Having attended the Dec. 12 four-hour rally and public hearing addressing coal export through the Northwest, it appears that the full-page ads running in The Columbian for three consecutive days proved to be a bad investment for “Alliance for Northwest Jobs & Exports” as the ads seemed to have drawn only around 35 pro-coal people out of the 650 (or more) attending.
For the entire three hours of hearings testimony I spent in Clark College’s Foster Hall, Gaiser Hall being the other site on campus where public comment was taken, there was but one pro-coal person speaking.
The identical newspaper ads, which had the sentence “We’re speaking out” in the center of the page, should have said, “We’re shelling out,” which is what one has come to expect of the cowboy capitalists — my apologies to the genuine article of cowboydom.
Edie Cotton
Vancouver
