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Power Government Republicans The Almighty Buck United States

Trump Orders a Lifeline For Struggling Coal and Nuclear Plants (nytimes.com) 286

Posted by BeauHD from the who-wants-to-be-a-millionaire dept.
According to The New York Times, President Trump has ordered Energy Secretary Rick Perry to "prepare immediate steps" to stop the closure of unprofitable coal and nuclear plants around the country. From the report: Under one proposal outlined in the memo, which was reported by Bloomberg, the Department of Energy would order grid operators to buy electricity from struggling coal and nuclear plants for two years, using emergency authority that is normally reserved for exceptional crises like natural disasters. That idea triggered immediate blowback from a broad alliance of energy companies, consumer groups and environmentalists. On Friday, oil and gas companies joined with wind and solar organizations in a joint statement condemning the plan, saying that it was "legally indefensible" and would force consumers to pay more for electricity.

The administration has also discussed invoking the Defense Production Act of 1950, which allows the federal government to intervene in private industry in the name of national security. (Harry S. Truman used the law to impose price controls on the steel industry during the Korean War.) If the Trump administration were to invoke these two statutes, the move would almost certainly be challenged in federal court by natural gas and renewable energy companies, which could stand to lose market share. Such an intervention could cost consumers between $311 million to $11.8 billion pear year, according to a preliminary estimate (PDF) by Robbie Orvis, director of energy policy design at Energy Innovation.
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Trump Orders a Lifeline For Struggling Coal and Nuclear Plants More

Trump Orders a Lifeline For Struggling Coal and Nuclear Plants

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  • Capitalists no more? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by orev ( 71566 ) on Friday June 01, 2018 @07:29PM (#56712864)
    Isn't the point of capitalism to allow failing companies to die? At least during the financial crisis there was a national interest reason (collapse of the economy and banks runs are bad), but coal mines?

    • Re:Capitalists no more? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 ) on Friday June 01, 2018 @07:45PM (#56712932) Journal
      Yes, but in spite of all his bluster and repeating himself ad infinitum about any number of things that are complete and utter nonsense, he has to do whatever he has to, regardless of the consequences to the country and everyone in it, to retain the support of his voter base. Without them, he's got nothing. So he'll fuck over the economy, fuck over all citizens, and fuck over the environment, to appease those who voted for him. Little does he know that many of them are capable of looking past the ends of their own noses and will see that things like this that he does will have far-reaching negative effects -- and ironically he'll lose supporters anyway. He's a train wreck, has been all along, and isn't showing any signs of changing.

      • Re:Capitalists no more? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Friday June 01, 2018 @08:00PM (#56713018)

        Little does he know that many of them are capable of looking past the ends of their own noses and will see that things like this that he does will have far-reaching negative effects -- and ironically he'll lose supporters anyway.

        You sure about all that? I'm not.

        • Unlike this guy [slashdot.org] who commented below you, I don't automatically assume that someone who votes Republican, and specifically voted for Trump, has room-temperature IQ. Some of them did it out of spite, disappointment, and bitterness, which is not excusable, but at least understandable. Smart people do dumb things all the time; that's just how our primitive little species is at this point in it's development, our intellect doesn't always win out over our hardwired responses and emotions. These are the people I t

          • ... Some of them did it out of spite, disappointment, and bitterness, which is not excusable, but at least understandable. ... These are the people I think are looking at Trump and realizing what a mistake it's all been and how much they want to take it back now.

            Sure, I get that. But I wonder how many, like Trump himself, will double-down in the "us vs. them" environment it seems to be in the remote hope of coming out on top - even, or especially, if it's on top of the rubble of our society. Scorched-Earth campaigns have a certain appeal if you think you're better prepared than others to deal with the results or just don't care (about the results and/or others). Trump certainly doesn't seem to really care about anything except the adoration of the people at his

      • Re:Capitalists no more? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by jader3rd ( 2222716 ) on Friday June 01, 2018 @08:45PM (#56713238)

        Little does he know that many of them are capable of looking past the ends of their own noses and will see that things like this that he does will have far-reaching negative effects

        Pretty much the definition of a Trump supporter is that they aren't capable of that.

    • Re:Capitalists no more? (Score:4, Funny)

      by PolygamousRanchKid ( 1290638 ) on Friday June 01, 2018 @07:54PM (#56712978)

      but coal mines?

      "I think we should look at this from the military point of view. I mean, supposing the Russkies stashes away some big bomb, see. When they come out in a hundred years they could take over... In fact, they might even try an immediate sneak attack so they could take over our mineshaft space... I think it would be extremely naive of us, Mr. President, to imagine that these new developments are going to cause any change in Soviet expansionist policy. I mean, we must be... increasingly on the alert to prevent them from taking over other mineshaft space, in order to breed more prodigiously than we do, thus, knocking us out in superior numbers when we emerge! Mr. President, we must not allow... a mine shaft gap!" - General Buck Turgidson

    • Theres still hope for Betamax (Score:4, Funny)

      by goombah99 ( 560566 ) on Friday June 01, 2018 @08:03PM (#56713030)

      Ha! good thing I didn't sell my stock in buggy whips!

    • They never were (Score:5, Insightful)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Friday June 01, 2018 @09:41PM (#56713496)
      these are the same folks who vote for the farm bill and oil subsidies every year. The same folks that made marijuana illegal to prop up private prison industry and cotton. The same folks that ran proxy wars in South America for bloody _fruit_ companies.

      No, there's nothing even a little capitalistic about this party. They're just Kleptocrats.

  • IMHO, we need nuclear (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Snotnose ( 212196 ) on Friday June 01, 2018 @07:31PM (#56712870)
    Coal is outdated and needs to be replaced with natural gas.

    Nuclear has issues (most of them caused by lawyers paid by the hour, most of the rest caused by executives paid by the quarterly stock price, and a small handful of technical issues) but they're still a good way to get a lot of energy from a small footprint with a minimum of global warming.

    • Re:IMHO, we need nuclear (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 ) on Friday June 01, 2018 @07:47PM (#56712942) Journal
      Natural gas is a stop-gap, but it's a better stop-gap than coal is. Nuclear needs to be un-demonized, but rather than the over-complicated, high-pressure reactor designs we've got now, we need a 21st century upgrade to newer, better designs that are less expensive and safer -- and these exist. I also personally think that thorium reactors should be given a serious look, but I know I'm in the minority there.

      • Re:IMHO, we need nuclear (Score:5, Insightful)

        by voss ( 52565 ) on Friday June 01, 2018 @08:57PM (#56713314)

        Nuclear is an option but propping up old nuclear and coal plants is not the answer and does not incentivize new nuclear designs.

        • I'm making a face right now because I more-or-less said exactly what you just said but you apparently didn't see or comprehend that. :p

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by voss ( 52565 )

            No what you said nuclear needs to be undemonized and mentioned other newer types of nuclear power. What I said is what Trump did does not do that and does not create incentives to do what you want. It was not "just what I said"

      • It's only economical if you don't budget for decommissioning and cleanup (pushing that to future generations) and it's only safe if either (a) it's regulated to death--which also makes it uneconomical, or (b) at no point in the 60 year operational lifetime no one ever gives control of safety over to an MBA (or just a bad engineer). And the penalty for making too many mistakes is a cataclysmic disaster. Oh, and it requires a gigantic capital investment that only pays off over many decades and only if alterna
        • Unfortunately the total nuclear proponents never ever mention commissioning/decommission costs or how the land after decommissioning would be "lovely"

        • Re: Nuclear power is intrinsically pretty dumb. (Score:4, Informative)

          by c6gunner ( 950153 ) on Saturday June 02, 2018 @09:39AM (#56715206) Homepage

          Here's a lesson for young engineers out there: A good engineering solution is one that is intrinsically safe and simple, one that naturally fails in a safe way

          Which modern designs absolutely are. Even older nuclear plants didn't depend on "everyone doing their jobs perfectly", they only depended on people not doing incredibly stupid things in large numbers at the same time. This invariably meant that at some point I'm the 70ish years we've had them, at least a few would fail in dangerous way. Their safety record was still fantastic, but not perfect.

          With modern designs you don't even have that possibility. You could put a bunch of liberal arts majors in charge of the plant and the worst thing that happens is it stops working. Granted, there's still the possibility that one of them will try eating the nuclear fuel, but the damage from that particular failure will be quite limited in scope.

        • Re:Nuclear power is intrinsically pretty dumb. (Score:5, Informative)

          by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 ) on Saturday June 02, 2018 @12:47PM (#56716002) Journal
          I'm astounded at how little people comprehend -- or even completely read -- what people write.
          I already said the current designs aren't great, there are better ones, and potentially better technologies (e.g. thorium) but like too many you don't see to READ WHAT I WROTE and that annoys me.
    • What I find perennially amusing is how, every time there's talk about the government financially supporting nuclear power, the people who previously supported subsidies & tax breaks for 'green energy' suddenly become free market capitalists. Just watch, happens every time.

      • Don't presume to speak for me.

        A case can be made for providing subsidies for nuclear power to push carbon releasing power out of the picture faster. But subsidizing nuclear and coal is corrupt insanity. If the case were made for how we could get rid of coal faster I'd be all for giving it a hearing.

      • What I find perennially amusing is how, every time there's talk about the government financially supporting 'green energy' , the people who previously supported subsidies & tax breaks for nuclear power/fossil fuel suddenly become free market capitalists. ;)

        Nuclear is last centuries tech like fossil fuel so their subsidies should have stopped as they reached the mass market. Subsidies for renewable should also stop when its met a critical mass and is no longer a minor part of the power generation map.

    • I still oppose nuclear (Score:5, Insightful)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Friday June 01, 2018 @08:05PM (#56713048)
      because I don't trust Americans. They'll want to privatize it sooner or later because it's easy to convince 51% of the population that the private sector is so much more efficient (which is funny, since most of them have worked for mega corps and seen exactly how efficient private business is). Of course private enterprise isn't more or less efficient, but people expected cost savings and dam-gummit they're gonna get those savings... by dangerously cutting corners and/or running plants far outside their useful life cycle.

      This isn't even hypothetical. It's exactly what happened in Fukushima. And the people involved got off Scott free too. They cried a little on TV and all was forgiven. Meanwhile lots of the clean up workers died of cancer already and thousands lost their homes and jobs.

      Until you can convince America that Ronny Reagan was full shit when he said "Government's not the solution, it's the problem" then I want nothing to do with nuclear. I suppose if you could make it cheaper to run a safe plant than an unsafe one, but that tech isn't even on the horizon.

      • I suppose if you could make it cheaper to run a safe plant than an unsafe one, but that tech isn't even on the horizon.

        It's not missing tech. It's missing liability laws. Make the CEO and stockholders personally liable for all the damages from a meltdown, and safety will be the number one priority before the ink on the new law is dry

  • 52-dimensional chess (Score:5, Insightful)

    by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) on Friday June 01, 2018 @07:36PM (#56712892) Journal

    The administration has also discussed invoking the Defense Production Act of 1950, which allows the federal government to intervene in private industry in the name of national security.

    Finally we have a president who truly understands the value of "free markets" without government interference.

    At least Trump is demonstrating that every one of the most hallowed conservative principles really don't mean a thing to conservatives. They never did. It was always a con job. Trump could perform an abortion with a rusty screwdriver while raising taxes and banning guns on Fifth Avenue and conservatives would still meekly seek his approval and make excuses for him as long as he continues to send up the racist bat-signal.

    A reckoning will come.

    • Conservatives aren't (Score:4, Insightful)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Friday June 01, 2018 @07:52PM (#56712966)
      they use the word to hide the fact that they're actually in favor of sweeping societal and economic changes. They're not Conservative (opposing change and supporting the status quo). Heck, one of the most Conservative politicians in history was Hillary Clinton. She'd have kept everything as is, making only small changes to keep everything on course; and she polled terribly. As a rule "progressive" policies (Medicare for all, College for everyone, New New Deal, ending wars, infrastructure spending, living wage, etc, etc) poll in the mid to high 60s, yet their candidates can't seem to win elections.

      What I'd like to see is an honest label for the entire movement. Maybe "Regressives", since they seem to want to roll us back to the early 1900s or even late 1800s. Except not quite because they wouldn't support the isolationism and anti-bank sentiment that was popular back then. I wouldn't call them Neo-Liberals because they stop all sorts of liberty (Drugs, abortion, Gay Marriage, etc). I'm open to suggestions, but it bothers me that they use such a deceptive label. If people knew their actual policies they wouldn't have a chance.

      • As a rule "progressive" policies (Medicare for all, College for everyone, New New Deal, ending wars, infrastructure spending, living wage, etc, etc) poll in the mid to high 60s, yet their candidates can't seem to win elections.

        They do when they get the chance to run. The problem, as you just pointed out, is that of the 2 major parties that we seem to be stuck with under first-past-the-post voting, the one that people see as a progressive party is actually the status quo party.

    • 52-dimensional chess

      Sounds like a house of cards.

    • His poll numbers are solidly in their 40s (Score:5, Interesting)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Friday June 01, 2018 @08:10PM (#56713066)
      and haven't budged once since he got elected (+/- 2% for error). And he keeps doing worse things. He supports TPP now, and DACA, and H1-Bs, and looked the other way while Carrier Air and Harley Davidson outsourced jobs, and protected Chinese jobs at ZTE, and failed at Repeal & Replace... I could go on.

      All these broken promisies, the first two absolutely critical to his base, and still his poll #s are at or near 40%. Meanwhile the Dems are getting ready to run another Milktoast Hillary-bot 2.0 "centerist" candidate in all their races and give up both the House and Senate and eventually another presidency...

      Trump at least _says_ he'll do something. He's lying, but the lies feel good. So far the right wing corporate Dems don't promise anything but the same policies that got us in this mess. Meanwhile the few Dems like Bernie and Alison Hartson [youtube.com] get hammered by the establishment Dems and shut down.

      I don't see any sign of reckoning. All I see is business as usual...

      • All these broken promisies, the first two absolutely critical to his base, and still his poll #s are at or near 40%.

        Are those the same polls that said Hillary would win?

        Anyway, if you do a deep dive into those polls, you'll find that he's still an historically unpopular president. As long as he's sufficiently racist and does things like take children away from asylum seekers, he'll keep drawing his 5,000 at rallies, but he's about as popular with most Americans as he is with Melania.

        • No, it's from 538 (Score:5, Interesting)

          by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Friday June 01, 2018 @09:36PM (#56713470)
          who consistently said Hilary was in trouble and needed to be campaigning harder while everyone else said Trump didn't have a chance.

          Again, his poll number's don't budge. If you ask people about issues they consistently oppose Trump. If you ask them about _Trump_ they consistently support him. Thing is, that's not how politics work in America. In America we have wedge issues (Abortion, Gun Control, Gay rights) that split the voters almost evenly. Then there's a small number of 'swing' voters.

          Thing is those voters vote on their 'gut'. They don't rationally weigh options and policies. They vote for the candidate that makes them feel the best. This is why you can take a Trump voter, run Trump's polices against them and find they oppose Trump 70-80% of the time but they'll still come out and vote for Trump. Trump makes them feel _good_. His rallies are fun. He Makes America Great Again. Hillary (and the Milktoast right winger Dems like her) make everybody feel bad. They call you a racist and a sexist. They tell you how bad you are for not making it through college or not having enough money to get your kid's through college. Trump tells you he's gonna get your jobs and healthcare. Hillary says she's gonna leave things as is, with you unemployed and not able to afford a doctor visit even if you have insurance.

          This is the reality of the American Political system. None of it was by accident. It was built this way to keep wealthy landowners in power. It's doing exactly what it's supposed to do: provide the illusion of Democracy. I don't know how to fix it either.

          A buddy of mine is absolutely fucked. Almost 50, lots of health problems, has a parent who just won't die and is weighing him down. Dead end job because they shipped his career overseas. Fucked. He's turned to phony-baloney "Alternative" medicine bought off Amazon to treat his various illnesses. Right now the symptoms can be lived with (albeit with a big hit to his productivity), but that's not gonna last. Still, he's convinced himself everything's OK, that he's getting better. That Homeopathy works. And that he's gonna get rich off some dumb ass crypto coin scheme he put $300 bucks into. Meanwhile he just starting working for some gig economy bullshit where they dictate everything he does but don't have to pay benefits or minimum wage.

          He should be pissed that he and his parents got tossed aside like hot garbage. He should demand healthcare and a decent wage. He should be voting the the Dems primary to drive the party left and then in the general to drive them to victory. That's the problem I don't know how to solve. We're a nation of temporarily inconvenienced millionaires...

          • Then there's a small number of 'swing' voters. Thing is those voters vote on their 'gut'. They don't rationally weigh options and policies. They vote for the candidate that makes them feel the best.

            I disagree on that. I mean, obviously, swing voters are those who don't vote based on wedge issues. So if that's the "policies" you mean, then I'm totally offbase. But most swing voters seems to like some policies from each party. Or care about really obscure ones that are sometimes supported by one party

            • You got it all opposite way around: the parties "offer" positions to catch votes, that is all. If your demography is so bad that 60% of the population is against gay marriage, the parties will oppose gay marriage. Your parties usually don't "make politics" ... they turn their coat to catch the wind that breezes, hence the US are as a society so backyard.

              • Sometimes politicians are followers. Othertimes they're leaders. Yeah, they're unlikely to fly in the face of 60% disapproval, but 52%?

                US Society is backwards because there has been a propaganda campaign since the 80's or 90's, convincing people that if it wasn't for that horrible government in their way, they'd all be millionaires.

          • Not consistently. Nate Silver only started downgrading Hillary's chances sometime in the late summer/early autumn of 2016. I remember there being a discussion on his site where someone claimed Nate was playing a dangerous game of small potential gains and huge potential loses. If Hillary won, the argument went, no one would credit Nate because it was obvious to all that she would. But if Trump won, everyone would say that if Nate Silver was so wrong about that how could he be right about anything else. He w

    • Another possibility is Trump is not an ideologue and acts on hunches that are telling him something is beneficial to the country at the moment, without necessarily understanding (or trying to understand) why.

      I know that sounds scary, but sometimes acting on a belief that everything is well understood and thought out leads to worse consequences, for example the intervention in Libya.

      • Re:52-dimensional chess (Score:5, Insightful)

        by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) on Friday June 01, 2018 @08:28PM (#56713134) Journal

        Another possibility is Trump is not an ideologue and acts on hunches that are telling him something is beneficial to the country at the moment, without necessarily understanding (or trying to understand) why.

        This is my favorite flavor of Trump apologia. It's the "Father Knows Best" argument for why he's really the greatest president ever.

        This is also the theory of Scott Adams, who is now known mainly for making excuses for anything Trump does, and for being a feckless cunt.

        • Well, how do you appraise a theory? You evaluate its predictions. The theory you suggested in your first post is the kind of theory that predicted his defeat in the election, and then doom and gloom afterwards. The "hunch" theory has been claiming the opposite since the beginning. Which do you think the current reality reflects better?

          Scott Adams, whom I haven't followed for a long time, deserves credit on his own for predicting Trump successes. Scott's problem is that he is a hyperrational person which alm

          • Scott Adams, whom I haven't followed for a long time, deserves credit on his own for predicting Trump successes.

            I want to point out that he also predicted Trumps failure. However he didn't fall for political derangement syndrome, which put him ahead of the pundits.

      • Re:52-dimensional chess (Score:5, Insightful)

        by GrimSavant ( 5251917 ) on Friday June 01, 2018 @09:10PM (#56713366)
        Trump is not an ideologue in the traditional sense, yes, but the problem with your statement is who his hunches are telling him are benefiting from the impulsive action. It is not what is beneficial to the country as a whole, it is what is beneficial to Trump personally and to his political allies. Perhaps he is such an extreme narcissist that he conflates those two together, but that doesn't make it any better.

        Propping up the coal industry should make this point plain as day to rational observers. Coal has a load of negative externalities [theatlantic.com], it imposes a cost on society far higher than is paid in the price paid by the end electricity consumer. The old economic excuse for coal, that it's cheap, rooted in a laissez faire or free-market capitalist ideological justification, is moot since coal is decreasingly competitive on price, particularly in comparison to natural gas. It wouldn't need these subsidizes otherwise.

        All that remains is naked use political power for self interest and the interest of political allies. Much like coal itself, that is very old and very dirty.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Raenex ( 947668 )

          Propping up the coal industry should make this point plain as day to rational observers. Coal has a load of negative externalities

          Missing from this argument are the externalities that come from renewables, in particular rare earth minerals.

          Also missing from this argument is the actual national security reason given for saving coal plants: reliability. Unlike natural gas, coal fuel can be stored on site.

        • Note though that it is your judgement, that Trump is doing what he's doing to benefit himself. You interpret his actions one way or another based on your knowledge of people you've met in your life and on your own psychological makeup. A lot of people -- close to a half of the voting population -- do not share your judgment. If Trump's character were on trial, we'd have a hung jury.

          I would agree with you about coal, except that I don't know almost anything about the realities of the coal, and I cannot say t

  • Hooray for the free market and small government (Score:4, Insightful)

    by nedlohs ( 1335013 ) on Friday June 01, 2018 @08:02PM (#56713020)

    Glad to see the Republicans sticking to their principles.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by fafalone ( 633739 )
      They are.

      Doing everything possible to support their rich CEO donors in their quest to fuck over people and the environment in pursuit of ever more profit.
      What, you think they actually gave a damn about economic principles, fiscal conservatism, or family values? Please. Those are just tools they use to trick half the electorate into consistently voting against their own self-interest.
  • ...Dead salamanders. The only reason to align the two is political swamp-reason.

  • The coal industry employs fewer people than Arby&r (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Friday June 01, 2018 @08:29PM (#56713140)

    Just passing along that, The entire coal industry employs fewer people than Arby’s [washingtonpost.com] -- and just a bit more that Whole Foods:

    The coal industry employed 76,572 people in 2014, the latest year for which data is available. (That number includes not just miners but also office workers, sales staff and all of the other individuals who work at coal-mining companies.)

    Although 76,000 might seem like a large number, consider that similar numbers of people are employed by, say, the bowling (69,088) and skiing (75,036) industries. Other dwindling industries, such as travel agencies (99,888 people), employ considerably more. Used-car dealerships provide 138,000 jobs. Theme parks provide nearly 144,000. Carwash employment tops 150,000.

    Looking at the level of individual businesses, the coal industry in 2014 (76,572) employed about as many as Whole Foods (72,650), and fewer workers than Arby's (close to 80,000), Dollar General (105,000) or J.C. Penney (114,000). The country's largest private employer, Walmart (2.2 million employees) provides roughly 28 times as many jobs as coal.

    • If a job is a job is a job, why are you not working for Walmart? You must have some idea how wealth is created and know that flipping burgers is not how.

      And what about national security? How easy would it be to sever a natural gas pipe line? They run through miles and miles of empty country. Fifteen minutes with an excavator and a little C4 could shut down a entire state's supply. With a coal or nuclear plant only the plant grounds themselves have to be guarded.

      I suppose you think we do not need a farm

  • Picking winners and losers (Score:5, Insightful)

    by GrimSavant ( 5251917 ) on Friday June 01, 2018 @08:43PM (#56713218)
    This is the nightmare of government interference into markets that conservatives have long used to attack the left for their regulatory and subsidy policies, summed up in the pithy phrase of "picking winners and losers". But this is unvarnished use of political power to the economic benefit of political allies, a crony capitalism that is an even more explicit form of the "swamp" behavior that Trump ran against.

    If you think the above rebuke is wrong, please tell me what the genuine public interest is in the underlying rule "to consider guaranteeing financial returns for any power plant that could stockpile 90 days’ worth of fuel on-site". Several forms of power generation don't stockpile fuel (natural gas is typically piped in), or don't use "fuel" at all, such as wind, solar, and hydro. If fuel disruption was the legitimate security concern, then not requiring fuel distribution at all would be the most ideal for that end.

    Propping up coal is particularly egregious, since the coal industry has a plethora of negative externalities, which means that if anything coal power has been selling at rates well below it's true overall cost to society. Coal power also is at the top of the list of mortality [statista.com] and impaired health of all forms of power generation, far higher than natural gas generation which has been the main competitor crowding it out on price.

    Subsidizing coal power is plainly not in the general public interest, only the narrow interest of those who depend economically on the coal industry.
    • Shithole does it because the coal people have rowdy crowds show up to his rallies. That's the only reason. He likes "ratings", and coal people give him "the best" ratings.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • The "right" agrees with many provisions in Obamacare when asked. Still, they oppose Obamacare because in their mind not invented here = bad. Trump is the poster boy for unrestricted capitalism. This implies that bothering with the welfare of minions is not on their mind. For Trump things are great when it makes him money, if he is in the center of it all, and when he is made to look good....and of course, when it does not interfere with his weekly multimillion Dollar golf trips to Florida. How's that for go

    • Training the workers for a new career doesn't get you campaign contributions and other favours from the mine owners.

  • We have gone from a post-Truth world to a post-Government world where absolutely everything the government does it does so with emergency powers not intended for that purpose.

    - POTUS using executive orders to determine immigration policy.
    - The purchase and import of German cars is a national security threat.
    And now this.
    - Companies (small enough to simply fail) going bust constitutes a natural disaster.

    There's a name normally given to a leader who uses powers without oversight or recourse in a way not inten

  • We can blast and bash Trump as much as we want, but it is OUR FAILURE that he is still in office and has a Congress that just does anything to please him. Quoting Adenauer: "Every nation gets the government it deserves." I'm not suggesting that you write to your representatives in Congress, start talking to those people who still think Trump is doing a great job. These people are the real danger.
  • I'm good with helping getting new reactors off the ground. We need baseload power, but it needs to be clean. That means more hydro, Geothermal, and nuclear.
    But the idea that we should continue to subsidize old nuclear and coal is plain foolish.

  • When did natural gas get so cheap and why are we all so sure it will stay that way forever? If the coal plants are not needed in a particular area then I guess they can be shut down while natural gas is still cheaper, but in a few years they may have to be started up again if/when natural gas gets expensive again.

  • Between $311 million to $11.8 billion per year? That is only a range of 32dB; maybe you can find a way to increase it further.

    Remind me again why we are listening to you for economic planning.

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