Coal Mine Closings in Kentucky Kill Hundreds of Jobs
Happy New Year from Obama and the EPA!
The Obama administration has made no effort to hide its disdain for the coal industry, so this report from John Ruberry of Marathon Pundit shouldn’t surprise anyone:
War on Coal: Mine closings in Kentucky kill 670 jobs
On Monday Patriot Coal Corporation closed two western Kentucky mines. On New Year’s Eve the company announced the mines will be closed. The effects will be felt beyond Kentucky, as a Republican member of Illinois’ Saline County Board, Joe Jackson, points out.
From the Southern Illinoisan:
Jackson said the negative impact on Saline County is from regulations placed on coal mines by the government.
“We know that those places wouldn’t be closing if it wasn’t for (President) Obama and the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the regulations on burning coal,” he said.
State Rep. Brandon Phelps, D-Harrisburg, said while the shutdown does affect residents in his area, he is not sure how many people were impacted.
Professor Jacobson addressed Obama’s disregard for the constitution and his efforts to hamper the coal industry in his recent column for USA Today:
Constitution’s horrible, no good, very bad year
As 2014 comes to a close, it’s worth considering the Obama administration legacy as we head into 2015…
As to the environment, EPA regulatory authority has been used expansively to scale-back the coal industry and shutter coal burning power plants. Those regulations have cost Democrats politically in states like West Virginia and Kentucky, but the damage to the coal industry may be irreversible.
Further, the administration has moved to implement national carbon-emission reductions even though Congress has not approved such a national reworking of our energy policy. Even The New York Times notes that President Obama “could leave office with the most aggressive, far-reaching environmental legacy of any occupant of the White House. Yet it is very possible that not a single major environmental law will have passed during his two terms in Washington.”
The exploitation of environmental regulatory authority not to implement laws, but to create a regulatory equivalent of legislation, is an abuse of executive discretion. At every level, the Obama administration has signaled that going it alone is the only way to get things done.
Paging Mitch McConnell…
Featured image via Wikimedia Commons.
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Comments
Again, it must be noted: even if the GOP wins it all in 2016, including the Presidency, those administering these agencies will still be entrenched and loyal to those who support their agenda. Unless these people are removed nothing will change. These agencies must be neutered, quickly, and permanently.
No reason I can think of not to start right now. The EPA needs to be dismantled, along with ALMOST all other agencies of the Federal government.
Agree. Long ago, Congress violated an important management maxim: “Never turn loose of the purse strings.” Agencies should not have power to influence cost in the private or public sectors. And they damn sure should not be tied to interest groups at the expense of “We the People”.
Exactly. Here in the American West’s cattle ranching country we need to get rid of the Bureau of Land Management and the Fish and Wildlife Service.
Agreed! The EPA especially needs to have it’s regulatory authority severely curtailed. It’s probably the second most hated agency in the Federal government, right after the IRS. That hatred is well earned too considering how much of a hassle they can make it for people to do anything on their own property.
The EPA, Education, DHS, HHS, Labor, and too many others need to be dissolved. Others need to be-structured, and/or cut budgets, and be re-staffed: AG, State, Commerce, Treasury, SSA, DOD, VA and others.
We must elect someone who will conduct a complete shake-down. Yeah, I’m dreaming again.
Repeal The Administrative Procedures Act completely.
There is a coal fired power plant just outside our town. A few months ago they started the process of reconfiguring the plant to run on natural gas. We are fortunate in this regard that our local power plant can make this switch, people in other parts of the country may not be so lucky and will have to instead have to switch to different service providers altogether as the stations they used to rely on get shut down. This could result in power having to be imported from areas much farther away than it used to have to travel. Coal may be dirty compared to some other forms of power but it was cheap, plentiful, and reliable. Obama’s war on coal kicked out from under a lot of Americans something they relied on for basic stability in their lives: local cheap power.
CO2 brings life back to barren places, yet my coal plant got closed, even though they scrub out the actual bad stuff. Now they want a subsidized “future gen” operation, where they build a pipeline to move CO2 so they can sequester the life giving stuff.
http://futuregenalliance.org/community-corner/2013/03/
They find forests also are growing faster now, thanks to increased CO2, but have to warn us we still must waste billions burying CO2 “fertilizer”. Good grief. Every plant we eat grows better now, and barren areas now maintain greenery. MORE carbon dioxide please.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/02/forests-in-the-eastern-united-states-are-growing-faster-than-they-have-in-the-past-225-years/
“Electricity prices must necessarily skyrocket”. Obama clarifies the left’s war on the productive and self reliant. BigGov bureaucracy demands a choke hold on free market success, and the other hand in its pocket. Always with fatuous claims that “it’s for your own good”.
Coal is solar energy concentrated.
Our biggest mistake is trying to respond rationally to the lunatics running the country. There is no value to argument in the face of insanity. Those people need a straight jacket thrown over them. Then truss them up and run them out on buses. Drop them off in various ‘hoods a hundred or more miles away, take away their credit cards, phones and most of their cash and let the ‘hood have their way with them.
If 2% of the population would simply march on DC with chain saws, axes, flamethrowers, generators, dozers, semis, heavy equipment, fuel trucks, etc., and just start disassembling DC governmental agencies, brick by brick, I think we’d get somewhere. Spare national treasures, Library of Congress, the Smithsonian, and memorials. obola likes riots of destruction, vandalism, etc.; how about one on his doorstep?