Obama: No Friend of Coal
Nothing says change like killing the coal industry--and the media is finally picking up on the fact that Barack Obama is not a friend of coal. With renewed interest in Sen. Obama's remarks on coal, the Ohio Coal Association isn't standing by idly. Just this morning, the Association's President, Mike Carey, stated, "[T]he Obama-Biden ticket spells disaster for America's coal industry and the tens of thousands of Americans who work in it."There's a lot not to like about coal, except for the fact that it is cheap, domestically produced energy that is a vital part of our economy. Railroads depend on revenues from hauling coal as a major source of income, and without coal the future of railroads--at least some of them--might be in doubt. Coal also produces 52% of the nation's electric power. No one is going to argue that coal is the clean energy dream of the future, but until those dreams are able to become reality, the reality is that America needs coal.
posted by Publia at 10:33 AM
3 Comments:
Wilmette -- I just published an article in which I quote a spokesperson for St. Louis-based Peabody Energy, the world's largest private-sector coal company, as saying, 'Electricity Costs Would Skyrocket' Under Obama. It's true! Obama wants to cripple and/or kill an industry!!!
Paradise
(John Prine)
When I was a child my family would travel
Down to Western Kentucky where my parents were born
And there's a backwards old town that's often remembered
So many times that my memories are worn.
Chorus:
And daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
Well, I'm sorry my son, but you're too late in asking
Mister Peabody's coal train has hauled it away
Well, sometimes we'd travel right down the Green River
To the abandoned old prison down by Adrie Hill
Where the air smelled like snakes and we'd shoot with our pistols
But empty pop bottles was all we would kill.
Repeat Chorus:
Then the coal company came with the world's largest shovel
And they tortured the timber and stripped all the land
Well, they dug for their coal till the land was forsaken
Then they wrote it all down as the progress of man.
Repeat Chorus:
When I die let my ashes float down the Green River
Let my soul roll on up to the Rochester dam
I'll be halfway to Heaven with Paradise waitin'
Just five miles away from wherever I am.
Repeat Chorus:
Bob, thanks for the link to your article. Does it matter if income taxes don't go up if utility costs soar? This is not the change I want, and does not represent a better life for the less well to do who spend a great deal of their disposible income on utility costs.
Anon, thanks for sharing the song with us. Coal has been both a blessing and a curse, and we would be short-sided to neglect that fact.
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