Free Republic

SANDY HOOK, Ky. (AP) — The regulars amble in before dawn and claim their usual table, the one next to an old box television playing the news on mute. Steven Whitt fires up the coffee pot and flips on the fluorescent sign in the window of the Frosty Freeze, his diner that looks and sounds and smells about the same as it did when it opened a half-century ago. Coffee is 50 cents a cup, refills 25 cents. The pot sits on the counter, and payment is based on the honor system. People like it that way, he thinks. It...

As part of the President’s eleventh hour surge of new rules which are intended to hamstring any reforms sought by the Trump administration, the Interior Department recently rolled out a new “stream protection” order. This move would once again vastly expand the definition of open waters and restrict industrial activity which might, in theory, impact them under the Clean Water Act. The long and the short of it was yet another barrier to any sort of coal mining in the country. Rather than waiting for new leadership to rewrite everything, go through an extensive period of public comment and court...

(Watch the video at the link) Hillary Clinton already has an issue with being truthful, but her latest waffling on coal — and, specifically, coal miners’ livelihoods — has most of the country crying foul. “Instead of dividing people the way Donald Trump does, let’s reunite around policies that will bring jobs and opportunities to all these undeserved poor communities,” Clinton boasted at a town hall meeting in March — immediately, hypocritically, and even jovially following up with this zinger: “So, for example, I’m the only candidate which has a policy about how to bring economic opportunity using clean, renewable...

Romney fights for jobs -- and votes -- in an industry at war with Obama’s EPA. Nearly four thousand people turned out Friday in Abingdon, Virginia, to hear Mitt Romney declare his support for the coal industry, which has been besieged for more than three years by President Obama's Environmental Protection Agency... --snip-- For a Democratic president so closely allied with the labor movement, Obama's abandonment of the mine workers is stunning, considering that the head of the AFL-CIO, Richard Trumka, began his career with the UMW. Even as the EPA's regulatory squeeze of power plants has had the effect...