Posted on 01/02/2012 8:12:50 AM PST by mmanager
Editor's Note: Murray Energy Chief Executive Officer Robert Murray has been called the most controversial CEO in America. He doesn't hold back on his views of America's current political climate -- and the Ohio Valley's future- as he joins us for this month's Sunday Sit-Down.
-- Many people believe the federal government, through the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, is waging a war on coal. How concerned are you that your business could be regulated to such an extent that it would make coal mining unprofitable in the near future?
Murray: I am 100 percent certain that will happen, the way it's going. I spent three days in Washington (in December) and met with (a number of) United States senators ... and (some of) the top people in the House of Representatives. ... I also spoke at a dinner in St. Clairsville that was 70 percent my employees and 30 percent vendors. And if I don't give a speech about what's going on in Washington, (my employees and vendors are) unhappy with me and they ask me questions. This is part of what I said:
(Excerpt) Read more at news-register.net ...
Obama said he would eliminate coal. Why didn’t people believe him?
Gas-fired electricity is about 11 cents per kilowatt hour, and usually there's no pipeline big enough to the power plant.
Wind, if it blows, is 12 cents per kilowatt hour, solar is 22 cents per kilowatt hour.
There a cost to electing dems...
Reminds me of my late stepdad who got me into the coal biz. Arrogant ?
Hell yes.
Producer of jobs and coal. That too...
>>Obama said he would eliminate coal. Why didn’t people believe him?
Who didn’t believe him? On the Right, we believed him. On the Left, they believed him.
The difference is that we know where the electricity for our iPhones and Volts and air conditioners and microwaves and televisions and computers comes from.
The Left think it comes out of the three prong hole in the wall. When Obama said he’d destroy coal power, the Left thought, “Gee why do we still burn coal? We can get electricity out of the wall?”
Eric, this guy is no good. He thinks he is beyond any oversight. I would go to work at Walmart before I would work for him. This article is spot on but he is a nut case.
I don't frighten easily. I wouldn't be in the coal business if I did. But I am scared to death for the people of the Tri-State area. This place will be devastated. I'm 72 years old, I'm spending half of my time in Washington, I've had four strokes and lots of TIAs, one in the presence of the Speaker of the House ... I can't keep it together, and I'm losing ground.ML/NJWe are observing, with every passing day, the damaging regulatory actions of President Barack Obama, his appointed cabinet bureaucrats and his supporters in the House and Senate.
The Obama administration has declared war on coal and has been speeding along unrestrained with a series of U.S. EPA regulations.
Coal powered electricity is 4 cents per kilowatt hour. Gas-fired electricity is about 11 cents per kilowatt hour, and usually there's no pipeline big enough to the power plant. Wind, if it blows, is 12 cents per kilowatt hour, solar is 22 cents per kilowatt hour. But wind and solar get (massive federal subsidies).
Obama's already canceled 81,500 megawatts of coal-fired electricity in the United States. That's 7 percent of the electricity in America. That's the 4 cents per kilowatt hour of electricity, not the 22 cents per kilowatt hour that he advocates through his green program.
About Global Warming: The fraudulent individuals around the world who have attempted to capitalize on the promotion of their theory that the Earth is warming are now finding out that it's just not true. ... They did it for what I call crony capitalism - to make money off global warming. ... Albert Gore has made hundreds of millions of dollars over his hoax, and now they're finding it's simply not true. [Actually "they" are not now finding it's not true. This was a hoax, fraud, massive deception, from the git-go and "they," the hoaxers, certainly knew it was all a big lie. ML/NJ]
The Democrat party has always tried to represent itself as the party of the middle class, of the working man. Back in the 1940s, post World War II, that was probably true. But that changed a long time ago. Now they're the party of the elitists in California, the movie stars, people with a lot of money. ... They don't represent working men at all.
I agree with the article. I have also met him and he comes off as mmanager described him. That said, he is a true rag to riches story and shows what risk taking and an entrepreneurial spirit can achieve.
Very good article, gas and coal compete with each other but also work with each other. In the Marshall Texas area lignite is mined and since that is top soil mining we move our gas pipelines all the time so they can mine. Of course the power company pays for it. The schools get both values for the lignite and gas and that helps hold property taxes down.
What's really happening here, when I look at this from a very broad perspective, is this:
1. The U.S. economy is basically stagnant because it has completely "run its course." Popoulation growth and productivity growth are the only ways an economy can grow, and we don't have much upside growth potential because our population growth is minimal and our productivity is already so high that it's hard to improve on it.
2. As a result of #1, the only way for nominal "growth" to occur in our economy is for consumer spending to accelerate, backed by to inflate demand from our existing consumer base. But we're all tapped out as consumers because we already have more crap than we need, and we don't have an employment base to support any growth in consumer demand, anyway.
3. Therefore, the U.S. government becomes a mechanism for stimulating demand through the imposition of regulations that force consumers (and businesses) to buy things they don't need. Industries (especially high-tech industries) already do this by building in "functional obsolescence" into their products, so their customers replace their products long before these products physically break down. Personal computers are a perfect case in point.
4. See #3. Government gets into this game by imposing "functional obsolescence" into large segments of the economy through its regulatory power. Go back and look at how much of this country's economic activity in the last two decades was tied direct or indirect government intervention in the marketplace: excessive mortgage lending under low interest rates and lax oversight, mandatory coverage for medical insurance policies, "Cash for Clunkers," Y2K compliance, etc.
5. For energy, the EPA is simply a tool the government uses to force obsolescence into a perfectly normal and fuctioning industry. Outlaw coal-fired plants, and there will still be a demand for other forms of energy. Who cares if it is more expensive than coal? It will generate its own economic activity where none existed previously.
6. But the coal will not stay in the ground, either. There was a news story last week about the U.S. energy sector that got surprisingly little fanfare. For the first time since the 1940s, fuel (gasoline, diesel fuel, aviation fuel, etc.) was the largest export from the U.S. When a country like China builds a new coal-fired power plant every few weeks, they have to get their coal from somewhere. When emerging Latin American countries do the same thing, where do you think they will get theirs?
7. If you look behind the headlines and see who is acting behind the scenes to push the Federal government in these matters, I can almost guarantee you that the biggest lobbyists for these EPA regulations aimed at shutting down coal plants aren't evironmental advocacy groups and alternative energy industries at all, but include other U.S. industries such as Class I railroads that stand to make a huge windfall in the future moving coal from U.S. mines to port terminals for export.
8. Related to Item #7 . . . Ask yourself why someone like Warren Buffett would go out and acquire the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad -- the second-largest U.S. railroad company -- in 2009 at a cost of $44 billion?
Ask yourself why someone like Warren Buffett would go out and acquire the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad — the second-largest U.S. railroad company — in 2009 at a cost of $44 billion?”””Because Buffett is behind the push for ‘Hish Speed Rail”. He is hiolding alot of the cards in the Western USA with rail mileage.
Ask yourself why someone like Warren Buffett would go out and acquire the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad — the second-largest U.S. railroad company — in 2009 at a cost of $44 billion?”””Because Buffett is behind the push for ‘High Speed Rail”. He is holding alot of the cards in the Western USA with rail mileage.
Cold, dry weather makes cracked fingertips which are now covered with Neosporin & bandaids...
Can’t type worth a darn....sorry.
That would be a legitimate point, but the problem there is that passenger service hasn’t been a profitable business line for the railroads in decades.
Any chance those “brownouts” and “blackouts” will start just before the election?
Good article!
Won’t see this in the mainstream press.
The pro-union commentary following the article is breathtaking in its ignorance. Don’t these idiots realize that they’re being sold down the river by their union leadership? Don’t they realize that they’re cheer-leading themselves out of their own jobs?
Fools. Soon to be out-of-work fools. Perhaps that’s where the 0bamunist regime plans to recruit its brown shirt army.
Yes, all summer long.
“This is a radical, incompetent - I don’t know where the radical starts and and stops and the incompetence starts and stops - but he’s destroying particularly this area of America.”
No...it’s the INTENTIONAL implementation of his anti-American agenda!
That is quite the pile of Broken Windows Fallacy, if that is what is really happening.
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