Look! Here’s a distraction!
Problem is, coal mining jobs aren’t coming back — even under President Trump.
Robert Murray, owner of the country’s largest private coal company, wasted no time pointing the finger when he announced plans earlier this week to lay off as many as 4,400 workers, or 80 percent of his workforce.
His St. Clairsville, Ohio-based Murray Energy Corporation needed to downsize “due to the ongoing destruction of the United States coal industry by President Barack Obama, and his supporters, and the increased utilization of natural gas to generate electricity,” he said.
“Frankly, I am frightened for you, my employees, and the survival of your jobs and family livelihoods,” Murray said in a speech to workers, according to The Wall Street Journal. Their only hope for their jobs, the 75-year-old said, lies in electing “friends of coal” like Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.
That’s not true, of course — not least because the pink slips are set to go out in September, and the election won’t be held until November. But even a President Trump — whose seemingly half-baked plan to save coal would likely only boost its chief rival, natural gas — can’t stop the calamitous decline of the industry. For that, coal only really has itself to blame.
It’s predictably easy for Big Coal and its cohorts to obfuscate facts. The very idea that wealthy coal executives represent miners’ best interests ignores a long history ofviolence and abuse against workers who risked their lives to extract a fuel that helped usher in unprecedented economic growth, often for meager wages.
The coal industry has been in decline for decades. In 2007, coal still produced 50 percent of the electricity used in the U.S. Nine years later, that number stands at 33 percent.
CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS
Coal miners actually fared slightly better under Obama than they did under his Republican predecessor, George W. Bush.
More: Coal Baron Promises Huge Layoffs, Then Tells Workers To Vote Trump
Will Trump supporters actually swallow such lies? Probably. Coal is killing coal - not president Obama.
