10May

The Federal Coal Moratorium — Politics Masquerading as Policy

Via The Desert News:  Some Americans may not realize it, but coal still provides roughly 35 percent of all the electricity generated in the United States. That’s the largest share of affordable electricity from any one energy source. States that rely on coal as their primary source of power enjoy the lowest electricity costs nationwide. […]
09May

HEITKAMP: We Need to Stand Up for Coal Country

Via The Grand Fork Herald:  Walking up and down the wind-swept prairie slopes near Beulah this week, it occurred to me that this swath of grassy land—an unmined portion of lignite coal country—probably doesn’t look like a coal mine to someone who’s not from North Dakota. In North Dakota, we know that our coal mining […]
07May

The Candidate in the Coal Fields

Via HuntingtonNews.Net:  This picture was worth a thousand words.  An AP photo of Hillary Clinton confronted during a West Virginia campaign stop by unemployed coal miner Bo Copley and his wife, holding a picture of their young daughters. Copley, tearful and choked up, managed to ask the presumptive heir to President Obama’s anti-coal policies how she could […]
06May

Coal Jobs are Vanishing Before Our Very Eyes

Via The U.S. Chamber of Commerce:  Michael Kinsley, a long-time observer of national politics, explained 30 years ago in The New Republic that “a ‘gaffe’ occurs not when a politician lies, but when he tells the truth.” In 2008 President Barack Obama, when he was running for the highest office in the land, committed one when […]
05May

EPA Shut Down Enough Coal Power Plants In US To Supply All Of Great Britain

Via The Daily Caller: America shut down enough coal power plants last year to blackout Great Britain, according a report published by pro-industry Institute For Energy Research (IER), citing data from The Sierra Club. The total amount of electrical power generation going offline in America is equivalent to blacking out the entirety of the United Kingdom. American coal […]
04May

Coal Takes Center Stage Off Broadway

May 4, 2016 The value of coal to the economy and to presidential aspirations won powerful endorsements on the campaign trail this week.  Both presumptive candidates for the White House gave coal and coal jobs top billing, albeit in very different ways.  What they left unmistakably clear, however, was that coal and the communities it […]
04May

Alabama’s Coal Industry Crushed by Needless Regulation

Via AL.com:  For decades, Alabama has proudly mined the coal that fuels American industry.  During World War II, coal helped fire the steel foundries and factories that built America into the “Arsenal of Democracy.”  And today, with coal still supplying roughly 37% of U.S. power generation – more than any other single power source last […]
03May

Hillary Clinton Hears Wrath of Coal Supporters in West Virginia

Via The New York Times: WILLIAMSON, W.Va. — Hillary Clinton came to campaign in coal country — and she had her feet held to the fire. As Mrs. Clinton stepped onto the sidewalk on Monday to tour a health and wellness center here, a crowd of protesters stood in the rain, many of them holding […]
03May

New Jersey: No Plan To Comply With Federal Clean Power Plan

Via NJSpotlight: Proponents of EPA policy say state is risking chance that feds will step in and draft regulations to ensure compliance with law. There is no chance the Christie administration will draft a proposal to comply with the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan to sharply curb global-warming emissions from power plants, officials […]
02May

Leading the Charge Against the War on Coal

Via The Lexington Herald-Leader: Since the Herald-Leader decided to question my perception of “reality,” when it comes to Kentucky’s coal industry, I’d like to take a moment to remind them of the true, hard facts that shape that reality — a reality for the thousands of Kentuckians who have been hit by the war on […]