Washington state refuses to allow coal export terminal, in legal battle with 6 states

 

Washington State via the court will try and stop the coal export terminal. This is a federal port. Just another in the list of judges who will put their nose into it. Stopping utility lines, laying pipelines and improving refineries, – don’t even consider building a new one. But forget the impact of the huge solar panels that fry birds in an instant. Wind farms that are equally as devastating. A wink and a nod to them. The list is endless. They would have us go back to being Hunter-Gatherers. First some history and what we need to remember at this election time, and then will include here what the wacko birds are trying to do. In this case, stopping exporting coal and costing thousands of jobs.

Keep in mind: There are 400 coal-powered electric plants in the United States. They generated 30 percent of the nation’s electricity.(Jul 31, 2015)  Some states like Ohio, 54 percent comes from coal.

McCarthy: “The hicks in flyover country were too stupid to understand that we were doing them a favor by killing their jobs”.

 

 

 

Recall this? This one says it all:

EPA Chief: ‘Hicks in flyover country too stupid that we were doing them a favor killing their jobs

She implement controversial environmental regulations such as the Clean Power Plan (CPP) — which are viewed as job-killers in coal country — and told reporters earlier this year that she gave up talking to “climate deniers.”

“I don’t check out flat Earth society and I’m not talking to climate deniers,” she said in October. “That’s it. Sorry, I know I’m supposed to be for everybody, but my patience has worn thin over eight years.”

 

Trump repeals coal mining regulations, signs legislation

In case we wonder why we elected Trump, and what will happen if we don’t support the man in November by electing conservatives. I give you a few of what we were up against and lucky for us, Trump won:

 

 

EPA ‘clean coal’ rule would increase power prices by 70 or 80 percent

An Obama administration official has said that the new clean coal rules could increase electricity prices by as much as 80 percent.
Dr. Julio Friedmann, the deputy assistant secretary for clean coal at the Department of Energy, told House lawmakers that the first generation of carbon capture and storage technology would increase wholesale electricity prices by “70 or 80 percent.”
The Obama administration’s plan to fight global warming includes limiting carbon dioxide from new power plants. In order for new coal-fired power plants to be built, however, they would need to install costly carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology.

Hillary Clinton ‘We’re going to put coal companies out of business’

 

 

Top EPA official Obama’s “coal regs will be painful all of the way”

Obama’s war on coal hits our electric bill

EPA shuts down one of the largest Coal Mines in U.S.

It is the first time in the agency’s 40-year history that it has canceled a federal water permit for a project after it was issued.

The EPA noted in its own press release that it was asserting a rarely used authority

Obama’s promise to bankrupt coal industry to cost 1,000 jobs in upper Midwest

 

Now the latest:

A lawsuit has pitted six landlocked states against Washington State over a simple question: Who owns the federal ports?

Washington State is denying the states the permits required to build a large coal export terminal along the Columbia River. The states have sued and Washington filed a motion for dismissal.

But U.S. District Court Judge Robert Bryan rejected Washington State’s motion, setting the stage for a legal showdown over who really gets final say over which products flow through the nation’s sea ports.

“We’re talking about the Constitution and the rule of law,” said Montana Attorney General Tim Fox, “One state can’t discriminate against another state’s commodities in this way.”

Montana and Wyoming are leading plaintiffs and two of the largest coal-producing states in the country. The Powder River Basin contains 2.5 billion tons of recoverable coal and currently supplies 40 percent of the coal used in the United States. But as many states wean themselves off of electricity from burning coal, coal companies are looking to boost exports, primarily to Asia. But they have a major problem: there are no ports along the West Coast currently set up to load coal onto ships.

Four other states, Kansas, Utah, South Dakota and Nebraska, have joined the lawsuit against Washington State.

The Millennium Bulk Terminal, proposed for the port in Longview, Wash., was supposed to solve that obstacle. It was designed to export 44 million metric tons of coal a year. Important allies and trading partners Japan and South Korea were eager to buy the coal. But after conducting an environmental impact study, the state of Washington denied the terminal a required water permit.

“I think we’re on sound ground,” said Washington’s Democratic Governor Jay Inslee, “because we’re enforcing our environmental rules for clean air and noise and some other issues.”

Snip…

“It is insulting to all Washington residents that proponents of this facility have chosen to minimize and ridicule the impact diesel emissions from the largest operation of the largest coal export facility in North America would have had on the people of Cowlitz County,” said Ecology’s spokesman Dave Bennett.

But Governor Jay Inslee makes no secret of his disdain for coal. In his 2007 book, “Apollo’s Fire: Igniting America’s Clean Energy Economy,” Inslee wrote, “coal is killing us. If we fail to restrain growth of CO2 emissions all six billion of us on this little spaceship are at risk.”

He also wrote that coal and cars are in a race to be the greatest danger to our climate. And at a recent news conference in which he announced Washington state would file its 32nd lawsuit against the Trump Administration over the dismantling of president Obama’s Clean Power Plan, Inslee said: “We’re breathing smoke from Mississippi, we’re breathing smoke from the rest of the United States. We have an interest in reducing coal smoke from all over the United States.” More at Fox News

Washington D.C. – Survival of the fittest

 

Wolf Management 101 – Guest post by Mustang

 

Washington is a pack of wolves.  There are several species of wolf, of course … but for simplicity sake, let’s just pretend there are only a few.  Nevertheless, despite different species, all wolves behave in the same way.  They are hunters looking to bring down and consume the weakest of their prey.

How we perceive these wolves is interesting.  For example, if one happens to be a western rancher who suffers the loss of one of his cattle, it makes perfect sense that this westerner would form a low opinion of wolves —but no matter what the rancher thinks, the truth is that the wolf is pure of heart.  He is only doing what wolves do.  A wolf pack may have killed and eaten a cow, but it did not break into the rancher’s house and steal his stereo or his wife’s jewelry.

We may apply the same analogy to describe Washington’s beltway shenanigans, where there are several species of wolves (Democrats, Republicans, Independents, journalists, lobbyists, bureaucrats).  They too are pure of blackest heart —seeking out the weakest of their prey.  I can even hear howling in the background.

This leads me to wonder, if Donald Trump has a mission to drain the swamp, and if he understands that the swamp is populated with wolves, why isn’t he arming himself?

  • Even supposing that Jeff Sessions resigns as Attorney General, does Mr. Trump imagine there will be no consequences from Sessions’ friends, allies, or even those of another political species who hates Sessions guts but sees an advantage in attacking Trump?  Is Mr. Trump so starved for attention?
  • Even supposing it is true that CNN and MSNBC behave themselves as something less than journalists, does Trump enhance his position, or detract from it, by hounding these people as news fakers?  (For the record, I can’t think of anything lower on the food chain than a journalist).  Why not starve the news fakers to death rather than giving them something to feast on every single day?
  • One must also wonder how to deal with wolves most effectively.  Is it by behaving as they do, running around baying at the moon, or by using high caliber weapons to dispatch them into wolf Valhalla?

There is something of Mr. Trump that we just don’t need: a daily dose of school-yard immaturity.  But there is also much about Trump that this country desperately needs —and why he was elected to the nation’s highest office.  We need him to address the wolves because they have become far too over-populated, because that is what Mr. Trump promised to do, and why the people elected him.  If he has a problem with Jeff Sessions, address it privately, as a gentleman, and then get on with the business of state-craft.

I understand that we can’t allow Mr. Trump to actually shoot these wolves, but he can damn-well starve them to death.  I hope he’s reading Bunkerville and thus gaining such phenomenal free advice.

Note: Mustang has two blogs where he spins some exceptional tales. Wander over to: Thoughts From Afar  and  Fix Bayonets

 

Muslims ‘Day of Prayer;’ organizers have extremist ties

Many outspoken Christians expressed disappointment that President Obama would endorse the Muslim “Day of Prayer,” yet ignored the Christian “National Day of Prayer” in May. This nation was founded “under God,”

The Islamic “National Day of Prayer” emerges Friday, marking the end of the Muslim month-long holiday Ramadan. Thousands of Muslims are expected to march on Capitol Hill

praying

Conflicts shroud this day, as many decry the actions and views of the organizers, including Hassen Abdellah, an attorney who represented Islamic terrorists for the 1993 and 2001 world trade center attacks. Imam Abdul Malik is another event organizer whose facebook page includes a video where he says “polygamy is an American tradition,” ( see http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2009/09/islam-on-capital-hill-.html). This is a quote from his wall: Democracy is not revelation, and democracy does not equal freedom, for in democracy you have apartheid, you have slavery, you have homosexuality, you have lesbianism, you have gambling, you have all of the voices that are against the spirit of truth; so no we don’t want to democratize Islam, we want to Islamize democracy (italics mine). That’s what we want.” Another video called “Anti-Zionism” is allegedly by this same man. The Washington Times reported some Islamic groups that would not take part in this day, including The Islamic Society of America (ISNA) and the Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR).

http://www.examiner.com/x-20686-Orlando-Christian-News-Examiner~y2009m9d24-Muslims-rally-at-capitol-hill-for-Day-of-Prayer-organizers-have-extremist-ties