Bankrupting Coal

Here’s the video that just may cost Obama West Virginia, or Ohio, or Pennsylvania.

The money line comes around 1:55. After telling the Chronicle he would put a cap and trade program in he adds, “If someone wants to build a coal fired plant they can … but it will bankrupt them because we will charge them a hug sum for all the green house gasses emitted.”

Ed Morrissey has this take:

This still consists of Obama sending “price signals” that discourage the use of coal. He does say that getting rid of coal altogether is an illusion, but he’s obviously opposed to expanding its use or even keeping it at current levels. He wants to heavily fine coal operators in order to get “billions” for R&D on alternatives, which will send the coal industry reeling and energy prices skyrocketing, as Obama himself pledges later in the same interview.

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Jim Vicevich

Jim is a veteran broadcaster and conservative/libertarian blogger with more than 25 years experience in TV and radio. Jim's was the long-term host of The Jim Vicevich Show on WTIC 1080 in Hartford from 2004 through 2019. Prior to radio, Jim worked as a business and financial reporter for NBC30 - the NBC owned TV station in Hartford - and as business editor at WFSB-TV in Hartford for 14 years while earning six Emmy nominations and three Telly Awards.

9 Comments

  1. Nadine on November 3, 2008 at 7:50 am

    Ohio, W.V, and PA coal workers are in jeopardy of losing their jobs. Where is the hope? No jobs, no money to pay bills, uncertain future – oh that's right – Obama will come and redistribute our money and give it to all the workers he puts out of business. But as he destroys job after job there soon will be no one to go get money from – the piggy bank, dear Obama will be broken – all gone! Now where's the hope – Oh yeah – that's when the public will hope or wish they had voted with some intelligence and voted McCain.
    The hope I see is just that – hope – and hope is only a dream – nothing substantial – there is no substance to hope. Why vote for an illusion? We need to vote for substance, we need to vote for change – a real change – like taking Government out of our lives and giving it back to the people. If this is what sounds good to you then do the first step – you are one of the 'we the people' so exercise your right, your freedom, and vote for 'Our Country First'. All the rest will follow.



  2. Dave in EH on November 3, 2008 at 8:11 am

    Creating dependency under the guise of an environmental policy.

    Obama's socialism will be as temporary as a temporary rate hike from the phone company.



  3. Stephanie on November 3, 2008 at 8:26 am

    Should this surprise anyone? If the voters of this country have not figured this guy out yet with only one day left until we elect a president, we're all going to have to learn the hard way. It's discouraging to see what a nation of sheep we've turned into. The damage an Obama presidency will do to this country will take YEARS to un-do. And the Supreme Court nominations that surely wil be made over the next four years – I'm nauseated just thinking about what kind of liberal/socialists will be nominated and approved by our overwhelmingly liberal congress. I "worry" about our great nation.



  4. Dave on November 3, 2008 at 1:26 pm

    .Taa-Dow!….This is Guy is playing make believe "I want to be President". He's delusional about the real world and has absolutely No experience. You can't replace Coal! Hello McFly! Yet it looks like he will be are Prez. This is thje last day in Free America!!



  5. Dimsdale on November 3, 2008 at 2:21 pm

    Nice to know that one of our greatest resources, a supply of coal that could last at minimum, one hundred years, will be off limits to us just when we need it.

    No doubt we will sell it to the Chinese, who are actively building coal burning plants to supply their energy needs.

    As for clean burning coal, remember when (Sept. 18, 1996) President Bill Clinton stood on the edge of the Grand Canyon on the Arizona side and signed an executive proclamation making 1.7 million acres of Utah a new national monument (I believe it was the Escalante Monument Nat'l Park or something close to that)?

    As he declared 1.7 million Utah acres to become a national monument, he simultaneously deprived an energy-starved U.S. of up to 62 billion tons of environmentally safe low-sulfur coal worth $1.2 trillion and mineable with minimal surface impact, was a political payoff to the family of James Riady.

    The Utah reserve contains a kind of low-sulfur, low-ash and therefore low-polluting coal that can be found in only a couple of places in the world. It burns so cleanly that it meets the requirements of the Clean Air Act without additional technology. One of the other places is, you guessed it, Indonesia.

    Obama will just put the "icing on the liberal cake" by denying us an energy reserve of our own, keeping us the energy slaves of the Middle East.

    Thanks, guys!



  6. Dimsdale on November 3, 2008 at 3:48 pm

    The more I watch that (and I hope the same can be said of the people in the coal states), the more I realize that he is doing a rather pathetic job of hiding his plans for America: no domestic coal, no domestic oil, no domestic nuclear. No nuthin'!

    What a shame that the media isn't doing its job and reporting this in a timely (i.e. before, say, the night before the election) manner.

    I really hope the electorate is smarter than they are being reported as being.



  7. shiningcityonahill on November 3, 2008 at 5:55 pm

    Oil and gasoline are unacceptable, natural gas is only tolerable momentarily and it now appears that coal is no longer acceptable. Perhaps we should bottle up all of the hot air Obama and his surrogates in the democratic party have been spewing from one end of this country to the other over the course of the last year or so. We'll have to develop a way to use it as an energy source since nothing else we rely on to keep our nation moving will be available for much longer. Seems pretty safe to say that it is 'unlikely' that Obama's hot air is a resource that can ever be depleted.



  8. Dimsdale on November 4, 2008 at 8:12 am

    Shining: that "hot air" is actually methane! Just coming out of the wrong orifice…



  9. Dave in EH on November 4, 2008 at 9:58 am

    This mannikin is going to engineer an economic disaster of Carter proportions, as a minimum.

    If you eliminate coal, you're going to *HALVE* the available electricity, forcing generators onto more expensive fuels and energy sources. Alternatives need an infrastructure lead time when you switch power sources — y'all need time to build a powerplant.

    Now, with this economic change, there will be downstream changes. Higher electricity prices will harm the citizenry at large, with higher electric bills, higher bills on anything requiring electricity and decreased economic competitiveness on the part of the US as a whole. This, in turn, will lead to greater job losses as overhead costs increase and moving jobs overseas becomes more attractive.

    Somehow, I don't think this is the hoped-for change…



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