In 2008 UMW Chief Cecil Roberts stumped for Barack Obama. West Virginia Democrats and union leaders took two buses and several vans from Charleston, West Virginia throughout southern West Virginia on a Tour for Change.
Among those there were Governor Joe Manchin, Auditor Glen Gainer, Treasurer John Perdue, Attorney General Darrell McGraw, Sec. of State Nominee Natalie Tennant, Supreme Court Nominee Menis Ketchum, UMWA President Cecil Roberts, WV AFL-CIO President Kenny Perdue, State Party Chairman Nick Casey. Ben Smith from Politico hopped on the bus to cover the tour.
Big Mistake.
The head of the United Mine Workers Cecil Roberts blasted Obama’s radical EPA administrator Lisa Jackson today for killing off the coal industry like Osama Bin Laden. The UMW Chief said under Obama’s new regulations “we’re never going to have another coal-fired facility in the United States that’s constructed.”
The Hill reported:
The coal industry will suffer the same fate as Osama bin Laden under new climate regulations proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency, the head of the United Mine Workers of America said this week.
“The Navy SEALs shot Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan and Lisa Jackson shot us in Washington,” Cecil Roberts, president of the powerful union, said during an interview Tuesday on the West Virginia radio show MetroNews Talkline.
Roberts blasted Jackson, the EPA administrator, over the proposed regulations, which would limit greenhouse gas emissions from new power plants. Opponents of the regulations, including Roberts, say the new rules would be the death knell of the coal industry.
New coal-fired power plants would have to install technology to capture carbon dioxide emissions in order to comply with the rules. The technology, known as carbon capture and storage (CCS), “is not commercially available,” Roberts said.
“This rule is an all-out, in my opinion, decision by the EPA that we’re never going to have another coal-fired facility in the United States that’s constructed,” Roberts said.
Cecil Roberts stumped for Barack Obama 4 years ago. At the end of Wednesday’s interview Roberts was still praising Obama. Obviously, the UMW needs new leadership.
