Thread for obviously newsworthy stuff

[spambot]

[Aeson]

They had to shutdown the government spellchecker

[spambot]

Unfortunately, loopholes in the rules governing the 2020 re-nomination
campaign are enabling these so-called Republicans to flirt with the
possibility of contested primaries and caucuses.

While President Trump would win re-nomination it wouldn’t come quick
and it wouldn’t be inexpensive. Any contested re-nomination
campaign—even a forlorn hope—would only help Democrats.

Accordingly, I am asking for your support to take the unprecedented
step of amending the rules to close loopholes in the re-nomination
campaign, including Rule 40.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/mitt-romney-trump-republican-national-committee_us_5c2cdc11e4b08aaf7a94efdc

[Proteus_MST]

Sounds like some trumpist republicans are in fear for their beloved leader and therefore want to take steps to make the party more totalitarian

[Dinner]

If olive oil is made out of olives... Then what is baby oil made out of?

[spambot]

More coal plants shut down in Trump’s first two years than in Obama’s entire first term

Despite campaigning on a pledge to save the dirtiest of fossil fuels, President Donald Trump has presided over a faster rate of coal plant retirements in his first two years than President Barack Obama saw in his entire first term.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reports that while 15 gigawatts of coal-fired plants were shut down in Obama’s first four years, Trump’s first two years have seen some 20 gigawatts retired (with more than two thirds of those occurring last year).

So what went wrong? After all, Trump had said he would end Obama’s supposed “war on coal.”

The answer is there never was any such war. The fundamental problem for coal was — and still is — economics, not politics. Indeed, as one leading industry analyst explained back in May, “the economics of coal have gotten worse” under Trump.

Coal power plants have simply become too expensive to operate compared to natural gas and renewable energy. Indeed, building and running new wind and solar farms is now cheaper than just running existing coal plants in many places.

The Trump administration itself is slowly waking up to this reality. Back in August, Trump traveled to West Virginia to tell supporters he had a “military plan” to save coal power plants. But by mid-October, Politico was reporting that “the White House has shelved the plan amid opposition from the president’s own advisers on the National Security Council and National Economic Council.”

Apparently they had no idea how to pay for the multi-billion dollar plan, and the most likely source of money was inevitably going to be U.S. ratepayers, especially in the red states that had the most uneconomic coal plants.

https://thinkprogress.org/more-coal-plants-shut-down-in-trumps-first-two-years-than-in-obamas-entire-first-term-e6b72f354330/

lol

[spambot]

Awaiting Trump's coal comeback, miners reject retraining

When Mike Sylvester entered a career training center earlier this year in southwestern Pennsylvania, he found more than one hundred federally funded courses covering everything from computer programming to nursing.

He settled instead on something familiar: a coal mining course.

“I think there is a coal comeback,” said the 33-year-old son of a miner.

Despite broad consensus about coal’s bleak future, a years-long effort to diversify the economy of this hard-hit region away from mining is stumbling, with Obama-era jobs retraining classes undersubscribed and future programs at risk under President Donald Trump’s proposed 2018 budget.

Trump has promised to revive coal by rolling back environmental regulations and moved to repeal Obama-era curbs on carbon emissions from power plants.

“I have a lot of faith in President Trump,” Sylvester said.

But hundreds of coal-fired plants have closed in recent years, and cheap natural gas continues to erode domestic demand. The Appalachian region has lost about 33,500 mining jobs since 2011, according to the Appalachian Regional Commission.

Although there have been small gains in coal output and hiring this year, driven by foreign demand, production levels remain near lows hit in 1978.

A White House official did not respond to requests for comment on coal policy and retraining for coal workers.

What many experts call false hopes for a coal resurgence have mired economic development efforts here in a catch-22: Coal miners are resisting retraining without ready jobs from new industries, but new companies are unlikely to move here without a trained workforce. The stalled diversification push leaves some of the nation’s poorest areas with no clear path to prosperity.

Federal retraining programs have fared better, with some approaching full participation, in the parts of Appalachia where mining has been crushed in a way that leaves little hope for a comeback, according to county officials and recruiters. They include West Virginia and Kentucky, where coal resources have been depleted.

But in southern Pennsylvania, where the industry still has ample reserves and is showing flickers of life, federal jobs retraining programs see sign-up rates below 20 percent, the officials and recruiters said. In southern Virginia’s coal country, participation rates run about 50 percent, they said.

“Part of our problem is we still have coal,” said Robbie Matesic, executive director of Greene County’s economic development department.

Out-of-work miners cite many reasons beyond faith in Trump policy for their reluctance to train for new industries, according to Reuters interviews with more than a dozen former and prospective coal workers, career counselors and local economic development officials. They say mining pays well; other industries are unfamiliar; and there’s no income during training and no guarantee of a job afterward.

In Pennsylvania, Corsa Coal opened a mine in Somerset in June which will create about 70 jobs – one of the first mines to open here in years. And Consol Energy recently expanded its Bailey mine complex in Greene County.

But Consol also announced in January that it plans to sell its coal holdings to focus on natural gas. And it has commissioned a recruitment agency, GMS Mines and Repair, to find contract laborers for its coal expansion who will be paid about $13 an hour - half the hourly wage of a starting unionized coal worker. The program Sylvester signed up for was set up by GMS.

The new hiring in Pennsylvania is related mainly to an uptick in foreign demand for metallurgical coal, used in producing steel, rather than domestic demand for thermal coal from power plants, the industry’s main business. Some market analysts describe the foreign demand as a temporary blip driven by production problems in the coal hub of Australia.

Officials for U.S. coal companies operating in the region, including Consol and Corsa, declined requests for comment.

“The coal industry has stabilized, but it’s not going to come back,” said Blair Zimmerman, a 40-year veteran of the mines who is now the commissioner for Greene County, one of Pennsylvania’s oldest coal regions. “We need to look at the future.”

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-trump-effect-coal-retraining-insight/awaiting-trumps-coal-comeback-miners-reject-retraining-idUSKBN1D14G0

Trump supporters really aren't terribly bright.

[Aeson]

We’ll have to see the holiday numbers ... if Santa giving lumps of coal to naughty children boosted demand. Maybe Trump can set up Federal training programs to make kids naughty again

[pchang]

Fracking killed coal. I suppose I helped a little since my undergraduate research project advanced one of the technologies required for fracking.

[I AM I AM I AM MOBIUS]

The news is poison.

[Dauphin]

I thought automation killed coal, or at least employment in coal mines. Jobs in coal mining have been on a near continuous decline for a century.

[Proteus_MST]

AFAIK everything that could get automated in coal mining already was automated in the 1960s/1970s ...
every further job losses in coal industry rather have to do the decline in the use of coal (for example for heating and producing electric energy) and with cheap competition from countries that don't care too much for miner safety (for example, China)

(Ruhr Valley also had a large coal mining industry that more and more declined ... its last coal mine closed the doors a few months ago (but Ruhr Valley sucessfully underwent a structural change from coal/steel industry to other businesses (like software industry), so it is not a big problem))

[rah]

Yeah, it's too bad, my old man invested in oil fields in Illinois but they couldn't get to it at the time. Now with fracking it would have been returned a lot of cash. Coulda been rich.

[ZEE]

Rah, we need to talk buddy. You see, Rah, Kidicious has completely PWNed your ass again. You have no chance against the maturity and logic of Kidicious.

Kidicious is the greatest poaster in Apolyton history, Rah. I am sorry he PWNed you like that.

[Proteus_MST]

Who is Kidicious?