[Hoot Gibson]

I am not, nor have I ever applied for or received any form of disability. But I knew you were on one by the way you talk.

It is pretty obvious, isn't it? Before Obama and Biden killed the coal mining industry in eastern Kentucky, it was difficult to hire experienced, older coal miners because so many near retirement filed bogus disability claims through one of the many crooked eastern Kentucky lawyers.

I have probably told you this story before, but one of the top corporate attorneys in West Virginia once told me how amazed he was by the sheer number of lawyers in eastern Kentucky. He went through phone books for Johnson, Floyd, and Pike Counties and calculated that, on a per capita basis, those counties had three times as many lawyers as Huntington had at the time. That is one of the biggest reasons why it has been so hard to convince businesses to locate facilities in eastern Kentucky. Slip and fall lawyers and their clients swarm like locusts on any company perceived to have deep pockets. It is a vicious cycle that gets worse in tough economic times.