This afternoon, the coal industry is launching yet another public relations campaign — this one billing itself as “an alliance of people from all walks of life who have joined forces to educate the general public and lawmakers about the importance of coal and coal mining to our local and national economies.”

This group is calling itself the Federation for American Coal, Energy and Security, which creates the nice abbreviation, FACES of Coal. The group is having a kick-off press event this afternoon at the offices of the Charleston Area Alliance, a regional chamber of commerce group.

Among those I’m told are taking place in today’s event are West Virginia state Sen. Roman Prezioso, D-Marion, Vivian Parsons, executive director of the County Commissioners’ Association of West Virginia, and Rick Rice, president of Mountain State Steam Inc. in Buckhannon.

This group joins the Friends of Coal, Citizens for Coal, and the West Virginia Coal Association —  not to mention those fine letter-faking folks at the American Coalition for Clean Coal Energy (Five more fake constituent letters to Congress, written by the ACCCE’s PR outfit, have been discovered, congressional investigators announced yesterday) — as well as the National Mining Association and who knows how many other industry front groups out there … oh yeah, don’t forget the new organization Friends of America.