Jay Rockefeller: Cap and Trade More Important than WV Jobs

Jay Rockefeller Revealed:
No Friend to Coal
No Friend to West Virginia
Cap and Trade More Important than WV Coal Jobs

WHO DID ROCKEFELLER REPRESENT: JOBS OR ENVIRO-DONORS?

NOTE: Original article at DBKP: Jay Rockefeller: More Concerned with Cap and Trade than WV Coal Jobs.

Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) suddenly notices a few things: 1-this president is a slave to enviro-weenies who hate coal; 2-Rockefeller represents West Virginia where coal employs a significant number of people (over 30,000); and, 3-his constituents won't be very happy when they lose their jobs or their "electric bills will skyrocket."

Cap and trade, courtesy of Jay Rockefeller, who is a BIG booster of the legislation that his party is pushing. Oops! He seems to have noticed that voters in his state have noticed.

From Being Frank:

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va... signaled strongly that promises from the White House are not enough. During a Senate hearing on Obama's proposal for the 2001 budget, Rockefeller lashed out.

According to one published report, Rockefeller made it clear "he isn't sure he trusts the president's commitments to coal. ..." Referring to Obama's pledges to support coal, the senator complained that, "He says it in his speeches, but he doesn't say it in (his budget proposal). He doesn't say it in the actions of (EPA Administrator) Lisa Jackson. And he doesn't say it in the minds of my own people. And he's beginning to not be believable to me."

Precisely. In an interview published in the New York Times, Rockefeller said it is not just energy spending policy that worries him. "It's not a question of money, it's a question of the overall approach. I just wonder whether they really do understand the importance of coal, the fact the nation can't exist without it," he explained.

Oh, now Rockefeller speaks up.

Ace has the right take: "This is a fairly significant statement, I think. Rockefeller could have asked for reassurance on coal any number of ways. He chose to do so by suggesting Obama's words do not match his deeds."

MORE:

Ed Morrissey, Hot Air-- Obama’s starting to be “not believable” on coal …:

Is Rockefeller sincere? I find it difficult in the extreme to believe that anyone with enough cranial power to breathe without written instructions could have misinterpreted what Obama promised in this Chronicle interview. It didn’t get made public until a few days before the election, and people in the Coal Belt may not have heard about it in time, but it’s been part of the record ever since. And as Rockefeller himself points out, the administration’s actions on coal for the past thirteen months have made clear their animus towards that “great natural resource.”

If Rockefeller is sincere, then he deserves a Captain Louis Renault Award for his shock, shock! at Obama’s hostility towards the industry that powers his home state. If not, then West Virginians need to replace Rockefeller at the first opportunity — unfortunately, four years out — to send someone a little more honest and less clueless to the US Senate. Either way, all of the rest of us who have been warning about Obama’s environmental extremism can certainly add Rockefeller’s belated complaint to the mountain(top) of evidence for our argument.

Don Surber also has thoughts:

Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller — West Virginia’s other senator — got a little excited about Barack Obama in October 2008, when he told Jake Stump of the Charleston Daily Mail: “He’s the president I’ve been waiting for all my life.”

Well, after today, it looks like Rockefeller has begun waiting again.

The Won is no longer The One to our septuagenarian senator.

It was from Surber that we first learned that the EPA had killed jobs in West Virginia back in December. From Obama hosts a job summit while his EPA kills jobs:

The Associated Press outlined four ideas that President Obama should consider for his job summit tomorrow. How about we start with keeping the jobs we already have in the coalfields? Not only does mountaintop mining provide coal mining jobs, but it provides cheap electricity to attract other jobs, and it provides flat land in a state whose main deterrence to economic development is its lack of flat land.

Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa Jackson has not only stopped future permits but she went back and retroactively pulled 79 existing mine permits, including 23 in West Virginia.

Surber again, when the EPA caused the lay-offs of 5% of the people of Clay County, EPA lays off 500 coal miners in Clay County:

Consol Energy announced plans to shut down two mines in Clay County, West Virginia, throwing about 500 people out of work. The entire population of the county is 10,000 people.

The actions of the Environmental Protection Agency and federal judge Chuck Chambers were cited.

And what was Jay Rockefeller doing during that time of job losses?

Just last month he lamented the election of Massachusetts' new Senator Scott Brown as an impediment to passing the coal- and job-killer known as cap and trade.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), asked about the effect of Brown’s election on efforts to pass a climate change bill, replied “probably not very helpful.”

Jay Rockefeller has seen the light and it's an ill wind that is blowing him away from President Obama because if there's one thing Jay likes more than money, it's the prestige of a U.S. Senate seat.

[ABOVE: Election 2014--The voters respond to Rockefeller the same way he responded to West Virginians in 2009.]

He didn’t have anything bad to say about Obama and cap-n-trade during those heady months when his party had it’s super-majority and the media wind was totally at his back.

Rockefeller can judge by the numbers of outraged phone calls he’s been getting that it may take a full four years for him to run away from Obama and his job-killing, coal-snuffing party.

It’s too late. Jay Rockefeller had a chance to stand up for the people of WV in 2009 and he didn’t. He actually almost never does. But now they are aware of it.

His latest verbal retreat won't be his last. West Virginians will hopefully remember that he is a fair-weather friend. When the chips are down, Jay's votes for his cocktail party buddies--and there are many more enviro-weenies at Washington cocktail parties than coal miners.

Bye bye Jay.

UPDATE: We referred to Rockefeller's enviro donors, but forgot the accompanying research. We'll include it in a future update. In the meantime, we'll direct readers to WV Watchdog and this interesting tidbit that the Senator received a hefty cash donation from SEIU.

In his 2008 re-election campaign Rockefeller accepted $10,000 from SEIU. [...] Rockefeller is connected to SEIU not just through campaign donations, but also by blood. Rockefeller’s cousin, Anne Bartley, is married to Larry B. McNeil. McNeil is described on Bartley’s bio as “a former Saul Alinski organizer for 25 years.” He currently serves as director of the SEIU’s Institute for Change.

Readers interested in beating us to an update can check out the WV Watchdog's site for more info on where Senator Rockefeller gets his cash--besides his sizable inheritance, that is.

by Mondo Frazier
image: DBKP file
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