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Quick: What was the No. 1 source of electricity production in the U.S. during the first half of 2017? If you answered renewable energy, you were wrong by a mile. If you answered natural gas, you were wrong by a tiny amount. According to the Energy Information Administration, which tracks energy use in production on a monthly basis, the single largest source of electric power for the first half of 2017 was coal. That's an amazing finding, because liberals, especially environmental groups, keep telling us that coal is a dead industry. They ridiculed Donald Trump and called him a liar...

FORT MADISON, IOWA -- Only ghosts and shadows haunt the empty halls of Sheaffer Pens, the onetime giant pen manufacturer on H Street. Its locked doors and worn brick stand like weary sentinels along the banks of the Mississippi in this struggling southeast Iowa river-and-railroad town. Rust weeps through the paint on the window frames; the once magnificent illuminated-letters sign with the trademark white dot that faced Illinois is gone, no longer serving as a gatekeeper for its fortress of employees. At its peak, it employed more than 2,500 people in a town of 14,000; nearly everyone here had someone...

First, the bad news: GDP is slowing all over the world because productivity has been in decline for two decades. The result has been higher unemployment (especially among young people) and economists talking about 20 more years of slow growth. According to new numbers from Oxfam, just eight people are as rich as half the globe. In addition to this unprecedented inequality, we face climate change that’s taken us into the sixth extinction wave in the history of the planet, and the last time that happened was 65 million years ago. To turn things around before it’s too late, we...

Bosses of German companies including engineering group Siemens (SIEGn.DE) and carmaker BMW (BMWG.DE) will travel with Chancellor Angela Merkel to meet U.S. President Donald Trump this week, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. Faced with Trump's "America First" policy and threats to impose tariffs on imported goods, the captains of industry will stress how many U.S. jobs are tied to "Deutschland AG". Trains-to-turbines group Siemens employs more than 50,000 people in the United States, its single biggest market, where it makes 21 percent of its total revenue, while BMW's South Carolina plant is its largest factory anywhere in the...

President Trump signed legislation today rescuing coal miners and the coal industry from hateful liberal politicians. Several coal miners were in the room today for the special event. Trump promised to rescue coal miners during the campaign. Hillary promised to kill all coal mining jobs and put thousands of families out of work. Today President Trump made good on that promise. With some coal miners looking on, Pres Trump signs bill repealing Obama Admin regulation protecting streams from mining debris. pic.twitter.com/HmpL1crtrQ

Vicente Fox Trump acting like 'a child, a CEO': Vicente Fox 1 Hour Ago | 01:35 Former Mexican President Vicente Fox blasted President Donald Trump on Friday, calling him a "child" and mockingly referring to him as a corporate "CEO" rather than president of the world's most powerful country. In an interview on CNBC's "Squawk Box," the outspoken Fox said Mexico won't pay for the wall Trump wants to build along the border, "not now, not ever." Fox also said he doesn't believe Trump is an American "in his soul and his beliefs." He added he does not understand the...

President Donald Trump (C) leads a meeting with invited business leaders and members of his staff in the Roosevelt Room at the White House January 23, 2017 in Washington, DC. Business leaders included Elon Musk of SpaceX, Wendell Weeks of Corning, Mark Sutton of International Paper, Andrew Liveris of Dow Chemical, Alex Gorsky of Johnston & Johnson and others. Trump meets with CEOs and pledges to cut taxes 'massively' President Donald Trump on Monday told a range of business leaders that he believes his administration can cut regulations by 75 percent or "maybe more." At the White House with 10...

The GOP’s Future Is as the Party of Industry Republicans have a chance to reshape American politics by offering a program for an industrial economy. By Michael Lind — November 25, 2016 Donald Trump won the presidency in an upset victory largely because of his appeal to the white working class in a number of industrial states that have been reliably Democratic for years. His denunciations of Chinese mercantilism and U.S. transnational corporations that offshore jobs to low-wage countries resonated strongly in the parts of the South and the Midwest where most U.S. manufacturing is concentrated — while shocking defenders...

Donald J. Trump on Thursday traveled to Pittsburgh, a city once synonymous with the rich coal seam that runs beneath it and now the capital of natural gas fracking, to promise the impossible: a boom for both coal and gas. Mr. Trump’s energy promises to those attending a corporate conference contained a fundamentally incompatible concept, as expanding the exploration of natural gas is the surest way to hurt coal production, and vice versa. Since the two fuels compete directly for the same market — the power plants that light American homes — it is effectively impossible to increase production of...

For the past year as some of you know, Sweden has called for a ban on lobster imports from the United States. Without a shred of proof, they claim that American raised lobster threaten their native lobster in its own habitat. Only two forces seem to be fighting this unjustified and uncalled for ban, Nova Scotia and New England Fisherman, particularly those from my home state of Maine. The ban proposal has already cleared its first hurdles despite new data by European scientists that show that American imports have nothing to do with the increase of North American lobsters in...

The “keep it in the ground” fossil-fuel strategy described by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton as a “done deal” would kill more than 380,000 jobs and deliver a $70 billion annual hit to the economy, according to a report released Wednesday. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Institute for 21st Century Energy found that banning fossil fuel production on public lands and offshore waters would result in a loss of $70 billion in annual GDP as well as $11.3 billion in royalties, along with massive direct and indirect job losses.

Coal and steel in Europe - coal and lead in America: Citizens are taking a back seat to globalist ambitions by the ruling class “In the next century, nations as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single, global authority. National sovereignty wasn’t such a great idea after all.”—Strobe Talbot, Bill Clinton’s Deputy Secretary of State, Time, July 20th, 1992. Despite the recent Brexit vote on the British Isles, the European Union still maintains its stranglehold on most of the old continent, and this über-nation has overridden the wishes of the member state’s public to varying...

Opportunities for producing and assembling products and their components have spread worldwide, making it is easier for countries to climb the production value ladder. States at the bottom, extracting raw materials, can gradually move up, first making low-value components and then progressing to higher-value ones or basic assembly. But just as technology spurred globalization and the shifts in international trade that followed, so, too, will it revolutionize how countries again do business with one another. Compounded by the economic and demographic changes taking place today, automation, advanced robotics and software-driven technologies are ushering in a new era — one of...

(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...

Donald Trump states in Pittsburgh he will bring back Pittsburgh's coal industry, clean coal. And also he will bring back Pittsburgh's steel industry.

Cruz addresses a major reason for our trade deficit. However ... If something confuses people? It invites corruption. A handy rule of thumb in government. Are VATs confusing? Very. ~~~ Even explaining a VAT* is tough because there are many different kinds. Some alleged VATs aren't even VATs according to many. But I'll break it down into two categories: 1. A good VAT. 2. A bad VAT. ~~~ A Good VAT Senator Cruz proposes 'turning the tables' on Europe and other nations which are sneaking money back to corporations which give them jobs. In the nutshell, a good 'VAT' is...

The ability of the US manufacturing sector to produce increasing amounts of output with fewer and fewer workers should be recognized as a sign of economic strength and vitality, not economic weakness. Thanks to advances in technology, the factory floor today is one with modern, advanced, state-of-the-art equipment that requires fewer employees, but with greater skills and training than in the past. The trend in US manufacturing over the last 30 years – more and more output with fewer and fewer workers – is exactly like the transformation that revolutionized US farming over the last 100 years or more. With...

Since Obuma was elected to POTUS, I have been coming to Free Republic to get news, opinions and a few laughs. Most of the serious posts were bemoaning the out of control government and what could be done about it. "Oh Whoa is Me!". Then along comes a constitutional conservative. For the first time since Ronald Reagan, we have a constitutional candidate running for the GOP nomination. This man was elected by conservatives to go to Washington and stand up to the elites that no longer listen to the American people. He didn't go to Washington and "fall in" with...

The downward slide continued for Colorado's coal industry in 2015, highlighted by production at Routt County's Twentymile Mine, which was down 38 percent. Statewide, production in Colorado was down 18.5 percent, with 18.7 million tons, the lowest amount of coal mined in 23 years. ... Colorado Mining Association President Stuart Sanderson said the drop in production is a result of lower demand, but it was not caused by natural market forces. What we are seeing is the direct result of government regulations that are designed to drive coal out of the energy mix," Sanderson said. He called Colorado's 2010 Clean...

PARIS - President Obama joined leaders from 150 nations on Monday in pledging action against climate change, kicking off a historic two-week gathering that Obama called a "turning point" in the battle against one of humanity’s gravest threats. ...."The growing threat of climate change could define the contours of this century more dramatically than any other," Obama said in a speech at the Le Bourget conference center in Paris’s industrial outskirts. "What should give us hope that this is a turning point, that this is the moment we finally determined we would save our planet." Obama, who has staked his...