Appalachia

It has been proven over and over again that coal mining leaves an area far more impoverished than before the mining began. Degrades the land, abuses and sickens the workers, drives out good jobs and destroys public schools by degrading property values thus driving down taxes paid to support public education. The ridiculous "War on Coal" campaign is an insult to the hard working people trapped by the cycle of poverty created by the coal barons who enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else.

Unfortunately, it fails to go into the fact that resource extraction industries take the value from the area where the resources are located and transfer the wealth to the owners/investors. This model has now taken over the agricultural economy, which is now basically strip mining the soil. We are now at peak soil in the US agriculture sector now.

You should post this over at GD to get more views, just so some people might inform themselves.