This is brilliant.
Large coal companies, massive railroads such as Burlington Northern owned by Warren Buffett, and a slate of supporting businesses have been trying to come to market with a terminal in the Pacific Northwest for shipping Wyoming coal to Asia for over a year. Nobody, absolutely nobody can come up with a way to make this a profitable business proposition. And this is despite the fact that they get most of the subsidized coal off of federal lands for royalties that are far below the market value of the resource.
Yet, they still can't make it a viable business proposition. So what do they do - they turn to socialism for the coal companies by making Wyoming taxpayers pay for coal terminals in Oregon and Washington. Sightline makes this all too clear.
You can’t make this stuff up. The Wyoming state legislature—ostensibly one of the most conservative deliberative bodies in North America—has embraced full-on socialism for the coal industry.
Yep, that's what conservatives do when they can't get their businesses to make money. They turn into welfare queens - turning to big government so they can collect their welfare checks. You would think those guys with the big cowboy hats would be embarrased to be living off government welfrae checks - but , heck no, to them this is good welfare!
Meanwhile, the international coal market—which once seemed to hold promise for reviving Wyoming’s coal fortunes—is in a shambles. Asian coal prices are now so low that there’s simply no way for a private company to ship coal from the southern Powder River Basin to Asia at a profit. Heck, even Cloud Peak’s export operations, using higher-quality Montana coal, are hemorrhaging millions of dollars per month at today’s prices.
No business proposition there, so let's go for a welfare check..............
And for a state as small as Wyoming, a billion dollars is a lot of money: almost $2,000 for every man, woman, and child in the state. It’s also a lot of money for the coal industry: a billion dollars is enough to buy three of Wyoming’s largest coal companies—Arch Coal, Alpha Natural Resources, and Cloud Peak—with lots of money to spare. Which means that Wyoming is planning to put up a sum that represents a significant share of the total value of the US coal industry on a bet that the rest of the private sector won’t touch.....
But for coal, Wyoming legislators are all in favor of shameless doses of corporate welfare. It’s enough to make you think that their rock-ribbed conservative rhetoric is nothing more than cover for old-fashioned graft."
Go hug a conservative, and ask them if they can take you out for dinner with their welfare checks.