The Cost of the Union: Obama Declares War on Coal Country

District of Corruption

In the video below, President Barack Obama announces his plan to destroy the coal industry and thousands of Southern jobs in Appalachia with a suite of unpopular new EPA regulations designed to fight “climate change.”

West Virginia Rep. Nick Rahall, a Democrat and Obama ally, recently said in a floor speech in the US House of Representatives that “the only real question is where on a scale from devastating to a death blow the new rule will fall.” Even before the announcement of this new federal regulation, Obama’s War on Coal had already taken a toll on Southern workers in eastern Kentucky and West Virginia.

This unilateral act by Obama to destroy the coal industry is just the latest example that voting in US elections is futile – like the DREAM Act in 2010, Cap-and-Trade was defeated in Congress in 2009, but now Cap-and-Trade is being imposed on Appalachia anyway just like the DREAM Act was imposed through executive order.

Why should anyone vote in US elections when federal judges and federal bureaucrats make all the laws and the rigged system is impervious to reform?

Note: The Kentucky League of the South will be holding a “Stand for Coal” demonstration in Pikeville and Prestonburg, KY on July 19th to protest this.


About Hunter Wallace 12379 Articles
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47 Comments

  1. But the jobs, families, and livelihoods annihilated by it……is not.

    Every opportunity should be made to reach every single, conservative coal advocacy group, mining company, and news outlet in that area. This should be the sort of news that hits the AP.

    Coal miners and their communities do, in fact, keep the lights on. LNG and the “Shale Miracle” are topping out as we speak…..there will be no energy independence. We’ll be forced to go back to coal, but only after coal country has been raped by government.

    This rally can and should generate as much free press as the SPLC did when they took the LS billboard down.

  2. Obama’s motivations are twofold, and simple and obvious:

    1. Coal is largely a red state and red county industry

    2. Greenie weenie multimillionaires and billionaires comprise a huge percentage of the Democrat Party donor class

  3. We have enough coal (including soft brown, tar sands, and such) and uranium (if we use super-efficient breeder reactors like the rest of the world) to keep us energy independent for hundreds of years.

  4. Rudel…..I used to think the same thing.

    But several things are at play here:

    1) The depletion rate of Shale oil and LNG wells are anywhere from 50 to 65%, PER YEAR. The US literally has to now DOUBLE the # of wells in existence within just 2 years, and frack the environment straight to hell, JUST in order to produce the SAME number of barrels we produce today.

    2)The Shale reserves have been grossly overstated, grossly. In fact, California just admitted within the last week, that their recoverable reserves were overstated, by, oh a mere….

    96%! http://www.thewire.com/national/2014/05/california-shale-oil-eia/371317/

    That’s damn near everything! That’s 2/3 of overall reserves!

    http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2014/may/22/two-thirds-write-down-us-shale-oil-gas-explodes-fracking-myth

    3) Lastly, Steve St Angelo, one of the finest energy commentators in the market….opened my eyes to EROI(a concept he originated, which stands for “Energy Returned On Invested”.

    100 years ago, for every barrel of oil we invested in new oil exploration and infrastructure, it yielded 1200 more barrels. The EROI was 1200 to 1. Today….for every barrel invested into new fields and wells…..we get a mere 5 barrels. 1200 to 1, down to 5 to 1.

    It would take an oil price of several hundred dollars to bring back economic exploration and drilling….which, of course, will literally stop the entire world.

    The great news for Southern Nationalists, and those who favor traditionalism over trans-national corporate, bankster globalism…..is that due to peak oil….the world is about to get alot bigger again.

    For those who wants to read more from SRS, his excellent site is here:

    http://srsroccoreport.com/

  5. Cleburne61

    Way to win friends and influence people for our cause, preach destitution and economic collapse.

    Who wants to invest serious power in people who promulgate the message that theirs (ours) is a cause that necessarily depends on destitution and collapse in order to be successful? If that’s what we’re preaching, nobody’s going to trust us with power even if a collapse happens.

    And I’m saying that regardless of the truth of the matter of peak oil. I’m saying it as a PR observation.

  6. The coal industry is blowing up mountains in Appalachia and dumping the debris from them in streams. This destroys the South’s natural heritage and it poisons the water of our people who live there. There would be more coal mining jobs if the coal industry didn’t use the methods it uses to get coal from the mountains. Why should we stand for the coal industry? As nationalists, we should oppose the destructive acts of the greedy coal industry capitalists.

    • I’m not from there.

      It is what people up there are mad about. Everyone has to make a living and poverty and unemployment are the most pressing issues in Appalachia. A major lesson of the last war was ignoring the concerns of the people in that region proved fatal to Southern independence.

  7. I’ve been seeing some West Virginia ex-patriots lately. They say that there are no jobs there, all the coal mines are already shut down. The only ones left are run by rich Yankees, with all the positions already taken, and cuts and firings in process.

    There’s an exodus happening there, right now. West Virginia will soon become a, what I like to call, Ghost State (play on Ghost Town).

  8. ” The Kentucky League of the South will be holding a “Stand for Coal” demonstration in Pikeville and Prestonburg, KY on July 19th.”

    This is great, and goes along with the whole “In support of the Southern worker” type thing that y’all came up with to combat the Communists, and open border folks. You’ll definitely generate a lot of support and recognition by supporting miners.

  9. Why Pikeville & Prestonburg? Why not hold it in Roswell, or Area 51, New Mexico? They got coal mines there to, and probably more space aliens. Why not hold the rally in Ashland, Kentucky. Ashland is much easier to get to by interstate. You also pick up WV, and southern Ohio there too. Then there’ the Capital of West Virginia, Charleston. Right in front to the Capitol building is the Stonewall Jackson Memorial—what better place for the League of the South to rally for coal! Right across the Kanawha River from the Capitol is a college with the name Morris Harvey carved in stone. Harvey was a Confederate soldier and coal baron.

  10. Look … the US owes China and others trillions …

    Chinese are NOT stupid people.

    China is building up militarily (, lest the US renege. Would Obama lie??)

    There are really only 2 possibilities:
    The Chinese + are banking on the Obama recovery to repay them as the US becomes the world leader in “green” energy or
    They already own the coal, oil, uranium, etc. that is off limits to our use, ie. 80%+ of Nevada. No keystone pipeline means oil to China, not us. Could be a coincidence??

    On the bright side … look at all the smiling Obamaphone users you’ve made possible!

  11. Re: Earl

    I’m not familiar with that area.

    I expect the Virginia/Maryland and Kentucky League will cooperate in West Virginia sort of like how we did in Uvalda with people from Georgia, Florida, and Alabama.

  12. @Hunter

    I’m sure the League of the South will get a warm reception in Pikeville, and Prestonsburg. But, the center of the action, is Ashland, and with Ashland you pick up serious media coverage. You have a really hot topic in coal…

  13. @Countenance

    You misunderstand me, the SN cause is a winner whether we were in good times or bad. The message is simply: we are for self-determination….because it’s every people’s right, and we don’t have it….yet.

    I’m not a doom porn guy, but I’m also not one for optimist opiates, either. I’m a realist, like most everyone else on this site.

    I didn’t bring that point up in the end to “bring folks on board” to any cause. It shouldn’t necessarily be brought up in the coal PR blitz. Keep the message focused: on Washington D.C.’s hatred of coal, and those who produce it, and the alternative of freedom that awaits them, if they’re bold enough.

    I said it, because it’s the truth. There’s a silver lining to any cloud. The world is headed toward a currency/banking crisis, and an energy crisis. Some feel these things are horrible.

    I beg to differ, on the other side of every crisis is an opportunity. Globalism only thrived while both a) credit, and b) energy were “limitless”. Both of those things have hit a brick wall called reality.

    They’re our opportunity. They’re not the end of the world….they’re the beginning of a new one. The birth pains of a wonderful freedom.

    @Bobbola

    China doesn’t need our energy. They just signed a $400 billion, 30 year, LNG contract, and a $270 billion oil contract with Russia. Russia got the hegemony in the deal, China sourced its energy needs for decades. Both sides won. They also are busy contracting with the Saudis to build an enormous oil refinery within Saudi territory. This oil will trade for Yuan, when the time is right.

    http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/saudi-arabia-and-china-team-up-to-build-a-gigantic-new-oil-refinery-is-this-the-beginning-of-the-end-for-the-petrodollar

    China, Russia, and the BRICS are busy stockpiling thousands of tonnes of gold, and building up their IMF alternative, the “BRICS Development Bank”….which will be backed with collateral of half a trillion USD worth in BRICS currencies. They will bring back the “gold standard”, using gold trade notes and gold-backed bonds as letters of credit. This is what will soon fuel the trade of commerce and trade, after gold is re-valued, to restore those countries’ solvency in their balance sheets.

    Our people don’t have to sit here and take what they’re taking. Freedom is just ahead, let’s plant as many seeds for secession and freedom as possible while things are ‘rosy’.

  14. Cleburne61

    Well then, please accept my apology.

    However, that doesn’t change the fundamental point I’m trying to make, it’s just that now, I know this point doesn’t apply to you.

    Our movement has a reputation for being the province of ignorant losers. Now, any relationship between that reputation and reality is very strained, but still the reputation exists. But I don’t think ours should be a movement that depends on ignorance, destitution or collapse to be successful. Ours should be a movement such that there is a direct relationship between how intelligent and educated (formally or informally) our people are and how successful it is, and one that is economic-agnostic, in that it can win just as well in the best economy in the world as it can in the worst, and every other kind in between.

    This is why I think all our people should have a life slash hobbies slash interests beyond the movement and the cause. For one, if we win, we have something to fall back onto, so that our lives aren’t dependent on the cause and therefore dependent on never winning. (Can the NAACP ever afford for “white racism” truly to be eradicated, e.g.?) And second, our movement gets better the more our people know, even if what they know isn’t related to the movement, no matter how dorky or dweeby it is.

  15. I think that there is good reason to be concerned about atmospheric change from CO2 emissions.

    I also am concerned about the general depletion of our oil reserves.

    Most of all, I am disturbed that the politicians and media that bleat endlessly about “global warming” do not really seem interested in addressing the problem.
    If they were really concerned about global warming, they would be propagandizing and funding a massive nuclear power initiative. Instead, they attack American industries and hock inefficient “green power” patronage scams.

  16. David F.

    As Instapundit says, and I agree, I’ll start thinking that “climate change” is a problem when those who say it’s a problem start acting like it’s a problem. Until then, I’m left to conclude that “climate change” and “green” is the province of a combination of very rich Democrat donors who want a “green” wall between themselves and the diversity they want to enrich the rest of us with, and a giant slush fund for various crony green-capitalist scams and hustles. One of the latter is what’s principal in the Cliven Bundy question, to allude to the most previous OD thread.

    The future is nuclear.

  17. Afterthought

    Climate change is not a hoax, it’s just that almost all of it is natural. It is my understanding that in the last 2.5 million years, the “normal” for the world has been cold and heavily glaciated, and that what we’re experiencing now (“now” as in 10,000 B.C. to the present) is abnormally warm, an interglacial, they call it.

  18. Politicians passing laws, and writing regulations to change the weather is absolutely nuts. Think about it.

  19. Appalachia is full of people who are madder than Hell at what the coal companies have done to their region. We’re going to alienate those people by appearing to side with the faceless coal companies that aren’t even from there.

    Coal companies like Massey represent everything that nationalists should be against. They are scum. They are literally blowing up our land to make a profit.

  20. Hunter: Didn’t Al Gore say there would be no ice and snow by 2014 because of global warming?

    Here you go.

    In his speech, dubbed, “Earth Has A Fever,” Gore referred to a prediction by U.S. climate scientist Wieslaw Maslowski that the Arctic’s summer ice could “completely disappear” by 2013 due to global warming caused by carbon emissions.

    He went on to say that “scientists reported with unprecedented alarm that the North Polar icecap is, in their words, ‘falling off a cliff.’ One study estimated that it could be completely gone during summer in less than 22 years. Another new study to be presented by U.S. Navy researchers later this week warns that it could happen in as little as seven years, seven years from now.”

    And Maslowski himself told members of the American Geophysical Union the same year that the Arctic’s summer ice could completely disappear within the decade.

    “If anything, our projection of 2013 for the removal of ice in summer… is already too conservative,” he said.

    http://www.naturalnews.com/042074_al_gore_global_warming_predictions.html#ixzz33X1tGbxK

  21. LLD, there’s no other jobs besides coal mining. What are W.Virginians supposed to do once the mines shut down? There’s nothing there.

    If you’re against coal mining, people aren’t going to view that as against Yankee corporations, but against Southern workers. Instead of demonizing coal, you ought to be coming up with another way to mine. Without the mines, there is no work.

  22. @ Countenance

    No apology is necessary. I agree with you, that those who represent our cause and our people, should exude not only confidence, but intelligence too. Being informed, and demonstrating you know your stuff makes all the difference.

  23. Re: Long Live Dixie

    There was a group called United Mountain Defense that were among the counter-protesters in Murfreesboro. They are a leftwing group with an “anti-racism commitment” policy.

    https://sites.google.com/site/umdunitedmountaindefense/home/umd-anti-racism-commitment

    In any case, I am sympathetic to environmental conservation, but I am from the Southern lowlands. There are no mountains around here and our economy is not based on the coal industry. It’s up to the people who live in Appalachia to decide whether they are for or against the coal industry.

  24. Logan Smith: LLD, there’s no other jobs besides coal mining. What are W.Virginians supposed to do once the mines shut down? There’s nothing there.

    I’m not talking about shutting the mines down. I’m talking about ending mountaintop removal and other unsafe and damaging practices that benefit only the big shots who run the mining companies. Mountaintop removal is exactly what it sounds like – the coal companies have found that it’s more profitable to just blow up the tops of mountains. It’s devastating to the landscape and the local people. The irony here is that there would be more people employed in the mines if they would ban this practice. Conventional mining is more labour intensive, so it is in the interests of the coal miners to go back to conventional mining.

  25. Hunter: There was a group called United Mountain Defense that were among the counter-protesters in Murfreesboro. They are a leftwing group with an “anti-racism commitment” policy.

    All the more reason to avoid any appearance of standing with the coal companies. Why let the communists have a monopoly on the hearts of the local people who are against the coal companies? The local people are being used as pawns by big business and if the only groups that talk about their interests are communists, then they have nowhere else to turn. Instead of picking one side over the other, why don’t we pick both sides? We can support all the local people by opposing the capitalistic coal companies and supporting a return to conventional mining.

  26. Just as a matter of principle, I would always favour an eternal issue like the natural landscape over a temporary issue like employment. In 1000 years, who will care if a generation or two in our day fell on hard times and had to learn a new skill? But in 1000 years people will care if the ancient mountains of Appalachia have been blown to pieces. It’s a choice that I don’t think needs to be made because there is a simple way to avoid it, but if it did have to be made, I think it’s best to consider the long-term implications when making it.

  27. Chris Irwin is an anarchist who attends Marxist-Leninist discussion groups in the Knoxville area.

    Are the local people against the coal industry? Everything that I have seen suggests otherwise. The Democrats in Kentucky and West Virginia are already publicly denouncing Obama’s energy policies. Obama’s position on coal is also politically hurting Democrats in southwest Virginia and western North Carolina.

    This is going over like a fart in the wind in Appalachia. No one there wants to be associated with killing jobs to fight “climate change.” Pollution and mountaintop removal are specific practices that are more controversial, but that is not the same thing as shutting down coal fired power plants because coal shouldn’t be used, period.

  28. It’s much the same way in California: liberals who don’t live in rural California and whose livelihoods are not derived from its resources and industries impose draconian environmental laws through the California state legislature that create poverty and unemployment in the White working class areas which wants to secede to become “Jefferson.”

    Coal is the issue that alienates Whites in Appalachia from Washington. Nothing else comes close.

  29. While folks are still here and awake, how do y’all feel about spreading the word of our cause on Confederate Music youtube videos (the comment section) and on /pol/?

  30. “Rudel…..I used to think the same thing… But several things are at play here”

    Perhaps you are right about bitumen and lesser forms like shale and sand, and I still believe that Peak Oil theory is correct (and is being confirmed daily) but we still have tons of coal and thorium based reactors are real and promise to give us centuries of power.

    We can always turn coal into high test gasoline and carbon fiber (and other plastics) and use nukes for electricity.

    There is nothing to stop us from using other methods than mountain top removal and huge slurry dams of coal waste to produce coal albeit at a higher price.

  31. @ Rudel…

    You’re quite right, I’m a total believer in Thorium, I think it will transform the world….that’s precisely why the ruling elites in charge haven’t green lit it yet, but its day is coming, nonetheless. Coal is plentiful, if we’re actually allowed to use it. Coal has gotten cleaner, and thorium is the energy of tomorrow.

    I’m not saying there’s no energy, I’m just saying there will be an initial shock and price to pay, since that jump can’t be made overnight. Good thoughts.

  32. Perhaps I should have said “man-made” climate change, but the climate is not changing fast enough for our tools to perceive it at this time. It is a hoax dreamt up by Fabian Socialists and their fellow travelers in order to get control over human population growth, or more specifically human impact on the environment (which is real).

    Here is an erudite video explaining it.

  33. @Cleburne61: Thanks for your referring to http://srsroccoreport.com. A fascinating and thought-provoking reading, complimentary to the issues discussed here at OD.

    @Long Live Dixie: Thanks for explaining many things about the mining and people’s moods in Appalachia.

    In general: facts and compact views’ presentation win readers and support. The speech incontinence so often seen here at OD over the last year destroys the blog readership and cause’s support.

    If you are in it, control when, what and how much you say: don’t dilute the useful content. This has been a good and useful thread — thanks all!

  34. “Politicians passing laws, and writing regulations to change the weather is absolutely nuts. Think about it.”

    Like King Canute holding back the sea by royal decree. It just make me think the end is nigh for the USA (and about time too.)

  35. Afterthought on June 3, 2014 at 3:25 pm:

    Funny, when I think Plekhanov, I think of Arch-Communist Gregori Plekhanov.

    Yup, only I am modestly spelling myself with a small “p” 🙂

    Your view of Plekhanov as “Arch-Communist” is inaccurate, though, see e.g. http://en.potiori.com/Georgi_Plekhanov.html:

    Plekhanov was hostile to the Bolshevik party headed by Vladimir Lenin, however, and was an opponent of the Soviet regime which came to power in the autumn of 1917. He died the following year. Despite his vigorous and outspoken opposition to Lenin’s political party in 1917, Plekhanov was held in high esteem by the Russian Communist Party following his death as a founding father of Russian Marxism and a philosophical thinker.

    … Plekhanov was extremely hostile to the Bolshevik Party headed
    by V.I. Lenin and was the top leader of the tiny Yedinstvo group

    The people who stood at the origins of the now super-successful destruction of the West have been carefully nurtured on Bolsheviks’ methods. The Communists’ brilliance in the delayed action right in front of you.

    If Lenin and Plekhanov’s works and lives were thought about by the SNs and WNs, they — we — would be much better off.

    I view Lenin as one of the biggest evils that the Western Civilization have ever seen but his practical methods are priceless.

    Plekhanov was deeper than Lenin and was warning what would happen if Bolsheviks got the yearned power.

    Lenin enjoyed his victory for less than year only, until he and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanni_Kaplan met… then quickly melted away. He had the time to have belated regrets on what he had done, though. Things more or less went the way Plekhanov had seen them. He was a good and prescient man.

  36. First, mountaintop removal is not the literal blowing the tops off mountains.
    Yes they do “level” the mountain, but is a version of strip mining. They blast the coal free once reaching it. It’s quite magnificent to see.
    Once the land is restored, it becomes more usable. You can’t really build houses or commercial properties or roads or grow crops on the side of a West Virginia hill.
    The war against West Virginia began in the late 70s.
    (About the time Bobby Bowdin went full throttle negro).

    West Virginia did four things well back then. Mine coal, make energy, make steel, and produce chemicals. And they are trying to finish off the last one that hasn’t been completely destroyed, coal powered energy generation.
    West Virginia is the number one energy exporting state in America.
    Wash DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and etc., you are welcome. Just remember it isn’t some cheap motel keeping the lights on for you.

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