A one man wrecking crew–
Barack Obama promised to bankrupt the coal industry during the 2008 campaign.
“So if someone wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them.”
Now this…
Alpha Natural Resources announced today that it plans on closing eight mines in Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia. The company will lay off 1,200 employees.
The New York Times reported:
Alpha Natural Resources, one of the nation’s largest coal producers, announced on Tuesday that it planned to idle eight mines in Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia, reducing its annual production by 16 million tons. The move will include laying off 1,200 of 13,000 employees. The company said that it was trying to meet the “evolving demands of a changing global coal market” and that it would continue selling coal in the United States while focusing new efforts on overseas markets.
The company blamed Obama’s EPA for the layoffs.
The Wall Street Journal reported:
The coal industry has been hit by competition from cheap natural gas, but Alpha made clear in its announcement that an equal problem is a Washington “regulatory environment that’s aggressively aimed at constraining the use of coal.” That’s a direct reference to the deluge of Obama Environmental Protection Agency regulations designed to force the closure of coal-fired power plants.
And yet Obama has the nerve to say he represents the middle class.
