously as possible to countries that would prosecute them.
Speed was a key factor.
Survivors of the Holocaust who made the United States their home after the war had been forced to share it with their former Nazi tormenters. That had to change, and fast, the OSI's proponents said. If suspects were to stand trial, they needed to be found and ousted while they were alive. The OSI and its backers didn't want death to cheat justice.
Yet only 10 suspects were ever prosecuted after being expelled, according to the department's own figures.
At his home in Osijek, Denzinger would not discuss his situation. "I don't want to say anything," he told the AP in German as he rested on his walker in the hallway of his apartment.
But Denzinger's son, who lives in the U.S., confirmed his father receives Social Security payments and said he deserved them. "This isn't coming out of other people's pockets," Thomas Denzinger said. "He paid into the system." Plus his father is paying 30 percent in taxes. "They should be taking out nothing," he said.
Another former Nazi camp guard, longtime Montana resident Martin Hartmann, lives in Berlin and also is collecting Social Security, according to a person with knowledge of Hartmann's finances who requested anonymity because the person did not want to be associated with Hartmann's Nazi history. Hartmann, 95, left the U.S. in 2007, just before a federal judge issued an order to revoke his citizenship.
The loophole also means new suspects, including former SS unit commander Michael Karkoc, whom the AP located last year in Minnesota, could retain benefits even if removed to another country.
German prosecutors opened an investigation after the AP uncovered documentation showing Karkoc, 95, ordered his unit to raze a Polish village during the war. Dozens of women and children were killed in the attack.

US drops arms, ammunition to Kurds fighting ISIS in Kobani

The U.S. military said late Sunday that it had dropped weapons, ammunition, and medical supplies to Kurdish forces battling to hold the Syrian border town of Kobani against Islamic State militants.
The airdrops were the first of their kind and followed weeks of U.S. and coalition airstrikes in and near Kobani. Earlier Sunday, U.S. Central Command (CentCom) said that it had launched 11 airstrikes overnight in the area.
CentCom said U.S. C-130 cargo planes made multiple drops of arms and supplies provided by Kurdish authorities in Iraq. It said they were intended to enable continued resistance to Islamic State efforts to take full control of Kobani.
In a conference call with reporters after CentCom announced the airdrops, senior administration officials said three C-130 planes dropped 27 bundles of small arms, ammunition and medical supplies. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the White House.
One official said that while the results of the mission are still being assessed, it appeared that "the vast majority" of the supplies reached the intended Kurdish fighters.
The official also said the C-130s encountered no resistance from the ground in Syria during their flights in and out of Syrian airspace.
The airdrops are almost certain to anger the Turkish government, which has said it would oppose any U.S. arms transfers to the Kurdish rebels in Syria. Turkey views the main Kurdish group in Syria as an extension of the Turkish Kurd group known as the PKK, which has waged a 30-year insurgency in Turkey and is designated a terror group by the U.S. and by NATO.
President Barack Obama called Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday to discuss the situation in Syria and notify him of the plan to make airdrops Sunday, one administration official told reporters. He would not describe Erdogan's reaction but said U.S. officials are clear about Turkey's opposition to any moves that help Kurdish forces that Turkey views as an enemy.
One of the administration officials said the airdrops should be seen as a humanitarian move. He said U.S. officials believe that if Kobani were to fall, the Islamic State militants would massacre Kurds in the town.
Another administration official said "you might see more" U.S. resupply missions to benefit the Kurdish fighters in Kobani in the days ahead. Yet another administration official said a land route to resupply the Kurds had been under discussion but would require Turkish cooperation. He said talks on resupply needs and means would continue.
In a written statement, CentCom said its forces have conducted more than 135 airstrikes against Islamic State forces in Kobani.
Using an acronym for the Islamic State group, Central Command said, "Combined with continued resistance to ISIL on the ground, indications are that these strikes have slowed ISIL advances into the city, killed hundreds of their fighters and destroyed or damaged scores of pieces of ISIL combat equipment and fighting positions."
The airdrops came amid reports of some of the fiercest fighting yet in the month-long battle for Kobani, with Reuters reporting that Islamic state fighters had attacked Kurdish fighters with mortars and car bombs. The Britain-based Syria Observatory for Human Rights claimed that 70 Islamic State fighters had been killed over two days, though those reports could not be immediately confirmed.

Democratic National Committee chief predicts Dems 'are going to hold the Senate'

Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, leader of the Democratic National Committee, said Sunday that her party will keep control of the Senate next month, suggesting that GOP efforts to drag President Obama into races is a failed strategy.
“We are going to hold the Senate,” the Florida lawmaker told “Fox News Sunday.” “The president is not on the ballot.”
Her remarks come weeks after Obama argued that he indeed was “not on the ballot this fall” but that “every single one” of his policies are.
Since the start of the 2014 election cycle, Republicans have tried to tie incumbent Democrats to some of the Obama administration’s policies and actions that have alienated many voters -- including ObamaCare and the IRS targeting of conservative political groups.
“Republicans are desperate to put him on the ballot because they’re trying to turn away from their own terrible record,” Wasserman-Schultz said.
She made her prediction amid a majority of polls that give Republicans at least a 60 percent chance of retaking the upper chamber, including a Washington Post forecast that gives the GOP a 93 percent chance.
Republicans need to win a net total of six seats to take the Senate.
Wasserman-Schultz also argued Democrats will keep control of the chamber because Republicans have let down Americas by taking away their health care and opposing minimum-wage increases.
“One question voters will ask is: Who has your back?” she said.
Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, told Wasserman-Schultz that Obama is “taking the country in the wrong direction and (Democratic) candidates are following him off the plank.”
“I don’t know whose back he has, but it’s not the American people’s,” Priebus continued.

CDC Cartoon

GOP faces possible House loss in Michigan stronghold after incumbent loses primary, nominee branded 'foreclosure king'

House Democrats are not expected to make big gains in the midterms, but they are optimistic about winning a Republican-held seat in Michigan in the aftermath of a nasty GOP primary in which a “foreclosure king” defeated an incumbent portrayed as a “Santa Claus impersonator.”
Lawyer and businessman Dave Trott trounced incumbent Rep. Kerry Bentivolio in the party’s August primary, but not before a Tea Party group labeled him a “foreclosure king.”
Democratic nominee Bobby McKenzie, a former State Department counter-terrorism analyst, has seized on the attack line and is now essentially tied with Trott, according to an internal campaign poll by San Francisco-based Tulchin Research.
Leading pollsters are still giving the edge to Republicans in the race for Michigan's 11th District, which is outside Detroit.
But Bentivolio, who admits to dressing up as Santa, has started a write-in campaign as an independent candidate and will likely take votes from Trott.
Political observers say Bentivolio got into Congress in 2012 essentially by a fluke, so there was little surprise that he would lose this year’s primary.
When five-term GOP incumbent Rep. Thad McCotter was disqualified in a ballot-signatures scandal and resigned in July 2012, Bentivolio lost in September to a Democrat in a special election to fill the seat for a few months.  
However, a month later he won the race for the full term as the only qualified Republican on the ballot.
Within months of arriving on Capitol Hill, Bentivolio was already being targeted as one of the House incumbents most likely to lose in 2014.
Such predictions were in part based on Bentivolio’s meager war chest being no match for the deep-pocketed Trott, a Duke law school graduate who purportedly spend more than $2 million on his 2014 primary victory.
“Even I figured he’d win,” Bentivolio told FoxNews.com. “How do you compete against that?”
Still, the most significant expenditure in the entire race appears to be the primary ad paid for by the Tea Party-affiliated Freedom’s Defense Fund that hits Trott, whose family-run law firm processes foreclosures for lending institutions.
“Foreclosure King Dave Trott evicted 101-year-old Texan Hollis from her Detroit home of 65 years,” the narrator says in the 30-second spot. “Stranded and in a wheelchair, she was dumped on dangerous, rainy streets. … all to line the pockets of greedy Dave Trott.”
Trott announced after the primary that he was selling his stake in the practice, in an apparent attempt to soften the criticism.
But it’s unclear whether he remains part of other related businesses, which combined with the law firm are considered by critics to be the biggest “foreclosure mill” in Michigan.
The Trott campaign did not return calls seeking comment. 
Though Trott has the backing of such establishment Republicans as Mitt Romney, Bentivolio says he was undermined largely by the leading state Republicans.
“You’re supposed to help a freshman congressman,” said Bentivolio, an Iraq veteran, former reindeer farmer and auto designer. “But they did everything in their power to undermine my seat. … I guess I didn’t go to the right schools.”  
State party leaders reportedly didn’t even support his successful 2012 bid, instead backing a former state GOP senator’s write-in campaign.
The Michigan GOP party on Thursday made clear its role in 2012.
“We always support out incumbents, but we stay out of primaries,” party spokesman Darren Littell told FoxNews.com. “We thank the congressman for his service.”
The Tea Party-backed Bentivolio also argues he passed conservative-minded legislation while in Washington and even had the backing of House Speaker John Boehner, whom he said commended him for knowing when to vote with the caucus or for his district.
Bentivolio says he was okay with Trott’s attacks during the campaign, but felt he went too far by criticizing him on social media after the primary.
He said he appealed to Trott to knock off the attacks, then tried to quiet him with threats of entering the race before deciding on the write-in campaign.
“I warned people,” Bentivolio said. “I worked in Congress and on Ronald Reagan’s election. And they call me a ‘newcomer?’ I got news for them.”
He said the attacks included a whisper campaign that questioned his military awards.
“And now I want my reputation back,” said Bentivolio, still rankled that dressing up as Santa at charity events for children would be used against him.
Trott campaign manager Megan Piwowar said to The Associated Press about Bentivolio’s write-in effort: "If he wants to disrespect the overwhelming number of voters, that's his choice."
McKenzie campaign manager Tony Coppola thinks the race has tightened because of the combination of Trott’s questionable business practices and Democrats having a good candidate.
“Bobby tried to make the country safer at the State Department, and the Republican candidate put 100,000 families out of their homes, 80,000 by his own admission," he said. "That’s a stark contrast.”
Coppola points out the race also has another potential spoiler, Libertarian candidate John Tatar who got 2.7 percent of the vote in the 2012 race for the seat.
Still, Coppola says the campaign is sticking with the same strategy that got McKenzie this far, despite the late-stage changes.
“We’re going to talk to voters,” he said heading into the weekend. “We’re going to knock on 10,000 doors. We’re going to make 10,000 phone calls.”

Maryland to delay legal effort to recoup $55 million for state's failed ObamaCare site

Maryland officials reportedly have agreed to delay court action seeking $55 million from the primary contractor for the state’s problematic ObamaCare website.
Officials from Maryland’s health care exchange in April fired the contractor, Noridian Healthcare Solutions, and vowed to seek court actions to recoup the money.
Both sides have struck a temporary deal so state officials can focus on the second year of ObamaCare enrollment that starts Nov. 15, according to The Baltimore Sun.  
A spokeswoman for Democratic Gov. Martin O'Malley told The Sun that officials are still "evaluating claims that we may pursue in litigation."
The first ObamaCare enrollment, on Oct. 1, 2013, got off to a disastrous start, marked by an overwhelming public response that crashed the federal site, HealthCare.gov, and several state-run sites.
President Obama, angry and “frustrated” by the start of arguably his biggest legislative accomplishment, made sure the software problems were essentially fixed after the first several weeks by hiring industry experts to work around the clock to write better computer code and fix software bugs.
But at least two state-run sites -- Maryland and Oregon’s -- had to scrap their failed, multi-million dollar, online projects.
Oregon has moved online customers to the federal site after software bugs and other technical problems kept the state from fully enrolling a single customer online.
The problems and transition is estimated to cost state and federal taxpayers at least an additional $85 million -- including $50 million to manually enroll thousands of customers and $35 million to Deloitte Consulting to salvage the faulty technology.
Maryland officials have decided to replace their technology, instead of fixing the system or like Oregon joining the federal exchange system.
They have hired Deloitte Consulting, which has successfully run the Connecticut exchange. The effort is expected to cost $43 million.
The decision also comes just weeks before Election Day for Democratic nominee for governor Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown, who was O’Malley’s point man for ObamaCare.
Maryland and contractor Noridian have blamed each other and subcontractors, including IBM, for the problems.
The decision to delay action also came amid an ongoing inspector general’s probe, which was requested in February by Maryland GOP Rep. Andy Harris.
"Millions of dollars were wasted because of a lack of oversight by Lieutenant Governor Brown, and now the state must try to recoup some of the money he allowed to be sent to companies who couldn't deliver," Harris told The Sun. "The federal investigation should provide critical information about how taxpayer dollars were wasted and whether fraud occurred."
Justin Schall, Brown's campaign manager, said: "It's disappointing that congressman Harris would mislead the people of Maryland and play political games with a federal investigation."
Thirty-six states are part of the federal exchange, and there are 14 state-run sites.
The president crafted the legislation to help an estimated 30 million uninsured Americans get coverage.
The administration reached its goal of enrolling 6 million people by its self-imposed March 31 deadline. And right now, 7.3 million people have enrolled in marketplace plans, paid their premiums and have access to insurance, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

Losing the War on Coal: One Virginia town's painful decline

APPALACHIA, Va. –  Roger Whited doesn’t have to think back too far to remember when Main Street was alive with bustling shops and offices, teeming sidewalks and even traffic jams, all thanks to the industry that was the lifeblood of this tiny mountain town and countless others like it.
But six years into what many term the Obama administration’s “War on Coal,” Appalachia’s main thoroughfare is a tableau of boarded-up buildings, empty storefronts and dilapidated homes. Those who still mill about on streetcorners are looking for jobs, not places to spend their paychecks.
"I remember when the downtown area was more vibrant -- streets were packed and businesses were open,” said Whited, who teaches high school social studies in Wise County. “There was the hotel and Bessie's Diner, which was a popular place to get a meal. There were several other restaurants, but now the only place that serves food is a gas station.”

"There were several other restaurants, but now the only place that serves food is a gas station.”- Roger Whited

For generations, coal powered not only Appalachia’s homes and the lights on Main Street, but also the local economy. The salaries paid by companies like Cumberland River Coal Co. were enough to afford the trappings of a middle class, if hard-won, lifestyle. Men and women who toiled in the mines spent their money downtown and sent their kids to the local schools.
But the Obama administration’s tough regulations on coal-fired electric plants, combined with other market forces, have left the future of coal – and the people, companies and towns that depend on it – in doubt. The administration is seeking to reduce carbon emissions at coal-fired plants by 30 percent by 2030, a goal that industry officials call unrealistic. New plants are too expensive to build, and older ones are too costly to retrofit, they say.

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The United Mine Worker's union local, like so many shops on Main Street, sits empty. (FoxNews.com)

"If somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can,” President Obama said in January 2009, shortly after taking office. “It's just that it will bankrupt them because they're going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted.”
Even as the nation endured a recession, followed by years of sluggish economic growth, coal towns like Appalachia reeled from policies dictated in Washington. As coal-fired plants closed, demand for coal plummeted. In 2011, Appalachia’s lone high school closed, a casualty of low enrollment.
In July, Arch Coal, parent company of Cumberland River Coal Co., announced plans to idle its mine in Appalachia and lay off 213 workers, a devastating final blow to the town of 1,800. That followed a similar move by A&G Coal Co., once one of the region’s biggest employers.

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The mines around Appalachia once shipped thousands of tons to coal-fired electric plants, but policy changes in Washington have left the facilities empty. (FoxNews.com)

Miners who hung onto their jobs know their paychecks are numbered.
“You wake up every day wondering if you’ll have a job the next day,” Brandon Lawson, of nearby Big Stone Gap and a miner for six years, told the Bristol Herald Courier. “I’ve seen it [the decline of the industry] coming a long time ago.”
Tucked away in the mountains from which it takes its name, Appalachia is just a 30-minute drive from the Kentucky state line. It was one of many settlements that sprang up around mines. Those clusters became known as “coal camps,” where housing and services were all operated by the coal companies in the arrangement made famous in Tennessee Ernie Ford’s classic 1955 hit.
Coal towns that flourished became full-fledged municipalities, like Appalachia, which was founded in 1898. As mining became safer and wages rose, Appalachia and surrounding towns became symbols of success of small town America, a rural answer to Detroit. Hospitals, schools, restaurants and shops sprang up, all fed by the trickle down from “King Coal.”
There is no end in sight for the current decline, according to a report by Downstream Strategies titled, "The Decline of Central Appalachian Coal and the Need for Economic Diversification."
“Coal production in Central Appalachia is on the decline, and this decline will likely continue in the coming decades,” states the 2010 report, which predicts production, which peaked at 290 million tons in 1997, will amount to less than 100 tons in 2035.
Many have moved away from Appalachia in search of work in recent years. Other breadwinners, reluctant to shatter the family bonds built over decades, spend their weekdays in far-off locations, sending money home and visiting on weekends or whenever they can. In Appalachia, they call it the “Suitcase Brotherhood.”

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This 1974 photo from the National Archives shows Appalachia's largest coal mine, complete with three silos to store coal until it was ready to ship.

James Hibbitts was an upper middle-class banker in Appalachia back when there were loans to be made. Now, he works throughout the week for a natural gas company in Pennsylvania, some 375 miles away, returning for a few days when he can in order to be with his family.
“I am torn between the place I call home and the travel I am having to do to provide for my family, he said.
Environmental and liberal groups say there is no “war on coal,” only policies aimed at reducing pollution. They say many factors have contributed to the downturn in places like Appalachia, and the key to their turnaround is adaptation.
"The Appalachian coal market is confronting a perfect storm of mature coal resources, abundant and low-cost natural gas, deflated global coal prices, an influx of coal from Colombia and other countries, and competition with coal from other parts of the United States," said Alison Cassady, director of domestic energy policy for the Center for American Progress. "It does not help to blame the EPA and ignore the more fundamental market forces at work."
Rick Mullins, a local business owner in Appalachia and former state Senate candidate, agrees to some extent. He said the area has many attributes that could aid in a turnaround, but says federal aid is needed.
“What we are going to have to look to in the future is diversification,” Mullins said. “Owing to the unique history and natural beauty of the region, other avenues of employment could involve promotion of tourism in the region.
“If we could attain some kind of federal assistance in order to level the playing field, it would help greatly,” Mullins added.
Whited is not sure the Appalachia he grew up in will ever come back.
“I've got some good memories when things were better,” he said. “A lot of people had money and times were much more prosperous than they are now. Now there's really none of that, and it's empty for the most part.
“It's sad."