The real point of the Clean Power Plan

When the Most Equal Comrade spoke of fundamentally transforming America, he meant that he intended to hobble it.

Is there any other explanation for this?

President Barack Obama’s plan targeting coal-burning power plants will cost a quarter of a million jobs and shrink the coal industry by nearly half, according to a new report by the American Action Forum (AAF).

The president released final regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Monday, which require every state to meet strict emission standards for coal-burning power plants in the next 15 years.

The so-called “Clean Power Plan” will cost the industry $8.4 billion, nearly 10 times more expensive than the most burdensome regulation released this year, according to AAF, a center-right think tank led by Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office.

“This week, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released its final greenhouse gas (GHG) standards for existing power plants,” according to the report, authored by AAF’s director of regulatory policy Sam Batkins. “The final plan will shutter 66 power plants and eliminate 125,800 jobs in the coal industry.”

“Perhaps more alarming, using the 2012 baseline for coal generation and projections for 2030 output, the industry could shrink by 48 percent,” the report said.

AAF based its report on EPA data, which estimated that the rules would lead to 34,000 “net decrease in job-years,” or jobs. However, the AAF argues nearly four workers depend on a single energy job.

“In AAF’s last measurement of the economic loss of the rule, we used a PricewaterhouseCoopers study that found one energy job supports 3.7 additional jobs,” the report said. “If we take that multiplier and apply it to EPA’s figure of 34,000 jobs, it nets a total employment impact of 125,800 fewer workers.”

AAF also predicts at least 66 coal-fired power plants will close due to the plan. Those plants currently produce emissions more than 2.5 times the rate that the EPA has mandated all must meet by 2030.

If post-America can be saved, the task is going to be unprecedentedly Herculean. To characterize the deliberate damage wrought by the Freedom-Haters as immense is to employ an understatement.